Building your first niche website is your first step to building a passive income. There are too many niches, sub niches, and micro niches out there to name them all so there are many opportunities for you to make money online.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Building Niche Sites
Building your first niche website is your first step to building a passive income. There are too many niches, sub niches, and micro niches out there to name them all so there are many opportunities for you to make money online.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Ezine Article Spying
Short post today but I wanted to show everyone how you can spy on ezinearticles.com and see all the articles with top views. You can either do a general search or be keyword specific. This can help you determine what keywords to target when writing articles for your niche. We want to maximize the amount of traffic we can pull from our articles so we might as well see some of the top producing articles in action.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
5 Types of Online Passive Income
Today I want to discuss the 5 types of online passive income that you can build for your websites. Passive income is the best type of income that you can build, in my opinion. Who wouldn't want want to make money while you sleep!
- Affiliate Marketing - This is probably the most used typed of passive income out there. Affiliate marketing is where you sell other people's products for them and for every sale you receive a commission. This is where you would build an e-mail list or website that targets a specific niche then begin selling products to your targeted visitors. This typically includes reviews of these products to help assist your visitors with their buying decisions. The biggest affiliate networks you can sign up for are clickbank.com, amazon affiliates, or cj.com.
- Selling Ad Space or Adsense - Online advertising is one of the most used revenue generators out on the web. Similar to affiliate marketing but you build websites for specific niches that have the potential to generate a large amount of traffic to. The hope is your visitors will click on your advertisements making you some nice cash each day. Google Adsense is one of the biggest ad networks you could join.
- Product Creation - This is what I consider a step up in the internet marketing world. This method is when someone wants to build their own informational product and sell it through their website or another medium. Product creation is as simple as someone building a product that they consider themselves an expert at, which can be in any niche. We are all good at something, think about something you may be good at that you could create and sell.
- Referrals - How about that product you just created? Wouldn't it be nice if other people started selling your product for you? You could just sit back while an army of affiliates run around the web promoting your product. If you can recruit the affiliates and possibly super affiliates, you could see a major win fall.
- Membership sites - Create your own membership site in a niche you're passionate about. Build a private portal with secret information about your niche that people would be hungry to see. The key is to release new information each month that will retain your clients. There is an overwhelming amount of people who completely forget about some of their memberships and will pay the subscriptions for months before ever visiting again. It's definitely not something to be overlooked.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Make Money with Article Marketing
Article Marketing is now bigger than it ever was but there have been some significant changes with regards to the Google Panda Update. There are some changes to the methods we use now compared to just a few months ago, prior to these algorithm updates.
Article marketing is typically the beginning point for most marketers who want to gain targeted traffic, but what normally happens is they fail at article marketing because they do not understand the techniques behind it that drive traffic. I want to talk about some of these methods that will turn a ‘Fail’ into a ‘Win’.
There is NO EXCUSE to being able to make a descent passive income from article marketing and I will cover everything in detail that you will need to know to accomplish making an income. Making money online takes hard work like everything else, there is no push button magic secret.
I’m going to detail this out as a step by step action plan that is easy to follow. If you want to see success, follow these steps and I promise you results.
Step 1: Keyword Research
This is what I consider the biggest step in all of article marketing, keyword research. New marketers have a difficult time grasping this concept and can lead quickly to failure and ultimately quitting all together. For this method we will be using keywords known as long tail keywords or keyword phrases.
To give you a picture of how to do the research, let’s find an example. Let’s choose a random niche to target, heck let’s get one that’s even highly competitive, the Weight Loss niche.
I prefer using SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool when doing research. (These are free methods that will get the job done, once you start making money I highly recommend buying Market Samurai, it will change your life.)
You next step is to look for long tail keywords, more than one word, that have at least 10 searches per day and less than 10,000 competing sites. (The competition isn’t always a factor, it really depends on who is ranked #1 already, we’ll talk more on this in a bit.)
I entered in the search box, “Burn Fat”, and this brought up a long list of keywords related to burning fat or weight loss. Scroll down to the bottom of the list, here are some keywords that we should be able to compete for.
Found one! does walking on an empty stomach burn more fat? (This is what we call a long tail keyword) This keyword receives 11 daily search results for Google and 16 Results averaged between the top 3 search engines. If we put this keyword in quotation marks, “does walking on an empty stomach burn more fat”, and search with Google, we can see the exact competition, a jaw dropping 6 sites.
There are a few other keywords on this list you should look at after we are done here. I can bet that after writing this post people will be jumping on this long tail keyword and some others in that list.
So with one article we can potentially send 11 people to our site per day, 330 per month. Let’s say your site is selling a product with a commission of $23 and you write 10 articles that have this kind of traffic, that’s 3300 visitors per month potentially. If only %1 percent converted on your product, that’s $759 per month! Not to mention passive income where you are going to set it and forget it.
Step 2: Article Research
This really applies to niches that you are not an expert in. You should have no problem writing articles about topics you’re passionate about. Since I’m not an expert on burning fat I’ll head over to Google and search for “does walking on an empty stomach burn more fat?” and check out some of the sites for ideas on what to write about.
I’d also recommend visiting an authority site that is in the niche you are targeting. There might be some good information that will give you ideas for great content.
Step 3: Writing The Article
You don’t have to be great writing to get into marketing, if you can express an idea or plan to someone verbally, why can’t you do it by writing it down?
It’s best to make the article short, 400 to 650 words, it’s crucial after the Google update to maintain a minimum threshold of 400 words for your articles. You want to write a short article that keeps the reader interested, when they come to your article we want them to think, “Oh, this is short, I can read this.” You want to avoid a high bounce rate (where a user immediately leaves a page they just visited), due to the latest panda update this can affect our Google search rankings.
Here’s a great tip for article writing, Bring up a problem -> Write about the pain or difficulty caused by said problem -> Discuss the solution & lifestyle without the problem. This is a powerful article writing method that will draw readers to your site. Offer part of the solution or a great tip in the article leaving the reader hungry for more.
There is 6 basic parts to an article,
Title or Headline
You must put the keyword here. An exact match is best, so “does walking on an empty stomach burn more fat?” or top lists are great for getting attention. For example, Top 10 Fat Burning Tips, where maybe, Fat Burning Tips is your keyword, will be an attention grabber. The keyword optimizes it for the search engines and the couple extra words spice up the headline to grab attention.
Summary
Your keyword doesn’t have to go here but if you are working with a shorter keyword I would recommend it. This is the part of the article that will show up on the search engine as the description of the article. You want to make this as appealing as possible so you get clicks.
First Paragraph
The Keyword must be in the first sentence of your paragraph! Then, once more throughout the paragraph, don’t spam it. Try to keep this interesting and engaging so the reader doesn’t leave immediately.
Body
Insert the keyword again once or twice in this part of the article. This is the beef of the article, so great content here!
Conclusion
This is where we want to skillfully lead the reader to our author’s resource box, where you will want to promote your website.
Resource Box
The majority of article directories will allow you to promote your website (one or two links) in this space. This is where you must put a call to action to get readers to visit your website. If possible you want to have the link to your site setup with anchor text as the keyword you are targeting. This will help optimize your website for SEO and backlinking.
Examples “If you want to burn fat now visit this website now (Link Goes Here)” or “For more tips on burning fat visit this website now (Link Goes Here)”
Most article directories will not allow a direct affiliate link so you need to have your own website that can be linked, then have a short review of your affiliate product on your site; then put your affiliate link in that review. (You can put affiliate links inside your articles at GoArticles.com!)
Step 4: Article Submission
Great job so far! You should now have a high quality article that we can submit to article directories. Ezinearticles.com is still the best article directory, even after the Google panda update, and right now approval times couldn’t be any quicker. Submit the article to Ezinearticles first, and then once it is approved you can submit it to other article directories. Google has put more of a penalty on duplicate content so it wouldn’t hurt to invest in article spinning software at some point for better results.
Other article directories I recommend are Goarticles.com and Associatedcontent.com
Web 2.0 Sites for submission, Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com
Document Sharing Sites are starting to pull some weight with Google, I recommend submitting your articles to Scribd.com as well.
Step 5: Ranking for Search Engine Position
Since we are dealing with low competition keywords it is VERY easy to rank #1 in the search results. You honestly need just a handful of backlinks to rank this high. Sometimes you will have an article that will rank number one naturally, no backlinks, because there is zero competition. I had an article last week do that!
To get these backlinks you will need to social bookmark your articles. There are various pieces of software and services out there that can help automate this process to many different sites at once. If you decide not to do it by hand in the future there are service here in the warriors for hire section or gigs on fiverr.com.
When creating these social bookmarks make sure that you are using the keyword that you are targeting in the article in the anchor text of the link.
If you have created a high quality, killer article, then your article is likely to get picked up and syndicated by other people providing even more backlinks.
Final Step: Profit?
This last step is where you will see results from your hard work. It all comes down to numbers and how hard you worked. Think realistically about how many articles you can write in a day then setup a plan to write that many every day. Let’s say you can write 3 to 4 articles per day for 30 days, that’s 100 to 120 articles in one month. If each article has 10 people click through to your site per day, that’s 10 X 100 = 1000 visitors per day to your website. These are targeted visitors that are coming to your website, viewing your offer. If just %1 of those people convert into sales, that’s 10 people buying your product every day. Occasionally you will write an article that is just a home run, this is a killer article that will bring in a huge traffic every day.
Talk about building a passive income! Once you have this type of traffic built you can set it and forget it. Move on to your next website or project that you want to promote and start writing articles. Rinse -> Repeat -> Profit.
The example I’ve used is a typical but well below average situation for article marketing. You are likely to see much greater results than what I’ve show above. This method will work for any niche; there are always keywords ripe for the taking. If you have trouble finding some keywords start thinking about sub niches and micro niches. Don’t do just plain dog training, try a specific breed for example. That’s all I have for you today!
Good Luck,
-Jay Vance
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Quit Wasting Time on Your Blog
How much time does it fee like you waste on your blog? Either checking analytics or reading other blogs for ideas, traffic generation methods, or just being unable to focus on what to do next? You may have just realized that you fall into these categories. Don't worry, I've been there too.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
8 Tips To Generate Massive Sticky Blog Traffic
Blog traffic can be hard to come by to someone who is new to the blogging world. Even if you are a long time blogger you may have not found the success of building large amounts of traffic to your site. Some blog for the satisfaction it brings where they build a community and others build blogs to make a full time income. Might as well be paid for your hard work right? Lets look at some methods that can bring in traffic to your site and allow you to reach your goals.
- Provide Great Content - Making quality content is hands down the best way to bring big blog traffic to your site and keep it. If you provide crap content then you can expect poor results. Content is king! You must write valuable material to provide to your readers so they will want to return to your site, hungry for more info.
- Blog Design - Having a clean and professional looking blog makes you, in turn, look professional and more authoritative. Creating a site that is easy to use and putting your content in logical, organized locations will help you maintain users on your site.
- RSS Visibility is a big mistake most bloggers make - Your typical user isn't tech savvy or might not even know what RSS is. You will need to let them know what RSS is and that it is completely free to subscribe to. You can also, from time to time, remind your users at the end of your post to subscribe by providing a link to your feed.
- Respond to Comments and E-mails from your visitors - Commenting to your visitors builds trust with them and gives them interactions that will make them want to return to your blog. Always e-mail back your visitors! This is one of the biggest trust makers out there, if you don't reply to someone they will think their question wasn't important and lose faith in you and your site.
- Research other blogs in your niche and begin leaving comments everyday on these other blogs - This will build trust with the blog owners and send traffic your way. You want to make sure that your website is linked to your name in the comments. Plus by researching other blogs you can see what techniques they are using to build content and bring in traffic.
- Guest Posting - Now it's time to target those blog owners your just made friends with. Ask them if you can make a guest post or possibly swap posts. This will bring in serious traffic to your blog.
- Use Graphics in your posts - Using graphics can help keep your visitors interested in your site and spice it up a bit. No one wants to visit a bland blog that is just white with text. There is plenty of free image sites out there where you can supply plenty of images for your blog.
- Engage your readers - Getting your readers to comment on your blog adds another level of interactivity that will keep your readers coming back. Ask a question at the end of your post. "What would you do" or "What methods do you use for X niche". This will help get readers to comment on your posts and stay interested in your blog.
These tips will help you grow your blog into an authority site in your niche. Posting great content that keeps your readers engaged and coming back hungry for more is the secret to building a successful blog. Whether you blog to make passive income online or just for the passion, these tips will work no matter what your goals are. You will be well on your way to generating massive blog traffic.
Starting an Online Business with Zero Investment
What I love about the internet is that anyone can make money online with zero investment. You can create a blog and start making money online immediately. Now, to make money immediately you do have to have some experience and know how to drive traffic but we will save that for a later post. I wanted to talk about some of the free options out there that can help you build a passive income site in 30 days.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Finding a Niche to Start Your First Website
The first thing any internet marketer has to decide on is which niche to target? There is so many primary niches, sub niches, micro niches to pick from it can be difficult to land on one. If you are going to create a blog then I highly recommend selecting a topic that you are passionate about. It will make it much easier to start building content and you will actually enjoy what you are writing about.