How I Built A Site In Just 10 Days That Makes Between $1000 To $2000 A Week
Actually, for a while this site was making more then $2000 a week. On top of the 10 Days it took me to set up, I only spend about 30 or so minutes a week on maintenance. …
Ok, so here’s what I did: firstly, I found a great affiliate program that I wanted to promote. In this case it was the Herbal Remedies affiliate program that I mention on my page: http://www.affiliated-business.com/AffiliateProgramsDirectory.html. This program pays $12 - $20 per sale which is reasonably attractive...
After joining the program; I hired a university student from a local university to design the website for me. I simply put an ad in the local university job search, and got about 15 responses from students who know how to design websites. I got them to email me an example of a website that they had designed, and then I got them to start designing the
Nutritional Supplements website for free (as a test to see if they had good website design skills, because I certainly don't!)
I picked the guy who designed the best test site and hired him for four hours at a cost of $60 US to design the site. He designed this site for me: http://herbalzilla.com.
It’s not particularly fancy but does the job. Note: although there is nothing special about this site copying it isn’t a good idea. This site, like most others, is subject to copyright. You are welcome to design a similar site, just don’t copy any of the wording or layout - you can probably do something much better anyway!
I then registered the domain name (I often use http://www.mydomainfriend.com to search for good domain names) and put the site up with my web host. You can see a list of good hosts at: http://www.profitpuppy.com/hosting.htm.
The last (and most important step) involved making a list of keywords that people might search for when looking to buy a satellite TV system. To make this list I used Wordtracker - you can find out more about this at: http://www.profitpuppy.com/keyword-research.htm
Then I logged onto my Google Adwords account and put in a bid for these keywords at 5 cents each. Google Adwords is a pay per click search advertising service. If you do not understand how pay per click advertising works, then have a look at this page: http://www.profitpuppy.com/pay-per-click.htm
In this instance, I was generating about 800 clicks each week from the Adwords at a total cost of $40 resulting in at least 8 sales each week of satellite TV systems. This site is now generating less traffic and lower revenues (probably because I have told so many people how to do it!), however, the sales are still ticking over.
This strategy is probably the quickest and easiest way to make money on the web. You simply sign up for a good affiliate program and promote it using Google Adwords. In this case I actually built a one page site - the main reason was that you can’t advertise on Google if the site you are promoting uses pop-ups. Because the site I was advertising did have a pop-up, I had to build my own one page site which would then in turn advertise the other site.
It is a very quick and easy way to make money on Google, and it is a great way to get started because you can get it going quite quickly. However, you have to remember that it is becoming very difficult to find cheap clicks on Google Adwords.
To advertise a satellite TV related offer you would now be looking at paying $1 a click to promote the offer. However, it is still possible to find some clicks at only 5 cents if you look hard enough. We will be talking about that in more detail in some of the upcoming issues of the ecourse.
This is a great way to make money on the net with little effort. I would recommend that you start out using this method, but don’t rely only on this method. You need to start looking at other techniques as well such as getting your own product or getting free listings with search engines. We are going to be talking about that more in the upcoming issues.
Basic copywriting and web conversion strategies
What does it take to become successful in an Internet business? Do you need to learn how to become a great website designer or a programmer?
The answer is no - these are useful skills to have but you can hire someone to do these things for you. Do you need to have lots of money? No again. Too much money can even be a disadvantage as you can potentially waste a lot of it (if you don’t know what you are doing…)
The most important thing is that you understand the 3 fundamentals of Internet marketing, which are: learning how to get visitors to your website, implementing the best overall business strategy and converting your website visitors into buyers once they visit your site.
It’s very difficult to hire someone who has these skills as there are very few people who have them. You need to practice these techniques for yourself if you want to be successful. Understanding traffic conversion principles and the importance of copywriting is essential to business success in any arena.
This is a very broad subject area - to learn everything you need to know about traffic conversion and copywriting might take months, or possibly even years. However, you can get a head start by learning from people who already know what they are doing – I can’t teach you everything I know, but in this issue of the ecourse I’ll go over some of the most important elements copywriting and traffic conversion:
How to think of your website
Your website is like a salesperson for your product or service and you need to treat it as such: It might sound a bit silly, but you need to pretend that your website is a salesperson that is going out and describing what your product does and why the person should buy your product.
You’ve probably seen many of the ‘brochure-ware’ sites out there? The headline at the top of the page says something like:
“Acme Services – Professional and Reliable”
Now imagine this for a second: a salesperson knocks on the door of a potential customer, the person invites them in and the first thing the salesperson says is, “Acme Services – Professional and Reliable”. What do you think the customer would think … “Are you a lunatic?!”
It doesn’t make any sense and it doesn’t help sell your product. Again, you have to think of your website as a salesperson: you need to communicate your key message about your product or service or call to action (for instance, if you just want them to give you their email address).
This style of writing is often referred to as direct response copywriting (which you should endeavour to learn about). It’s the art of writing a sales letter that sells, something that people will respond to. It’s not easy to do and it requires lots of training, but it’s a very valuable skill to have.
Elements of your website to improve your response
Your headline
This is the first line on the page: the purpose of which is to get people to want to read the rest of the page. Try to use something that will include the benefits of your product or service and don’t be afraid to use a long headline if you need to. The sub-headline is also very important (this is the headline below the headline). You should use the sub-headline to engage the person with the page so they will read further…
Photos
They say a picture is worth a 1000 words but this is not usually true – sometimes they will just distract your visitors. Make sure that any photos or pictures you use directly complement the page. Always have a caption under a photo which will entice people to read the page and / or take a particular action.
Testimonials
It’s very important to have testimonials from satisfied buyers of your product or service. To make the testimonials more credible it helps if you can have a photo of the person or perhaps an audio testimonial.
The offer
What incentives are there on your site for people to take action? What bonuses can you give people who buy through your site or give you their email address? (Remember, people don’t give away their email addresses lightly nowadays).
Benefits not features
Make sure you talk about the unique benefits of your product/service as compared to others. Don’t just rattle off a bunch of features … instead look at what benefit it may have for the person who is buying the product. What’s in it for them? Always consider your site from the viewpoint of someone may be reading the page. Ideally, you want a unique reason for people to buy from you and not someone else.
Don’t just go for a nice looking design
A nice looking site with a clean design is nice, but it won’t necessarily sell your product. Believe it or not, people have had more success selling products from a relatively simple page. Although, if you were selling diamonds or up-market handbags, you may need a well considered site design, but the most critical factor for selling your product is never the design.
What you are offering and how you present that offer is far more important… If you are selling a $50,000 BMW for $10,000 you won’t find it hard to find buyers, as long as people believe the offer is for real. You have to present your offer or product as a proposition that is too good to refuse, just like buying a $50,000 BMW for $10,000.
How do you know if your website is good?
There is only one way to know - you put it up and start promoting it. If people start buying the product then your site is probably at least moderately successful, although you still need to test things and see what works best. Don’t give the site to friends and ask for their opinion unless they are in the market to buy your product. You have to test your market and then adjust your site accordingly.
Other factors for improving your website conversion:
Here are a few more tips that can help to improve your website conversion even further:
- Trial using pop-ups on your page - they sometimes work and are worth trying. Don’t use normal pop-ups as a large proportion of people have software to block pop-ups. Instead look at DHTML pop-ups or other methods that are not affected by the pop-up blockers or cross browser compatibility issues.
- Usually it is better to have a long sales letter on one page than to break it up into several pages – try it and see.
- Try to capture the person’s email address and get them onto an auto-responder so you can still keep in contact with them after they have left your site.
- Always make your claims completely honest and believable - it’s often better if you explain a negative aspect of your product so that people believe the rest of your information.
- If you have an order page make sure you restate the benefits of the product on the order page so that people are reminded of why they are buying.
- Lastly and most importantly, study from people who are successful. Find sites that have high conversion ratios and learn from them.
Ok, so that’s it for the basics of web conversion. There is a lot to learn but that should get you started.
By the way if you are looking for the master of traffic conversion, take a look at John Reese who is one of the most successful internet marketers that I know and is one of my mentors in the area of internet marketing. There’s some valuable info which you download at: http://www.profitpuppy.com/johnreese.htm
All the best,
- Daniel Russo
Copy Writing Issues: Get a top 10 ranking without paying a cent
By Glenn Murray
If there's one thing that Google loves, it's content. Done right, a content rich website is almost guaranteed to rank highly. But how to get that content? You can write it yourself, but that takes a lot of time. You can pay an SEO copywriter to write it for you, but that takes a lot of money. If only there was another option...
What if you could get your content for free? And not just a little bit of content; a lot! What if you could get an almost unlimited supply of keyword rich, expertly written content, specific to your subject matter, absolutely free of charge? Would you snap it up and upload to your site in an instant? Of course you would! Well here's the good news: you can! Read on to find out how you can get a top ten ranking in the search engines without paying a single cent...
Yes, content gives you a great ranking
Content is king. This is widely acknowledged as fact, but if you need further convincing, consider the following two points:
- Point 1 - In Google's own words, one of the keys to a high ranking is to "create a useful, information-rich site" (from "Google Information for Webmasters" ).
- Point 2 - Google insider, codenamed 'Google Guy', advocates a list 26 steps to building a high ranking site. Step 5 of the list says, "build one page of content and put online per day at 200-500 words" (from Brett Tabke's "26 steps to 15k a Day"[http://www.googlelady.com/156/26-steps-to-15k-a-day/] , advocated by Google Guy in a WebMasterWorld QA session ).
But why does content give you a great ranking?
I won't go into any further detail about IF Google loves content. I will, however, briefly explain WHY. Google's love affair with content is based on two key attractions:
- Google loves sites with a lot of content because it assumes they provide a lot of useful information. And remember, that's the whole reason Google exists - to help people find useful information. The more helpful Google's results, the more traffic (and revenue) it gets.
- Google loves sites that have a lot of links pointing to them because this means other webmasters hold your site in high regard, and Google assumes this means the content is useful. And naturally, if you create a useful site, other webmasters will link to it because this makes them useful to their visitors (thereby developing site loyalty), and they gain credibility and authority because they're associated with you.
So how can you get free content for your website?
Three words: 'free reprint articles'. There are hundreds of thousands of people out there writing high quality, helpful, informative articles on virtually every topic imaginable, then giving these article away to any webmaster who wants to publish them on a website. In exchange for the article, the author asks only that you retain the author bio at the end, complete with all links (e.g. "Glenn Murray is an SEO Copywriter and Article Submission Specialist...).
To find free content for your website, simply visit any one of hundreds of 'article banks' on the Internet such as Ezine Articles , Go Articles , or Article Blast . Browse or search for the subject you're interested in, then take the article(s) for free. There is absolutely no charge. Some of these sites will even send a regular stream of articles direct to your website (using RSS).
Alternatively, you can sign up to any number of article distribution lists and get articles delivered direct to your email inbox. Again, it's absolutely free! Some of the better known distribution lists include Article Announce , Free-Content , and Free-Reprint-Articles .
TIP: The article banks and distribution lists mentioned above are just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds more - just do a search for "free reprint articles", "article submission", "article submission site", "submit article", "article submit site", "free articles", or "free content". You may even find a site or list which only deals in articles relating to your particular subject matter.
Why is it free?
Why are these authors giving their articles away? Because it helps the author's own search engine ranking. As explained above, Google loves sites with lots of links pointing to them. Every time their article submission is published, the author gets another link to their website. In fact, if the article is really good, it may be published hundreds of times. And each time, it's another link to the author's website. Put simply, article submission is a writer's free pass to the top of the search engines.
How do I know if the quality is good?
It's a process of natural selection. The better the article submission, the more often it will be published, so it's in the author's interest to write and submit articles of the highest quality. Of course, this doesn't always happen, but in most cases, you'll be reviewing the articles before you post them anyway, so if you discover one that's not up to scratch, don't use it.
In time, you'll become familiar with the authors who consistently put out good quality content - you may even find enough of them that you don't need to go looking for content from anyone else...
Where do I put the free content?
Most people put the articles in an 'Articles' or 'Resources' section on their website, but you can put them anywhere you like.
How much free content should I use?
As much as you want or as little as you want. It all depends on your needs and the needs of your audience. If your audience expects that at least some of your site is original content, then give it to them.
But what about the duplicate content issue?
It's not an issue!
There's a lot of a talk about how Google penalizes duplicate content. The theory is that when the majority of the content on two separate webpages (on different sites) is the same, the one with the higher PR will be shown and the other one will not.
Whether or not this theory is true is still a hot topic in search engine circles, but regardless, it doesn't affect people publishing free-reprint articles. When you publish the article, just make sure you have unique content around it. Generally, it's enough to have your own unique introduction to the page (which may be common to all pages), and your own navigation elements, headers, footers, sidebars, logos, images, etc.
Conclusion
Free reprint articles are a great way for you to achieve a high ranking. And you don't have to pay a cent! So what are you waiting for?
Happy reprinting!
About the Author
* Glenn Murray is an SEO copywriter , advertising copywriter , and Article Submission Specialist . He is a director of article submission alternative , ArticlePR , and also of copywriting studio Divine Write . He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com . Visit http://www.divinewrite.com or http://www.ArticlePR.com for further details, more FREE articles, or to download his free SEO e-book, SEO Secrets .
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