Author Archive
If you have been online for more than a few days I am sure you’ve been tempted by the adverts for those programs that guarantee you a millionaire lifestyle. You know the ones with the Villas, Yachts and Ferrari’s. Tempting aren’t they but I am sure you’ve thought that they are too good to be true, you are right. The only people getting rich is the creator and maybe a small percentage of his affiliates.
Making money online is not as simple as these ads make it seem. Unfortunately there are no short cuts you need to not only learn the basics of creating a profitable website but master them as well. You’ve probably had friends or acquaintances recommend a product to you after it helped them to make lots of money. Thats doesn’t mean it will work for you. No doubt they have experience and know how internet marketing works.
Think back to when you started to ride a bike. What did you parents buy for you first? A racing bike or a simple bike with training wheels? If they were sensible then it would have been the bike with the removable training wheels. The same when you learned to drive, did you learn in a relatively slow car and easy to use car or 180 MPH Porsche. It’s quite obvious why you don’t learn on something thats too difficult to ride or drive because if you did you’d soon lose confidence and give up.
Working a full-time Job and trying to make money online can be difficult. Lack of time and family responsibilities can make finding enough time to create sites almost impossible. It doesn’t help when many e-books tell you to do thinks like write 5 articles a day for distribution. Outsourcing the work is not usually an option as you will be spending a lot of money even before you start to make an income.
I have lost count of the times we’ve had new members sign up who have spent hundreds of dollars on e-books and programs but have put none of it into practice because of lack of time. Or even worse have put it into practice but haven’t had the necessary knowledge to take it any further and make a profit.
I talked to several people who have already spent over $1500 and don’t know why they haven’t made any money. What they haven’t realized is that no matter what the program you are going to need to promote it.
Don’t believe what all the Guru’s tell you it’s not easy to make money online. Via my Blog and forum I get to chat to lots of people who all have one thing in common they want to make money online. Often this is to supplement a poorly paying full time job, to bring in some extra money to help out with bills or just so that can get away from a mundane 9-5 job. Unfortunately about 95% of these people won’t get to realize their dreams and be able to make a significant online income. There are 5 basic mistakes that people make when they set out on an online career. The sad thing is that most of these can be easily avoided with a bit of planning and preparation. Let’s look at the mistakes and how you can avoid them.
1 Failing to Plan Is Planning to Fail
I suspect that 99.9% of people who star out on an online career haven’t created a business plan. Ask yourself if you want a hobby or a business, if the answer is a business then it’s time to get serious. Include your personal strengths in your business plan and aim to focus on these initially. If you find you lack certain basic skills then use the first few months as an apprenticeship and learn the skills you need.
In order to build a profitable website for yourself you need to have a good plan in place as well as you carrying out lots of preparation first. A lot of people will come up with an idea for a website, they then buy a domain name and start to build the site without actually thinking through what is required. Like these people I use to have hundreds of websites and would never concentrate on one but would instead be moving from one to the next constantly. However now I concentrate on just 20 sites or less and because of this I have seen a dramatic increase in my income from them.
There are 6 steps you should take to ensure that you create websites that are profitable. Stick to this formula and you’ll rapidly increase you income. Before you even think about building a site get yourself a ring binder and some paper you should create a section for each site you want to create. You could do this on a PC but trust me on this you’ll use it much more if it’s in a folder next to you PC.
With Step One you need to carry out your Keyword Research. It is at this time you need to be thinking all about niches and into what sections they are likely to be placed. The niches that you choose can be on any subject you want, and you will soon that not only are there plenty of profitable niches but also there are plenty of profitable sub niches as well. For example if you choice to do a site on Cars this is a great niche to have but a site that is on SUV’s or Carburretors for cars would be even better. The most important thing to remember is that when doing your keyword research you need a good mixture of keywords. You need some that will have very little competition for you to worry about and others that will actually end up challenging you when it comes to promoting the site.
One thing that constantly bugs me about many of the products that get released is that they don’t tell you how to bring traffic to your site. You get a large e-book that tells you how to build an amazing site but not one chapter on traffic generation
When I was starting out I spent lots of money on site building tools and keyword tools and nothing on learning how to generate traffic. I now know how stupid that was. The tools might have been the best in the world but without traffic the end results were worthless.
The best looking site in the world means nothing without human visitors. If you can’t attract the website spiders and then organic traffic you will be left with a site of no value to you. Have a look at the forums where people buy and sell website and each thread will have 2 questions. How much does the site earn and how much traffic does it have. On a personal not i prefer traffic over income as I know I can turn traffic into income easier than generate new traffic.
SEO or Search engine optimization is often portrayed as a black art. If you go to forums you’ll find lots of contradictory information. The fact is that anyone can call themselves an SEO expert and then charge hundreds of dollars to try to get your site to the top of the rankings. Many so called experts have spent a few weeks reading some of the misleading information in forums and probably spent some money with Amazon and purchased a few books.
The Problem with search engine optimization is that with a few exceptions the methods that work change every month. Last month it may have been fine having 3.4 % keyword density in an article but this month thats regarded as spamming by one search engine while another thinks 4% is an ideal percentage. You can easily do your own search engine optimization if you stick to the methods that have always worked and always will work.
Luckily for us a series of new product has recently been released that at last talks some sense about Search engine optimization. Xtreme Rankings is a book and series of videos that shows you how to get your sites ranking at the top of Google. The process is laid out in easy to understand section sand Ryan the author takes you by the hand and guides you through the SEO maze.
If you want to increase the income from your websites the best way is to attract more visitors directly from the search engines. To get these visitors you require higher search engine rankings. However finding the right information in forums is not always easy. Many of the so called facts are out of date or completely wrong.
Occasionally a product comes onto the market that changes the way you do business. I Xtreme rankings is such a product. Created by Ryan Moran Xtreme rankings contains no fluff or filler just straight facts all aimed at allowing you to grab higher search engine rankings.
It is quite possible that you haven’t heard of Xtreme Rankings. This is probably because the Ryan didn’t want the entire usual marketing guru’s promoting it. He preferred to let word get around naturally about just how good the product is.
Every webmaster knows that to gain ranking positions in search engines you need to build links. This usually means hours at a computer submitting your site to directories and emailing other webmasters requesting reciprocal links. There is another way of getting links which often overlooked and complements your current link building strategy, writing articles.
Content is the life blood of the Internet every webmaster needs it and every website needs fresh content to keep Google and the other Search engines coming back regularly. By writing articles you can provide this content and at the same time get yourself permanent back links to your website. This article will attempt to answer some common questions asked by first time article writers.
What should I write about?
When it comes to creating an online business lack of focus is probably the biggest thing holding us back. Focus is important on 2 levels. Firstly you have your long term focus which is what you want to ultimately achieve. Stop reading this for a moment and ask yourself what do you want? Financial freedom? To be able to leave your current job and work at home? A new house? A world cruise? That is your long term focus this what will drive you if you harness it. If you want it enough and focus on it you will get it.
I had someone I used to help with her online business. She often got demotivated and stopped work. One day I asked her what she desired most and she told me how she wanted to move out of her 1 room apartment and into a house. I told her to go and find the house she wanted. When she found her dream home she placed the plans and photo’s on the wall behind her computer. Every time she wanted to finish early or not work she would look at that house and think what it meant to her. Very soon she was back working hard and completely motivated. About 14 months later she was able to complete the purchase of a similar house.
In addition to long term focus you need to consider your short term focus. a lack of short term focus will have a negative impact on your Long term focus. How many times do you sit down to write an article or build a site only to answer emails of have instant message conversations? very soon you realize you’ve done nothing constructive and you have no time left.
If you want to earn money online there are several methods that work well. The key is to try to have 2 or 3 separate income streams going at the same time so if one income stream fails you still have money coming in.
Just over 2 years ago I left a well paid job and shortly afterwards due to circumstances had to find a new income quickly. I began to try to make an income online, through sheer luck I soon managed to make enough money each month to cover all my bills. Before I started I knew absolutely nothing about marketing of any kind let alone online marketing. I hadn’t even heard of AdSense until the day before i built my first site!
Desperation is a really good teacher. Within a few months I was earning enough money online to pay all my bills and start to build up my savings. It wasn’t easy and I made lots of mistakes along the way. I always believe in sharing what I know so I set up The Income Academy to share my knowledge with people who wanted to make money online or to supplement their income.