Tuesday, June 30, 2009
How Well Do You Plan Out Your Niche Sites?
Admit it. We all have done it. You get an idea for a niche, do a little keyword and domain name hunting and an hour later you have an attempt of a niche site live on the web. How is that working for you? Niche site building is a process as you will see in the new eBook Kelvin and Adam are releasing. If you were to start a brick and mortar business, would you have it up and running in an hour, even a day or week for that matter? Great niche sites take planning, from layout, to content, to keyword focus, to link building and traffic generation. Actually building the site and getting it live on the web is an easy process and will go even smoother with a well laid out plan of exactly what you are wanting to do. If a blog is not attached, you should have at least 80% of your content written and ready to go live before even building the site. You should also map out exactly what the site structure should be before even installing the platform. Sketch out everything on a piece of paper or Word file before you even start. Know exactly how the final site will look upon completion. Sure this takes a ton of work before hand, but trust me that the finished product will look and perform better if you plan it out. Each site is a business all to itself and every successful business has a business plan before they are open for business.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Email From Kelvin And Adam - New Guide Coming Very Soon
In case you did not get the update from BANS creators, Kelvin and Adam, I am posting it below. I will have a copy in my hands soon and can not wait to see it. It should be well worth the money. Below is the email sent out.
Thanks for all the feedback we've received - both positive and negative.
Before we link you off to the full guide summary we promised we want to take the time to clarify a couple of things raised in both emails and on the forum.
1. What Is This New Guide And Where's It Come From?
We've been building niche websites monetized through affiliate links and contextual programs like AdSense since 2004.
It's how we got started online, it's how we managed to switch from going to work to working from home, it's how we learnt the majority of the practical internet knowledge we have, it's what gave rise to the concept of BANS, it's what enabled us through finance and understanding to move into more complex internet projects.
They were our way in to the internet and they have played a part ever since - for a long long time they were our "bread and butter".
Our new product isn't a guide about BANS - it's a guide about affiliate marketing through content driven websites.
That's the opportunity.
For as long as consumers research and buy products online and for as long as the companies that sell (or facilitate the selling of these products) have affiliate programs that enable you to make money by promoting these products there will be space for committed affiliate marketers to make a lot of money by building sites which connect the two together.
All BANS is is a relatively simplistic content management system for developing such sites with a focus towards the eBay affiliate programs.
Until we built BANS we use to hard code all our content websites in Dreamweaver.
Despite the fact that it's been said numerous times by people who have actually seen this model through - ie have been successful with it - the amount of times we've seen people give up or point the finger when they haven't taken the time to break down what it is that they are actually doing has been unbelievable.
If you don't truly know the model (the requirements of the model) how can you successfully develop sites to profit from it?
This has always been a shortfall for BANS.
It's always been just a tool - some of you have loved it, some of you have outgrown it and some of you have abandoned it.
With no direction the idea of the "quickest path to success" is the one that many followed which meant the rapid development of poorly chosen, poorly planned, poorly built, poorly marketed and poorly managed sites.
The result of that process is inevitable - regardless of platform.
If you can't see that you're wasting your time.
Another group of people went into over-development - design rather than research and content creation became the focus.
Both have got it wrong.
The GameImprovementIrons.com site has sat on the front of BANS for over a year.
It cost us $500 to put together (we outsourced the content) and it has been consistently making between $200 (out of season) and $400 (in season) per month for the past couple of years.
It's not one that we've paid any attention to - it's not had any new content added to it in over a year and a half - it's not had any active marketing - it's not even structured perfectly (we don't recommend this level of neglect) - but it's sat there in prime position on Google and the other major engines for the last couple of years for many of its target keywords connecting golfers interested in Game Improvement Irons to different sets of clubs listed for sale on eBay.
All this while thousands of affiliate marketers both inside and outside of BANS have become hysterical about the future of niche site building.
There's also no reason it won't continue to do that for the forseeable future - who's competing with us???
The search engines fill their indexes with relevant data - our site is the only site dedicated to Game Improvement Irons on the internet and with the exception of a high level and comprehensive series of guides on improvement irons on an industry leading Golf website our own site is the most complete representation of that market segment online.
With little competition and with a site structure and written content (that has been thought out and not copied) which mirrors the collective demand it ranks - it's as simple as that.
If we wanted to sell that site we'd expect to receive around 24x the monthly income on a website aftermarket like Sitepoint so we're talking around $7,000.
A $500 investment and we've got well over $10,000 back - there aren't many ways of doing that in this world on or offline.
"Relevancy" is the only word that matters when it comes to niche affiliate websites at every part of the process - from researching, planning and building all the way through to marketing and management.
We've seen sites built to target golf putters (ie with a domain name targeting golf putters) full of reviews of golf balls.
What's happening here?
If you're targeting putters build a site about putters, if you're targeting golf balls build a site about golf balls.
If you've got it in you to build a site covering all golf equipment then sure cover everything but before you start down that road you've got to be honest about the requirements to pull a site off that covers a market segment of that size.
The higher up a market segment you go the fiercer the competition - move up the ladder too high and you've moved out of niche affiliate websites and into resource websites which is a completely different game and which requires much more advanced sites and features - forums, reader reviews etc etc for success.
It's "niches" for a reason.
A small site called something like golfputterguide.com which is full of golf ball reviews is a "conflict" and your rankings suffer as a consequence.
Have a look at your own sites.
Do they properly "mirror" the demand they have been built to serve (not just in page structure but in the "answers" these pages provide) or are they a mix-mash resulting from poor planning?
We've looked at thousands of BANS built sites over the past couple of years. 99.9 times out of 100 any "problems" lie with the site and any problems with the site are a consequence of the perspective of the person that developed it.
Like it or not - that's the reality.
In October 2008 (post the mid summer eBay and Google drama) we put around $15,000 into content for the development of a new network of golf equipment related sites.
Built with BANS V3.0 according to the basic principles outlined above they're all indexed, all gaining rankings, all getting relevant people and all converting a percentage of these relevant people into eBay affiliate commissions.
There's no rocket science here, no mystery - just basic method and procedures which result in the relatively quick development of a new site which "matches" a particular demand and which then generates money connecting that demand to the supply.
Build them with BANS, build them with Wordpress, build them with Joomla, hard code them - if you want to make a go of this just make sure you build them and that you build them "right".
And so that's what this new guide is - our answer to the question:
"How Do I Build Niche Affiliate Websites Successfully"
What About The Future Development Of BANS?
We appreciate that this will be a dissapointment for many of you but for now we've taken BANS as a tool as far as we want to take it.
We're not software developers - never have been never will be - we took BANS from the 1 page setup file it was when it launched back in 2006 to the CMS it became in V3.0 through the use of a PHP book bought from a local bookstore - this was a huge task and an intensely pressurized extended period of time - all done for free for existing BANS users.
We remain happy with both the progress we have made with BANS as a product and the level of site you can build with BANS V3.0 in the context of the opportunity that exists and if you want to develop more advanced sites then there are options open to you that will enable you to do that (the reason a Wordpress section was added to the forum).
We have had 2 enquires over the past few months from development teams wanting to take over the project and further evolve it - something that we do appreciate there is room to do and something that we would like to see happen.
This is something we'll be considering over the next couple of months as we see the release of this new product through and evaluate our own future online.
BANS as a project, however, is neither dead nor vulnerable to dissapearing.
With all that said (and we appreciate it's a mouthful) - here's the link to what was the initial purpose of this email - the "Full Guide Summary":
To download please right click your mouse over the link and choose 'Save Target As...'
http://www.thenumber1waytomakemoneyonline.com/full-guide-summary.pdf
The new product will be released from the following website:
http://www.thenumber1waytomakemoneyonline.com
And within the next few days we'll be in touch with final details of the actual release day.
For those of you interested in seeing "this" how we see it - we truly hope it serves you well.
There's an awful lot of room online to make money from affiliate marketing via content driven websites.
We believe that it's simply not being looked at properly.
Thanks for taking the time to read this through and we'll be in touch again shortly.
Best,
Kelvin and Adam
Thanks for all the feedback we've received - both positive and negative.
Before we link you off to the full guide summary we promised we want to take the time to clarify a couple of things raised in both emails and on the forum.
1. What Is This New Guide And Where's It Come From?
We've been building niche websites monetized through affiliate links and contextual programs like AdSense since 2004.
It's how we got started online, it's how we managed to switch from going to work to working from home, it's how we learnt the majority of the practical internet knowledge we have, it's what gave rise to the concept of BANS, it's what enabled us through finance and understanding to move into more complex internet projects.
They were our way in to the internet and they have played a part ever since - for a long long time they were our "bread and butter".
Our new product isn't a guide about BANS - it's a guide about affiliate marketing through content driven websites.
That's the opportunity.
For as long as consumers research and buy products online and for as long as the companies that sell (or facilitate the selling of these products) have affiliate programs that enable you to make money by promoting these products there will be space for committed affiliate marketers to make a lot of money by building sites which connect the two together.
All BANS is is a relatively simplistic content management system for developing such sites with a focus towards the eBay affiliate programs.
Until we built BANS we use to hard code all our content websites in Dreamweaver.
Despite the fact that it's been said numerous times by people who have actually seen this model through - ie have been successful with it - the amount of times we've seen people give up or point the finger when they haven't taken the time to break down what it is that they are actually doing has been unbelievable.
If you don't truly know the model (the requirements of the model) how can you successfully develop sites to profit from it?
This has always been a shortfall for BANS.
It's always been just a tool - some of you have loved it, some of you have outgrown it and some of you have abandoned it.
With no direction the idea of the "quickest path to success" is the one that many followed which meant the rapid development of poorly chosen, poorly planned, poorly built, poorly marketed and poorly managed sites.
The result of that process is inevitable - regardless of platform.
If you can't see that you're wasting your time.
Another group of people went into over-development - design rather than research and content creation became the focus.
Both have got it wrong.
The GameImprovementIrons.com site has sat on the front of BANS for over a year.
It cost us $500 to put together (we outsourced the content) and it has been consistently making between $200 (out of season) and $400 (in season) per month for the past couple of years.
It's not one that we've paid any attention to - it's not had any new content added to it in over a year and a half - it's not had any active marketing - it's not even structured perfectly (we don't recommend this level of neglect) - but it's sat there in prime position on Google and the other major engines for the last couple of years for many of its target keywords connecting golfers interested in Game Improvement Irons to different sets of clubs listed for sale on eBay.
All this while thousands of affiliate marketers both inside and outside of BANS have become hysterical about the future of niche site building.
There's also no reason it won't continue to do that for the forseeable future - who's competing with us???
The search engines fill their indexes with relevant data - our site is the only site dedicated to Game Improvement Irons on the internet and with the exception of a high level and comprehensive series of guides on improvement irons on an industry leading Golf website our own site is the most complete representation of that market segment online.
With little competition and with a site structure and written content (that has been thought out and not copied) which mirrors the collective demand it ranks - it's as simple as that.
If we wanted to sell that site we'd expect to receive around 24x the monthly income on a website aftermarket like Sitepoint so we're talking around $7,000.
A $500 investment and we've got well over $10,000 back - there aren't many ways of doing that in this world on or offline.
"Relevancy" is the only word that matters when it comes to niche affiliate websites at every part of the process - from researching, planning and building all the way through to marketing and management.
We've seen sites built to target golf putters (ie with a domain name targeting golf putters) full of reviews of golf balls.
What's happening here?
If you're targeting putters build a site about putters, if you're targeting golf balls build a site about golf balls.
If you've got it in you to build a site covering all golf equipment then sure cover everything but before you start down that road you've got to be honest about the requirements to pull a site off that covers a market segment of that size.
The higher up a market segment you go the fiercer the competition - move up the ladder too high and you've moved out of niche affiliate websites and into resource websites which is a completely different game and which requires much more advanced sites and features - forums, reader reviews etc etc for success.
It's "niches" for a reason.
A small site called something like golfputterguide.com which is full of golf ball reviews is a "conflict" and your rankings suffer as a consequence.
Have a look at your own sites.
Do they properly "mirror" the demand they have been built to serve (not just in page structure but in the "answers" these pages provide) or are they a mix-mash resulting from poor planning?
We've looked at thousands of BANS built sites over the past couple of years. 99.9 times out of 100 any "problems" lie with the site and any problems with the site are a consequence of the perspective of the person that developed it.
Like it or not - that's the reality.
In October 2008 (post the mid summer eBay and Google drama) we put around $15,000 into content for the development of a new network of golf equipment related sites.
Built with BANS V3.0 according to the basic principles outlined above they're all indexed, all gaining rankings, all getting relevant people and all converting a percentage of these relevant people into eBay affiliate commissions.
There's no rocket science here, no mystery - just basic method and procedures which result in the relatively quick development of a new site which "matches" a particular demand and which then generates money connecting that demand to the supply.
Build them with BANS, build them with Wordpress, build them with Joomla, hard code them - if you want to make a go of this just make sure you build them and that you build them "right".
And so that's what this new guide is - our answer to the question:
"How Do I Build Niche Affiliate Websites Successfully"
What About The Future Development Of BANS?
We appreciate that this will be a dissapointment for many of you but for now we've taken BANS as a tool as far as we want to take it.
We're not software developers - never have been never will be - we took BANS from the 1 page setup file it was when it launched back in 2006 to the CMS it became in V3.0 through the use of a PHP book bought from a local bookstore - this was a huge task and an intensely pressurized extended period of time - all done for free for existing BANS users.
We remain happy with both the progress we have made with BANS as a product and the level of site you can build with BANS V3.0 in the context of the opportunity that exists and if you want to develop more advanced sites then there are options open to you that will enable you to do that (the reason a Wordpress section was added to the forum).
We have had 2 enquires over the past few months from development teams wanting to take over the project and further evolve it - something that we do appreciate there is room to do and something that we would like to see happen.
This is something we'll be considering over the next couple of months as we see the release of this new product through and evaluate our own future online.
BANS as a project, however, is neither dead nor vulnerable to dissapearing.
With all that said (and we appreciate it's a mouthful) - here's the link to what was the initial purpose of this email - the "Full Guide Summary":
To download please right click your mouse over the link and choose 'Save Target As...'
http://www.thenumber1waytomakemoneyonline.com/full-guide-summary.pdf
The new product will be released from the following website:
http://www.thenumber1waytomakemoneyonline.com
And within the next few days we'll be in touch with final details of the actual release day.
For those of you interested in seeing "this" how we see it - we truly hope it serves you well.
There's an awful lot of room online to make money from affiliate marketing via content driven websites.
We believe that it's simply not being looked at properly.
Thanks for taking the time to read this through and we'll be in touch again shortly.
Best,
Kelvin and Adam
The Rewrite Dilemma
I received an email from a reader that was inquiring about a new service that rewrites articles for customers and wanted my thoughts on the service. While I do not use the service the reader was questioning about, I have heard of several that do this.
My thoughts on rewriting others content is this: We all tend to use other articles as basis of information in writing our own works of original content. If you are rewriting the content, but are merely copying the whole articles thought process and overall body, you should probably link to the original article as a source of inspiration or reference. If you are TOTALLY rewriting it, to add something new in ways of views or additional information, then you can claim it as your own. While in the Google guidelines it says there really is no penalty for duplicate content, you should reference in good faith if you syndicate an article or merely rewrite. Some articles can indeed be rewritten for the better, I know a ton of mine could really be improved. My thinking is though, if you are going to go that far as to spend money on a rewrite, why not pay for a totally original piece of work? Sure it will cost you a little bit more, but if done by the right service, it will lend more credibility to your site in general. The site in question from the reader, I will indeed try, just to see how close it comes to the original article from a plagiarism aspect and to see if it is actually rewritten better on a quality standpoint. I will report back in a future post.
My thoughts on rewriting others content is this: We all tend to use other articles as basis of information in writing our own works of original content. If you are rewriting the content, but are merely copying the whole articles thought process and overall body, you should probably link to the original article as a source of inspiration or reference. If you are TOTALLY rewriting it, to add something new in ways of views or additional information, then you can claim it as your own. While in the Google guidelines it says there really is no penalty for duplicate content, you should reference in good faith if you syndicate an article or merely rewrite. Some articles can indeed be rewritten for the better, I know a ton of mine could really be improved. My thinking is though, if you are going to go that far as to spend money on a rewrite, why not pay for a totally original piece of work? Sure it will cost you a little bit more, but if done by the right service, it will lend more credibility to your site in general. The site in question from the reader, I will indeed try, just to see how close it comes to the original article from a plagiarism aspect and to see if it is actually rewritten better on a quality standpoint. I will report back in a future post.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Blog Commenting With Your Twitter URL
We all have done it, we comment on blogs related to our niche and slap our target keyword as the username and our niche URL in the URL spot. Usually it is attached to a 5 word comment, if that. I have found it more useful these days if commenting on a blog post in a related niche to leave my Twitter page username and Twitter profile URL instead along with a meaningful comment. Everyone should have a Twitter page related to whatever niche they are in and hopefully updating with niche related comments or blog post/content pages from your site. When leaving your Twitter username and URL, it is a little less threatening and spammy in nature. Sure you are not getting whatever search engine love there is to get, but aren't we really look for surfers related to our niches? Sometimes we pay too much mind to the search engines and not enough to the goal of getting targeted surfers. Think about this the next time you leave a blog comment.
Have you tried commenting with your Twitter URL?
Have you tried commenting with your Twitter URL?
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Saturday Around The Web June 27th
Sorry for the late post as I was at the neighbors helping them with their new iPod touch and got hung up a while.
The first interesting thing I came across is Tweetboard. I have yet to set it up myself, but plan on doing so this week. I see it as an alternative to burdensome message boards and quite an engaging tool to have for your niche.
Chris Crompton from Search Engine Land has a take on AdWords Conversion Tracking: How To Optimize Your Account 10x Quicker. Definitely a good read.
Aaron Wall has a post on how to spot keyword trends that is very informative.
Speaking of keywords, I found a cool keyword tool driven by the Google AdWords API. Fun to play with.
Here is a post on 7 secret ways to use Twitter search.
The first interesting thing I came across is Tweetboard. I have yet to set it up myself, but plan on doing so this week. I see it as an alternative to burdensome message boards and quite an engaging tool to have for your niche.
Chris Crompton from Search Engine Land has a take on AdWords Conversion Tracking: How To Optimize Your Account 10x Quicker. Definitely a good read.
Aaron Wall has a post on how to spot keyword trends that is very informative.
Speaking of keywords, I found a cool keyword tool driven by the Google AdWords API. Fun to play with.
Here is a post on 7 secret ways to use Twitter search.
Friday, June 26, 2009
A Twitter Guide By Mashable
I was going to save this for my around the web post I do on Saturday, but felt this particular site needed it's own post. If you did not know it now, Twitter is very powerful. I have found it almost as useful as Google itself. I heard about the deaths of Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon on Twitter first this week. Not only from a news standpoint, I also find it semi useful as a search engine itself. Learning to use Twitter to your advantage takes time. I have mentioned the book by Joel Comm before that I still recommend, but now Mashable has released a Twitter Guide as well. You should spend a couple of hours going through this as you will truly learn a ton. You will learn also how to leverage Twitter in your favor as far as niches go. Bookmark it for sure.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The Best Way To Read An Ebook
If you are like me, you have purchased or freely downloaded your share of eBooks. Each one is like getting a present on Christmas morning. Unfortunately, most eBooks are hard to read or not well put together. It is very easy to get distracted, especially if there are numerous links included. You can get off on a tangent in no time. Blog post or web pages less than 1000 words are easier to read online.
I have found that if I print the eBooks out with my printer and read the content anywhere in the house other than the computer rooms. I always have a highlighter with me to highlight the important points and links I will want to visit later. I always try to read the entire eBook all the way through first before venturing on to any links. Some how reading it on paper holds my attention longer and I absorb the info much better and faster. If you find yourself never finishing an eBook, you should really give this a try. Send my apologies to the tree huggers for the extra paper usage.
I have found that if I print the eBooks out with my printer and read the content anywhere in the house other than the computer rooms. I always have a highlighter with me to highlight the important points and links I will want to visit later. I always try to read the entire eBook all the way through first before venturing on to any links. Some how reading it on paper holds my attention longer and I absorb the info much better and faster. If you find yourself never finishing an eBook, you should really give this a try. Send my apologies to the tree huggers for the extra paper usage.
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