Can’t Get Rich

For those of you still struggling to make a few bucks online, which was the same boat I was in years ago, I’m going to release a few methods that worked for me that I thin ANYONE can do.  And no, you don’t have to pay me a dime, nor will these posts lead up to some huge product to buy (just in case there are any cynical readers amongst us — haha!).

Here’s a method that should make you anywhere from $100 to a couple hundred dollars each time you do it.  It only takes an hour or so of work, and it can be repeated almost as often as you’d like … to a point.  And you might even get lucky and land some profits even higher than a couple hundred dollars, but I’m just trying to be as realistic as possible for someone starting out.

Here’s the method:

1. Go to a forum / website that has a “websites for sale” section.  One of my favorites for this is Digital Point … mostly because they’re full of cheap bastards and low price point stuff.  The Warrior Forum also has a comparable section … but they’re kind of the opposite of DP — they’re often full of bastards who think they’re work is worth 10x what it should be.  So in this case, focus on the undervalued, cheap bastards.  :)

2. Once you find the sub-forums selling websites, locate the super cheap ones.  By super cheap, I mean $100 or less.  You’ll find more of these on DP than most other sites.  If you can get the price to $60 or less, you have almost a guaranteed winner.  Just make sure that the site looks at least semi-okay.  It doesn’t have to be awesome, but it can’t be absolute crap.

3. Steal underwear.

4. Buy up the cheaper sites that seem like they’re at least of okay quality … ideally with unique content (not autoblogs although you can make a few exceptions).

5. Go to a “higher class” forum or website selling place and list the website for sale.  Flippa.com is a great place for this, but there certainly are other places out there.  Do a 3 day or 7 day auction and have the starting bid at twice what you paid, and then have a buy it now for about $100 more than that.  Note that in some cases, you can triple, quadruple, etc. the price if the site appears to be worth it.  Make sure you ask the original seller to delete their old post / thread listing the site for sale.  :)

6. Watch and profit.

7. Rinse and repeat (except step #3, that’s optional).

Note that you don’t have to do this just for cheap sites — you can make even more money finding higher valued under-priced sites where there’s a lot more profit to be made, but obviously more of a risk to you, which is why I suggest that you start out as a cheap bastard (no offense Digital Point posters).  :)

Stay tuned next time for another online money making tip that will allow you to make several times more money than this tip with even less effort … but still give this a shot, as once you learn this for low price point stuff, you can make a ton applying it to the higher price points.

See?  And who said it wasn’t impossible to make money online … oh, that’s right, I once said that.  Oops.  :)

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As I’m sure some of you are aware, I started out not making a ton of money online … then I had SOME success, then I had a little more, then some more, and then a lot.  :)

Now, there are probably hundreds of lessons that I’ve learned from this, but the biggest secret I’ve seen to making money online is that it’s all going out there and creating relationships and knowing what you can offer.

Before you walk away thinking “duh, everyone talks about creating relationships with their customers,” I’m not talking about that.  In fact, even though I think that’s useful, I think that’s a very MINOR thing when it comes to making serious money online.  It’s funny how everyone else preaches that, though.

Instead, I’m talking about business relationships with other influential people in your market / industry.

Sure, if you’re starting out like most people online (or like I was long before), you might think that any influential people in your industry could care less about you or helping you, and you’re probably mostly right about that … unless you have something of value to offer them!

Realize that every business online and offline is about making money.  Some of the guys making the biggest amounts of money online already have a lot of influence and know how to make money fast, and often times they don’t have nearly enough ideas, products, or services than they could be selling.

That gives you a window of opportunity.  If you can create a product, idea, or service and make it hands free for them, offer them a partnership (or give them complete rights to it) and give them a big cut of the sales if they promote it as their own and you take care of all the support and backend work, it’s really a no brainer to most of those guys.

They get a product they can call their own, they don’t have to lift a finger on the support, and they get a big chunk of money.

If you can offer that, you can approach almost any joint venture partner, business, or major player online.  Just make sure that a) you can create a cool product or service b) you can do a good job managing the support and taking care of the customers and c) you can offer them a big cut (50% would be a MINIMUM — the more the better if you’re just starting out to entice them to partner with you).

Once you land your first deal like that, they’ll be back for more if you do a good job.  On top of that, others in the industry will notice you and start to see if they can partner with you.  And if they don’t come to you, you can seek out other partners, mention that you’re associated with the more well known person or business, and gain credibility and partners that way as well.

Literally all you have to do is find an e-mail of a few of these influential marketers or businesses and see what you’re able to do (or attend a seminar and do the same).  Just make sure that you’re able to put something together first instead of just saying that you will (they’re use to people who never follow through on stuff).

On top of that, most people fail here because they either a) have a crappy idea or product (in that case, you should learn how to create a good one) b) they never ask for help in areas where they suck (they assume they can come up with an idea, create the product, fund it, and market it without any help) and c) they offer a tiny cut to the marketer to market the whole thing for them thinking that they’re entitled to most of the profits because they thought of the idea (that’s stupid — ideas are worth a dime a dozen if they aren’t followed through or marketed correctly).

And if you have a killer idea but don’t know how to create it, find either a cheap worker (writer, programmer, etc.) on sites like www.bestjobs.ph, craigslist.org (local or foreign workers work fine — search other countries for some cheaper deals), rentacoder.com, freelance.com, elance.com, college job wanted classifieds, etc. and get it made.  Or try to make a deal with some of those guys to get a cut of the profits (if it’s an easier task or one that you know you can make a deal with and market) … or a combo thereof. 

Then if you’re dirt poor, you can still get your idea to come to life, and you now have something of value to offer those bigger players in your market.  If you can follow through and don’t slack off in any of these areas (and get a realistic mindset of what you can do or ask for just starting out), it’s almost impossible to fail when it comes to making easy money online or offline.

So if ever you hear someone asking “how do I make easy money online,” point them to this blog post and tell them to get working on it.  :)

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Here’s a cool SEO trick that most people overlook despite how easy it is to get ranked fast in Google, Yahoo, or just about any other search engine (I find it works best with Google, though):

1.  Do keyword research (Google has a cool keyword generator tool) on keywords in your niche.

2.  Select keywords that seem decent but aren’t too competitive.  One trick I do here is to search for more long tail keywords (for instance, if your niche was motorcycles, I would try to go for terms like “buy motorcycles online” or “where to buy motorcycles online” instead of “motorcycles”) or target the longer tailed keywords that you find using that Google keyword tool mentioned above.

3.  Once you narrow this list of keywords down a little bit, go to Google and put each term in quotes and do a search (this will only show results that contain exactly that keyword).  Then make note of how many times the EXACT keyword terms show up in the meta tag titles (the blue links that are displayed in the search results).  If there are no top ten results with the keyword, keep special track of those.  If there are less than 3 or so, also write those down in another category.

4.  Now take all the terms that had no results or very few in the meta tag titles and either create a webpage with the terms in the meta tag titles or do a blog post with the keywords being in the post title (the title of your blog post — like mine here is “Cool SEO trick that most overlook”).  If you have very little website skills, try using Blogger.  Do one post per keyword term (you can maybe do two keyword terms in one post if it makes sense).

5.  Now ping your blog post or webpage.  One of my favorite pinging services (free, of course) is Pingoat.com.

6.  Sit back and watch.  In most cases, you’ll see your post or webpage being ranked within a few hours tops — sometimes it might take a couple days, but 80% to 90% of the keywords that you picked (if you did your research right) should be showing up with your site on page 1 of Google.

Keep in mind that you might not get a ton of traffic from most of these keywords (although some certainly can give you a lot), but they quickly add up.  Even if each keyword gives you 10 to 100 new visitors a month, that quickly adds up when you do several of these.  When you do dozens to even hundreds of these, you can get some massive traffic that’s all 100% free from your new organic search results. 

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You always hear marketers talking about how the product doesn’t really matter … and that it’s all about the sales copy and marketing. Even though I’m a big backer of good marketing and sales copy (it definitely is a big factor in my successful products), I think that there’s a lot to be said about having a unique, interesting, or otherwise “different” product that sells itself.

Recently, I came across an electronic cigarette. Yes, you heard me right. Electronic smokes apparently are picking up popularity, and I don’t think it’s because they’re doing an awesome job marketing it — I think it’s because the product has an “wow that’s unique/cool/awesome” factor to it.

On top of that, the uses of it can be more than just a normal cigarette. You apparently can smoke it on airplanes, in non-smoking areas, etc. because it gives out water vapor instead of actual “smoke.” This again, is another “wow” factor that will market itself virally by word of mouth (not to mention the fact that it’s a ton cheaper).

Another use is to use it to stop smoking, as you can buy ones with high, medium, low, or NO nicotine, so all of a sudden you have a product with a ton of uses — those looking to smoke more, smoke less, and save money.

Throw on added value where there aren’t 2,000+ dangerous chemicals (only nicotine — unless you get the non-nicotine ones –, flavor, water, etc.), and you have a product that sells itself.

Rumor has it that several of these electronic cigarette companies are selling out fast and having a hard time getting more shipments, but I came across one still shipping out at www.ElectroBlu.com (if you want to test it out, I’d recommend getting more than just the sampler if you plan on having a good supply of it).

But seriously, I love how this can be marketed to smokers AND those looking to quit with major benefits for both. Again, it’s an awesome case of a product selling itself.

I think that is the best kind of marketing possible, and who knows how well they’d do if they were a little better at marketing themselves.

If you have a killer product, I think that’s perhaps the most important part to major success online, as everything else can just fall in place then.

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If you’re looking for the same regurgitated advice that every other internet marketer gives you, then you’ve come to the wrong place. Recently, I’ve seen a trend that I think is a dangerous one.

Several top internet marketers are dishing out advice on how giving out free or VERY cheap products on the front end is the way to go. I completely disagree with 95% of that and think it will actually hurt more people than it will help.

Sure, their logic might make sense upon first glance:

Cheaper Price / Free = More Customers = More People to Sell on the Backend To

But let’s take a closer look at that…

Let’s say that you send 2,500 visitors to your site and convert a whopping 40% on your free offer (that’s a fairly high percentage even for a free offer — I’m being generous). That’s 1,000 “customers” and $0 profit.

Now, let’s say that you have a $97 product in the backend or as a one time offer. Those 1,000 “customer” never bought from you and are classified as freebie seekers as of right now. A 5% conversion rate on them might be very optimistic, but let’s assume that you get that 5% conversion rate. That’s 50 sales, or $4,850 for you.

Kind of sad for 1,000 “customers” — that’s only $4.85 each, which again is pretty optimistic.

But let’s assume that you want to take advantage of your paying customers now and you offer a $497 one time offer to your 50 paying customers. Since these are paying customers, they’re conversion rates will probably be a bit higher. So let’s say that 10% convert. That’s 5 sales, or $2,485.

We’re at $7,335 so far. Now I know what some of you are saying … the money’s in the list, and you have 1,000 “customers!!!” Well, not really. We have 50 real customers and 950 freebie seekers. Even if we doubled our paying customers, that’s still not much. You probably won’t make $1 per month per subscriber for a freebie seeker, so you might make a few hundred to maybe even several hundred dollars a month off that list if you’re good.

Now, I know some marketers offer a cheap “trial” of say $1 or so with a forced continuity in the back of $50 per month or so. You might think that this would be a better model even if only half of the original 1,000 “customers” bought. The problem there (and most marketers won’t tell you this) is that most forced continuity models will have a much lower conversion rate even if the original offer is cheap or even free. The few exceptions to this might include free/cheap trials to software, tools, services, etc. where the buyer expects to pay a decent monthly fee if they like what they get.

So what about the other guy…

Higher Price = Fewer, Higher Quality Customers = Higher Priced Backends to Sell To

Let’s take a closer look here.

Let’s say that you get your 2,500 visitors to your site and only 3% convert instead of the original 40% on a $297 product. That’s 75 customers or $22,275. We already have 3x more than the other model even BEFORE we include the backends.

Since these are proven buyers and higher quality, we can focus on bringing them higher price point backends. The backend should at least be the same price point as the front end if not more. So let’s just say that we do $497 on the backend. We should expect at least a 10% conversion on that because these are proven high price point buyers who’ve already bought from you (I’ve gotten as high as 66% backend conversions at similar price points). That’s about 7 to 8 buyers (7.5). Let’s just say 7 - that’s $3,479 extra. On the higher conversion end, you could easily top $20,000 extra.

However, with those 7 very high price point buyers, you can then go on to offer an elite one time offer or upsell at $1,000 or more and grab a small percentage there as well.

We’re already hovering around $25,000 on the low end. But it just gets better. Now that you have 75 decent buyers and several elite buyers, they’re worth significantly more to you and far more likely to buy higher price point products in the hundreds or even thousands of dollars. They’re also more likely to purchase some subscription programs at decent price points as well — probably worth far more to you than the prior list.

You can take this logic to the extreme and focus on even higher price points from the start or high monthly subscription products.

The key here is to have something that provides value and that people want. If someone wants something bad enough, they’re willing to pay for it. That’s a key to remember.

In addition, offering free or cheap products can always frighten off some of the normally high price point buyers too. And we’re not even getting into the quality of free/cheap vs. paid/high price point products argument yet — we can save that for a later time.

So before you jump on the bandwagon of the free front end trend, give it some thought. You might be shooting yourself in the foot.

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