Last week I posted Part 1 of the Niche Site Private Advertising Experiment, a little case study I’m running to see if I can generate additional income from my security guard training niche site by having related companies pay for ad space.

Last month, the site pulled in $2,801.06 from Google Adsense alone, but as I always mention it’s dangerous to rely only on one income source from a website – so I’m giving private advertising a shot.

In Part 2 I’ll be explaining more about the mechanics of how you can actually run ads on your website or blog and accept payments too. Later posts in the series will cover pricing, marketing your ad space to potential advertisers and hopefully some real life examples along the way.

Side note: since I posted Part 1 of the series the niche site has already landed one paying advertiser and many more have already expressed interest!

I’m excited to talk about that, but let’s take it one step at a time and get into exactly how you can place advertisements and accept payments on your site first.

The Old School Way

This isn’t my first experience dealing with direct advertising on a website that I’ve owned.

My first experience came when I began monetizing Green Exam Academy back in 2008 after news of my layoff from my architecture position. After having mild success with Google Adsense, I learned that I could potentially cut out the middle man and try to sell advertising to companies own my own.

A couple of weeks and a number of phone calls later (yes, phone calls) I landed my first advertiser who paid me $150.00 total for 3 months of advertising (at $50.00 a month).

Like I mentioned before, we’ll talk more about pricing in part 3 (including the major mistakes I had made with my first deal) – but first things first, let’s tackle our options for placing ads on our site and accepting payments.

WordPress Plugins

As any newbie would do when he or she wants to do something on their site but has no idea how (and I was a total newbie at the time), I searched for a WordPress plugin to figure it out.

The plugin I used for GreenExamAcademy.com was called WP125 and it worked pretty well.

The plugin automatically creates 125×125 pixel ad spaces (the most common ad size that seemed to be floating around at the time – and even still today), which you can then manually put anywhere onto your site with some shortcode or into your sidebar with a widget.

From the plugin’s settings in WordPress, you can control:

• The number of 125×125 ad spaces shown including how many in each row and column.
• What ads show up in each space through an image URL (not by uploading).
• The target URL for each ad slot.
• The number of days each particular ad will be shown before it’s taken down.
• If you want to track the number of clicks or not.
• A default ad to show when you don’t have enough ads and/or one of the paid ads expires.

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Thanks for reading!
If you would like to leave a comment on this post, please click the link below:

Niche Site Private Advertisement Experiment – Part 2 – Displaying Ads and Accepting Payments
Join the community of over 10,000 fans of SPI on Facebook!

Related posts:

1. Niche Site Private Advertisement Experiment – Part 1 – Why?
2. Niche Site Duel 013: CPA Promotions, Private Advertising, Job Board and Income Report
3. Niche Site Coaching 2.0 is Now Accepting New Applications
4. Niche Site Duel 012: An Experiment and Income Update
5. Niche Site Duel 003 – How to Setup a Niche Site: Before You Add Content

Let’s start off the New Year with a bang…

Welcome to my January 2012 Monthly Income Report!

Each month I share an extremely detailed report about what I’ve been up to, the income I’ve earned online and the lessons I’ve learned during the past 31 Days.

Why?

For several reasons:

1. To keep me headed in the right direction. Sure, I could keep this all to myself but sharing this information publicly helps to hold me accountable and continue to try and outdo myself.
2. I want to be honest and transparent. If anyone talks about making money online, I think that’s really the only way it should be. Wins, losses, successes and failures – the whole deal.
3. I know it inspires a lot of people to take action.

Before I get into this month’s report I just wanted to mention one quick thing: if you’re just starting out online, please understand that making money via the Internet is definitely not an overnight thing.

Time, hard work, dedication, a lot of failures, constant learning and a passion to help other people are all things that I’ve found to be part of the recipe for success.

And lastly – it takes belief. If you don’t believe you can succeed, then there’s absolutely no chance that you will.

“My inner world creates my outer world.” - T. Harv Eker, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

Let’s get to it…

Important Going-Ons in January

The start of the New Year was rough – mostly because I was sick.

Being sick = no energy = no work, which is unfortunate because after writing my 2012 Goal Post, I really wanted to take massive action.

But, on the bright side, I was reaping the benefits of passive income and I knew after a week off from work that this could be a record breaking month.

One of the key indicators came from my iPhone app business.

iPhone Applications

Right after Christmas my partner and I released a new update to one of our most successful iPhone applications, Baby Maker.

Before the update it was averaging about $50 per day and entering in and out of the top 200 apps in the photo/video category in the app store.

Over the past 31 days it has averaged $156 per day and has been bouncing around the 100 to 120 mark in the same category.

There are a few reasons why our earnings jumped by 212%:

• The update itself. There are websites, Twitter accounts and Facebook pages with thousands of followers that post when old apps are updated. Beyond that, the update definitely helped because one of the prior updates to iOS crashed some parts of the app.
• It was right after Christmas, which is one of the many times during the year when there’s a boom in the number of iPhone and iPod Touch users who are all looking for apps to fill their brand new devices. The other boom times of the year are Father’s Day and whenever a new version of the iPhone comes out.
• Our other apps, both paid and free, which also saw more downloads as a result of the season pushed sales for BabyMaker, not only because there were more people on our brand, but because within 90% of our applications we have a more apps page that showcases some of our more popular (and profitable) applications.

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Thanks for reading!
If you would like to leave a comment on this post, please click the link below:

My Monthly Report – January 2012
Join the community of over 10,000 fans of SPI on Facebook!

Related posts:

1. My Monthly Report – January 2011
2. My Monthly Report – January 2009
3. My Monthly Report – January 2010
4. My Monthly Report – April 2009
5. My Monthly Report – August 2010

Over the weekend the team behind Market Samurai, a keyword research and SEO analysis tool that I’ve recommended several times here on the blog (and that I’m an affiliate for), posted an announcement about some changes that are happening with the software that had a lot of people asking – is this the end of Market Samurai?

Because I use the product almost every day, and more importantly because I know many of you do as well as a result of my recommendation and training videos, I feel that it’s my duty to keep everyone informed of what’s going on.

If you’re not a Market Samurai user you may still find this post interesting, but I just wanted to let you know why I wrote this article up front so that if you’re not interested I don’t waste your time. 

UPDATE (Wednesday, February 1st, 2012): Market Samurai just posted a NEW blog post here saying everything is back up to speed, and the article also debunks a lot of claims other SEO analysis tools have made about the situation and clarifies a lot of what’s going on.

What Happened…

One of the reasons I have used and recommended Market Samurai since mid-2009 is because of their very honest and transparent approach to doing business, which very much aligns with my own.

So, when over the past few days the software was having major issues and not working correctly, I knew a blog post explaining the situation was due.

And just yesterday (Sunday), the Noble Samurai team posted this:

Update: The State of the Market Samurai Nation

Basically – what happened is this:

Market Samurai pulls a ton of data from all different sources, one of the more significant sources being Google.

Google, as a lot of us know, has been making a lot of changes lately. In addition to algorithm updates (like the more recent Panda and “above-the-fold” updates) and the integration of search and social – a lot of stuff has been happening behind the scenes too – like changes in the ability to pull certain types of data from their system, or at least putting limitations on them.

Eugene Ware, CEO of Noble Samurai explains, “As large portions of Market Samurai currently use Google’s service, this has temporarily broken a range of functionality in Market Samurai.”

Their Solution…

A lot of Market Samurai is now back up and running, however to lessen the queries on Google certain pieces of data will now be pulled from Bing, and I think this is where a lot of people, including myself, freaked out.

Bing, as much as it’s growing and as good of a search engine as it is, it’s definitely not Google. Google’s data is what we want to use and is still really what matters.

I think the article was a little unclear, however, on which parts of Market Samurai were being replaced with Google. I received a number of emails from people saying that Market Samurai search numbers would no longer be reliable, that all of the new data from Bing would be misleading, Market Samurai is dead, etc.

I wasn’t going to lean one way or the other until I got some real answers, so I emailed Eugene and received an answer just a few hours later, which was surprising considering the hundreds of comments (and his responses) on his blog post, and what I’m sure is a lot more support tickets.

I emailed him the following question:

–

Me: Hey Eugene, I read the latest post on Nobel Samurai …quick question for clarification purposes, because everyone’s in an uproar right now and I’m not sure we all fully understand what’s going on.

My question is: keyword search data (the keyword research module) is still using Google, correct? That didn’t change to Bing, or did it? From what I read in the post it was just for the more basic things like SEOC and things like that, but not actual search numbers.

And the SEO Competition Module is still using Majestic, correct?

Eugene: Hi Pat. Yes, Google keyword data still is from Google at this point in time! And SEO Competition backlink data comes from Majestic! It’s only SEO count metrics such as SEOC/SEOLC and Index Count that have been swapped to Bing at the moment.

Me: Thanks Eugene. By the way, do you mind if I share your response (that the KW Research Module and SEO Comp module, which are the ones I use the most – are still working) in a post if I choose to write about this? Please let me know. Thanks!

Eugene: Hi Pat. No problems if you’d like to share my response in your blog post.

Me: And do you have a quick list of the exact parts of MS that will be switching to Bing? I have SEOC and SEOLC so far…

Eugene: The main changes to Bing are:

• -SEOC/SEOLC/SEOTC/SEOUC in Keyword Research
• -IC/CA in SEO Competition
• -Other changes in other modules are inconsequential.

–

This is good news for all of us Market Samurai users out there: the Keyword Research Module and all of the most important data in the SEO Competition Module are still pulling data from Google.

This means the software will still allow me to do exactly what I use it for: to find good keywords that are highly searched for and have relatively low competition on the first page of Google.

And for those of you wondering, here are the definitions of the affected acronyms listed in Eugene’s response:

• SEOC - SEO Competition - The total number of webpages that mention a specific keyword term, in the same (phrase) word order, in Google’s index.
• SEOLC - SEO Local Competition - The total number of webpages that mention all of the words in a keyword term in the title of the page, in a specified country.
• SEOTC - SEO Title Competition - The total number of webpages that mention all of the words in a keyword term in the title of the page.
• SEOTC - SEO URL Competition - The total number of webpages that mention all of the words in a keyword term in the URL of a page.
• IC - Instances of Content - The number of times the article has been republished online.
• CA - Google Cache Age - The number of days since Google last reindexed the page listed.

Fortunately, the way I perform (and teach) keyword research doesn’t even use any of this data, even SEOC.

The way I see it, SEOC doesn’t matter and shouldn’t even be on there because it doesn’t matter how many webpages are competing for a specific keyword – what matters is the strength of competition of the results on the first page of Google.

There could only be 100 websites competing for a keyword, but if they are all PR7 authoritative sites, then it still wouldn’t be a keyword worth pursuing.

That’s the good news, but there’s some bad news too…

The Rank Tracker

One of the best features of Market Samurai is (er, was?) its beautifully crafted rank tracker – a tool that allows you to check the ranks of your websites in the search engines for specific keywords up to 100 pages deep in Google (1000 results). 

It was also neat because it would automatically detect if any internal pages on your website ranked for those keywords as well. For some of my sites, I’m literally tracking hundreds of keywords at a time – something that would take days for me to do manually (even with the help of some other rank tracking tools), but only seconds with Market Samurai.

Unfortunately, because of the new query limitations (and over 400,000 users of Market Samurai), the Rank Tracker needs to get it’s data elsewhere.

“With over 400,000 users now, tracking the ranks of your keywords on your behalf results inliterally millions of Google searches every day. Google’s changes mean that it will be simply impossible for us to continue doing this on your behalf.”

Unfortunately, this data isn’t free – and it would actually be incredibly expensive to get:

“…with a fixed-price product and so many users, it’s simply an economic impossibility to provide the same rank tracking functionality on an ongoing basis. In fact, it would cost us over $40,000 a day to purchase this data!”

I think you know where I’m going with this…

“So, we’re left with the difficult decision of having to pass this costs on to our users in some fashion (most likely a monthly paid service)…”

The paid service would be for the rank tracker only, this is confirmed in this comment here.

To me it was always weird that they didn’t charge a monthly fee for their rank tracker, because almost every other high-quality rank tracker does.

The truth is, of course, it’s going to be a difficult transition. Asking for payment for a service that has traditionally been provided for “free” (or as part of an overall one-time payment) doesn’t always go over well, especially with existing customers.

Netflix, anyone?

You can still, temporarily, track ranks with Market Samurai – except instead of using Market Samurai’s servers, you’re using your own. This works, but too many queries from your own server can create Google Service disruptions – so be careful if you’re in a work environment.

How much will this cost, nobody knows for sure yet, but apparently existing customers could get some sort of discount, and they may offer some limited rank tracking for free.

Will I pay for it?

Not sure.

I do use it but I am also exploring other options.

Other Rank Tracker Options

Spencer from Niche Pursuits has a product called Long Tail Pro, a simpler but just as powerful competitor to Market Samurai that I’ve used and am very impressed by. LTP’s rank tracker still works, although you have to enter urls and keywords one at a time at the moment.

Then there’s Erica.biz’s recent successful startup, WhooshTraffic, which has a more expensive Rank Tracker service. It does everything Market Samurai does, plus the service emails you an update of your rankings daily – which is an amazing feature.

There are several other options too such as Raven Tools and SEOMoz which are both paid services, and as far as free tools there’s SEOBook’s Rank Tracker for Firefox, however I can’t confirm that it’s working at the moment. If anyone has any other tools or suggestions that are working, please leave them in comments.

The Big Picture

So the question is still: is this the end of the Market Samurai Dynasty?

For me, not yet.

I’m going to continue using Market Samurai for keyword research and SEO competition analysis, although Long Tail Pro is definitely on my radar now.

If you’re not happy with the changes that Market Samurai has made – that’s totally understandable.

I’m not happy with them either, but a lot of the changes happened because of circumstances they couldn’t forsee or control, which is part of a potentially bigger problem and lesson we should all pay attention to.

Business that rely heavily on another are scary. 

It’s like with my LEED exam study site – that’s a bit scary because the moment that exam expires, if it ever does, that business is done.

Hence, my advocacy for big time diversification online.

It’s also like with any business that relies purely on the Amazon Associates program. If the Amazon Tax hits that business’s state and Amazon pulls the plug on affiliates, then that business is dead, or at least severely injured.

Can we ever not be at the mercy of another company when doing business online?

To be honest, probably not – but the idea is to have the most control as possible.

Another important lesson here is what happens when you always put your customers first. 

Noble Samurai has always done that from the beginning and has gone above and beyond to make sure their software is up to date as best as possible.

So even in light of all the recent events and the number of people who are upset, you’ll notice a ton of hardcore support for the company too – people who are going to stick with them no matter what.

A prime example of company motive comes from a specific exchange in the comment section of their most recent post:

A commenter named Kurt: “I thank you for being forthright honest with your members, especially those who have supported Market Samurai for all this time. While I understand where you are coming from, I would also like to take the time to evaluate my choices if Market Samurai (or portions of it will become paid), since we have to check the implications of this on our operations and our business model. I hope you can still maintain avenues such as refund open, especially if some members deem the new cost pricing strategy too expensive for their operations.”

Eugene: In regards to refund, our policy has always been to treat people the way that we’d like to be treated, and for us that means refunding everyone back to the first people who helped us launch our business in August 2008.

That kind of care will keeps people fans for life.

–

Thanks for taking the time to read this “news” type of article from me.

I know I don’t usually post stuff like this, but a lot of people have purchased Market Samurai through my affiliate link (thank you!) and I wanted to make sure everyone knew what was going on and what our options were.

Cheers, and all the best to you!

My January monthly income report will be published next.

UPDATE (Wednesday, February 1st, 2012): Market Samurai just posted a NEW blog post here saying everything is back up to speed, and the article also debunks a lot of claims other SEO analysis tools have made about the situation and clarifies a lot of what’s going on.

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Thanks for reading!
If you would like to leave a comment on this post, please click the link below:

Is This the End of the Market Samurai Dynasty? Direct Answers from the CEO
Join the community of over 10,000 fans of SPI on Facebook!

Related posts:

1. How To Test Your Online Product Before It’s Even Made – Part 1 | Making Sure a Market Exists
2. 8 Quickfire Questions and Answers with Pat
3. SPI 013 : Is Giving Away Free Information Bad? Here Are Some Answers
4. Your Website Is Up – Now What? 5 Things You Can Do To Market and Promote Your Website
5. Mastering Keyword Research and SEO Competition

My security guard training niche site currently earns between $1,800 and $2,200 per month – 99% of it coming from Google Adsense alone.

One of my goals in 2012 is to diversify the income streams coming from this site and increase its monthly income to at least $3000 per month by the end of the year.

Diversification is important because:

1. It’s safer. It’s not smart to rely on one single income source because the moment it runs dry, you’re done for.
2. It gives you more opportunity. The more income sources available, the more options you have to expand and grow. Instead of focusing on growing income source A, you can grow income source A, B & C at the same time.
3. It increases the value of the site. Buyers are more likely to be attracted to a site that has several income sources.

My quest to diversify SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com has been very unsuccessful so far, due in large part to a simple lack of taking action.

This is why I formally announced diversification as a goal for 2012 because I know you’ll hold me accountable to it and at the very least, motivate me to push forward – and you already have.

More on that later in the post…

Will History Repeat Itself?

When I started monetizing my first website back in 2008, GreenExamAcademy.com, I also started with Google Adsense.

It was encouraging to see trickles of income from the ads, however because I was just laid off and was about to start a family, I put a lot of pressure on myself to quickly find another income source.

(Maybe the lack of pressure is why I waited so long this time…something to think about.)

So what was did I do next?

I learned about private advertising, or “renting” out space on your website to advertisers for a fee. The middle-man (Google) is out of the way and typically you can negotiate more than just a cost-per-click payment structure, and have banner ads in place as well.

Private advertising made sense to me because I was already tapping into the visitors who came to the website, but not into the related companies who could benefit from those visitors too.

I immediately did some research to see what companies might be interest in advertising on the site. A simple Google search for a related keyword can show you…just look at the ads that show up next to the results.

I contacted a few of them and within a week had my first advertising contract in place.

It was for one 125 x 125 pixel banner ad in the sidebar and I was so happy and excited that a company was interested, I didn’t even negotiate and took the first offer. A 125 x 125 pixel advertisement to be placed in the sidebar at $50 a month for 3 months.

Big mistake.

Why?

Because I eventually learned that I had enough targeted traffic to charged up to $300 a month, which is what I eventually did with new companies that came on board to advertise on the site.

For the LEED exam niche it was particularly easy to sell ad space because I was one of the only websites online talking about the LEED exam who had a significant amount of traffic.

At this time, according to my analytics, I was getting between 500 and 900 visitors per day (on the weekdays):

Here were the issues I had when I first tackled private advertising:

• Setting the right price, which I already mentioned.
• Manually placing the ads on the website. Sometimes I would spend hours just messing with CSS and html trying to figure it out. You know that guy who never asks for directions when he’s lost? That was me back then.
• Keeping track of the number of clicks per ad.
• Remembering when to take ads down after the various contracts expired.

But you know what? I just rolled with it and made it happen – and that was a success.

I just did it and that’s what I have to do again.

Private Advertising on Security Guard Training Headquarters

Private advertising may not work for all niches, but you definitely need some traffic in order to convince potential advertisers to work with you directly.

How much traffic exactly?

Well, that depends on a number of things such as the niche itself, how much money a potential lead is worth to a company, how much you’re charging, how good of a salesperson or copywriter you are, etc.

As far as traffic for SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com, check out the numbers – they are eerily similar to GreenExamAcademy.com when I started private advertising on the site (between 400 and 800 visitors per day):

Lost Opportunities

Since the middle of last year I had an Advertising Page setup on securityguardtraininghq.com that simply said:

“Thank you for your interest in advertising on Security Guard Training Headquarters. For advertising options, please contact advertising@securityguardtraininghq.com”.

…and that’s it.

This page was setup in anticipation of some type of advertising opportunity that I knew was eventually going to happen, and I included the email to collect potential leads just in case.

And guess what?

I did get emails – at least once or twice a month, but I had nothing to offer in return.

Although this was a good litmus test as far as demand for advertising on the site, I failed in having something readily available.

I didn’t follow through, which is very unlike me.

The last straw happened last week when two separate advertising inquiries came on the same exact day! Again, with nothing to offer them in return.

The first thing I did was the same thing I always do when I realize I have failed: I don’t think about what I did to fail, I think about what I have done in the past to succeed.

A negative attitude does nothing but waste time. Having a positive attitude based on past positive experiences is always the first step to getting back on track.

So what did I think about?

• I thought about how most of my past successes didn’t come from me waiting for things to be perfect or the timing just to be right. I just dove right in and worried about perfection later.
• I thought about how even the toughest of tasks were always much easier after just getting started. An object at rest is a lot harder to move than one that’s already in motion.
• I thought about how sharing what I was doing had always motivated me to start something and keep going with it.

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Thanks for reading!
If you would like to leave a comment on this post, please click the link below:

Niche Site Private Advertisement Experiment – Part 1 – Why?
Join the community of over 10,000 fans of SPI on Facebook!

Related posts:

1. Niche Site Private Advertisement Experiment – Part 2 – Displaying Ads and Accepting Payments
2. Niche Site Duel 013: CPA Promotions, Private Advertising, Job Board and Income Report
3. Niche Site Duel 012: An Experiment and Income Update
4. Niche Site Duel 003 – How to Setup a Niche Site: Before You Add Content
5. Niche Site Duel 002 – Finding a Profitable Niche: My Process Revealed

At the end of 2010 I created a niche site from scratch for the security guard training industry in the U.S. In 73 days it got to the #1 spot in Google and it’s currently generating between $1,800 to $2,200 consistently each and every month. You can read more about how I publicly created this niche site (from niche selection to the domain name and monetization – for free) on the Niche Site Duel Hub.

In that particular industry there are different training requirements for each state – so it made sense to create a separate post for each one individually.

As a way to organize this content and provide a better user experience on the homepage, I thought it would be cool to have a clickable map of the United States – so I had one made for me.

I found a flash map that I liked on iStockPhoto.com. It cost about $8.

From there, I hired a flash-developer on Odesk.com for $10.00/hour to include the correct links for me and add some color. It took him 5 hours and 20 minutes to complete the job, for a total of $53.30

Finally, I gave the file to Mike, my VA, to embed on my niche site. You can see the final result on http://www.securityguardtraininghq.com right now if you wish.

That’s $61.30, which I consider a worthwhile investment.

I’m very happy with the final result and it’s something a lot of people have complimented me on – not just people from this blog who are familiar with the niche site, but actual users of the site as well, which is really nice.

Interestingly enough, one of the most common questions I get is “How can I make a map just like that one for my own site?”

At least 3 times a week, somebody asks me this question – and I even have a response setup in TextExpander (one of the several productivity tools I discuss in Productivity Hacks – How to Make Time by Shaving Time) to quickly reply with an answer, which basically outlines the process I just described above.

I must have shared this with at least 50 people by now, and although I have no way of telling whether or not all of them followed through, even if 25% of them did, that’s a lot of money that could have been saved if there was an easier way.

And if there was an easier way, maybe all of them would follow through and have a helpful map on their website.

So – I decided to develop a tool myself.

My New Web App

Four days ago, I only had an idea.

Today - Create a Clickable Map is already up and running!

You can watch the video below to see exactly what it looks like and how it works:

(Click here to watch How to Create a Clickable Map for FREE on YouTube)

This app, of course, isn’t for everyone – but for the few who are looking for a tool like this – it will be extremely helpful.

The experience of building this web app was amazing, especially after the WordPress plugin failures I had last year, and it only cost a couple hundred dollars and 3 hours of my time. The developer (who I found on Odesk) was awesome and I’ll definitely be working with him again soon for stuff related to my upcoming SPI related product actually, hehe.

Since I know a lot of you are interested, here’s a link to the original job posting on Odesk and a copy of the mockup I drew up in photoshop below (using my pen and tablet tool!):

Although the hand-drawn U.S. map in the mockup is embarrassing, I think the general idea of how the apps works and the user-interface shows through, which is why communication with the programmer was extremely smooth and development was quick.

If you do use this app, since it creates a flash map for your site, I’d still recommend linking to each site below the map (like I did on securityguardtraininghq.com) so that the search engines can still read the links, and in case anyone has flash disabled in their browser too.

The Domain Name

The people who email me (or those of you reading this post) who may find this tool useful will at least know about it now – but I was hoping there was an untapped keyword that would allow me to reach more people through the search engines too.

If traffic becomes significant, I wouldn’t mind strategically placing some Adsense ads on the site and seeing what happens.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t very many keywords to choose from that weren’t either totally out of reach (because of map sites like MapQuest.com, Google Maps and other more robust map generators), or keywords that were “too long tail” and totally weak in terms of search volume and traffic.

I picked http://www.createaclickablemap.com because it encompassed both the keywords “create a map” and “clickable map” in it, which had ‘okay’ numbers – but more so because it’s easy to remember and it describes exactly what the site does. People can expect to find a tool to create a map when they arrive, and that’s exactly what they get.

I wasn’t really creating this tool for a niche site anyways, and because it’s only a one-page site with a flash enabled tool on it – I’ll probably need to add more content somewhere on the page to even start to see any significant traffic from search engines.

I created this tool primarily to help those who may be interested in creating their own US maps for their website so they can avoid having to pay extra money and waste time waiting for a developer to finish it up for them. I’ll be creating more niche sites in the future that will be utilizing this tool as well.

Just a fun little experiment that I enjoyed and wanted to share with you today.

If you like the tool and want to help out, please visit Create a Clickable Map and LIKE the page! That’s all!

Cheers, and all the best!

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Thanks for reading!
If you would like to leave a comment on this post, please click the link below:

A Project in a Weekend – My New Web App
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Related posts:

1. Love Everyday – An eBook Project
2. Random Fun Post of the Weekend – Our First Dance
3. Random Fun Post of the Weekend – Gizmo
4. Notable Links to Read this Weekend – Ed.1
5. The Power of the Written Word for Podcasts and Videos

This is a guest post from Rick Mulready of iRockPaidTraffic.com.

I met Rick last year when he came down to San Diego for a lunch and it was super easy to get along with him because he’s such a down to Earth and friendly kind of guy. But, what intrigued me most about him was his 10+ years of experience in the online space, which all had to do with paid traffic.

I’ve dabbled before, and personally my previous experience with paid traffic is pretty much synonymous with that of an ex-girlfriend:

“We gave it a shot, but it just didn’t work out…”

“It started off nicely, but then she turned on me…”

and the classic: “I gave her everything, and got nothing in return…”

[insert your own here]

My only small success with paid ads came when I did a tiny $50 experiment to get more Facebook Fans, but overall, my experience wasn’t good – so when I met Rick I became extremely interested in his line of work and as we started talking more and more about it, I became fascinated.

I realized that:

1. I had no idea what I was doing before.
2. There’s a TON of potential with paid traffic, especially when it comes to extremely targeted leads and customers.
3. It’s nothing to be scared of, as long as you’re educated going into it.

I learned a lot from Rick and thought it would be cool to have him write a guest post for SPI specifically about paid traffic. Why and when it should be considered an option, what platform is the best, and how to get started.

So – without further delay, here’s Rick!

Enjoy!

Paying for traffic to your website gets a bad rap.

I mean, who wants to pay money to get people to their site when there are so many other effective no-cost ways to build an audience (writing epic content, SEO, social media, guest posting, etc…), right?

Look, I get it. I really do.

But…

I believe Facebook Ads are an exception that should be considered.

Why Facebook ads?

• When free traffic just isn’t providing the kind of numbers you want to see, Facebook ads are a great way to reach your ideal niche audience/client, and kick it up a notch fast and on a limited budget.
• When you need more diversified traffic to your site because Google’s Panda updates wrecked your organic search results.
• When you have an idea for a product, but aren’t sure if there is a market for it, test it on Facebook to see if there is any interest before creating it.
• If you’re launching a new product, but want to find a name for it that is going to generate the most sales, do a test run on Facebook with a variety of names and see which one gets the most clicks.

There are more than 800 million people (yes 800 MILLION!) on Facebook today.  This lends you an instant opportunity to reach hundreds of millions of potential customers, subscribers or readers that may not know to search for you in Google.

Facebook gives you the ability to set-up extremely specific targeting for your ads so they can be seen by your exact niche audience.

I’m not suggesting that you abandon your SEO efforts or other strategies that are free to do.

Rather, I’m suggesting that the unique form of advertising that Facebook provides can help you in ways that you may not have considered.

What I’d like to show you are some tips and creative ways you can use Facebook advertising to build your audience and grow your online business.

The #1 Thing You MUST DO FIRST

There’s something you can do to increase the chances for a successful ad campaign on Facebook and I can’t tell you how many people DON’T do this.  Well, I can, but that’s a whole other story.

Research your exact target audience before you set-up your campaign.

Unless you know precisely who your target audience is, don’t be one of those people who jumps right into setting up a campaign and skips this step.  You’ll save yourself time and money by taking a few minutes to do it.

There are several ways you can research your target audience:

Google Analytics:

A great place to start is what you know about your existing customers or website visitors.

• Are they male or female?
• How old are they?
• Where do they live?
• What are their interests?
• What other websites do they frequently visit?

Know your competitors:

If you don’t know who they are, you should.

Check out their Facebook page and pay close attention to comments people leave, which posts draw the most reactions, what people are “Liking”, etc…

All of this is great intelligence you can use when setting up your own ad campaign.

YouTube:

Ever notice that small graph-looking icon in the right corner underneath a video you’re watching?

When you click on it it gives you some great data about people who have watched the video — viewer age ranges, countries where people are watching the video, etc…

Also, scan the comments to read what people like and dislike about the video.  There can be valuable insights here.

Quantcast:

Quantcast is a free online tool that provides details about audiences for all website owners.  You simply type in a website whose audience you’re interested in learning more about.

The amount of information available from site to site can vary (the smaller the website that you’re searching about the less data there will be) but the insight you can gain from Quantcast is awesome. My favorite bit of data is a breakdown and list of other sites people are likely to visit.

This is GOLD when you’re using “Interest Targeting” on Facebook because you can learn more about the interests of people who go to that site.

You’ll also find standard data here that you would find with Google Analytics, but the demographics go a bit deeper to include things like site visitor income levels and the # of children per household.

Alexa:

Alexa is another free online resource that gives you insights into the visitors of other websites.

You can use it for a number of insights including how popular a competitor’s website is and finding new competitive websites that you may not have realized existed.

BONUS TIP: In addition to using these resources for your Facebook ad campaign research, they’re also great when researching niches that you may want to start working in.

Who Doesn’t Want to Sell More Products? A Case Study

Only72.com hosts large online niche sales once or twice a year.  You may remember Pat talking about it a couple of times last year.

The people behind Only72 bring together the biggest names in a given niche (personal development, for example), compile their best-selling online products (such as guides or courses), and discount them by over 90% for a limited time (72 hours).

Only72 wanted to reach new people who weren’t already on their email list and who wouldn’t have normally heard about the sale.

Facebook’s enormous audience and the ability to uniquely target its users were a natural fit for this campaign.

In addition to pinpoint targeting — images, headlines, ad copy, and landing page were all designed to grab attention and create a sense of urgency.

This campaign worked so well, in fact, there was a 364% return-on-investment.

Here’s one of the ads that performed extremely well:

Why it works:

• This ad catches user’s attention right away with the colorful image of the pretty woman.  With all the clutter on Facebook pages these days, the image is the most important part of the ad.
• The headline stirs an emotion of empowerment and motivation.
• The ad copy clearly outlines what the product offering is (“22 courses/products”), the value being offered ($1087 worth…for $97) and then further provides further validation by highlighting that courses/products are from the “biggest online personal development bloggers and authors.”
• Users also explicitly know the price ($97).  Including the price is a great tactic to filter out qualified customers.
• A sense of urgency is implied — “Only 36 hours left.”

Landing Page:

We all know how important a landing page is when trying to convert website traffic to paying customers.

The landing page used for this campaign prominently displayed exactly what was stated in the copy of the ad – “22 personal development courses from 25 amazing people…”  This was done so the user didn’t experience any surprises when they clicked.

The landing page also clearly listed out each of the courses/products, their authors, and the price they normally sell for individually.

There was a clear call-to-action (a red button with “Get Instant Access”) and a digital clock in the upper right counting down to the end of the sale.  This clock further created a sense of urgency for the person to buy without further delay.

Targeting:

“Precise Interest” targeting was used to reach users who have an interest in things like the following:

• Personal development
• Personal growth
• Productivity
• The 4-Hour Workweek

“Fans” of people like Tim Ferriss, Tony Robbins, and Gary Vaynerchuk were also targeted because their brands align with the products and courses being offered.

If You Don’t Test, You’ll Hate Yourself Later:

In any kind of online advertising, testing is THE most important thing you can do.

Different images, headlines, ad copy, and landing pages should all be tested to see which performs best.

The 364% ROI was the result of testing all these variables and ultimately only running the ads with the best combinations.

Do yourself a favor…be diligent about testing.

Grow Your Business Page Through Facebook Page Ads

I want to expand on Pat’s advice about building your Facebook audience quickly.

His last tip in that video offers Facebook ads as a viable way to increase your Fan numbers.

I couldn’t agree more!

These ads are called Facebook Page ads or sometimes called “engagement ads.”

A couple of things have changed, though, since he put that video out; a few things I think you’ll find game-changing.

First and foremost, you can now target friends of people who are already Fans of your page.  This is Facebook’s bread and butter — leveraging social proof and word-of-mouth promotion.

After all, you’re more likely to do something at the suggestion of a friend than a total stranger, right?

When setting up your ad, you’ll see this option:

Attract Your Ideal Audience

The other part that has evolved over the past couple of years is the “Interest targeting.”

Hopefully you have a picture in your mind of the ideal person who will benefit most from your niche business. (If you don’t, I’d jump to the “Do this before anything else” portion of this post.)

“Interest targeting” is a great way to put your business in front of your exact target audience.

This targeting has only gotten better because, whether we like it or not, Facebook now takes all of our status updates, “Likes”, personal profile info, what we post on other people’s Walls, groups we belong to, etc… and uses it to target ads to us.

A little scary, but true.

Have a site in the personal finance niche, for example?  You can target your ads to people who work at the Wall Street Journal if you want.  Awesome.

This type of ad is so effective because all your ideal customer has to do is click “Like” within the ad to become a Fan of your business and start getting your updates.

They don’t even leave the page they’re on when they click.

Pretty cool.

Here’s an example:

By clicking “Like” I would automatically register as a Fan and start getting updates from AmEx Open.

Pat has mentioned it several times when he talks about his Facebook strategy but once you get someone to Like your page, you MUST engage with them on a regular basis.

Share great content with them, interact with them and grow your relationship.  This is one way people start to trust you and ultimately become buyers of your product.

Test Product Ideas BEFORE Creation

Have an idea for a niche product but unsure whether there’s a desire for it?

You can test market reaction to a product idea before creating it by using targeted Facebook ads.

Tim Ferriss talked a lot about this kind of testing in The Four-Hour Workweek but he did it with Google AdWords.

As we’ve discussed, set up your targeting so the ideal audience for your product idea will see your ads.

Test different versions of images, headlines and ad copy which all revolve around your product and variations of your idea.  Give your ads some time to run and then see which of your ads perform the best.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the landing page with this kind of test because you’re really only concerned with how many times people are clicking on your ads.

Was the click-through rate high? (the average on Facebook is about 0.04%)

Was there one ad that people interacted with more than another?

This kind of testing can give you invaluable feedback about a niche product idea before you spend the time and resources to create it.

Testing eBook Titles – A Case Study

Similar to testing niche product ideas, if you’re writing an eBook you can also test different titles to see which most resonates with your target audience.

I did this recently with Scott Dinsmore over at LiveYourLegend.net.

Scott just released an awesome book/course called “Live Off Your Passion – An Unconventional Guide to Finding Passion and Getting Paid to Do Work You Love.”

He wanted to be sure he was using a title that people were drawn to and ultimately one that drove people to buy the book.

He gave me 10-15 potential titles and sub-titles and I created a bunch of ads with different combinations of these titles.

From what I knew about his brand and audience, I set up the targeting to ensure his ideal customer would see his ads.  (The targeting that performed the best was Fans of Tony Robbins and the book Think and Grow Rich).

Here are a couple examples of the ads:

I kept the image the same because I didn’t want it affecting the click-through.  I was more interested in which headline and ad copy resonated with people.

In some of the ads (like the one on the left) I also included a call-to-action because we also wanted to see if we could collect any email addresses on the landing page.  This was merely a secondary benefit but it was really successful as 12% of those who clicked on the ad ended up subscribing to Scott’s blog.

I let the ads run for a few days before seeing which of the ads had the best click-through rates.

In the end, there was a clear winner and “Live Off Your Passion – An Unconventional Guide to Finding Passion and Getting Paid to Do Work You Love” became the title to Scott’s new book/course.

Gift for SPI Readers: Download my Facebook Ads Guide for FREE!

I’ve only just touched on the possibilities that exist with Facebook ads but hopefully you’ve gotten some actionable tips and ideas that you can take and use for your own niche.

If you’re not yet advertising on Facebook but want to get started, I want to help.  Hell, even if you’re already running ads, I want to help.

I’ve put together a great free guide where I walk you through step-by-step exactly how to set up your own campaign and I explain each step along the way.

Consider it a road-map.

By the time you finish reading it, you’ll be creating and running your own campaigns.

To download the free guide, simply click here: IRockPaidTraffic.com

Rick Mulready created I Rock Paid Traffic to help online entrepreneurs and small businesses grow their businesses through Facebook advertising.  He’s been in the online marketing space for the past 11 years, plays rec-league ice hockey every week, is a die-hard Washington Capitals fan and tries to keep up (often unsuccessfully) with the CrossFit workout-of-the-day.

If you have any questions or comment for Rick or about paid traffic in general, please leave them below. Cheers!

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Beyond Free Traffic – A Paid Advertising Strategy That Works
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5. Your Next Free Marketing Lesson is in an Infomercial

In this session of the Smart Passive Income Podcast, to kick of the new year I share something special that happened to me that happened as a result of producing the SPI podcast.

This is session is a little different than the rest in that it’s more inspirational and motivational (as opposed to stuff that you can totally take action with right now), but the message and lessons behind it are still extremely important.

I’ve hinted about this a couple of times in the past, but last year I was hired by a Hollywood Producer to help him with an upcoming film. As a result I was able to fulfill a life long dream of mine, which I talk more about in the show.

Even though I tell a story in this session, I do my best to try to include some tips for your online business or blog, including my overall web and social media strategy to help promote this film.

I’m extremely proud to be a part of this project and share it here with you today !

If you’re at work and cannot listen to the audio or you just aren’t into podcasts, I recommend you open up the transcript at the bottom of this post so you can read through the session instead. The transcript is already available for you.

Right click here to download the MP3

Items mentioned in this podcast include:

• Pat on IMDB
• The Crooked Arrows Homepage
• The OFFICIAL Crooked Arrows Teaser Trailer
• The Crooked Arrows Facebook Page
• Virtual Staff Finder
• Podcast Session #28: How to Be Everywhere
• Podcast Session #19: Everything You Ever Needed to Know about YouTube for Online Business

Please let me know what you think of session #31, and if you enjoyed this episode, please share it!

Thank you all for your support, and once again, Happy New Year!

Cheers! :)

Please subscribe below to the podcast to get automatic updates:

• Click Here to Subscribe via iTunes
• Click Here to Subscribe via RSS (non-iTunes feed)

Transcript:

Click Here to Download the Transcript for Session 31 (PDF)

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If you would like to leave a comment on this post, please click the link below:

SPI 031 : Seeds of Opportunity & Pat Goes Hollywood
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Related posts:

1. SPI 030 : Pat’s Top 30 Tips for Successful Affiliate Marketing
2. SPI 027 : How to Harness the Power of Social Proof Online
3. SPI 026 : The Two Types of Relationships You Must Develop Online in Order to Succeed
4. SPI 001 : Introduction | Show Formalities | What to Expect
5. SPI 029 : How to Conduct (and Master) a Webinar with Lewis Howes from LewisHowes.com

A lot of the strategies that I implement here on SPI are a direct result of seeing what other people are doing – and then doing the exact opposite.

For example, most people don’t share their income publicly online, while I have my Monthly Income Reports.

A lot of people say to stick to one platform or medium and own it. Master it. I have adopted a Be Everywhere business model instead.

Many hide the parts of their businesses that might make them look bad, while I do my best to show the entire story.

A lot of these strategies, big and small, help me stand out of the crowd, and the way I utilize my email list is no exception.

Before I can show you what makes my approach with email different than most, let’s first examine what a lot of other internet marketers have done in the past.

Emails That Didn’t Resonate With Me

When I first started getting serious about online business, I was taught to follow what other successful online entrepreneurs were doing. Not to copy them, but instead be inspired by them – follow their strategies and put my own voice to it.

When I began to construct my email list and autoresponder series I subscribed to over 25 different newsletters so I could learn from the best – so I could decode and decipher any patterns in their techniques and apply them to my own brand.

After a short period of time (and a ton of emails later) I did begin to notice some patterns. Unfortunately, they didn’t resonate with me.

I’m not going to mention any of the specific newsletters I subscribed to, but I’m sure if you’re at all familiar with this industry you’d recognize some of these:

• Constant emails that included offers from other people with a “must-have” solution that is only available for a short period of time.
• Emails with text that sounded way too incredible, both in the subject line and in the body of the email.
• Emails that came from a “no-reply@” email address.
• Emails that shared only parts of the whole, only to include the rest of the story behind another opt-in form on another site, or behind a payment gateway.
• Emails that just lacked any real content & personality.

They sort of reminded me of those “Congratulations! You’re the 1,000,000th visitor! Click here to claim your prize” advertisements that used to infest the web.

In the same way, they used to work, but people online are getting smarter and are tired of being fooled.

This is why I’ve adopted a more passive approach to my own email list, one that focuses on content, personality and even interaction – not selling and gateways. This is what I’m comfortable with and even though I may be leaving money on the table upfront, in the long run I know it’s a better strategy for my particular brand.

Here’s a more detailed look, from the start…

The Lead Magnet

Not everyone includes something free as a gift for subscribing (aka. a “lead magnet”), but I do.

There are two modes of thinking here:

1. Include a lead magnet because it’s incentive to subscribe to your newsletter or email list.
2. Don’t include a lead magnet because you’re potentially getting subscribers who are dead leads – people who only subscribe to get the free thing who won’t respond or even care about your future emails.

Both points are totally valid, but here’s my 2 part-strategy when it comes to the lead-in to my email list:

Part 1: I include a lead magnet (in this case, eBooks the Smart Way) and make sure it’s extremely impressive – something totally unexpected that could potentially convert a person who subscribes just to pickup something for free, into a long time subscriber. Every once and a while I’ll get an email from a new subscriber who insists on paying me for my eBook – that’s the kind of value you want to give away.

Part 2: I make sure that the first followup email a new subscriber receives (a pre-written email in my autoresponder series) is one of my best pieces of content I have. For my newsletter, it actually includes something that’s actionable – something people can test immediately and see instant results from, which is important to make a quick but long lasting first impression. Plus, this strategy will help your open rate in the future as well.

Once a person receives their free eBook, they then go through my autoresponder series.

The Auto Responder Series

I’ve written about 4 types of autoresponder sequences before, one of them being the “Pat Flynn model”, which is what I’m going to describe for you in more detail below.

The core behind the Pat Flynn model is content and engagement.

It adapts the autoresponder series as more of an extension of the brand – another way to connect with people – as opposed to a direct marketing tool.

It roughly follows the pattern below:

Why This Works

Quite simply, it’s not aggressive and the emails are actually helpful and more personal.

They’re real.

Also, it’s a different strategy – and in a world full of junk email that gets deleted, I want to send something that actually gets saved.

The autoresponder series helps to keep me in constant contact with my subscribers, which is important because it gets people used to opening my emails. Then, when an important broadcast is sent in the future, it’s more likely to be read.

As a result, my open rates are anywhere between 50% and 70%, depending on the subject-line of the email, which is apparently pretty high in this industry, especially for one with over 25,000 people on it.

Some of the content emails have links back to relevant posts on my blog, but not all of them. This results in a constant stream of returning traffic to various posts on the blog every day, which is nice.

The Autoresponder Schedule

I schedule the autoresponder series to send an email in 7 or 14 day intervals. Currently I have 30 emails in the series (I add a new one every few weeks) which equates to over a year of passive but constant contact with my subscribers.

They are sent out on any day except for Mondays, which I reserve for any potential broadcast emails. The idea here is to never send more than 1 email to a single person on any given day.

The Broadcast Emails

A broadcast, or a one time email to your subscribers, is typically used for more timely information – information that’s important to be read at that specific moment in time. The real-time nature of broadcast emails usually create a small sense of urgency or anticipation, which is good if the subject line and the body of the email are well written. If not – the only sense of urgency subscribers may have is the urgency to unsubscribe.

For me, sometimes it’s an announcement of a new post (or video or podcast) that just came out that I want to make sure gets the most eyes on it, and Mondays are typically when I publish my more epic and noteworthy content.

Other times, my broadcasts include a link to another person’s site – something noteworthy and valuable that I want to share with my subscribers.

Sometimes the email includes a link back to the blog (or a video or podcast session) that will eventually lead a subscriber to an affiliate link or an offer – but it’s never a direct link to a product. In this case, the content that I link to usually includes a recommendation in the context of a successful case study or recent experiment that I’ve done.

The “offer-related” broadcast emails, although few and far between, always work extremely well. The open rates and click throughs are usually higher than normal (it varies, again, depending on the subject line and how well I craft the call to action in the body of the email), but bottom line – I find this indirect method to be far more subscriber-friendly than the kinds of emails I get from more aggressive internet marketers.

Actually just last week I received this message from Jeremy who has been subscribed to my email list since March of 2011:

“Pat, thank you so much for what you do. I literally just unsubscribed to maybe 10 or so email lists I was on, and you and one other one were the only ones that made the cut. You don’t send me crap and it doesn’t seem like your motive is to just drain my wallet. Thank you and please keep the emails coming!”

My approach may not be for everybody but it’s another option I’m sharing with you because you don’t have to be aggressive with your email list to still get results and you can use it as a tool to build trust instead of destroy it.

Of course, you should always test things out and at the very least make sure your audience knows what to expect from your emails beforehand. Maybe you do sell something in every email that you send out – and that’s okay – as long as you share that upfront and build a list of subscribers who are ready for it.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this insider look at my email list strategy.

Cheers!

p.s. If you have yet to start your own email list, here’s a link to my Beginner’s Guide to help you get started!

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A Detailed Look at My (Non-Aggressive) Email List Strategy
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5. How I Accumulated 10,000 Email Subscribers in 13.5 Months

Starting The Smart Passive Income Podcast was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

With nearly a million downloads (including over 100,000 in December of 2011), I definitely don’t plan on stopping.

In the year and a half since going live, the podcast has already done so much for me and the SPI brand:

• Based on a survey, the podcast is the #1 way people have found out about SPI.
• It rounds out my Be Everywhere business strategy and allows me to connect with people no matter how they prefer to consume content – text through my blog, audio through my podcast, and video through my YouTube Channel. (aka. The Content Trifecta)
• Hosting the podcast has tremendously improved my comfort behind a microphone and overall presentation skills.
• The podcast was nominated in two categories for the annual Podcast Awards, and although I didn’t win I still get a ton of recognition from being nominated.
• It connected me with a client (a Hollywood Producer) who I am now working with for an upcoming movie this Spring. More on this coming soon!
• It has provided me several more opportunities that I’ve had to turn down for different reasons: JV partnerships, job opportunities, speaking gigs, etc.

I’ve always encouraged others to start their own podcasts, which is why I’m extremely excited to see three people who I highly respect recently publish their very first episodes too:

Adam Baker from Man vs. Debt, Derek Halpern from Social Triggers, and Glen Allsop from Viperchill – all bloggers who I’ve mentioned several times here on SPI before who each produce amazing content on their blogs, and now we have the pleasure of listening to them on their own podcasts too.

Even after just listening to each of their first episodes, I’m really excited for what’s to come.

What a wonderful gift to start off the new year!

Below are links to each of their first podcast episodes, in the order that they were published:

Man Vs. Debt Podcast – Episode #1 – Your Big Why and Defining Your Freedom : Adam’s blog and podcast are primarily for those looking to get out of debt, but he often touches on a lot of important lessons that can be applied to all of our lives outside of the debt we incur. At the same time, he’s growing like crazy in the online business and marketing space too, so I won’t be surprised if we’ll see some aspects of that in his podcast eventually as well.

Social Triggers Insider: How to Get Major Press with No Connections : Derek’s Social Triggers Insider is not on iTunes yet, but that’s okay. It will be soon and he tells me that he already has 8 more episodes recorded. The first one, which features special guest Jonah Berger, professor at the Wharton School of Business, is incredibly informative. Visit the post because it’s not just a podcast – it’s sort of in a master class format.

Viperchill Episode 1 – How I Would Make Money Online if I Was Starting from Scratch : A perfect title for a first podcast episode from Glen, because we all want to know how Glen does what he does, right? This is a quick listen (20 minutes), but it provides a ton of insight on what he does and what he would do right now. One thing is for sure, this intro will make you wish it was longer.

Congrats to Adam, Derek and Glen for taking the next step with their brands this year – it’s incredibly motivating and I’m excited to see what’s next for them.

Enjoy!

p.s. If you’re interested in starting your own podcast too, check out Learn How to Podcast - a completely free resource (no emails required either) created by Cliff Ravenscraft of PodcastAnswerMan.com.

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3 Brand New Podcasts You Should Be Listening to in 2012
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5. The Smart Passive Income Brand and Plans for the Future

Welcome to my December 2011 Monthly Income Report!

Each month I write a detailed report about the money I’ve earned online. It’s not all about the numbers though – it’s more about what I’ve done to earn that money and the lessons I’ve learned along the way.

I’ve been keeping this up for over 3 years now, and every month brings along something different as I’m constantly building my passive income portfolio with new projects and new forms of (virtually) automated businesses each and every month.

So why share this with you?

There are a couple of reasons:

First and foremost, it keeps me headed in the right direction. Seeing the numbers and writing down both my wins and my failures help me stay the course and always try to outdo myself, and publicly displaying these things holds me accountable.

Secondly, and more importantly, I do this to be transparent.

If you’re just starting out online, please understand that making money via the Internet is definitely not an overnight thing, and it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to pull it off.

A lot of people attempt it and a lot of people fail – but I absolutely know that it’s possible. I struggle through trial and error every single day – but as long as you have a goal and constantly work towards it (and fall down towards it too), you’ll give yourself a chance.

Thanks again for your support, and let’s get right to it.

Important Going-Ons in December

December is always an interesting month in terms of my income. With the holidays and much of the population in vacation-mode and away from the office, it does reflect in my earnings report, both in good and bad ways.

Another thing that seems to happen at the end of the year for a lot of people is – getting sick.

During the later half of the month my son got sick, and as most parents know that means that inevitably the rest of the family will get sick too, and this time it was no exception for us.

My wife and I soon picked up whatever bug my son picked up from who knows where, and it didn’t help that we were also hosting a party for my son’s birthday on Christmas Eve, and then celebrating Christmas by house-hopping on Christmas day, and then attending the Holiday Bowl a couple days later, and then an annual Christmas party with some of our closest friends, and then hosting a small New Year’s Eve get-together for our immediate family, and then…I pass out.

Ok – I didn’t really pass out, but I felt like it sometimes – and I still have yet to fully recover.

As a result of all this activity, both in my schedule and my immune system, my ability to get some good work done at the end of the year was not there. But, thanks to the power of passive income my income levels were still maintained.

GreenExamAcademy.com

Typically, the end of the year is a terrible time for sales on GreenExamAcademy.com. November’s monthly income report reflected that, and I was expecting similar, if not smaller numbers in December.

So, it was definitely a surprise when I noticed that the December earnings from this site for December more than doubled.

Less than an hour of work was done on the site the entire month (just a few replies to some emails that came in), so it was definitely time to do some investigation.

There are a couple of factors that probably helped me out here:

Continued Education

Part of the duty of those who pass the LEED exam is maintaining your accreditation by meeting continuing education requirements. I recently put up an affiliate link to some education classes that would satisfy some of the requirements, and they seem to have converted very well in December.

My thoughts are that since people are off from work, they are taking advantage of this extra time to get their requirements in while they can.

A New Version of the Exam

Late next year, they’ll be rolling out a new version of the exam, which means there’s always a huge scramble to pass the current version so people don’t have to learn all of the new stuff – they can more easily pass the older exam and just maintain their accreditation.

Although there’s still a lot of time, there’s been more recent talk in the industry about the new version of the exam, which probably got a few extra people to become interested in passing the exam now.

Good times.

SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com

On the flip side, and as expected, the earnings from this career-based niche site was down compared to previous months.

Nothing to worry about though…

• The site is still ranking #1 in Google for its primary keyword.
• It’s still getting hits from over 4000+ long-tail keywords.
• And it still earned over $1,500.00 (as opposed to over $2k last month).

If you’re interested in learning how I created this site from scratch – all the way from coming up with the idea, to ranking #1 in Google and earning money, you can read more about it here on the niche site duel hub. All free content and you don’t even need to opt-in to get it.

Traffic was down a bit during the month, and CPCs (cost-per-clicks) were down as well – and again, this is expected.

This is just speculation, but the holidays probably had a little bit to do with it. People aren’t searching for as much information about security guard training, and security guard training companies are paying less for advertising at the end of the year, which has a direct effect on my income (since through Adsense, I earn a percentage of the total cost per click that advertisers pay).

I suspect things will pick up in January, and already on the 3rd and 4th of the month I’ve had two consecutive $100+ days.

In 2012 you’re going to see a lot more information about this site – primarily what I do to diversify the income coming from it, as per my 2012 Goal Post.

iPhone Apps

December is always a good month for iPhone apps – especially if you have some exposure in the app store (top lists, features, etc.).

Why?

Because a lot of people open up their presents and see a brand new iPhone, iPod Touch or iPads.

We also timed an updated version of our top performing application, Baby Maker, with the holidays and it seemed to pay off, as you can see below:

It also cracked the top 100 Photo & Video category, and we’re still working on updating it again, since we found a couple of bugs since the latest release.

After that’s done, we’re going to start working on some new apps, and actually begin some marketing to promote the apps we already have in place. Should be fun, and I’ll keep you posted on what’s going on as it happens.

Still, we’re no Benny Hsu

Other Niche Sites

With the other (smaller) niche sites that I own, some were up, and some were down.

One in particular that did really well in December is a fairly new site that targets a specific type of electronic product type (not a brand).

After a 2 month backlinking campaign, the site rose to the top 4 in Google and began ranking for long tail keywords as well.

In December, which is always a good month for electronics and other type of retail niche sites (i.e. gifts), it earned $190.05 from Amazon.com, pushing over $3,873.74 in sales, which is pretty cool.

I’m sure the numbers will be down at the beginning of the new year simply because less people are shopping on Amazon.com. Chris Guthrie always notes that most of his sales for his Amazon affiliate sites come at the end of the year too.

Again, I’m sorry I’m reluctant to reveal any new additional niches to you – at least at this moment in time. I’m still seeing new copycat sites popup as a result of my revealing my security guard training niche site – and unfortunately people are still copying my content, taking what I’ve researched and written and slightly changing the words without any credit back to me or my site. It’s sort of obviously when all of the bullet points and charts within their posts are the exact same as my own.

I usually reserve a spot here in my income reports to talk about what’s been happening with SPI, but there’s too much good stuff to talk about (like reaching a million YouTube video views, 1 million podcast downloads, etc.), and I’d like to talk more about each of those in a blog post later on in the month. For now, let’s just get to the numbers…

Income Breakdown

Disclosure: many of the links below are affiliate links that will earn me a commission if you purchase through them. If you do, I absolutely appreciate it and if you have any questions about any of the products or services please contact me!

Also, please note that a lot of these are figures from reports from each individual company for the previous month. It does not necessarily reflect the actual payment which, for some of the companies listed below, come 30 to 60 days later because of potential refunds.

• GreenExamAcademy.com Product Sales:
  • Total: $4,134.97
    • Last Month: $2,045.14
      
    • Difference: +$2,089.83
      

• SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com:
  • Adsense: $1,570.22
  • Job Board: $10.01
  • Amazon.com: $0.48
  • Total: $1,580.71
    • Last Month: $2,170.15
    • Difference: -$589.44
      

• Other Google Adsense (includes other niche sites):
  • Total: $225.56
    • Last Month: $288.66
    • Difference: -$63.10

• Affiliate Earnings (includes other niche sites):
  • Market Samurai: $4,683.36
  • Instant Article Factory: $171.12
  • The Best Spinner: $1,951.12
  • Blog Blueprint: $750.58
  • Unique Article Wizard: $2,978.82
    
  • Bluehost.com: $14,550.00
  • iPhone Apps w/o Experience eBook: $132.56
  • Chris Guthrie’s Amazon Niche Profit Course: $70.22
  • WP-Wishlist Plugin: $12.00
  • Affiliate Marketing for Beginners by Corbett Barr: $307.02
  • Joseph Archibald’s 40 Day Challenge: $205.39
  • Thesis Theme for WordPress: $622.50
  • Aweber: $523.50
  • Elance.com: $206.00
  • Odesk.com: $0.50
  • 99Designs.com: $27.00
  • EasyPLR: $42.03
  • Woothemes.com: $46.00
  • Screenflow: $79.20
  • BuildMyRank: $489.90
  • E-Junkie.com: $67.60
  • Amazon.com: $347.46
  • Beachbody Products: $29.90
  • Total: $28,293.87
    • Last Month:$29,616.24
      
    • Difference: -$1,322.37

• iPhone Applications:
  • Paid Apps: $3,668.62
  • Free Apps: $585.86
    
  • Total: $4,254.48
    • Last Month: $2,853.12
    • Difference: +$1,401.36

• Gross Total in December: $38,485.59
  • Last Month: $44,473.31
  • Difference: -$5,987.72

• Expenses: $3,461.02
  • Major expenses this month include virtual assistants, hosting account for SPI (dedicated server), recurring payments for various tools, CPA fees.

• Net Total in December: $35,028.57

(Click here to read a typical monthly expense report which breaks down how my time and money is spent)

The numbers are a bit skewed because last month I included a substantial non-recurring payment from a client, which isn’t typical – but even so I’m very happy to finish off the year above $35k.

What’s encouraging here is that the portion of my income NOT related to the SPI blog is much bigger than last month, which aligns with my goal for 2012 to expand and diversify more of my outside-of-SPI-income.

That said, as I always make sure to mention in my income reports, I’ll be the first to admit that a significant portion of my income comes directly from this blog, mostly from the products that I recommend as an affiliate, which are products I’ve used and have helped me in one way, shape or form.

I’m very fortunate to have a community that is willing to support me by making purchases through my affiliate links – a responsibility that I will never take lightly and always take seriously – and as such I never promote just for the potential income that can come from an offer.

I am extremely grateful for everything, and I will continue to give back with valuable content and my experience in return.

Lessons Learned in December

In December I had a run-in with a very determined troll, a person who leaves off-color remarks and takes disrespectful actions to attract attention and stir up a discussion.

Now, I always welcome the critics and skeptics, as long as people are being respectful to me and to each other. I wish there were more of this because it’s healthy, and in an industry like internet marketing and making money online all sides of the story need to be addressed, and questions and criticisms are, at least for me, are a very welcome way to make sure everything is addresses as it should.

My issue is with some people’s approach.

In this instance, it’s unfortunate because this troll actually brings up some good questions and concerns (among some not-so-good ones) that I would have been happy to discuss, even publicly – but the off-putting nature of the approach just didn’t sit well with me and as a result, respect was obviously thrown out the window.

I won’t get into too much detail, but this person emailed me a very long email with a number of questions and concerns. As I was formatting a reply, a number of my blogger colleagues messaged me saying that this same person posted the same exact email (verbatim) in the comment sectionon their blogs on posts where I was mentioned or featured.

It was also posted in a number of popular forums and other places online – all within just a few hours before I even had a chance to respond to the initial email. Now – there are 20 to 30 different spots online addressing me and asking me questions (the same questions – one making fun of the shirts I wore in my videos, but that’s a separate story), and now what am I supposed to do – respond to each and every one of them? Monitor each and address them all?

I was happy to answer the questions and reply to him criticisms and concerns. It’s easy, because it’s all truth and backed up by real numbers and reports.

But, his intentions were obvious.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things, and the thing is this – no matter what this person does, even if he apologizes and whatever (I don’t expect one), I will never ever be able to get rid of the bad taste of that initial impression.

You never have a second chance to make a first impression, so be wise about what you do and how you approach things.

When all this was going down, I couldn’t believe it. It took almost every ounce of my energy NOT to immediately respond and react to this right away. In the heat of the moment, you’ve got to let things cool down before reacting because you can get into big trouble sometimes, even when you’re not the first one to start something.

In sports, do ever notice how often the person who reacts is always the one to get penalized?

I was glad to wait it out because now I can address it here respectfully in a calm and cool manner, instead of creating some monster of a post that probably would have been very entertaining to read, but it most-likely would have made me look bad too.

Thanks for letting me share that here with you.

On a lighter, but more disappointing note  - I just wanted to congratulate to Adam Baker from ManvsDebt (who now has an amazing podcast, by the way!) for getting first place in our Blogger Fantasy Football league.

I’m a HUGE Fantasy Football junkie and took first place the last 3 years in a row in another league.

It was me and Adam in the finals, and he won by a total of 2.54 points.

2.54 points!

That’s one field goal. One touch down, a 26 yard run, a 22 yard reception and about a billion of other possibilities that could have happened differently to put me into first place.

Why is this important?

Because there will always be the “what if’s”.

There will always be this or that which could have happened instead – stuff you wish you had done differently – and yeah, you can learn from those experiences – but don’t dwell on them.

Don’t get upset because there’s nothing that you can do to change the past.

You can only change the future (as cliche as that sounds).

And I’ll end my report on that note.

Thanks for your time, as always, and if you’re interested in what I’m up to in 2012, check out my 2012 Goal Post.

Happy New Year, and Cheers!

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My Monthly Report – December 2011
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Related posts:

1. My Monthly Report – December 2009
2. My Monthly Report – December 2008
3. My Monthly Report – January 2011
4. My Monthly Report – October 2011
5. My Monthly Report – November 2011