>>> To all the pros out there <<< - a few questions :)

Hello all,

I started this thread seeking for some advice, from all of you, in regards on how to best monetize a site and how long should you expect until you see some returns. Actually, I would like to mostly concentrate on the latter.

I have been reselling domains for a while, and even though I wasn't doing so bad, the recent economy changes have really affected the market and I've taken a big hit. Thus, I decided to look into developing some of my domains instead of just selling them to cut my losses.

I have been researching, reading threads and ebooks in regards to development and all that it includes - SEO, monetization of your site, etc - for the past couple of months, and at this point I am certain that I've heard most of it. I obviously don't mean that I've turned into an expert within a couple of months of research, I just mean that I am aware of the standard steps to follow when starting a site.

During that research, however, I have come up with a few questions that I would like your comments on.

All the industry forums are filled with writers trying to sell their articles and people paying for articles, comments, posts, traffic, submissions etc.

As I understand it, the easiest way to start a site is to make a blog, post 5 articles in it and post another 5 articles to all the article directories, right? That's 10 articles total. Let assume that you were to buy these articles from an average cheap writer... that's 10 times $5 (assuming that each 400-500 word article would cost $5) = $50. Now, let's also assume that you will be spending around $20 to have someone submit your site and your remaining 5 articles to directories, and/or buy some traffic or ads. Out total cost so far is $70 and we have a complete site. Of course, that site would have to be updated with unique content regularly in order to keep up with the competition and rank well.

My question is... how soon are you expecting to recoup your initial investment? Everybody seems to think that you will start making some money in about 5-6 months from the launch of your site. Assuming that you will be updating your site with about 5 articles for each of these 5-6 months, you'll need to buy another 25-30 articles. That's $125-$150 extra bringing our total cost of running and maintaining that site to around $200 (and that's excluding hosting or other unforeseen variables).

How long would it take you to start making some of your money back? Better yet, how long would it take you to actually make money?

I am sure I am missing something here, and this is why I decided to start this thread. Bare in mind that I am not looking for answers in the form of "you can write your own articles" and such. Of course you can write your own articles and you can submit everything yourself, but if you have to go through all that, then how come all these services exist and why do people buy them?

I have been through several jobs in my life - many of which involved some form of business article writing. I could easily start a blog on a business/financing niche and post my own writing and it would be just as good, if not better, than many other related blogs out there. However, I cannot even conceive the idea that a blog (or two for that matter) could bring me even half of what I was earning as an executive. I am not trying to brag here and I hope nobody took that previous statement in such a way... If I was happy with my other jobs, I wouldn't be here trying to start my own business.

What I am simply trying to say is that I believe that my strength is marketing and management and that's what I would like to concentrate on. The question is, is it worth paying people for these services? Can you make your money back faster than you would if you invested in.... bonds for example?

I am going to stop here - hoping that some of you will have the courage to read this whole post!

Thanks in advance for all of your responses!

 

Wow, that is some post. heh

I know you are going to want to hear more than this, but...in answer to those particular questions, you have to do it yourself to see for yourself.

Everybody who has done this has seen different results, so....

But, as a marketer/advertiser, I put article marketing near the bottom of the barrel.

But, like I said, try it to see for yourself.

 

Actually, this might be exactly what I wanted to hear copper.. Maybe I am looking at this the wrong way. Since you put article marketing at the bottom of the list, may I ask what you would put above it?

Furthermore, would you mind giving me your opinion on the following question:

"How long would it take you to start making some of your money back? Better yet, how long would it take you to actually make money?"

Maybe my response to your question should have been my initial post - I just wanted to fully explain what I needed and I ended up writing this "monster"

 

I'm going to sound like a stuck record to many here, but if you want to be a success, you have to advertise and get word of mouth going.

This is how, Shoemoney and JohnChow.com started. That is, if you know of these two bloggers. They have roughly around 10,000 daily visitors.

If you have heard of Shoemoney, you may want to listen to this audio: http://odeo.com/episodes/24457326-P...hoemoney”-Schoemaker-Get-To-Where-He-Is-Today

Some of it is BS, but it is pretty interesting. It's a long tape, around 70 minutes, and it starts off slow and a little boring, but stick with it.

Are you talking about article marketing? I don't do that. If you are talking about how long it took to get my money back after placing my ad(s), I would say less than a couple of weeks, if not, maybe, less than a week.

But, again, what may take me that amount of time may take another longer, or, shorter.

It's a question that really can't be answered.


I don't remember when I started making money. The same day after placing my ads? ... The day after???

But since it varies from webmaster to webmaster, that is irrelevant.

 

Thanks for the tip - went through the whole audio. It's fun to hear from someone who has made it

I wasn't referring to article marketing in specific, I am talking about any technique that you use. If you make your money back in a few weeks, I am assuming that after a little while you started making money - is that true? Would you say that there are bulletproof methods to make at least some profit (minor even)?

If that's the case, then I would love to chat with you for a little bit if you don't mind. I would consider even paying for some valuable information or for a pattern that could eventually be recreated. There is one thing to note though - I am very serious about investing some good money in this and I plan to hire a team of people to perform specific tasks in order to get things going. In order to be assured that such a system would be feasible, I would like to try out a few stuff myself so that I know how the exact process works, in order to properly instruct others in the future. Do you think that this is something I could do? I just need to understand what sort of techniques are out there and then weigh in the cost of hiring some people to perform them against possible earnings. If the latter is greater, then I am ready to go all in

Please tell me your thoughts about that.

Thanks again - it seems like you were the only one so far to have the guts to read through the whole thread and I consider this a great value in someone!

 

Yeah, I enjoyed it myself. All that is old hat, but I enjoyed it. I put it in my favorites, and pass it along to my readers.

Anybody who will sit through that entire thing and take notes, is the one I know is serious in his site(s).

That guy really pushed the envelope.

I appreciated his honesty in the last half of the audio when he said that he spent a lot of money in advertising.

Most, for some stupid reason, will not admit that they advertise. Shit, the big sites out there are big due to advertising, buying traffic!

There is no shame in advertising, buying traffic!

Yes. I put in the ads, they start clicking on them that day, and it took, I think, maybe the first 100-200 to come in to look at my site before one bought. That took, I think, 2 days.

That has been quite awhile back now, so....

I have put my advertising on hold because I am working on another project (seminars on the road) but I was advertising in over 400 sites, and getting in over 20,000 daily hits.

It's no biggie, though, because the more sites you advertise in, the more hits you get. So....

Well it depends on how much we are talking about, but, in order, it would be: Advertising, word of mouth, and article marketing.

Advertising you can make a lot of money! Just ask Shoemoney, heh heh. Word of mouth and article marketing is very minor. In fact, in many instances, I think it is safe to assume that a minimum-paid worker working 40 hours a week makes more money, and works far fewer hours than a webmaster does via article marketing.

I would strongly suggest not doing this. First see if you can do it yourself.

Many big sites out there are a one-man operation.

DavesDaily.com was one, before he sold it. He got his traffic up to over 300,000.

I myself will never have a partner or "help" for my sites, TheList.FM. Other than help with the orders coming in, but that is about it.

I'm changing that format around, too. I am going be doing a paid subscription rather an e-book. I think, and I could be wrong, but I think many would find that more valuable, thus getting in more orders.

I'd like to ask you, would you rather buy an e-book, or say, a two-month subscription to a magazine that goes out every week, and with updated info???

Thanks for your feedback on that question.

 

Hey copper!

Apologies for the late response to your comments.. Thanks so much for your help!

As far as hiring people to help me out - I completely agree with what you are saying. If I don't know the whole process from beginning to end, then there is no point in even trying to do this. I plan to learn as much as I can before I go into that... I just plan to have many sites that generate a decent semi-automated income per month and then concentrate on a couple of sites that I will handle personally.

Let me rephrase that question for you. Would I buy an e-book? No. Would I subscribe to a magazine that goes out every week with updated info? Maybe - if I that magazine skipped all the basics and provided me with more specialized information in regards to marketing... The real question for me here is... Would I buy something that a publisher compiled for wide distribution or would I pay that publisher to lead me through the process personally? I would definitely go with the latter.

There are loads of ebooks out there for free or close to it. I have already read a few. There are many blogs as well - that could be seen as the equivalent of a free and updated magazine.. I have check out a few of these as well. All these have something in common. It's the same content rewritten with minor alterations from the author. That's not to say that everybody copies the content from others... It's only normal that they would all look alike since the steps to market a site are the same for everyone... There are about 50 ways to do it and everybody lists them in some way or another, maybe through a blog post or an ebook.

The real question for me is how do I get down to the specifics of each method... Yes, I know there is paying for traffic, article marketing, social bookmarking and so on and so forth. Should I use all of these no matter what my niche is or what I am trying to market? Should I do them all at once? One every week? That's what I need to know. Unfortunately, I haven't figured it out yet even though I have spent about a month reading and researching... I have read some opinions - tried some too - but they didn't really work for me, so I have to assume that I am doing something wrong.

Would love to talk to you about it in more detail if you have a few spare minutes to spend. Now, I do understand that if you know the answers to my questions, spending these few minutes with me is costing you money since you could be easily performing the steps I ask you to explain. Nevertheless, I am serious about this and if you do "teach" me what I need to know, I don't mind paying you for your time.

Let me know And thanks so much once again for your tips so far!

 

Research method i.e. article marketing. Look at ways webmasters submit their articles, how many links do they put in the resource box, what code do they use, do they add keywords etc...
The only way to find out what works for you is to apply various variables in each marketing method and stick to one which works best for you, or even use a combination.
There is no 100% full proof guide to sucess in online marketing. Its try and fail and try again and fail and try again and see some sucess. By doing you are learning, by not doing you are only going around and around in circles and not finding any answers because you are not doing.
i.e....For some, article marketing may be the best traffic generator, however for someone else a combination of social networking, emailing, and video marketing gets them their required traffic.
It all depends on the person/market. But there thousands of variables when it comes to the "specifics" of each method.
Remember it doesn't matter how much marketing you do, Content is King.

 

Thanks. I like how you put that.

Do them all at once. Hell, why not?

You combine them altogether and you still won't get that many daily visitors. And between that and the hours you put in, in my book, that ain't shit.

Excuse my French.

So, why do one at a time?

Well, I already know those methods you speak of are not all that great.

Just about all of them do not work, period.

Article marketing can be just ok for many webmasters, but I would not put that method on the top of the pedestal.

You want to do better than just, "eh, it's ok.''

Try it anyway, to see for yourself.

But have your site, articles and your submissions to these networks critiqued.

Ask family, friends, whoever...

Yes, but just about all of these e-books are pure crap, including 99% of these methods they write about.

It's like...they are all talking parrots, repeating something they heard from another talking parrot, none of them knowing what they are saying.

There are very few of us who will say in our own verison of e-books and or in our sites that search engines are highly overrated, that online classified ads, Squidoo, MySpace, FaceBook, signatures (posting in message boards with your url on the bottom of your posts) Twitter, on and on and on is pure shit, and, article and video marketing is just ok.

It's like you have to wear your boots so you can read these e-books.

Oh, and by the way..."content is not king," as many think it is. Marketing, promoting is king. Good content keeps them coming back, but don't you first have to bring them in?

There are so-called "gurus" out there that sell products on how to get more traffic, like, John Reese and Frank Kern, yet these two idiots have very little traffic at their own sites.

I always get a kick out of some who say that such guys are "the greatest," yet they STILL have very little traffic as before. ... Just like the "gurus.''

But, like I said before, try all these methods to find out on your own. Experiment with them for a few weeks.

There is no reason to do one at a time, since all of them combined will not bring you that much traffic anyway.

Forget about it. Posting on and reading this board helps me too, since I also will be doing seminars soon, and I need to know how to better communicate with webmasters on this level, and to better understand them.

That's, basically, the only reason why I am here.

So....

What is your site, and or product and or service, anyway???

 

Copper - I can't thank you enough for your repeated replies

Judging by your words, I am going to assume that you believe that the best way to get that precious traffic is either through email marketing or adwords (or similar services)... Am I right?

As far as a site, a product, or a service goes, I don't have any at the moment. I have developed a couple of sites just so that I can start testing some methods, but as you can understand by my threads I was far from successful. Can't say I did my best or that I tried all the techniques I know, but I just feel like it won't get me anywhere without some sort of guidance from someone.

Would you say that the highest paying niches are the most competitive ones, and thus should be avoided by a beginner? If so, what would you consider to be the best way to start? I am a domainer so I have a bunch of domains to choose from.. but again, my main problem is that I don't know where to start. Would love to hear your thoughts

 

it depends what the purpose of the sites is. If they are just MFA sites or 'page rank funnels', you certainly don't need to buy articles for them. 'Repurpose' some existing stuff to create your content.

 

May I ask what an MFA site is? Is a page rank funnel a site for the purpose of having a few links on it to boost some other sites' PR??

 

Hey,

this is probably one of the most commonly asked questions in IM. However, there is no real definitive answer, until you explore it further for yourself.

The main factors you have to contend with will be:-

- niche
- quality of articles and blog posts
- How hungry your potential customers are
- Are you offering anything of value or "new" information for your readers

I have written so many articles and blog posts and sometimes with no real success and other times i have made no real effort and had a winner.

A great example of this was last weekend. I wrote an article on Friday morning, submitted to EZA and it was approved and live within 5 hours. I enjoyed the weekend and checked my stats again on Sunday. I was kinda blown away, just that one article had received 456 views and my url had been clicked through 226 times.

Now that's never happened in the space of 36 hours! And a near 50% clickthrough rate. It just so happened the article had been picked up and published on 12 other sites and the article had mentioned Barack Obama, who is still a huge draw to hungry eyes. After checking all my stats, that one article had also given me 8 sales of a $14.69 product. So $117.52, for an article that took me 45 minutes to research, write and submit! (actually add about $2.23 in adsense!).

Of course, other times i have written 30 articles and 30 blog posts in a week and see that produce less than $5 in that week.

I think the moral is, there is no secret formula. There are things you can do to improve your chances of success. Sometimes you can work ever so hard for little reward and other times you do nothing and have immediate success.

I am a supporter of article marketing, but that's because i have been through the crap times when my efforts were producing nothing and i have also experienced some incredible highs. This is what works for me!

I am great believer in adding lots and lots of content though. Whether it's blog posts, articles or more info on your site, the more you do, the more the search engines will take notice!

 

Hey JamesW,

Thanks for your reply! I just have one question for you.

You mention that you had big success with one article last weekend. Then of course you say that you have had many articles that didn't generate much interest. It's a close match between quality and luck as far as I can tell. My question is... what if you start flooding all the article directories with quality content? That way you basically control the luck factor in my opinion. The quality is up to you (or your carefully chosen writers) so it's controllable as well.

What do you think? If making article marketing effective is the result of two factors both of which you can control - then it sounds like it's a gold mine. Am I missing something here? :S

 

Hey there,

OK this is just my personal opinion. I would consider a major part of my business is article writing and marketing. However, i am not one of these people who submits to 1000s of directories.

To me, even with all the recent changes, Ezine Articles (EZA) is still king. The other directories, again just in my opinion, produce little more than backlinks.

My process:-

I will write and submit an article to EZA. For me i tend to find an article of approximately 350-400 words works best. The most important part of the article is the title! If you have a crap title, no-one will ever read your article. So percentage wise, i would put 40% of my efforts into thinking of a great article title.

Either have an air of mystery, e.g. "Discover", "Is this What's it's cracked up to be", etc.

or

A benefit, e.g. Top Tips, Deadly Mistakes, How To, etc.

i also find the longer the title, the more notice people will take of it...on EZA's homepage and in the search engines.

So An example of a title that has all the above:-

"Discover How To Lose Your Ugly Belly Fat In Under 30 Days And Attract Gorgeous Girls"

The next most important part is your author's bio, you want your reader to click through to your main site. So in your bio, re-address the problem your reader is facing, give the url of the site that will solve that problem and then give your reader the benefits of visiting that url. I would attach a 35% imprtance to this.

An example of an aithor's bio:-

"Have you had enough of all your friends teasing you about your ugly Belly Fat. Visit loseuglyfat.com right now and discover how to lose that ugly belly fat in under 30 days and attract gorgeous girls"

So the actual body of your article, i would attach a 25% importance. In your article body, you want to discuss whatever you have mentioned in your title. So usually a problem, your reader is facing. Then discuss possible solutions to their problem and then recap at the end of the article.

Never "finish" the article at the end. You want your author's bio to seem like a continuation of your article, therefore your reader has no choice but to seek further information from the links you have provided.

Now i have seen an increase in click through rates to my main sites, since i write my articles this way. I used to be happy with a 15% clickthrough rate, nowadays if it less than 30% i feel disappointed!

As for the other article directories, i use goarticles, searchwarp, isnare, article dashboard and buzzle. For the first 4 i will submit exactly the same article i submitted at EZA (once it has been approved and published) and link to another article at EZA. I know my Ezine Article will get the most views, so i make sure i provide good backlinks from the other article directories. Buzzle will require original content just like EZA, so spend 10 minutes re-writing the article. Once again this re-written article will link to an Ezine Article of mine.

Another thing to remember is to ping your authors feed everytime you have a new article published at EZA. Treat your articles as a blog, so whenever there is new content ping your feed and try and backlink to it as well.

I have been involved in discussions with some of the so called great article marketers, Dean Shainin, Steven Wagenheim and Shannin Herod and they all base their business around article marketing. I actually bought a product from Shannin and he showed a formula, whereby he had written just 21 articles on a subject in October 2008 and by March 2009, those articles had been viewed approx. 44,000 times and had approx. 15,000 clickthroughs to his website.

Now i'm sure everyone would be happy to receive an additional 15,000 visitors to their website from say just 3 days work (writing 21 articles)!

 

No. Placing ads in other webmasters' sites.

*shrugs shoulders* You would think so, but I don't know. There could be one product out there that many don't even think about.

Oh hell no. It's all in the advertising, and, sometimes in article marketing. Whomever is the best at it, and keeps at it with one ad after another, makes the most money.


Nobody can really tell you where to start. Find out what you are passionate about. If you are not passionate about something, you won't get ahead as far as you would like. All that time and money will be wasted.

 

What's the url?

Was this at Ezine?

 

I am going to sum this up for you in a nice one liner.

"A blog is a long term investment"

 

Hey,

Firstly my url i'm not giving you at the moment, because this is a brand new fresh niche i have just started with and am looking to be greedy. This is about a certain announcement made by the Obama administration a couple of months ago. So i am quietly cashing in with an affiliate product.

I have started writing a report which gives all my articles, the affiliate product, the keywords and my methods.

As for Shannin...i don't know where to start! I guess at different IM forums, different people are well know. Shannin has been a member at the other very large and famous IM forum for over 4 years, he has in excess of 8,000 posts and is well respected and known. He made a thread and he provided his authors feed url. I am trying to locate in on my hard drive, i know he used a pen name, that's why i'm having so much trouble finding it!

But if you just search EZA for your niche and then pick any article, scroll down the page to the 15 "most viewed" articles in the last 90 days, the figures you see above mean nothing. Try Weight Loss, just check out the top article. It was published on March 15th 2009 and has received 21,212 views in the last 2 months.

Sorry would give you the link, but i am unable to provide links in my posts yet.

That article is called "Weight Loss Program - Strategies You Cannot Afford to Miss Out If You Want It to Work".

Just google that exact phrase and you will find the exact article. Scroll down the page and you will see how many views it has!

The top article i ever came across was in the Weight Loss niche was published in September 2005 and had received something like 540,000 views up to Feb this year. The weird thing was, once i read the article, it wasn't that great and i'm sure i could have produced better content!

The whole point to using EZA in my opinion is to write such a good quality article that other webmasters pick up your article and add it to their site with your resource box in tact. If that webmaster has a high PR site or a lot of traffic, this will get a lot of eyes to my article!

 

Now how did I know you were going to say that? *wink wink*

Well, what do you know about that.

*drum roll* And the price of that is???

And, from what I can see, this guy you spoke of does not have 44,000views in that space of time. Not even close.

Am I missing something?

He just wrote a slew of articles, 280, in the past few years, and many of them have views in the two digits.

Sorry, but everybody and their cousin does that.

And how much is he selling his stuff for???

I know. I have seen such articles, and, as a researcher and writer, I have spoken with such writers who have had that many views.

Some of them advertised the articles, promoted them in some way. That is one of the ways they are able to get so many views in such a short time.

When one really looks into all of this, not everything is as it seems.

Sure ya can. Just copy and paste. Mods do not mind.

Money can be made, but when you break the numbers down, take out taxes, and whatnot, add in the time factor to do the research for the info, or, to think it up, and THEN put that info into words to form an article, which that alone takes longer than 30 minutes to write out, it is not much money made. It is just, "eh, it's ok."

One guy I talked to estimated it around $5 an hour after breaking the numbers down.

There are exceptions, of course, but that is the norm.

Some are content with that, some want more.