Building A Better Internet Business

Posted on July 17, 2012 | Filed Under Uncategorized 

So in the last post, I talked about the “recommendation” that you should aim to earn at least $1 per month per daily visitor.  So in other words, 500 visitors a day should make you $500/month.

That’s kind of a guideline from Ken Evoy and I used to throw around a number similiar.  But since Panda/Penguin, I’ve changed my tune quite a bit.  That might have been an ok guideline in the “old world”, but now you need to extract WAY more per visitor than in the past.  Mostly because getting free traffic used to be a whole lot easier and less risky.  In 2006, Adsense payouts were higher, you could guarantee yourself traffic by just putting up more pages, and Google didn’t have near as many updates.

To play it safe, you need to make MORE from visitors.  By making more from visitors, it means you need less of them.  And by needing less visitors, it means you rely on Google less.  It doesn’t mean you’ll get less Google traffic, but you won’t be put out of business if you don’t have it.

So what’s the answer?  The answer is increasing your margins by selling something your visitor wants.

I know that MOST people will say that they’ve tried that.  The problem is, they’ve tried it in a very unstructured way.  They’ve created a website about “Healthy Eating” and they sell an ebook with Juicing recipes in the middle of all the rest of their content.  They then are shocked that they can’t sell any, with all the visitors they have.

If they were to look a the numbers, they probably realize that most of the visitors probably never see the ebook they are trying to sell.  It’s buried in the navbar and probably not really sold on many other pagse.  Plus, many people are probably not even interested in juicing in the first place.

So instead of the “Healthy Eating” niche, it’s much more profitable to just take a sliver of the market and move right into “Juicing”. …even if you think that the numbers look too small.  It’s ok to accept smaller numbers now because your visitors are going to be MUCH more qualified.

So this is all SBI 101 stuff right?  People SHOULD be choosing smaller niches because that’s the whole premise of SBI in the first place right?  Well, in my opinion, there was a slow creep towards slightly bigger niches based on what I described above (Infrequent Google Updates, More pages=more traffic, and higher adsense).  And really, the biggest reason for that is that people don’t want to deal with the hassles of selling products.

And maybe you don’t either?  Maybe you don’t want to take money, ship products, and deal with customer service?  That’s what people typically will say.

The motivation for doing so would be that you can rely on less traffic and, therefore, rely less on Google.  But you don’t really need to ramp things up as much as you’d think.  And I’ll outline some strategies, using the example above, to extract more value out of your visitors.

Stay tuned.

Are Smaller Niches The Answer?

Posted on July 13, 2012 | Filed Under Uncategorized 

All this talk about Google Penguin is resulting in a lot of people saying “Big Brands are taking over the SERPS”.  And realistically, maybe they are.  I mean, it’s a “safer” bet for Google to rank brands higher.  To spin off the old saying, nobody got fired for putting walmart at the top of the SERPS.

But, I think it’s probably a good time (now that Google has your attention) to rethink the concept of the niche.

If you’re an SBIer, you probably know that 99% of the people that use SBI start content sites and monetize with Adsense.  I know based on my own content sites and from postings in the forum, that the value per visitor is very low.  For example, if you’re making $500/month on 500 visitors a day, then that means you’re making .03 per visitor.

But what happens if you started making 15 cents per visitor?  Would it stand to reason that you could pick a niche that’s 20% the size of the one you’re currently operating.   That would mean:

• You need 20% of the traffic you would before to make the same amount of money
• You rely on Google less because you need less traffic
• You could narrow your focus and focus on one sliver of the market
• Instead of competing against Brands, you’re operating on the fringes

The next few posts will be about how to run a post-penguin web business.  With a few little tweaks, you can do MUCH less work and make more money.  You’ll probably be able to sleep a little better at night

Google Panda 2.5.2

Posted on November 8, 2011 | Filed Under Uncategorized 

About 3 weeks ago, Google unveiled a doosy of a Panda update.  The update was a big one according to a survey of SEO’s.  And if you’ve mulled around the SBI forums, it’s very difficult to NOT pay attention to the despair.  In many cases, people had spent years of building their sites and traffic, only to have a large significant portion of it wiped away with no explanation.

As far as fundemental problems go, I think it’s important to go back and re-read the post I made shortly before the actual update.  From reading people’s forum posts, I could tell that people had an unnecessary reliance on Google traffic for a large portion of their business.  And it’s not just the reliance on Google traffic, but it was the reliance on a LARGE amount of traffic in general.

Reducing your dependence on Google is easy, you just need to fiddle with one of the variables.  (Traffic * Conversion Rate)*Average Profit=Total Profit.  If you want to increase your income, you have to increase one of those variables.  And for most people monetizing with Adsense, it’s a difficult choice to make.  Increasing your traffic can get difficult at a certain point, increase your conversion means getting more people to click off your site, and there is no way to really increase your profit through Adsense.  So what to do?

Well, that was covered in a previous post so I’m not going to go into it here.  But what most people want to know is what to do now?  I’ve read a lot of articles and have been attempting to figure out what I think might’ve happened during that Panda update.  And I think I’ve found the explanation that makes the most sense to me.

Google & Machine Learning

There’s a search engine in Russia by the name of Yandex that actually was started before Google.  It’s the dominant SE over there.  They have an algorithm that uses human feedback to determine if a certain website should stay there.  So I’m just going to summarize it upfront and then go into more of the details here.

Traditional SEO is what gets you to the top of the search engines, human interaction with your site is what keeps you there.

Ok, so let’s kinda explain a bit.  I actually first heard this concept from a guy named Kurt Melvin at the WarriorForum. He called this concept “People Rank”.  Unfortunately, the page he talked about it is not available so maybe he changed locations.  Anyways, it was the first time I heard about the idea that people’s interaction with a site can have an influence on their ranking.

So for awhile, people have suspected that Google uses human reviewers to grade certain websites.  It seemed like a big task, after all, what’s the algorithm for if you just have humans doing the ranking.  Then there was a post here that linked to the actual grading criteria.  To be fair, what the reviewers were looking for is nothing ground-breaking, but when you pair it up with other information out there, it starts to get interesting.

Shortly after that, I came across another article on Google’s Machine learning.  I went through quite a few, but here’s a good explanation that I found.  So this kinda tied together the whole concept for me.  So here’s just a random guess as to how the whole thing work.

Human Reviewers–They are given search queries. And they have to decide their intent on that query.  Is it commercial? (buying something) Is it navigational? (Leads to another search) Is it informational? (They are seeking information).  Next they decide the vital sites for that query, if any.  If they searching for Honda, then Honda’s webpage should be 1st no matter what, making it an overriding factor.  Then they find good sites/bad sites.  Then they find the common characteristics of a good site for that search term.  If it’s an e-commerce site, maybe it’s credit card logo’s, McAfee logo, reviews, facebook page likes, etc.

Engineers-Next step, maybe the engineers go back and try to figure out a way to customize an algorithm for a certain type of search.  In other words, how do they automate what the reviewers were just finding.  They play around with it in the “sandbox” and then see how the results look. And when it works well, they roll it out.

Human Interaction: Like I mentioned above, I think good old fashioned SEO will still get you moving up the serps. In the old days, even bad sites could stay there for a long time.  Now, things are more difficult and Google has MANY ways of monitoring human interaction with your website.  They have Google Chrome, Google Analytics, Google Toolbar, and they could even tell by matching your IP with a search query. If you went to abcsite.com and popped right back into the SERPs, then maybe abcsite.com wasn’t a good match.  If I were to guess, all they would need to look at was bounce rate and time on site.

Machine Learning: So I’m assuming that Google is probably rolling this out in phases. Kind of dialing it up, watching the results, and then pausing.  In the future, I wonder if it won’t be much more dynamic.  If people from all around the world start searching for a certain search term and they are looking for a certain website, then maybe that site will shoot up the SERPs in short order because that’s where people are clicking.

So what does that mean for you?

In the old days, you might’ve been able to trick the machine and get to the top of the SERPS.  Nowadays, you actually need to have a website that is worthy of being there (as judged by humans).  Good advice is to just pay attention to putting out content, but I think it’s important to go a step further. Here would be my action plan:

1) Content Matters, but the right kind of content-Words on a page is what gets a page ranked, but figure out what kind of content people are looking for.  Pictures/Videos/Text?

2) Design Matters-Ugly sites can rank, but appearance matters.  An appealing site conveys trust to the visitor and now, ultimately, to the search engines.

3) Navigation Matters-A lot of SBI’ers completely clutter their nav bar.  All pages are NOT created equal so make sure you put the right ones in the spots that will get clicked most. You can view current trends simply by looking in Google Analytics.  And a good idea is to separate links into sections that make it easy to navigate.

4) Get Into Analytics-Pay attention to your highest referring keywords in Analytics and watch the bounce rate/time on site.  There is no “average”, it varies.  So your 50% might be good compared to your peers.  But always try and improve it by testing out new layouts and headlines.  If you tackle your Top 10 keywords, you should put yourself in a much better position.

5) Know Your Role-I think it’s going to be very difficult going forward for content sites to get ranked for commercial phrases and vice versa.  So if you’re a content site, give up on ranking for “Iphone Cases” and focus on getting ranked for “Iphone Case Review”.

A Few Closing Thoughts/Ideas:

1) Facebook/Google+ are very important, so keep getting people to vote on your content.  Putting the button is the easy part, you need to get people to CLICK it.

2) Fix Duplicate Content Issues across the web and on your site (check webmaster tools)

Hope that helps, let me know you thoughts/findings!

How Close Are You To IM Business Armageddon?

Posted on September 19, 2011 | Filed Under Uncategorized 

In the wake of Google’s Panda update, it seems that more and more people are posting sad stories about their business being totally wiped out by Google.  I know that I have a hint of panic when I go to check my ranking for a site and then I panic when I don’t see it where it SHOULD be.

First things first, I think my view of “SEO” has become somewhat more refined.  Since the majority of my websites sell a physical product, I know that just getting a visitor to my site does me no good. I need to provide that visitor with what they need, otherwise they’ll bounce right off.  So whereas about 5 years ago, all I was concerned with ranking/traffic, my view is a little more complete now.  I want the qualified traffic, I want them to be happy with what they found, I want the surfing to be easy on my site, and I want them to be happy with the experience.

Like Ken Evoy says, if you take care of your visitor, you SHOULD be ok.

But what if you’re not?  What if you get caught up in the Google Update through no fault of your own?

I have my own theories on what caused the update.  Personally, I think a lot of it had to do with off-site ranking factors simply getting devalued.  Let’s face it, it’s not nearly as easy to get links as it used to be.  So you have to actively SCOUT out links and promote your site.  And the way most people “promote” their site is simply by writing articles or doing the easy stuff.  And when Google devalues the easy stuff, so go the rankings.

I’ll rattle off a few ways to get more traffic, but the big lesson comes after that.  You can do things such as

-Get affiliates

-Pay for traffic

-Start an Email list

-Focus on Yahoo/Bing more.

-Focus on Social Media more.

-Get website partners.

-Etc.

But with most sites, there is still a fundemental problem that seems to come up over and over.  And that is the over reliance on a lot of traffic in the first place!

But that’s not even the root cause of the problem.  The root cause is website owners are not making enough money per visitor.   And it’s because of a poor monetization strategy.  Here’s how it unfolds.  A person starts a website, throws on adsense, grows the website to 2000-2500 visitors, starts making a few hundred dollars per month, gets excited, experiences a traffic drop of 50%, and then says their efforts were for nothing.

I really think that people are holding onto pretty old ideas about what adequate demand/supply is.  And I think that’s mostly because most SBI’ers end up starting content sites and monetize with adsense.  They know what kind of traffic it takes to make decent money, so the demand needs to be there to get that traffic.

But what they don’t think about, is that you need WAY LESS if you’re making WAY MORE per visitor.  Let me give you an example:

–On my typical e-commerce site, the average PROFIT per visitor is close to $.85.  This is the average, I have some that are way higher than that.

–On my typical adsense site, my average PROFIT per visitor is .09.

That means on an e-commerce site, I’m making 9x the amount of money for the same visitor.  So now that you know that, if your goal is $500/month, how much traffic do you need?  With the .85, you’ll need about 17 visitors a day.  With the .09, you’ll need about 185 visitors per day.  So in other words, you need to do about 9x the word to hit your goal!   ***Just as a comment, these numbers are probably a bit high for a per visitor value. I have tweaked my sites for years trying to get my metrics up, and these reflect that.  But still, the lesson remains***

So what does this mean?

It means that you don’t need to look at “Demand” numbers the same way you might’ve had to before.  You don’t need to focus on broadening your niche in order to get more demand.  Instead, you can focus your niche and have more qualified buyers.  It’s MUCH easier to sell an e-book about natural cures for Arthritis than it is a e-book about natural cures.

So how does this relate to IM Business Armageddon?  Well it’s simple.  Because you rely on less traffic to hit your goal, it just means that you can do more with less.  So lots of traffic is great, but it might not be as necessary.

When you need a lot of traffic, you have no other choice but to depend on Google.  It’s just a fact of life.  But if you need less, it’s easier to diversify.

So what are your thoughts?  Reservations?

Following The Road Less Traveled

Posted on September 16, 2011 | Filed Under Uncategorized 

As some may or may not know, I’m in my early 30′s and continue to work a full-time job despite making a lot more from marketing online. For me, my dream has never been to work from home, but more to have financial security. I’m pretty conservative by nature so I like the idea of having a full-time job that provides benefits and pay, plus an online income that allows me to do things that I normally wouldn’t be able to do.

This post was going to be about how it might be a good idea to work full-time while building your IM business, but I’ll take a detour based on some work-events.

I work in finance at a well-paying, but low-stress and “regular” hours job i.e. 9-5. I have flexibility, a great boss, and I like the people that I work with. But the other day, I was offered a job as a manager in my department. This would require more meetings, more travel, and longer hours. And the pay? I didn’t get THAT far, but the thought is that it’s about $10K more than what I’m currently making.

As you might guess…………..I turned it down. You kinda have to come up with a crafty excuse for WHY you turn something down because people usually aren’t supposed to turn down promotions. But I think I did a pretty good job.

The reason I turned it down makes sense to me, but probably not to many people that were observing from the outside (and don’t know I have other income). MOST people need to take that promotion. They need to because most people need the extra money. So they sacrifice time with their families in order to get it.

I did think it was kinda interesting cause I randomly checked my Adsense stats right after I made the decision. For me, I don’t pay any attention to Adsense normally. I went through a period in 2007 where I built a couple sites that were primarily monetized with Adsense. I spent about 2 months working on them, built some links, and then just let them go. And they still produce to this day, despite no new content having been added to them. All in all, it was a good investment of time, but my other e-commerce sites have bigger opportunities so I chose to just spend all my time there. So…when I logged on, this is what I saw. (this is what you see when you login to Adsense, I was going to show the reports screen but the data is too wide so this is easier)

I’ll do the math for you, but $864 x 12 months is $10,368 per year. About the same as that “raise” that I was going to get.

This didn’t cost me any time away from family….no traveling, no working late, and no being glued to my blackberry.

I will admit though, you do kinda think twice every once in awhile. When you see friends taking on more responsibility in their jobs and whatnot. But….only for a second! Because when you’re able to play outside with your kids without having to worry about who is emailing you on the weekends…it’s all worth it!

Have a good one!!!

Quick & Dirty Adsense Sites–Step 2

Posted on September 15, 2011 | Filed Under Uncategorized 

Ok, so hopefully you read “Step 1″ on how to create quick adsense sites. Now you go to the next step which is all about how to promote the site and put it on auto-pilot.

Using SBI, it’s pretty simple to put a site on auto-pilot. Basically you want to enable the C2.0 feature on all pages where it makes sense to have interaction with the readers. So continuing the “Building A Fence” example that I used in my last post, here’s all you would need to do. If you’re building a page on “Lessons Learned From Fence Building”, just insert a Content 2.0 Invite at the very bottom of the page and invite users to respond. You can seed some of the submissions to get some going or just wait until they start to come in.

This is a strategy I like to call the “2nd Level Push” or the “Tier 2 Push”. This works great with mini-adsense sites for a lot of reasons. These sites have only 10-15 pages that are built by YOU, so all of them (besides the home page) are considered Tier 2 and are placed on the nav-bar. Those are the pages that have good demand/supply numbers. Tier 2′s get all the targeted traffic, while the Tier 3′s (C2.0 submissions) are really just “supporting” the Tier 2 pages. The purpose is to LINK to the Tier 2′s (using approriate anchor text) and help them get ranked for those primary keywords. But Tier 3′s also are great for pulling in long-tailed keyword searches.

Now once you build out the structure of the site, you need to promote the pages. What really makes this quick/easy is if you can actually outsource the link-building. But if you can’t, then it’s simple enough to do yourself. My 2 favorite methods are just directory-submissions and article submissions. Contrary to popular belief…they both work, and STILL work despite the Panda update.

There are tons of services out there that will submit your article for you AND submit your directories, so it really doesn’t matter which ones you use.

Questions?

Quick & Dirty Adsense Websites–Step 1

Posted on August 26, 2011 | Filed Under Uncategorized 

Long time, no post

I made a post in the Site Build It! Forums about what I referred to as Quick/Dirty Adsense sites. My results have ALWAYS been great with these types of sites and every year I look back at my Adsense account and think “Why didn’t I do more of that?”. Well, there is a reason why I didn’t.

One of my criteria for doing these types of sites is that I actually know what I’m talking about through personal experience. The website is not meant to be a hub of information for everything and anything related to a broad topic. Instead, the focus is to build a site that has relatively high demand numbers for a handful of keywords, build 10-20 VERY high quality pages from experience, and do mild promotion through normal link building channels.

I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you’re going to be spending the next several weekends building a fence? Instead of just doing the project, why not document everything and create a little website? Take pictures, videos, and talk about the pitfalls you experienced. Who knows? Maybe you can write off a portion of the fence cost (Check with your CPA, don’t take my word for it).

The important thing is to not get too caught up in taking advantage of ALL THE KEYWORDS that have demand. If you’re topic is “building a fence”, it makes sense to create some pages around “Vinyl Fence” if you actually looked into the Pros/Cons about installing that. That would be useful information because I’m sure others who put up a fence are thinking about the same decisions. It does NOT make sense to make a page about “Invisible Dog Fences”. Sure, it’s “related” because they both are fences. But it’s not what falls into this project. Avoid the temptation!

So again….the value here is that it’s focused, it’s a personal experience, you’ve documented your journey, and it’s narrow in scope.

I’ll go over the way you grow sites like this in the next post!

Google’s Update…WOW!

Posted on March 3, 2011 | Filed Under Uncategorized 

Well, it’s been almost a year since I’ve updated the blog…that wasn’t really my intention, but I guess time kinda got away from me.  But, a big update like this spurred me back into action and I’m hoping to update this a little more than I have in the past.

I don’t think anyone can really say that they know for sure what this update was all about.  It couldn’t have just hit the “Content Farms” because there was definitely a lot of damage to sites that are the furthest thing from content farms.

At first I kind of assumed that a lot of “good” sites were just feeling some collateral damage from the hit on content farms.  But as you see more and more cases, you realize that can’t TOTALLY be the case.  Because large sites, which I’m assuming don’t do much article marketing, have gotten hit.

All I know is that while we don’t totally know the signals, I’m going to take a few lessons away from this.

Write Great Content—I know that everyone, including myself, believes that they are writing good content.  But I’ve been guilty of just churning out as much as I can put down on paper and calling it a day.  Realistically, I think it makes sense these days to make pages more in the 600+ words range.  Instead of breaking things into smaller pages in order to optimize for more keywords, I think it makes sense to try and create a larger authority page and then link off to pages that maybe contain a little more detail.

Still Link Aggressively–I know this probably goes against the grain, but I don’t think that sites got into trouble because they linked aggressively.   I’m a fan of casting a wide net when it comes to getting people to my sites.  While I’m not a huge fan of article marketing (Unless you’re in an information business), I’ll gladly do it if I thought it would bring a small amount of qualified buyers to my site.  And I’ll gladly TRY things to get more people to my site, if I think it would work.  I think a lot of people don’t try things cause they are afraid of getting penalized and, in my view, that’s a little short-sided.  Google doesn’t need to ZAP certain pages for breaking the rules.  They already have a formula for NOT rewarding low value links….it’s called Pagerank.

Get Better Links–Ok, this is a BIG BIG BIG one.  Most people are wasting time with the low quality stuff.  The easier a link is to get, the lower the value it has in the SE’s eyes.  I know that’s simplistic, but it’s also true.  Not that low-value links don’t have some value, they do.  But most people are not ranking because they don’t have enough authority in their site.  And to use another word, they don’t have the Pagerank they need.  Ranking a website requires 2 things (and possible a 3rd..more on that below), Pagerank and Link Reputation…you NEED BOTH!  Link reputation is easy.  Just go out and get lots of links that use the keyword in the link text.  Any old link will do.  Pagerank is much more difficult.  You need to get links that actually have some juice to them.  And those TEND to be pages that require some more work.  And, surprise, those are the ones that Google likes.

Organize Your Content–One of the major problems I see is that people don’t have an easy to navigate website.  Here’s a tip, organize your site around your most popular (pageview) content.  That’s what people are looking at, so give it to them and make it easy to find.  This’ll help your bounce rate and visitor satisfaction.

Get A New Design–I know ugly sites can rank, but so can pretty sites.  And in this day and age, there is no excuse to settle for a bad design just because you CAN.  So upgrade the design to something visually appealing.

The last 2 tips have more to do with a newer addition to the algorithm that is probably a long-time in the making.  And that’s the monitoring of bounce rates.  In the old days, building links moved you up in the SERPS and you were there until someone got more/better links.  Now, Google has the ability to monitor your sites bounce rate through Google Analytics, Toolbar, and Chrome.  Building links gets you INTO the SERPS, but it might not be able to keep you there.

Anyways, those are my tips.  What about you???

Sitesell Tips: How To Create A Website On Autopilot Using SBI 2.0

Posted on March 16, 2010 | Filed Under Sitesell 

Ok, I’ve always said that the Content 2.0 module of Site Build It! was the best bang for your buck when it comes to site building.  And that was when it cost $99/year.  Since then, SBI has included it in the cost of the subscription.  WOW! Ken Evoy’s reasoning for making this free was that it would allow people to utilize this great tool.  And I couldn’t agree more. I think it’s probably the best tool for internet marketing around.

Why is Content 2.0 So important?  More Pages!

If you do nothing, but build a lot of pages around a specific in-demand theme, you will get traffic.  More pages=More traffic…there’s just no disputing that and I have lots of data from Google Analytics that proves this time and time again.

But…the key is to make sure that the pages are around a theme that is in demand in the first place.  And that’s where I hope you have followed the action guide and picked a niche that meets the criteria.

The Wrong Way To Target The Tail and Long Tail:

Just to define terms.  The “Long Tail” refers to keywords that are one-time and unique.  So by definition, you can’t optimize for the long-tail.  The only way to improve your odds is to write more words, which would increase your chances of picking up more unique word combinations.  The “Tail” usually refers to very low-demand keywords that usually appear at the bottom of your keyword list.

A very common tactic within SBI is to create LOTS of pages based off of these low-demand keywords.  While that normally would be ok, what people end up doing is creating a lot of keywords off of wacky keyword combinations.  The result is that people end up rewriting the same bit of content in order to “optimize” it for a given keyword.

So what I mean is, let’s assume you have a build a page around a 10k demand keyword for “homemade Wasp Traps” that covers the topic of how to build your own wasp trap.  Towards the bottom of the list, you notice a keyword with 100 searches/month for “wasp trap homemade”.  A common practice is to build a page for that as well and try to optimize the page for this term.

The problem with this is twofold.  For one, when you start really creating pages for keywords that really don’t make sense, you will start to experience EXTREMELY high bounce rates.  Unless you have Google Analytics installed, you might never realize how high bounce rates are for your site.  It’s not uncommon to have 50-60% bounce rates for the HOME PAGE.  Now imagine how bad it can get if the visitor lands on a page that’s clearly written for robots instead of humans.  I can spare you the suspense, the bounce rates go through the ROOF!

The second problem with this approach is that it’s a time/brain drain.  Instead of building up your valuable “Homemade Wasp Trap” page that actually has great demand, you’re wasting time and effort to pickup traffic for a worthless keyword.  It’s much easier to focus on making your hero page a lot better.  Put pictures, a video, and detailed instructions on how to make the trap.  It’ll get more links and have more stick-i-ness.

But What About The Long-Tail?

That’s where Content 2.0 comes in.  You let your visitors build pages for the long-tail FOR YOU.  Like I said earlier, more pages=more traffic. And if you’re building pages around an in-demand theme, then you’re going to get more traffic.  And if you’re building more pages around an in-demand Tier 2 keyword and then asking people for input through Content 2.0, then you’ll get LOTS of pages using the main keyword (Wasp Trap) in all sorts of combinations.  And the best part is, they actually make sense.

And furthermore, the added benefit of Content is that it takes snippets of the submissions and posts them onto the invite page.  That means you’ll have the benefit of some extra words included on your main page about Wasp Nests.

And if you repeat this for a lot of words, you’ll end up with a site where YOU focus on the main keywords (Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 keywords that make sense) and your visitors create the long-tailed keywords for you.

Summary:

1) Build Tier 1 and Tier 2 Pages.

2) Only Build Tier 3 Pages if they make sense.

3) Include an Content 2.0 invite for most Tier 2 keyword pages.

4) Follow best strategies for seeding C2.0 submissions.

5) Focus on making existing pages better and letting users grow your site.

Thanks and post comments if you have questions.

Dave

Sitesell Review Part 1: Matching expectations with reality

Posted on December 2, 2009 | Filed Under Uncategorized 

I field a lot of questions that people email me, but there was one that came in from someone that I went back and forth with a lot.  The initial question was about SBI and if it’s worth the money. This guy had seen his income slashed from $100k to $20k in the last year so he was looking for something to make him $50-$60k/year. 

I replied like I always do, anything is possible but you’d be in the top .001% if you actually could pull that off.  I told him it will entirely depend on your niche, how quick you pickup the concepts, and how fast you can scale.  I think he was upset (not with me) at the thought that doing internet marketing isn’t easier.  I always respond back that most people go to college for 4 years, spend $60k on education, commute 2 hours a day, and work 50 hours a week for a regular salary.  What makes them think that buying a ebook and spending a couple hours a night online is going to allow them to match that salary in less than 12 months?

But, I can’t really blame them.  Just like the lotto, everyone thinks there’s a chance.  And in a bad economy, people are looking for some hope.  I tell family, friends, and everyone that even IF you could make $10k real fast online doing some new technique, what will that really get you?  I mean sure, $10k is better than nothing but it’s not going to fund your early retirement.  And if you don’t build any fundemental skills that you can use once that technique fades, you’re really only left with $10k and nothing else.

And while most people can’t earn $50k in their first year, most people probably can make $6-$12k with one site..maybe not their first year but certainly their second.  And if you successfully make $6k with one site, don’t you think you could make $50k with multiple?  And that’s the point.  If you picture people in a sport or kids in a classroom, you build confidence by DOING something well….even on a small scale.  You don’t start whipping pitches at a kid who is struggling to hit a baseball.  You teach him how to swing the bat, keep his elbow up, and keep his eye on the ball.  Then you start out slow and increase the speed of the pitches as he gains confidence. 

And with all these Get Rich Quick offers, that’s what I feel like happens….they ended up just getting fast balls whipped at them when they don’t even know how to swing a bat.  You might get lucky and connect on a few, but you aren’t going to be able to connect consistently. 

And that’s why I like SBI so much.  They give you all the tools to create a site, promote a site, and slowly learn about apply all these different facets of internet marketing.  When I read Sitesell Reviews that talk about the program being tailored to Newbies, I just have to laugh.  Because when you consider that even people that put up a front of making big money online, actually aren’t, you figure that maybe that’s where we should be starting…instead of trying to hit it big.

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