I want to talk about building an authority website today, and how you might create one for yourself in order to generate income.

There are many different kinds of websites you might create. For example, you might make a niche website that is relatively small and only targets a single keyword. Or you might create an e-commerce store that focuses on selling products.

But an authority website is a bit different. Instead of exploiting the web for inefficiencies in order to produce income, the authority website model seeks to create income by offering real value to people.

Other types of websites may offer value to the site visitor as well, but an authority website thrives on delivering value. If it does not, then it is essentially just a bunch of spam that will eventually be penalized by the search engines.

Quality content

The main key in building a successful authority website is in delivering quality content.

If you read the A-list blogging crowd then you are probably sick of hearing about “quality content” by now.

But the fact is, your business is not sustainable if it just a bunch of “me-too” content.

For example, if you go to Google and do a search for your keyword, you can probably find hundreds or even thousands of articles about your topic.

Then go to eZine Articles and do another search for your topic. Notice that there are thousands of articles about it. Glance through and read some of them.

Recognize that the content that you create for your website has to be far, far better than everything you just read.

The web is a sea of spam, and several hundred thousand new blogs are created every month. Every month!

So ask yourself: “How am I going to stand out from all of that spam? How am I going to build a brand online, and get people to share my stuff with each other?”

You have to create something amazing. You can do this by creating articles that are:

* Extremely in-depth.
* Very detailed.
* Helpful, unique, insightful.
* Original ideas not found elsewhere on the web.
* Unique presentation that is lacking on the web. For example, video or eBooks in a niche where none currently exist, etc.

Building an authority website means that you have to deliver unique, remarkable, and high quality content.

High volume

Ever hear of “volume blogging?”

The idea is that the title of each article you publish has a lot of power to be able to rank for long tail keyword phrases.

Therefore, one approach to building an authority website is to publish lots of articles that each target a unique long tail phrase.

This is a very powerful and somewhat dangerous approach.

What is the danger?

The danger is that most people allow their quality to drop as they try to push out higher volumes of content. This is only natural, and is very difficult to overcome.

One of the best ways to deal with this is to have a daily quota for yourself.

My recommendation is 3 articles.

This may take a while to build up to. Publish 3 articles on your website in a single day, and evaluate your quality level. Is it still up to your high standards?

If not, you may have to settle for one or two articles per day for a while, until your speed increases.

As you continue to write, your speed and quality will go up over time. This is especially true given that you will be publishing about the same topic over a long period of time.

Keep pushing yourself until you can publish 3 quality articles each and every day.

If you can maintain that quota, that is over 1,000 articles per year.

This will get you to a very healthy online income in a very reasonable amount of time.

The bonus is that if your quality is really high and you have good insight and expertise on your topic, then your income will be very sustainable and durable as well.

Making money with your authority website

There are many different ways to make money from an authority website, but I would urge you to focus on traffic generation for at least the first year.

After that, you can easily test different methods of monetization to see which ones pay off the best.

AdSense is a powerful option because there are so many advertisers bidding for the ad space, and it is extremely easy to implement. It is also fairly easy to optimize.

Once you have run AdSense for a month or so, you can get an idea of what your current traffic is worth. Then you can test other forms of monetization against this, and see which performs the best.

When I created my authority website, it took me about 300 hours to write approximately one million words of content on 1,500 articles.

The website went on to earn up to $2,250 dollars per month in AdSense, and I eventually sold the website for $200,000 dollars.

Thus, my dollar-per-hour earnings when creating that website was somewhere around $900 dollars per hour. Not bad work if you can get it.

And I believe that anyone can achieve those kind of numbers, but very few people actually will, because the probationary period is so long these days (Google will not send you free search engine traffic for several months, because so many new spam websites appear every day).

Building an authority website is a labor of love, but I still believe it is one of the best choices for online income, because the resulting income is relatively stable. Smaller niche sites have less trust and can easily be crushed in algorithm updates.

If you want to learn more about building authority websites, check out Patrick’s website about making passive money online.

Vern’s Note: As you know, if you’re a reader at this site, or my AimforAwesome.com site, I don’t accept guest bloggers that I don’t personally know, respect, and idolize. Patrick is that, and more – he is a friend that has freely given me heaps of help and inspiration over the years. He’s one of the “Good Guys” and there aren’t all that many in his niche! Thanks to Patrick for this guest post – you’re welcome to post again anytime!

Making Money with an Authority Website is a post from: Inc. Answers

There are piles of money to be made online – and many people are just smashing their own personal income records, and setting new ones. There are more millionaires now in the USA than ever before… and, there are more internet-made millionaires than there are those with other backgrounds. (just a guess, not based on facts – don’t quote me.)

You know who is successful online? Those that are consistent. You can have the greatest idea ever… and if your implementation is not consistent… you’re dead in the water… you’re like a starfish – arms open wide for help… and none coming.

Personally, I think right now is the best time in the history of the internet – to SELL SOMETHING. Probably your mindset is a regional one… you see what you can see around you. Your friends, their friends… your family. You.

I see it differently. Almost daily I’m meeting people from Germany, Belgium, Malaysia, China, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, UK, Australia, Canada, and 75 other places. These people are on vacation in Thailand. They have the money and the time to go across the world… or 1000′s of kilometers – and see what makes Thailand so special.

Ebusiness is fueling many of these dreams. I meet many people that have their own online businesses. I meet many more that WANT one, because they are doing well enough at what they’re doing (dead-end job working for someone else) but they want MORE from life. They want to move across the world and live in a place where everything is different. They want to expand their world view.

Internet business – ebusiness – can give you that.

Two months ago I started a project that is now climbing the mountain of success. We’re about 1/4 of the way where we want to be, but, already – we’re killing the niche. My partner and I put about 50 hours each into the project before getting started. Now that we’re started – we’re putting a couple hours each into it daily.

It’s a HIGHLY competitive niche.

We’re still killing it.

The only way this happens is – knowledge, and consistent application of your fingers to the keyboard. There is a BOATLOAD of stuff that needs done – and it’s mostly marketing, once you get started.

Start 3-4 projects – I mean – PUSH yourself to start 3-4 good projects… beat yourself up every day and get the work done. Work hard on them for 6 months, a year – in spare time – whatever you HAVE…

Then – take a look at which one is most promising.

And then clobber that niche… that idea.

You need to find out what works for YOU. Not for me. Not for my partner. Not for Shoemoney or Adam somebody – forgot his name, don’t read much anymore at other sites – too busy.

The only way to find out what works for you – is to DO STUFF. Get started and GO. Find something that works for you – something you have a talent with and you are driven to do.

Otherwise – you’ll be in the same place you are now – next year. And, the year after, and so on, and so on, and so on…

Don’t be in the same place.

GO, GO, GO!!!

State of Online Business? is a post from: Inc. Answers

If I help you considerably, I’ll take a cut of commission as payment for my work. I’ll warn you now, most businesses do not interest me and I have �a real good idea what can and can’t work online.

Do explain it for me in an email and we’ll see if it’s something I’m interested in helping you with.

Cheers!

Online Business Help is a post from: Inc. Answers

We decided, after quite a lot of thought that we should sell all the websites that are taking my time away from what I want to do – write books.

IncAnswers.com is a great domain name, and we were in discussions with an intermediary that had a client willing to pay $20,000 for it in January, 2010. Whether that company is still interested or not – we’ll see, because we’re only asking $6900 for the domain name and all content associated with it.

Sale Includes:

• IncAnswers.com domain
• IncorporationAnswers.com domain
• IncZen.com domain
• All domain content at IncAnswers.com (none at incorporationanswers.com)
• YouTube account (IncAnswers)
• Gmail Account (IncAnswers@gmail.com)
• Twitter Account (IncAnswers)

The content on IncAnswers.com is pretty specifically focused on the internet marketing niche – though it need not be. There is little traffic to speak of – perhaps 20-30 unique visitors per day. This website was created with the idea that I’d have more time to focus on the internet marketing niche, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I just don’t have time.

The price is only $6,900 and the value is predominantly in the domain name itself. The name, IncAnswers.com lends itself to a number of possibilities, as does IncZen.com.

If you would like to buy this domain, bring an offer through Escrow.com. The owner is a Thai girl here in Thailand that owns all of our projects. Once you’ve deposited the funds in escrow.com we will transfer the domain and give you the logins for the other accounts.

We are also selling a couple of other sites you may have an interest in:

AimforAwesome.com – Hawaii focused site

ThaiPulse.com and /blog/ – Thailand expat focused site

IncZen.com, IncAnswers.com, IncorporationAnswers.com for Sale is a post from: Inc. Answers

If you’ve tried to get into the partner program and couldn’t, now there is still a chance you can earn money on your popular videos. Youtube is looking at pageviews and virility of your video and once it meets certain standards will send you a message through Youtube Inbox to ask if you want to monetize your video.

This is a new program and is just rolling out – but you don’t want to miss that message because if you get it you’ll be on your way to making some extra cash.

If you don’t have any videos that are getting high pageviews you should do some searches today and find out what topics you could do videos about – are getting high pageviews. You can sort your search results by highest views…

Can you replicate any of the top videos?

Youtube is another revenue source in the big picture – go get you some if you’re into making video!

Making Cash with YouTube – Yes, You is a post from: Inc. Answers