There are few things more frustrating to us internet marketers than a
website that refuses to grow. You probably know the feeling. You have
a website with a lot of potential – decent traffic, substantial
earnings, a niche with room for growth – but for some reason, you just
can’t seem to increase the money that you’re making from the site.

A couple of years ago, I was in that same boat. My wife and I ran a
recipe site that was totally stuck. We had decent traffic (about 1,000
hits/day) and we were making about $500/month from Adsense. As pleased
as we were with our success, we were also a bit frustrated. We had had
those same traffic and earnings numbers for about 6 months, despite
trying several different ideas and methods to increase them.

After beating our heads against the wall for several months, trying to
sell a couple of affiliate products, we finally decided to write our
own ebook. We released it several months later, and that changed
everything. We saw an increase in earnings from $500/month to over
$10,000/month. We became recognized as one of the top experts in our
niche, and on top of that, we now have a much more stable business
that is not completely dependent on Google.

The Benefits of Selling An Ebook

Why would you take the time and effort to write an ebook for your site
when you can just throw Adsense on there in 5 minutes? I think there
are 4 main benefits.

1) Get Customers – If you have a website that generates money in some
fashion and don’t know who your customers are, you do not have a
business. Customers are the driving force and the lifeblood of any
business. If someone else (Google, Amazon, etc.) controls the people
that make you money, that’s a risky position to be in. Selling your
own product gives you a lot more control over your IM business.

2) Reduce Dependence on Google – I don’t dislike Google by any means,
but I can’t exactly say that I trust them either. Having any
significant portion of my income be dependent on Google (whether
through Adsense, search traffic, or something else) gives me a slight
case of the heebie-jeebies. Selling your own product to your own
customers means that algorithm changes, Panda updates, and Adsense TOS
changes will have less effect on your income.

3) Find Affiliates – We’ve all probably been an affiliate for someone
else’s product at some point – whether it’s Amazon, something you
found on Clickbank, or another product entirely. You can make decent
money selling someone else’s product, but the real money is in having
your own affiliates. Let me tell you, there is nothing more awesome
than having a small army of affiliates who all want to sell as many of
your products as possible.

4) Increase Earnings – Last, but definitely not least, selling your
own product will almost certainly make you more money than Adsense.
Let’s look at some hypothetical numbers:

Your website:
1,000 hits/day
5% CTR on Adsense
$1 average per click

On Adsense alone, this would make you $50/day.

Same website, except now you’re selling an ebook for $20 (which is the
absolute lowest I would ever sell an ebook for):

1,000 hits/day
1% sales rate
$20 per sale

Selling your own product would make you $200/day.

Obviously these numbers can change from niche to niche, but they’re
pretty typical across the board. In fact, the 1% sales rate is
probably a bit low. But as you can see, even with generous numbers,
selling your own product will most likely make you significantly more
money.

Despite the benefits of selling your own product, I don’t want to
suggest that everyone drop whatever they are doing and go write an
ebook for their site. Not every person is at a point where they should
focus on an ebook, and not every website or niche out there is
suitable for one either. Let’s look at what you should know before you
start writing an ebook.

Is Your Niche Suitable?

People often think that only information niches are suitable for
ebooks. While this is partly true – information niches are definitely
great for ebooks – product niches often work very well for info
products too. The question you need to ask yourself is this: “Will the
information on my website completely answer my readers’ questions, or
will they still want some additional help?”

Or to rephrase that, “Is there some sort of value that I can offer my
readers beyond the short articles or product descriptions on my
website?”

Chances are very good that a 400-word article isn’t going to
completely answer your readers’ questions. Chances are very good, if
they are really interested in your topic, that they are going to want
more information. Let’s look at some examples.

Information Niche:

Let’s say you have an article on your website about how you lost 20
pounds. You only have 400 words to talk about the subject, so you
mainly focus on the food that you ate. What are some questions that
your readers might have even after reading your article?

What foods did you avoid?
How hard was it to stay on the diet?
Did you ever break down and cheat?
How long did it take to see results?
Were the meals you ate difficult to cook?
Were the ingredients expensive?
Did you count calories?
Did you do any exercise on the diet?

And that’s just off the top of my head. I could come up with 20 or 30
more with a few minutes to think about it.

Product Niche:

So now let’s say that you have website where you sell a product – in
this case, digital cameras. What questions will people have before,
during, and after the buying process?

What sort of camera should I buy?
What camera is the best for sports photos (kids, landscapes, up-close
details, video, etc.)?
What’s the best all-around camera I can get for $500?
What do all of these buttons and knobs on my camera do? (This could be
an entire book by itself!)
How do I take better photos of sports, kids, landscapes, etc?
I took a picture of X and had this problem. How do I fix that?

And on and on. The better you know your niche, the more questions
you’ll be able to come up with. But as you can see there is a need for
expert guidance and help in just about any niche. Which brings me to
my next point.

Can You Become An Expert In Your Niche?

In order to help people solve the problems and answer the questions
they have about your topic, you are going to have to become an expert.
Readers don’t like to think they are wasting their time. They only
want to give their attention to people they think can genuinely help
them with their problems, questions, and issues.

The good news is that experts are made, not born. Jillian Michaels is
pretty well known in the health and fitness niche, and most people
would consider her to be an expert on losing weight and getting in
shape. But was she born in a spandex jumpsuit doing aerobics with her
own little baby dumbbells? Of course not. Over the course of her
career, she learned as much as she could about fitness, and then she
put it into practice.

If you want to turn your website into a business, you need to become
an expert in your niche. Here are three crucial elements of being an
expert.

1) Enjoy what you do. If you picked the niche for your website simply
because there were a lot of juicy looking keywords, and now you can’t
possibly bear to write another article about acetylene torches,
conservatory blinds, or acai berry juice, you need to find a new
niche.

Here’s the thing. Your readers are intuitive, and they can tell if you
don’t like your topic. If you don’t like your topic, they’ll wonder,
why did you start a website about it? And more to the point, if you
don’t like your topic, how are you ever going to become an expert on
it?

Besides, who wants to run a business that they hate? Not me.

2) Personal experience is key. You cannot research your topic online
and be done with it. People can spot that sort of fakery a mile away.
You absolutely must try out your topic personally.

If you run a personal finance site, you have to actually pay off your
debt, stick to a budget, or invest some of your money in an IRA. If
you run a health and fitness site, you need to actually lose weight,
gain muscle, eat a healthy diet, or workout every day. If you can’t or
won’t commit to doing the things you’re writing about, you need to
find a new niche.

This doesn’t mean that you have to have accomplished everything that
you write about. If you want to write about getting out of debt, that
doesn’t mean that you have to be debt-free. But it does mean that you
have to be actively paying off your debt, sticking to a budget, and
trying out different strategies to see what actually works.

3) Never stop learning. Years ago I was in financial sales, and I had
the great privilege of working with some people who were world-class
experts at selling. One of the common traits that I noticed in just
about all of them was their attitude toward learning new things. These
people had been in sales for years, and could sell ice to Eskimos, but
they never thought they knew it all. They were always trying to learn
new things, try out new ideas, and find new ways to sell better.

You need to have the same attitude towards your niche. You’re never
going to know everything (and that doesn’t need to be your goal), but
don’t ever stop learning. There is always something more you can learn
to help your readers.

Is Your Website Suitable?

Now that you have a better idea of whether your niche is suitable for
an ebook (and, to look at it another way, whether you are suitable for
your niche), let’s talk about the two most important things that you
to accomplish with your website.

1) Authenticity. First, and most important, you have to speak with a
consistent and coherent voice. In other words, you need to be
authentic. If you have a content-farm type website, with tons of
mediocre and conflicting content, you are going to have a hard time
appearing authentic to your readers. If you are trying to present
yourself as an expert but are doing all of your research online, your
readers are going to figure this out.

I used to be an avid reader of Steve Pavlina’s blog. If you’re not
familiar with him he is a personal development blogger, and he has
made some pretty incredible claims over the years, including
graduating from college in only 3 semesters, adapting to a polyphasic
sleep schedule, and making over $40,000 per month from his blog. While
I might question the wisdom of some of his choices, I never once
thought for a second that he was lying about anything that he claimed.

Why not? Because everything that he wrote had the ring of authenticity
to it. Your readers are going to be intuitive as well. Don’t make
claims that aren’t true, don’t make yourself out to be something that
you’re not, and if you say you’re going to do something, make sure to
do it. It’s that simple.

2) Quality content. At the risk of sounding like one of the blogging
gurus, let me say that the content you’re putting on your website has
to be high quality. Let’s not kid around. You know whether the content
you’re producing is good enough to actually help people, or whether
you’re just throwing it up to get some Adsense clicks.

Think about it this way: Is the article you’re about to publish good
enough to get some organic links from other writers in your niche? If
not, go back and do it over.

What’s the bottom line here? If I were going to boil everything that
I’ve just said down to one key point, it would be this: Everything
about your website (the design, the content, the niche, even your
photo and About page) needs to make people trust you.

That’s what it comes down to. If you’re going to turn your website
into a business, people need to trust that you can actually help them
lose weight, get out of debt, take better photographs, train for a
marathon, etc. First they are going to trust you with their time by
reading your content. Then they might trust you with their email
address. Then maybe they’ll trust you with their money – which, I have
to say, is a pretty awesome feeling.

So that’s where you need to start if you think your website might
benefit from an ebook. In my next column, I’ll talk more about when to
write an ebook and how to get started.

——————————

If you would like to learn more about how to turn a website into a profitable, sustainable business, visit John and Mary Frances Pickett at www.theebookebook.com. John is currently writing The Ebook Ebook which will teach you how to build an audience, create a fantastic product (like an ebook, for instance), sell it successfully, and run your business without having to spend all of your time on it. Until The Ebook Ebook is complete, John will be blogging about these same topics on his site. You can sign up for his email list and get all of his updates sent to you for free.

As many of you know, I am far from being an apt Internet Marketer. My forte is actually software design. So, while this post won’t make you rich, you may get a little bit of knowledge about how to utilize some of the latest and greatest keyword tools to hit the market.

What is “Google Autocomplete?”

Go ahead and follow this link for Google’s official description of their Autocomplete function. But, you’re probably already quite familiar with it. You notice its output as you casually type letters into the Google search box. While you do so, a fairly complicated process is working behind the scenes. For each letter you type, requests are being exchanged between your desktop and a Google server. The incoming packet of information contains an array of keywords which reflect Google’s attempt to “guess” what search phrase you are about to type next.

So why is “Autocomplete” useful to us?

The data returned via Google Autocomplete is extremely useful for several reasons.

• First, the returned keywords are often narrowly descriptive of the exact expression that you are currently typing. Meaning you are able to get a flurry of related keywords that are all highly congruous with your seed keyword phrase. Hence, achieving a resultant keyword set that is exceptionally focused. Yielding such an “on-target” result via other means (like the free Google Keyword Tool) is often problematic and privy to “word noise.”
• Second, the Google Autocomplete database is much bigger than the Google Keyword Tool database. Hence, allowing for the harvesting of a more expansive keyword set.
• Third, the algorithm by which the Autocomplete tool attempts to determine which keywords you seek, is quite different than the one employed by the Google Keyword Tool. The Keyword Tool is great. But the method by which it renders suggestions is often much more strident than that of Google Autocomplete. This is perhaps because the GKT was not really invented for organic search marketers, but rather for PPC marketers. So one’s attempt to garner Long Tail keywords via the old tool is often a bit tricky.
• Fourth, when we use Autocomplete, we are able to take advantage of Google’s sophisticated indexing technology–and harvest thousands of keywords in seconds. If you were to perform a similar process on a keyword set that resided on your own hard drive, for example, the same task would take a much longer amount of time. Used properly, the Autocomplete method is faster than virtually any keyword acquisition method out there.

What is “Autocomplete Scraping?”

In light of the above-mentioned reasons, it is in our interest to familiarize ourselves with the methods by which we may extract as many keywords out of Autocomplete as possible.

And that is where an Autocomplete Scraper comes in.

A “scraper” is simply a program that pretends it’s a person — typing keywords into the Google search box in a rapid fashion. And, saving the resultant keyword phrases in a text file or database.

When this process is done right, it becomes possible for the user to harvest thousands of rich keyword phrases in minutes.

There are hundreds of Autocomplete scrapers out there.

Simply surf on over to Soovle.com and type the keyword “dog training” to get an idea of how many scrapers there are in the world.

Many programs and websites feature similar functions. And, if this were your typical IM blog, then I might just list a few of them here, and head out for lunch.

But this is The Keyword Academy, so chances are; you’re looking for a post with a bit more depth to it.

And that is where the now infamous “Wild Card Scraping” technique comes in.

What is “Wild Card Scraping?”

As far as I know, there are only two software applications in the world that do “Wild Card Scraping.”

• My own software – at Keyword Researcher.org
• And, TKA’s Niche Refinery – at Niche Refinery.com

So, if you’re looking for this sort of Autocomplete scraping, you’ve come to the right place.

To understand what Wild Card Scraping is, you might want to start off by watching the first half of my YouTube video here.

But if you’d like to try it yourself, go to Google and type in a “question” phrase like:

Is X safe for children?

Then, delete the X and start typing various letters like A, B, C, etc. You’ll notice that Google’s drop-down box is populated with various “suggestions” as you type. This is important. Because there is gold in this little white box.

Google’s suggestions are reflective of the keyword phrase that you just typed in.

Everyone knows that.

But the important part is this:

The suggestions are also reflective of the “wild card” letter. (i.e. the text at the position around which the keyword phrase is currently “pivoting.”)

This is the novel little insight that makes Wild Card Scraping so valuable. Specifically, it allows you to ask Google to “fill in the blank” of any partial keyword phrase that you request.

Notice, in the above example, we can use our Wild Card (our asterisk *), and craft the following expression:

Is * safe for children?

Then, after a mere 10 seconds of scraping, we get a list like this:

• is acetaminophen safe for children
• is activia yogurt safe for children
• is acyclovir safe for children
• is adderall safe for children
• is advil safe for children
• is albuterol safe for children
• is aloe vera juice safe for children
• is ambien safe for children
• is an electric blanket safe for children
• is apple cider vinegar safe for children
• is apple juice safe for children
• is aspartame safe for children
• is aspirin safe for children
• is azithromycin safe for children
• is b12 safe for children
• is baby aspirin safe for children
• is benadryl safe for children
• is benadryl safe for children under 6
• is biotin safe for children
• is bitter apple safe for children
• is bonine safe for children
• is borax safe for children
• is boric acid safe for children
• is buffered aspirin safe for children
• is camphor safe for children
• is chalk safe for children
• is chamomile tea safe for children
• is chiropractic care safe for children
• is cipro safe for children
• is clindamycin safe for children
• is clonidine safe for children
• is colace safe for children
• is colloidal silver safe for children
• is concerta safe for children
• is danactive safe for children
• is deet safe for children
• is denorex safe for children
• is depakote safe for children
• is dextromethorphan safe for children
• is dimetapp safe for children
• is diphenhydramine safe for children
• is dmae safe for children
• is doxycycline safe for children
• is echinacea safe for children
• is eggnog safe for children
• is elderberry safe for children
• is epsom salt safe for children
• is eucalyptus safe for children
• is eva safe for children
• is evening primrose oil safe for children
• is facebook safe for children
• is facebook safe for children under 13
• is flagyl safe for children
• is flame resistant clothing safe for children
• is flaxseed safe for children
• is flu vaccine safe for children
• is fluoride safe for children
• is gaba safe for children
• is gas x safe for children
• is gatorade safe for children
• is general anesthesia safe for children
• is ginkgo biloba safe for children
• is ginseng safe for children
• is green tea safe for children
• is guaifenesin safe for children
• is gymnastics safe for children
• is homeopathy safe for children
• is honey safe for children
• is horseback riding safe for children
• is hypnosis safe for children
• is ibuprofen safe for children
• is kava safe for children
• is klonopin safe for children
• is krill oil safe for children
• is lactulose safe for children
• is lamisil cream safe for children
• is lamisil safe for children
• is laser hair removal safe for children
• is laughing gas safe for children
• is lexapro safe for children
• is lithium safe for children
• is lotrimin safe for children
• is l-theanine safe for children
• is lysine safe for children
• is magnesium safe for children
• is mastic gum safe for children
• is mavala stop safe for children
• is melatonin safe for children
• is melatonin safe for children 2011
• is melatonin safe for young children
• is memory foam safe for children
• is metamucil safe for children
• is miralax safe for children
• is monistat safe for children
• is mri safe for children
• is mucinex safe for children
• is nac safe for children
• is nail polish safe for children
• is naproxen safe for children
• is nasonex safe for children
• is neem oil safe for children
• is nexium safe for children
• is nitrous oxide safe for children
• is nyquil safe for children
• is oil of oregano safe for children
• is olive leaf extract safe for children
• is omega 3 safe for children
• is ondansetron safe for children
• is peppermint essential oil safe for children
• is peppermint oil safe for children
• is pepto bismol safe for children
• is permethrin safe for children
• is phenylalanine safe for children
• is phenylephrine safe for children
• is prednisolone safe for children
• is pressure treated wood safe for children
• is prevacid safe for children
• is prozac safe for children
• is pulmicort safe for children
• is pvc safe for children
• is quercetin safe for children
• is quinine safe for children
• is qvar safe for children
• is raw honey safe for children
• is raw milk safe for children
• is red bull safe for children
• is royal jelly safe for children
• is rum cake safe for children
• is sam-e safe for children
• is scotchguard safe for children
• is sensa safe for children
• is soy milk safe for children
• is soy safe for children
• is st. john’s wort safe for children
• is stevia safe for children
• is strattera safe for children
• is sucralose safe for children
• is sudafed safe for children
• is tea safe for children
• is tea tree oil safe for children
• is teeth whitening safe for children
• is terminix safe for children
• is the flu jab safe for children
• is the flu shot safe for children
• is the flu vaccine safe for children
• is the internet safe for children
• is triaminic safe for children
• is tums safe for children
• is turmeric safe for children
• is tylenol safe for children
• is ural safe for children
• is vaccination safe for children
• is vagisil safe for children
• is valerian root safe for children
• is versed safe for children
• is vicks safe for children
• is vicks vaporub safe for children
• is vigamox safe for children
• is vodka sauce safe for children
• is whey protein safe for children
• is wifi safe for children
• is wireless safe for children
• is wormwood safe for children
• is xanax safe for children
• is xbox live safe for children
• is xopenex safe for children
• is xylitol safe for children
• is yakult safe for children
• is yerba mate safe for children
• is yoga safe for children
• is zantac safe for children
• is zicam safe for children
• is zinc safe for children

If you were in the “child care” niche, this could be quite a valuable list. And, it would be very difficult to harvest keywords like this without the above-mentioned technology.

Maintaining a “Scraper Swipe File” for your niche

In copywriting, a Swipe File is a collection of “tried and true” advertising sales letters. Copywriters keep these on hand because it is much easier to start a new project when you have an existing template of an already-successful project.

When you do asterisk-based scraping, you might find yourself in the same pickle. As it is easy to forget which keyword phrases will result in a nice stream of moneyed keywords. Hence, in each niche that you happen to be in, you’d probably want to maintain a little Swipe File–a text file in which you make a note about the phrases that are working for you.

Long before the invention of my tool “Keyword Researcher,” the good folks over at The Pond created a thread in which they listed several “keyword arrangements” that produced valuable organic search traffic.

A while back, I combined their ideas with my own Swipe File, and put the text into “asterisk-friendly” syntax. The Keyword Researcher software now features a derivative of this list in the application itself. But to get you started making your own Swipe File, you might consider using the below list of ideas. (Simply replace the word “camera(s)” with the product or service that your own website features.)

Swipe File Ideas

Questions

• Where to buy * cameras
• Does a camera *
• Do cameras *
• Why do cameras *
• Is * camera
• Are cameras *
• Are * for cameras
• Where * camera
• What * my camera
• Who sells * cameras

The preposition “for”

• * for a camera
• Cameras for *
• Camera * for

How

• How do I get camera *
• How * my cameras
• How does a camera *
• How * a camera
• How * on my camera

The Best

• Best * camera
• Top camera *
• Top 10 camera *

Regions

• Where to buy * cameras
• Camera store in *
• san diego camera *

Buy Words

• Buy camera * online
• Buy * cameras
• * cameras to buy
• Buy camera *
• Buy * cameras

Time

• 2011 camera *
• 2012 camera *
• camera * 2012
• best * camera 2012
• vintage camera *

Product Comparisons and Reviews

• Compare camera *
• Compare prices for *
• Best camera reviews of *
• Is Nikon better than *
• Compare Nikon and *
• best priced camera for *
• Nikon * Canon
• * camera reviews
• camera * compare prices
• Price compare * cameras
• Price comparisons * for cameras
• Price comparisons of * camera

Coupons and Promotional Codes

• * cameras for sale
• Best price for * cameras
• cheapest camera *
• Bargain * cameras
• Deals for * cameras
• camera * coupon
• discount camera * code
• camera * promo code
• Best * cameras
• cheap camera *
• buy camera * cheap
• The cheapest camera * online
• * camera sale

Deal-seekers and Shoppers

• low cost camera *
• low price camera *
• Who sells camera * cheap
• Who sells camera * the cheapest
• Discount camera *
• Discounted camera *
• Camera * for sale
• camera * for sale online
• Cheap camera * online
• cheapest camera * online
• * camera Best price
• Affordable camera *
• Get cheap camera *
• cheapest * camera

Shoppers with Monetary Restraints

• camera * under 100
• camera * under 500
• camera * under 1000
• cameras for under *
• best camera under *
• cheapest camera under *

People Looking for Online Merchants

• camera * online
• Online * camera
• camera * Amazon

Get Started Scraping

Hopefully, that’s enough to get you started.

But we’ve only scratched the surface of scraper-based keyword research. There are several other methods to toy with. Lately, my personal favorite being the harvesting of novel keywords from the Google Related Searches page (which was the most recent addition to Keyword Researcher).

Another recent favorite: Using Wild Card Scraping with the GoDaddy Bulk Domain Name Checker, to find available domain names. Which is all covered in this YouTube video here.

And then there’s “deep scraping.” Which involves placing two characters where the asterisk resides (instead of one). Hence having the effect of crafting keyword phrases in the form of:

• Is aa safe for Children?
• Is ab safe for Children?
• Is ac safe for Children?
• … (all the way up to) …
• Is zx safe for Children?
• Is zy safe for Children?
• Is zz safe for Children?

When used correctly, and for very active keyword phrases, this method can quadruple the number of keywords you get. And, as far as I know, Keyword Researcher is the only tool that does it.

Now What?

Current Keyword Academy members can head over to Niche Refinery and start plugging the above-discussed expressions into the Suggest tool. Once you get a feel for Wild Card keyword searching, you’ll probably wonder how you ever lived without it!

If you’re just getting started in Internet Marketing, you should be able to find more than enough keywords to keep you busy. But if you need even more, you may consider upgrading to my tool–Keyword Researcher. Below is a special TKA coupon to save you a few bucks. If you’re not sure, just download the free trial and see if you like it.

TKA Coupon: Click Here to receive $8 dollars off of Keyword Researcher

(Note that version 4 is due out soon! And, will feature Bing Scraping! Along with a few other surprises.)

If you have any questions contact me here!

Thanks for reading!

If you’ve heard of satellite sites at all, you most likely associate it with some crude link wheel scheme, or with duplicate content. We’re going to be looking at something quite a bit different in this article.

Used properly, satellite sites can enable you to accomplish a number of things, without running afoul of search engine spam filters, or producing useless cloned websites that add nothing to the internet:

• re-purpose / re-use old content and save some writing time or money
• create valuable properties for linkbuilding
• create targeted traffic funnels back to your main site
• enable the use of less brandable EMDs (exact match domain names) for easier ranking
• provide more complete coverage of your niche
• create additional revenue streams
• if your main site gets slapped, you have another property in the niche that you can turn your energies towards.

In addition to the above, when you build out a system like this, you can’t help but become a real subject matter expert. You’ll find that as you create your empire, the content comes easier and easier, and you can write some posts off the top of your head.

Why not Web 2.0?

At this point, some of you are already wondering why you don’t just put up a bunch of Squidoo lenses or similar. You can do that. In fact, for some of the site types I am going to be discussing it may be the best way to go for your niche. But if it is at all possible, I recommend using your own properties for this because:

• Web 2.0 properties can be fickle in terms of their own policies. You may find that you have put a lot of time into someone else’s site – only to have them change their system, and give you a smaller piece of the pie.
• They can get slapped by Google just like any other site
• You have no control over your own content
• Web 2.0 properties usually take a cut of whatever revenue your content generates
• Sometimes your Web 2.0 property will outrank your main site, at least in the beginning. This may or may not be an issue depending on your point of view.

Having said the above, I recognize that there can be situations where it just makes more sense to use a Web 2.0 property. Maybe cash is hard to come by, or the particular “niche of a niche” you have in mind simply doesn’t justify a stand-alone site.

Planetary Systems

The example below will be based on a product, because product sales is what I do. If you have a different type of site, say advice or news, I think you’ll be able to use most of these techniques described in your niche as well. If you’re an Amazon affiliate, you’re gonna love this…

Brand Expansion

In this system, you create properties based on brands. The nice thing here is that each brand has its own products, special features manuals, warranties, etc. Check out the image below:

Please don’t take the diagram as meaning that the satellite sites all link back to the main site or vice versa. That’s not the case at all. Of course, that is one possible use for a satellite site – but not the only one. There’s no reason you can’t have a big treadmill site and a Bowflex treadmill site that stand completely independent of each other. The nice thing with that technique is that for a search for “Bowflex Treadmill” you could get two spots in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Page).

I am sure this will not be news to more experienced readers, but if you are running your Bowflex and your Horizon sites as AdSense sites, you do not want to link them together. More cautious marketers may not even link them back to the main site.

When you are building out a brand system like this one, take into account the full product line. For instance, I wouldn’t name my Bowflex site “Treadmill Central” or similar, for the simple reason that Bowflex makes a lot more than treadmills.

Maybe our little Bowflex site starts ranking pretty well. It would be nice to add in some weight benches and adjustable dumbbells to expand the site. In that case, “FitnessDemon” might make more sense.

Sub Niches

Every site of any size can be broken down into sub-niches. Most of the time yours will be reflected in your site categories, but sometimes they will be suggested by a specific post or even a reader’s comment. Our treadmill site could generate product sub-niches like these:

Here we can see just some of the available sub-niches for our site. Each of these can be a site of its own, with unique content. I myself would love to see the Treadmill Desk and High-End Treadmill sites. The best ones now have everything but a built-in hot tub.

Again, we see the opportunity for tightly themed sites that can rank on their own terms. In this case, I would not be surprised to see some of the satellite site outrank the main site for some more general terms. I also believe they would also be more likely to attract links than a general treadmill site.

Related products

Not everything about treadmills is a treadmill. People use all kinds of things with their treadmills, and these provide an opportunity to grow your network as well.

Here we see our treadmill site owner expanding into new and more loosely related areas. It will occur to you that these sites could also be used to bolster sites besides our treadmill site. Many of these niches could support general fitness related or health sites as well.

Monetization

Obviously, these sites need to pay for themselves, and I don’t just mean the hosting fees. You have to be compensated for the time and trouble it takes to set them up. So how do we go about it?
If your main site is monetized as an affiliate or e-commerce site, you can always do the same thing for these. AdSense is more problematic.

Regardless of how you monetize these sites, I do have a recommendation that will help to grow your income and the strength of your network over time with little effort:

1. Make sure you have the appropriate channels set up so that you can track what income is being generated by these satellite sites.
2. Without fail, use that money to expand the sites and promote them.
3. In the beginning, you will want to seed your “satellite fund” if you can. It will get them up and earning more quickly.

The idea here is that these are not your main sites – so long as they generate enough cash to cover their own promotion and content creation, you are winning. The older they get, the larger they get, the more links they have, the more money they make, and the better backlinks they can provide.

E-commerce

I love this. I am already doing this for most of my e-commerce sites, and it works. The satellite sites aren’t bringing in a lot yet, but they more than pay for themselves, and the backlinks don’t hurt.

The nice thing here is that you will already have a deal set up with some suppliers, and you have an instant set of content to re-write and re-use. Your competition will generate content for you as well – in fact, Competition Is Good.

E-commerce sites have instant credibility as well, and easily pass a manual site review should Google come calling.

Affiliate Sites

Same thing – your deal is in place, so you can rinse and repeat.

Don’t be afraid to combine networks to fully cover your sub-niches, and go ahead and include products you don’t have a deal for. It won’t kill you to link out to someone else’s site. I promise. Your goal is to cover the niche.

When you do link out to someone else to give your visitor more information, use the largest most authoritative site you can find that is not your direct competition.

AdSense

Be careful. Don’t link your satellite sites to each other. Absolutely do not create a “ring” or other discernible pattern linking back to your main site.

In Conclusion

Once you have a site making money, double down! Use your satellite sites to increase your exposure in the SERPS, expand your customer base, and generate another income stream.

You already have the keyword research done, you know what it takes to rank, you are familiar with the subject matter – this is how you leverage the work you’ve already done to generate more money with less effort.

So what if HighEndtreadmills.com is only generating $75.00 per month? It takes up a spot in the SERPS, maybe gives you a relevant backlink, pays for itself – and if you plow the earnings back into it, it can become a nice little income stream all its own.
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Dave Huckabay has been operating e-commerce websites since 1996, and has sold millions of dollars worth of product online. Keyword Academy members have access to Dave’s experience through our private forum.

Did you find this article useful? For much more, including complete chapters on competition and content creation, along with product selection, sourcing, and pricing, take a look at The Grabapple Guide to E-commerce.

The idea is this:

Take about 10 of your ultra premium articles, your absolute best stuff on your website, and throw about 5 dollars worth of paid Stumbleupon traffic at each one. (Premium content is the foundation of our original blogging experiment).

Stumbleupon traffic is not perfect by any means, but it is fairly cheap (10 cents per visitor) and it allows for quick and dirty testing, which is really what we are after here.

We want to use paid traffic as a way to run quick experiments and find out which is the best performing piece of content.

I recently did this experiment on my own website. Take a look at this picture below that reports on paid versus “free stumbles.” I tested about 3 different articles across these 6 days:

Each day I promoted a single article with 50 paid Stumbles (5 dollars).

On the first two days, the article that I was promoting only received two free stumbles each day.

But look at the next couple of days. One of them received 90 free Stumbles, and another received 164 free Stumbles.

Thus, some of my articles that I was promoting that week performed better than others. The plan is to promote about 10 more pieces of “premium content” in this manner, and see which piece of content gets the most free Stumbles, and thus had the most “likes.”

Once the winner is established, I will likely throw some more traffic at that particular article (maybe 500 visits or so), and do some other unique things to share and promote it.

Why all the testing and fuss over which piece of content is most successful?

Because I am trying to pull in organic links. Real links. And create real word-of-mouth marketing.

Anyone can send paid traffic to a landing page. However, by using this technique, you can test various articles and find out which one is getting the best response.

If you spend 50 dollars on testing and then spend another 50 dollars sending paid traffic to the winning article, will it be worth it?

Maybe, maybe not. But if you push yourself to create a variety of amazing content then I would bet that you will net at least one or two permanent, organic links out of the deal.

And if not, you are still learning something (hopefully). Your testing will still reveal the piece of content that was the most “liked.”

At this point, you could create 5 new articles for your website, all variations on that “winning” article, and try to make them more useful, remarkable, and link-worthy.

Rinse and repeat.

Is paid traffic part of the TKA curriculum? No it’s not. But this is one method of “social promotion” that does not rely on cheap or manufactured links. Instead, it relies on creating remarkably good content. If you create an article and drive 500 targeted visitors to it and you don’t get a decent response, the answer is not more traffic. The answer is design better content. The tactics keep changing (and always will), but the foundation of your promotional strategy and link building should be content-based, not “manufacture as many cheap links as possible.”

Paid Stumble traffic is just one example out of many. There are a million other tactics out there. While the individual tactics may change, consider using an overall strategy that is sustainable in the long run, one that draws in real world links based on worthy content.

For my own experiment, I will test several more articles over the next two weeks, then hammer the “winning article” with 500 visits. At that time I will report the results of that experiment. Stay tuned……

There is a saying about success in business (I’m paraphrasing a bit here):

“One time lucky, second time–you might actually know what you are doing!”

I recently experienced some huge success with my supersite when I sold it off for a large sum of money. My next internet marketing experiment is going to determine whether I was lucky or not.

In order to duplicate my success I am converting a niche website that I own into a supersite. I’ll be doing this using TKA principles and methods that are taught in the core lessons, with a few advanced tips thrown in along the way.

I am not revealing the URL of this website experiment publicly, but I will post it later on in the forum (on the “inside” of The Keyword Academy). The fact is, this is not a “quick and dirty” kind of blogging experiment. The results will take several months to become apparent, but the potential payoff is enormous. Slow and steady wins the race. This is about building a sustainable business, not a quick money grab.

So this blogging experiment is to turn a niche site that currently earns less than $50/month into a full time earner.

Let’s start with content planning. My philosophy has always been to gear this towards long term organic link building.

I don’t like to sound like an A-list blogger, but the absolute core of this effort starts with outstanding content.

Take a single article and refine it until it is:

* Detailed and insightful.
* Original with unique ideas presented.
* Actually helpful to your core audience.
* Longer rather than shorter articles (I generally shoot for one to three thousand words).

Do all of that, and make a truly outstanding article.

Now, do it again. I would recommend that you slowly and deliberately build up about 15 such “ultra premium articles.”

What does your sidebar look like on your website? In my opinion, it should have almost nothing but links to articles like the one I just described. Your article titles should have serious “grab-ability” and make big promises with reader benefits.

Example: “Learn to Develop a Full Time Income Stream from Internet Marketing”
Example: “How to Create Amazing Content that Sells Itself and Gets Linked to Often”

But you can’t just make hollow promises, of course. The articles have to be really good. Deliver on your headline. If you can, over deliver on it.

Every person who visits your website will see nothing but premium resource posts and link bait style articles in the sidebar. The idea is to focus on gaining organic links, rather than building a readership. You don’t want fans, necessarily. You want link juice.

It is much more difficult to build up real, organic link juice than it is to build an audience or a readership. However, the payoff is much greater as well. If you plan your supersite correctly and focus on getting strong links, building a readership becomes a trivial afterthought later on.

For example, once you are averaging several thousand search engine visitors per day, you have quite a bit of flexibility as to what you will do with that traffic. You can monetize it aggressively, convert it into readers and subscribers, build a list with it, and so on.

But without the link juice and the recurring search engine traffic, your website will not have a source of fresh eyeballs on it. Without search traffic, even if you build a small readership, getting future traffic will remain a problem.

This is why you should develop your website around the idea that you want long term, organic links flowing in. If your content is not strong enough to do that, you should take a step back and refine your strategy:

1) Plan your supersite with premium content in mind, such that it can pull in long term links on its own.
2) Display that premium content prominently to all site visitors (probably in your sidebar). Focus on earning links.

Stay tuned for the next part of this blogging experiment, where I’ll dive into the promotional end of things.

The only thing stopping you from creating words out of thin air is that your fingers are not moving yet on the keyboard.

My best articles that I have published on the web are almost never what I would say where my most inspired articles.

You CAN force your brain to create on demand. This can be done using limitations, deadlines, and incentives.

For example, sit down at your computer and mandate:

“I cannot get up from this chair for any reason until I have produced my next 3 article titles, and published the articles that go with them on my websites.”

If you are interested in ever eating, sleeping, or using the bathroom again, then your brain will get to work very quickly at this point.

Part of the problem at times can be perfectionism. We want to write a truly awesome article, or we want it to be just perfect.

Don’t bother with that! Just start writing. Grab your keyword list and start cranking out material. If you do this every single day for a year straight, then guess what? Some of your stuff that you publish will be awesome. Some of it, not so much.

Give yourself permission to create content, and let it stand on its own. If you are knowledgeable about your topic then none of it should be too terrible.

The goal of course is always to maintain a certain level of quality with our websites, but that does not mean that everything that you publish has to feel like one of your best works. By definition, it never could.

Saying that you don’t want to write because “you are just not feeling creative” is a terrible excuse.

Creativity creates itself.

Creativity flows from action.

Start moving your fingers on the keyboard and content will come into existence. Don’t judge the quality of it until you have pounded the keys for 20 or 30 minutes. Don’t beat yourself up because you don’t feel the “flow” right now.

Creativity will come to those who take action. Move your fingers on the keyboard.

Stop judging your output so harshly and give yourself permission to start creating.

If you do not want to write, then blame it on laziness. Your brain will be creative if you tell it to be. Your brain will be creative if you sit down and start typing and impose some deadlines on yourself.

Do not fall into the trap of believing that your creativity is temporarily gone, so you cannot write anything today. You have mistaken that state of mind for laziness!

Now, go forth and create!

From time to time, I’m asked about how it is that I’m able to manage my Internet marketing business while holding down a full time job and raising a family. Some time ago, I addressed this question in the TKA private forum. I’ve received feedback from several members about how that post was quite helpful to them so I thought that it would be worthwhile to revisit the matter today.

It’s my hope that this post will help some of you who may be struggling to find the time to spend growing your online businesses, develop work habits that will help you achieve your goals.

Regardless of Who You Are, Everyone Faces Time Management Challenges

One thing that many of us struggle with is finding the time to sit down at our computers and write articles or promote our websites on a consistent basis. Whether you have a lot of free time or you have very little, the chances are high that you could make better use of your time if you employ a couple of strategies that I’ll talk about today.

The two main issues that I’ll be writing about today are having good work flow systems in place and developing the self-discipline to manage your time effectively.

The Importance of Developing Good Work Flow Systems

Without good systems in place, I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near the work accomplished that I do. The tasks that many of us here at The Keyword Academy do are very similar. We do keyword research, we build websites, we write content for these websites, and we promote them through either link building or other website promotion strategies.

While the tasks are the same, some members are able to perform these tasks on a much larger scale than others. Oftentimes, it’s even the people who have less time to actually sit down at the computer who get more work accomplished.

For me, the reason I’m able to produce a massive amount of content with limited time is because I have developed efficient systems that help me to make the best use of my limited time. Many of us feel like we are working as efficiently as possible but you would be surprised how taking a good hard look at your workflow can make you even more efficient.

Because much of what we do tends to be quite repetitive, anything we can do to streamline our daily workflow will result in us being able to get more done in the same amount of time.

What I like to do is make a flow chart that shows every step that goes into performing a certain task. Then I ask myself two questions. The first is, “are all of these steps really necessary?” and the second is, “how can I perform each of these steps faster with less effort?”

Eliminate Low Value Tasks and Focus On High Value Tasks

When I first got started in this business, I spent a lot of time in front of my computer doing what I considered to be working. Now that I’ve been at this a while, I realize that most of my time was being spent on low value tasks that simply occupied my time and made me feel like I was working hard.

There’s no question that I was putting the time in but I hadn’t yet learned the importance of identifying low value tasks and eliminating them out of my daily workflow.

Let me give you an example of what my days were like back then.

• The first thing I would do was check my many email accounts and respond to any emails that I thought I needed to respond to.
• Then I would go to the forums to see if anyone had replied to any of my posts and find out what the latest forum chatter was.
• Then I would pop in at a number of other MMO blogs and forums that I was in the habit of visiting each day.
• Lastly, I would spend whatever time I had remaining to write some articles for my websites as well as some articles to use for backlinking.

One day when I was feeling really frustrated because I wasn’t getting enough work done, I took a much closer look at my work patterns and asked myself some tough questions. I was putting a lot of hours in but I rarely had much to show for my time. You might say that I was lying to myself by convincing myself that I was actually working when, in reality, all I was doing was wasting time.

What I was actually doing was spending 50% or more of my efforts on tasks that wouldn’t have any impact on the growth of my business whatsoever. This is when I first sat down and analyzed my work habits to identify the low value tasks that could be culled out of my daily workflow.

After I made the list, I was blown away when I realized how inefficient I was with my time. Here are some examples of tasks that I thought were so important at the time.

• Low value task: I was keeping detailed spreadsheets to record every link that I had ever built along with what I considered to be important details about each link. Solution – After several months of doing this, I had accumulated thousands of entries in my spreadsheet but I realized that not once had I ever needed that data. I immediately cut this low value task out of my workflow and I’ve never looked back.
• Low value task: My systems were very linear and inefficient. I would usually write an article. Then I would paste the article into Post Runner, insert the links, record information about my links, and then I would write another article. Solution – By embracing the power that comes from working in batches, I became much more efficient with my time. The amount of content I was able to produce as well as the number of backlinks I was creating went through the roof!
• Low value task: When I actually found time to work, I often wasted a lot of it by thinking about what it was that I would actually do that day. It wasn’t uncommon for me to run out of time before I actually got any productive work done. Solution – I learned the value of planning my work out far in advance. Once every couple of weeks, I sit down for a planning session and write down what I want to accomplish in the next two weeks. Then I make a list of tasks that I’ll need to get done if I’m going to be able to complete everything on my list. Whenever I have a day off from my 9-5 job or I finish cooking dinner and I have some free time, I don’t have to waste any time wondering what I should be doing to grow my business. I just grab my list, pick the next item on it, and get to work.

Developing Discipline Is Hard but It’s Worthwhile

Once you’ve managed to trim the fat from your workflow and you have outlined a good plan of attack, the hard part begins. The hard part is developing the self-discipline that is needed to take action and complete your plan.

This can be quite difficult and it’s very easy to get off track and end up blowing an entire day. It’s just so tempting to pop into Google Analytics to see what your traffic is looking like. It’s very tempting to pay a visit to the forums to see what’s new and exciting to talk about. It’s quite tempting to fall into the trap of constantly checking your AdSense earnings or affiliate commissions. All of these things are low value tasks that can burn up what limited time you might have.

The way I’ve been able to develop the discipline that I’ve needed to grow my business to the point that it is at today is to constantly ask myself a couple of questions.

• Is the task that I’m doing right now going to help me accomplish my two week goal?
• Is the task that I’m doing right now going to result in the growth of my business?

Whenever my answer to either question is no, I’m reminded to stop doing what I’m doing and get back to working my plan.

In summary, I encourage you all to do three things:

• Plan your work out at least two weeks in advance.
• Take a close look at the things you are doing when you sit down to work and cut as many of the low value tasks as you can out of your workflow.
• Discipline yourself to stick to your plan and don’t let things like sharing your wisdom with everyone about the latest controversial topic in the forum get you off track.

Hopefully you found this article helpful in some way. If you did, the next step is to take action and implement the strategies that I’ve outlined for you today. Don’t cheat yourself out of the success that you are working so hard to achieve by getting stuck in the same unproductive habits that are holding you back.

Break the bad habits that are limiting you and prepare yourself to reap the rewards!

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About the Author

If you would like learn more about promoting your websites via social media websites, visit socialmediaspringboard.com, where you’ll find tips from Philia on implementing social media marketing strategies. You’ll also find free tools such as free buttons, clip art, and stock photos. Philia also offers websites that are pre-made in WordPress that are available to purchase for those of you who are eager to get started making money online but don’t currently have the time or skills to build a website.

They wanted to know if they could get to $1,000/month in online income with this schedule.

My opinion is that you would have to be very lucky and talented to build an income like that with such low volume, and you would somehow have to:

1) Get incredibly lucky with your topic selection.

2) Publish extremely valuable content that spreads in a viral fashion.

3) Have a unique and highly efficient form of monetization that goes beyond basic CPC ads and affiliate sale. 

If you think about those 3 points and really take a long hard look at them you will realize that betting on any one of them is not realistic for most newcomers.  This is because:

* The web is a fairly efficient market and it becomes more so every day as more and more internet marketers flood the profitable niches.  So getting lucky with topic selection becomes less and less likely with each passing day as the web becomes more and more saturated.

* Writing viral content is certainly possible but can be  a bit like catching lightning in a bottle.  This is especially true if you are just starting out and do not have a regular audience yet to help spread the content for you.

* Monetizing more efficiently than Google means that you have to move up in the chain as far as services or products.  Rather than referring people through an ad based on a topic you want to somehow sell them the solution directly.  This sounds easy in theory but you will likely need to spend more time and energy refining your product or service than what you spend on your website.  Most internet marketers do not approach their business like this (from the outside-in) and are not in a position to move up the monetization chain.  In other words, if you have a website about credit and loans, are you in a position to start making actual loans to your site visitors?  Probably not.

So what is the solution?

Ignore these potential “shortcuts” that will likely not work out for you anyway and just leave you discouraged.

The Keyword Academy offers a long, stable, and safer path to a sustainable online income through the creation of an authority website.

Writing 2 articles per week probably will not get you to your income goals.  Try writing 2 or 3 per day while building an amazing website.

Don’t count on a lucky shortcut.  Instead, use the volume + quality approach to create a huge website that the search engines would be foolish to ignore.

Create a free eBook and feature it in the sidebar of your website.  Doing so had 2 immediate and significant benefits:

1) Legitimizes your site in the eyes of the search engines as being more useful and less spammy.

2) Has the potential to bring in real organic links (the kind that you cannot manufacture and are therefore quite valuable).

Now I can hear your protest in advance: “But I don’t want to spend my time creating an eBook!  I would rather crank out more content and build links, because that is more profitable!”

Your argument does not wash in the long run.  If you want to build a successful website in the long run then you should probably entertain the idea that you are going to need to have some variety.  Just having 100 articles on your site that are all exactly 400 words is not enough.  Getting a free eBook in your sidebar is another step toward having a “real” website.

Now then, how can you create a free eBook that has real value for the visitors, without wasting a ton of time doing so?

Let me break the process down for you:

Come up with a content plan for your website that includes your next, say, 20 articles.  If you are working from a keyword list to create your content, then carefully select the keywords that would create articles that might become chapters in a book about your topic.

For example, say that your topic is “auto restoration.”  So you might go through your keyword list and come up with article titles like:

“An Introduction to Classic Auto Restoration in Your Own Garage”

“What Tools are Critical for Restoring, Polishing, and Maintaining Classic Automobiles”

“Buying and Selling Classic Restored Cars for Fun and Profit”

And so on.  Note that each of those topics could easily be a chapter in a book, as well.  One is an introduction, one is about maintenance, and one is about buying and selling.

So the idea is that you outline your eBook, then break it down into chapters, then write each chapter and publish it as a post on your website.

You might consider the idea of holding back at least one or two chapters that you do NOT publish on your site, so that you have some exclusive content to package up into your free eBook.

After you have written all of your posts and published them on your site, simply copy and paste them into an eBook.  You can find free tools to create eBooks using Google (OpenOffice is free and creates a PDF).  You can also search online for ways to generate free cover graphics.

So that’s it:

* Outline your eBook into chapters.

* Write each chapter as a post and publish it on your site.

* Repackage all the chapters into an eBook and give it away for free in your sidebar.  Simple linkbait made easy, with no wasted effort in the process!

The idea was tantalizing to me. A true system for passive income! All I had to do was create a digital product, set up a quick landing page, buy some pay per click traffic, and I could start printing money every day.

I decided to create a product based on a system for slot machine gambling. The idea was utterly ridiculous, because there is no legitimate strategy for slots (other than to own the casino!). But I went ahead and created this lame eBook and threw together a makeshift landing page and signed up for Adwords.

One person bought my book and then promptly requested a refund, claiming my product was trash. I burned through about 50 dollars worth of traffic and never made a successful sale.

I had failed.

It was from that failure that I found another forum, where someone was talking about building an online empire of legitimate content, that could then make money from advertising. This sounded like a lot more work to me, and it also sounded a lot less exciting. But because I had failed so miserably with my passive, automated, pay per click scheme, I was willing to give it a shot.

And so it goes. If you want to make money online, persistence is your greatest ally, because failure will be common in the beginning.

For example, when I started building my “content empire,” I had many emotional setbacks. A string of days with no AdSense clicks. Rankings in Google that would come and go at the drop of a hat. At one point I lost interest for a while and did not add new content for months on end. I lost interest and momentum because so many days resulted in zero earnings for me.

Another failure, by some measures.

But then something happened. I got really sick of my day job, and something flipped in my brain. I was suddenly no longer willing to go on with a life of mediocrity, living paycheck to paycheck, with no hope for a brighter future.

I sat down at the keyboard and I got serious.

Like 25-articles-in-a-single-day serious.

At some point, that switch had flipped in my brain, and I said to myself: “OK, I see that one or two articles each week is not cutting it.”

They say “fail early and fail fast.” Learn what is not working for you, and then take corrective action.

If you really want online income then you are going to have to create it. Build it. Grow it. Expand what is working for you. Discard your failures and move on with renewed energy.

Most people fail with internet marketing because they do not attack this business with a serious enough effort. That is the common failure that I see over and over again.

An entrepreneurial path is one of high intensity energy. Passive online income does not just fall into your lap.

My only real failure in my career was when I temporarily gave up on it. Had I created something every single day (3 articles per day anyone?), I would have hit my income goals a lot sooner.

Look at your situation with complete honesty. Have you failed to meet your income goals? Why? The answer is almost always a lack of consistent daily action.

Identify your failures and resolve to move past them.

Everyone fails in internet marketing at some point. The big earners are the ones who move past those failures and take action with renewed enthusiasm.