The thought of starting an online business and turning it into a profitable company that provides you with both financial freedom and independence, is appealing to many. Some want to be able to be their own boss, others want to be able to spend more time with their family, and many want to be able to travel the world while they run their online business.
When I started out, I had no money to invest, so quickly had to learn how to make money from nothing. This was one of the first methods that worked for me, and I’ve been using it ever since as my various online businesses have grown. I started with around 100 bucks. Here’s a screenshot of one of the websites I sold last year where this method had been used in part to build it up to the stage where it was largely hands off at time of sale (disclaimer: this was not an overnight success!)
A lot of people assume that they can’t make money online because they don’t know how to build websites or rank websites. Well, if you have always wanted to test the online marketing waters but didn’t know where to start, you are in luck. This is something that can be done by someone with:
- Little to no technical knowledge (me when I started)
- No coding or SEO knowledge (me when I started)
- No experience with running a website before (me when I started)
- Around $100 in start up cash (you could invest more or less but this is what I recommend)
Often times the simplest ideas will produce the biggest returns, and this is a prime example of how you can take a simple idea and grow it into a profitable online business. No tricks, just hard work.
Here is what you need to do:
1) Identify an evergreen niche
The first thing you need to do is identify a niche, and you want to take three things into consideration when doing this. First, ask yourself if is this a niche that is very popular with a large selection of products or services that will always have a high demand. You don’t want to target a niche that has a small demand or is just a fad. Think long-term potential here. Some examples of strong niches with endless opportunity include weight loss products and dating offers. People are always going to want to lose weight and people are always going to be interested in dating. There will never be a shortage of consumers actively seeking these products and services online. Pick the wider niche and not something very specific that could be short-term (e.g. such as the latest celebrity diet).
Second, you will need to make sure that your niche is one that has a lot of high paying offers. You don’t want to go through all of this hard work to only make a few dollars per conversion. There are two websites that you can use to help you prospect for niche ideas and also see what offers are available, how popular they are, and finally, how much they pay.
Start with Clickbank or Amazon.
2) Build your website
- Buy a .com domain for 99 cents with this GoDaddy coupon.
- If you do not already have hosting, my friends at MonetizePros (who provided the make a website guide) have an exclusive coupon to get a discount on hosting (yes, it's likely an affiliate link, but as it's an exclusive discount and they put the guide together it's nice to help them out!). The first year + domain works out to around $80 with a basic package.
- Pick a review theme for Wordpress. If you read the full post I have suggested a few in there but feel free to choose your own.
- Create 3-5 review posts. Ideally make these unique and based on real experience using the product for best results. If you're lazy just rewrite from other similar sites.
- Insert affiliate links for the products you are reviewing
3) Promote your website
There are lots of ideas in this thread but a simple way to get started is using a simple Google search:
Google Search Tools (100% Free)
When I first started this method I was using Google Alerts as a semi-automated (and free) solution, but there is a more efficient method to utilize in 2015. Here’s how to do this with Google search alone.
Go to Google and search for your keyword. If your keyword is a phrase, put it in quotation marks.
Click on “Search Tools” under the search box.
Change “Any Time” to “Past 24 Hours”
Change “Sorted by relevance” to “Sorted by date” to get the most recent results first.
If you want to search Facebook posts, or any other site, you can also do this on Google by entering the following and changing the time and sort as above:
Searching for: "your keyword" site:facebook.com
Find relevant places that are talking about the product/niche you are in and add valuable comments. If you are adding value, link to your review posts directly.
4) Stay consistent
Popular niches will generate a lot of Google results and a lot of activity through BuzzBundle. A lot of your results are going to come from press releases, new blog posts and forum posts. Keep track of all the URL’s on a daily basis -- if you are not finding at least 50 targets a day then you should consider adding some more products and searches. Whenever you receive a new alert immediately visit the URL and leave a response. Act fast, because you can potentially be the first individual to respond, which will attract more clicks.
Not all of your searches will present you with an opportunity to post, but the majority of blogs and forums will have a window of opportunity for you to leave some feedback that directs readers to your website. Now, when you are creating your posts don’t just say, “Hey, visit wwwyoursite.com” because that will look like pure spam. Not only will you not receive any clicks, but the website will probably delete your post quickly assuming it is spam.
Put some thought into each reply you make, and try to customize it to directly relate to the post you are responding to. This not only helps you get a better response, but it allows you to fly under the radar of website owners and moderators. So, if you were promoting a diet pill product and responding to a question posted on a blog asking about quick ways to lose weight your reply would want to be crafted this way:
“I was in the same boat as you about six months ago. I had no idea what to believe online because everything seemed to be an advertisement. I actually read a personal review about [your product] and it seemed like the person had great success using the product so I gave it a try. I couldn’t have been more excited about the results, as I am now 50 pounds lighter than when I first started using it. The article was very helpful to me -- if you want to check it out yourself you can read it here” [link to your review article].”
Remember, the more products you review, the more traffic you can generate. When you get rolling this directly translates into more sales and profit for your business.
5) Continue to build other traffic sources and you will start to rank in Google
The beauty of this method is that it doesn’t rely on SEO but just by setting up a website and creating content, your review posts (and even forum threads/blog posts you've commented on) will start to rank in Google and receive organic search traffic. Not only can you rank the individual review posts, but you can also create additional posts based on long tail keywords and then direct that traffic to the specific review page. Learning SEOis just one of many ways to attract your first website visitors for free. Using Google and BuzzBundle is the easiest way to start producing highly qualified traffic as well as sales. You can then scale up by outsourcing that work and focusing on creating additional organic traffic sources through search engine optimization later on.
To conclude:
Creating a website and scaling it to a six figure per year online business is a very achievable task as long as you know the proper steps to take and don’t give up. This method allows you to build a business that produces residual income and starts to produce revenue almost instantly. You don’t have to wait months for expensive search engine optimization to kick in -- and you don’t have to worry about Google rankings and avoiding penalties and algorithm changes. In fact, you don’t have to rely on ranking in Google at all to be successful with this method!
FAQs
Q) How long until I start to make money? A) Usually within a week of consistent posting and commenting you should start seeing traffic and hopefully sales
Q) I can't afford a domain! A) A .com is 99 cents here.
Q) How much can I make? A) Many people in this thread have been making $10-100/day. Others have scaled and some have even sold their websites (like I did).
Q) I have never made a website before, how do I do it? A) Follow this guide
Q) Which host should I use? Are there discounts? A) Try this coupon
Q) I keep getting banned, what should I do? A) Keep trying and move onto other sites. Make sure to add value and not just spam your link with your first comment
Q) Can you mentor me? A) No, but feel free to ask questions here
Good luck!
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