Strategic Website Profits

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Ok in the last post I talked about how and what you can do to make more money with your Google Adsense ads and today I want to talk about what you can do if you’ve already taken all the steps I’ve already laid out in that post and you’re still not pulling in enough revenue from your websites or Blogs that you’ve dedicated to Google Adsense.

Before I talk about what to do, let’s talk about what not to do… One of the things you really don’t want to do is give your readers too many choices. By that I mean you really don’t want to place any other ads on the websites and Blogs that you have Adsense on.

When you decide to place contextual advertising on one of your sites that should be the only form of advertising on your site. You don’t want affiliate ads all over the place on top of your Adsense ads (contextual ads). That’ll just lower your click through rate and reduce your earnings. So when you decide to utilize Adsense in one of your niches… stick to it and use nothing (advertising) else for optimum performance.

If you really want a high click through rate another thing you want to stay away from is really good content… Good, fresh and unique content seem to kill click through rates so be advised. Something you may want to do to counteract this is to display your Adsense ads above your content so that your new visitors have to scroll down through your ads to get to your content… above the fold so to speak.

Ok so now let’s talk about what you can do to increase your earnings on a site that you’ve pretty much dedicated to Adsense.

Here’s what I do. I add newsletter opt-in forms to those pages as well as RSS feed subscription forms. Check out this post here: Increase Your Customer Lifetime Value

That post talks about increasing your customer lifetime value and unfortunately that’s a concept that is usually only talked about in off line business circles but it’s what a lot of internet marketers sorely need to incorporate into their websites.

The concept is really simple… make more money (on average) from each and every single person that visits your site. In order to make that possible, you’re either going to have to contact your site visitors directly or somehow bring them back to your site and that’s where email newsletters and RSS Feed subscriptions come into play.

Email newsletters are a ton of work but they allow you to stay in constant contact with your readers and every time you contact them is an opportunity to sell an affiliate product. Ok so maybe not every time but often enough so you can reap a better reward then you have been right?

RSS feeds are a different animal but the more subscribers you pick up the closer and closer you get to becoming an authority in your niche. The only way I’ve tried to further monetize RSS Feed subscriptions is by weaving in affiliate links into my Blog posts which, by the way, is the best way to get readers to click through to your affiliate ads.

When configuring your Wordpress Blog and your RSS feed you want to make sure you are only sending out excerpts to your readers… remember get them to come back to your site to read the rest of the story. This also helps keep the Black Hat RSS feed scrapers at bay which is nice.

I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t completely figured out how to further monetize my sites through RSS feed subscriptions but I’ll be damned if I can’t make more money with more and more people coming back to my sites!

In any event, email newsletters will help you extract more money from your readers and that’s how you make more money with Adsense.

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One of the easiest ways to prevent $0.10 Google Adsense clicks is to do some keyword research prior to choosing the keywords you want to optimize your websites or Blogs around.

A good rule of thumb is that you’ll usually get about 50% of whatever the advertiser is paying for the ad through Google Adwords. Here’s a free tool you can use to check and see what advertisers are paying for their keywords: Adwords Keyword Tool. Personally I use Keyword Elite for this but if you’re getting 10 cent clicks then you probably can’t afford that just yet…

I usually go after keywords that will pay me at least a buck but most of the time these days I target higher paying keywords usually in the $5-$20 range…

Obviously I’m always looking for low amounts of competition in the keywords I’m targeting but since most of these keywords (that pay more then you know a dime) are highly competitive I aim for local niches that can deliver enough traffic for a few clicks a month.

Here’s what I’ve done in my local niche and it’s worked out pretty well for me… I’ve build Adsense sites for divorce lawyers, DUI attorneys, real estate market, mortgage, credit, credit repair, accountants and pretty much like I said above… do your research before you select your keywords and domain names and you’re bound to end up with higher paying clicks.

Targeting the local niches of high-paying Adsense keywords will put you in the long tail of keywords and that should also make getting some traffic a lot easier for you.

These blogs won’t make you rich and most of the time you’ll only be getting a few clicks per month but when you’re working with Adsense you have to remember that it’s a numbers game and that you’re most likely not going to get rich off of one Adsense site unless your name is Steve Pavlina or maybe John Chow back in the day and you just get boat loads of traffic going through your Blog.

A good goal to have with Google Adsense is to build a network of sites that earn about $1-$3K monthly and for that to happen I’d say you’re looking at about 75-125 sites depending on how good you are at optimizing your sites for your keywords.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about how I use Google Adsense and how I increase the amount I earn per Blog because sometimes Google Adsense just isn’t enough and no I’m not talking about plastering affiliate banners and ads all over the damn place.

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The 7 Figure Secrets

Not long ago I posted about Mike Filsaime’s 7 Figure Secrets Offer and one of the primary reasons I decided to opt-in to this particular offer was because of the free “cliff note style” report Mike Filsaime was offering - 7 Figure Secrets… the free report was supposed to be a summary of Mike Filsaime’s $1300.00 home study course The 7 Figure Code.

7 Figure Secrets by Mike Filsaime is one of the biggest pieces of fluff I’ve read in a long time… it’s perfect for someone who maybe just did a search yesterday for make money online or earn money online for the first time ever…

According to the offer page 7 Figure Secrets was going to sell for $297… Mike Filsaime must’ve talked to one of his consultants and he must’ve been advised to give the report away for free for fear of outrageous return rates.

There’s no way in hell that 7 Figure Secrets could justifiably be sold for $297… I’d venture to say that something like 95% of the people that bought it would return it!

7 Figure Secrets is typical of most of the eBooks and reports being sold in the make money online and earn money online niches… basic and generic information that would only be helpful to someone who just discovered the internet yesterday.

The problem with make money online gurus like Mike Filsaime is that they make most of their money by selling information in the make/earn money online niche and not by actually marketing products on the internet.

Sure they may use a product or two and they may read a report or two and they may even have a few websites but make no mistake most of their money is made by selling make/earn money online reports, eBooks and other crap wrapped up in a shiny wrapper.

The 7 Figure Secrets Report confirmed my belief that Mike Filsaime is nothing more then a good marketer selling basic and general information and promoting it as “cutting edge” and “must have secrets” that are anything but.

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If you want to see a “tell-it-how-it-is” with no bullshit in between make money online blog then you don’t have to go any further then Lost Ball In High Weeds.

I’ve been following this guys Blog for some time now and I don’t know of any other blog in the make money online niche that tells it the way he tells it (no BS) with apparently a blatant disregard for his affiliate commissions…

His latest post What Works For me is a great example of what it takes to make money online right now and how to generate traffic to your money sites… The whole Blog is kinda like one huge case study really…

A lot of newbies to internet marketing and making money online get caught up in the dream of making millions and becoming rich on the internet and the worst thing about it is they think that they’ll accomplish everything in like a couple of hours a day and that’s just retarded. Lost ball In High Weeds is the perfect title for a blog in the make money online niche because we’re all basically lost for months or years (because of all the BS beight taught on the interweb) until we start figuring out what the hell really works and that’s flinging sites at the web until you find some that stick.

Read Lost Ball In High Weeds and you’ll see the frustration of someone who toils in internet marketing and you’ll also see that it’s not as glamorous as some eBooks would like you to think it is… Lost Ball says and talks about how most of us internet marketers feel… this shit ain’t fun and we all know it I just don’t know of anybody else who verbalizes it as eloquently as Lost Ball…

I’ve decide to no longer fling shit at the web… Today is my independence day… lol… I just don’t have the heart to build sites in obscure niches anymore and then work tirelessly to promote crap I’m not even the least bit proud of… I don’t have the heart or patience to F around with Google anymore… Some where along the line I lost interest in building all of these sites just to chase some commissions and clicks…

If you read my about page you’ll see that I take everything I make online and I funnel it into my offline business and luckily for me the offline business just keeps growing even during this slow economic time. My plan is to keep about 20-40 sites (the ones that make money worth mentioning and I enjoy writing about) of the about 125 domains that I currently have splattered all over the web. Some of these niches I’ll further monetize by developing my own products and in others I’ll just continue to drive more traffic to and optimize until I can charge more for advertising.

I also plan on selling SEO services (link building and basic stuff to begin with) through my Strategic Website Traffic site and combine this money with the money I make from my other 20-40 sites to develop the products I was talking about earlier and also to create a marketing budget for said products… basically I’m going into capital building mode and I’m going to do my best to turn this internet marketing thing into a business that I can be proud of and one in which I only focus on building sites in niches that I enjoy. I don’t mind writing and optimizing but I’d like it to be for sites that I can get behind. I’d say niches I’m passionate about but I’m sick of hearing all that garbage from all the MMO idiots…

And btw no disrespect to all you guys like Lost Ball who are mad-flingin shit on the web… I’ve been doing that since ‘04 and I just think it’s time for a change for me and really all I’m doing is trying to make more from fewer sites. I’m still an internet marketer I just don’t want to have to maintain a lot of sites that I don’t give a rat’s behind about. To each his own I suppose.

Anyhow that’s what works for me…

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This earn money online blog post isn’t going to be about how Overstock and Regnow are going to turn StoreStacker into a must have money maker and about how it’s going to be software that you’re absolutely going to have to have in order to earn money online…

StoreStacker is a nice piece of software but today I want to talk about the product itself and about how the guys over at halfagain (creators of StoreStacker) have laid out a simple yet very effective business model for earning money online.

If you’re not familiar with StoreStacker, StoreStacker is basically an affiliate store website builder a lot like BANS in how it can build affiliate stores in basically minutes but in my opinion it’s superior because it can pull products from eBay, Clickbank, Amazon and now Overstock and Regnow.

I think I paid $100 for StoreStacker and another $25 for the ClickBank plugin and now I’ll be forking over another who knows how much for the Overstock and Regnow plugins… a few weeks back they released some other paid plugins that could pull in RSS feeds and insert them into your store you know for “fresh’ content and for the search engines. At the same time they made an update to the StoreStacker script that allows users to import YouTube videos into your StoreStacker stores.

Guys this is what’s known as the “selling shovels to the gold miners” method of earning money online and let me tell you why I have so much respect for these guys at halfagain and how they’re going about their business online.

1. StoreStacker is a good product and it works if you work it. The most important thing in any business is to have a product of good quality that people want to buy and use.
2. The product offers an opportunity to continue to sell to the existing customer base. With the plugins they continue to come out with they have a customer base of of StoreStacker buyers that are most likely interested in these upgrades to their stores at $25 a pop. They say that the easiest sale to make is the sale you make to clients and customers that have already bought from you.
3. They’ve limited the number of licenses they’ve released so the market doesn’t get saturated with these things. Basically what they’ve done is ensure that their existing customer base has a product that they can continue to use because it shouldn’t lose it’s effectiveness. That’s called building trust and establishing a reputation with your clients for providing value.
4. Since it’s the internet there will always be updates and upgrades to the stores that you can sell to existing customers. I don’t think I really have to expand on that one.
5. They have a good support forum for StoreStacker. Providing solutions for your customers when they have problems with your software is essential to ongoing sales.

A lot of you may argue that by limiting the number of licenses they’ve released they’ve limited their income potential… that’s one way of looking at it but here’s how I look at it. Customers that really believe you have their best interest at heart will spend with you indefinitely and that my friends is invaluable when you’re building a business. A while ago I made this post on Increasing Your Customer Lifetime Value.

This is how you go from breaking even or losing money on a marketing or advertising campaign to making a lot of F@#!ing money! You sell more stuff to your existing customer base. It doesn’t cost you anything to market to them and they already know and trust you.

And that’s the kind of product based business model that I think we should all one day strive to have. That’s where the real money is at. I mean what are we making with Amazon? 4% a sale. eBay? 3-5% a sale. Shit you’re better off chasing high-paying Adsense clicks in your local mortgage, credit card, DUI and divorce niches…

Sure we’re all earning money online with Blogs and affiliate stores and pay per click but that’s all we’re doing (and how much do you like chasing back links really?)… This isn’t really how you envisioned earning money online would be but this is how the pro’s go about their business so you drink your coffee every morning and you start optimizing your sites even though you pretty much hate what you’re doing.

Hey don’t get me wrong I’m still slinging all of my shit at the web just like you to earn money online but now that I’ve been in this game (earning money online) for an extended period of time I’m beginning to have a lot of ideas on products and software that would benefit other internet marketers and a products-based business model seems more appealing to me right now and more financially rewarding and just more up my alley.

And at the end of the day I don’t think all this time I’ve spent earning money online with affiliate marketing has been a waste of time because I think it was necessary to learn this business from the ground up and I’ll always be promoting affiliate products for the extra income stream and because it makes sense to begin with affiliate products when first entering a new niche.

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