A Website Model That Makes Money

A Website Model That Makes Money

by: Michael Keenan

I would like to share with you one simple stratergy in creating income with your own website. This is just one method out of simply millions that you could create for yourself. Remember the internet provides no limits. This is one example that does work for me, and may give you an insight into exactly a website model, that you may like to put into action for yourself. Affiliate marketing and/or sales of any kind on the internet, requires a real commitment, as I am sure you do already realize. The internet is really one of the greatest training grounds in the world for sales. You can try and fail many times, until you find that system and approach that will work for you. But the commitment that you show in meeting this challenge, will be a lesson that you will always remember. Success is always achieved in no matter what you do, through simple hard work. There is no easy path to success, but when you achieve the success you are after, there is no greater feeling. So lets begin. In this example my website, which for the purposes of this article i will call '????'. I will give you the exact profit breakdowns. With this website I treat all my affiliate products as purely residual income, much like adsense. Adsense itself generates for me, on this website, on average around $2 per day. I also use various other companies affiliate products, which generate around $200 per month. Also within the website, I sell e-book informational products, which I own the full resale rights for, which generate around $700 per month. And here lies the answer to making money online, no matter what you sell. The products, that generate the most income, are the ones that you will own yourself. Certainly I should be making more from the affiliate info products that I sell. But I lose commissions through simple affiliate url tampering. Commissions that are stolen or lost are a real pain. You can try every method in the book to protect your affiliate codes. But after all the hard work is done, you still lose that valuable income. The people who sell the original affiliate product know this, which is mostly why a high percentage of the sales price is offered to an affiliate to begin with. Because they realize that a very high ratio of sales made on their products will give them the total profit back. The reasons why people change affiliate product codes etc, could run into pages. Lets just say it is inevitable. This is the reason why I treat all my affiliate based products as purely residual income. But as you can see in this example clearly where the highest return on investment lies. And that is in the products that you actually own. You can purchase resale rights for info products easily, and it involves not much money at all, most products are available for under $50. Or if you have the time and patience to search the internet. You can find amazing e-books that have free resell rights and the information they contain is really valuable. You will find these types of treasures occasionally, and the lights will start flashing in your eyes when you do. The information that you have just discovered is of value and that is a real key to success. This is why I, at this point, strongly emphasize the importance of this one principle. Only sell products that you feel strongly about and you know that will be of great value to the person who may purchase it. That includes products you have bought the resale rights for, or a free product, you have discovered with resale rights. If you sell strong products with real informational value consistently you will always succeed. Your customers will return, quite simply because they know where the value of the information they seek is the greatest. And that is at your website. Always remember to put yourself into your visitors shoes. Ask yourself the question? Would you buy the products you are selling? Answer this question with a Yes. And you will be really on the start too online success.

Creating A Blog To Promote An Existing Business

Creating A Blog To Promote An Existing Business

by: Mal Keenan

Copyright 2005 Mal Keenan If you belong to any of the following groups, then this article is for you. * You already have a business and a website that serves as the official hub for your online sales. The website may be serving as an online store for your enterprise. * You need a venue wherein you can promote your affiliate links. * Your already have a website, which may not necessarily be a commercial one, and it is enrolled with a Pay Per Click (PPC) program, like Google AdSense. Success in these fields depends on one essential principle which you might have already realized: traffic is the key to your online business thriving. You may have in your digital inventory the best products in the world, but they won’t mean squat if no one would get to see them. This is why each and every online businessman will fight tooth and nail just to have a piece of the Internet traffic. After all, the more visitors who get to visit your site, the more potential clients you have. And blogs can most definitely help you drive visitors to your pages. Here is how you could use them to achieve such a purpose: 1. Download the Wordpress blogging software, which is available for free at www.wordpress.com . An alternative is to go with blogger.com. I have posted instructions for setting up a Blogger blog at your own server in this PDF file: http://www.pluginprofitstraining.com/blogsetup.pdf 2. Remember that good content is always at the heart of a progressive online traffic stream. People are always looking for information, and if you will give them that, they would read what you have to offer. Dedicate your blog to the subject of your main website. Publish informative entries that would hook your readers and make them come back for updates. In between purely educational entries, strategically include a link to your site by suggesting their importance to your readers. 3. Using the above mentioned strategy, you could also include your affiliate links to pre-sell your affiliate products. The more traffic you drive to your affiliate merchant’s site or sales page, the more chances you will have of effectuating a successful sale and bigger commissions. 4. Links from blogs are unilateral, meaning, they are one way links to your websites. The more traffic a unilateral link generates, the more it becomes prominent in online searches. Avoid reciprocal links at all costs! Do not include a link to your blog from your website. Search engines abhor reciprocal linking. 5. 80% of your traffic will come from the search engines. You have to tweak your blog to attract the attention of the search engine spiders. Now, blogs are already search engine friendly. However, there is a very big possibility that you would be competing with other blogs on the same subject. You have to make sure that once you upload your blog, it is able to outperform its competitors in the search engine rankings. One way you can do this is by using the title of your post to match the keyword phrases you are targeting, plus put a sprinkling of your keyword phrase in the post itself. I am doing this with great results. 6. Check your blog offline. It should be as readable and as navigable as possible for your prospective readers. Make appropriate adjustments if necessary. 7. Upload your blog to a reliable server that has enough bandwidth to accommodate many viewers. 8. Constantly update your blog. Search engines love regularly updated content, so publishing new entries will greatly increase your blog’s page rank, and consequently, your main website’s traffic. 9. Accepting links from other related blogs will also bring to your site some traffic from sources other then search engines. The way that a blog is designed fosters the building of a community of blog sites, and this will provide for an added stream of visitors for you. 10. You could also decide to enroll your blog site in the Google AdSense advertising program. This will give you an additional income stream. We will discuss this in future articles. Blogs are excellent promotional tools for your existing business. Use them well and you will harvest the rewards in a matter of weeks.

Huge Content Rich Websites for Profit

Huge Content Rich Websites for Profit

by: Robert Rogers

Here is the bare bone - no hype information and a link to the website I built using these techniques. So I not going to lie to you about how much money you can make or how much I made. Simply put, people are making money with these kinds of sites, I just want a piece of the action. This article assumes you have a basic knowledge of HTML, Google Adsense, and Affiliate Advertising. We've all heard the phrases "Content is King" and "If content is King, then relevance is Queen!". So I'm going to share with you how to build a site based on these principles for profit! I built a 1000+ page content rich website in about 2 days. Check it out at http://articleupdates.com Website Building tools: I used DreamWeaver as my html editor. Any good html editor will work such as Frontpage. Go to download.com and search for "html editor". Coffeecup is a very popular free editor. Basically you need a good editor that will update links site wide automatically. Give you reports on broken links, and do search and replace site wide, file specific, and etc... Also very important is a good table building capability. For the content I pulled articles from various free content sites. As long as you adhere to the terms of fair use, you will have access to thousands of content rich articles that you can put in your own website. Get a simple clipart cd with 150,000 royalty free images from Bestbuy for $20. Then plug in your affiliate codes for google adsense, clickbank, and commission junction. You don't have to be an html expert. Just having some basic programming knowlege is enough. For example, understanding head, body, and building tables. Inserting variables and doing global changes. Any good html editor will help with that. You really need to become an expert at building tables. They are fast loading and can really make an impact on a site. If you are into css, even better! Key Features for SEO: Keyword Rich and Relevant! Building with SEO (search engine optimization) in mind. Use these techniques when building your site! Niche Site: Pick a very specific topic. I chose "Making Money Online with Content Rich Sites" for this example. Use a simple structure. Index page to "Index of Articles". Then "Index of Articles" to each individual article page. Two levels, easy to manage, easy to spider! Make your site surfer friendly: No hidden pages, re-directs, pop-ups, spyware, java, or scripts. Just use ".html" files with text links to full text content rich pages which are also easily spidered with useful relevant information for the visitor. Include lots of articles including a few unique pages that you have written yourself. Now start building your basic template for all the pages on your site. How you build your template will greatly depend on what editor and tools you'll be using. For example: most times you'll do something like Huge Content Rich Websites for Profit. When you go to build your 1000+ page site, the editor will replace the title tag with the appropriate text dynamically. Title Tag and Description Tags and all other meta tags should be relevant and keyword rich. Page Title - Use relevant keywords on each index page to the articles - Use the article title which will have additional relevant keywords for each article page. H1 Tags - Keyword rich and relevant ex: "Make Money Online", "Home Based Business" H2 Tags - Use the article title in the article pages. ex: "10 Ways To Make Money Online" robot.txt file for spiders - just a simple two line file in your root directory User-agent: * Disallow: Body text - Use content rich articles. Also use high color contrast between the text and the background so the search engine doesn't think your trying to hide anything and penalize you. Plus it's just plain easier to read. Use arial or verdana font. URLs, File Names, and Directories - use the article title ex: http://articleupdates.com/i-home-business/five-ways-to-increase-your-affiliate-sales.html Inbound links: Set up link partners. If you can, have them place the link to your site using a keyword instead of the domain name itself. ex: Make Money Online Click Here. Outbound links: Do the same for your link partners. Set up links using text that is relevant to their topic which should be relevant to your site but not competing if possible. If you sell computers, link to a company that sells computer desks. Make same site links with relevant text. ex: "make money at home" will link to a page within your own site. Make Image alt text use primary keywords. ex: "money online" Add HTML comment tags that use primary keywords. These are not seen buy the surfer, but can be seen by search engine spiders. No one has proven this helps, but it doesn't hurt! Now add money making adsense and affiliate links on every page. Put them top center between the article title and article content. Adjust the colors so that is blends in with your web page content. Google adsense will pick up the page title, h1 and h2 tags to target the ad. When someone clicks on it, you get paid!. Once you have these basic things set up in your template, you need to use a powerful tool called Article Equalizer. With a little practice, you'll be able to build 1000+ page websites in just a day or two. The link to Article Equalizer is http://hop.clickbank.net/?mark6188/articleeq Another important thing you can do: Add dynamic RSS content by keyword. I'll follow up on this in my next article.

Google's own AdSense Tips

Google's own AdSense Tips

by: Richard Keir

Copyright 2005 Richard Keir Google is at least as interested as you are in having your ads perform well on your site. And they've gone to some work to provide the information you need to optimize your AdSense. What's fascinating to me is that apparently not everyone bothers to read their tips. And even some that do, fail to apply it. That said, you need to be aware that simply using their tips doesn't guarantee successful ads and decent CTR (Click Through Rate). How many times have you heard this? You have to test. You have to try alternatives and see what really works best for you, on your pages, with your content and your visitors. Test, test, test some more. Track your results, analyze them, try variations. Too many of us don't test. We hear the mantra, but we don't do the work. First, let's see if we can get an idea about location. (The graphic is included in the article on my site or you can take a look at it at the Google link included below) Generally, above the fold, at the top center of your content, below top navigation is the hottest location. Not immediately below which is good but not quite as hot. In a left sidebar, to the immediate left of primary content or below the primary content are also good. Most other locations are generally cooler. Again, you need to test and you need to consider your users behavior - and their behavior may vary on different pages with different kinds of content. Google suggests that in some cases, such as articles, the best location can be at the end of the article. To quote Google, "It's almost as if users finish reading and ask themselves, What can I do next?" Well targeted relevant ads right there can provide the answer. Don't blindly assume that sticking a nice big rectangle in the center above the fold will do it. It may, but depending on your content, it may annoy or inconvenience your users. Users tend to focus on content, navigation and to a lesser extent graphics. Positioning your ads near these elements will often work well -- if those ads are targeted to your visitors needs. The top three performers among the Google ad formats are the 336X280 large rectangle, the 300X250 inline rectangle and the 160X600 wide skyscraper. Google reports that the wider formats tend to do better than the taller ones. One reason may be that these are, perhaps, easier to read since they have fewer line breaks and require less eye movement. But, you need to use formats that fit your pages well. Once again, you need to test, but redoing your pages to suit a particular ad format may not be a reasonable alternative and you may discover that a different format actually gets better results. Now we come to color. Conventional wisdom says that colors which tend to blend into your content do better. Some go so far as to suggest that colors which make the ads look like part of the content are best. Personally, I think anybody really believes those ads are anything but ads, but who knows. Google suggests that you may find that colors that standout from your content do better - or maybe the opposite. This is absolutely an area where you need to test alternative color schemes. Going with the conventional wisdom usually works fairly well, but without testing you could be leaving a lot of money on the table. Google allows you to have up to three ad units and one link unit on your pages. If you have long pages with lots of text, can only use small ad units or are in a niche with a large ad inventory, multiple units can pay off. Keep in mind that the way ad serving works is that the higher value ads are delivered to the first ad unit block encountered in your code. Always make sure that this first ad unit is displayed in the best location (yeah - test). You want the higher paying ads to be in the prime hot location on your page. Weaker locations can get the lower priced ads. And if none are available, then nothing will display unless you've included an alternate ad URL in your Google code. To maximize monetization you should be including alternate ad URLs, especially if you are putting multiple units on a page. The use of an alternate ad URL also eliminates the possibility of being served PSAs (Public Service Announcements). It's your real estate, maximize your returns. Nothing here is secret. Except for using the alternate ad URL, all of this information is available from Google's Optimization Tips page - http://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html . You can buy books and courses, visit a dozen forums and, in the end it comes down to what your visitors do on your site. The best you can get is general guidance. This means averaged outcomes over many sites, many types of content. If you are serious about doing whatever you can to really optimize your AdSense returns, there is only one thing to do - test. Whether it's AdSense, opt-ins, copy, headlines - anything with a measurable outcome that you can track - then the way to improve is to test and keep on testing.

Optimizing AdSense™ by User Behaviour

Optimizing AdSense™ by User Behaviour

by: Laura Ciocan

If web surfers behaved all alike, if there were strict patterns in users' behaviour, wouldn't all publishers be on a sunny beach right now, with a fancy-colored cocktail, worring not about AdSense™ optimization matters? Web user's behaviour depends on two main groups of variables: the user-related one and the website-related one. A) User-related Behavior Variables Though people react very differently at various stimuli, we can identify some peculiarities specific to web surfers. The behaviour is much like yours. Have you considered watching your own actions while surfing on the web? This might help if you want to improve your site's appeal to readers, especially if you sell something or if you want your visitors to click on your ads. Several groups of variables that influence users' behaviour can be identified: * Components of the mental processes involved while searching and browsing on the Internet: attention, awareness, language, mental imagery etc. * The behavior of websurfers is influenced also by their subjective approach to matters, determined by temperamental characteristics, such as mood, patience and their purpose and degree of interest. * Also, users act differently varying with how used they are to web surfing. Let's see how we can tweak our websites to turn these to our advantage (and turn visitors into “clickers”): 1. Mental processes Attention - The web designer keeps the tools to direct readers' attention. A simple design, without unnecessary loading will prevent the reader from being distracted by unimportant elements. The ads placement must be done strategically, in a place impossible to overlook (recommended in the first paragraph, usually in the upper-left area). Pictures and graphics are considered attention-grabbers and will also be considered when choosing your ads' placement. Awareness - This is a very debated topic. Opinions differ on readers' ads awareness. Some sustain that the more blended into content, the better, others say that this formatting will induce the readers the feeling of being “tricked” into clicking on ads, which they resent. I incline to say that blend-in ads work only for very well targeted ads, coming naturally as if belonging to the content. Positioning ads outside the content area would be effective mostly with advertising that builds brand awareness, based on image impressions. Mental Imagery - Again, a pleasant, uncluttered design, a balanced look of the page contribute to a positive perception of the page from the part of the reader and to a more open state of mind. A professional layout is important. It inspires confidence, people don't want to purchase from a just any backyard business. 2. Subjectiveness Patience - A golden rule: don't abuse your readers' patience (for they usually don't have one)! Web pages must load quickly, ads must not be placed in readers' way and should be kept to a reasonable number. Purpose and Mood - Are more related to the topic of your site and the type of content you publish. The idea is that users' purpose and mood can be influenced by copy. Degree of Interest - Besides relevant, good content, that answers questions, the reader's interest is influenced by involvement and interaction. Keep your reader involved, integrate your ads into an interaction environment: these will work wonders on your CTR. 3. User's Degree of Acquaintace with Web Surfing Net savvy users have developed certain immunities, such as ad-blindness. These are less likely to click on any ads. Customizing ads for this type of readers means harder work; the result must be ads of high relevance (and remarkable ad texts!), with an aspect as close to the rest of the page as possible, as if they were a natural continuation of your ideas. Important! avoid default formats. B) Site-related Variables The type of the site and the topic attract visitors with different interests with different behavioral patterns. 1. Site Type — Readers vs Browsers Whether the visitor is a “reader” or a “scanner/browser” depends also on the site type — content and topic. Generally, readers are regular visitors while “scanners” are the ones who look for information and will not spend too much time on the same site. Site topic and content are most times factors in bringing more “uniques” or more regular visitors. Though not as a rule, these apply to many sites: Sites Attracting Unique Visitors - These are mostly commercial sites, content sites. Statistics say that unique visitors are more likely to be your clickers, for regular readers are more used to your pages' look and your ads. Contextual advertising works well with these sites. If you're headed for unique visitors, make your site “SE-friendly”. They come mostly from search engines and are said to be “pre-qualified” clickers. So, your efforts should be directed towards keywords and keyword phrases optimization. The ideal would be to go beyond the technicalities, that is finding out what are the most searched for keywords in your area of preoccupations and try to find out why these are popular, try to find a behavioral pattern. This can be achieved by statistics and analysis. Find out some niches in your area and the users' behaviour within them — that is, lists of searches and then see what is it customers want. This will solve your puzzle and give you exact hints towards what works best for your site. Keep in mind: unique visitors are mostly "browsers". Use ad placement and ad customization techniques that apply best for this type of users. Sites with Regular Visitors - These are mostly forums, blogs and news sections (though news are somewhere in between). If you own sites with many bookmarks, that attract especially repeat visitors, then either you will be very imaginative in customizing your ads and finding new ways to interest your readers into clicking or if not the case, better use CPM based advertising. Brand bulding/reinforcement advertising works better in this case. 2. Site Theme Relates to Visitor's Mood and Purpose Commercial Sites - Sites selling and promoting products are more suitable for CPC advertising. By their specific, this type of site will attract visitors looking for a specific product/service/business opportunity. Thus, users are more in a buying mood, are looking for a way to spend their money profitably. These are clickers. Content Sites, Blogs, Forums - Unless you market specific products, your readers will land on your page without the express purpose of buying something. However, you can influence your reader's mood and needs thru witty, sales-directed copywriting. You just need to know some basic things that sell. One is that people are more likely to buy from persons they know, like and trust. So, what will help you build these? Good content and structure. Especially with content sites, these are fundamental issues to focus on (unlike commercial sites that focus more on products). Good content, profesionally written and formatted for the web, containing information that is of high interest and relevance for the reader, within an easily manageable structure and good targeting on a specific theme are imperatives. On one hand these mean bulding confidence, the first step in selling. On the other hand they will attract well-targeted ads, more likely to interest your reader. Great content will give you credit to your reader. Once you've gained trust, it's easy to direct your readers: you just give recommendations and the results will appear. (Avoid being too explicit in recommendations, though — for example, directing readers towards clicking on ads is against AdSense™ Program Policies.) With blogs and forums, it is a different story. Not all forums and blogs are accepted for AdSense™ (or even if accepted, they must be also profitable). Only genuine, specifically-themed blogs and forums, with highly interesting content are suitable. These conditions being fulfilled, forums and blogs are perfect as a source of advertising money — they have what is very difficult for others to achieve: reader's trust, liking and involvement.

4 Steps To Unleashing Profits In Your Online Business

4 Steps To Unleashing Profits In Your Online Business

by: Barry Gilbert

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 4 Steps To Unleashing Profits In Your Online Business - by Barry Gilbert (c) Barry Gilbert - All Rights reserved You may use this article for free, Resource box and links must remain as is. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ever wonder how the thousands of "under the radar" web businesses that earn well over $100,000/year (many with much higher sales) out of their own home do it? Over the last year I've had the great fortune to speak with many of these true, hidden entrepreneurs at conferences, seminars, e.t.c. What I'm about to share with you also came true for me, and is outlined in more detail in my Ultimate Information Entrepreneur's Success Package Here's an example of their business model: 1. Information Products. Without a doubt, each one of the successes I know market their own infoproducts. For some, it's an ebook. Others have special reports. Still others run online coaching programs, membership sites, paid newsletters, teleseminars, or produce digital audio or video products. It's not their only source of income, but is a MAJOR source of income, and more important, brands them an expert in their field leading to success with 2 and 3 below. 2. Market related Affiliate Products. Again, in almost every case, these online success stories become experts at finding and creating joint venture deals with partners. But, they work differently than most affiliates. They start by ALWAYS reviewing the product they will market. Second, they look for a different way to present the product or service - a more beneficial way to show users the real benefit in the affiliate product. Third, they use the branding from 1 to negotiate higher commissions and focus on high commission programs only. 3. They monetize their traffic using Adsense or selling advertising on their sites. For high traffic pages where adding paid ads or Google's Adsense will not impact their own sales, they will run ads to further monetize their sites. 4. Sell their time. You will find that truly successful people online LOVE to help people succeed. But...for every person who is really dedicated to succeeding there are 10 "tire kickers" who want someone to hand them success on a silver platter. It doesn't work that way, nothing works that way. So, in order to leave time to help those who really want it, coaching programs are formed. Yes - you have to pay big money, but you should easily be able to get 10X the value for money spent. So as you can see, there is no ONE single way to build your wealth online. Instead, you build a diversified, rich and healthy business by focusing on these 4 pillars. Not only will you earn more money, but your business will be stronger and build momentum faster when you do.

Article on the timing of events with Site Build It

Article on the timing of events with Site Build It

by: George Slater

Firstly let me say that I think Site Build It, it rocks. When I started on this journey, that I am still on, I started reading everything about mail marketing, web marketing etc etc. I had already been ripped off with the developers of my first site so I was not going to let that happen again. But then I was shown SBI and I have not looked back. However, there are ways that you can make you use of SBI better, not by using something else, not by not reading the manual, which you should do about 5 times. (The devil is in the detail!!), but if this is your first site then you can maximize your SBI investment with timing. Why, well when you start you are probably going to go through stages, reading the manual, research, writing, reading, putting up pages, adding links etc etc, it is at this stage, prior to monitorising your site that timing is everything to maximize what site build it does for you and what you can do for yourself FREE. Here is the timing. Buy site build it and stop reading any other web marketing stuff Read the manual Re-read the manual Do the Brain thing Document everything Write loads of copy Start putting the copy up When you get to 40 pages Become a Zealot (See Hints and Tips at Site Central) Start doing the mini hum thing Ask for a DMOZ listing Write some articles and send them off Apply for Google Adesense Get as many links as you can Then Monitorise your site with Google Then add your newsletter stuff Then add your affiliate links. Now read all the other SBI products (keep re-reading the manual) OK, OK now you are asking why that order. Well a lot of it is covered in the manual so a lot of it I will just glance over, but the middle bit I will dwell on. Now I am supposing you want the best results for the cheapest price – right. OK If you are new to this you probably either want to put up loads of content or a sales page. If you read the manual you will see the content must come first, content, content and more content. Now I presume you have bought your site, you have done the brainstorm thing and got everything in hand, you have loads of content. OK now you have built the site to about 30 to 40 pages, make sure they are spell check, linked and look good. Now go off and become a Zealot. Details are on the tip and hint’s site build it site. Just go to the site and do the quiz, if you fail do it again, if you fail read the answers and keep going until you pass, one you do then put forward you site. Now why do things in this order, because as soon as you have put up any adds or a few links to affiliates the webmasters they deem you as a commercial website and say you have to pay. If you have no ads etc, then you get in if you have a good content site. Now do not just put up you main page, put up every page in every section you can. Try doing three pages a day until you start getting the replies back saying you have been accepted. Now do the same things with DMOZ (News just in – Value Exchange started Excellent – I got an email prior to Ken's Newsletter so I went straight in and so far I have got three ‘good’ links) Now build your E-bay page and link to your site from that – see details in MYNAS at Site Central Hints and Tip’s Now apply for Google Adsense, follow the instructions at site build it. Again if you do this in this order you will avoid not getting onto Adsense because you are already advertising one of their clients. Just one of the things that can fail you. OK now go for the mini hubs that are also in the tips and hints. OK, now that has probably taken a bit of time and during that time Site Build It, your new links and other work have probably now got you up in the Alexa rankings, now is time to add your Newsletter forms, your Google Adsense code and start the work on the affiliates site. I hope that this helps, as the man said ‘It’s all in the timing’.