with the latest Panda 3.3 wake-up call and the sudden drop of rankings for many people who are using search engine optimization to drive traffic to their sites (see my “oh yikes SEO Monster post” from a few days ago), I guess it’s time for a cold hard look and a serious question:
(knowing what I know now) What would I do if I had to start all over again?
Well, let me tell you what I would NOT do to start making money with Internet marketing:
Build an *empire* of tons of little affiliate sites promoting individual products or monetized with Adsense.
Here’s why:
*Empires* are bad for you reason #1: Quality Content
realistically, you are NOT an expert on tons of different topics.
Meaning you have to get content from other sources. These other sources can be
- ‘auto-blogging’ type content (BAD with a capital B so big it doesn’t fit on this page, stay away from it!)
- outsourced (typically rubbish quality unless you’re willing to fork out $20+ for an article, which is kinda prohibitive when you’ve got an *empire* of sites that all need content.
- curating: actually a pretty good idea (if done properly, if curation is a model you’d like to investigate, I highly recommend you check out Bill Guthrie’s Market Social Blueprint), or the brand-new Curation Mastermind (both of which I’ve reviewed, and they’re both very good) but again: if you want to do this at *empire* scales, sounds like a lot of work to me. Plus of course, you can’t control the content in terms of search engine optimization or – more importantly – calls to action (click on my freakin’ affiliate link, will ya!)(well, ok, you can always put a CTA at the end, as part of your “curation”)
So you see, content is the first hurdle to high-earning affiliate *empires*.
Now, more importantly,
*Empires* are bad for you reason #2: the question of optimizing these sites.
The (yes THE with a capital T bigger than the B in bad above) secret to making money online is to TEST yourself to high conversions.
And it’s NOT something you do overnight.
And it’s certainly not something you can guess.
And it also isn’t something that you – unfortunatly – can transfer from one niche to another.
Meaning: for each of your little niche sites, you have to spend quite a bit of time and energy optimizing it.
And as you have an empire, most likely they’ll all be completely under-optimized.
Let me put it this way: at Yanik Silver’s last underground seminar, someone asked the question: “who is split-testing DAILY?”. And without fail, those who raised their hands were 7 or 8 figure marketers.
So you see, I’m not exaggerating when I’m saying
The secret to making a lot of money online is TESTING!
Now, testing is a huge subject, so I’m not going to cover it in great detail here (and I don’t have any fantastic recommendations under $1000, but a good primer that shows you WHAT you need to do, not necessarily HOW to is here), but I’ll give you 2 further internet marketing lessons here:
- as I’ve pointed out before, it’s the stuff you (already know you) *should* be doing that’s making you money (as in: the stuff you NEED, not what you WANT) and
- by telling you that TESTING is unpopular, the psychological herd/social proof thing kicks in, and you now feel justified NOT to do the unpopular thing. Well, bummer, because I’ve told you about this psychological trick the herd is playing on you, the rule no longer applies to you and you can now go forth and start testing.
Finally,
*Empires* are bad for you reason #3 the traffic question for *empires*:
most people (lol, you are now immune to “most people”) use SEO for *empire* type sites. And as we’ve seen over the last few days, the whole SEO game has suddenly gotten a whole lot more difficult.
The beauty of having your own product is this:
(ok, this may sound a little bit tongue in cheek, but I’m dead-serious about the core of the message!)
A buddy of mine recently put it this way: “most affiliates will mail for porn, as long as the stats are good”.
Meaning: you and I are here to put out high quality content that really helps people.
That should NOT stop us however from exploiting (mercilessly;-) the greed of those who will sell their granny to the devil for a few bucks.
Yes, we then have to deliver outstanding content to our new customers and really help them, but in the meantime: optimize the heck out of your sales-funnel (see point #2 above) so you’ve got killer EPCs and JV requests and affiliates will be flocking to YOU!
I really liked a thing I read on Perry Marshall’s affiliate page: “I’ve tested this with my own money” (meaning: he has tested his sales-funnels with his own money, not using the affiliates’ traffic).
And as long as you’ve got that mindset: delivering kick-ass content to the end-users and well-tested sales-funnels and hence high EPCs to your affiliates, you WILL win!
Now, how do you create this high converting sales-funnels?
By driving traffic at it.
PPC comes to mind, but I know, it costs money.
As an alternative to PPC and SEO you may wish to have a look at what Jeff Johnson does, he is going more and more over to a “non SEO” model.
One I particularly like (and I’ve seen it in action, because that’s how I signed up to Jeff’s list), is that of giving away free software, totally genius and it gives you a ton of *targeted* traffic to boot.
(at this point you’re supposed to go “awesome, traffic SO I CAN TEST MY SALES-FUNNEL;-)
Anyway, now that I’ve told you what I wouldn’t do and why (namely build large empires of little sites), here’s what I’d do instead (and guess what, that’s exactly what I’m doing right now)
How to really make money with Internet marketing: Focus more on my own products.
Not even on authority sites to begin with.
“What?” I hear you cry, no authority sites?
That’s right!
Authority sites have a bunch of great advantages (and yes, I’m still building mine out, but it’s NOT how I would get started!)
The purpose of an authority site is
- establish myself as an authority (note to self: product to follow;-), which is another way of saying “reputation management” (funny story on the side: we’re just doing some reputation management for a company where when you search for their company name, you find a Belgian porn-site right next to their company. I’ve never had such an easy sale for “reputation management”;-)
- build a nice big honey-pot for backlinks so I benefit from SEO-traffic
The big drawback of a an authority site is this:
it takes time for you to make money! Because
- SEO doesn’t work overnight
- and a 3 page authority site just doesn’t exude as much authority as a 1000 page site.
So, knowing what I know now (and I’ve pretty much told you everything I know above, apart from how to make a killer G&T, and yes, it’s a sunny Friday afternoon…), if I had to start again and wanted to make money FAST, I would do what pretty much nobody else is doing (because they’re chasing the quick ‘no work’ buck and hoping SEO will solve all their problems), and that is create my own little products in small niche markets where people desperately WANT a solution (they also NEED it, but primarily they want to get rid of the itch right now).
I first read about this very concept I’ve just told you about many years ago, it was a free report by a gentleman called Jimmy D. Brown.
And I thought “it can’t be as simple as that” … and did bugger all for a few years.
Until I finally started creating my own products.
Now, I did start creating my own products in the Internet marketing niche.
And it has served me well, very well indeed.
However, knowing what I know now, if I had to start again (and in a way I am starting again, because I am doing precisely what I’m telling you, right now), I would (and am) creating products outside the Internet marketing niche, in small niches that have the WANT and a NEED for an instant scratching of the problem.
So far I’ve done quite a bit of testing, and it turns out ‘only’ about one third of my attempts have a 95%+ chance of succeeding. The other two thirds are so so, or there’s just not enough response from the market.
Should that discourage me? NOOOO way, that’s absolutely fantastic news!
1 out of 3 projects a home-run!
With a bit of practice, you can knock out one of these per month!
And yes, some will take some startup time, but boy, when you hit it right:
Look at Mike Geary (actually, all the top 3-5 “weightloss” products on Clickbank), they’re doing 8 figures a year with ONE product.
I’m not suggesting you will right away (Mike took a couple of years to get started, so did Isabel de Los-whatever her name is, the lady of “The Diet Solution”) but with a bit of
persistence, this is (just my opinion) The way to get started, get started fast, learn far more than you’d ever to by building an *empire* and end up with a real business asset.
Right, right now I don’t teach it – simply because I don’t have any products that are making at least 6 figures outside the Internet marketing niche (and I do like walking the talk) – but when I do, I will.
In the meantime, two highly recommended resources, #1 is The Secret Product Formula which I’ve reviewed before and #2 is “The 4 hour product” which recently got the accolade “WSO of the day” (which now that you’re immune to herd-urges means NOTHING to you;-) and really is very very good.
Both are pretty much in line with what I’m saying above, as in: forget about SEO, forget about Internet Marketing as the first market to enter etc.
Both have a very different energy, The Secret Product Formula is a little more “ernest”, a little bit like Eben Pagan, whereas the 4 Hour Product is very “gut driven” and fun
E.g., you’ll fall of your chair laughing about 1min45secs into the first video of module #4 where he talks about the SEO courses you probably have on your hard-drive, very funny stuff.
Anyway, I have both and I recommend getting both so you get 2 different, but very solid
perspectives on what I consider The way forward (of course, only knowing what I know now…)
Ok, signing off with this observation:
over the last few years I’ve noticed in myself and many others, the you have to *experience* the thing you read about, hear about, learn about.
I really did read Jimmy D. Brown’s writings on “hey, it’s super-easy to create your own products, and you can easily build out a sales-funnel quickly”.
And I ‘knew’ that it could be done, simply because I could see other people do it.
But I didn’t take action for years.
Why? Because I only ‘knew’ it intellectually, I’d never had the *experience* of doing it.
And guess what, I got the experience, after just doing one simple little product. And then the next, then the next, and so on.
Just go and do it and thank me later!
have a fabulous weekend
Veit
PS: I’ve noticed more and more people have the “buy me a beer” for great content link under their emails/blog posts. If you can find a “buy me a G&T”, please do. Otherwise, if you like it, I’d appreciate a FBLike or G+ – because, this is supposed to be an authority blog after all, and as we all know, social signals are one of the most important search engine optimization signals these days! Thanks, I appreciate it!
ah yes, and it’s now officially after 5pm;-)
