How To Grow A Great Blog Without Writing It Yourself

How To Grow A Great Blog Without Writing It Yourself

As an entrepreneur and a blogger I’ve been afforded a unique outlook on the whole blogging as a business discussion. Bloggers look at blogging as something they do for fun, for creative expression, for meeting people, for making money directly from advertising and affiliate promotions or indirectly by promoting a business. Most bloggers are either not blogging for money or are self employed content publishers. While there is nothing wrong with that, and I’ve been living the self employment life myself for a long time, it’s not my end goal.

Because of my entrepreneur mindset I always look at things from a strategic business point of view, not an employee mindset. This attitude has led me to study business strategy and systems and implement what I learn both in my business and in my blogging. I doubt there are many other bloggers out there who think and act as I do in this regard, which is why I enjoy writing about

blogging as a business model so much - it’s not territory many people cover since they just don’t think about it.

Today I have a topic for you that clearly is from the entrepreneur mindset and if your goal is to use blogs for business, possibly as your business (the blogging business model), as a lead generator for your business, or as a cashflow source for bootstrapping your business, you will definitely find the ideas below of interest.

How To Leverage The Talent Of Others To Help Grow Your Blog
Attracting new writers to your blog is a difficult process and there are many variables to consider. Your goal is to sustain the value your blog offers, or ideally, increase the value it offers to your readers. As most bloggers know, value comes from content, and content comes from the minds of people, so your first goal when outsourcing the writing of your blog is to find the right people.

It’s pretty clear that the best blogs have talented people writing them. While talent alone isn’t enough, it’s important to focus on attracting, then filtering and finally retaining talented individuals as the key outcome of your outsourcing efforts. Even if a blogger can’t commit to as many articles as you would like them to write, having one great blogger send in one article a month will do more for your traffic and blog growth than a mediocre blogger writing once a week.

Finding talent is not a process that can be done quickly and you won’t really know if a new writer you bring to your blog works well until they have published to your blog for a period of time. Watching how the blogosphere reacts to your hired bloggers is a good way to determine if you have added a good person to your team. Look for comments, trackbacks and incoming links generated by your bloggers as key metrics to assess their performance.

When Is The Right Time To Hire Bloggers?

This is a tough question to answer. You have two variables to consider -
1. You

How much writing do you intend to do yourself and what role do you want to play at your blog(s).
2. The current status of your blog

How much traffic you have, how entrenched is your personality with the current readership, what can your blog and you offer to incentivise contributions.

The first part I can’t really help with since you know what volume of work you want to contribute to your blog and what role you want to play. You may have an end goal of stopping writing altogether and acting as the manager of a team of writers. Or you may want to continue writing to your blog but want to bring on additional bloggers to increase traffic, or start a new blog or even a blog network.

The current status of your blog is a crucial element because it determines what leverage points you have to offer people you hire. If you have a hugely popular blog then many people will consider it a privilege to write for your blog and will likely give their best work because they know how much they gain from the exposure your blog provides.

The less traffic you have the harder it is to attract writers without offering some form of payment. If you plan to outsource from the start, with no traffic or brand in the blogosphere, you will either have to offer partnership or pay money. Other options include a contra deal where you trade products or services you provide in exchange for blogging, for example consulting, or web design/hosting, or SEO work in exchange for writing.

Given all these conditions you can decide when or why you think outsourcing your blog writing is something you want to do. The position you are in now dictates what options you have and what resources you can leverage.

How To Get People To Write For No Money
If you were to ask me how you can get a person to write for “free” I would suggest focusing on building one great blog. If that means working on it yourself for the short term future then so be it, you have to start somewhere. Make one great blog, grow the traffic and brand into something well known and liked within your niche and then you have something you can leverage.
Like

my story with Small Business Branding you don’t necessarily have to build the blog from scratch yourself - you can go out and buy a blog that’s already established. With an asset available you can offer exposure and traffic to your potential recruits in exchange for content.
Another alternative is to bring on a partner or several partners. The down side with this method is you share ownership of your asset with someone, the upside is they may be as motivated as you are to see your blog succeed.

You could consider offering a future payment option. Make a pledge to pay a set amount in a set time period regardless of the performance of the blog, provided they agree to contribute a certain amount of writing. This systems lets you “put off” paying your blogger until your blog is producing revenue, and is also secure for your writers since they are guaranteed a certain amount of money even if the blog doesn’t take off. It’s a gamble, but it might help you get started.

No matter what the option you choose, there really isn’t any way to hire a blogger for free, you always offer something of value in exchange for their work, it just doesn’t necessarily have to be cash or paid immediately. Even if you had your girlfriend or husband or other family member blog for you for nothing, they do it because they love you and enjoy the chance to demonstrate this, they feel good inside about it, or another way to look at it - they might do it to avoid feeling guilty for shunning a self-imposed obligation. There is always a self-serving motivation behind every action, even when actions appear on the surface to be 100% selfless.

What About Paying Bloggers Money? - How Much Should You Offer?
If you have cash to spare (err…invest) then paying for blog content is a great way to motivate people. If you are serious about building a blog network then you better be serious about rewarding your writers very well.

The payment structures for paid blogging is an area where the market is constantly in flux. It’s such a new job that there is no standard as yet, but for the sake of helping you decide what to pay I offer a few examples I’ve either implemented myself or seen other blog networks use. Bear in mind that ultimately you pay what it takes and you can only find that out by making an offer.

Generally most agreements are based on posts (articles published), either paying per post, or paying a set amount each month or week in exchange for a set amount of posts. Other aspects of the agreement might include having your paid bloggers interact with the community via comments and performing additional marketing or blog management tasks.
Testing For Traction

I can’t remember which network it was - not one of the big ones - that paid $5 per post to bloggers with a minimum of 60 posts per month, so bloggers had to commit to an average of two per day. Note that posts don’t need to be fully fledged articles, news bites of a few hundred words count as a post too.

This particular network spent $300 a month minimum on each blogger resulting in a lot of posts in a short period of time. If after three months it is clear the blog is not taking off even with that much regular content, then the blog is sold off. If the growth curve is good, then the network renegotiates a new contract with the blogger based on a revenue share for moneys above the $300 a month minimum, for when the site starts making good money.

This method requires a significant investment upfront for each blogger, but you guarantee that you fully test the niche. I’d recommend focusing on only a few blogs to start with so you can see the results of two posts per day for yourself. This method is possibly one of the best ways to seriously start a blog network, but it might be too much money for some of you reading this.

Monthly Wage
A few years ago, the original blog network,

Weblogs, Inc, had a blogger contract leaked to the web, so we all got to see how their system worked. While not every blogger had the same agreement, it was possible to garner a general impression of how the most successful blog network hired bloggers.

The agreement was for $500 a month in exchange for writing 125 posts, interacting in comments and deleting spam. I later read that not every blogger was paid the same, but this pricing point certainly felt like a “general standard”.

This is a solid payment structure and for many of the hired bloggers was a nice additional source of income - a part time job. Some people made a go of freelance blogging, combining the income of several blogging gigs to equal a full time wage. Weblogs Inc was one of the first networks to offer stable pay for hired bloggers and could be held responsible for creating a new job type - freelance blogger.

The Revenue Split
Sharing revenues with bloggers is a great way to stimulate motivation and empower your bloggers with control over their income. Of course if their income grows, yours does too.

B5media piloted a system where they paid their bloggers 100% of the revenue up to the first $100 and then a 60/40 split (the blogger received the 40% I believe) of any moneys over $100. They have since adapted a new method with a different payment structure.

I like the split payment option because it means your outsourcers are paid in proportion to the work they put in and are rewarded well for hard work. It’s important to offer a basic minimum retainer so they know they have a guaranteed income, and it should quickly become clear which bloggers are working hard and motivated and who you might have to let go.
Pay Per Post

You can keep things very simple and offer a set dollar amount for each post a person makes with no limitations on how many posts they make. This is a very ambiguous payment method and I don’t recommend it. It’s important to have set boundaries and expectations otherwise your bloggers may lack motivation or simply slack off.
Where To Find Bloggers?

Performancing.com until recently had an exchange area of their site including a blogger job board. It was launched shortly before the Problogger.net Job Board. Performancing was free and Problogger costs $50 per advertisement. Unfortunately performancing recently went through a rough period of changing owners and I’m not sure what happened to their job board. Since then the Problogger Job Board has become the standard.

Jon Symons from the

HomeTurfMedia blog network told me that each ad he places at the Problogger Job Board is bombarded with applicants and he has no trouble finding bloggers willing to write.

Headhunting
Another method if you have more time and patience is to search the blogosphere for good bloggers in the niches you want to target. Once you find someone who’s work you like, email them and propose a job writing for your blog. Using this method you can view a person’s “portfolio” as a means to assess their talents before approaching them.

I like this method best, but it does take the most work and you must be prepared to face a lot of “no thanks” since many writers will be happy with their current blogging gigs.
Know Your Reason For Outsourcing

Before you go down the path of bringing on people to write for your blogs make sure you know why you are doing it. If you have a business goal in mind, then make sure you track your metrics. Know how much a blog earns for you at certain traffic benchmarks so you know how much you can budget to pay bloggers.

As a rough guide, if you are good at blog monetization, generally each unique visitor you have to your blog should be worth about $1. So if you can get to 1000 daily unique visitors then you should be able to earn $1000 per month from your blog. That is a VERY rough guide, but I have found it to be true in general.

The rule tends to apply only when your blog starts to surpass the triple figures mark in daily traffic and becomes more consistent once you get past the four figure daily traffic milestone. It’s not set in stone either - you can make even better returns depending on the audience you are tapping into - as much as $5 per unique visitor is not that unheard of.

Once you know your revenues and costs, you can start to look at things like the ratio between how many posts are made each day compared to your traffic growth rate. If two new posts per day sees you bring in an extra 2% in traffic each day, then you can start to play with your numbers.

The relationship between content production, traffic and income are the core drivers of a successful blog, so if you intend to take your blogging business serious you need to know your numbers, at least to a basic understanding.

If you want more details on building a blogging business I suggest you read my series on

professional blogging.

Yaro StarakProfessional Blogger

How to get a successful website in 12 months using only Google

How to get a successful website in 12 months using only Google

Google is powerful. We all know this. Everyone uses Google on a daily basis to search for everything and anything. As a web entrepreneur you must have a solid understanding of what it takes to get a good listing in Google. If your business is web based and your website is a channel of distribution or your main sales tool then think of Google as your most important salesman. This guy must mention you to every potential customer that comes asking him for directions.

Over the years I’ve acquired knowledge about Google by reading and researching and then putting into practice techniques I’ve learnt. Today I thought I would share with you the number one resource I used many years ago that formed the foundation of my understanding of Google. I suggest every web entrepreneur read this article as it is a great primer on things to do to get your site up in the top results for Google.

Courtesy of www.webmasterworld.com, read Succesful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone.
*UPDATE*I’ve copied and pasted the article from WebmasterWorld below because it seems to move around a lot and people keep asking for it so this way it stays in one place. Please note the article below is sourced from WebmasterWorld. There is some good further discussion regarding this article if you follow the link to the forum topic - Succesful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone.

Note that some of the ideas below are disputable. Nothing is guaranteed but certainly if you follow the instructions below you will do a lot of good for your website.

In another post google as a Black Box Giacomo proposed that we talk too much theory and not enough application of it. So, lets skip the theory and get to what I know works from time proven methods on google. I know the following system works 100% of the time with google to attain rankings across a wide range of keywords. This is what I do with clients to build a successful site and has worked every time. The level of success will depend largely on the subject matter, it’s potential audience, and it’s level of competition on the net.The following will build a successful site in 1 years time via google alone. It can be done faster if you are a real go getter, or everyones favorite a self starter.

A) Prep work and begin building content. Long before the domain name is settled on, start putting together notes to build at least a 100 page site. That’s just for openers. That’s 100 pages of real content, as opposed to link pages, resource pages, about/copyright/tos…etc eg: fluff pages.

B) Domain name:Easily brandable. You want “google.com” and not “mykeyword.com”. Keyword domains are out - branding and name recognition are in - big time in. The value of keywords in a domain name have never been less to se’s. Learn the lesson of “goto.com” becomes “Overture.com” and why they did it. It’s one of the most powerful gut check calls I’ve ever seen on the internet. That took serious resolve and nerve to blow away several years of branding. (that is a whole ‘nother article, but learn the lesson as it applies to all of us).

C) site Design:The simpler the better. Rule of thumb: text content should out weight the html content. The pages should validate and be usable in everything from Lynx to leading edge browsers. eg: keep it close to html 3.2 if you can. Spiders are not to the point they really like eating html 4.0 and the mess that it can bring. Stay away from heavy: flash, dom, java, java script. Go external with scripting languages if you must have them - there is little reason to have them that I can see - they will rarely help a site and stand to hurt it greatly due to many factors most people don’t appreciate (search engines distaste for js is just one of them).Arrange the site in a logical manner with directory names hitting the top keywords you wish to hit.You can also go the other route and just throw everything in root (this is rather controversial, but it’s been producing good long term results across many engines).Don’t clutter and don’t spam your site with frivolous links like “best viewed” or other counter like junk. Keep it clean and professional to the best of your ability.

Learn the lesson of google itself - simple is retro cool - simple is what surfers want.
Speed isn’t everything, it’s almost the only thing. Your site should respond almost instantly to a request. If you get into even 3-4 seconds delay until “something happens” in the browser, you are in long term trouble. That 3-4 seconds response time may vary for site destined to live in other countries than your native one. The site should respond locally within 3-4 seconds (max) to any request. Longer than that, and you’ll lose 10% of your audience for every second. That 10% could be the difference between success and not.
The pages:

D) Page Size:The smaller the better. Keep it under 15k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 12k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 10k if you can - I trust you are getting the idea here. Over 5k and under 10k. Ya - that bites - it’s tough to do, but it works. It works for search engines, and it works for surfers. Remember, 80% of your surfers will be at 56k or even less.

E) Content:Build one page of content and put online per day at 200-500 words. If you aren’t sure what you need for content, start with the Overture keyword suggester and find the core set of keywords for your topic area. Those are your subject starters.

F) Density, position, yada…Simple old fashioned seo from the ground up.Use the keyword once in title, once in description tag, once in a heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italic, once high on the page, and hit the density between 5 and 20% (don’t fret about it). Use good sentences and speel check it Spell checking is becoming important as se’s are moving to auto correction during searches. There is no longer a reason to look like you can’t spell (unless you really are phonetically challenged).

G) Outbound Links:From every page, link to one or two high ranking sites under that particular keyword. Use your keyword in the link text (this is ultra important for the future).

H) insite Cross links.(cross links in this context are links within the same site)Link to on topic quality content across your site. If a page is about food, then make sure it links it to the apples and veggies page. Specifically with google, on topic cross linking is very important for sharing your pr value across your site. You do NOT want an “all star” page that out performs the rest of your site. You want 50 pages that produce 1 referral each a day and do NOT want 1 page that produces 50 referrals a day. If you do find one page that drastically out produces the rest of the site with google, you need to off load some of that pr value to other pages by cross linking heavily. It’s the old share the wealth thing.

I) Put it Online.Don’t go with virtual hosting - go with a stand alone ip.Make sure the site is “crawlable” by a spider. All pages should be linked to more than one other page on your site, and not more than 2 levels deep from root. Link the topic vertically as much as possible back to root. A menu that is present on every page should link to your sites main “topic index” pages (the doorways and logical navigation system down into real content).Don’t put it online before you have a quality site to put online. It’s worse to put a “nothing” site online, than no site at all. You want it flushed out from the start.

Go for a listing in the ODP. If you have the budget, then submit to Looksmart and Yahoo. If you don’t have the budget, then try for a freebie on Yahoo (don’t hold your breath).
J) SubmitSubmit the root to: google, Fast, Altavista, WiseNut, (write Teoma), DirectHit, and Hotbot. Now comes the hard part - forget about submissions for the next six months. That’s right - submit and forget.

K) Logging and Tracking:Get a quality logger/tracker that can do justice to inbound referrals based on log files (don’t use a lame graphic counter - you need the real deal). If your host doesn’t support referrers, then back up and get a new host. You can’t run a modern site without full referrals available 24×7x365 in real time.

L) Spiderlings:Watch for spiders from se’s. Make sure those that are crawling the full site, can do so easily. If not, double check your linking system (use standard hrefs) to make sure the spider found it’s way throughout the site. Don’t fret if it takes two spiderings to get your whole site done by google or Fast. Other se’s are pot luck and doubtful that you will be added at all if not within 6 months.

M) Topic directories.Almost every keyword sector has an authority hub on it’s topic. Go submit within the guidelines.

N) LinksLook around your keyword sector in googles version of the ODP. (this is best done AFTER getting an odp listing - or two). Find sites that have links pages or freely exchange links. Simply request a swap. Put a page of on topic, in context links up your self as a collection spot.Don’t freak if you can’t get people to swap links - move on. Try to swap links with one fresh site a day. A simple personal email is enough. Stay low key about it and don’t worry if site Z won’t link with you - they will - eventually they will.

O) Content.One page of quality content per day. Timely, topical articles are always the best. Try to stay away from to much “bloggin” type personal stuff and look more for “article” topics that a general audience will like. Hone your writing skills and read up on the right style of “web speak” that tends to work with the fast and furious web crowd.
Lots of text breaks - short sentences - lots of dashes - something that reads quickly.
Most web users don’t actually read, they scan. This is why it is so important to keep low key pages today. People see a huge overblown page by random, and a portion of them will hit the back button before trying to decipher it. They’ve got better things to do that waste 15 seconds (a stretch) at understanding your whiz bang flash menu system. Because some big support site can run flashed out motorhead pages, that is no indication that you can. You don’t have the pull factor they do.

Use headers, and bold standout text liberally on your pages as logical separators. I call them scanner stoppers where the eye will logically come to rest on the page.

P) Gimmicks.Stay far away from any “fades of the day” or anything that appears spammy, unethical, or tricky. Plant yourself firmly on the high ground in the middle of the road.

Q) Link backsWhen YOU receive requests for links, check the site out before linking back with them. Check them through google and their pr value. Look for directory listings. Don’t link back to junk just because they asked. Make sure it is a site similar to yours and on topic.

R) Rounding out the offerings:Use options such as Email-a-friend, forums, and mailing lists to round out your sites offerings. Hit the top forums in your market and read, read, read until your eyes hurt you read so much.Stay away from “affiliate fades” that insert content on to your site.

S) Beware of Flyer and Brochure SyndromeIf you have an ecom site or online version of bricks and mortar, be careful not to turn your site into a brochure. These don’t work at all. Think about what people want. They aren’t coming to your site to view “your content”, they are coming to your site looking for “their content”. Talk as little about your products and yourself as possible in articles (raise eyebrows…yes, I know).

T) Build one page of content per day.Head back to the Overture suggestion tool to get ideas for fresh pages.

U) Study those logs.After 30-60 days you will start to see a few referrals from places you’ve gotten listed. Look for the keywords people are using. See any bizarre combinations? Why are people using those to find your site? If there is something you have over looked, then build a page around that topic. Retro engineer your site to feed the search engine what it wants.If your site is about “oranges”, but your referrals are all about “orange citrus fruit”, then you can get busy building articles around “citrus” and “fruit” instead of the generic “oranges”.The search engines will tell you exactly what they want to be fed - listen closely, there is gold in referral logs, it’s just a matter of panning for it.

V) Timely TopicsNothing breeds success like success. Stay abreast of developments in your keyword sector. If big site “Z” is coming out with product “A” at the end of the year, then build a page and have it ready in October so that search engines get it by December. eg: go look at all the Xbox and XP sites in google right now - those are sites that were on the ball last summer.

W) Friends and FamilyNetworking is critical to the success of a site. This is where all that time you spend in forums will pay off. pssst: Here’s the catch-22 about forums: lurking is almost useless. The value of a forum is in the interaction with your fellow colleagues and cohorts. You learn long term by the interaction - not by just reading.Networking will pay off in link backs, tips, email exchanges, and it will put you “in the loop” of your keyword sector.

X) Notes, Notes, NotesIf you build one page per day, you will find that brain storm like inspiration will hit you in the head at some magic point. Whether it is in the shower (dry off first), driving down the road (please pull over), or just parked at your desk, write it down! 10 minutes of work later, you will have forgotten all about that great idea you just had. Write it down, and get detailed about what you are thinking. When the inspirational juices are no longer flowing, come back to those content ideas. It sounds simple, but it’s a life saver when the ideas stop coming.

Y) Submission check at six monthsWalk back through your submissions and see if you got listed in all the search engines you submitted to after six months. If not, then resubmit and forget again. Try those freebie directories again too.

Z) Build one page of quality content per day.Starting to see a theme here? google loves content, lots of quality content. Broad based over a wide range of keywords. At the end of a years time, you should have around 400 pages of content. That will get you good placement under a wide range of keywords, generate recip links, and overall position your site to stand on it’s own two feet.

Do those 26 things, and I guarantee you that in ones years time you will call your site a success. It will be drawing between 500 and 2000 referrals a day from search engines. If you build a good site with an average of 4 to 5 pages per user, you should be in the 10-15k page views per day range in one years time. What you do with that traffic is up to you, but that is more than enough to “do something” with.

http://www.searchengineworld.com/misc/guide.htm

How To Invest In Websites In Your Spare Time

How To Invest In Websites In Your Spare Time

I remember my first website sale. I made $13,000 Australian dollars selling a website that I had built from scratch myself. That sale was a big windfall for me and a moment I won’t forget because it was the first time I saw the real potential of online property investment.
Since that sale I’ve gone on to sell more than $150,000 USD in websites. Some of the sites I built myself, investing my own time and sometimes money, while others I have purchased and then sold for a profit at a later date.
I’ve never lost money on a website investment, although I have bought some sites that were not big money spinners - I got out with pretty much the same as I went in with. When profits are made though, the worst I have done is double my money.
Long Term Investing?

On the Internet you might call what I do long term investing since most of the sites I bought were sold no earlier than 18 months time. The websites I built myself take as long as five years to reach the point of sale, although I could have sold earlier for less or held on longer for more.
The best return on investment from a flip (a site bought and later sold) was 1,000% - 10 times the money I put in. It took a little over two years to do that. Another trade was a set of sites I purchased 18 months prior that brought in a little over double my initial investment.
In the offline world, returns like that in 18 and 24 months would be considered exceptional and certainly not standard. If a share portfolio or investment in physical property returns 20% a year you are doing well.

The world of the web is different. Everything is changing fast, yet with so many websites and so many people online, the size and potential of the market is tremendous. There are bargains out there all the time and as long as you don’t screw up what you purchase, simply allowing a site to grow organically can result in significant profits, if you are prepared to wait.
Flipping Part Time

I’ve never focused all my energy on buying and selling websites, which is why I haven’t done that many trades. Most of the time I work on whatever my main business projects are at the time, but I keep my eyes on some of the website trading forums to see if bargains come up.
When a site matches my criteria, I act fast with an offer, do some basic due diligence and if all things go well, make a deal. I miss out on more sites than I purchase because other people out-bid me, the site sells before I find it or due diligence convinces me to pass on a particular site.
As a result of buying websites purely as a side project, I’ve focused on a certain type of website and made sure I have people working with me who can help with the activities I don’t have the time to do. You definitely need to be careful if you want website flipping to be a part time job, it can quickly suck all your time, especially if you choose the wrong type of site.
Criteria for Part Time Website Flipping

Here’s some advice from what I have learned in the previous years flipping websites part time.

1. It helps if you have money to invest.

As with most forms of investment, you can make more if you have more to spend. When I was younger, I didn’t have money so I built websites with the sweat off my back. Most never amounted to anything financially, but one did - that first five figure sale I mentioned earlier. From there, as my income grew, I was able spend more to make more.

In recent years I’ve barely blinked an eye to invest a few thousand dollars in a website and spent as much as five figures in one deal. At one point I made a bid for a very popular site of $50,000 (I didn’t have that much money at the time - I figured I would find it after the fact), but I was quickly out bid and the site eventually sold for over $100,000.

Sites that cost more have more traffic and usually bring in more revenue. As a result, if you simply hold on to the site, given nothing unexpected happens, it should grow naturally, depending of course on how the traffic is generated (if the traffic is purchased, that’s a different story).

It’s easier to grow something that already has a stable base of traffic. Traffic tends to bring in more traffic, especially if you focus on websites that are community based. Just as businesses stand to gain the most from existing customers, a website has significant leverage within its current audience.

Taking it a step further, if you are well versed in internet marketing and website optimization, you can use your skills (or other people’s) to accelerate growth even more rapidly. This however requires more time or resources, so you need to consider what roles you want to perform and how much money you want to spend hiring other people, if you do decide to pro-actively optimize the sites you purchase.


2. If you don’t have money, start something new or use alternative sources of funds


As usual the relationship between money and time are converse, if you have one you need less of the other. It’s easier and quicker if you have money to begin trading websites, but you can make it work without money, if you have the patience and the follow through to build something yourself.

The great thing about creating a website from the beginning is the learning process. Nearly all of the sites I built during my first few years online would be considered failures, at least financially.
I spent hours and hours building forums that never took off, coding websites that never had more than five readers a day and swapping links to website projects I quickly abandoned due to my constantly changing focus. While I never made money from these sites I learned a TON about how the web works and that foundation of experience laid the path for future successful projects.

Let’s not forget, if just one project takes off you may hit pay dirt big time. Even if you don’t make millions on your first website trade, if you can build a site, flip it for a few thousand dollars, that money can be reinvested into more sites, and so on.

Alternatively, you can use any source of funding to start a website portfolio. You can seek investors, borrow money using traditional means like banks, funnel cashflow from other projects into website purchases, look for partners with cash or even get a job and use that money for online investment.

If you decide to go into debt to invest in websites, make sure you know what you are doing. There are no guarantees and I recommend you ask yourself how it would impact you if you lost the money invested. I ask myself this question every time I make a purchase and I never buy unless I know I could still survive if everything went downhill.

3. Look for sites that grow organically




I’ve talked about my strategies for picking websites in previous articles on website flipping that I will link to at the end of this article. My strategy has always been to find low maintenance sites, however it’s important to also consider the potential for organic growth, especially when investing part time.

I’ve advocated investing in forums for a long time because they tend to sustain themselves with little work beyond moderation. You don’t have to invest in content creation, marketing or spend money on advertising, If there is already a community in place. You can do all of these things to speed up growth, but generally if you have a base of a few hundred regular forum participants (that’s daily participants - not just registered members), they will create content and bring in new readers without you needing to do anything at all.

Forums are notoriously hard to start from scratch, which is why I don’t recommend choosing a forum as an investment if you intend to build it from the beginning. Buying established forums is great - creating one from nothing is challenging and time consuming.

Blogs can make good investments, especially if you are buying one with an established writer or a team of writers and an established readership. Even if you buy a blog without a writer, it’s not hard to find people who can write the blog for you, just bear in mind there is a big difference between a good blogger and an average one. Blogs live and die based on continuous content and if you don’t find a way to keep the flow of new ideas coming, you might regret the purchase.

On the other hand, sites and blogs using a niche content model, can be a good purchase, depending on the market. Niche sites generally rely on search engine traffic to bring in readers who are then sent off to other sites through Google AdSense ads or other forms of advertising, which is how money is generated. If you find niche sites with a history of stable traffic targeting markets that, given things remain stable, should continue to grow with the natural growth rare of the Internet, then you may have found yourself a good buy.

I’ve stayed away from sites that sell products as their monetization method (like a site that sells an ebook) or sites that depend heavily on paid for traffic like Google AdWords. I like the source of traffic to be organic and sites that sell products tend to require more maintenance (testing the sales page for example) and that you possess an insight into that market. Niche sites that monetize with affiliate products are fine though since you don’t actually manage the products yourself.

There are plenty of other types of websites for sale, from proxy sites, to social media sites, video sites, MP3 sites, to full blown e-commerce sites. Some of these are models I don’t understand or require significant maintenance and participation to keep growing. You however may be very familiar or interested in these formats and I always recommend you gravitate towards projects you have enthusiasm form and understand the model, so don’t follow my lead blindly - make up your own mind.

4. Use a team to make the process as hands-off as possible


There is no website you can buy that doesn’t require work. Right from the moment you make a purchase you have the transfer to handle, including the DNS changes, making sure scripts are working and so on. There may be emails to respond to, moderators to manage and affiliate links or advertising code that needs to be changed.

All of these tasks have to get done. You can do them yourself, taking you away from your main projects, or enlist the help of others. If you truly want to keep website investing a part time occupation then you must have help.

A tech support person is the first role I suggest you fill - and this is not just for investing in websites. I tell Blog Mastermind students this. I tell Membership Site Mastermind (not public yet) students this. I tell everyone the same thing. It’s my number one tip for any person who is not already a tech geek themselves - you need tech help if it is not your strong point and stop trying to do it all yourself - it’s killing your chance of success.

If you have people you trust, who know websites and scripts and web languages, then the technical aspect of maintaining a website is very easy. It also makes it easier to complete changes you want done, for example - website design changes, optimizing the placement of AdSense code and adding new features.

Beyond technical tasks, you can employ help for basic tasks like email support, forum moderation, liaising with advertisers all the way up to more complicated task such as search engine optimization, split testing different advertising methods and seeking new sponsors.
In my case back when I started I did it all myself, which is why it took five years to build a successful website the first time round. Today I’m not afraid to seek help from tech people, designers and website managers. Most of my recent investments require a couple of hours a week of my own time, which usually involved coordinating the people working with me on the sites.

Is It Getting Harder To Trade Websites?

The web has grown tremendously in recent years and will continue to grow. That’s one of the reasons the opportunity right now to invest in web property is so great. Provided you invest in sites that provide value, the size of the market should grow organically as more people go online, which means your investments will grow organically too.

However, let’s not forget that the entire concept of buying and selling websites is becoming more popular and you face more competition when bidding for sites at the popular trading forums. When I first bid for sites at Sitepoint there was little experienced competition (lots of newbies like me at the time). Today, if you don’t act immediately when a quality new site becomes available, you miss it, or the price inflates beyond what you are willing to spend.

That said, flipping sites is still a very unique thing to do and while there is competition, it really is a laughable amount compared to other forms of investment. Let’s not forget most people don’t understand the value of the websites they own and if you use research methods to find sites that avoid the popular trading forums, there are bargains everywhere.

Ed Dale always makes the point that when looking to purchase websites you should consider your existing business model and find sites that can plug straight into it. You can leverage certain sites in ways other people can’t, if you have a unique insight into how a market works or you have an existing process to produce income that the website can leverage off (like a product of your own you can sell to the new audience you get when you buy the site).

$14 Million from Trading Websites

Ed Dale’s Dominiche training program is still my number one recommendation for learning how to buy and sell websites. It’s not cheap, but there really isn’t anything else out there from people who have the experience that Ed does (he has sold $14 Million worth of websites).
Clik here to read about Ed’s program


COPY FROM http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/912/how-to-invest-in-websites-in-your-spare-time/#more-912

$9000 A Month From A Board Game?

$9000 A Month From A Board Game?

As someone who writes about the Internet marketing industry, who presents articles to help people make money online here at this blog and runs a membership site to teach people to blog for profit, it’s pretty clear I make a living by helping others make a living online too.
That, for obvious reasons, tends to bother some people and I’m questioned whether you can indeed make money from the Internet if you don’t sell people products on how to make money. It does seem rather incestuous in some way doesn’t it.

Well some of you will be surprised to know that yes, you can in fact build an Internet business that is not focused on Internet marketing or anything related to making money and be very successful and in fact I expect significantly more people make a living online selling stuff in niches that have nothing to do with money, marketing, or business…
And here’s some interesting proof of just that -

A Board Game About Herbs?

If you ever had doubts about the potential to succeed online by finding a niche and creating a business around it, then Jeff Walker has a video you have to watch.
Jeff is the guy behind Product Launch Formula, a course I purchased over a year ago that is no longer available. Jeff’s tactics are great and in my opinion, mandatory study for any person who intends to sell something online.

Jeff’s about to release a new version of his program, titled Product Launch Formula 2.0, and in anticipation of the release, he’s put out this awesome video from one his clients who used the launch formula in a very obscure niche - herbs - and one of the products he sells is a board game.
I don’t know about you, but a board game based on herbs is not something I would ever expect could be the basis of a six figure business.
Watch The Video

Jeff explains how our herb entrepreneur pulled off this amazing feat and breaks down the exact process he went through to launch his board game in a free video you can watch here -



Note - you only get the first half of the video if you don’t opt-in. I suggest you opt-in first, then watch the full version of the video that you can access after signing up (it’s free). If you don’t you will have to wait for it to load twice and skip the first half after you opt-in, which is a pain - it’s a big video!

Lessons From The Video
There’s some great content in the video and I recommend you take 45 minutes from you day today to watch it from start to finish.

Here’s just some of the notes I took while watching it -
Conducting teleseminars with experts as part of your launch process is a VERY powerful technique, especially in non-Internet marketing niches. Experts you interview will help build your list because they want to promote their interview and thus will send traffic to it, this in turn helps you sell more product.
Using a limited bonus package for the first X buyers creates scarcity, which ramps up sales big time.

Having a list of buyers is 10 or 20 times more valuable than having a list of prospects. This is the core reason people can run very successful businesses with tiny email lists - because they have a list with people who actually are interested enough in what you offer to spend money, they are not just freebie seekers.

Create a sense of community before the release of your product. One of the suggested methods for doing this is through blog comments and there’s some awesome examples of how John (the herb guy) did this in his launch in the video.

The core strategy presented in the video is what Jeff calls the Horizontal Helix, which sounds scientific to me, but it’s not. Put simply, it’s about using each launch as a springboard for bigger launches in the future. What’s cool about this case study, is that John was able to automate this process using email autoresponders so you don’t have to do a massive launch (and invest all that time and energy) each time.

I’ve only touched on a few of the ideas from the video, so as you can tell this is one value packed resource. It’s worth watching regardless of whether you intend to join Jeff’s program or not. Here’s that link again -

The Horizontal Helix case study video
Remember - opt-in first to get the full version so you don’t have wait for it to load twice. You can unsubscribe after opting in if the emails bug you, but I expect they won’t. Jeff’s one of the few Internet marketers I remain subscribed to because he doesn’t abuse his list. Plus I like the guy, he’s pretty down to earth, yet smart.

Yaro StarakHorizontal Helixing