How to Earn 5 Income Streams from One Paid Printed Newsletter
While everyone else has a free e-newsletter or even a paid online newsletter, you might consider going in the opposite direction and having a PRINT newsletter.
You can use a mailing service to print and mail the newsletter for you, making it a hands-off operation once you send them your new issue and updated mailing list.
Formatting the issue is something you can hire out.
Even writing the articles can be outsourced if you don’t want to do it yourself.
But why would you want to do a print newsletter?
You can charge more because it has a higher perceived value than an online newsletter, regardless of your niche.
You have increased credibility. It might not be right, but the fact is a print newsletter is generally going to be viewed as more authoritative than an online newsletter, especially if your target market is older.
With a printed newsletter, you are in their mailbox. You’re on their kitchen table. You’re on the coffee table in the living room or the nightstand in the bedroom. You are in your customer’s homes, and while I don’t know all the psychology behind this, I do know that when they can hold your product in their hands, your customers become much more bonded to you than if you’re simply words on a screen.
Refunds are lower or even non-existent. The act of having to mail the newsletter back to you (the publisher) to get a refund is more work than most people are willing to do. And I know of print newsletter publishers who charge anywhere from $47 a month to $299 a month and do not allow refunds once an issue ships.
How do you make money with a printed newsletter?
You can use any one of these methods or a combination.
1: Subscription Fees
Of course you can make money by charging for subscriptions. Determine what it costs to print and ship, what it costs to obtain a new customer and how long you expect the average subscriber will stay with you.
You can charge more for certain niches, such as highly specialized areas (think fields such as science and engineering) as well as almost any type of investing or how to make money niche. You can likely charge even more if your newsletter is for businesses rather than individuals.
Then again, you can also publish and mail your newsletter for free and still make plenty of money, as I’ll cover in a bit.
2: Charging for ‘Ride-a-longs”
Since your newsletter will likely go out in an envelope, there’s no reason why you can’t add in some ride-a-longs. These are completely separate fliers, brochures and sales cards or sales letters from other businesses who want to target your customers.
When you build up sufficient subscribers in the right niche, you can make even more money from your ride-a-longs than you do from subscriptions.
3: Charging for Ads
Another option is to sell ads inside your newsletter. Again, you’ll want to have a sufficient number of subscribers to make it worthwhile for your advertisers. Anyone looking to target your prospects will be a good candidate, as long as they are not in direct competition with you.
It’s even possible to send out your newsletter for free and still make a hefty profit if you do some or all of the following: Target the right readers, charge for ads, charge for ride-a-longs and/or sell your own products via the newsletter.
4: Selling More Products
The added visibility and enhanced credibility a printed newsletter creates will naturally lead to more sales.
And it doesn’t hurt that when your customer is holding your newsletter in their hands, you have no online competition for their attention. Think about selling from a website – you are in direct competition with every other website on the internet for that person’s attention. At any moment they can click over to Facebook, YouTube, Reddit or whatever. But when they are reading the sales letter you included with your newsletter, they’re not clicking away. They’re READING the sales letter.
You can advertise your products in your newsletter and in your own ride-a-longs. You can also write newsletter articles that make it super easy to recommend your own solution.
Even when promoting a new launch online, who are your subscribers most likely to buy from? The person who sends them a newsletter in the mail each month, that’s who.
You might also create a special inner circle of your paid newsletter subscribers. This inner circle gets special offers and deals your other list members don’t get – just another perk of subscribing.
5: Get Offered More JV Deals and Publicity Opportunities
The enhanced visibility and credibility of a printed newsletter can also result in getting more offers from fellow marketers to do guest posting, be a guest on podcasts and even do profitable joint venture deals.
One printed, paid newsletter publisher I know tells the story of someone subscribing to his newsletter using an alias. This person was a paid subscriber for 7 months before revealing he was a high level online marketer (8 figures) and wanted to strike a JV deal. That one deal resulted in a very large payday for the newsletter publisher.
And when you approach others with JV deals, it’s much easier to get a yes when you can say you are the publisher of a newsletter.
6: Get More Clients
Do you perform a service of some type? Coaching perhaps? Consulting? Freelance marketing for non-internet businesses? Whatever it is, you can use your printed newsletter to gain more customers.
Credibility. Knowledge. Trust-worthiness. Being the EXPERT. These are the perceptions your prospects will have of YOU because you are the author of the newsletter they read each month for help, tips, news and advice.
Place an invitation in each newsletter for them to contact you for a consultation. If you don’t hear from them after 3 or 4 issues, call them and remind them of who you are. “Oh yes, I get your newsletter!”
Tell them you’re calling to see how they’re doing and if you can help. They will be flattered. This isn’t a sales call because they know you and like you already.
Know, like and trust. Almost nothing can build that faster than continuous communication of awesome advice in your printed newsletter and an offer to help them. Find out what their current #1 headache is and help them solve it, and you’ll have a client for life.
Seth has published 17 books and has the number one blog in marketing, according to Ad Age Power.
Here are Seth’s 10 Golden Rules for Your Success.
1: Do it Your Way. Seth has a blog but until very recently he didn’t have a podcast. He still doesn’t have Twitter. Or video. Or even comments on his blog. Seth decided that it would just be him and his blog, one post per day, and we weren’t going to pay attention to what other people told him he was ‘supposed’ to be doing. As he says, you don’t have to like his blog, but it’s the only one like it because he did it his way instead of copying what others are doing.
Seth has chosen not to focus on his blog stats, either, because he doesn’t want to work towards having a more popular blog. Instead, he wants to receive the kind of emails that say, “I’ve been reading your blog for six weeks and look what I changed in my life. Thank you for inspiring me to do that.”
2: Tell Your Story. Tell a story that resonates with your audience. People remember stories that match the way they want to see the world. When Seth meets small-business people, he’s not interested in their balance sheet. He wants to know their story.
Why should the customer pick you? Why should the customer care about what you’re doing? 2% better than your competitor doesn’t win you the business. Having your own unique story that sets you apart from everyone else does.
3: Be Patiently Impatient. Or perhaps impatiently patient. Do what you have to do to succeed and do it fast if at all possible. But realize that success can take time.
You set up a brand new social media channel in no time at all, but no one is using it – should you close it down and do something else? It took Twitter 2 years to catch on. Imagine if they had given up after a few weeks or months.
4: Refuse to Settle for Average. Anyone can be average, and any business can be average. But what’s the point? No one has ever said, “Ooh, that business is so average, let’s use them!”
You can choose to stand out in your field, or you can choose to create an entirely new field. Either one works.
5: Your Product is Your Marketing. Did Google advertise? Did Facebook, Amazon or eBay advertise? No. But what they did do is make something people talked about.
If you can come up with a profitable idea that gets people talking then you’ll never have to advertise.
6: Spread Your Ideas. Hold your idea close, tell no one and soon you’ll see another business using that very same idea to make their next fortune. “Hey, they stole that idea from me,” you’ll say.
Nope. Ideas are everywhere and your ideas are not exclusive to you. Other people are having the exact same great idea you’re having. That’s why when you have a great idea, you should act upon it immediately and spread it in such a way that people take notice and pass it forward to others.
7: Choose Carefully. There are an infinite number of things you could be doing now, tomorrow, next week. And there are an almost infinite number of businesses you can start, choices to make, roads to follow… choose carefully.
But once you choose something, don’t second guess your choice.
8: Life is a Series of Dips and Rises. Things won’t always work out perfectly. You might make a mistake so big it looks like things are over.
But as long as you get back up one more time than you fall, you’ll be better than okay.
9: Navigate without a Map. Going to work for one company and retiring there 40 years later is what your grandpa did, not you. For the last 2 -3 decades, Fortune 500 companies have created zero jobs.
The future is being built by people like you – entrepreneurs. There are no rule books and no maps, except for this one: Help others get what they want and you can get what you want.
10: Create Something Remarkable. Remarkable means quite literally, something worth remarking about. Something worth telling others. A black and white cow is not remarkable, but a purple one is.
Online Marketers: The One Simple Shift that will Catapult You to Success
It’s my opinion that any online marketer – regardless of niche – who doesn’t do the following is essentially hiking up a rocky mountain barefoot when s/he could be taking the ski lift.
Online marketing boils down to this: We either create our own products or choose affiliate products, and then we spend our precious time, energy and money getting people to BUY those products.
But only a relatively small percentage of marketers make the one simple shift that will catapult them to success.
I’m going to focus on product creators here but this applies to affiliate marketing as well.
Here’s the traditional launch a product method:
You get an idea for a product.
You do some research and you believe this product will sell well.
You create the entire product.
You create the entire sales funnel that will sell the product, including squeeze page, upsells, downsells, sales page, product delivery page, affiliate page, etc.
You line up affiliates and convince them to promote your launch.
You launch and you make sales and you don’t sleep for a week because of all the customer service requests and affiliate hand holding necessary.
Then you pay affiliate commissions, pay affiliate bonuses, pay your web designers and copywriters and all of that if you haven’t already.
You’re exhausted. And this didn’t make the kind of money you thought it would, so you…
…start over with a new product and new sales funnel.
You do this as quickly and as often as you can without going insane.
Within a few months or years, you are so burned out you wish you still held a job working for someone else.
Sound familiar?
Let’s add a twist.
You get an idea for a continuity product like a membership, newsletter or software as a service.
You do research to confirm this product will likely sell well.
You create just a small portion of the product if it’s informational – about one month of content. If it’s software, you outsource the creation of it (unless you’re a coder, which you’re probably not, so let someone else do it for you).
You create a page to offer either a free or $1 trial of the product. You could create an entire funnel, but you’re lazy so you just create the one page.
You drive traffic (free or paid) and you get your initial members.
You continue to get paid on those sales every single month.
You see which traffic methods are working and you keep using those.
You regularly update the product.
You continue to get trial members, many of which continue as full paying members.
You may or may not use affiliates – that’s totally up to you.
This same membership sells for years. YEARS. Because you keep updating it.
Life is good. You know how much money you will make next month. You work 10-20 hours a month.
You’re not breaking your own spirit by continually having to create new products. There is no way you would ever get a ‘real’ job again.
This second scenario can be just a small launch, perhaps to your own list just to see if it’s going to sell well. You don’t have to sweat the 101 things that go along with a huge launch because this isn’t a: “Sell it hard and get out fast.” kind of thing. You’re selling this membership, newsletter or SAAS for months or years to come, and earning residual income, too.
You can start a membership site in a week and buy enough traffic to see if it’s a winner. If not, tweak it and try again, or get a better idea. You’re not out much money or time. (A full-blown launch can cost you hundreds of hours and a small fortune in copywriting, page design, affiliate contests and so forth.)
You’re essentially giving away initial access, so affiliates are optional. Fancy sales copy is optional. If you’re offering the right product to the right audience at the right price (free or $1) then selling just got a lot easier.
And it’s residual. $10 a month. $20 a month. $47 a month. You pick the price. You get 200 new trial members the first week and 100 stick with you – you can do the math. You get 200 new trial members every single week for 52 weeks and half of those stay in the membership for several months – you can do the math.
Yes, there is attrition. But if you’re offering the right newsletter or membership or software, that attrition rate can be surprisingly low. Think of a software someone needs to run their business. Are they going to cancel? Not unless you stop updating.
Think of a newsletter or membership that gives them the crucial info they need to succeed (business or personal, doesn’t matter). Are they going to cancel? No way.
I love products that pay residual income.
I sell my own and I sell other people’s residual products as an affiliate.
My reasoning is simple: Why work myself to death to create products that only pay me one time when I can create products that pay me over and over again? And these are products that I can keep selling for years to come.
Consider this: Do you want to do 2 to 4 major product launches each year? I know guys who do one per month. It’s crazy.
Or do you want to have maybe 1 or 2 products that you can continually sell for years that happen to bring you residual income, too?
Residual income might well be considered the 8th wonder of the business world. When you’re earning residual income, you have income security with LESS work than if you did a big fancy launch every 2 to 6 months.
Do you know what it takes to do a big launch? It’s exhausting. And when it’s over and the affiliates are paid and the bonuses are paid and all the expenses are handled, you realize that even though the launch went great (assuming it didn’t flop) you still didn’t make as much money as you thought you would.
Which is why you see marketers doing one big launch after another. It’s work and frankly it’s not fun.
If you wonder why so many ‘big name’ marketers come and go after a few years, this is the reason.
Be kind to yourself and work smart. Sell products with residual income.
Conversion Factors to Sell More Books | Try These Methods Now
(Plus Your Launch Schedule for Amazon’s Latest Algorithm Change)
To increase conversions of your book on Amazon, pay attention to these 6 items:
1: Your Book Cover – Don’t skimp here. Make it professional looking, eye-catching and readable in thumbnail size.
2: Your Book Title – Everything else being the same, a change of book title has been known to move a loser into the best-selling category.
3: Book Description – Think of your book description as a mini-sales letter. Every word should work to turn the prospect into a customer.
4: The Look Inside Sample (This is the table of contents and the first 5 to 10 pages) Make your table of contents compelling, with plenty of benefits and curiosity. Your first pages should highlight what the reader will get from reading your book – the benefits and changes they can expect, or the entertainment value. If it’s a work of fiction, your first pages and lead character need to capture the reader’s interest to the point where they care about the hero and MUST find out what happens next.
5: Price Point – This will depend on your genre. In some niches, 99 cents and even $2.99 books sell well. In other niches, that low price point implies the book isn’t worth the customer’s time.
5.5: Reviews – Quantity of reviews can be almost as important as how many stars you average. Don’t panic when you get the occasional negative review – it makes your positive reviews that much more believable, and some negative reviews can actually increase sales. For example, a book on herbal remedies with a negative review from someone who only believes in pharma drugs is a positive to that book’s target market.
The higher your conversions – in other words, the more traffic you can convert into a sale – the more traffic Amazon will continue to send to your book page.
Focus on higher traffic, lower competition keywords. Choose categories with plenty of visibility that you can rank for (not so popular that you can’t compete and not so obscure that no one cares).
If possible, get pre-orders to help you reach the hot new releases list when your book launches. Plan to send an initial boost of traffic to your Amazon book page the day you launch as well as the next two days after that (72 hours total). This primes the Amazon traffic pump. When Amazon’s algorithm sees that traffic is purchasing your book, it will begin to send its own traffic.
To please Amazon’s latest algorithm change, your launch schedule might look like this:
Pre-launch – discount your book price and get pre-orders*, the more the merrier.
Day 1 of Launch – email your list and use social media. Today you’re sending all of your warm traffic to get your conversions high.
Day 2 and 3 – do everything you can to get more traffic, such as promotions, guesting on blogs and podcasts, getting your book featured on book blogs and so forth.
Days 4 – 7 – if you can continue the hard push, do so.
Day 8 – move your book to full price.
And as long as your book continues to convert well, Amazon will continue to send traffic your way.
*Let’s talk a little bit about Pre-orders
Pre-orders are obviously a great way to guarantee you’ll have sales on launch day, and you can start getting pre-orders before your book is even written, much less published.
(HINT: If you have a book idea, put it on Amazon for pre-orders. Then push traffic to it to see if it converts. If it doesn’t convert, tweak the 5.5 conversion factors listed above. If it still doesn’t convert, you might want to consider writing something else instead.)
Amazon has changed the preorder period from 90 days to a full 12 months.
And you can put your entire series of books up for sale before they are written – up to 10 books in a series. The power of writing a series – fiction or non-fiction – is that when a person buys one book and likes it, they are much more likely to buy more books in the same series.
Plus, you can promote all the other series’ books in each of the individual volumes.
Just make sure you can write and publish your entire series within 12 months.
Rule #1 of online marketing… there aren’t nearly as many rules as you might think.
Rule #2 of online marketing… some people will do things that really should be against the rules. And sometimes these things will really make you mad.
Rule #3 of online marketing… you can’t change what they do and getting mad won’t help. But what you can do is sleep well at night.
Here’s what I’m talking about:
Within the ‘make money online’ niche, as well as most likely every other niche, there are people who don’t play fair.
I’ll give you a few examples:
They sell live coaching for big fees, boasting about how customers will have direct access to them. Then they outsource those calls to staff or virtual assistants.
They offer upsells at one price, then offer the same upsells at lower prices when people don’t buy. Those who bought the first time paid more for the exact same product other customers paid less for.
They offer products that aren’t created yet. Then say they have ‘technical difficulties’ as they rush to outsource the creation of the product.
They sell software that does not work.
You get the idea.
I’ve bent the rules myself, but in ways that never disrespected my customers. My own rule is that customers come first and it lets me sleep well at night.
The other day I was promoting an affiliate product when one of my customers sent me an email. He was livid. Seems he bought the product at one price, and then later discovered that had he left the page and waited for a follow- up email from the seller, he could have saved $100.
Whoops.
This is a good customer of mine. He’s been with me for years. I apologized for his experience and sent him the $100.
What I didn’t do was complain to the product seller. I let it go. While I play fair, I realize I can’t always expect everyone else to do the same. This seller has quality products I totally believe in, and I’ll probably continue to promote them.
But in the future, I will look at the funnels I promote more carefully. And if there is a way to get a better deal, I’ll let my readers know about it.
Case Study: Increasing Opt-ins by 50%
Matt offers a physical copy of his book for free, if the new customer pays for shipping and subscribes to a $1 trial of a $47 monthly continuity program.
When Matt set up his squeeze page he was in a hurry. He recorded a short video of himself talking about the book offer but he omitted using an ecover. Conversion was at 26% and it wasn’t paying for itself. In fact, for each new subscriber, he was paying about $2.00 out of his own pocket.
The continuity program is a good one and he was making a profit overall, but he really wanted to get the initial offer to pay for itself so that he could ramp up his advertising.
He tried a few things which increased conversion a percentage point or two. But then he finally added an ecover right above the opt-in form.
Conversions increased.
Then he went a step further, recorded a new video in which he holds a copy of his book and replaced the old video.
Conversions have now increased by 50%.
Never underestimate the importance of pictures in general and ecovers in particular. Whatever it is that you’re offering; a book, a report, software, etc., display a picture of it for prospects to salivate over. Or better yet, hold it in your hand to make it even more real and more desirable for the prospect.
Weird Website Trick Increases Conversions in Any Market
You’re going to think this is too simple to work.
Big mistake.
Certain website designs attract certain target markets. The design that attracts gardeners, for example, is going to be different from the design that attracts electrical engineers.
Knowing this, the question becomes, “How do you design a website that you KNOW will attract your target market like no other?”
And how do you do this without a lot of market research, testing, trial and error and so forth?
It’s so simple, I’m almost embarrassed to tell you.
Look at the successful websites in your market.
And then do what they do.
See? I told you this was simple.
There is zero need to waste your time or money conceptualizing what your site could look like. You don’t need to make a dozen mockups and drive traffic to see which site people stay on. You don’t need to hire fancy web designers to create an artsy site.
See what’s working, learn all you can and then create your own familiar design without copying.
If you use any site design other from the type favorited by your target market, you’re going to lose traffic. And conversions.
People trust a good-looking site that feels somewhat familiar. Using a professional, familiar design boosts trust, reputation and authority. The visitor won’t realize why they trust your site, only that they do.
And that’s all that counts.
Why Internet Marketing was made for Introverts
20 years ago if you wanted to get rich and successful, it helped tremendously if you were an extrovert.
Why?
Because of networking. You had to convince people to finance you, to work for you, to work with you and to buy from you. Handshakes and small talk and saying all the right things and making the right impression and… whew. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
That’s because I’m an introvert. Yes, I can do all of those things in person, and I can do them well. But to recharge I need plenty of time alone. What I can’t do is that sort of thing 8-12 hours a day. It’s just not going to happen.
Enter the internet. All networking can be done online. All selling can be done online. EVERYTHING can be done online! It’s an introvert’s dream come true.
Online marketing is your shot at the life of your dreams.
And if you’re an introvert, you have an edge over extroverts. Especially in the time of coronavirus.
So get busy and make your dreams come true.
Do You Hate Paying for Advertising?
It’s great when we can use free advertising to make sales, right?
Like when affiliates send you traffic.
Oh wait… you have to PAY those affiliates.
Okay, but when you do guest posting, and appear on podcasts, and haunt forums and do all those other things that are free…
Except all of that takes TIME. And it may – or may not – send you the traffic you seek.
Hmmm….
What if we thought of advertising as an investment?
Let’s say you invest in real estate: You might make 5% to 20% yearly returns on your capital, right? Of course there are things like property taxes and maintenance that eat into that.
Or you could lend money to others and charge 10-20% interest. But what are you going to do if people don’t pay you back; break their legs?
Okay, you could buy a business. You’ll need a big (BIG!) down payment and either a paid manager or 40-60 hours per week of your own time to run the place.
Then there’s the stock market. Win some, lose some… better buy the blue-chip stocks to be safe. That’s about 6% per year. I hope you’re either very young and willing to wait a long time to see your money grow, or you have a lot of money to invest right now.
Then there’s ads. Little bitty ads on Facebook, YouTube, Adwords, etc.
You place an ad – depending on what you’re selling, you might spend $50 a day. But you have a system in place, and that $50 yields $50 in immediate return and another $100 over the course of the next couple of weeks or months.
In other words, you invest $50, you get back your $50 and you make another $100 within 2 months. Like clockwork.
What are you selling?
Courses, info products, services… whatever it is you want to sell. Maybe you already have a brick and mortar business and you’re getting new customers this way.
What other investment will give you a return like this? Because if you know of one, I sure want to hear about it.
“But I don’t know what to sell or how to sell it.”
Fair enough. Pick something. Choose a niche where there is a lot of money to be made that you find at least somewhat interesting.
Got it?
Now go on a quest. Find out what other people are selling in this niche and how they’re selling it. Take an entire week to do this. Make lots of notes.
At the end of that week you should have a long list of affiliate products you can promote as well as ideas for your own products and services.
Pick one and get started.
My point here isn’t to give you a primer on how to sell products or build sales funnels or even do advertising. It’s to show you that one of the very best investments you can make is in buying silly little ads.
Because once you have a winner, you can continue to invest in that ad over and over again for remarkably large and fast returns.
Want to retire in 5 years?
This is how you do it.
5 Reasons You NEED a Blog
Blogs are so 2005, right? You’ve got to keep writing all the time and finding things to say and communicating and who needs that?
Okay, maybe you do.
If you have a website, you need a blog.
If you market online, you need a blog.
If you want to have an audience for whatever it is that you do, then you need a blog.
Here’s why:
1: More Connections.
Blog marketing boosts your connections with potential customers. They can get to know you through your posts, understand why you are the expert, find out how you’re different from all the rest and leave comments for you to respond to.
2: Improved SEO.
If you want to rank for certain keywords, frequently updating your content and using keywords in your posts is a great way to do it.
3: Freshness.
A website without a blog is static. It’s stale. It’s not growing, moving, inspiring, adjusting to new developments, improving with the times or helping people when they need it most.
4: Testing New Ideas.
You’ve posted 30 new blog posts in the past couple of months. Of those, 25 received a moderate number hits, 4 received a lot of hits and 1 went viral. Which post topic is telling you to expand upon it, create a product around it, write a book about it and teach a course about it? Gee, I wonder…
5: Practice.
Do you want to get better at content creation? Having a blog is an excellent tool for that because you’ve got to continually update it. And you get immediate feedback, too.
When Typos Cost You Money
I just received an email from a well-known online marketer. The guy has been in the business at least 20 years and makes significant bank – or at least I assume he does – who knows.
Look, I get it that proofreading is boring. It sucks. Who wants to take the time, right? I’ve probably published more mistakes than anyone.
But… some mistakes can be far more costly than others.
I clicked over from the email to his sales letter which was interesting for more than just the typos (of which there were many.)
His sub headline wasn’t even about the product, it was about one of the bonuses – a stack of old books written on a related topic. I’m going to tuck that little bonus-in-the-sub headline technique away for possible future use.
Scrolling down, there were the typical typos such as, “ahve” for have. “Befroom” and “beddroom” for bedroom. “Podcsat” for podcast. “Soemthing” for something. These are things that are super easy to catch if you pay attention to your spellcheck. And yet, there they were.
Then I got to the one that cost him sales. I’m going to paraphrase the paragraph headline and what he wrote, but you’ll get the idea:
3,000 members on recurring billing at $47 a month. This guy I knew was famous for raising money for bigwigs and doing this and that, but he also ran an online business where he got 3,000 people paying him $38 a month. I’ll show you the exact method he used.
Ouch.
Did you catch that?
My theory is he first wrote $38 a month, but later decided it would look better at $47. He changed the headline but forgot to change the paragraph that came after it.
Which had me wondering… is he making ALL of this up?
Just as bad, there was a ‘testimonial’ from “John Doe,” the name Americans use as a placeholder for a real name. Obviously, this was supposed to be flushed out with a real sounding name and a much better testimonial from the placeholder of, “I’ve taken a few of his programs over the years and have learned a bunch.”
Wow that’s embarrassing. Ironically, I have no doubt this marketer has enough real testimonials to fill a book.
Up until the fake testimonial and the price discrepancy, I’ll bet a lot of people really wanted to buy the product he was selling, too. I know I did. But after those confidence shaking mistakes, why would your average customer believe anything on the page?
Credibility and sales were lost.
You might want to proofread your sales letters like your sales depend on it. Because they do.
How to Sell Products at a Ridiculous Markup
I’d love to call this a case study but I don’t have enough info to do that. What I can say is that this must be making money or they wouldn’t keep doing it.
Lately my Adblocker isn’t always working properly on YouTube, which is why I’m suddenly seeing ads appear before my videos, and it’s been a real learning experience for me. If you have an adblocker, you might disable it for a few days just to see what you’ve been missing.
Recently I watched a YouTube video while doing research on Tinnitus, which is likely why I was shown an ad for a simple product – an ear cleaning device – with an equally simple ad. It was a bunch of short video clips (mostly stock footage) assembled with background music and words on the screen – no audible narration of any kind.
They were selling this “revolutionary doctor-invented, doctor-endorsed” soft little plastic corkscrew device with a handle. Imagine a disposable toothbrush – only for your ears – and you get the idea. And you could buy one for $44, or 2 for $69, or 3 for $93 or something like that. The prices were HIGH. And of course, they only had 7 available for my area and these prices were 50% off but only available for the next 7 minutes (yeah, right.)
Following a hunch, I went to Amazon and looked for the same device and found it for about ten bucks. Taking a wild guess, wholesale it’s probably about $2-$4 in quantity.
Here’s my point: If someone has an urgent problem and you have the solution, you can pretty much charge as much as you can get away with. If your advertising is done right and creates urgency and makes the product seem exclusive, then it’s a fair guess that most people aren’t going to go to Amazon to see if they can get it cheaper like I did.
If you can find a product that:
Is low cost to you
Can be made to appear to be worth much more than it costs
Solves an immediate and urgent problem
Can be targeted to the right audience on YouTube
Then you can make a simple video ad for YouTube and test it out. This might take a few tries to get right, but if you hit upon a winner, you can make some SERIOUS money doing this. I’ve seen the exact same system used by the same company for a portable air conditioner and a vacuum cleaner attachment, and I’m sure they’re doing this with many other products as well.
The beauty of placing your ad on YouTube is people are on there looking for SOLUTIONS, and you do not have the competition of hundreds of other sellers like you do on Amazon.
The video ad itself was simple enough that almost anyone could create it. This leads to a sales page, which leads to an order page. And while I can’t show you the videos, here are the sales pages for…
Spend some time on YouTube without your adblocker and you’ll eventually run into this type of video ad. This is an easy system that can be duplicated multiple times for multiple products. In fact, it’s not hard to image that these guys are pulling in 6 or 7 figures doing this.
3 Tips for Selling More T-shirts
T-shirts can be a great way to make extra money. Find a quote people love, design a super simple shirt with that quote, get it on Teespring and run a Facebook ad campaign. Yes, it’s just about that easy.
The key of course is to find the quote that people are willing to pay for. To do this, first pick a niche so that you know exactly who you are targeting. For example, I saw someone on FB targeting female military veterans.
Once you’ve got your niche, set up a Facebook fan page for that niche and find a quote that is getting a lot of shares and positive feedback on Pinterest or Facebook.
The t-shirt I saw for female veterans said simply: “Yes I am a Veteran. No I am not a guy.”
Nice.
Tip #1: Don’t know what to put on a shirt? No problem, just ask. Let’s say you go to Pinterest and you search for quotes. Choose what you think are the most promising quotes and put them on shirts in Teespring.
Post images of the shirts on your Facebook fan page without the links and simply ask if people would wear them. If you don’t have fans yet, run Page Post Engagement (PPE) ads to reach your target audience. $5 might be all you need to drive enough engagement to any one shirt picture.
Once you’ve chosen a winner, then you make a new Facebook post with your Teespring link. Drive traffic with Facebook ads.
Tip #2: Whenever you post a new shirt on Facebook, make this your first line of text: “Tag your friends who also love it.” Follow this with your Teespring link and your sales copy and shirt picture.
Asking people to tag their friends will get you more views and more sales.
In the above example, who knows female veterans? Other female veterans, that’s who. It will only take you a second to do this and it can result in a lot more sales.
Tip #3: Continue to make shirts for your chosen target market rather than hopping from niche to niche.
Then every time you run a new campaign, go to the admin area of Teespring and send a message to everyone who has purchased from you in the past. Let them know about your latest shirt that will be only be available for a couple of days.
Send the message 3 days prior to ending the campaign to give them just enough time to see the email and order. This is a short message of about 2 or 3 lines of text, nothing fancy. You will get more orders doing this one simple thing each time you have a new campaign that is ending soon.
Clickbank Recurring Billing IM Programs – Good to Know Information
Clickbank Recurring Billing IM Programs
This is a list of the top paying Clickbank programs in the online marketing niche with recurring billing. Sell them once, get paid over and over again. And since it’s Clickbank, even new marketers can get signed up and promoting right away. Average rebill amounts are according to Clickbank.
Please note, I’m sharing these strictly because they are the highest paying. I don’t personally endorse any of them, so please do your own due diligence. (That said, in my humble opinion there are several outstanding programs in here.)
All The latest Internet marketing News – Up to Date
New predictive capabilities in Google Analytics
Google has recently rolled out some new predictive capabilities in Google Analytics that could have some big impacts on your Google Ads — specifically your website users’ purchase probability and churn probability.
These newest updates represent the company’s last push into machine learning to help businesses grow by improving the insights available in Google Analytics.
YouTube to offer more in-video ads, boosting ad space and lowering cost
On July 7th, YouTube announced that mid-video ads would be placed on eight minute videos now, instead of the previous length of 10-minutes.
Interruption for viewers is standard, but may now be more jarring with this update. For YouTube, this update has increased the amount of ad space that the platform has available to marketers, lowering the cost of ads in hopes of eventually increasing demand.
If you’re unfamiliar with rich results, they “are experiences on Google Search that go beyond the standard blue link.” So, what does that actually mean?
If you’ve watched Google search results evolve over the past few years, you’ve noticed your search results are no longer only a page full of large blue text links and descriptions. Some results produce a variety of different informational pieces.
For example, if you search “COVID”, you’ll encounter one of the most comprehensive examples of rich results.
A new Google app called Keen, which sounds like a blend of Facebook Groups and Pinterest, purports to make it easier for you to learn more about what you love and connect with others who share your passions.
Instagram Shop launches with Facebook Pay to US customers
Instagram announced the launch of Instagram Shop in the US, a new e-commerce hub that lets merchants sell products and take payments via Facebook Pay. A new Shop tab will also appear in the navigation tab this year.
Instagram Reels will roll out to US users next month
Mark Zuckerberg will launch Instagram Reels, Facebook’s answer to TikTok, in the United States and more than 50 other countries in a matter of weeks. The global launch comes as TikTok is facing scrutiny from Washington.
“Brand Profiles offer a permanent home for brands on Snapchat, [bringing] various brand experiences for Snapchatters together into a single home on our service. With 229 million Snapchatters using the app daily, this real estate for our partners is especially important in a world where our millennial and Gen Z audiences can be hard to reach and build deep, authentic relationships with on many platforms.”
Google Search Upgrades Make It Harder for Websites to Win Traffic
A push for quicker answers and more ad revenue has made it more expensive for online businesses to reach consumers. Some say the search giant has gone too far.
“This holiday shopping season will look different compared to years gone by. However, it’s going to be more important than ever for people to come together and share gifts with their loved ones.”
“Learn how people expect to celebrate and shop this holiday season. Filter, find and share shopping insights from our 31-market consumer research. Then read our marketing guide for practical tips on opening up opportunities in the upcoming season.”
A Cautionary Cat Tale of a Partnership Gone Horribly Wrong
Once upon a time…
…two cat lovers, Chris and Jessica, started filming their cats Marmalade, a male ginger tabby, and his black long-haired adopted brother Cole and putting the videos on YouTube and other social media sites.
People loved Cole and Marmalade and their audience grew, earning them enough money to fund their efforts to rescue and rehome cats all over their city.
Then one day Chris entered into a contract with two online marketers who promised to take the Cole and Marmalade social media channels to new heights and make even more money for Chris and Jessica and their rescue work. The new partnership was called the Cole and Marmalade Network.
All seemed well for a while, until it wasn’t well at all.
Now Chris has accused the two marketers of trying to steal the business out from under him by ‘firing’ both Chris and Jessica from the business.
The marketers have physically seized control of all media channels as well as Chris and Jessica’s cell phones, computers, cameras and video footage, and filed suit against Chris and Jessica, who have filed a counter suit.
The Fans Take Action
When fans learned that Chris and Jessica’s content were allegedly stolen from them, they did two things:
First they unsubscribed in droves from Cole and Marmalade’s social media accounts in protest.
Second, they started threatening the 2 online marketers with harm. Since the lawsuits were a matter of public record, it wasn’t difficult for fans to find the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the two marketers. (I’m simply reporting what happened and absolutely NOT condoning the actions of these passionate but somewhat misguided fans.)
This second bit should give any marketer pause. If you do something that appears to go against popular icons (in this case, Cole, Marmalade and their humans) you might keep in mind that you could be making yourself a target of wrath.
And it just gets messier from there.
I’m not here to say who is right or wrong, but rather to point out a couple things you want to be aware of should you ever partner with someone else in any capacity, whether you’re the online marketer partnering with a content creator, or the content creator partnering with an online marketer, or any partnership you might enter into.
Chris and Jessica indisputably started this business themselves. It was 100% theirs. But there came a time when they thought partnering with two people who were savvier about online promotion and marketing could help propel their business and their cause to a higher level. That’s totally understandable and can sometimes be a smart move.
A HUGE Mistake?
However, in my opinion they made a foolish mistake in giving each of the two marketers a 33.3% share of the business, while retaining only 33% for themselves. This made them minority partners in their own business. They could be outvoted or forced out, and indeed this seems to be what happened.
I’m no lawyer, but if you start a business and then take on a partner, you might want to consider retaining 50% or higher stake in your own business.
A Better Move
And upon further consideration, you must wonder why Chris and Jessica felt the need for partners at all. Why not hire experts to help them? It would have cost far less than 66.6% of their business, and they could have fired the experts any time they liked.
I suspect the marketers talked a very good game and convinced Chris and Jessica this partnership would allow them to focus all of their efforts on creating content and helping the stray cats, the two things Chris and Jessica were passionate about, while leaving all the marketing to the marketers.
I understand the desire to hand over 100% control of the things you don’t like doing in your business, but it’s never a good idea to hand over 100% of anything in your own business, ever.
Why is This Important to You and Me?
This story captured my attention for two reasons – one, I love the two cats, Cole and Marmalade, and I remember watching their videos in the past (I somehow lost touch with their YouTube channel in the last couple of years.)
Second, it sent chills down my spine realizing that one bad partnering mistake could result in losing my business and ending up in endless court battles to try to get it back.
And the entire debacle could then be aired out in public on the internet.
Thus, I’ve turned to the experts to find 7.5 things to think about BEFORE you ever partner with anyone on anything (that sounds extreme, but so is losing everything you’ve worked for.)
The entire concept of partnering is to add skills to your business that you alone cannot provide. In this example, a content creator partnering with an online marketer could make sense, if for some reason the content creator can’t simply outsource the marketing portion of the work and oversee it himself.
7.5 Things to Consider BEFORE Business Partnering
Make sure partnering is worth it. Does partnering bring more benefits than not partnering? That is, will you, your brand, your product or cause be in a better position because you partner than it would be if you didn’t partner, and instead outsourced?
Don’t rush in.
Are you sure you want to do this? Is someone pressuring you to make this partnership? Enthusiasm has its place, but a thoughtful business plan with each partner’s commitment clearly outlined is needed here. Review the positives and negatives before signing anything.
Choose the right partner. If their goals, values or morals don’t match yours, or if they have a different vision of what’s going to happen, then this isn’t going to work.
Have a signed agreement. Every detail should be spelled out and signed by all parties. It really is best to have a lawyer for this. Make sure you have a clearly defined exit strategy in your agreement that allows either partner to buy out the other without destroying the business.
Include a non-compete agreement. Done correctly, this will prevent one partner from taking clients, assets or confidential information from the business to use in another business.
Each partner should bring their complimentary strengths. It might not make sense for two course creators to create a partnership (they could simply joint venture together) because they both bring the same strengths to the table. But if one partner creates courses and the other does all the marketing, then they are using their complimentary strengths to build something bigger than either of them could build alone.
Consider a limited partnership. If you’re backing a business financially but not making a hands-on commitment, then a limited partnership could allow you to reap the financial rewards without being liable for actions of the general partner.
Egos should be left at the door. If one of the partners feels more important than the other, the business is likely to suffer. And if there is a lack of trust in each other, there will be second-guessing, suspicion and serious problems with communication and direction.
I don’t want to make partnerships seem like a scary thing to always be avoided. There are times when a partnership can be your best avenue to growing your business exponentially while taking some responsibility and time commitments off your shoulders.
Here are 7.5 Reasons to Consider a Partnership:
Two heads can indeed be better than one. Having a great partner can multiply ideas and business experience. Together the two of you can find better ideas and solutions as you build on each other’s strengths. In a great partnership, one plus one does indeed equal three.
Double your resources.
One partner has the products, the other has the contacts and customers. One partner has the experience, the other partner has the fledgling business. One partner could be in the shop making the product while the other partner is out pounding the streets and making the sales. If you only have half of the puzzle pieces, it can be easier to find someone with the other half rather than trying to build those pieces yourself.
Double your strengths. You have an eye for detail, your partner can see the big picture. No one is great at everything, but everyone is great at something. Finding someone who fills in your own gaps can be a real blessing for your business.
Together you can take great risks and reap greater rewards. Alone you might not have the assets or the mindset to take a leap of faith. But working together, you can figure out how to get it done and rely on each other to leave your personal comfort zones and expand your business.
Partners can tell you when you’re being an idiot. Sometimes we get a ‘great’ idea that is about to spell disaster. A partner can reign you in at these moments and let you know you’re not seeing the entire picture.
Having a partner is more fun. Assuming you enjoy each other’s company, business is a lot more fun when you can share it with someone else. You’re facing challenges together, which makes everything less scary and more exhilarating.
You can take a break. There are times in business when you need a break from the customers or even from the business. If you’re going solo, there is no one to pick up the slack. But with a partner, you can take a day off or let your partner deal with the customers while you work on other things.
Your partner is a source of emotional support. You won’t hear many people talk about this one but having the right partner can make all the difference when you hit milestones, both good and bad. When a customer goes full on crazy and trolls your social media accounts looking for blood, you’ve got someone right there to help you through it. And when you land that big account you’ve been working on for weeks, or you see your latest launch go to a large six figures, you’ve got someone to jump and scream with happiness with you.
A Few Quick Partnership Q and A’s:
What is the difference between a joint venture and partnership?
The members of a joint venture have teamed together for a particular purpose or project. Once that purpose or project ends, so does the joint venture.
The members of a partnership have joined together to run a business together, usually intending to be together for as long as they own the business.
What are examples of possible IM partnerships?
One person is great at making content and another is great at driving traffic to that content. The content creator focuses on content, the partner drives traffic, sets up sales funnels and does the general marketing.
One person is an expert in a niche (any marketable niche) and the other person is great at marketing. The expert creates a product or course and the marketer sets us the sales funnel and drives traffic. (You can do this repeatedly with experts who know nothing about online marketing.)
Two people with very similar businesses and audiences, who enjoy working together, decide to combine forces, lists, brands and so forth. Two heads working together can often come up with more and better ideas than two people on their own. And they can take turns taking time off while the other one minds the business.
A software engineer and a marketer. The engineer makes something new, like a social network, and the marketer grows the user base.
Can you give examples of great partnerships?
A few of the more famous partnerships are:
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple
Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom of Instagram
Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice of Soul Cycle
Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google
Richard and Maurice McDonald of McDonald’s
If I’m going to partner with someone, should I have a lawyer?
Yes.
While you can take a standard partnership agreement and modify it to suit your needs, ideally you want legal representation. Imagine if your company grows to become worth millions… you’ll be glad you set things up correctly in the beginning.
If money is an issue, try doing a Google search for ‘affordable legal services’ and you’ll likely find several options.
What typically goes into a partnership agreement?
The name of the partnership
Each partner’s contributions
Allocation of profits, losses, and draws
Definition of each partner’s authority and decision-making ability
Management guidelines
Procedures for admitting new partners
What happens if a partner withdraws or dies
Dispute resolution
What should I ask my potential business partner?
Ask anything and everything you want to know. This is no time to be shy.
Here are seven questions to get you started:
What is your vision for our company? (And is it the same as yours)
What are your strengths and weaknesses? (And do they compliment yours)
How much money will we each contribute to the business?
How much time can you dedicate to the business?
How will you handle conflict or trying circumstances?
Will you agree to put everything in writing?
What’s your exit strategy? (If they have to leave, will they want you to buy them out? Or would they prefer to sell their interest to a third party?)
*Granted, it’s no longer a secret now that I’ve shared it with you. Oh well, enjoy!
Over the years I’ve been compiling this list of niches one by one. Some of them I added because they’re obviously hugely profitable. Others intrigued me. A few of them look pathetically small, and yet they are being used by people who earn 7 figures a year in these exact niches.
And all of them are worth looking into when choosing your next project.
I’ve also added a few notes under the main categories to give you more ideas.
LOCATION Based – Create a site that highlights all the happenings in your area. This is awesome for bringing in local advertisers. Suggest that your advertisers use a direct-response type of ad, such as “Mention this ad to get 25% off.” This will show them exactly how effective advertising on your site is.
Your hometown
Your county, state, province or area (if it’s not too big)
Your country (if it is small in geographical or population size)
MONEY – sites that teach how to make money through investing can command high dollar for advertising. These sites and their corresponding emails lists sell for high prices, too.
Real estate
o How to make money flipping houses
o How to buy a house no money down
o How to fix up houses
o How to build a portfolio of houses or apartments
Investing
o Futures
o Investing for beginners
o Foreign currency trading
o Stocks, bonds, recommendations
o How to successfully invest
o Unusual investments
o Bitcoin and e-currencies
Marketing
o How to
o Social media
o Industry specific
Retirement
o Saving and investing for retirement
o How to plan for retirement
o Where to live
o How to travel and where to travel
o Things to do – finally doing the things you love
o Retirement homes and communities
o Senior discounts
o Continuing education
o Resources
o Volunteering
o Identity theft and scams
o Estate planning
o Retiring abroad
o Products just for seniors
Debt
o Debt consolidation
o Improving credit score
o Getting out of debt, staying out of debt
Getting a job
o Tricks and tips
o Getting to the decision makers
o Resumes and CVs
o How to prep for the interview
o How to ace the interview
Consulting
o Industry specific
o Solution specific
o Skill specific
o How to be a consultant
o How to use consultants to grow your business
o How to get rich as a consultant
Time management
o Skills and techniques
o Doing less but achieving more
o Productivity and efficiency
Starting a business
o Ideas, market research and business plans
o Legalities, setting everything up
o Funding the business plan
o Employees, hiring and being the boss
o Marketing, sales, getting customers
Making money
o Side hustles offline
o Business opportunities
o Starting an online business
o Online jobs
o Blogging
o Social media marketing – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc.
Sales
o How to sell more
o How to get more leads
o Persuasion tactics
o Negotiation
Career – how to get ahead in a certain field or career
o Shortcuts in a specific field
o How to get hired
o How to get promoted
HEALTH – this word ‘health’ encompasses so much that it can be difficult to know where to start. Just remember that you’ve got to niche it down or you’ll never be successful. All health to all people won’t work. But natural remedies for people with Type 1 Diabetes will work. Weight loss won’t work. But weight loss for women over 40 via the keto diet will work. You get the idea.
Weight loss
o For Women – This market is TOO big, sub niche this down into age group or some other demographic
o For Men – Great idea to focus exclusively on men, their insecurities and problems with excess weight
o For Overweight Kids – Tricky, you might partner with a doctor for this one
o For Teens – The motivation to lose weight here is HUGE because of peer pressure and wanting to fit in
o For Specific Body Parts
§ Tummy Fat – This market is HUGE
§ Upper Arm Fat – Women over 45
§ Double Chins – Include facial exercises with this
§ Man Boobs – Yes, this is a thing
Natural weight loss – Focus on losing the weight naturally, perhaps with herbs and without crazy or difficult diets
Weight Gain – Yes, this really is a niche
o Weight gain for men
o Certain body types do not easily gain muscle from working out – can you help?
o Herbs, exercises, foods, nutrition, etc.
Stress and anxiety
o Herbal treatments
o Meditation for stress
o Cognitive therapy
o Any natural remedy
Anti-aging
o Body exercises
o Brain exercises
o Facial exercises
o Herbs and natural remedies
o Attitude – mindset plays a big role in aging
o Diet, specific foods to eat and avoid
Muscle Building
o Workout videos
o Supplements
o Herbs
o Habits, tips, tricks and motivation
Easy exercise
o At the gym
o At home
o With weights
o Using bodyweight
o Routines
o Pilates
o HIIT
Fat loss
o This is like weight loss but with focus on losing fat
o “Fat loss” resonates better with some prospects than “weight loss”
o Belly fat is a huge niche
Diets
o Keto
o Paleo
o Mediterranean
o Any major diet
Recipes
o For any of the popular diets
o For health in general
o For specific foods, especially healthy versions (healthy chocolate recipes, healthy pasta recipes, etc.)
Natural healing
o Herbs
o Exercise for healing
o Any healing method that does not involve drugs
Wellness
o Getting healthy
o Staying healthy
o Living longer
o Keeping the brain sharp
o Improving memory
o Energy
Specific health problem
o Curing diabetes
o Getting pregnant
o Depression
o Acne
o Hair loss
o Male enhancement
o Overcoming anorexia
o Teeth whitening
o Quit smoking
o Headaches
o Improving heart health
o ADHD and focus
Yoga – more and more popular every year
o Yoga routines
o Yoga DVD’s
o Yoga supplies, mats, books, etc.
o Yoga for men
o Yoga for absolute beginners
o Yoga for busy people
Meditation – this niche is growing fast
o Books, recordings
o Meditation for stress
o Meditation for depression
o Meditation for better brain and more creativity
Sleep – people are having a harder time sleeping
o Natural remedies
o Sleep hacks
o Anything (legal) to help people fall asleep easier, stay asleep and sleep deeper
RELATIONSHIPS – This is a truly fun niche to work in. Be sure to specify your audience and their main objective. For example, young men wanting one night stands is vastly different from middle age men looking for ‘the one’. If your site is about dating, be sure to get one of the big dating sites as a sponsor or advertiser.
Dating
o How to get a girlfriend
o How to get a boyfriend
o How to pick up women
o Dating advice for male heterosexuals
o Dating advice for female heterosexuals
o Dating advice for gay men
o Dating advice for lesbian women
o Dating over 50
o Online dating
o Dating for women over 40 who want to date younger men
o Dating for men over 40 who want to date younger women
o Dating or matchmaking for certain groups of people (such as an ethnic or religious group with certain rules and customs)
Breakups and Divorce
o How to get your ex back
o How to get over a man
o How to get over a woman
o How to take the pain out of divorce
o How to ‘win’ in a divorce settlement
o Starting over
Relationships and marriage
o Making your marriage work
o Deepening your relationship
o How to add spice and excitement to your relationship
o How to save your relationship
o Communication
o Managing conflict
o How to stop fighting about money
o How to cope with the strain of children on your relationship
Sexuality
o Better sex
o More sex
o Sexual problems
o Sexual communication
o Toys
Conflict
o Dealing with conflict at work
o Working out issues with your parents or siblings
o Negotiations
Body language
o For dating
o For sales
o In general
Parenting
o New parents
o Parents of big families
o Parents of a single child
o Single parents
o Teenagers
o Specific mental or physical challenges (such as parenting an ADHD child)
Education
o Teaching your children to be awesome people
o Helping your child with learning challenges
o Teaching your child a foreign language
o Teaching your child a specific skill
o Help for teachers
SELF-IMPROVEMENT – this niche is growing rapidly and includes many more sub-niches than what I’ve listed here. However, it can be difficult to monetize this niche. Be sure you have several best-selling affiliate products or a long list of possible advertisers in mind before starting.
Mindset
Motivation
Goal getting
Law of attraction
Spirituality
Success
Affirmations
Empowerment
Mind-development
Prosperity
Memory
Tapping
NLP
HOBBIES AND ASSORTED – it can be truly surprising what is profitable. For example, I know of one woman who has a site about antique tea cups. She’s added a monthly paid newsletter, and easily earns $15,000 a month. Collectors can be just as fanatical as say, golfers.
Travel
o How to travel for cheap
o Where to go and what to do
o Tips and tricks of seasoned travelers
o Best travel deals
Learn a new language
o Spanish
o English
o French
o Italian
o Chinese
o Thai
o Etc.
Just about any hobby with active people who spend money
Imagine you build a website, drive traffic, monetize the heck out of it, list build, drive more traffic, and then sell the whole thing off.
How much can you get?
That’s going to depend on a lot of factors, including the niche you’ve chosen, how big and responsive your email list is and how much money your website earns. Usually ordinary money-making websites are valued at 2x or 3x annual income. But if you’ve built a large responsive list to go with the website, you can easily double that figure or more.
As an example, you build a site on how to plan financially for retirement. You monetize it 5 different ways, meaning you have 5 separate streams of income from this one website. You also aggressively build your email list.
You may earn more from the email list than the website, or vice versa. But let’s say that the list and the site together are earning you $100,000 a year.
3 times $100,000 is $300,000 to sell the site. But you’ve chosen retirement financial planning, an extremely lucrative topic. Financial companies and advisors would kill to have your list and your site. In that case, you might be able to sell it for $500,000 or more.
How do you build one of these sites?
Your first step is to choose your niche. At the end of this article I’m going to list out some popular and lucrative niches to get you started.
Once you have your niche, you build an information site with plenty of relevant articles and content and update it on a regular basis.
You also create one or more lead magnets to build your email list.
Next you’ll be monetizing the site. Depending on your niche, you might consider any combination of the following methods:
Pay-per-click advertising – you get paid every time someone clicks an ad. Adsense is a good example
Native advertising – things like sponsored blog posts or discovery platforms. This sort of advertising fits seamlessly into the content that surrounds it. US advertisers spent $44 billion on native advertising in 2019, which is $8 billion more than they did in 2018.
Video ads – these are sponsored and recommended videos placed on the website. Publishers sell video ads by cost-per-completed view or cost-per-thousand. As an example, Taboola video ads generate over 3 billion views per month among US audiences.
Selling Ad Space – publishers can make money by selling ad space to advertisers directly or through an ad network. If your site’s topic is your local community, you might want to sell ad space directly to local advertisers.
Affiliate marketing – advertising products in exchange for a commission on sales.
Your own product sales – create products or even paid memberships of your own to sell to your readers.
Generate leads – as the publisher you’re acting as a matchmaker by introducing two parties who can benefit each other. Back to the financial planning for retirement site – there are plenty of investment firms that will pay you handsomely for each lead you send them. And you can use a third party service such as MaxBounty, NeverBlue or PeerFly to find those advertisers.
Donations – if you have a loyal fan base who loves you, let them ‘buy you a cup of coffee’ for your efforts. Better yet, sustaining patrons sign up for a recurring monthly donation to your site.
Sponsored content – a form of native advertising, this content looks exactly like regular content except it’s written by the sponsor and includes a ‘sponsored’ disclaimer.
Paywall – we mentioned creating a membership site under ‘your own product sales,’ but another option is to place your primary site behind a paywall. Visitors can read, for example, 3-5 pieces of content before they’re required to subscribe to read more.
Build an email list – this one is generally the most important monetization method of all, since you can continue to market to your list and repeatedly bring them back to your website as well.
Then in 1 to 5 years when it’s growing strong and you’re bored stiff with the site, you’ll sell it for 5 or 6 figures. Or possibly even 7 figures, but only if you’re very, very good at building traffic and value.
Your first task – your VERY first task – is to choose a NICHE.
You may choose a larger niche with several smaller niches inside of it and make one big authority type of website.
Or you might really niche it down and focus in on your target market.
Here is my own niche list to get you started. Some of these niches are HUGE and others are much smaller. All, in my estimation, are profitable. But it is up to you to research the niches you’re interested in to find out how popular they are, how they can be monetized and if they are right for you.
