• how to build a website that sells
• how to rank well in the search engines
• how to drive traffic to the website via social media
• and more!

As word got out that I was doing these things for myself, an interesting thing happened.  “Real”, off-line businesses started to ask me to help them with their companies and their internet marketing strategies.

So, I tabled the development of my own passive income streams and started helping other companies.  This is often referred to as “offline marketing”…doing internet marketing services for local businesses.

Later, I hit an obstacle that is common to many small businesses.  The energy required to maintain the sales engine was very high.  Building sites that I can fire up and let run on their own?  No problem.  Having to sustain a list of calls, prospects, doing presentations, closing, executing, all while trying to keep the pipeline full of new customers?  Problem.

The beauty of making money online for myself  is the simplicity of it.  I can work on it at MY pace, not someone else’s.  That is very freeing.  And the idea that most of us pursuing online marketing really cherish is the idea of PASSIVE income…money that comes in without doing extra work.

I have websites that make money each and every month, that I haven’t TOUCHED in over two years.  THAT is passive income, and THAT is what online marketing is all about!  No pursuing customers every day.  No spending 80% of the time contacting new prospects.  Take that 80% of your time, and pour it into building the next money-maker, or optimizing an existing one!

First, I used eBay.  Then, the $7 script.  Then Rapid Action Profits.

I won’t even talk about selling digitally on eBay any more, since the glory days are past.  And the headache I always had with the 7 dollar script and RAP are the setup…particularly the template editing to make the pages look right.  AND, it’s always been difficult to integrate those sales platforms into WordPress, which is what I build all my sites in (because of how easy it is, and because of the Google love).

FINALLY someone built what I’ve been requesting for a long time…a WordPress plugin that handles digital sales/delivery/security AND handle the affiliate side of things.

I don’t have to explain the power of having an affiliate program for your digital product, right?  I mean…having OTHER people sell for you…why NOT give them a cut of each sale?

Check out this WordPress Affiliate Program plugin called WP Instant Pay.  It is phenomenal.  It is SO easy, SO well-documented, and I can just plug it in and start selling on my WP sites!

When I found out this was coming out, I actually delayed a few projects I was working on until it was released.  I knew that it would be worth the wait, rather than hassle with RAP or $7 script.  And I was right.

Check it out!  And start selling through your WP sites, and recruiting your affiliates!!

1. create site with ads or affiliate links
2. drive traffic to said site
3. PROFIT!!

Oh, if it were only that simple!

First, the creation of content for the site can be tedious…especially if it’s in a niche about which you only know a little.

Second, driving traffic is a function of having good content on the page, as well as a good backlinking strategy.  And one of the best backlinking strategies is article marketing.  But it can get tiresome writing article after article.

I know from experience, as well as from lurking on lots of Internet Marketing forums, that CONTENT IS KING, but Content Creation is one of the biggest hills to climb for most folks.

So I created “Uniquification“.

It is a program that helps people who need content.  Whether it’s writing posts for their blog or website, writing articles for article marketing, or creating a “free report” to give away for an opt-in, this program can help make content creation FAST AND EASY!

Check out “Uniquification: Unique, Original Content…Fast“.

In those first days, I would not spend a DIME out of pocket to make money.  Sure, sure, NOW I outsource coding work or SEO work to my Virtual Assistants in various parts of the world.  NOW I buy domain names like they are going out of style.

But when first starting out, I didn’t have the bankroll to invest like that.  And it was frustrating because all of the folks that were “making it” were all spending money.

It’s NOT true that to make money you have to spend money.  It does make it alot easier to make more money faster if you have some to spend…but if you don’t have anything to start with, how do you do it?

Here’s a quick list of ways to make money without buying domain names, or paying web hosting fees:

1. Leverage the free sites like Blogger, Squidoo, WordPress.com and HubPages.  You may be limited to a certain look or functionality, or may be at risk for having your site taken down if it’s too spammy.  But, it’s FREE.  And if you are doing IM correctly, there won’t be a reason for them to take it down.
2. Start with Adsense.  It’s the easiest way to start making money.  Affiliate marketing takes time to figure out.  With Adsense, it’s only a matter of having it on your site and getting traffic.  With Affiliate marketing, you have to do that, AND pick a good-converting product with an affiliate organization that is trustworthy.
3. Create your own content and publish it on Kindle.  Obviously this only works if you can write, but chances are you know SOMETHING that people would be interested in reading about.  Ask yourself, “what would someone be willing to take me out to McDonald’s to learn about?”  Whatever it is that you know in your head that is worth a burger, someone may buy for $7 or so on Kindle.  It adds up.
4. Lurk on the WarriorForums.  The War Room is worth paying for, but since this post is about free stuff, you will learn a TON of stuff from the site.  Even now that I don’t spend as much time there, since I’m actually DOING IM, and not just talking about it, I still go there weekly to be inspired.  Read, read, read.  Don’t pay for the guides…most of the guides are a distillation of what you can learn for free.  (Buying the right ones CAN be helpful because it clarifies and focuses you, but you’re trying to do this with no money, right?)
5. Offer your services for sale.  You can do this on the WarriorForum, or places like ODesk, eLance, getafreelancer.com, etc.  You can learn as you go, and earn as you go.

Remember…treat it like a business.  Put the money that you make away.  Then you can start investing in the easier ways to make money, which will include paying for domain names, hosting, an autoresponder like AWeber, etc.

For the last 10 years I’ve been a Data Analyst at one of the nation’s largest banks. But I have finally cut back my hours to 20 per week, since my “hobby” of making money online is earning me enough to do so.

It’s not as satisfying as quitting altogether. But, I like what I do at the bank, the pay is good, and the benefits are phenomenal. Ie: I still have my and my family’s health care benefits paid for from the bank…that’s almost worth working 20 hours per week for anyway.

I know I’m one of the “few” lucky ones. My wife does not work. Scratch that…my wife is a stay-at-home mom (so she works ALOT…she just doesn’t get paid for it). My kids have me around a lot now, which is especially good during the summer. There’s nothing like stepping away from the computer for a bit in the afternoon to play with my 8-year-old son!

I love the freedom. And I know many of you who read this blog are looking for the same thing.

So here are my pieces of advice of how to get here:

1. Diversify. The expression “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is especially true in the world of Internet Marketing. Google changes it’s search algorithms, and it’s Adsense and Adwords policies which might make it harder on IMers. eBay is notorious for making on-the-fly changes to its affiliate program. Other affiliate programs change, products change, niches change. I’d rather have a little income from each of these than all my income from one.

2. Work. If you treat Internet Marketing like a part-time hobby, it will treat you the same. If you treat it like a business, it can be a business for you. People think that IM is EASY (mostly because all of the people trying to sell internet marketing products are trying to convince you this is true). But, the few who actually make enough from it to earn a living will all tell you the same thing: it takes work, like any other job. (Unless they’re trying to sell you something.)

3. Go Offline. Once you get your feet wet and start making some money on the internet for yourself, find a way to help other people in real life do the same. The education you give yourself by building your own websites, doing your own SEO, etc., puts you WAY AHEAD of the average business owner. And those folks are willing to pay you a premium to help them do what you have been doing.

4. Plug the holes. Find the things you are really good at, and things you really aren’t good at. Be honest. Then find a way to plug the holes…to get the things done that you aren’t good at. It might mean being willing to pay someone (outsourcing anyone?), but if a little out of your pocket keeps you productive on the things you are good at, it’s worth it.

5. Test and Measure…EVERYTHING. Test ad copy on your sales page. (Split test with Google Web Optimizer.) Test your Adwords ads. Measure conversion rates. When you pick a product to target, pick several in the same niche and horse-race them. You can get a huge increase by focusing 80% of your effort on the 20% of the products that are the most profitable.

6. Have a Supportive Spouse. Not much more I can say about that!

Well, those are a few pearls of wisdom from someone who has been in the trenches. I hope it helps those of you starting out on this journey.

The guy who explains his process (John, known as XFactor on the forums) was literally begged by people (right in the thread) to condense the material to an ebook.  That way we didn’t have to read through so much junk, and we could have his definitive answers to some of the oft-repeated questions.

He finally created his ebook.  No kidding, it’s one of the best ones I’ve read.  There’s no hidden affiliate links, no fluff.  He just walks through his exact method.  He does not claim to be the end-all be-all answer man…he just reveals what HE does.

I bought his guide and decided to put it to the test.  So many folks on the forums had given positive feedback, with actual results, that I thought I would give it a try.

The great thing about it is that it is very, very practical.  It isn’t just concepts that seemingly could make you money.  I can’t tell you how many guides I’ve read where I’m impressed with the IDEAS.  I know in my head that they could make money…but for one reason or another, they never implement in a way that makes the money that was conceptualized.

With Xfactor’s guide, the idea is to:

• find product-oriented micro niches (like “glass top end tables”),
• ensure that the proper search volume is there to support it, but that the competition on page 1 of Google is easy to beat
• validate that advertisers will indeed pay a decent amount per click,
• setup a small website, HIGHLY optimized for high click-through-rate,
• run an article marketing campaign that will put your site on page one quickly, and keep it there.
• see income of $2-$5 per day per site
• make many of these sites (since they take only about an hour to create)

Like he even says…there’s nothing new under the sun.  This isn’t some earth-shattering new discover, some secret Google hack, or anything black hat.  It just takes the CONCEPTS that we all have learned and gives it an actual step-by-step.

Now…for the RESULTS:

I have been doing this for 3 weeks at the time of this writing.  (Keep in mind I have a full-time job and work at this only in the evenings after the kids are in bed and the wife and I don’t have other plans.)  I have created 4 sites.  2 of them are now on page 1 of Google, and of those two, both are averaging over $2-$3 per day.  The other two are not yet on page 1.  I have not even completed the article marketing campaign that he recommends…not for ANY of the four sites yet.  The general consensus is that it takes about four to six weeks for the sites to ‘mature’.  (Sites bounce around on and off the first page during the early days.)

I’m about to start another site or two this week, so I’ll keep you posted on those results when I start to see them.

Xfactor’s Micro Niche Adsense Course costs $67 when I paid for it.  With these two sites alone, it will pay for itself in about 5 weeks…then every other site I create will be gravy!

By the way – he uses Micro Niche Finder as his tool of choice, and gives very specific results you should look for when choosing a niche keyword phrase.  It’s a phenomenal tool (my favorite keyword tool, even over Keyword Elite), and I already had it, but if you don’t, it’s worth the investment.

UPDATE: Well, I’ve made over $341 since I started. I had a learning curve, and I only spend a little time every week working on it. I only have 13 sites up, but frankly I don’t even count some of the early ones. (I did a bad job at picking the niche and the domain name.) I think the thing that helped me turn the corner was the membership forums he offers. There is a TON of good information about SEO, niche-picking, link-building, etc., that really make it easy. This is definitely a course worth picking up, and if you do, be sure to get involved in the forum.

Google provides a website with the 100 most-searched phrases every several hours. (http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends) I learned a long time ago that if a phrase appears on here, there’s something going on that’s making people search for this phrase. If you can get some content on your website that’s related to a hot trend phrase, you can get tons of traffic.

For example, from JUST ONE phrase I found on Hot Trends, I ended up with 5000 visits to one particular blog post one day, and several thousand each day for a while after that. I was making $20 in Adsense revenue each day from that ONE POST!

Unfortunately, a lot of the phrases mean nothing to me.

So, I created the Hot Trends Research Tool. This tool provides a ton of information on each of the keyword phrases that appear on Google’s Hot Trend list. It allows me to research topics quickly, and write articles/blog posts super-fast. All the data is on one page. In fact, I even provide some keyword research data (if it appears, from Google), so that you can come up with alternative related phrases.

There’s a ‘How To Use This Site’ page there, too, explaining exactly how to use the tool. Once you poke around, you’ll get the idea.

Check it out!

Hot Trend Research Tool
http://hot-trends.noduplicatecontent.com

But it’s a common problem.  You want to make your blog profitable, but you run out of ideas about which you can write.

I have developed a package called Uniquification which solves two problems:

1. getting over writer’s block and finding topics to write about
2. generating unique content quickly and easily

In fact, I’ve created an entire blog over at No Duplicate Content (www.noduplicatecontent.com) to help document strategies to solve those two problems.

If you have trouble coming up with you next post, or if you don’t know what to write, check out the ideas at No Duplicate Content.  The Uniquification report is free!

Here’s a taste:

• special searches you can do for your niche to find hot topics
• one of the biggest sources of content that is NOT indexed by the search engines, but easily lends itself to creating blog content
• how to convert exisiting content on the web into your own, original, unique content for your site

I even have some macros that you can run in your web browser that automate some of the brainstorming and content-gathering.

So check it out, and drop me a line to let me know how you like it!

Uniquification – Generating Unique Content Quickly and Easily

Oh…these ideas apply to way more than just blogs.  If you are doing article marketing or want to develop your own free report (or paid report!), these ideas will help!

Remember that to get good ‘link juice’, you want to have a link from a high PR page, and you need that link to NOT be NoFollow, and you want to use good anchor text in that link.

First, use Firefox as your browser.  Then download two plugins for Firefox:  SEOQuake and NoDoFollow.  To get SEOQuake, just go to http://www.seoquake.com/ and download the plugin.  For NoDoFollow, in Firefox, go to Tools, Addons and browse.  Search for the NoDoFollow plugin.

Next, google your niche keyword + the word ‘forum’ or the phrase ‘message board’.    Visit some of the boards with the NoDoFollow plugin enabled and make a note of which forums allow signature links that are NOT NoFollow.

Join the forums which have good traffic, good PR, and allow sig links that are DoFollow.  Setup your signature with good keyword-rich anchor text.  (Like “Diabetic Recipes” as your link, not “For diabetic recipes, click here” with click here as your link.)

Then, go back to Google and make sure your Advanced settings are set to display 100 results.  Turn on the SEOQuake plugin.  Search the phrase -  site:forumname.com keyword   Replace forumname.com with the domainname of the forum, and keyword with your niche keyword.  This will find specific threads within that forum.  Use SEOQuake to fetch the PR for the results, then sort, descending, the PR.  Basically, this just sorts your Google search results with the highest PR results at the top.

Visit those specific discussion threads, and post a RELEVANT, non-spammy reply, making sure your signature is on.

Repeat.

This allows you to place good anchor-text links in a high-PR page that will follow your link and pass some of the ‘link juice’ on to your site.  As an added bonus, if it is a high-traffic site (which it probably is if it’s good pagerank), you might get visitors directly from the forum.