I’m going to tell you about the best way to really make money from your websites (above and beyond the limitations of adsense), but first indulge me with a little context…
The karmic occurrence that lead me to a realisation about how to make more money from my websites
Over the weekend I was over the park with a few friends when we decided to join in a massive game of football with men and women and children of all ages. Good old fashioned fun, nothing too serious.
Or so I thought.
Whereas the majority of people playing the game, and gawd knows how many there were but it was probably twenty aside or something like that, were having a nice time letting the little kids get the ball, tackle us and score goals there was one moron who was trying to impress the girls a bit too much.
He was a bronzed “Adonis”, you know the type: stomach like a bag of walnuts wrestling under a blanket, hair swept back and built like the proverbial toilet house. There he was pushing the young kids of around nine off the ball and dribbling past five girls before smashing the football into the goal past a cowering seven year old. He’d then proceed to applaud himself.
I watched and laughed at this buffoon who scored one goal after another and then flexed his muscles in front of a group of girls who were watching and thinking, like the rest of us, that here was a guy who needed to visit the planet earth once in a while.
If ever I have seen a great example of karmic payback it was what happened next.
He went off the pitch and proceeded to put what I can only describe as cooking oil all over his torso and the game fired up again with all the littleuns enjoying the football because he wasn’t playing. When he came back on again you saw the kids shoulders drop, which was heartbreaking in itself.
Before I had a chance to think the ball was at my feet and this fourteen or so stone giant was running at me like some kind of charging rhinoceros. Fearing I was about to be mown down and killed in an accident that would have been at home on a safari I tapped the ball to my left just as he came sliding in for the tackle, and moved out the way.
Then I saw it.
He had slid in a massive pile of dog matter.
The combination of the heat and the dog do do meant it had slid all the way down his body. Literally from the top of his thigh to the back of his neck was covered. I nearly stopped breathing due to combination of retching and laughing uncontrollably at the same time. The Crisp N Dry, or whatever tanning stuff he’d just put on, ensured it was well and truly against his skin.
One of the dads then started a round of applause and then so did the entire pitch. We watched as the Adonis walked off retching himself with his tail between his legs.
For me it was a truly a moment of beauty. I took a deep breath and sighed with relief as he walked away. One of the little kids then shouted for me to pass the ball to them. With pride I took a swing and kicked the ball, and proceeded to get put my left foot in the exact pile he’d just slid into. Where’s the justice in that?
A perfect example of the long tail strategy
Upon seeing the shape of the buffoon playing football I thought it might be a good time to try getting fit again for the summer. I did get fit and lost a hell of a lot of weight for a little while, but like all good dieters the second I looked at myself in the mirror and thought “I look great” I celebrated with a McDonalds and it went downhill from there.
Anyway one of the supplements I was taking, not steroids I might add, is called creatine. I read it helps build muscle so thought I’d get myself some.
After using it for around four months, and looking into ordering some more yesterday for my “new challenge”, I suddenly realised I had no idea what effect it was having on my body. What exactly did it do and how did it do it? So off I trotted to good old Google.com and typed in “what does creatine do?” I held my breath hoping I wouldn’t find sites saying “creatine makes your manhood shrink!”
The first result that came up was
http://www.building-muscle101.com/what-does-creatine-do.html
Now if you read my monthly printed newsletter The Digital Upstart (you can check it out here: http://tinyurl.com/557fog) in May’s issue I covered optimising a web page to pick up no cost traffic from the search engines and build a list. This is a brilliant example of someone using the long tail strategy really, really well.
Essentially they have optimised for that exact keyword phrase “what does creatine do” which means it’s easier to get good rankings with Google.
The owner of this site is making money with Google adsense adverts. Every time someone clicks on those small classified ads you can see the owner will make a small commission.
If I were the owner I’d scrap the adsense adverts and add an opt-in box to collect people’s email address just like I showed in the recent IID issue. If they’re looking for information on creatine, you know that they’re interested in health and fitness and muscle building so you could offer them some sort of incentive like a report or ebook on muscle building and get them to sign up to your newsletter. I’d use something like “The shocking truth the fitness experts want kept out of the public eye”.
This is where I see so many people go wrong. They rely on what the gurus say about adsense and how it’s an easy way to earn online. The fact of the matter is that single web page might be getting thirty or so visitors a day. If five of them clicked on the adsense ads the owner might make a dollar or so. These are all rough guesses but it won’t be a lot of cash.
Now if they collected just one of those visitors email addresses they could market their own products or an affiliate products for a commission for months if not years to come. If they did things properly they could earn a hell of a lot more than just the odd dollar here and there from adsense advertising. They’ve done all the hard work writing the article and optimising the web page, but by adding an opt-in form they could increase their revenue from the site.
Now here’s where I’d be really clever. Once the person had opted in to my email list I’d THEN send them to a page with adsense adverts with something like “Please check out or sponsors” above the classified ads. Two birds. One stone.
I know how popular the long tail strategy was with readers of the issue and there someone is using it in action. Make sure you check it out it’s a great example of how it works.
Lead Generation Videos
Last week I had a ton of emails about Mark Vurnums product found at http://www.leadgenerationvideos.co.uk/. This was promoted by Simon of Business Opportunity Review and lots of people must have received it. I think a few other people must have been promoting it as well, although I can’t be sure.
Anyway rest assured I will have a good look at this one over the next couple of weeks and get back to you with what I find. I think, note think, it’ll be a good product. However you can never be sure with these kinds of things.
Give me a little while to have a good look and watch this space for more info in the coming weeks.
Coming Soon
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had recently let a few people into a closed seminar I did on selling high-end info products online. Rather than your usual twenty dollar or so ebook per sale this concentrated on showing people how to use other peoples hard work and effort to sell products for hundred quid and over through the internet.
The feedback was the best I’ve ever had.
Now I know you’ll be used to hearing that kind of thing from people online time and time again. Next week though I’ll prove it to you. We’re not talking testimonials from existing gurus and web site owners who just want to give a testimonial for the sake of a link back to their site. No. We’re talking people just like you who may have found the whole earning money online thing a tad confusing…until they saw the seminar.
I’ve been online for three and half years now (blimey that’s gone quick) and in the recent seminar I reveal every dirty little trick I’ve learnt that you can use to get other people to make you a living online. I know that sounds crazy, and it is, but boy does it work.
It’s the exact same method I have used to go from scratch, and without a product, to four or five figures in a day within two weeks.