This article contains my opinion and my own strategy for making money
I
see tons of newbie mistakes where you blog every day and you scale up to build
a large website that earns you little to no money. This may work for you but,
it doesn’t for me.
I
build small 5 page websites that I set up to run like little virtual vending
machines operating 24 hours a day to pay me online.
Many
assume that in order to make good money online, you have to slave 8 hours a day
at your computer... You don’t have to
with the way I work
In
fact, I own hundreds of 5 page website that make me over one hundred dollars
each month.
I have similar ones that are higher income
earners of $2000 plus per month on some of the better months. These sites earn
well during seasons and occasions. Can you start to see the picture I am painting?
The potential of owning hundreds of
smaller sites and have them generate for you in a variety of niche subjects.
I
also have around twenty sites that underperform and earn a mix of $10 bucks and
various sums chump change but I count those as experience in what to stay away
from promoting. Every action will bring you closer to perfecting your choices
in creating the best product sites. It’s still better than savings account
interest.
The
fact is once you get this system down, it becomes easier and faster to automate
this process for yourself: If you asked me, How long does it take to work on
each site? I have refined this to where it takes me no more than an hour to
build my income earning site using Wordpress.
I mentioned before having sites that I have
scaled up to being able to earn $2,000 plus per month. These are sites where
after I saw a demand growing from building a micro-site, I decided to invest a
little more time in it once I determined it was a hot subject. Building a $2k
per month site took longer about 1-2 weeks depending on how hot I saw the topic
was. Still, to spend 14 days or less on a hotter topic site and build it up to
residual earning monthly is far less work than what the average person would
take in their day job.
Before
we dive in, I want to explain the income avenues out there so you can see the
logic in what I am doing:
Here
is some insight on what I think works and what doesn’t.
1.
PPC affiliate sites – You need a big budget to work this. It also takes a great
deal of trial and error and about a years’ worth of experience to perfect this
income model. It’s not a good way to start. Rather it’s something you launch
later on the side once you get some income going to support you through the
expense of what it takes to run one of these sites.
2.
Mailing list affiliate sites – these are sites for getting you to opt-in to a
mailing list, ( kind of how you must have started at WA) These sites keep you
on a list and promote products to you
over time. This is a good way to make money, but for me, not the way to start.
I wouldn’t choose this as a newbie business model. I would start this after I
started making money and I could take a year to really perfect and build one of
these sites. This kind of website also takes a year (at least) to become
experienced at earning any real money.
3.
Make review blogs to sell digital products – the review method is a valid
business model, however, the digital product niche is pretty competitive so
newbies don't have a chance until you learn the basics.
4.
Review blogs to sell PHYSICAL products – BINGO! This is the way to start. Not
only is this the easiest method that I know of to make money online. But you
can quickly build up a full time income within months if you really center your
efforts on just this.
5.
Clickbank and digital products – There are way too many gurus out there selling
Clickbank training. I started there and I lost time there. If you are looking
to make money right away, Clickbank is not the best way to start. You have no
idea if half the programs on there you are promoting actually work and yet I
see newbies time after time selling programs and losing their reputation. You
need to actually try and work a program to make sure it works before you sell
it. Do your homework. If you are starting in this business, you can’t risk
losing trust with your following by promoting something you don’t know about
Don't
get me wrong Clickbank is great...but only when you have built up some
AUTHENTIC experience. The problem I have with Clickbank is that it has hundreds
of newbie affiliates joining every day. It takes some Freddy Krueger skill to
be able to max out with CB nowadays. If you are new, its’s easy to be tempted in
that marketplace. I strongly suggest you resist that urge that the super gurus
are preaching out there. That is unless you like severe intense hard grueling
work from the start.
Amazon
is the best place to start from and it is time tested for reliability in
getting paid.
Why
Amazon and Physical Product Affiliate Marketing Is a Good Place to Start..
This
is the easiest way to earn money (I received a $40.00 from someone who bought a
wedding ring from my niche blog site about suitcases)
•
There are literally tens of thousands of products on Amazon and new products
being added daily.
•
I spent over 40 hours niche researching all of Amazon products and I still find
new products all the time.
•
Its harder to sell an e-book. Think about it, you have to write pages and pages
to pre-sell a book or training program to convince someone to buy. With
products you don’t have to work so hard. When people are seeking products to
buy them, they are only looking for a few convincing points to help them decide
what works best for their needs.
•
Amazon is unsaturated (99% of the niches are still low competition) .Amazon
will never run out of room for affiliates to sell. There is enough work there
for all of us.
•
People have trusted the Amazons sale process. In most cases, they end up
spending more than they originally plan to. A $10 purchase can easily convert
turn into a $100 purchase in a moment. You get commissions on EVERYTHING they
buy!
•
The key to this system is to drive traffic to Amazon to make a sale. For example,
I sold a $1500 playset .I don’t have a single website that sells playsets.
Someone just clicked through my link and decided they want to buy a playset.
You
still say, “But Jo,... I can make more money off digital product commissions!! “
Yes,
you can make more money selling higher commission trainings like eBooks and
video courses not. But the question here is do you really want to put in all
that work yet as a newbie?
As
for all of my websites, I haven't touched them in over 6 months now and they
still earn for me as they did from the beginning. (The exception is there are 3
micro sites I posted in another blog post from a separate older account where I
had not updated my Amazon links and the links expired July 30th,
2015. I waited too long until the last minute to replace those) Physical
products sites do not really need much updating once you do a good write –up
about the products you are promoting.
With digital product sites, you have to
continually work on rankings, add content, add links, etc. just to keep the
same level of income. They are not as set and forget as Amazon product sites
can be.
Because
so many newbies have to broad of an interest they build sites on, there is very
little competition in building sites about very specific and targeted products.
Your
Key to Success is Finding the Right Products to Promote
The
strategy is to create a mix of selection where 90% of your items are high priced
and 10% are bargain (low-end) priced.
•
90% high ticket items above $100. That gives you around $5 of commission per
sale. A $300 item sale gives you about $20 in commission.
•
10% low end products to inflate your commission percent. At the beginning of
the month they drop you down to 4.00% commission, so it’s important to sell 20
items immediately each month to get it up to 6.5% So all you do is go through
each category in Amazon until you find products that fit the following criteria
(for high ticket items):
•
Choose products that cost $100 or more and have 10 or more 4 and 5 star reviews(This
is a really good indicator whether or not the product is popular and selling) .
I don’t choose anything below a 4.3 star rating. There is no sense in promoting
products that have 3 stars or less because they are most likely bad products.
•
Choose products that have 5 or more products to promote so we can create a whole website around one type
of product.
DO
NOT Promote
One
of the most common mistakes people make when starting out with Amazon is
picking the wrong niches. EVERYBODY tries the following niches when they get
into Amazon affiliate marketing:
1.
Televisions
2.
Digital Cameras/camcorders
3.
Luxury Watches
4.
Laptops
5.
Computers
6.
Cell phones of any brand (Samsung, IPhone, Blackberry etc...)
The
problem with these niches is everyone and their mother has a website on these
items. These are the first things they think of that are high ticket items they
can get a lot of commission. What that means for you is MASSIVE
competition...which is bad. So try to find more obscure niches like:
•
Womens Leather Boots
•
Specific types of Lawnmowers
•
Barbeque Grills ( even distinguish between gas only on a single site and do not
mix gas and charcoal on a site because you want to draw in someone who has
decided which burn source they want and they are ready to pick one, you have to
really get specific so you get less tire kickers and more action takers. There
are enough sites out there that go through the grand comparisons. The buyer is
going to still leave that site and research specifics on their final brand choices.
You want to earn by getting that buyer to click through from your site to
Amazon.
WAIT
! Before You Write That Article
You
want to make sure that the product you choose has enough searches online . You
need to know that enough people are looking for the item to determine if you
have a product that people are seeking. All you do is run the root product name
through the google Adwords keyword tool. https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner
So
if we have a grill called the George Foremanx50 indoor grill (I’m making this
name up), run the keyword 'George Foreman x50' and 'George Foremanx50 indoor
grill' through the keyword tool to see the search results.
If
a product has about 4000+ searches each month, I will then do a little more
homework by searching other sites and blogs to get an idea on how it’s being
promoted so I can figure out which angle I will be promoting the product from.
Always look at your competition. Once I
determine people are using websites to help them decide on buying, I will then
consider writing an article on it. Once you find 1 product that fits, go back
to Amazon and try and find at least 4 more related products that also have
4000+ searches. As for our indoor grill example, we would go back and make sure
there are 4 other popular gas grills by other brands that rate high as well
plus some low cost options to mix into my high priced options.
In
my next blog post we will cover how to write blog posts that sell products.
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