People Can Be Great!
I’ve had a couple of my friends, people who I actually rarely see, already offer me advice in my quest! I think that’s great! One person did this through responding with a comment that shows his idea to help me. Trés cool! Thanks, Carl. My other friend, Jeff, emailed me some tips, since he has a part-time business on the internet. [Hey Jeff, what's your site? You should put a post on here and link to your site, so I can see what it's about.] It just goes to show that there are people who are not selfish and care in this world!
I’m always up for suggestions and help in this quest of mine. I know it might seem silly to some people, and others might think I’m insane… “Stick to the job!” I hear. “Work hard, and you’ll get ahead.” Well, that depends on how far you want to go. I doubt I’m going to be CEO of this company, and getting into another right away is a tough call. At least at that level. So, to get that kind of position, one has to start thier own company. And isn’t that what I’m doing? I honestly believe that once it starts to bring in some money I will be able to do as owners of other companies do - hire people to do the easy work and the things I’m not great at (like web design) and make more money from the tough stuff myself.
But that takes time. It certainly isn’t going to happen this month. And I don’t expect it to happen until after at least a year. Until then, I’ll keep plugging at this and getting things done in my spare time, while I work for someone else. At the moment I’m most concerned about making enough from this endeavour to keep my house and start to pay down my debts… $1500 a month would be enough! (After taxes and expenses, of course.)
So, if you have any ideas, feedback, or input into this, I welcome them! Just post them here or email me…
November 21st, 2008 at 3:49 pm
You are very welcome for the help. I am actually going to be creating another website based of off my experiences with creating an online income. I guess sort of what you are doing here. However, all my affiliate sites that are out and about on the net, will not be posted anywhere except for in marketing. Why? Because I do not need to make it easier for competition to find my site, and copy how I do things, and push me out of the ranks. This is why most marketers who are selling marketing advice do not display the sites they are making money off of.
November 21st, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Now, a piece of advice that I hope you use is this: Do not try for a big authority type site just yet. Why? Because its a big endeavor that will take a lot of work, and you do not know of the payoff with it yet. A thing to do, is to take the niche you want to get into and make a smaller mini site, selling other peoples products (affiliate) drive traffic to that site, capture emails through an opt in list with an auto responder, by offering something of value for free. In return, they may buy something from you right then and there, and you get to contact them again through the auto responder. Now, once you are making some money, you can take the next step in that niche, and make an authority site on it ( as long as its making you some money). And then send out emails to your list promoting the new site. Now, to keep your list interesting before this happens, is to send them useful info for free once or twice a week. If they continue to see value in what you are showing them, they will keep reading your emails. Another things that is good as emails, is creating rss feeds giving out info as well, and in return promoting the new authority site.(RSS feeds are potentially viral, as a lot of content sites may put feeds on their site, because it auto updates for them, and it creates exposure for you) Then, once you can prove that your new site converts your product into sales, you can create a separate sales page for it, and have affiliates promote it (or have the sales page in the first place, and you promote that, and the site being behind the scenes)
November 22nd, 2008 at 10:28 pm
OK, here is another piece of advice that I am going to give out, almost forgot about it. And I made a big big mistake with it, and now Im currently rushing to fix the problem. Ok, so, with all my sites I write articles based of off long tail keywords right? Sounds simple enough doesn’t it? Well, yes and no. I picked some long tail keywords alright, and got organic traffic from them, however, the keywords I used were for people who were looking for info on those keywords. Free info. Yes, you want to pick some long tail keywords, and use them naturally in your content, BUT, you must choose very very carefully which long tail keywords to use. Pick “buyer keywords”, or as some IMers call them “desperate keywords”. These are keywords for people who are both desperate to solve a problem, and want a solution right away, and they are willing to pay for it. They are the ones on the verge of buying, and since they found your site with those keywords, you must have what they want. Now, if you do congrats, you just made a sale. The trick is, if you are using those long tail keywords, make sure you want something to give the customer that relates to the problem they are trying to pick.
A very common mistake that a lot of internet marketers use is they will just use the general keywords for their pages because they have the most traffic. However, 99.9% of those common keywords are not from surfers on the verge of buying. And then another mistake, is picking long tail keywords that are just the same as the general ones, except they are more targeted traffic, however, they are not guaranteed buyers, they are just surfing for free info on that specific topic. Which is great, your getting traffic, but you are losing money in the process. All you had to do was dig a bit deeper, and find those keywords that represent buyers and people desperate to fix a problem. This is where the money is. This kind of traffic, may seem smaller, like maybe 100 or so visits a day, but guess what, they are more likely to buy from you, even at a standard 1 - 2% conversion rate will give you 1 - 2 sales a day. And if you get $20 - $30 for each sale, that is $20 - $60/day, or $600 - $1800 a month. (from just 1 site)
I am not trying to hype it up or anything, its just the way it is. However, here is the catch. This will not work in a low traffic niche. This is a step in the siphon method, which only works in high traffic niches. Too much competition you say?? BAH!! I am getting traffic in a very high competition niche right now, I just messed up with the type of traffic, wrong long tail keywords, they were searching for what I had to offer, they just wanted the info though. So, now Im going to change that, and we shall see that traffic change to buyers.
=) Hope this helps you in your quest.