Affiliate Marketing - The SMART Way

The next VIP product is about to launch, but I wanted to get some last-minute feedback from you (details below)… 

Speaking of which, the first couple of VIP products have been a raging success - but more importantly, people are seeing major results by following them.

I like the “short, targeted report” method of delivering information because it makes things simple & instantly actionable. Unlike a full-blown course, these strategies are “singular” and therefore there is no ”puzzle-work” involved. You simply do the strategy and watch it work.

Such as many of the people who have followed the Conduit Method and seen almost immediate results - both with new sites and by changing existing review sites.

This, by the way, is what makes it all worth it to me. I LOVE seeing people take action and literally create life-changing results because they decide to do something that works. 

Anyway - with that thought in mind - this next VIP release will be the most useful and “instantly actionable” one yet for a lot of folks…

The Essentials Package - Site Layouts That Sell

Hundreds of people now have asked if they can buy, “co-develop” or otherwise obtain the templates I use for building my affiliate sites, review sites, conduit sites, etc.

I’ve had to decline each time because I didn’t have anything that was “complete” enough for them to use - and also - I didn’t exactly want people to simply just straight out copy my actual affiliate sites or swipe my content.

So that’s why I’ve decided to develop and distribute my best-converting templates and site layouts for quickly rolling out affiliate sites - just add your content, promote them and you’re in business…

Here’s what I’ll have for you when it goes live:

* 3 HTML Site Templates (2 Conduit Site Styles, 1 Content/Review Mix Template)

* A Wordpress Theme Based on the Conduit Layout - so you can build ultra-profitable review sites even if you have ZERO html or web design abilities.

* Installation & Usage Instructions For Quickly Editing, Uploading and/or Installing - PDF and video format

* Step-by-Step SEO Promotion Strategies For Easily Indexing & Ranking Your Sites - I’ll have 2 “action checklists” for easy, methodical SEO, 1 will be 100% free, 1 will include paid options.

My only question is…

Am I missing anything?

Is there something else you’d like with this package?

Please tell me by posting a comment below right now - the sooner the better.

Thanks!

-Chris

P.S. I now have a dedicated affiliate resources page for the VIP products at http://www.thelazymarketer.com/vip-affiliates.php

They’ve been converting at around 25% from “list” traffic…

Yes, it’s true.

Our good friend Google has (finally) started testing a social-type ranking system where users can customize their own search results - removing sites that they don’t want, “approving” of sites they like, and suggesting new sites that should be listed.

This all takes place within their own personal Google account (so in other words, the actual Google search results won’t change - yet - but the users will be able to modify their own results for any given query, which Google then remembers for that user, so they’ll have to be logged in for this to take effect).

However - it would only make sense that Google will be using this data as part of their natural algorithms.

While I don’t think this will actually have any effect on traditional SEO for a long time, what this is forecasting is a future where you simply won’t be able to “mechanically” fake relevance.

Rankings will (eventually) actually have to be earned with worthy content.

That shouldn’t be shocking. It’s what Google (and the other engines) are trying to do right now, anyway. Everyone’s desparately trying to be as relevant as possible to win the search “race”, and Google’s in a particularly precarious spot because they need to maintain their lead, and their pre-eminence.

Now - before we all get hysterical and start assuming that the sky is rapidly descending upon the earth with an armageddon-esque mission, keep in mind that this is just a BETA user-end test that will obviously require a lot of testing, “tweaking” and everything else before it’s ready to be deployed.

Additionally - since this system is even easier to abuse in regards to manufacturing rankings (creating hundreds or thousands of user accounts and “voting” vs. building backlinks), I can only reasonably assume that Google will simply be adding it as one factor in the overall ranking equation.

There’s also a question of “reverse SEO”, as in, competitors attempting to knock out other sites in the way of their own ranking attempts. It would be a lot easier to simply cast bad votes, or perhaps hire black-hat firms who will provide such services in mass quantities.

And finally, there’s no way that a “voting” system can possibly influence or determine the trillions of long-tail queries & results - not to mention the roughly 50% of search queries which are totally unique.

So the future is definitely uncertain, but it’s anything but bleak…

We’ll likely see small, gradual changes over time that we can all adapt to, but what I am certain of is that the long-term outlook for people building valuable sites and resources is better in the future than it is currently.

It will actually be less overall work to produce excellent content than trying to beat the system. And it’s really not that hard in general. Whether you’re creating Conduit Sites, regular product review sites, content/authority sites, products, communities/forums, etc - it doesn’t matter - so long as you’re not just using scraper content, thin affiliate content (nothing but promo) or otherwise sites that have no actual intention of doing anything other than DIVERT traffic - you’ll be fine.

So perhaps this is a wake-up call for many of us who might be relying a bit too much on “manufactured” rankings. It’s important to ask yourself if your site(s) would survive an actual user-based voting system, should that happen in some capacity…

And there’s no time like the present to get a head-start on your future competitors…

All the best,

-Chris

P.S. Keep in mind that catering to your users and actually giving a damn aren’t just speculative “future” obligations for obtaining rankings. They also work amazingly well right now, today. And not just with SEO, although that’s definitely a factor.

Google isn’t some spineless pushover that you can beat into submission (you’re thinking of MSN). It’s kind of like being in high-school, where being “cool” is based on how others see you. Not by trying really hard to fit in, which has the complete opposite effect.

Oh yeah - almost forgot - you can check out Google’s official release about this at http://www.google.com/experimental/a840e102.html

My previous blog post generated a flurry of activity, as was anticipated. 127 comments so far - not bad.

In all, I think I answered something like 60 questions in detail, so you might find some very revealing information just by parusing through the comments section…

Anyway, I’ll keep this post short and sweet:

Here’s the predominant themes that I saw come up consistently with the question/answer session the other day…

* How Do I Choose a Profitable Market?

* How Do I Make My Site SELL?

* How Can I Get - and STAY - Ranked in Google’s Search Results?

* How Can I Get More Traffic?

* I Don’t Have Any Seed Money - How Can I Get Started?

* How Can I Stay Focused?

* How Do I PHYSICALLY, TECHNICALLY Do This Stuff - ie. Building Mini-Sites, Building Links, etc?

* How Can I Truly Profit From (And Effectively Build) Email Lists?

* What Should I Focus On So That I Can Build Income Streams That Will LAST?

That’s what I’m seeing as a concurrent theme across the questions asked the other day.

And I realize that these aren’t exactly “surprising” insights or themes, but nevertheless, it’s a good indication that they need more coverage, more transparency and more systematic, methodical training.

Anyway, what I’d like to do at this point is make some proposed titles for my power-reports and power-packages, as well as potential lessons in my 6-month training program, which I’m thinking will be named “6 Months to 6-Figures” or something like that.

Here’s a Sampling Of What I Have In Mind, Based on Your Responses:

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Report: How to Know FOR SURE Whether a Certain Niche is Profitable - And How to Accurately Predict How Much Your Site Will Make At Its Traffic Capacity

Report: What Makes One Site Sell and One Site SUCK - Insider Tactics on Making Every Visitor Count

Report: How to Build Email Lists That Will Actually Make You a Fortune. INCLUDED INSIDE: How I Generated $5000 from a list of just under 500 people, and why the “you need a huge list to make money” myth is a complete load of crap…

Report: 3 Proven Ways to Completely “Google-Proof” Your Business - And How to USE Google To Do This!

Report: 5 Free and Effective, Targeted Traffic Tactics That Have Nothing to do with Search Engines

Report: How To Easily (Legally) Obtain The Most Coveted High-PR Backlinks From Sites Who Don’t Have a Clue, For Free…

Report: 25 Ways to Build One-Way Backlinks (This is actually completed, just needs to be polished. And all my “confessions” customers get it for free. Aw shucks, how nice of me…)

Report: How to Build Respected, Highly-Regarded (and High-Traffic) Authority Sites in ANY Niche Even If You Don’t Know a Damn Thing About It (And No, This Has Nothing to Do With Partnerships or Other People’s Content)…

Package: Cookie-Cutter Mini-Sites, Pre-Optimized For Conversion. Just Add Your Own Unique Content, Insert Your Affiliate Links And Get Them Indexed - and “Ta Da” - Commissions! (These are stripped down templates with complete, step-by-step instructions on HOW to add content, HOW to write effectively, and HOW to market them effectively for very little cost).

The idea here is to create a few mini-sites yourself and then OUTSOURCE this process so that your monthly income just keeps on building and building in the background. In fact, the instructions and on-page directions will be so thorough and easy to follow that your initial outsourcing workload (training materials) is practically DONE FOR YOU.

All content will be unique, and the templates are personal license PLR - so short of reselling or distributing them in any way - they’re entirely YOURS to do whatever with.

(I know that lots of people want to know how I build websites, etc. - so I thought this would be the ultimate solution for kickstarting the mini-site process rapidly)

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That’s what I have in mind right now as a STARTING POINT for my power-reports series.

As I mentioned before, I’ll be selling them for anywhere from $9 to $29 per report - possibly a little more for the template packs - and they’ll largely be a mix of PDF and Video training, since most people prefer one or the other, and video often has a way of “filling in the blanks” for people who want to know a specific thing that I may have inadvertantly missed in a PDF report alone.

What I’ll also be doing, starting very soon is “kickstarting” them by releasing each one to my subscribers and clients solely at a discounted price for 24 hour periods when it’s initially released.

After that, they’ll be featured on TheLazyMarketer.com, which will then be an actual content site and portal (it’s almost finsihed, btw), with the ebook being sold only at http://www.thelazymarketer.com/confessions/

So stay tuned for that.

It will be happening very shortly - I wouldn’t go to all this trouble if it wasn’t

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One final request:

Am I Missing Anything?

The above “idea list” isn’t conclusive or comprehensive by any means, but I’d like to hear your IDEAL “report title” if I’ve missed something that you want to see being offered.

Be sure to post your proposed title/topic below, and I WILL take it seriously.

Thanks everyone.

-Chris  

What I want to do today is something I should’ve done a long time ago…

I want to find out what YOU need help with, and then provide a solution that’s catered directly to you - as well as others who may be facing the same thing. So please help me to do this effectively by reading this post and responding to it in the comments section with YOUR dillemma, questions, etc.

More details on this a few paragraphs down…

Firstly - Why Am I Doing This?

Because I have an obligation - as well as a vested interest - in having my customers actually succeed with the instructions and methods I teach in Confessions and on the site in general.

Also, TheLazyMarketer.com is currently being scaled up behind the scenes as an authority site, with two major projects already under way…

1. A Highly In-Depth, 6-Month Training Course

2. An Entire Series of “Power Reports” (Ranging from $9.00 to $29.00) Dealing With Very Specific Issues & Strategic Methods

I want to make sure that these things directly address the problems, questions and potential “hang-ups” that you’re currently dealing with (although that doesn’t mean I won’t answer your specific question that you ask today, for free - I WILL - keep reading…)

In addition to this, I also want to make sure that I’m actually focusing my blog updates and newsletters on topics, issues and solutions that are relevant to YOUR needs & goals.

Simply put - help me help you.

Now, I don’t want to sound arrogant, or come across as being some all-knowing “affiliate god”. I’m really just a kid who’s fascinated by all this and is just at the beginning of his own journey as well.

Yeah, I’ve had some successes and I generally think that I’ve mastered a FEW of the available affiliate marketing strategies - but I’m nowhere near my long-term goals and I’m still learning a lot as each day passes. So what this question/answer event will also do is help to create my own action plan as an affiliate myself.

Reason being, I truly enjoy helping others achieve success, and this is the one niche I actually, personally give a damn about - which means that even though my bread and butter is made in outside niches, everything I do as a marketer has two purposes for me:

1. Obviously to build my business assets and income

2. And also to provide a basis for creating more FACT-BASED content for TheLazyMarketer.com

So you have an opportunity today to not only get “un-stuck”, but also to potentially direct the course of my own business activities and projects so as to “answer” your question with real life results.

So here’s how it will work today…

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Live Event: Diagnose And Destroy The Obstacles To Your Online Success, Right NOW!

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Essentially, if you’re not seeing the results you want from your marketing efforts, I want you to tell me what you’ve done, what you’re doing, and what your goals/expectations are from your online business.

Tell me what you’re frustrated with…

> Is it getting traffic?

> Finding profitable niches?

> Getting ranked - and STAYING ranked?

> What to do to bring your income to the next level?

> How to increase conversions?

> Etc. etc.

Please be somewhat specific about the details of your situation (you don’t have to reveal niches or sites, but please provide details about your marketing activities and strategies), as this will help me to accurately answer your question.

Also, please try to FOCUS your question to one issue or problem.

Although I do truly want to help you - I can’t feasibly answer comments that ask a number of individual questions. 

Also, I’d appreciate it if you could identify yourself by your full name, or at least with your first name and your last initial. This will make it easier for others to make sense of my responses - there’s a lot of “Mike’s” and “Dave’s” out there

So let’s get started…

I’ve posted a sample comment/question below that would be the IDEAL format for the comments to follow…

And finally, as an added bonus, the first comment also contains two links to brand-new PDF reports:

1. My Story - A bit of background on how I started, the story behind my $9,100 day (from affiliate sales, no list), and some other fun stuff…

2. The Interrogation Transcript - A PDF transcript from a focus-group where 22 marketers got me to answer their toughest questions about affiliate marketing, SEO, link-building, traffic generation and more - I held nothing back. This is a very powerful report that may very well answer your own question directly….

So post your comment below that tells me where you’re stuck, and I’ll do my best to shed light on what you need to do in order to get the results you want.

-Chris

P.S. Once again - the 2 PDF reports mentioned above, as well as the ideal (sample) question is in my first comment below - so go there right now and post your own question… 

If you’ve been on my mailing list for any length of time, then you’ve already heard me drone on about “authority sites”, and why they’re a solid strategy for long-term success, strong search engine rankings, and so on.

But, as has been oft-reflected by the number of emails I get with this exact question…

“Chris - what do you mean by authority site?”

It’s a valid question.

Is it just a “big” mini-site? Is there a certain amount of articles required to become an “authority”? Who the hell decides what’s authoritative and what isn’t? What’s an authority site??!!

Some people might classify authority as being expert advice and experienced-based, unique content. They’re right, but the way I see it - there’s more to it than that…

My definition of “authority” is this:

A site that’s useful enough, memorable enough, meaningful enough or controversial enough that your visitor’s will actually tell others about it - involuntarily. 

It could be 100 pages. It could be 10,000 pages. It could be ONE page. It doesn’t matter - if it’s something genuinely interesting to your visitors, you’ve established web authority.

Here’s some examples of authoritative & useful content:

* Expert and/or effective, compelling content. Usually created by enthusiasts or talented people with effective writing/communication skills. (NOT just a site with PLR content and adsense, in other words…). Examples include sites like ShoeMoney.com, StevePavlina.com, Maddox.Xmission.com (funny & dry humor), and so on.

* A tool or script of some kind. Currency calculators, financial tools, meta-searches and otherwise some kind of helpful or compelling data. Examples include XE.com, Switchboard.com, and Digital Point’s keyword tool. Keep in mind that often, even the most popular sites like this are simply using legal API access to blend and “stack” free data from multiple sources - giving the visitor more data for their search. An example in our own niche here would be the keyword tool at SEOBook.com

* A Portal. This is kind of like a community/information site/review site/forum and so on all in one. Examples include Allan Gardyne’s AssociatePrograms.com, and one of my old favorites as a longboarder - SilverFishLongboarding.com. These take awhile to get going, but can often “evolve” over time out of a good content site or blog. The advantage is that eventually, your users can be providing a lot of your content for you, automatically.

* A Directory with a Purpose. Not just a “web directory” in a niche, but rather, something that truly helps to organize the market for your visitors. Examples include things like public records directories (like SearchEngineZ.com), industry directories like BoardFolio.com, and so on. Keep in mind that the long-tail traffic and exposure that this will earn you will be phenomenal in some markets, and if your site comes across as being well-structured and authoritative (ie. not just a scraper site), then you’ll get lots of incoming backlinks because it will be seen as a central resource.

Hint: This directory-with-a-purpose model is an example of something you can do in any niche regardless of knowledge or experience - all it takes is proper organizing. For instance, in our very own affiliate marketing niche, there’s a site like this at LifeTimeCommissions.com, which lists many affiliate programs that have residual payout structures. Whoever owns the site probably knows their stuff - but he wouldn’t have to.

You don’t have to be an expert to create something useful when you’re simply organizing information…

And my last example,

* Authoritative Review Sites. Sites like TopTenReviews.com, RottenTomatoes.com and others like it are perceived as being more “trustworthy” because their content is objective and it’s more like “meta-reviews” - meaning that they’ve mostly just calculated an overall product rating based on the aggregate views of several expert reviewers/critics in each applicable product category.

You can do this on a smaller-scale in any niche, but it would be best to shoot for a larger overall genre so as to appear less biased. Again, this is an example of how to create very trustworthy content (using other people’s opinions to form an aggregate consensus in a nice, visual format) without having to “know” a damn thing yourself. 

There’s other examples of authority sites, to be sure - but can you see the difference here between an authority site and “yet another affiliate” site?

So perhaps there’s two overall qualifiers for the definition of an authority site:

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1. A site that’s useful enough, memorable enough, meaningful enough or controversial enough that your visitor’s will actually tell others about it - involuntarily.

2. A site that the majority of your affiliate competition will be too lazy to build or even contend with… 

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Internet users aren’t stupid.

The majority of them know when they’re being sold to, and most affiliates (from what I’ve seen) absolutely suck at writing in an authoritative, believable tone. Hyping products and trying to hard-sell stuff is ineffective in almost every case. 

When people are researching a product decision or otherwise looking to buy something - by and large, what they want to base that decision on is FACTS.

So that’s the other half of it.

When you can “marry” the elements of authority function with authoritative communication - you have the skills necessary for building a sustainable (and genuinely helpful), six-figure business and beyond.

It’s when you don’t need to rely on Google for traffic due to word of mouth, press, other sites spreading exposure and so on that your search engine rankings will become solidified naturally. And those are the rankings that stand the test of time.

Ironic, but true.

Take care,

-Chris 

P.S. Yes, products are “authority sites” by my definition as well, but it’s a different kind of category altogether. For the purposes of clarification, this blog post is referring to sites that are monetized with affiliate offers.

This will be one of my shortest blog posts.

I just finished doing my tax return for 2007 (for us Canadians, the dreaded due date is the 30th of April, not the 15th).

I will be sending the Government a check that - aside from basically depleting the majority of my savings - would’ve been enough to buy a very, VERY nice car.

(We’re talking the kind of car that can go 0-60 in under 4 seconds)

Had I simply taken the time to get incorporated and structure things differently prior to leaving on my worldwide adventure travelling (which made up most of 2007), I would be sending them a MUCH smaller check. One that could only equate to being a “loss” of something like an economy sedan. Which wouldn’t be all that bad

I say this in a light-hearted tone, but really, all I can say is that I count myself tremendously lucky and perhaps even blessed that I’m in a position where I actually have the funds to absorb a major hit like this. And it’s not like it “came out of nowhere” or anything - but I trust many of you can relate to the “surprise” of your first tax bill once you start making real money as a sole proprietor.

Yes, I’ve since set up a corporation and all that jazz - but it’s “a day late and [almost] a buck short…”

The moral of the story:

Taking a few days to talk to some professionals (attorney, accountant) about setting up an optimized business structure could be worth literally “months” of extra revenue for you come tax time.

Don’t procrastinate on this.

You’re gonna get taxed regardless, but you might as well review your legal options for setting up the right kind of corporation, tax shelters and other strategies for keeping more of what you make.

It really adds up folks - in BOTH directions!

Take care,

-Chris

P.S. Well, if nothing else, this at least gives me the mammoth-scale butt-kicking I was needing to get some more products out this year - so watch for some up-and-coming launches…

Download instructions below - but read this post first to understand how important this is… 

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It doesn’t take long to see just how sporadic the “search engine game” is when you’re trying to get indexed and ranked. Especially when it comes to actually maintaining your rankings.

It’s not a cake-walk.

Any moron can target some keywords, buy a bunch of text links and “voila” - they get a 1st page ranking. But this is almost always short-lived… 

Maybe you’ve seen this as well, but I’ve seen first-hand how many of my direct “affiliate feeder” sites (which provide little to no value, other than “value” in terms of conversion on my end) will quickly gain rankings, and then gradually just fall off the map - regardless of additional linking efforts, site editing, etc.

And in the same way, my sites that actually provide good content or are of some on-site use to the visitor always seem to maintain their “overall” rankings - meaning that though the rankings might bounce around, they never fall off the map. Any quality site will always remain a “contender”, so to speak.

At least from what my experience is.

And for a long time, especially recently - this has puzzled me.

It’s as if Google is actually manually selecting it’s “valued” sites. It seems impossible, based on the sheer volume of content that it indexes, but that’s how it seems to respond. MSN and Yahoo are all over the map in this respect (hint: that’s why they’re the favored engines of black-hatters the world over), because with the lesser engines, it’s still just a matter of using ”the formula” to get and STAY ranked.

But Google is a different thing altogether.

In fact, what I’ve got for you here is - ALLEGEDLY - a leaked internal document taken from the training materials for the ”quality-rating” review staff over at the Google HQ. It very clearly explains to the reviewers what sites are deemed as valuable, webspam, “thin affiliates”, vital, relevant, non-relevant and so on.

There’s some controversy over whether this “leaked document” is real or not.

Let’s just put it this way - everything you’re about to see in the ‘report’ makes sense. It’s logical in that you can see exactly why, from Google’s perspective, taking these steps and ranking sites according to these guidelines is what will make their business model (providing relevant results) successful.

It’s also written in a very professional tone, and the amount of detail that’s been laid out in regards to how a reviewer can identify “good” and “bad” sites is very, very revealing.

If you’re creating scraper sites, adsense fodder or even just relying on “mini-sites” solely - this document is NOT going to be a pleasant read. But if you’re serious about learning how to build sites that Google WANTS to rank and send high-quality traffic towards, then this is an absolute gold mine.

It has effectively answered my question about why some of my sites fall off the map, while others are still contenders - even when I use IDENTICAL SEO/linking tactics for each of these particular sites.

Now I know.

My sites were literally (and manually) pruned by a reviewer.

They ain’t coming back.

They still get “some” traffic from Google, but the majority of their traffic now just comes from MSN, Yahoo, ASK, and reffering sites.  

The following report shows you exactly how Google’s review staff are trained to rate sites. There might possibly be a few shreds of valuable information inside of its 43 pages:

http://www.TheLazyMarketer.com/GoogleLeak/ 

Enjoy

-Chris

P.S. Check my first comment on this post for 2 ways to “Google Proof” your business. You shouldn’t solely be relying on search engines for your livelihood…

(I’m “admin”)   

It’s inevitable.

There’s no getting around it…

Some of your sites (and products) just aren’t going to bring in the cheese that you were expecting. Some of them might even out-right FLOP.

So what do you do?

Stomp your feet? Chalk it up to experience? Go and cry on your favorite marketing forum about how affiliate marketing is a big scam and the only ones making money are people selling the “how to” courses about it?

Or is there something else that can be done to recoup your time & investment…

Personally, what I’ve done in the past is simply learned from it (usually after a short fit of violent swearing, cursing, etc.), and then focused on building more content into a niche that already performs well for me, ”chalking it up to experience”.

Well, not this year

Instead of just cutting my losses and moving on, I’m gonna make a killing by turning BIG profits on sites that don’t perform as well as I’d hoped. Instead of just acting like a chump and saying “oh well…”  

Because when life hands ME lemons this year (and it will) - I’m gonna SELL THEM!

That’s right folks, that’s the strategy.

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Before I go any further - I need to caution you that selling sites can be a risky endeavour. The indsutry is full of scammers, and there’s a steep learning curve involved.

I strongly recommend that you pick up Tim Phelan’s Definitive Guide to Flipping Sites to emulate someone who knows exactly how to sell sites, how to price them, and how to avoid getting scammed. I bought this guide awhile ago, and it has my full recommendation, which I don’t give out lightly.

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Sell off your under-performing sites to other webmasters and let them do to them whatever they want with it. For example, let’s say your rule of thumb for yourself is that you want each site you create to bring in at least $300 a month (that’s $10/day).  That’s just a sample figure - you can set your own minimum to whatever you want.

You’d then make that your standard:

Any site that doesn’t average $300+/mth in revenue once it’s getting steady targeted traffic gets auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Now, keep in mind that for many, many webmasters, buying a site that’s been consistently generating more than $100/mth is going to be a gold-mine for them - especially if they’re used to making chump-change with Google Adsense.

Since I’m building at least one 20-page affiliate site per month at the moment, I expect at least 30% of them to be what I consider to be under-performers. This means that I’ll be selling at least 4 sites this year - and I’m very excited about that!

Why?

Just take a look sometime at what established sites with consistent revenue patterns (and organic traffic) sell for on SitePoint.com

Sometimes sites with just a few hundred dollars monthly revenue sell for thousands…

So what’s the logic - why sell off sites that have a consistent, albeit low income? Because if it’s an under-performer, you can make several months’ income in ONE day (selling) and use that revenue immediately to reinvest in the sites/niches that are working for you.

Also, the numbers certainly aren’t unappealing. Let’s say you can sell a site earning $200/mth consistently from free, organic traffic. You could easily sell it for at least $1,200 minimum, because it would only take the investor 6 months to see a positive return on their investment, and that’s assuming that they do nothing to increase traffic or conversion.

That $1200 influx immediately gives you enough capital to comfortably outsource the creation of two 20-page mini-sites in your already-performing niche, with some cash left over for marketing and SEO outsourcing. What you’ve just done is simply accelerated your own revenues to build the better-performing parts of your business faster.

You don’t really lose out, either, because you’re generally going to make about 6-months to a 12-months revenue on each under performer when you sell it - so you’re basically just getting that money faster and using it to catalyze sites that will make more revenue than the ones you just sold anyway…

So I’m effectively trading a bad site for two better sites that will each earn more than the “loser”.

But you need to be careful…

Website marketplaces are full of escrow scammers, fraudulent buyers and otherwise people who are less than trustworthy. You also have to know how the site-buying market works, because it’s literally become a high-yield investment industry where many consulting agencies and big corporations are looking at for creating very high ROI’s for their seed capital.

My suggestion - if you want to learn as much as you can about how to do this - is to get Tim Phelan’s Definitive Guide to Flipping Sites

I bought his guide a short while ago and I personally wouldn’t feel confident buying or selling sites without reading it FIRST. Tim is a veteran site buyer and seller, and he’s the guy who a short while ago sold Pingoat.com - which was earning $1200 a month or so - for something like $30,000.

(John Reese bought it, as I recall).

Here’s his table of contents straight from the book:

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Again, you can check out Tim’s guide to site-flipping here >>

I strongly recommend it if you’re planning on making a killing with your under-performers this year, like me

Take care,

-Chris

You read that right.

A TWELVE-page ebook brings in $6,000 a month. And that’s just on the front-end.

It’s a very simple (and short) guide, but it’s a life-saver for those who need it. (It shows people who have a certain financial problem how to get a checking account when no regular bank will give them one.)

The author, Alexis, probably wrote it in a matter of an hour or so. Puts a new perspective on the question: “So, how much do you make an hour?”…

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See the full story on how she did this right here >>

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Now obviously, it’s the salesletter and her marketing experience that make this possible, but successful product creation is still one hell of a lot easier than you might think.

The problem is that many of us equate “ebook” to being a regular book, except in electronic format. The reality is that the people who typically buy ebooks online are buying an answer to a problem. They’re buying results.

Not some literary achievement - by any stretch…

They want to know how to make their cat to stop pissing on the floor. Or how to fix their credit so they can afford to buy a house. Or how to stop the bank from foreclosing on their house. Or how to find out if their partner is cheating on them. Or how to otherwise fix a desperate problem…

They don’t care how long the book, or report, or “blueprint” or whatever “it” is - they care about solving their problem. That’s exactly why Alexis can recruit one satisfied customer after the next selling a 12-page PDF for $24.95 a pop. And that’s just where the selling begins - we all know that the “backend” is where all the money is in any niche that lends itself to repeat purchases. 

So how can you cash in on this?

It’s all about learning how to identify desperate markets, and then concisely deliver the solution they want.

I’ve been referring to Alexis Dawes, who’s also the author of what I consider to be the absolute best “step by step” blueprint for creating info-products that actually sell: Desperate Buyers Only

I’ve read through her blueprint many times, and every time, I come away with a new perspective on just how easy this really is. And I can personally relate to the excitement of watching A FEW DAYS WORK translate into what would be considered a full-time income for most people.

So can you, and here’s how:

First of all, yes, I am absolutely trying to sell you on Desperate Buyers Only. But not just because I get a commission out of it (which I do) - it’s because it’s the only blueprint I’m aware of that correctly shows you the REALITY of how to make it big with info-products, and it’s written in the same style as my own ebook, “Confessions of a Lazy Super-Affiliate”.

In other words, zero hype. Entirely actionable.

In fact, there’s realistically no reason why can’t finish your first hot-selling info-product within 24 hours of getting Alexis’ blueprint. Let me explain why…

Here’s “Desperate Buyers Only” in a nutshell:

Without giving away any of Alexis’ secrets or, in my opinion, deadly tactics for whipping out a hot-selling product with ease, I’m going to show you how truly easy it is to launch your own product - and how much profit you can realistically expect to see as a result…

1. Identify a Desperate Market

I covered this in Part 1 of Confessions, but not as it relates to creating your own products. The key here is to identify problems that people would pay to solve without a moment’s hesitation. You can check out ClickBank’s marketplace for some ideas, or peruse through Yahoo Answers (or similar sites) to give you a good idea on what’s in demand for starters.

Look for problems that would keep people up at night. (And yes, the “cure insomnia” market is both a shining and literal example of that :-))

Alexa’s got a very precise sequence for not only identifying desperation and markets where zero-hesitation purchases are “business as usual”, but also how to specifically determine people’s exact wants, needs and problems. Their psychological breaking-points, so to speak.

From there, you simply “reverse engineer” the process, package it, and sell it.

2. Rapid Product Creation

Alexa’s running example throughout “Desperate Buyers Only” is the 12-page wonder that brings in about $200/day in sales. The beauty of this approach is that, as she puts it, “you can take free apples, turn them into apple-juice, and then sell it”.

Strangely enough, that sounds a lot like my previous blog post

Here’s an example of exactly how this happens:

Some of ClickBank’s top-selling “info-products” are really nothing more than glorified link directories (re: all those “legit online jobs” networks, or the “paid survey programs”, etc.), or otherwise a compilation of FREE STUFF that the users might not otherwise have known about.

And all it takes is a quick glance at their affiliate gravities to see that most of these products are selling into the hundreds of copies daily…

Now, I know full well that many of those products are, well, less than respectable in the way that they’re marketed. However - remember my previous post - the anatomy of a “breakthrough product” is simply common sense that’s been “systemized” into an action-oriented guide, leading the reader to do the inevitable in order to get the results they want.

(See my previous post for a full explanation on that)

So you don’t have to be unethical to sell people “free” stuff. Instead, you make an effective blueprint for them to follow - but it’s easier than you might think.

In fact, in keeping with the example above, making a comprehensive resource directory along with an explanation of exactly what to do with each resource would be incredibly valuable to someone who, for example, was wondering about how to actually find some kind of legitimate paid work via the internet. And all you’d really be doing is merging a “glorified directory” with a helpful step-by-step approach to accomplishing their desired result (working online).

Here’s what else Alexis covers in full detail in her blueprint:

* Compiling Actual “Insider Secrets”, Even When You’re On the OUTSIDE (in Any Market)

* Writing Your Short Report So That Readers Love It and GET Results (Specific Writing Methods)

* Naming the Product So It Grabs Attention And Sells (She has a killer “fill in the blanks” template with lots of suitable product name types)

* Pricing the Product So it Sells (This is normally very tricky - but her approach is surprisingly easy and hard to screw up)

3. Marketing & Promotion

This is where the rubber meets the road, and all too often - where a lot of “would be” info-product marketers end up biting the dust in confusion, poor results and failure.

Your pitch-page needs to convert; and for that to happen, you need targeted traffic.

Back to square one?

Not at all…

What I really appreciate about Desperate Buyers Only is Alexis’ style of writing - she just tells it like it is. And that includes her exact process for writing sales letters (it’s easier than you’ve been led to believe), as well as the precise sequence - including every marketing activity in full disclosure - that she does in order to generate targeted traffic.

I can tell you right now that as a product-owner, the HUGE advantage you’ll have over a regular website is the potential for traffic from active affiliates, bar none.

THAT is the ultimate strategy, folks. And if you’ve never seen how much traffic you can get by recruiting your own affiliates - you, my friend, are in for a very pleasant surprise.

Especially if you’re listed with a public network like ClickBank. It’s absolutely crazy how much attention your product will get once it starts selling consistently - that’s when things really start to take off for you. For example, even though it’s been a long time since I’ve made any even remote attempts to garner promotions or JV’s for “Confessions of a Lazy Super-Affiliate”, did you know that on average, it still gets over 500 visitors per day just from ClickBank Affiliates?

(Yeah, yeah, I know - I’ll get my butt in gear and drum up some more attention soon - I’ve been busy…)

I check my affiliate reporting stats every so often, and every day I get referrals from more than at least 50 different affiliates. Of course, it’s usually only a handful of those that produce any sales, but still…

…try doing that with article marketing, squidoo, etc

So anyway - that’s the real power in having your own affiliate force behind you. And that’s a low-end example. I know that as an affiliate, I drive more than 1,200 referrals to a certain vendor every day. I can’t imagine how much traffic they get from the other hundreds of “me’s” out there doing the same…

Anyway, sales-copy writing and traffic generation are topics that are too complex to cover in a blog post, but they’re covered in specific detail in Desperate Buyers Only, and it’s specific to info-products, which is in some ways a lot different than how I lay things out in “Confessions”.

For example, a major part of her strategy is actually selling info-products on what she calls “springboard sites”, where members in a certain niche are specifically looking for information to BUY. (Hint: Ebay could be considered a springboard site, by this definition)

This makes it easier to sell a product in comparison to just relying on search engine results - because you’re not competing with results that have free information.

Alright - that’s Desperate Buyers Only in a very small nutshell.

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Now let’s have some fun:

How Much Can You Realistically Expect to Make With Your Own Info-Product?

Well, let’s boil it down and see for ourselves…

Let’s assume that you decide to sell a short report on “How to Stop a Foreclosure!”

I’d say that’s a pretty desperate topic, and one that would certainly lend itself to a “no-hesitation” sale - assuming that your pitch-page presses the right psychological buttons, and - of course - that your product delivers valuable information. It’s also a timely topic, due to the current state of the US economy.

It’s also a topic in which your prospect DOES NOT want to waste their time - time is of the essence! They want short, fast, effective answers to some very serious questions. And that means that your report had better be brief, to the point and helpful.

Now let’s evaluate potential traffic streams. The Google Adwords “estimator” tool shows that the keyword “stop foreclosure” would generate an estimated 50-ish clicks per day if your PPC ad was in one of the top 3 results.

That’s just if you had an AD in that position. Keep in mind that, according to heat map tests across a variety of Google searches and users (re: StomperNet videos), the organic results get at least 5 times more eye-focus, and therefore clicks, than the paid results.

So we can realistically say that there’s probably about (at least) 200 searches on Google, daily, for that keyphrase. This obviously doesn’t include the traffic on MSN, Yahoo, ASK, and others, and it ALSO doesn’t include the countless other keyphrases and long-tail keyphrases that will make up a much larger SEO approach (ex. “foreclosure help”, “prevent foreclosure”, etc.)

And remember - you’ll also have the leverage of being able to recruit affiliates to promote your product and get traffic FOR you.

So what’s a realistic traffic expectation for your product site?

At a quick glance, I’d say that it would be realistic to expect a range somewhere between 200 to 800 visitors a day, including SEO traffic, affiliates, articles, forum marketing, Ebay, etc. And I’m leaning on the conservative side of things.

Now, let’s say that we price the product at $24.95, and that we’re able to get the pitch-page converting at even 3%, which would not be too difficult for targeted visitors in a desperate mindset. That’s 1 sale per 33 visitors on average.

So if we can realistically say that the product site could eventually (and potentially) reach a target of 400 visitors a day (the midpoint of our estimated “range”), then that would equate to roughly 12.1 sales per day.

How does the money break down? 

At 12.1 sales per day, that’s about 363 sales per month.

Since at least half of those would be the result of affiliate traffic (182 sales of 363), and your commission rate was 60%, then that immediately takes your price point per sale down to $9.80

If you were using ClickBank as the sales processor (primarily, not including Ebay sales via PayPal), then $1 plus 7% gets eaten up for each non-referred sale, and $0.67 plus 5% for the affiliate sales at the 60% commission. To make it simple, let’s just take off about $1.60 per sale total. So that comes out to around $580.80 in processing fees for the month.

You’d have earned $1783.60 from affiliate-referred sales, $4515.95 from direct sales, and the processing fees were $580.80. Your net profit for an average month - in this figurative example - would be $5718.75

And that’s just the beginning…

The beauty of selling affordable info-products is that you’re gathering a client-base who are already prequalified as buyers. They bought from you once, and they’ll from you - and your recommendations - for as long as you have their best interests in mind and present them with useful, relevant offers.

Although the “earning potential” of a client-base is particularly hard to guage (it’s practically unlimited), let’s keep it simple by factoring in just ONE backend promotion for this example. If you do a bit of research in the “stop foreclosure” niche, you’ll see hundreds of financial/consolidation and legal services offering their services to potential (and distressed) clients. What you want to look for, or establish, is either a commission-based affiliate program or one that pays per lead.

Let’s say you establish a marketing arrangement with a company that agrees to pay you $10 per targeted lead for every “foreclosure” client that requests information as a result of your referral from a trackable web-form (CPA). This is a common practice in a variety of fincancial/lending markets, and $10 per lead is realistic in this scenario. You can find offers like this, by the way, on networks like AzoogleAds.com and MaxBounty, etc.

Because the $10 CPA commission occurs just by having them request information from this company - and that would be one of the highly-recommended actions in your ebook - it would be realistic to expect no less than 25% of your customers to do so, and that’s being conservative. Remember - they’re not buying anything, just filling out an information request form.

25% of your 12.1 daily buyers equates to 3 form submissions per day, equaling roughly 90 leads referred per month, adding an extra $900.00 per month to your existing income stream.

Again - that’s being very conservative, and it doesn’t include the autoresponder follow-ups, affiliate promos, complimentary products and other CPA offers that you’d be presenting to them after the initial sale. Keep in mind that customer lists GROSSLY out-perform “prospect” lists in terms of promotion.

Example: I have a customer list comprised of 2,000 leads in a certain niche, and a prospect list of about 2,700 leads in the same niche. I mailed both of them the same offer about a week ago. The customer list generated over 60 sales (at $50 per commission). The prospect list generated about 15 sales. This pattern is consistently what you’ll see.

Anyway, that brings my figurative - yet realistic - example of what you can expect from launching your OWN “Desperate Buyers Only” info-product to just over $6,690.00 per month.

Can you see why product-creation is well worth mastering?

If you want to see how possible this really is - and if you want to learn from someone who’s got more experience than me when it comes to quick product creation that gets results like that - then I absolutely recommend Desperate Buyers Only.

It shows you how to do everything you need to do in order to get results like my example - and beyond…

Now go and make yourself your OWN 12-page masterpiece!

Cheers,

-Chris

P.S. I had a very clear “reminder” of just how powerful it is to target desperate buyers last week. My wife and I got a new dog, and she’s great.

But what’s not great is her tendency to pee, poo, bite, jump (and everything else) in our nice, clean condo. And believe me - when you watch - in horror - as your pet systematically destroys expensive furniture, your Sony Amplifier, etc. - all those $39 “dog secret” ebooks start looking pretty damn appealing…

To myself, and no doubt thousands of others

You know, there’s alot of misconceptions out there when it comes to creating a successful info-product, or even a full-fledged six or seven-figure business around ebook publishing. Everyone seems to think that you need to be selling some long-lost secret that’s been somehow “hidden” - until now, of course…

That’s simply not the case.

In fact, if I accomplish my mission with this post, I want to show you just how simple it really is to make a fortune by - literally - providing information that your market already knows, but in a way that will actually make a powerful impact on their life, thereby recruiting scores of loyal customers & repeat buyers in the process…

But to do this, I need to to first of all unveil a surprising truth about many successful products. It’s one that will be very liberating for anyone who really “gets it”.

So here it is:

Many of the world’s most “revolutionary” products are nothing more than a glorified approach to common sense.

Think about all of those “amazing” diet programs like Weight-Watchers, Atkins and others like it. They’re really nothing more than an organized, systemized way to EAT LESS. But the customers love it, because it takes a task (like dieting) that’s normally excruciatingly difficult, and reduces it to a managable “points” system.

It removes the “thinking” element for the end-user. It’s no longer self-directed, reliant upon belief, confidence or self-motivation.

Instead, the product is sold as a “magic formula”, but it delivers its value by almost tricking the customer into doing the inevitable actions required to achieve the results they want.

Read that last sentence again - as many times as it takes to see the immense possibilities that lay ahead of you in practically any market when it comes to creating “breakthrough” products by the dozen - with ease, no less…

This is the big secret to creating hot-selling products that aren’t misleading. You make it “easy” to do something that’s difficult. Everyone knows that eating less is going to result in weight loss. Everyone knows that working out consistently is going to result in muscle gain or toning. But it’s a very difficult thing to do, because it’s not cut and dry, and the results aren’t immediate. Everyone also knows it takes time, patience and work.

This is why “Weight Watchers” and other programs like it are such a sensation. It makes it easy for people to mentally switch from having to somehow just “eat less”, to actually being able to measure their daily intake. It gives them a system for doing what they already know works.

Of course, their marketing (and your marketing) will focus on the insider “shortcuts”, and all the wonderful, scientific methods of dramatically increasing results using [insert product here] - as opposed to the customer trying to figure it out on their own.

But really, the real truth behind all this is that these products are purchased because they represent the result, and they give the customer a “definite thing” to take action upon. Subsequently, when the common-sense actions take place consistently, via whatever “system” or “magic formula” has been sold, the desired results will follow.

And that’s why they’re beneficial.

So yes, you really can sell something that everyone already knows and make a fortune by simple packaging it as a “magic pill”, and then delivering on the promise by creating a logical, EASY system of taking necessary actions, which leads to results.

Want Some More Examples?

Sure thing.

Here goes…

1) All Those “[Whatever] For Dummies” Books. Whether it’s Microsoft Office, basket-weaving or even prayer - there’s sure to be a yellow book with a guy that looks like Waldo (from “Where’s Waldo”) on the cover, promising to make some seemingly difficult task real darn easy.

And if you’ve actually ever read one, you’ll immediately see that it’s no more than a simply-written, big-font approach to doing what all the other books on the subject will teach as well. And, it’s yellow. That helps too, possibly

2) Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The book sets itself up to be some sort of prophetic revelation of one of life’s great mysteries - why some people are rich and others are poor, regardless of their career or income. It’s a perfect example of selling a magic formula and then providing the basics of business, investment and leverage.

And those things truly are a “magic pill” for people who haven’t yet been educated on the truth about how the majority of the world’s wealthy actually build wealth, though you can hardly call it anything more than an appetite-whetter. But that’s also it’s purpose - the book isn’t a blueprint; it’s an eye-opener. It’s also a feeder product for the dude’s board game; smart cookie he is

3) The Tae-Bo “Box-Along” Videos. I find these things so funny. Aside from being the staple item of practically every garage sale I’ve ever attended, it’s kinda ridiculous in general to mimic someone on a TV screen for hours on end. But it works. And it’s not because of the special moves, or some sort of patented “exercise system”.

No, rather, these crazy videos work because instead of sitting on one’s ass - you’re moving around. Expending calories. Maybe I’m a hardened realist, but - hey, that’s the simple truth. Whether it’s boxing, “caribbean” aerobics or doing the bloody “Macarena” dance till you drop, the results will all be the same.

You’re gonna burn calories. The “method” simply serves as a distraction so as to pacify the normal inclination (doing nothing) long enough to produce results.

And there’s thousands of other examples like this, and they all do the same thing. They put a shiny label on something that’s UNIVERSAL knowledge, add their own little twist - and then proceed to make millions…

…while actually helping their customers see real results.

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When you look at it from this perspective, doesn’t it seem MUCH more attainable to establish yourself as an “expert” in a niche, create a report, a blueprint or some kind of results-focused “system” that indirectly coerces people into taking necessary action?

This in itself can truly become a “system” for you. One that you can repeat over and over, generating as many leveraged income streams as you care to create.

So don’t be afraid of the “expert” competition in your niche. In any niche, for that matter. They’re all doing the same damn thing, whether they realize it or not.

Now that you know the big secret here, you can literally step into any mainstream niche and make a HUGE splash by taking what you know as a marketer, and using those skills to create a red-hot seller that will actually help your customers.

Go get ‘em.

-Chris

P.S. What?? No mention of some related product for you to buy (and me to earn commissions from)?

Well, actually this post isn’t just another one of my ”pro bono” rants/raves. It’s actually an entirely selfish pre-sell for a my next post, which is going to be a review of one of the best blueprints I’ve found for creating “sure shot” info-products every time.

Feeder products like ebooks are amazingly effective at diversifying your traffic network, building your list and making a killing in backend affiliate sales. The traffic that you can generate from your own affiliates is going to be a pleasant surprise for anyone who does this…

So stay tuned for the next post this week, on how to identify topics and markets that will buy up your one-time-effort ebook like wildfire.