Setting up a niche site ~ update
By Jackie | May 10, 2008
In my last post I showed you my internet marketing action plan. I am pleased to tell you I have followed through and I have set up my first keyword sniping site. 
Yesterday was a busy day. I had been looking for keywords throughout the week and reading more of Courtney Tuttle’s blog Internet Marketing School. I continued to learn more about the process of keyword sniping and was feeling pretty confident about my ability to do this.
I was having a hard time finding a good keyword. A friend of mine mentioned I might want to just expand on something that was already working for me. This was a great idea. I took my most profitable squidoo lens and found some excellent keywords on the niche. I was able to find keywords with over 5000 hits a month and only 197,000 competing pages. These also happened to be keywords I was not currently focusing on in my squidoo lens.
There comes a time when you have to stop reading, and just start doing. I still had a few questions I thought I needed answered, but I figured I’m already doing ok in this market, I bet I can’t screw it up much.
Away I went. I purchased my domain name. I had some questions, like can I use a .info domain? Should I use dashes in my domain? I could have just waited until I could find out the answer, but that’s how things get stalled out.
I went for a .com ~ just spent the money and did put dashes in, because that’s the only way I could get my keyword in the domain name. Now whether these are the right choices or not, I’m still not sure. However, I could still be here today trying to find out the answers with no site built, or I could just take a chance and get moving.
There are always going to be questions and I can almost guarantee that none of them are going to kill your chances in internet marketing if you just guess at the answer. If you make a seriously HUGE mistake ~ which I can’t even think of what one would be right now ~ I bet you can either fix it later or try another website. So stop letting your questions stop you and just go for it!!
After I purchased my domains I changed the nameservers to my hosting and uploaded wordpress. Easy Cheesy.
I found a great template. In fact, I used Court’s Dateless Sniper template from his SEO Wordpress theme selection.
From this point I basically followed Court’s instructions from his Introduction to Keyword Sniping post. I actually had the post open in one tab and my new site open in another. I followed his directions. Until I ran into more questions.
Since this was not just a adsense site, and I was taking some of my information from the Wordpress Goldmine book for doing this for affiliate products I ran into some questions about links and product placement.
Again, I did not let these questions stop me. I just made a decision. I used the main keyword to link back to the homepage, just as Court suggests. I also used a keyword related to my product to link to the actual affiliate product.
Wordpress Goldmine suggests you put an image and a link to the affiliate product in the top left corner of your blog, but this template was not set up that way, and I think the content will sell well enough.
Next I wrote 10 articles related to my keyword. (this was the most time consuming part of the process). I also ran into some questions here as well. Court says 10 articles with a link back to the homepage in each one. Wordpress Goldmine only uses one article and a product review.
HMMM. I decided more content is probably always better, and managed to fit an affiliate link and a link back to the homepage in each of the articles, and I did a review of the product as one of my articles.
Finally the site was up. I was pretty impressed with my efforts for a first timer.
I had a squidoo site already on this topic so I used the RSS feed from this site as one of the modules in my Squidoo lens. I ran all 10 of the articles in the feed so there is a lot more content on my squidoo lens now. I also sent the site to a couple friends and they stumbled it for me.
This all took me about 6 or 7 hours yesterday, in the middle of Hanna puking due to 4 teeth coming in and trying to get ready for her birthday party (which is today). It really is one of the things I love about working from home. I can drop what I’m doing to take care of Hanna. I can set my own schedule. I can run to walmart to get a cake whenever the mood strikes me. It really is the ultimate freedom.
This morning I jumped over to my new site to check it out and see what’s going on.
This is exciting.
I had 2 comments, I already had 138 page views, 7 of my 10 articles have been clicked on and I already have 3 clickouts to my affiliate product.
This traffic is coming from Stumble Upon and Squidoo, which is great. Each day I will stumble a new page of the site, so I will get some traffic each day, as well as some internal backlinks. This should also help get my site indexed, and maybe allow me to make a little cash in between.
My next task for this site is to start building backlinks. I think I have finally decided on an article marketing site I am going to use. I am going to keep it to myself for now, and use the site and see how it goes. Once I have had a chance to formulate an opinion of the service I will let you all know.
There you have it. A run down of building my first niche website. If I can do it, with my kid puking on me. I’m sure you can too. Get out there and find some keywords, if you have something you are already marketing successfully, why not do a whole site for it. I’m sure you will have better access to great keywords and more traffic ~ which means more profit!!
I’ll let you know when I get my first sale from this site. One sale and this site will be in profit.
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Topics: Affiliate marketing, IMAP ~ Internet Marketing Action Plan, Internet Marketing, keyword sniping | 1 Comment »
An internet marketing action plan ~ pulling it all together
By Jackie | May 8, 2008
Over the past few months I have been trying to come up with an internet marketing action plan ~ a real plan of action I can take to make more money and get organized with internet marketing.
I think some ideas and plans are finally beginning to gel.
I recently read the 5 Bucks a Day ebook, and thought it was great. I have been fighting my insane need to do different things, and my inability to just do ONE thing forever. This ebook gave me such freedom. I don’t have to do the same thing over and over again. I don’t have to choose one thing and focus on it forever.
What I do need to do is set ONE goal, and then make sure whatever I’m doing moves me in the direction of that goal.
With that said. My first goal is to make 200 dollars a day. woo hoo. That feels good.
I went online to look up some different ways to make money online and made a great list of options to choose from for my weekly endeavors. The list is pretty long, but I found one thing that feels really good to me, and it could still be something new and different on a regular basis.
I was reading Courtney Tuttle’s Internet Marketing School blog ~ in fact, I’ve been reading it for the past few days from front to back. It’s an amazing blog with straight forward information that can really help anyone who is getting started in internet marketing.
He talks about Keyword Sniping. It sounds all high tech, but it’s not much different than what I’ve been doing for squidoo, only he has you make a whole website for the keyword. By doing this you can go for keywords that have more competition than doing it at squidoo. The keyword research is all very similar.
I got to thinking that sounds perfect. I can totally do that, it’s what I’m good and I can do it on any number of topics to keep from getting bored.
As I was thinking my way through this plan I remembered an ebook PotPieGirl had recommended, and it sounded like it was exactly this technique. So I grabbed a copy of Wordpress Goldmine and gave it a read.
This was the missing link. The pieces I felt were missing from Court’s explanation of keyword sniping were all in this ebook. He details not only how to set up a wordpress blog to use as a niche site, but also how to monetize and how to promote it so you can get traffic.
It was an awesome ebook. I wish I had gotten it earlier, but I guess all the pieces had to be in place before it would all register.
Now Court mainly uses adsense to monetize his sites, Wordpress Goldmine provides you with a number of other options for monetization, including actual products, and how to use clickbank products.
It then occurred to me I could use ebay products to monetize the new niche site I have in mind for my first project. I’m sure I can probably add adsense to the pages as well, but ebay will work quite nicely for this specific niche.
I am going to start off by just using the tools provided by ebay for their affiliates, but there is a plugin I plan on getting that will automatically show keyword related auctions at the bottom of your posts.
Then when I have some of my niche sites done I am planning to expand the ones that are doing well into full blown BANS (build a niche store) sites.You can get the BANS software that will allow you to build an entire ebay store around one niche or keyword.
To recap and make it all nice and tidy, here’s my new Internet Marketing Action Plan
- Based on 5 Bucks a Day I’m going to work on one project exclusively for a week.
- Find a great keyword with high search volume and relatively low competition.
- Build a wordpress site optimized for the keyword ~ 10 pages or so
- Monetize the site with any number of options ~ adsense, clickbank, ebay, actual products via CJ
- Article marketing to build backlinks and authority to the site
- Build Squidoo lens for the site
- Build hubpages for the site
- Bookmark the site ~ and other web 2.0 stuff to drive traffic and backlinks
- If the site takes off ~ build a BANS for the keyword
Now remember I’m not trying to go for the homeruns ~ I’m trying to build a solid site that will bring in 5 bucks a day. Each week I will repeat this cycle, and the 5 bucks will grow to 10 and then to 15 and so on and so on.
Eventually with enough of these sites built ~ and also commissions coming in from squidoo and hubpages ~ my daily income will grow until I meet my first goal of 200 dollars a day. At that point I will of course increase my daily goal so I can continue to grow.
The other positive I see in the action plan is the big sites are MINE. I’m not putting my eggs in someone else’s basket that could be toppled over and leave me with nothing. That’s the one problem I had with only focusing on Squidoo. If I do that, I could lose everything with no way to recoup. However, using Squidoo as a piece of my overall marketing strategy is a smart thing to do ~ because squidoo rocks.
So there you have it, my internet marketing action plan. It’s very excited and now I have to stop thinking about it and DO IT! Because we all know nothing happens without taking action.
Technorati Tags: internet marketing action plan, internet marketing, wordpress goldmine review, courtney tuttle
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Topics: Affiliate marketing, IMAP ~ Internet Marketing Action Plan, Internet Marketing, Product Reviews | 2 Comments »
Is 5 Bucks a Day Enough? I think it can be.
By Jackie | May 6, 2008
I’ve been pondering purchasing the 5 Bucks a Day Ebook for a while now. It sounds really interesting and I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. Truth be told ~ I am a bit of a cheapskate when it comes to buying ebooks.
However, yesterday I received an email and realized I could get 5 Bucks a Day Jr. for a price I was willing to pay. The basic difference between the full version and the “jr” version of 5 Bucks a Day is you don’t get access to the members community and all of the bonuses that come with the larger version. All I wanted was the ebook, so this works perfectly for me.
I downloaded the ebook and set out to read it straightaway.
Let me just say I was seriously IMPRESSED with this ebook. Now it is not going to teach you how to drive traffic, or find a niche or great keywords, it’s not that kind of ebook. What it will do is help you set up a system and a mindset to build your wealth. This is not just some think about it and it will happen theory, but a real concrete system to increase your productivity and build a prosperous online business.
Why 5 bucks a day?
Now 5 bucks a day doesn’t seem like much. In fact, it doesn’t seem like enough to cover my monthly expenses, so why would I want to shoot for making 5 bucks a day???
It’s believable. Your mind can seriously believe it is possible to make 5 bucks a day online. Think about it if you had 10 projects creating 5 bucks a day that’s 50 bucks a day. That’s a little more like it, and what if you had 100 projects making 5 bucks a day? Does that sound a little closer to where you want to be?
It 2 short years you can seriously build an online business of small projects making you 5 bucks a day.
I get bored so easily! I can’t stay focused.
Anyone who has been reading this blog for any length of time has probably seen I have trouble staying focused on ONE project forever. I get bored, and find it difficult to stay focused. However, I do believe I could stay focused for ONE week. Give it everything I’ve got for one week. Get one project set up during that week, give it all my focus and make it happen.
This is the perfect system for those who have difficulty with focus and maintaining it for a long period of time. It gives you the freedom to do different things, try different projects, learn new things all while continuing to move toward your goal.
I definitely recommend getting your copy of 5 Bucks a Day ~ at 7 bucks you just can’t miss. If at some point you decide you want to upgrade to the full package so you get the membership package and all the bonuses, you can do it from the book and they will deduct the price you paid for this book from the total price.
Technorati Tags: 5 bucks a day, staying focused, setting goals
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Topics: Internet Marketing, Product Reviews | 2 Comments »