Nichefinder's Journal

The Top Traffic Exchanges

2012-01-29T22:40:00.000-08:00

When I first go started with traffic exchanges, there were a lot of choices and it was extremely confusing. Most of the people pushing them were wanting to build their downlines - so other traffic exchanges users would be pushing dozens and dozens of TE sign up links.

What I discovered later on was that you don't need to enroll in every single traffic exchange. Neither do you have to sign up for dozens of them.

I signed up for an offer recently from a guy saying that he found a lot of success with them. After signing up, he gave me a list of probably over 50 traffic exchanges to sign up for. If you ever encounter something like that, avoid that person like the plague...they're just trying to scam you.

If this is your first year or 2 using exchanges, or you've never ever used them before, here's a list that you can use. It's a top 10 traffic exchange list that's rated based on traffic and results.

For most part timers, this list is plenty. You can surf for 1-3 hours a day and all of these will certainly keep you busy. Happy surfing!

7 Minute Workout - Starting Your Own Health Business

2011-05-25T19:41:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wanted to start your own health business? Recently I've come across something called the 7 Minute Workout and I'll go over my thoughts about the business end.

There are a lot of different health businesses out there. I've promoted supplements for weight loss, allergies, blood sugar and detox. I've also promote a bunch of ebooks on topics like alkaline water, getting a 6 pack of abs, and acid reflux.

While all of those were great, I decided to put more effort into the fitness/weight loss industry. Why? Weight loss is a huge, profitable market. Also, there are so many gimmicks out there that cause more harm than good.

For years I've spent a lot of time and money trying to find the best equipment and routine for losing fat as fast as possible. In the process, I've damaged my metabolism. I had to learn the hard way and it's something that a lot of people don't have to do if they start off in the right path and follow it.

So if you're interested in building a business in the fitness and weight loss industry, make sure that you check out this detailed 7 Minute Workout review.

SEO Website Builder Templates

2010-09-25T20:23:00.001-07:00

Looking for SEO Website Builder Templates?

I've been using SEO Website Builder since version 1 and I've also had the chance to take part in beta testing version 2. In the process, I built tons of affiliate site and learned how to optimize templates.

So one day I decided to put together 5 templates for SEO WSB. You can check them out by clicking here.

List Profit System Allows Beginners to Easily Build Their Own Business Online

2009-11-29T11:21:00.000-08:00

List building course is now available. The proven strategies for building a 6-figure online business are unveiled in this easy-to-follow multi-media program.

San Jose, California -- Charles Amith, marketing consultant, has worked with 1000's of aspiring home business owners in the last 12 years and has recently released a course to simplify the process of building an online business.

According to Charles Amith, owner of SolidIncome.NET, "There's a lot of business owners out there that still focus on one-time sales instead of creating a long-term business with repeat sales. So I've decided to release a course that shows even beginners how they could easily multiply their profits by automating their business through little-known technologies that are readily available on the internet"

The List Profit System course includes:

* The 6-step system that has allowed internet marketers to create a long-term 6 figure business.

* Why most people are wasting their money on building traffic and advertising there website. You'll find out the truth and put money in your pocket instead.

* The most powerful way to create a highly responsive email list and how you can easily implement this tactic in your business.

* What the top-internet marketing guru's won't tell you. If you were to follow what they're doing now, you could greatly suffer in your business. I'll show you why and how you could avoid making this common mistake.

* The fastest "free" method to let people know about your list and click on the subscribe button.

"After many years of wasting time and money, I've realized that the money really is in the list. List building has never been so simple," says Charles Amith.

Visit Website for More Information:
http://SolidIncome.NET/listprofitsystem.php

Best Membership Site Software

2009-04-28T01:06:00.001-07:00

If you're looking for the best membership site software, make sure that you check this page out.

You'll find a few of some really great membership site scripts that I've been testing out.

Internet Business Update - 1 Year Later

2008-04-28T19:31:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted on this blog. Things are going well with my membership site software project. I started it last October. Even though I didn't really do any launch, subscriptions have climbed up to the low 3 figure range. So I'm pretty happy about that.

So whatever happened to the EZturnkey site? Not much. I've been focusing on the health market lately and most of my IM-related sites have been slowly growing. The EZturnkey site is still being updated. I just posted a new hosting review, as well as a mini update to my Niche Rockets Review. I still had Keyword Avalanche info on it; Well it's been a while since they changed there name to Niche Rockets, so I had to make some corrections.

If you didn't go over my Niche Rockets combo post, take a peak. Although it was posted some time ago, their site is still doing well and packed with a lot of great tips. They released a Business in a Box system, where each month you can have access to a set of turnkey internet businesses - it's just up to you to build upon them.

That's all for now. I'll have to post more often:)

Campaign Blasts - an Excellent PPC Affiliate Marketing Course

2006-12-01T15:00:00.000-08:00

The other day, I posted my experiences with Matt Levenhagen's Campaign Blasts course.

I have more than a dozen of guides on how to use Google AdWords. So far, this has been one of the bests guides I've read . Most of the guides out there are actually rehashed content. The authors probably went to the Google AdWords learning center and ripped a bunch of content off of it.

So what's so different about the Campaign Blasts affiliate training course? Compared to what I've read, the material is pretty original. Matt is a Google AdWords Professional and he's launched hundreds and hundreds of campaigns. So he pretty much spills his knowledge out into this course.

So check out my latest review on Matt Levenhagen's Campaign Blasts.

Affiliate Project X - Is It All That It's Cracked Up To Be?

2006-10-10T00:40:00.000-07:00

I just posted a review on the super hyped Affiliate Project X. Who would want to get this ebook? It's centered around on Clickbank affiliates and has some wonderful AdWords tips. Whether you decide to check out my review or not, the ebook is great. It's not some rehashed Clickbank or AdWords ebook. If you're looking to improve your sales conversions (which means $$$ in your pocket), make sure you take a look at the review 1st and decide for yourself.

Make Multi-Language Blogs

2006-08-27T23:18:00.000-07:00

After reviewing a Wordpress Translation plugin, I decided to give it a try on my site. You could translate your site into Japanese, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, or whatever language that Google translator can handle.

There are some theories about the plugin causing a duplicate content penalty. So use it at your own risk.

AdWords eBook

2006-08-26T00:41:00.000-07:00

Brad Callen recently released his "Google AdWords Made Easy" ebook. For those of you that don't know Brad, he's the creator of SEO Elite, Keyword Elite, and author of the popular SEO book - Search Engine Optimization Made Easy.

I'm not going to elaborate on how great this new AdWords eBook is. I could tell you all of the great things in it...but why should I?

Wouldn't you want to reap the benefits yourself?

How?

No...I'm not asking you to buy anything. I'm going to give it to you for FREE! If you want to find out the proven tactics that Brad Callen uses to successfully send a flood of traffic to his sites, check out this Google AdWords ebook for free today.

Internet Marketing Videos - An Easy Way For Pumping Your Knowledge Up To The Next Level

2006-08-26T00:34:00.000-07:00

Sometimes learning without any visual example could be tough. The "visual" part is what makes us go to school, or go to a seminar to learn. Some people could easily learn by reading a book, while others may learn easily through a podcast, or audio book.

If you're wanting to learn - the visual way, here's some internet marketing videos that won't put a dent in your bank account. It's a huge bargain for over 22 hours of videos. It's almost like going to a 3 day seminar.

There's plenty of things to learn from. Whether you're just a beginner - trying to find ways to make a websites and make your graphics look awesome...or you're an advanced person learning to auto-populate your websites with rss feeds - these videos will provide you with the knowledge to build your business.

Check out this page to find out more information on these internet marketing videos.

My Recent Success With Keyword Avalanche

2006-08-04T15:17:00.000-07:00

I recently started using PLR articles. They've been working out pretty well and saved me a bunch of time. I've subscribed to 2 sources, Content and More by James Jackson, and Keyword Avalanche by Scot Standke, Jim Morris, and the latest member, Tim Gorman.

I prefer Keyword Avalanche more than Content and More. Although Content and More has over 700 articles a month for $19.99, they aren't fresh. I've found a few sites that have massively published all of the articles that Content and More offered. Since this site has had those article indexed for quite some time, I realized that they were just resell PLR articles.

Update 8/15/06: I recently received an email from James about Contentandmore.com; His first month was filled with a bunch of old articles so that he could offer a lot during his initial promotion. All future monthly articles will be brand new. The latest package does prove that they are fresh.

Keyword Avalanche offers fresh PLR articles, keyword lists, and tons of great support on their private forum.

I recently conducted a test with the fresh knowledge that I got from Keyword Avalanche. Here's an in depth review of Keyword Avalanche and a story about my tiny success:)

I've also uploaded this free Keyword Avalanche article marketing guide (PDF) that you can download.

Keyword Elite Review

2006-07-14T14:25:00.000-07:00

I recently started using Keyword Elite for my search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. Before using it, I compared Chris Lee’s Keyword Analyzer to Keyword Elite. Although both of them are great softwares for SEO and PPC keyword research, Keyword Elite had most of the features that I needed.

Out of Keyword Elite’s 5 modules (or projects as Brad Callen calls them), there were 2 that reeled me into using this product.

The first one was being able to quickly pull in a massive list of keywords. The second one was being able to spy on my pay-per-click competition.

Find out more in this Keyword Elite Review

Here's a FREE internet business startup kit

2006-06-05T10:18:00.000-07:00

Over the last few days, I've spent some time to put together a great collection of internet business related eBooks.

Whether you're looking to startup an eBay business, affiliate marketing site, or any money making venture online, make sure you take a look.

Click here for more info

I'm Number ONE \(0)/ But For How Long?

2006-05-15T10:08:00.000-07:00

It's been a few weeks since I posted my last article.

I've been keeping track of my ranking on Google and things are looking better.

For the keyword phrase "keyword results analyzer," I'm now listed at number 6, which isn't too bad with 1.4 million competitors (non-exact match).

Using the keyword phrase turnkey business idea (which is the domain keyword phrase for my other site EZturnkeybusinessidea.com), I'm listed at number #1 out of 3.4 million competitors.

I'm also #1 & 2 on MSN.com

In case you didn't notice, I'm using this Blogger blog lately for ranting:)

If you're looking for a turnkey business idea or internet marketing resources, please take a look at this site EZturnkeybusinessidea.com.

Something interesting about Google ranking

2006-05-01T09:07:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I was checking out the ranking for the phrase "keyword results analyzer".

I was pretty surprised that my keyword results analyzer article from my EZturnkey site was number 4. I was also surprised that BJ's review was number 1.

I thought this was really strange since the author of Keyword Results Analyzer, Dr. Andy, is one of my favorite SEO experts.

How could he not be number 1?

Well that was a few weeks ago.

Now, Dr. Andy is at number 1 and 2. BJ is number 3.

I'm number 9...but not with the site that I mentioned. #9 is actually an article from this blogger site. Now, my EZturnkey site review is no longer to be seen in the top 25?

What was the difference?

I'm not sure if it was a change in Google's algorithm, but the only change I made was the title tag.

I guess I'll go back to my original strategy and put the primary keyword in the title first to see if this will change my ranking.

My Blog Conversion - Hopping On The Bandwagon

2006-04-03T13:24:00.000-07:00

"Curiousity Just Killed The Cat"

After prowling online for ways to add features to my blogs, I ran into tons of Wordpress plugins. For those of you new to my site, I've been a user of Pivot for some time now.

Pivot has been great. I don't have any complaints about it. In fact, I find it much easier to use than Wordpress. It has tons of features that you can use to build successful content sites or blogs...without the need for MySQL or other scalable database.

So what happened?

Looking through Google, there was tons of blog plugins-for Wordpress. While there's tons of useful plugins for Pivot, being so curious, I felt the need to try out Wordpress :)

It took a good full day to understand Wordpress and how to customize it. A week later, I still feel as if it's lacking compared to Pivot. In Pivot, I really liked the ability to easily create multiple blogs for the same domain. In Wordpress, I don't think there's a feature...unless you hack around or install another copy.

I really like how the plugins integrate into Wordpress though. I could just drop in a script, and there will be options embedded into the interface. Most of the plugins I used with Pivot required me to work with the scripts. That's alright with me, but using a GUI makes life easier.

So what's better, Pivot or Wordpress?

Some people would easily say that Wordpress is the king of blogs. I'm still not sure which one is the best. For the amount of plugins offered, I could say Wordpress is the best. As for usability, I think Pivot is the best.

I guess another reason I went with Wordpress is the amount of support base it has. There's so many people hacking with it, it connected with the hacker in me:)

So if you're looking for the latest Nichefinder posts, please visit my EZ Turnkey Business Idea site. My focus is to provide content similar to this site, but on a larger scale. It will also contain ideas for offline businesses as well.

How To Get People To Click On Your Ads

2006-03-20T23:40:00.000-08:00

Recent study shows that only 4-5 people out of a 1000 click on internet ads

That's pretty disturbing to those starting out on net marketing. That's less than half a percent. To make things tougher, you have to convert that tiny percentage into sales.

When you design your website, I'm sure you'd like to create a site that's visually appealling. While doing so, you don't want to skip the things that make you money. Making content sites is a long and tedious job. I'm sure there's a lot of niche marketers out there that focus tons of time on writing up content, some SEO, and copywriting. How much time are you focussing on APO -- Advertisement Positioning Optimization?

After reading a recent advertisment research article, I realized that I had to make tons of changes to my content sites.

The bright side is that I'm using server side includes (SSI) in my static site templates, and configurable templates in my blogs. So all of pages can be changed in minutes.

So if you're trying to figure out how to optimize your site, make sure you do some research on APO -- Advertisement Placement Optimization.

By the way, APO is an acronym that I just made up a few minutes ago:)
Isn't it catchy?

How To Stop Spambots From Stealing Your Email Address

2006-03-16T13:08:00.000-08:00

If you've listed your email address on your website, I'm sure you've been bombarded with SPAM.

Tons of email addresses are taken from websites manually, or through computer programs called SPAMbots. They rip email addresses for the sole purpose of spamming.

One of the best ways to avoid these SPAM programs from taking advantage of your email address is to use a contact form.

Using a server side form will hide your email address from site visitors, as well as SPAMbots.

If you're not sure how to set up a form, you can also encrypt your email address.

A site that I use is Email Riddler from Dynamic Drive. It will encrypt your email so that it is hidden from the SPAMbots.

All you have to do is enter your email address, link text, and an optional subject line, click on the button and a javascript is automatically generated for you. Just copy it and paste it into your website where your email or contact us code would usually go.

Pay-Per-Click Marketing Analysis

2006-03-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

Using Niche Analysis To Set Up Your Ads

Whether you're using Yahoo Search Marketing, Adwords, or other Pay Per Click methods to bring traffic to you're site, you should integrate some niche keyword analysis into it.

If you want to make it easier for you, find keywords without much competition.

Go to Google and search for your main keyword. How many sponsored ads are there? If there are ads on less than 3 search pages, you've got a niche that isn't too competitive in the pay-per-click realm.

I started my 1st niche site on something that I was pretty passionate about. I didn't do any marketing analysis at all. I listened to a lot business guru's that said, "focus on your passion!" What if millions of others are marketing the same passion as you?

Well, working on my passion had more than 25 search pages of sponsored ads. It might of had more than 1000, but I got tired looking. If marketing your passion is too costly, why not look for less costly opportunities instead that have a high demand? Also, is there anyway to make your passionate niche more unique?

Although there's still money on the table for my passionate niche, there's many other less competitive niches that have money on table as well. I'm sure you wouldn't want to work hard as well...wouldn't you? I eventually realized that I should work smarter, and not just harder.

So start doing some preliminary pay-per-click niche analysis. After doing it, you'll be able to uncover keywords that have an acceptable search count without much competition.

Old SEO

2006-03-10T20:13:00.000-08:00

A Really Important SEO Update

The strategies listed in my SEO guide may temporarily help you in MSN or Yahoo. However, using these techniques may get your pages filtered out in Google. Google really doesn't like people increasing their rankings through optimization...or in their eyes-manipulation. This is the drawback of SEO--keeping up with all the search engine filtering algorithms.

If you're trying to optimize your site for Google, don't follow anything shown in the quick guide. Just write your pages naturally and with uniqueness. Write articles on various topics related to your keywords. Don't use the same keywords in your title, anchors, meta tags, etc. This will easily get your site flagged.

Develop your articles around solutions, not around specific keywords. Use your keywords for brainstorming.

If you really need traffic (now), start using pay-per-click and word of mout...hemmm, I guess on the internet I should say viral techniques:) Here's a short list of free things that you can do: use email signatures, use signatures on relative forums with links to your site, create a free report or e-booklet with links to your site, and you can use social bookmarking services like Yahoo My Web or del.icio.us

If you're just starting out, take a look at this affiliate guide review.

Internet Real Estate - Get Some While You Still Can

2006-03-06T13:57:00.000-08:00

There's quite a few marketers out there talking about niche sites like they are a piece of real estate.

They're right!

There's a wide variety of niche sites you can make, but the most favorable types and domains will be filled eventually.

For example, let's take a look at the 'internet marketing' niche. Internet marketing is a wide category. Within it, you have autoresponders, courses, domains, hosting, ebay,...you get the idea.

Within hosting, you can break it down to server types, bandwidth limits, personal ones, and business ones to name a few.

Each category is a niche. You can break down a niche more and more, but then you decrease your market size.

What happens over time with a niche? Niches eventually get filled. The internet marketing niche is pretty lucrative and competitive. You might be able to get into it right now, but you'll have to be highly unique and brilliant(setting yourself apart from the rest of the competition) or spend more time or money on it.

Right now, I'm living in the Bay Area (California). I started to think about how it would be trying to find a home over 50 years ago. Since it wasn't as populated as it is now, I'm sure that people were able to buy property easily at that time.

Now, residential real estate is selling for over half a million. In favorable areas, you'll be looking at close to a million or more. Just like internet niches, people will be moving out to hop into other ones...or maybe even settling for less.

So how will the internet be when all of the popular niches become filled? If you think that competition is fierce now, think about how the future will be.

Some people think I'm crazy spending tons of time building websites. The way I see it is that there's a great urgency.

There were a few niches I thought about working on a few years ago. They weren't competitive back then, but now, I wouldn't even consider working in them. Some of these sites have thousands of backlinks to them.

The internet is getting more and more competitive by the minute.

Grab your piece of virtual real estate while you still can.

cleanURL

2006-03-03T15:49:00.000-08:00

Shorten Your URL's and Stop Losing Sales Due to Lousy 3rd Party URL Redirects and Affiliate Link Theft!

Take Control By Using Your Own Free URL Redirect Service

Have you ever used a 3rd party-free URL redirect service? Most of the recent ones are referred to as: link cloaker's, link redirectors, link encryptor's, link forwarders, link shrinkers, tinyURL's, compactURL's, short URLs...etc.

Why use a free URL redirection service?

Here were some of my initial reasons:
*Prevent link theft
*Eliminate cut off hyperlinks in emails
*Make the links look cleaner by removing tons of variables from the link

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can promote a merchant through a affiliate relationship. They would offer you a link like:

http://www.qsdfy.com/if=24kl3k&productid=32423434&sd-121kjsklssld

Isn't that one long ugly URL?

Or maybe you've seen a webpage that you want to send to a friend. You copy and paste the web address into an email. They receive it, and the link is cut off. They can't view the page you wanted them to see.

If you shorten the URL, you could end up with something like this:

http://www.littleURL.com/a/3f1

That's a lot less to type, and easier to read through. It doesn't directly show a affiliate ID, if any, and in most cases, will retain it's link in an email.

These 3rd party URL redirect services were great to use at first, but I realized as time went on, their servers became overloaded. I've told some friends to check out some of my websites, and several times, the link either took a long time, or timed out and went to an error page.

Having my own business, I've always wanted full control over it. Although that's almost impossible, I knew that I could do something that would reduce the negative impact from others. Being in a job for so long, I guess I got tired of my future being in somebody elses hands.

So being the bootstrapper and hacker that I am, I created my own personal URL redirect software --cleanURL.

cleanURL will allow you to use the basic features that those 3rd party ones have, as well as:
*increase the speed of your redirected links by using your own server (assuming you do have a good server)
*have the ability to track your outbound-redirected links.
*avoid security issues with 3rd party URL redirect service's
*avoid losing sales due to 3rd party server problems
*and have a URL redirect service that is easy to install without any special requirements except the ability to handle PHP.

I've looked throughout the web for a good software that I could use. Having a Windows IIS server has brought me a minor challenge. Some of these software packages needed mod_rewrite (used on apache servers). Another issue was MySQL. I've been putting off my MySQL installation since I use static HTML with my SEO and Blogging software. (If you're wondering why, statics page pages can be managed dynamically and pulling up their webpage addresses directly is still faster than querying data to dynamically build a page from a database).

So, with the challenges I've had, I built a personal URL redirect software that you can have access to as a 'Nichefinder Newsletter' subscriber. The package comes with it's own documentation that you can review before installing it if you wish. Besides this tool, you'll also receive my monthly Niche Report. It's a 100-300 keyword list containing low competition, high demand keywords that you can use for your niche site.

If you'd like to sign up, there's a sign up form on the right margin. Don't wait too long, I'm only offering cleanURL for a limited time.

Your privacy is respected and you can unsubscribe any time you want.

So get cleanURL and some niches today!

Is Your Niche Too Narrow?

2006-02-24T07:09:00.000-08:00

Have you done any marketing analysis? Before you pick a niche, make sure it's a profitable one first. Every now and then, I'll come up with some great ideas. The niche might seem like a winner 3 o'clock in the morning, but until you do some analysis on your niche, don't get too hyped up for nothing.

The other day, I was talking to a friend that has a business selling wine tanks. He just started it up less than 6 months ago and thought there was a highly profitable market for them. He's a wine maker himself and knows a lot of wine makers as well. Also, wine tanks are big ticket items. He sells premium tanks starting at a few thousand dollars. His actual profit is close to $500 for every tank sold.

So, for a quick and dirty way to find out how much he could possibly make from selling wine tanks, let's take a look at Nichebot. I clicked on the Wordtracker option on the top menu and typed in "wine tanks". The top result was "polyethylene wine tanks" which had 14 searches in the last 100 days (according to Wordtracker).

By doing some analysis, I've realized that the amount of searches within a 24 hour period is roughly the Wordtracker count divided by 3.5; So if I take 14/3.5, I get roughly 4 searches a day. So in 1 year (365 days), I would get approximately 1460 searches.

So how do you find out how much you could roughly profit from this niche online? Direct marketing tests have shown that the average response rate is 1%. So assuming you advertised wine tanks online, let's say through pay-per-click ads from Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing, you could expect maybe 15 purchases every year. So, that would be a profit of $7500/year ...(15 x $500/sale).

Now that's assuming you were lucky enough to get a 100% of your ad viewers to actually clickthrough. What if only 10% of the viewers clicked on your ad? ...which is a pretty high percentage. Then you would only make $750 for that year.

So in my opinion, this niche would not really be lucrative online (unless you were able to create a viral buzz or unique offer from it). It's too narrow. You would have to add other items to the array to make it more profitable. So I suggested other things that could compliment his sales. Examples would be, an ebook on how to make wine, wine making supplies, wine glasses, wine making software, etc.

Another thing to keep in mind is that online marketing results vary from offline marketing results.

This isn't the definitive way to do niche analysis. It's just a quick and dirty method to see if your wonder niche is a wonder at all.

Once you've found a niche (or possibly other related niches), you'll then carry your preliminary research to full research mode.

Related articles:

Pick a Niche
Keyword Research and Niche Mining

Trying To Find The Right Domain Name?

2006-02-18T20:28:00.000-08:00

Here's a few links that have been really useful when looking for a domain name:

Instant Domain Search

Nameboy

I usually just go to my domain name registrar and find a name by trial and error.

After using both of these links above, they have saved me a lot of time.

Instant Domain Search is the latest tool that I've been using. It dynamically searches for available names as you type the name. It will then provide you with a list of places to register your domain.

Nameboy is pretty useful for looking up related domain names, or ones that rhyme with the primary and secondary names that you've typed in.

Give them a try

This Months Star - Earning More Than $144K / Mo

2006-02-17T07:06:00.000-08:00

I have to say congrats to super affiliate Kieron Donoghue. After reading his posts on Sitepoint, I realized that I should be focussing on pay-per-click (PPC) more than natural search.

It's an idea that I first started to really impliment after reading Rosalind Gardner's book, but I was still pumping out a lot of content for natural search. I've been probably doing 80% SEO and 20% PPC. After reading his posts, I've decided to pump up my PPC ads.

Here's a few quotes from Kieron:

"Above is a picture taken of 1 of the 5 pages from my business bank statement that relates to late December 2005, early January 2006. Obviously I've used Photoshop to key out some banking reference codes. I've only posted a picture of 1 page instead of all 5 as I don't want to disclose exactly how much I earn in a month. (BTW the currency of my bank statement is £UK Pounds Sterling). As you can see the rough total on that 1 page alone is roughly £82,000 which works out at approx. $144,000."

"My main focus is about 80% PPC and 20% SEO. I'm not very good at SEO but still do alright for some key terms. My Monthly ppc budget is around US $300,000 which equates to roughly UK £170,000. Although when I first started out my budget was approx. $50 a month :-)"

Check out his site: UK Offer and his blog.

Encrypting Your Files Or Passwords

2006-02-07T11:06:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I ended up downgrading my Opera browser to the latest stable version (from the beta). I didn't think I would have any problems.

When I upgraded, all of my cookies and saved passwords were retained. When I downgraded, I lost all of them. For close to a year, I've been relying on the built in password manager. After this experience, I'll never rely on the built in pw managers again.

If you're into affiliate marketing, I'm sure you have tons of accounts. Besides CJ, Linkshare, and Clickbank, there's a bunch of companies that manage their own programs. So with that, they all have different passwords. Having to log onto each one is a major drag. I think it's nearly impossible to remember tons of passwords.

I've tried to keep my keywords consistent over the last several years, but didn't have much luck. Companies had various requirements. Some would required only letters and numbers up to 6 characters, some more, some less, some required punctuation. So that whole idea of consistency was just wishful thinking.

Using Opera for a while, I got hooked on their system.

Today, I started looking for an alternate solution. At first, I was thinking about just putting them in a Word doc with a password lock. I didn't like that, especially since Microsoft products are the hackers playground.

There is a bunch of online password managers. That seemed like a risk too. You never know if the site administrator will take advantage of your info.

How about an offline password manager? These seemed okay...at first. I tried one out last year and after I loaded it, my firewall alerted me that it was trying to access the internet. I wonder why?

So I finally found something that I really like, and it's free. It's called Locknote from a company called Steganos. It will encrypt your text file with AES 256 bit encryption. That's pretty great considering that most secure shopping systems use 128 bit encryption.

The program is close to 300K, which is pretty small. So it doesn't take up much resources. With MS Word, I would have to wait a little for it to load. With this, you click it and it opens fast...it's kind of like Notepad.

It doesn't require any installation too. So I could access the file from a USB stick or a remote server.

Automatic Responder Review

2006-02-06T15:12:00.000-08:00

I finally got my automatic responder (AKA autoresponder) for my sites a few weeks ago. I've seen numerous reviews from online marketers. I ended up reviewing 3 companies, and they happen to be the most popular ones in the industry.

Usage:Autoresponders are used to automatically reply to requests (ie. newsletters subscriptions, forums messages, etc.)

It took me a while to buy into the whole idea. In the past, I set up a simple PHP or cgi script in my websites, and sent the responses directly to my email. That was fine when I only had a few dozen subscribers. It later became a hassle as more people came on board.

Another problem I faced was SPAM filters. The free email accounts like Yahoo and Hotmail sent my email directly to the bulk mail. I thought that I would be doomed forever.

Another issue I faced was using scripted Autoresponders on a Windows web server(IIS). My hosting service did not allow SMTP (outgoing mail) access. I could understand that, especially with the high levels of spamming and abuse.

A year ago, I read Yanik Silver's 33 Days To Online Profits. He talked about autoresponders and using them to automate business online. At that time, I thought it was a good idea, but I didn't do anything about it. Not until recently did I feel the pains of taking care of the mailing lists myself.

With an Autoresponder, you could preload your messages. Let's say you were going to take a trip to Hawaii for 3 months. You could preload weekly newsletters and schedule them to be sent at certain intervals. Even if you took a vacation for 2 years, you could use the same strategy. Even though things are pre-programmed, it's highly transparent to the reader. You could even set up automatic responses. There has to be some human intervention if your responses could not answer the questions properly.

As some of you know, I read Rosalind Gardner's book and went through Corey Rudhl's course recently. Both of them really pressed on list building. It made sense. People who go into your site initially may not purchase anything.

By building a list, you can keep contact and build the relationship further. As time progresses, the viewer will more likely think about the site they had recent contact (or the most contact) from. When your site comes to mine, your chances of making a sale have increased.

So I first started with an autoresponder called Sendfree. I remember talking to Bob Leduc, a very popular offline marketer, a year ago. He raved about his Sendfree responder.

For simplicity, I consider Sendfree the best. They allow you to send 30,000 reponses a month with no daily limit. It was really easy to set up the system and their wasn't much clutter. That's the benefit of simplicity.

The next one is Aweber.com. They're the most popular autoresponder out there. Many of the popular marketing gurus use their service. They have plenty of advanced features as well. I ended up not using them. If you have a list over 30,000, I could see the huge benefit. Each additional 10,000 subscribers costs an additional $9.95/mo.

I think any average marketer with 30,000 suscribers is making good money. Once I get up to the upper realms of readers, I'll probably switch over to them.

The last one I reviewed was GetResponse. They have a lot of advanced features. One of the things I integrated was receiving messages via RSS through an autoresponder.

GetResponse has so many features that it could be quite overwhelming. I know some basics, but still, I'm still overwhelmed.

The benefits of GetResponse is that they have some of the great features of Aweber and they don't charge additional amounts for a high level of subscribers. This sounds great and it's the reason why I'm using GetResponse. If you're above the 30,000 subscriber level or timing is a critical issue (they have a 1000 message limit/day per autoresponder), you're better off going to Aweber or selecting GetResponse dedicated servers. Updated 3/11/06: I heard that this might have changed recently, please check out GetResponse's current pricing.

With Aweber and GetResponse, you get a significant savings if you pay annually versus monthly.

Super Affiliate Handbook Review

2006-02-06T11:16:00.000-08:00

Last week, I finally finished up Rosalind Gardner's book. At last...here's the "Super Affiliate Handbook Review:"

For those of you not familiar with Rosalind, she's an ex-air traffic controller that jumped ship and created a website that earns over $435,000/yr selling other peoples stuff.

Several months back, I was contemplating if I should purchase James Martell's book or Rosalind's. I searched the web and somebody mentioned that Rosalind's was more of an inspirational or motivational book, instead of instructional. That kind of turned me off. I've read and experienced so much hype from businesses online and offline, I just wanted pure info that I could use. So after reading several more reviews, I ended up getting James book.

After buying James book, the lesson I learned from this was: make sure you're looking at current reviews.

If I would have noticed all of the news on search engine algorithm changes, I would have come to a different conclusion. Changing keyword densities, site structure, or totally re-doing sites to fit search engine changes is something that I don't want to do.

Also, I learned not to rely on a guy who idolizes Art Williams (A.L. Williams-godfather of MLM life insurance companies-Primerica and WFG). I highly respect Art's boldness and motivational spirit, but giving a lot of business hype, while intentionally hiding significant business issues and problems, is pretty misleading...simply not cool:(

Putting that stuff aside...

After reading Rosalind Gardner's book, I was pretty surprised. It actually had plenty of usable information. I could see that she was greatly inspired by Corey Rudhl's Internet Marketing course.

Her book doesn't emphasize natural search techniques (SEO), but she still has a lot of information about building traffic through other methods (ie. pay-per-click, forums, rss,etc.).

A massive strategy that I learned was how to build a list. I've had a lot of experience doing this offline in my financial business. I read many marketing books, especially in direct mail. I had applied those ideas online, but not until I read Rosalind's book did I realize how much I was missing out on.

She also goes into sales copy. After reading James book, I always wondered about this. I thought that since James didn't mention it, it wasn't worth putting into my affiliate sites. I was so wrong. By using the ideas that Rosalind has in her book, you'll learn how to convert your pages into sales...not just views.

An important thing to note is that this book isn't a get rich quick book. Despite the hyped subtitle, Rosalind's book is all about gaining the fruits from the seeds you sow.

Also, I don't want it too seem like James' book is all that bad. SEO is only a part of the whole picture. However, if you just focused on SEO, you could still make plenty of money. James is a living example of that.

If you took advantage of all of the tools, then there would be more money to be made.

From a business stability standpoint, the more legs on a chair you have, the more stable it is. If you're chair just has one leg (even though you have a hundred of chairs), you still don't have stability.

So what are the drawbacks of her book? Some people say that using Pay-Per-Click advertising is a drawback???? Well, you do have to pay more money out of your pocket. That's not a bad thing. Paying for more traffic to get more sales is an advantage...as long as you're making a profit. There's no free lunch (PERIOD)

Offline, I've spent thousands of dollars for advertising. I'm happy to say that I made it all back and more. Some times my ads didn't convert, sometimes they did. In the long run, the law of averages worked out. Along the way, you'll figure out what works and what doesn't. The great thing about the net is that you don't have to spend as much money as you would marketing offline.

The key to all of this is consistency and longevity. The more you're consistent, the better you get. The longer you do it, the more you'll learn from experience. If you're thinking you could spend a lot of money on Google ads in 1 month and expect tons of traffic to convert, that would be a mistake.

In conclusion, I highly recommend Rosalind's affiliate marketing book for experienced marketers and for people with ZERO experience. She goes through the fundamentals of starting your online business in a manner that is easy to understand and implement.

Starting An Internet Business-Part 6-Advanced Strategies

2006-02-06T10:52:00.000-08:00

"Search Engine Optimization"

Important Update 3/10/06: Please read the "Old SEO" article.

*****

In this section, I'll go over advanced site design strategies to help your traffic grow through the search engines. This is known as "search engine optimization."

It's not as easy as it you to be. People use to stuff their pages with tons of keywords. Search engines would notice, and you would get plenty of traffic. Now, this is seen as web spam, and your site would get penalized.

When making a page, ask yourself this question: "Would I be open to tell Google, Yahoo, or MSN about how I designed this page?"

If you're using super sneaky tactics, you might be setting your site up for failure.

So here's some basic SEO

* Add a primary keyword in your title
* Add a primary keyword in your headers. Use the html tag H1 for main titles, and H2 for subtitles. Don't just use bigger fonts.
* Italicize or make relevant text bold.
* Include relevant keywords in your hyperlinks instead of "click here"
* For the body, type your relevant content naturally. Don't pay too much attention to the density of your keywords. Just write your article as if you weren't paying attention to SEO. Relevance is the key.
* Create a page for every keyword (based on your keyword analysis).
* Do not buy other domains and cross-link them together
* Find ways to create one-way links to your site. One way to do this is through writing articles and submitting them to article directories. A better idea is to write for online trade publications or ezines.
* Add pages constantly, not in bulk. If you had 120 articles, it's better to publish 10 each month instead of 120 in one month.
* Focus on creating pages for your visitors, not just for search engines. Make a site that has easy navigation and that can bring in people repetitively.

If you don't want to worry about optimizing your site, you can use SEO software.

You should strive for a minimum page count of 50. As time progresses, and you feel it's worth building up more, increase your site to 200 pages.

Don't just limit yourself with 200. If you're really passionate with what you're doing, keep on building.

At that level, you should expect at least $500 a month. If you're not even close, you could be offering the wrong content, bad content, or just offering too much content for the wrong market. If you've done your research and followed the steps in this guide, you should already know how good your market is.

Also, don't expect to get rich overnight. Niche content sites can take 6 months to a year to get fully indexed by all of the major the search engines that you submitted your site to.

With all of the pages you've created, you can also track how progress as well.

If you're looking for immediate traffic, you'll have to spend more to get more.

If you haven't read Part 4, I listed some other SEO strategies that you can use as well.

Good luck!

Starting An Internet Business-Part 5-Making Money

2006-02-06T10:41:00.000-08:00

I think it makes sense to test out affiliate marketing first before offering your own product or service online.

Now if you have a cutting edge product, then by all means, market it first.

My reasoning for using affiliate marketing first is that it requires barely any business effort. You don't have to get a business license. You don't have to carry inventory. You don't have to worry about employees (if you wish). It allows you to work anywhere in the world. It allows you to work on your own time schedule. You also don't have to worry much about customer service. From my past experiences, this is a big plus.

So once you try out affiliate market, then you have a good idea of how you could market your own product. Think about it as a way to easily gain experience.

Imagine if you started a company. You got a sales permit, or some other license. You did some research and product development. You hired a programmer or a company to make the product. You get a patent or a copyright. You go through all of those things, and then realize that you can't bring much traffic into your site or to your product. What good is all of that time spent? You might be an expert on your product, but to succeed, you need to be an expert in marketing first. If you rely on somebody to do online marketing for you without knowing what they're doing, you're putting your greatest money making task at risk. If you have NO traffic, you'll have NO money.

For more information about affiliate marketing, I highly suggest Rosalind Gardner's Super Affiliate Handbook.

Okay, enough said.

If you feel you have enough online marketing experience, you can move to the next step...selling non-affiliated product(s) or services.

There's a variety of things you can offer.

Here's a quick list of ideas:

*Information Products
People are information seekers. You can offer a digital book (e-book) with your wealth of knowledge. Video's and audio files can also be offered. Since their digital, you make a terrific profit.

*Software
Create a useful tool (or even a tool for a tool).

*Any Product You Want
You can make your own, or sell other peoples stuff. If you want to start off selling other peoples stuff (not used:), consider dropshipping. You don't need to carry inventory. Items can be sent directly from a warehouse.

*Offer services
Products aren't the only thing you can offer. You can do consultations or coaching online.

*Site Memberships
Provide unique information or online tools

You can use credit card services like Paypal to handle the transactions. Clickbank is great for handeling digital product transactions.

For more information on making money online, review this quickstart monetization guide.

Starting An Internet Business-Part 4-Planning And Designing Your Website

2006-02-06T08:16:00.000-08:00

The first thing you want to do is create a plan for your website.

Build Up Your Knowledge!

Okay, so you've already done some research and picked out a good niche. So how are you going to create a site you know nothing about? The low cost approach is doing the research yourself. You don't have to go back to school for this. Check out online encyclopedias and related sites. Go to your local library and check out a few books on the niche.

Make sure that the information you pick is valid and acceptable. Whether you're reviewing websites or books, look at online reviews to see how others perceive the info. If you've picked out a book that has a lot of bad reviews, what do you think people would say about a website based off of that book?

Think about this whole process as an extended book report. Instead of talking about 1 book, you're combining all of the knowledge you've learned and reporting on it.

Keyword Selection -- The Planning Stage

After using Wordtracker, you should have hundreds of keywords. Will you use all of them? Most likely not. When I build a site, I'm looking at building at least 200 pages. It doesn't have to be all at once and shouldn't. You should continuously add content over time.

When I first started doing content sites, I felt kind of funny about the whole concept of typing tons of content. All the way up through college, I always avoided classes that focussed on writing, history, and literature. I was the technical type and always selected classes like engineering and physics.

Don't let writing or language skills intimidate you. The more you write, the more you'll improve. Whether if it's writing content for your site, or on somebody elses forum, practice makes perfect!

So what's your deadline? Let's say 6 months. Does a 200 page website seem like a big goal? Well there's 365 days in a year. In 6 months, there's close to 182 days. If you do 1-2 articles a day, you'll have it completed in 6 months.

Breaking down big goals into smaller steps makes things less overwhelming.

What Should You Write About?

I usually write articles about highly searched for topics first to create a foundation for my site. I then write articles using less searched for keywords that are relevant and support my foundation.

Look at your keyword list and select 200 keywords and ones that relate to it. You can have a primary keyword, and have 2-3 other ones that would relate to that article. Choose between 5-20 main topics from your list that are relative.

For your main topics, mostly likely they'll all be high competition. You might have millions of competitors for these pages. However, there are still main keywords that are similar to others that have lesser competition. For example, "term life quotations" could have less competition than "term life quotes".

For article pages, I typically look for keywords that have less than 10000 competitors.

Designing and Publishing Your Site

To publish your website, you're going to need some tools.

First, you'll need a tool to create your webpages. I use to use Microsoft Frontpage. Some other great tools are Macromedia Dreamweaver and Macromedia Flash (for great animations).

While these programs are all great, they can slow down production of your content sites. One of the problems that I faced is high memory consumption (compared to what I'm using now). Besides that, setting up information within templates was timely too. I would only use these programs for sites with irregular templates, or if you just like using their interface. Since my content sites are mostly made from text (and some images), I don't need any of the other features offered from these popular web design softwares.

Free Website Software

If you don't want to spend money on the premiere functionality of design or content publishing software, you can try some free programs.

If you want a simple and easy to use interface, download Mozilla. The full blown Mozilla suite comes with an html editor. For those of you that don't know about Mozilla, it's a great alternative to Internet Explorer. (I use Opera, but it doesn't have an html editor).

If you feel comfortable installing program scripts on your server, you can try a CMS (Content Management System). Free server based CMS's worth considering are Limbo CMS (MySQL can be used, but is not required) or Nukedit if your server is running Windows IIS.

If you're really tech savvy, check out HTML Kit. It's highly customizable and it's great if you like working with html code.

You'll most likely need an FTP program. This will allow you to transfer your files from your computer onto the remote host. I use a free program called FileZilla. You can search through CNET's download.com for more programs.

Another type of software I'd recommend is blogging software. You can make your site more personal by using one. Popular ones are Wordpress, Blogger, Moveable Type and Pivot. This site was built using Blogger. Blogger is free (no paid hosting required). Both Wordpress and Moveable Type are hosted on your server with a MySQL database. Pivot is also hosted on your server, but doesn't require a database since it uses an internal flatfile database system.

You can review "Part 3" of this series to see why you should or should not use a free hosted site.

I personally use Pivot. Not because it's the best, but mostly because it doesn't rely on a external database, like MySQL, and it does what I need it to. It's highly customizable and has plenty useful of features.

Another advantage to using blog software is RSS feeds. You can set up the program so that it will automatically submit each article to a directory service. This will bring in more traffic to your site.

Also, since the software is hosted on the site, you can edit your websites using any computer in the world with internet service.

Each one of these blog softwares have a support community. If you're not so technical, setting up a blog on your host can be difficult at first. So if you need information on installation or other support issues, check out their respective support sites.

Important Note: Getting Your Site Indexed By Search Engines

Have you ever seen advertisements for submitting your site to search engines? My take on all this is that you should never submit your URL to a search engine. In order to get your site indexed, post some useful content with your link on a site or directory with a high page rank.

The benefit of not submitting to a search engine is that if a search engine finds your link on a relevant site, your site can possibly rank higher. It's kind of like a recommendation from another site.

You can use forums, articles, or other promotional media...just don't use SPAM. Your reputation is on the line, so make sure that all your posts are done with good taste.

If you don't know what page rank is, download the Google toolbar. Go to options and enable 'PageRank Display'. Every site you go to will have a 0-10 PageRank. The higher, the better.

I'll usually target sites with at least a rank of 4.

You'll also want to look for sites that are relevant to your website. I would not link my financial website to a site on plasma TV's.

Starting An Internet Business-Part 3-Get A Cheap Web Hosting Package

2006-02-06T07:49:00.000-08:00

If you've chosen your domain name, you'll also need a place to store your information. This server space is what a web host is.

What you'll want to do is find a cheap web hosting package. When I say "cheap," I don't mean low quality.

There are so many places to get web hosting, that searching for an affordable one could be tough.

Most of the big named companies offer tons of web hosting packages, but unfortunately are pretty expensive. I'm pretty surprised that Yahoo is still offering their starter package close to $12/mo, with a $25 startup fee. I guess it's the name that sells.

Over the last decade, I've tried out several hosting companies. For over the past 2 years, I've chosen a service where I have 10 websites set up on. If you want to set up one website, you pay $1/mo. If you want to have 10 websites, it's $2.95/mo. They have a startup fee, but it's pretty small compared to the monthly savings.

Before selecting the package for your business, make sure you look at how much server space and bandwidth (transfer limit) you need. For most websites, the $1 or the $2.95 packages are OK. Content (in text format) takes very little space and bandwidth. If you're going to be serving audio, video, or other huge downloads, consider looking at advanced hosting. You can alway start with a basic package and upgrade as your needs grow.

Some people think that since the service is so cheap, there has to be some catch or some other issues. Since I've been using their services, there has been some minor annoyances. All I could say is if you're expecting somebody to walk you through step-by-step, this might not be the right service for you. I wasn't expecting them to do that...just a warning.

When I asked tech support questions, they replied quickly. Most of the time, the responses were good. However, there have been some times where I couldn't get the right answers until several emails later (email-based customer service does have disadvantages). I thought that my questions where common enough that they should include it in their FAQ (ie. SMTP or Sendmail configuration parameters-needed for setting up forums). I ended up finding my answers faster through online support forums and USENET.

Other than these issues, I think they have the best bang for the buck for a Windows based server.

For more information, check out the Onedollarhost site.

Are you looking for a UNIX based web host?

One of the best UNIX based web hosting I've reviewed is Dreamhost.

If you want a wide range of compatibility, flexibility, and stability, a UNIX based server might be the choice for you. If you're strictly an ASP programmer or you're using ASP scripts, you'll need to use the Windows IIS host that I previously mentioned.

Now this is a big steal if you're okay paying close to $7.99/mo or more. Their beginning package starts you off with unlimited domains and 1 TB of transfer. If you're an aggressive internet marketer, having as many domains as you could host is a big plus. This is in addition to unlimited subdomains.

There's too much that this host offers. Click here for more info.

===
A note about free hosting

There's a lot of sites offering free hosting. I've used many of them in the past for hobby sites. Most of these include advertisements using pop-ups or banners. The disadvantage of some of these sites are annoyances and reliability.

Since these sites are free, you never know how reliable your data storage is, how often your site will be down, or how long it will be free. Since your not paying anybody, what incentive do they have?

Another aspect to consider is credibility. Although your site may be informative, business sites with free hosting addresses don't give a professional image.

So if you have a long term site, you should consider hosting that you pay for.

Starting An Internet Business-Part 2-Do Some Domain Name Research

2006-02-06T07:18:00.000-08:00

What is a domain name? Simply, it's your web address. You'll have to do some domain name research before choosing one.

You can't just pick any web address. You have to pick one that's available, and most important, related to your niche.

You'll see many sites that don't have an address related to their niche. If you want to strongly focus on making a brand name (ie. like Google), you could pick a domain name that is totally different from your niche.

So why do I recommend choosing a relevant domain name? Search engines will rank domain a little bit higher if you include your primary site keyword in the domain name.

I don't want to go overboard on this. If you're working on a site on plasma widescreen televisions, I wouldn't create a web address like: www.plasma-televisions-for-sale.com; Although this is keyword rich, you don't want to make it look like web spam (which can lower your rankings). Simply include 1 or 2 keywords into the title. A fair example would be: www.plasmatvshop.com

If possible, stay away from using dashes. If you have to use them, online use 1 dash in your domain name.

Now again, don't focus on keyword rich names too much. If you're paying for traffic through advertisements, it really doesn't matter too much.

Another key tip is trying to keep your name short and rememberable. If you're using an abstract name, it might seem cool, but if a person can't easily remember it, how can they return to your site?

So once you come up with some ideas, I would take a look at 1 and 1. For under $6, you can select a domain name. I've used a few places to register my domains, but I like this one the best. It's affordable, it has a lot of features, and you can use their privacy feature for free. So if somebody is looking for your personal information, it will be hidden. There's a lot of other places that actually charge extra for this feature.

Click here to pick a domain name today

Starting An Internet Business-Part 1-It All Starts With An Idea

2006-02-06T06:39:00.000-08:00

In this guide, you'll discover how you can start up a business online for less than $50.

Whether you want to start up a small one or large one is up to you!

Using the technology of computers and the internet, you can even run a massive worldwide business without having any employees or inventory if you wanted to.

...so let's get started

In the past, brochure-like websites were the main style of business websites. As time went on, these websites seemed like a standard template. Visitors would visit these business websites and find barely any value.

Today, content is king. In order to create a profitable content based site, you need to create value.

When people search around the internet, the main thing they search for is information. ..and to make the experience more enhanced, people are looking for "relevant" information that contains value.

If you're in a competitive business, what are you offering of value? Why would a person go to your website and choose you?

What business are you really in?

Now that's even a better question. What information will you offer? What is the supply and demand of your "niche".

So what is a niche? In my words, it's a targeted idea that people are searching for. Why do I say targeted? Let's say you want to sell wide screen TV's. Now there are all sorts of them. You could get a rear project, a front projection, various LCD types or a plasma.

You could start up a company that carries a wide assortment of models and brands. This is a general widescreen tv niche.

Now let me ask you this. If you were looking for the best Sony plasma television, would you rather consult a one stop shop salesman, or a guy that specialized in Sony plasma televisions? I'm not sure about you, but I'd rather see the specialist.

The same thing goes for medical problems. If you had a chronic heart condition, would you go to a general family practitioner?

So how do you find a good niche?

Look for a specific problem first (with enough people that have it).

...and then with that problem, come up with solutions (services or products)

It really helps if you build a site on a topic you're familiar and passionate with. I agree with the familiar part, but passionate isn't always a must.

What happens if your passion filled niche is too competitive? Well, you can find niches within that niche (ie. focus on car amplifiers instead of car audio). What if those are even too competitive? You could dig down further, but will the tight niches bring in plenty of traffic and money? If it's too expensive to advertise, or if there's too much competition, it might be worth seeking other niches beyond your passion first. Also, make sure that your niche is profitable. A site about your daily misfortunes might not be so profitable. Once you have more experience, you can go into niches with higher competition.

In this website, I've written some articles on finding your own niche and analyzing which niches to use. A very popular tool that you can use online is Wordtracker. If you're very serious about your online business, this tool will allow you to dig 1000's of keywords for you to analyze. If you even get the 1 day Wordtracker package (close to $8), you could dig up plenty of niches that will keep you busy for the next year or two.

To save you some time, you can get free niche reports via email. I'm always analyzing niches and trying to find the hot opportunities to get into. Let me tell you, I have too many. I have so much that it would take me over 10 years to complete them.

Remember, it's not the niche idea that will get you rich, it's the actions you take with the niche that will make you money.

None of my niches are get rich schemes. These are niches that have a great demand that you could steadily make money in. The catch is that you have to spend a lot of time and effort building sites around them.

If I had a hundred of me, I would be making tons of websites this year. The problem is, I can't clone myself and I don't have that much time on my hands. So I might as well give some away instead of wasting them.

If you would like to subscribe, sign up through the 'free niche reports' form in the right margin.

Also see: Pay-Per-Click Marketing Analysis

The Newbie Monetization Guide - How To Generate Money On Your Content Site

2006-01-31T23:21:00.000-08:00

I remember when I first started making websites. I had a site on how to get DVD's cheap, a video/audio site, a movie information site, and a website on an actress I idolized at the time. I spent hours making these sites for fun. It's kind of crazy to see that some of my past competitors that continued publishing their sites are now making over 6 figures. I didn't think that I could make money off of those sites at the time. It was all a hobby.

I still see many fan sites that have tons of content, but don't generate any money at all. People spend tons of hours publishing free videos and podcasts on their websites. This might seem pretty cool, but I don't think it's cool if somebody is capitalizing on your ideas and making a fortune on them. If somebody is making money on great ideas and information, why can't it be you?

Now, don't get me wrong. Their were tons of sites back then that made money, but looked like garbage. They had flashing banners and those darn-never-ending pop-up ads. I'm not talking about making money through annoying methods.

So how can you make money by providing information, but not sell anything (directly) at all? The answer is: affiliate marketing

What is affiliate marketing? It's a way to gain commission through pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, or pay-per-sale transactions.

So how could you implement this type of marketing on your site.

Let's go through the easy way.

I've made it easy for you. There's a easy sign up button for Adsense below my "blogger" and "spam poison" images on the bottom of my navigation bar on the right hand side.

Sign up for Google Adsense today.

Why monetize your site with Adsense?

* The sign up process is simple
* You don't have to hunt around for advertisers
* Advertising is highly relevant to your content
* ...and it's free

How do you make money from this method? When you sign up, you get a piece of customizable code you put on your site. When your web page is loaded, ads that relate to your content are displayed. If somebody clicks on the ads, you get paid a small portion.

So where does the money come from? People pay to put ads in Google via Adwords. When a person clicks on the ad, that person/company pays a price that that chose (bid price). These ads are called PPC (pay-per-click). If that ads is displayed on your site (impression), you have a chance to earn money if somebody clicks on it.

Whether you have 1 site or 200 sites, you only have to sign up once. You can customize the code to add a channel. This will allow you to set up a channel for each site so you can track your sites independently.

How much money could you make? It varies. The more competitive the ads are (bid-wise), the more money you'll make. Some people pay only 5 cents for their ad. You can't squeeze much money from non-competitive ads. Last year, I had some Adword campaigns that costs $5 a click in a highly competitive niche. In order to get to the number 1 listing, I had to pay over $30 a click (which I wasn't planning to do). You would be making a lot more on niches like this.

What kind of ads should you pick? Adsense offers a variety of banners, boxes, and skyscrapers. For me, skyscrapers, buttons, and inline squares seem to work out the best. Banners have been a dying trend.

==
Affiliate Links

I won't go into too much detail about this. It's finding good companies to advertise within your content. I could right a great review on a book I like. Let's say that I did a review on great book about making money online through affiliate marketing. I could go to Clickbank.com or CJ.com and find companies or affiliate programs on those sites. For every sale that comes from my links, I get paid a fraction of it.

So if you're the type of person that likes to write reviews, or just great information, why not monetize your site with affiliate links? (Inline text links seem to work better than banner ads)

What if you can't find a great Affiliate program in your niche on these sites? Go to Google and search for: niche name affiliate (ie. surfing tips affiliate). You'll be able to find an affiliate program in most cases.

What's the difference between CJ and Clickbank? Clickbank mostly specialized in downloadable information (ebooks, software), while CJ focuses on merchants. Since Clickbank has downloadable info, they offer higher commissions. There's a lot of programs in CB that offer 50% on each sale.

For more information about making money online, visit our quick internet business guide topic--making money online.

Marketing Useful Software

2006-01-29T19:09:00.000-08:00

While thinking about an ebook to market, I ran across a website saying that I could actually make my own program with a program creator. I thought it was a lot of B.S., but after looking at some examples, I understood what it was all about.

One of the great examples was a sales letter creator. Just type in a headline, sub-headline, and the benefits of your product or service. After clicking a button, it would spit out a great sales letter.

Using this product in this way is great. I just didn't like the fact that the software insinuated that it could be used to make software (like any kind). I had to hunt around Google to figure out what it was about. It was a simple software program, with simple libraries, that could create basic logic programs.

Although I thought I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out what it was about, it was a great brain stimulator. I hunted around for more software creators. I checked out download.com and sourceforge.net. I ended up stumbling across video game engines.

A night after that, I spoke to my wife about a situation with one of my family members. There was a very common problem within her organization. A few seconds later, I realized that I could actually solve it indirectly (with a video game).

[For those of you that don't understand what the heck I'm talking about, think about how Robert Kiyosaki has helped people understand money with his board game "Cashflow 101".]

I did some keyword research and it was a great niche. There were no affiliate marketers that have tapped the niche yet. There was barely any affiliate programs related to what I'm doing, and there was ZERO companies on the internet doing what I'm about to do.

Although the video gaming industry is very competitive, can you think of any indirect ways you could market a game? If you think video games are too hard to make, think again. There's a variety of video game engines that have pre-programmed libraries to make your life easier.

So the lessons I learned were 1)think outside of the box and 2)create an affiliate program for something that has a high demand and may not exist.

Rosalind Gardner's 'Don't Buy Ros a Coffee' Contest

2006-01-24T11:02:00.000-08:00

On January 9th, Rosalind Gardner finally picked out a winning card from her stash of cards.

For those of you that aren't familiar with the contest, the prizes were Rosalind's Super Affiliate Handbook and the late Corey Rudl's highly acclaimed Internet Marketing Course. In order to enter the contest, anybody could send Rosalind a Christmas card or birthday card.

I ended up sending a card early in December and on January 9th, I recieved a NetProfitsToday link via RSS.

I was pretty excited to find out that I was the winner of the two internet marketing courses.

That was on January 9th. Today, it's January the 24th. What took me so long to post this message?

I've been so busy building websites. Since the beginning of the year, I've created 3 new websites with a total of over 70 pages of content so far. It's been hectic trying to do this, take care of my family with a wife and 2 kids, brush up my knowledge with some great ebooks, and handle my regular job.

Within the last week, I just received both courses from the contest. I've spent many hours reading those as well and implementing some new techniques. I have to say that these courses aren't what I thought they would be.

I've read close to half of Rosalind's book and a third of Corey's course. There's so much information, it's pretty overwhelming. I've read over 50 marketing books and there's tons of great information that the other books didn't cover. I'll keep you guys posted on what I've been doing and what I've learned.

CMS and RSS Feeds-Pivot Tweaked

2006-01-14T12:48:00.000-08:00

For those of you that read my last post, you know I'm diversifying my publishing methods. There are information sites that I don't run subscription lists on. But I do have other sites where I want people to subscribe to a mini-course or newsletter.

I read a post on some blog (don't recall) that the trend is for people to get get information on their own time , instead of newsletters via email; I'll still continue with my autoresponders and mailing lists, but I'll be adding RSS feeds to some of my new sites.

I've realized the easiest way to do this is by using blogs. So, I had to sacrifice something to get an added benefit.

So, back to Pivot. For those of you not familiar with this software, it's a PHP blog that is flatfile based (it uses a text database). I didn't want to add up my costs by getting MySQL added. So I ended up doing some hacking with Pivot.

I changed things around so Pivot is more of a CMS than a blog. There was a feature to turn off live entries. What this does is save each post as a static file. I then changed the templates to write a description from the post subtitle. I added keyword metatags from the keywords used for Pivots internal search engine. I changed the template to make it load faster and make it more search engine friendly.

Will Pivot be my main CMS platform. For blogs-yes, for overall content publishing-not yet. I guess I'll see some results in the next 6-12 months. At that time, I'll do some research to figure out which one I like the best.

Multi-strategy for SEO

2006-01-03T09:05:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's the beginning of 2006! After reading all of the SEO books in my collection last year, it's amazing how things change. On my past sites, I've used the same strategy. After all of the news from the last pubcon came out, it seems like SEO for Google has come to a halt. With all of their algorithms fighting spam, their SE has become anti-SEO. So the rules have changed. I guess that's the internet for you.

For the last few weeks, I've been thinking about what I should do with my future sites. Should I put my focus on just MSN and Yahoo? I soon realized that Google has been a big trendsetter in SE development, so it's just a matter of time that these other SE's catch on.

So in order to deal with this change, this year I'm going to use multi-strategy SEO. With 1/3 of my sites, I'll continue to make them as I did. The next third I have come up with my own SEO rules. Their somewhat leaner that before. To give you a clue, I'll be using my thesaurus quite a bit. The last third, I won't be using any SEO rules at all.

So the point I'm trying to make here is that diversification in SEO rules, as well as industries is very important. You never know what will happen to the rules of SEO in the future. Rules change all the time.

Another strategy within the strategy that I'll be using is content-advertising mix up. I'm not saying I will use ads from various companies, but I'll be splitting my sites in half. One half will contain content ads, and the other half won't. Why? I'll just say that it's another way to diversify. For one reason, I'll give you a clue. These content ads are competitors. Some are from SE's. So how does that affect your rankings?

It's better to be safe than sorry.

Niche finding on a budget

2005-12-23T09:42:00.000-08:00

This might seem funny, but I just found a great niche at the local 99 cent store. I usually don't buy books there, but out of curiousity, I checked the selection out. I found a book that caught my eye. It was in the field of health and medicine. I was surprised that it had a Costco sticker on it. I guess Costco had overstock or just could sell the bundle. So I bought the 99 cent book and did some keyword research. There was tons of high KEI keywords and a lot without any competition. I checked Google adwords and there was about ten ads.

So the moral of this is: don't just look around for niches on the net. Niches are everywhere!

Have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Keyword Research and Niche Mining Tools

2005-12-03T10:51:00.000-08:00

After a week long trip from Hawaii, I was eager to try out my new niche finding tool called Keywords Results Analyzer for Wordtracker. This tool does what I want, nichemining specifically for affiliate marketing. The tool does cost money, so if you're looking for something free, another great tool is Keyword Analysis by Cattle Ramp Seo.

The biggest difference between the 2 are the keywords it uses. Cattle Ramps tool is one of the best free tool I've ever used, but it uses Overture to build it's list. The problem with this is that Overture doesn't arrange the words in the correct order and it also doesn't care about plural forms. When creating sites for SEO, it's better if the words are the the right format and order for what a person is searching for. An example of this would be a person typing in "niche finding software" and Overture might return something like "finding software niche." While the user might find your site with this same phrase, google would most likely put the exact phrase your searching for 1st, since it is the most relevant. With Wordtracker, the user could reliably find the phrase in the exact order that a person is searching for.

Cattle Ramp also uses something called CID (Competition Indexed Demand), while most niche finding tools use KEI. CID targets keywords that have less competition. This is highly valuable if you want to target a niche and don't want to compete with the big guns.

With Keywords Results Analyzer the user has several filtering options. You can filter by count, 24 hr. count, root words, competition, and KEI. Although it doesn't use CID, using the 24 hr. count and competition works perfectly for niche mining. The creator of the software uses the strategy of filtering sites with less than 1000 competitors and searched at least 5 times in the last 24 hours. If you site is optimized with these filtered keywords, you'll have a chance of ranking within the top 10. Another strategy used for people who like using KEI is filtering sites with 1000 competitors and using a KEI of 10. This strategy can also be used for finding niches within niches which Keywords Results Analyzer automatically does. Once you open a project, click on this function and the software will search for sub-niches within you project in minutes.

While Cattle Ramp is a great software, KRA for WT saves hours niche mining. With WordTracker, the user can get 1000's and 1000's of keywords on your niche and easily filter through them. Cattle Ramp does have some automated features for this, but you have to pay a small fee for them. I had a niche with over 4000 keywords and I was able to find my best 10-100 keywords for my site in seconds.

So try Keyword Analysis by Cattle Ramp Seo or Keywords Results Analyzer and see which one you like the best.

Content Publishing Software ... What a Relief!

2005-11-18T23:02:00.000-08:00

I've finally found a solution to my content publishing headaches! After going through some of the popular blog/content management softwares and Allan Gardyne's forum, I've made a decision to purchase SEO Website Builder. I figured, if I'm going to be spending ton's of hour making affiliate sites, I might as well use a software specifically made for what I'm doing ... something that will help me to easily optimize my pages and pull in more free search engine visitors.

I tried to optimize things myself, but I ended up not conforming to the rules and just created articles from my own comfort level. Just like anything in life, getting too comfortable can mess up your achievement of goals.

It was tough for me to make the switch from Frontpage. In the past, I've always tried to create website's from an aesthetic perspective, rather than a SEO/usable content approach. I've used Flash, Dreamweaver, and Frontpage (with Photoshop) for my previous sites. Using all three of these, website maintenance was a big headache. I would use another software to find and replace text in the files to modify the design. This was a hit and miss technique. After learning to use the new software I purchased, many of my maintenance problems were solved.

I wanted something where I could post my articles or news easily, and have them managed easily within a database. Not only did this software provide this, it also provided a manual for the software and keys to search engine optimization. I wish I would have purchased it before I got James Martell's Affiliate Handbook. The creator of the software uses most of James's ideas to create the websites.

After creating an article or post, you have the option to analyze and optimize it for the search engines. This will help to increase the page rank of your content. All of the blogs or content management software I've seen does not have individual optimization. Most blogs have several posts on the main page along with a bunch of links(which effects the relevance for that page). Google really looks at relevance, so if you have a main page that talks about biking, and then about going to a restaurant over the weekend, the focus of that page has highly decreased. Then if you have a bunch of links going out to various pages, like recent entries or comments, you're diluting the page rank going out to links you want to focus on. SEO Website Builder takes care of this problem.

Another feature I like is the ability to change content or templates globally (similar to changing templates on Blogs and CMS's). If you want to redesign your website layout, all you do is choose a new template (or design one), and you can rebuild all of your pages in seconds with the new design. If you have certain strings, paragraphs, or groups of code that you have used on several pages (or even all), you can make a modification once, and rebuild your whole site as well.

Since the software is installed on your system, inserting and updating content is also really fast. Using several blogs and CMS's, I got tired having to wait for the server-side software to respond, and to return results through an internet connection. With a client-side software installed, you're only waiting for your CPU to respond, which is surely a big difference. This might not seem like a big deal if you publish content every now and then, but when you're contantly putting content into a site, you'll be able to tell the difference.

Well, that's most of the good stuff. The only thing I didn't like is going through the learning process. The interface of the software is good, but very different from other website development softwares. It took me close to 5 hours to get the basics down. That's not too bad. The interface was designed so that people without any web development background could easily design sites. It's been about 10 years since I started designing sites. For affiliate / content sites, I would not use any other software.

Another thing I didn't like was finding out how good the software is, and then wanting to modify my last Frontpage site. I'm currently converting and optimizing all of the pages using the new software. After using the software, I also increased my understanding of how SEO works.

So, to put it short, most of the things I didn't like are my own personal problems I have to deal with.

If you're thinking about creating websites that focus on graphics instead of content, this is the WRONG software to use.

I will continue to use Blogger for this journal. I will only be using this software to create my main affiliate and e-book/content sites.

There's many useful features that this program has that I didn't mention. So check out the SEO Website Builder website for more details.

SEO Blogs ....argghhhh

2005-11-16T18:36:00.000-08:00

Over the last few days, I've tested out several flatfile blogs, hopefully to manage my content.

I've tried out blosxom (Perl-based), Pivot, and some CMS programs like PHP-CMS, and Limbo.

I learned the basics of all of these and all of them were great for blogging or managing content.

I also got some good details from this site:
http://www.asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm

The problem I'm faced with is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I couldn't change the URL's or Metadata to be SEO URL friendly for IIS. I noticed there were some modifications that could be done for Apache or UNIX..but I'm stuck with Windows IIS for now.

I also checked out some other ones like Moveabletype and Wordpress which had some limited SEO modifications, but needed a database like MYSQL.

The big problem I see with many of these CMS or Blog software with Search Engine Friendly URL's is that they ownly cover a small portion of optimization.

Some have metatags, but globally for the entire site. That's not much help. Some have SEF URL's, but their not customizable.

I'm looking for something that can handle flatfiles and handle independent page customizations.

I guess that's too techie, but if I'm publishing SE optimized content, it has to be done the right way.

So I'll stick to Blogger and my traditional website SEO templates for now until some other solutions come out with a wider user base.