Before we get started I should mention a couple of things.

• I do the below steps for medium competition keywords and sites – i.e. keywords that have Google competition in “” up to about 30-40k. Obviously with less competition you can skip or reduce some of the steps.
• I use some automated tools. It saves me A LOT of time (I’m talking of up to 95%!). It’s your choice whether you want to invest in the tools or do it manually. Time versus money.

As you may or may not know, getting ranked in the search engines require on-page and off-page optimization. On-page optimization information is widely available, so I am not going to go into that. Off-page optimization is getting backlinks and that is what I will show you with this post.

So here are my steps for getting backlinks to a newly launched site:

I submit my site to Bing. I have found that by doing this generally Bing index my site within 48 hours, something that has taken a long time previously. Just type in your website URL on Bing and if it is not already indexed they will give you an option to submit your site.

Social Bookmarking. I use Bookmarking Demon to submit my site to 100+ social bookmarking sites. I normally submit the home page and two other pages on the first day and then submit 2-3 pages every two days until all the pages of my site are submitted. Social bookmarking traffic is normally untargeted and most of the time won’t make you a lot of money, but it is an early boost in traffic.

Directory Submission. I use DirectoryBot to submit my home page to 500+ directories. Directory links might not carry as much weight now as they did previously, but it only takes me 2 minutes – well worth it. It goes without saying that this step will give you a lot of backlinks spread out over 2-3 months and although you will not receive any direct traffic, it will increase your search engine rankings over time.

I get two articles written at Articlez and create a Squidoo lens and a Hubpage. Not only does it give me two backlinks from authority sites, but they also earn me a little money directly from Squidoo and Hubpages.

Article marketing. My article marketing might seem complicated but it is actually quite simple. I first get 5 articles written at Articlez (or more or less depending on how big my site is). My signature at the bottom will have a link pointing to the home page and one other internal page. So with the 5 articles I will get 5 home page links and 5 links pointing to different internal pages. I then use these articles in the following way:

1. I submit them to Ezine Articles first and when approved I submit them manually to GoArticles and ArticlesBase. This will give you authority backlinks and also give you some traffic.
2. Next step is to use Automatic Article Submitter to submit the 5 articles to a ton of other article directories. Not for traffic, but backlinks. I generally submit 1 article a week.
3. The last step is to add these 5 articles to Article Marketing Automation. Make sure to rewrite the article at least 30% using their rewriter as it will be published on a lot more sites. Article Marketing Automation is great for getting in context links as I just move the links from the resource box to somewhere in the article itself – something a lot of article directories from upon.

That’s it!

Because I use software to automate the process plus I outsource the article writing all these steps except for the Article Marketing Automation bit only takes around 20 minutes! AMA takes another 50 minutes or so.

So let’s see what you get after all your submissions have been taken into account (which may take several months).

You get a 100 social bookmarks to each page plus more than 1,000 links to your home page and 1,000 links to 5 other pages. There are a lot of variables but even if you only get half that you should be able to destroy the competition!

And boy am I glad I did!

I can honestly say they have the best system for “forcing” members to return to the site out of any make money online site I have ever seen. But is Affiliate Classroom 2.0 worth the money?

Let’s find out.

Affiliate Classroom 2.0 for beginners (new online marketers)

If you don’t know your affiliate products from adsense, or niche sites from authority sites AC 2.0 provides a brilliant education. They have all kinds of tools, case studies and articles, but what really caught my eye is their training system.

There is currently 3 levels of courses, with level 1 being very basic, level 2 a bit more advanced and level 3 a bit more advanced again. For those of you interested what the courses cover, here are screenshots from each level.

LEVEL 1 COURSES

LEVEL 2 COURSES

LEVEL 3 COURSES

Each course consists of a document explaining the concept, sometimes with the help of images, etc. It is then followed by a 10 question test, where you have to score 7 or more to pass.

There are also 10 “classes” that you can achieve in AC 2.0.

You start at class 1 and move up when you pass a certain amount of courses. However, there are also milestones. For instance, to reach class 6 you have to receive more than 3,000 visits per month to your affiliate websites.

Finally to reach class 10 you have to pass 9 level 1 courses, 9 level 2 courses, 9 level 3 courses and earn more than $10k per month as an affiliate!

So for the new internet marketer Affiliate Classroom 2.0 takes you by the hand until you have reached the $10k per month goal. Pretty cool!

Affiliate Classroom 2.0 for advanced marketers

If you earn more than $10k per month AC 2.0 probably is not for you, unless you want some education in specific areas of online marketing.

However, the website itself and its systems serve as a brilliant education.

First, when you sign up they bombard you with one time offers and upsells (3 when I signed up). Their sales funnel is a case study in itself!

Second, the way they encourage user interaction and members to return is the best I have seen. It is human nature to get to the highest level in anything, so to introduce a class system with 10 classes is genius. You move up in class when you complete tests on the various courses (forcing you to return to the website regularly) plus also taking action (setting up an affiliate website, getting a certain amount of visitors, earning a certain amount monthly).

Third, the members home page is set up brilliantly. Everything is easy to see and reach. Check out the screenshot below:

All in all I think Affiliate Classroom 2.0 is an excellent learning tool for new internet marketers or anybody not making at least a regular $3-4k per month. If you earn more than that already and know most things about setting up successful affiliate sites then this one is not for you.

You know where on Twitter you can leave quick comments and stuff. The problem is that people go off topic and your helpful tweet becomes a free for all.

Well, on TipDrop things are different. You can create a tip sheet for any subject you want and other people can then add to those tips, keeping everything on subject. There is also a cool rating system (credibility) where you can vote for you favorite tip and the tips are then displayed based on credibility.

And how would you like to earn some money from TipDrop? The guys at TipDrop is sharing 75% of their adsense revenue generated from your tip sheets with you! How is that for encouragement to write some tips!

Check it out here. It is brilliant!

Blogging To The Bank by Rob Benwell has been around for 3 years now and the latest version – 3.0 has been released. Version 1 was excellent, as it introduced the concept of making money with blogs. Version 2 was a decent update on the techniques to use.

Version 3?

Well, if feels a bit flat. While it does have its place and it will benefit certain people, it does not live up to the hype on the sales page.

However, there is something about Blogging To The Bank 3.0 which I think is brilliant. Go to the red section at the bottom if you want to skip the review.

Read below for a more in-depth review and to find out if you will benefit from Blogging To The Bank 3.0

 The Blogging To The Bank 3.0 concept is simple: it teaches you how to set up a blog and make money from it. However, as most people have found out it is not as easy as it sounds.

What is the best way to set up a blog, how do you create content for it, how do you monetize it, how do you get more visitors? Blogging To The Bank addresses all these questions, but so do a lot of free websites (including this one ).

The guide consists of 10 main steps to create your blog and make money from it:

• Market Research & Keyphrase Lists
• Domains & Hosting
• Creating Your Blog
• Optimizing Your Blog
• Content
• Promotion & Backlinks
• Advanced SEO Techniques
• Web 2.0 Strategies
• Outsourcing & Building Your Blog Empire
• Selling Your Blog

Most of these techniques have been around for a while and are well known if you have already tried to start a blog. The only place where you might pick up a few tips are in the traffic generation sections.

Rob also included a few other tips, mainly on how to get a bunch of backlinks which should hopefully increase your search engine rankings and get you more visitors.

Good Points

If you want to create a blog to make money and are a newbie (beginner), this guide will give you a good basic understanding on how to create your blog. It shows you step by step what to do and even includes a few advanced (but easy to follow) tips.

Bad Points

The information is just too basic. It might cater for somebody new to the blogging world – and I really mean NEW! The sales page makes it sound like the be all and end all of blogging, but that is not true. Following the steps will give you a basic blog that gets some visitors and makes a bit of money, but there are so many more things you can do to increase your visitors and earnings.

Bonuses

While Blogging To The Bank 3.0 comes with the normal raft of bonuses, only two are really worthwhile – the Article Assistance and Blog Announcer Pro software. Everything else is either outdated or ineffective. In fact, it is probably worth it to buy Blogging To The Bank just to get the software!

Conclusion

Blogging To The Bank 3.0 is a decent basic step by step guide on how to set up an income generating blog. However, it is not the holy grail and there are a lot of holes in the guide.

However, because it is so inexpensive I will recommend it to the following two groups of people:

1. People with no blogging experience who wants the basic steps to set up and earn some money from a blog.
2. People who want the software (Article Assistance and Blog Announcer Pro) to help with traffic generation.

I think the main reason Blogging To The Bank 3.0 has been released is because Rob Benwell is starting a membership site where he will create a six figure blog and as a member you can look over his shoulder and see exactly what he is doing. Brilliant to replicate in your own market.

This membership upsell is available after you have purchased Blogging To The Bank 3.0 as a one time offer and well worth the money. For people with some experience blogging who wants to take their earnings to the next level this is an absolute must!

As with all case studies you can copy it exactly, but if you really want to be successful think how you can incorporate parts or all of this plan into developing your business. Think outside the box!

I am not going to reveal my website, so please don’t ask. Not only will it distort my visitors and perhaps my Adsense CTR, but it will also open up my Adsense account for abuse. And yes, that has happened to a friend of mine who lost his Adsense account in the process!

I spent only 90 minutes on this site in total and now, 6 months later it gets 1,000 visitors a month, mostly from Google and earns me about $100 per month from Adsense. I did spend some money outsourcing tasks which sped up the process. However, you can easily do everything yourself, it will just take longer.

Now $100 is not a lot of money, but what if you had 50 of these sites? That’s $5,000 per month!

Keep in mind that this is just one (lazy) way of creating an income stream. If you put in a bit more effort than I did and you make this process your own with slight changes you can make so much more from it.

Here is a screenshot of the traffic when I started. The site went live on 25 December 2008 (yes I know it was Christmas!)

Step 1 – Choose Your Niche

I am a member of PLRPro so I chose one of their article packs. The one I chose showed Adwords cost per click at generally more than $2. I did not know anything about the niche and still don’t! PLRPro include 40 articles per niche in loads of different languages. I was lazy so I only used the English ones.

I did not do any keyword analysis, but just took the keywords PLRPro gave me.

=> 5 minutes using PLRPro

Step 2 - Create Content

If you did not use PLR articles you will need to write the articles yourself, or get somebody from Articlez to write it for you. I used all 40 articles from PLRPro.

I took the PLRPro articles and ONLY changed the titles. The last thing you want are pages with exactly the same title as 50 other websites.

=> 10 minutes using PLRPro

Step 3 – Register Domain & Hosting

I used Namecheap to register my domain, which was a .com domain and included my main keyword. I also have an Aluminum reseller account with HostGator which enables me to host unlimited domains, so after I registered the domain name I set it up on my reseller account.

=> 5 minutes

Step 4 – Create Website

I used a program called HyperVRE to create my website. You can use something else like XSitePro or Wordpress, but I believe one of the main reasons I am getting traffic with unchanged PLR articles is because I used HyperVRE.

HyperVRE has a cool feature where you can add random extracts, definitions, etc on a page, depending on where you specify it on the template. This might be a reason why my content was not viewed as duplicate content.

I used an extremely basic template, with no header picture, the menu on the right, an Adsense horisontal link below my site name and an Adsense large rectangle just below the title of the article. Below that is the article. I also used a random definition on each page as well as 4 random article extracts. If you have HyperVRE you will know what I am talking about.

If you don’t want to use HyperVRE make sure that you use some additional content on your pages to at least make it somewhat unique.

=> 15 minutes with HyperVRE

Step 5 – Add Blog

I created a very basic Wordpress blog in a different folder and linked to it at the bottom of my main site. I then added this blog to my Article Marketing Automation account and specified that 1 new blog post per day can be posted on my blog. I kept the subject of the blog roughly the same as the main site. Now every day I will get an automatic new post to my blog from Article Marketing Automation.

I also added a massive ping list to my blog functions so that every time there is a new post a bunch of sites get pinged.

Here is the list:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc/
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.fakapster.com/rpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.britblog.com
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://rpc.wpkeys.com
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

By the way, I believe Article Marketing Automation is part of PLRPro and you get a free account when you join PLRPro. Or I did when I joined…

=> 10 minutes

Step 6 – Get 5 Marketing Articles

Unfortunately you cannot use PLR in this step. If you do, you will need to rewrite the whole article as Ezine Articles does not accept PLR articles.

I used the good folks at Articlez to write 5 articles around my popular keywords (but not the main keyword, as that was way too broad).

=> 10 minutes using Articlez

Step 7 – Article Marketing

Another lazy step here. I submitted my articles to Ezine Articles and waited for them to approve it (VERY IMPORTANT – make sure your articles are approved at Ezine Articles before submitting them to other article directories, it will save you a lot of trouble from Ezine Articles).

After it was approved by Ezine Articles I submitted it to GoArticles and ArticlesBase.

However, the key step was submitting them to Article Marketing Automation. I made sure to use their rewrite function and rewrote them about 30%. I also linked to my home page and two inner pages on each article. To date, my 5 articles appear on 514 different blogs in the Article Marketing Automation network. Talk about getting back links! Oh, and I only submitted the articles at the beginning of April 2009!

=> 30 minutes for all submissions and rewriting on Article Marketing Automation

Step 8 – Getting Back Links

My last step was submitting my site to 3WayLinks to get some more back links to my home page.

=> 5 minutes

That was it! Total time => 90 minutes!

Let’s look at the traffic stats for 2009:

Total Back Links To Home Page According To Yahoo: 156 (most are PR1 and PR2 with a few PR6 links as well)

Adsense Average Earnings Per Click: $0.82 with a CTR of more than 10%

Use this case study as an example. Test new ideas. Maybe add affiliate products or an Ebay store. Or maybe market your own or a PLR info product on the site. Add a newsletter and build a list.

There are so many things you can do with this foundation. I have not because I was lazy, although after writing this post I might have another look at the site and see what I can improve

Free Search Engine Traffic

Search engines (like Google, Yahoo, etc) are my preferred traffic source. Why? Because it is free and with the right strategy and a bit of work you can receive tens of thousands of visitors a month.

Search engine optimization (SEO) deals with getting your site ranked on the first page of the search engines – preferably at the top spot! Each search engine uses slightly different ranking criteria, but as Google is the 800 lb gorilla of the search engine world, let’s see how we can rank on them.

There is a lot of incorrect information online about SEO, so forget everything you have been told and remember only this: Google ranks according to on-page factors and off-page factors. That’s it! Nothing complicated about it!

On-page Factors

These change all the time, but I generally do the following: your keyword should appear in your page title, in a H1 header, at the beginning and the end of the page. If you can add it to the alt text of an image of the page, brilliant. Don’t stuff your page with keywords. It does not work and can get your site banned.

Off-page Factors

Links, links and more links. That’s it! Get links to your site from wherever you can. One way links are best (one way links are where you don’t have to link back to the site linking to you). Another important point is to change the anchor text of the link to your keyword (the anchor text are the words forming the link).

Let’s look at an example:If you have a web page about “blue widgets” the anchor text of your link should be blue widgets, not click here. It is unbelievable how many people make this mistake. Don’t be one of them!

Where can you get links to your site? Loads of places. I use Article Marketing Automation and 3WayLinks. They work differently, but compliment each other well. I will do a case study in the future to show exactly how I use them. If I need more links, I will distribute articles, submit RSS feeds, etc.

Pay Per Click
I will be completely honest here. I have dabbled with PPC for 5 years (since reading Google Cash in 2004) but have never really built my websites or business around it. I am NOT a PPC expert, so I would suggest getting Google Cash, PPC Classroom or any of the dozens of PPC products being launched each year.

PPC is good for getting immediate traffic to a product or affiliate offer with very little effort. The problem is that it costs money and if you are not that good at it you can lose your shirt. I have a few times, so I know

Google Adwords is definitely king of PPC marketing, but don’t forget the second tier PPC markets like Yahoo, MSN, etc. Clicks are normally a lot cheaper through them than Adwords and I have had a few campaigns where traffic converted a lot more using MSN than Adwords. However, the amount of traffic from MSN was around 10% of the Google traffic.

My most successful PPC campaign is one I started a couple of weeks ago. Fuelled by the enthusiasm surrounding the launch of Google Cash Detective 2. Through more luck than skill I started a campaign that made me $30 profit per day for only one keyword. It took me all of 10 minutes to set up. With a bit of testing I got that up to $80 per day. The next step is to add more keywords and see what happens

Article Marketing

I am not a big article marketer, but I do incorporate writing and submitting articles into my marketing plan for two reasons: visitors and getting links to my website (remember the SEO section above?). Some people, like people following the Bum Marketing method generates a lot of traffic from articles and it works. 

You write a keyword optimized article, submit it to Ezine Articles and a few more (I submit to around 20) and voila. You have back links to your site and if you did a good job on optimizing the article you can get a lot of search engine traffic to the article, and hopefully to your site if they click on your links.

Which brings us to the two most important parts of article marketing:

Firstly, the title. Get your keyword in there. Also, make the title interesting. Entice people to click on it and read further. If your keyword is “losing weight” don’t use a title like “Losing Weight By Exercising”. Rather use something like “3 Exercises That Will Make Losing Weight Easy”.

Secondly, your resource box is where you can convince the reader to visit your site. Don’t write about you or what you do. Rather mention what benefits they will receive when they visit your site. And try and include your keyword in the anchor text.

Squidoo Lenses, Hubpages and Blogger Blogs

There are a lot of social networking places where you can create a web page (or similar) for free. The above 3 are probably the most widely used. Think of little feeder pages on different social networks feeding traffic to your main site.

I create these pages only after a niche or website has proven that it makes money and I want to increase my visitors. No point going through all the effort if your main site is not profitable, no?

I am not going to tell you what monetization method to use. I don’t know what your site is about, how big it is, your promotional avenues, etc. What I am going to do is give you an overview of the main monetization methods. Then it is up to you!

I actually want to clarify something. There is no right or wrong method. Choose one of the below methods and test your performance. Once you have sufficient data to draw conclusions, change your monetization method and test again. Eventually you will be able to identify the most profitable monetization method for your site.

Here are the main monetization methods from least to most effort:

Google Adsense

Google Adsense is very easy to implement. You just sign up, choose your ad formats and paste in the html code on your page. Google picks the ads to show based on what your web page is about. Nothing could be simpler, right?

Wrong. In order to make a decent amount of money right from the start with Adsense you have to be very lucky or very good. You need to choose a niche where advertisers pay a decent amount of money per click. For example, I only create Adsense sites where advertisers pay at least $2 per click on average. This means I will get around 80 cents per click.

To get the most out of Adsense you will have to test everything. Your site layout, your ad block sizes, your ad colors, everything. Your goal is to increase your CTR (click through rate) to as high as possible.

Think about it. Let’s say you get 100 people per day to your site and get 80 cents per click. If you have a 5% CTR you get only 5 clicks per day = $4 per day or $1,460 per year. If you increase your CTR to say 15% (not too difficult) you can earn $12 per day or $4,380 per year!

Affiliate Products

Affiliate marketing at its core is a simple concept. You create a website and advertise other people’s products on it. When somebody buys one of these products from your website you get paid a commission by the seller.

However, there are dozens of ways of doing this. The following is a brief overview of the main affiliate marketing choices you have to make. I will explore various cool ways of selling affiliate products in future case studies and articles.

Information products are very popular affiliate products because you can get such a large commission per sale. Clickbank has the largest collection of information products online where you can pick and choose what you want to market. They also show you what you will earn per sale, very handy!

For certain sites marketing physical products will be the more logical choice. There are a lot of different affiliate networks dealing with physical products, but the more popular ones are Amazon, Commission Junction and Shareasale. The biggest downside of selling physical products is that your commission rate will be a lot lower than with information products.

Another site that is worth a mention is Ebay. You can show Ebay auctions on your site and since Ebay is such a well known brand people will be much happier buying something on Ebay. Your commission rate will be very small, maybe a dollar or two per sale, but what you are really looking for is somebody registering with Ebay before they buy something. You can get up to $25 per registration!

Let’s look at an example:You have  a site about dogs. If you want to list a dog training guide you should go for an information product from Clickbank rather than a physical book from Amazon. The difference? About £30 per sale! You can also list other physical dog products, like collars, food bowls, etc from Amazon or Commission Junction. So you can see that you don’t just have to market one type of product. Mix and match. And test!

Public Label Rights Products

A very good, but a bit more advanced, way of making money is to sell PLR products. Below is an explanation of how to incorporate this into your site.

1. You need to find a PLR product in your niche. Google is your best friend here Once you find the right product you buy the PLR. Make sure that the product includes a sales letter, graphics, thank you page and maybe an autoresponder series. It means less work for you!

2. With PLR you can change anything you want, so I would suggest creating new graphics, personalising the sales letter, personalising the product and putting your name on the product as the author.

3. Set up the sales letter, payment links (I suggest using Paypal), thank you pages and everything else you need.

4. Set up two autoresponders, one for people who bought your product and one for people who visited your sales page but did not buy. As any internet marketer will tell you, the money is in the list. You can market to these people going forward and if you treated them right (which means not bombarding them with sales pitches in every email!) they will buy from you again and again.

5. Put a nice, large ad on the rest of your site (your article pages) advertising your new PLR product. Make sure to include a graphic of the report or e-book as people will respond better if they can “see” the product.

Your Own Product

This is very similar to the PLR section, but you create the product from scratch. The advantage of creating your own product to using a PLR product is that it will be totally unique. Even if you rewrite a large part of a PLR product, it will still be similar to the PLR product being sold by other people.

Hopefully this section gave you some ideas on how to monetise your site. I had a bunch of cool monetization ideas that I cannot wait to share with you, so be sure to check back often! The next step in our income stream creation process is getting traffic to our site.

Now you have to fill that site with content. But not just any content. Content that will enable you to make money with your site. Content that will get ranked in the search engines and give you floods of visitors.

Site content can take many different forms, but it generally falls into two categories: informational content and reviews.

Informational Content

Pretty much what the name says. Your aim is to provide good quality articles, blog posts or blurbs that will answer your visitors questions. The content pulls the visitor from the search engines, article directories or wherever onto your website where you have the chance to make some money off him (we cover monetizing your website in step 4).

The key factor with informational content is that it should be SEO food for the search engines. Do keyword research and find key phrases without a lot of competition, but with a lot of people searching for it (almost like a mini step 1). Target those key phrases when writing your content and each page will help to pull in more visitors.

Informational content is the most widely used and easiest to produce content and there are various ways to get this content.

Write It Yourself

This is the cheapest option, but also the most difficult and time consuming. Not everybody is a Hemingway or Shakespeare – actually don’t write like Shakespeare as nobody will understand you

If you need to do some research on what to write go to Ezinearticles.com and read through some of their articles on your chosen topic.

Some people also use content creation software. Out of everything I have tested the best one by far is Instant Article Wizard Pro. Have a look at their sales page to see what content can be generated within minutes without you doing anything. Everything is done be the software. In terms of cost effectiveness this is the best option.

PLR

PLR stands for public label rights and just means that you can use the article whose rights you bought any way you want. You can rewrite it, put your name on it, use different parts of it, etc.

If you do use PLR articles, make sure to change it or rewrite it as much as possible, or else you are going to compete with everybody that bought the articles. A good rule of thumb is to at least rewrite the following:

• Title
• First paragraph
• Last paragraph
• A few sentences inbetween to personalize it

By far the best PLR service around is PLRPro. I have been a member for years and am very happy with the quality of their articles. As a bonus they include a number of very powerful tools for free. Some of them feature regularly in my marketing arsenal so you will definitely see a some case studies using PLRPro and their tools.

Outsourcing

The most expensive option but if you need 1,000 articles do you really want to write them yourself? On Elance.com you can get articles for around $4, but please make sure about the quality of the writer before ordering a lot of articles from them.

I tend to order 5 articles. If I think they are good quality, I will order a larger batch. However, keep in mind that for excellent quality articles by native English writers you will pay at least $15 per article.

I almost forgot. I have been trying out a new article writing service called Articlez and it is pretty good and inexpensive. You can buy credits which you then redeem for content, from short blurbs to longer articles. A 350 word article costs $6 and it is written by native English speakers. Check it out if you are thinking about outsourcing your article writing.

Reviews

Again, it is pretty self explanatory. You write reviews about products or services and then offer that product or service through an affiliate link.

Writing a review is more involved than writing an article and to write an effective review you should have used the product or service. However, if you write effective reviews you can earn a lot more money than with pure informational articles.

The main point in writing a good review is to show the reader that you know what you are talking about – you have had the same problems as they do and by using the product or service those problems were solved. It is crucial to convince your reader that you have used the product or service, as that will build their trust. And if they trust you they are much more likely to buy the product you are recommending.

Another tip when writing reviews is to mention at least one negative point, but make sure that it is a minor one. Something like “I tried the 3 day acne cure and after 5 days my acne was cured.” Most people won’t be put off by the fact that it took 2 days longer than the sales copy states.

If you decide to outsource your reviews make sure to slightly change the review and put your own flavor on it. People are not stupid and if the review is too clinical they won’t believe it.

How Many Pages Should My Site Be?

The answer here is another question: “how much information can you give that will help (1) convert visitors into sales or (2) increase traffic to your website.

I have seen 2 or 3 page sites making $500 per month and 100 page sites making $500 per month. It depends on the niche, the products, your competition and a bunch of other factors.

For a good small niche site I would generally recommend 20-30 pages.

So you have generated some content for your site. THe next step is to monetize your site.

I have broken it down into 3 easy to follow steps.
 

1. Register a domain name

Remember when we did the keyword research in the Research section? When you register a domain you really need to have your main key phrase (in our example it was “golden retriever training”) in the domain name. Something like trainingyourgoldenretriever.com is still available and although it is a little long it explains exactly what your site is about.

You may have noticed that by using “your” in the domain name it speaks directly to golden retriever owners. This type of emotional connection is extremely valuable and profitable. You are showing golden retriever owners how to train their dog, not a dog.

People often ask me what they should do if the .com extension is taken. Try and come up with a .com that is available. Mix the order of words (it should still make sense) like I did to come up with trainingyourgoldenretriever.com when goldenretrievertraining.com was unavailable. Or use hyphens in the name separating the words.

If you really cannot come up with a .com domain name, use .net and as a last resort you can use .info. By the way, I have around 60 .com domains, 1 .net domain and no .info domains so you can see what I prefer

I like to use Namecheap for registering domain names. They have an easy to use interface and I have never had any problems with them. They also change your new DNS settings very quickly (don’t worry, we will get to that in a moment). Whatever you do, never use the same company for domain name registration and hosting. I have heard some horror stories about web hosts that can hold you hostage because they also control the domain name!

2. Set up web hosting

There are a lot of companies offering web hosting online. What they are essentially doing is offering you space and bandwidth on servers they own and run which is why you have to be careful when choosing a web host. Cheaper is not always better!

You also have a range of options to choose from. Shared servers, dedicated servers, reseller hosting, and so forth.

Well, let’s break it down.

If you want to set up one or maybe a handful of normal size sites, choose a shared server package that will enable you to include the number of sites you are planning.

If you are planning a huge site (and I mean HUGE) then get a dedicated server. However, for most people a shared server will have enough space and bandwidth to meet their needs.

If you are planning to set up loads of normal sites (read niche sites with up to a couple of hundred pages each) then reseller hosting will be your best solution.

Be sure to read the features of all the packages and think hard before choosing one. It is a nightmare to change hosting providers.

The best web host I have found is HostGator. They have a range of packages to suit everybody and they are reasonably priced as well. Most importantly, their customer service is outstanding!

After you have set up your hosting, make sure to change the DNS settings of your domain to the DNS settings of your web host. If you don’t know how to do this, get your DNS settings from your web host and contact your domain provider. Most domain providers will be happy to help you change it.

3. Creating your site

I can write a 100 page guide just on creating a site and many guides have been written about it! However, in the interest of time I will give a brief overview of the main ways to create a website.

In the future we will drill into each technique with tips, etc so be sure to check back regularly!

Wordpress

Installing a Wordpress blog as your site is probably the most popular way to create a website. It is easy to install, but you will need some technical skills if you want to customize the site with new graphics or a different template. The reason I like Wordpress is its flexibility. This site was created with Wordpress and if I decide to change the color of something it is only a few clicks away. Want to change my sidebar layout? A couple of minutes and it is changed!

Since an easy Wordpress installation option is included by web hosts using CPanel (HostGator is one) for free, you can create a site without it costing you a cent. However, unless you know your way around Wordpress as well as the different Wordpress plugins to enrich the site you might need an expert.

If you want to go at it alone, then I can recommend Caroline Middlebrook’s free Wordpress guide as a good starting point.

 
Website Creation Software

There is a lot of different software available that can create beautiful websites. Software like Dreamweaver and Frontpage are the popular options, but unless you have a lot of time to get familiar with the software and know HTML coding I would not recommend using it. Some people swear by them but it is just too difficult and time consuming for an inexperienced person to use.

The software I do recommend and the one I use is XSitePro. It is easy to use, it has a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface, it already has some nice and colorful templates to use and you can create a site without knowing a piece of code.

XSitePro automates a lot of tasks that will not only make your site look nicer but will also help with ranking in the search engines.

Now I have to confess, I started on Dreamweaver (this was long before XSitePro was even created) and in spite of all the good things I have heard about XSitePro I resisted getting it. Years later I eventually got it and I was really annoyed that I have not started using it earlier.

 
HTML Coding

If you want to learn the “insides” of how websites work you will need to learn the HTML and PHP programming languages. Is it necessary? No, but it will help you significantly when you want to start customizing websites.

Once you have created a couple of sites with Wordpress or XSitePro start learning the basics of HTML. It really is not that hard and you will be delighted about the flexibility it gives you. Later on learn more advanced HTML. If you are REALLY interested give PHP a go as well. A word of warning: php is much harder to learn than HTML.

Now you might ask why people would code their websites instead of using one of the above, easier options. You do get hardcore coders creating their whole website on Notepad! I was one of them for a few years and enjoyed it, but it is just too time consuming, which eats into profits.

 
Outsourcing

The last and most expensive option is outsourcing your website creation. Chances are the webmaster will use Wordpress, XSitePro or Dreamweaver to create your site, but at least you don’t have to learn how to do it.

You can go to places like Elance.com, post your project and see how much people bid for it. You might even get away with paying less than $200 for the site. Be warned that for such a low amount the site will either not be unique (they would use an existing template and just fill in the blanks) or be a rush job with coding errors, etc.

For a quality custom site with all the bells and whistles I would expect to pay at least $600 and closer to $1,000. Also, ask other webmasters or friends who they have used as it is normally better to use somebody referred by a friend than an unknown person.

 
 Free Websites

“What about free websites like Blogger or Squidoo?” you might ask. I have not included free websites in the site creation options, as I don’t think it is a good business decision to be at the mercy of a third party. What if you created all your sites on Squidoo and they close down? You lose your revenue streams. I would encourage you to pay a small amount of money and get your own domain and hosting. Then you are in control.

I do use some free sites like Blogger, Squidoo and Hubpages to test new niches or products. Throw up a couple of Squidoo lenses in an hour and see if people are interested in the niche or product. If they are you can create your own site around it. So in the case of quickly testing new ideas Blogger, Squidoo and Hubpages are really useful.

Now that you have your own website up and running we can move on to the next step which is to generate content for your site.

Now this might seem easy, but think about it for a moment. You like dogs and you have heard that the dog training niche is very lucrative so you decide to set up a site about dog training. Now unless you have a lot of money, time and know-how your dog training website is not going to make you any money! The niche is just way too competitive!

So what should your website be about?

Most people would advise you to start a site on something you have an interest in – a hobby maybe? Creating content about something that interests you will be a lot easier. However, your hobby might not be a profitable idea. How will you monetize the site? Will people spend money on their hobby? How many people are interested in your hobby? You get the idea.

The best idea for a site will be a hobby where your answers to the above questions are positive, but they are few and far between. So you will have to do some brainstorming. Look around your house or work place and look for things that people buy. Maybe something they need? A popular toy?

The idea is to develop a website in a narrow niche, as competition is normally much lower. It is all about demand and supply – I bet you did not expect an economy lesson

Let’s go back to the dog training niche as an example. Creating a profitable website on dog training is going to be extremely difficult. Sure, there is the potential to get loads of traffic to your site, but that is only if you rank well on the search engines. Let’s see what Traffic Travis says about demand (how many people search for the phrase dog training):

Wow, Traffic Travis estimates 92,533 searches PER DAY for “dog training” (see the above screenshot).

Now for the bad news. Let’s look at supply (competition) for the phrase “dog training”:

If you type in “dog training” (in quotation marks) in Google you get more than 6 million results! NB – your results may vary depending on your geographical location. Why use quotation marks? This will normally show you the web pages you will have to directly compete with for the phrase. Do you want to compete against 6 million sites?

I thought not

So let’s narrow down our market and drill down into the dog training niche. What about training for a specific breed? Maybe Golden Retriever training? Let’s see what the demand and supply is for “golden retriever training”:

Traffic Travis estimates 582 searches per day. That is a lot less than the 92,000 for dog training but it still means that more than 17,000 people look for golden retriever training every month! Do you think you can make money with 17,000 potential customers every month?

However, let’s not get too excited yet. What about the competition?

Google throws up around 18,000 results for “golden retriever training”. That might seem like a lot, but how many of the results are strong competition? Let’s use Traffic Travis’s SEO Analysis function to analyze the top 20 websites for golden retriever training.

What am I looking for?

In order to analyze competition I generally look at the following things:

Google PR
Although I don’t put a lot of weight on Google’s Page Rank, it is a useful tool to see what Google thinks of the web page.

Backlinks To Page
Search Engine Optimization (SEO – or how to get a high ranking in the search engines) in its simplest form consists of two things – (1) good on page optimization (covered later) and (2)backlinks (how many other websites link back to your web page). The more backlinks to the specific page, the harder it will be for us to rank for our phrase.

Backlinks To Site
Generally web pages rank individually, which is why backlinks to the specific page is more important. However, if you have a website with thousands of backlinks to the site Google might see it as an authority site and the authority of the whole site will influence individual pages.

On Page Optimization
On page optimization covers everything done on the web page that will help it rank well. Good examples are to include your keyword phrase in your web page title and description, as well as use it in headers (H1 html function), mentioning the phrase in the content on the page, etc.

Analysing the competition

The first thing that I noticed is that the domains are generally old, but the PR (Google’s Page Rank) is quite low. This is good.

The first two results are from the same site and although they don’t have a lot of backlinks to the pages, the site itself has a lot of back links. This will make it difficult to beat them.

Let’s look at the third result. It has a PR of 2, the page has 10 backlinks and the site has 261. “Golden Retriever Training” is NOT included in the title, description or H1 tags. Hmmm, this looks promising.

Now at this stage you can decide to create a website on Golden Retriever Training and with a little effort you can easily outrank the 3rd place webpage.

If you are still concerned about your ability to outrank the 3rd place webpage you can analyse the backlinks to the page with a brilliant piece of software called SEOElite.

So let’s analyze the backlinks using SEOElite for the 3rd result:

Very interesting! 2 of the 10 links come from .edu domains. Generally links from .edu and .gov domains carry more weight than the .com, .net and .info domains. Also, a lot of the links are not valid anymore and of the ones that are still valid only one links back with the anchor text “Golden Retriever Training” (anchor text refers to the text of the link).

This is just getting better and better! In fact, I was stupid to have used this example as it would have made a brilliant little website for my portfolio!

So there you have it. A quick and easy way to find key phrases with lots of demand but little supply. The next step is to create your website.