Forum Moderators: skibum
I need to start just getting some money in so I can pay my expensive rent each month without constantly worrying about if I am going to make enough for rent the next month or have to move. And hopefully start getting enough to re-invest back into marketing and building.
Well I have been reading excellent advice on here about what the most profitable niches and ways of marketing are and what things are not worth it because they don't have the same full potential as the others.
Although the most profitable niches sound like they cost the most to get started with and perhaps take more time. People here talking about investing thousands of dollars into them to get them going. I'm not afraid of risks. I just don't have money to invest like that. At least not yet.
So, I don't care about which ways are not long-term the highest potential and don't have the potential to ever make more then a measly 1-2 hundred dollars a day. Because if there is something like that that doesn't have long-term potential or high earning potential but has the benefits of being fast and cheap in making at a min. $100 a day I am interested. So I can know that my rent will be covered and have some extra for investing in the more profitible ventures.
I'm very new to all of this. But if anyone knows what kind of thing could produce that type of profit right away please share.
I guess if something is producing a return on investment then it doesn't really matter what the investment costs because you are getting it back. The problem is that I can't afford the delay in that. If I spend $2 a click at Google promoting something and it makes me a profit back I am still paying Google hundreds of dollars straight from my bank account way before I receive a check from the Affiliate program to cover those costs. Which is sometimes an entire month after the billing cycle that they even begin mailing them out. So something that paid quickly (like to Paypal) would be perferable.
I have been doing some of my own artistic service/product sites as well but they have not been doing all that well. Very sporadic sales. I need something consistant. I tried ebay too which I am completely sick of. I'll get buyers for my art the first time I put anything new up but as soon as I relist anything that has already sold- zero buyers. It's almost like it is only the same people looking at the art stuff and not a steady stream of new buyers.
Anyways. If there is not any answers to this or ideas I understand. It's kind of a stupid question. But maybe others here are interested in this topic too? The new people that don't have a lot of cash. I wish I had gotten into this stuff when I had plenty of cash and plenty of time, instead of wasting both of those things for years...
Thanks!
I really don't understand why companies can afford to pay $25 or more a click for some terms. Do they really convert that high of a % of people that go to there site, especially when there are so many just like them in the results, both natural and paid? And those conversions really pay them that high to come out way ahead of the cost per visitor? For something like mesothelioma I would think most people would just be looking for information. Considering that most sites that are very successful receive at least 100k visitors a month, these sites that are paying outrageous amounts per visitor (not even unique) it would cost them like 2.5 Million per month to get the same amount of fresh traffic. Google sure is making a killing.
I don't think Overture is the best place to find out what Adsense would pay per click. They are 2 different markets. The best place is straight through Google Adword's Estimation tool. Just an estimate but it will be closer to reality then someone else's market. It's not only the CPC but the estimation of how much traffic and clicks the term would get.
A certain term might get a lot per click, but may not be searched for very often. And then it would be harder to get as much traffic for a site on that topic then one on a greater searched topic. Esp. if you are doing SEO for the traffic.
I wonder though how many of those co. turn there content advertising off or pay less for it.
Getting 2000 unique new visitors per day (without paying a bunch for them) is no easy task. Unless you're an SEO genious.
Also, if you are burning to succeed there are other ways to get start-up funds then unsecured credit if you can't get it. You can sell your car,sell your furniture, move in with 5 roomates, cut down as much as possible on all personal expenses, and put the rest into investing in the business. Of course the unsecured credit is a lot more fun, but there are other ways if it's not possible and you are determined. I might have to do at least one of the above.
mfishy(or anyone big enough):
I believe I've read from you that you have employees helping with your sites. Are there concerns regarding the potential of them 'stealing' your ideas/knowledge/method and starting out on their own?
Most are risk-averse creatures of habit. The 9-to-5 routine and the consistent paycheck are not easily discarded for the perceived risk of a startup. Few develop the business savvy to minimize the risk of a startup to a manageable level, and they shy away from it.
Of course, there are exceptions, many of whom frequent this website!
2 of our employees copied our idea. One of them had the gall to host his test website on our own server in our office! (mfishy - are you sure those 9-5 guys are not doing the same to you? :))
The best way to prevent your staff from copying you is to get big enough to create division of labour. Then no single employee has all the pieces in his hand.
It was irritating, but on balance we just decided we'd have to come up with even better ways to beat them, which is just what we did. So in a way their actions spurred us on to even greater heights and was, in hindsight, a good thing for the business.
Again, it's back to that old question about protecting a niche or something you've found that appears to be low on competitors - you can't. Just like the people on here who keep saying ssshh, don't give the secrets away. Staff are the same. They need to properly understand how your business works in order to be really effective within it. If this looks like danger to you, then your company will be low on trust and high on internal politics and you're even more likely to lose staff than if you treat everyone in a mature and respectful way.
The fact is that if someone wants to leave and set up in competition then they will. A non-compete clause simply means that they may have to do it by proxy, but it will still happen.
The best way to prevent staff leaving is to give them something challenging to do and trust them to do it. If they struggle, help them, and when they succeed, praise them.
If you have a win-lose mentality to your staff, rather than a win-win approach, you're always going to be disappointed.
However IN THE CASE OF SOME BUSINESSES, I totally disagree that staff should be given all the knowledge. If they had it all they would not need you. In a business with low barriers to entry you need to keep your cards very tight you your chest.
The way we got around this problem was to raise the stakes for all new market entrants. We cornered the market and grew to a size that made it impossible for anyone to start from where we did. Our product offering is now so broad that a new competitor would have to invest a lot of money to get a toe hold.
That's the first mover advantage. If you are the first mover, don't waste your chance.
If what you are doing and the assets you have are not really unique and "proprietary" and easy to just watch and copy to a level that is competing then it is something that would be transparent anyways. Inside or outside the company.
What I don't understand on this board about cries of "secrets" and all in regards to niches is that we are talking about affiliate programs. Which means we are marketing products and niches of another company. If this company has an affiliate program, do you really think that you are there only affiliate and that they do not have thousands of others promoting them, as your competitor? And that they don't try to recruit other affiliates publicly and use the success info of there top affiliates as part of the lure to new affiliates? I'm not talking about private exclusive partnerships, obviously that is different.
Innovation and motivation should not be inspired by your competitors nipping at your heels.
NNY
But it's the same thing both ways really. The topics that yield high EPC's with a program with AdSense, are more difficult to drive traffic to (sans organtic SEOing, which takes much study, research, and waiting). I can think of many other topics where it's very easy to build link campaigns etc.
I could be absolutely wrong. Really. But in what I've seen and experienced, it's a whole lot easier to pull 1,000 uniques a day on a home theatre site then it is on a finace site.
You are absolutely correct.
If I follow the advice in Brett_Tabke's Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone [webmasterworld.com], I'm looking at writing 100 pages of material before launch. That's not a trivial task!
Has anyone had good luck estimating the profitability of their targetted niche? What calculations to engage in _before_ writing 100 pages?
I'm assume you'd look at the efforts of others in that field... "can I produce material that will rank better in this keyword area?" would be a good question to ask, right? That still has me wondering about money potential...
Now, if Overture's keyword suggestion tool accounts for about 20% of traffic from search engines total traffic with Google included would be 5 times that of Overture. Of course, you can't expect to have all that traffic to your site... perhaps 10% of the total traffic if ranking very well (#1?) on a keyword. 3% maybe?
Adsense and OV both give an indication of what people are willing to spend on a keyword. They both take their cut, so you're likely left with about half of what you would have to bid on Adsense, or half the median of OV bids.
So, Sum for each keyword of 3% of OV hits * 5 * (median OV bid/2) = rough expected earnings.
This might still be a wild exaggeration of a keyword area /cluster's potential... any thoughts?
Your KWs could have 0 bids or $0.05 bids and you can still make a pretty penny using banner/popunder networks, or affiliate marketing.
So, although PPCE bids give you a good sense of the supply/demand/conversion situation of a given market/industry/KW-set, it's not always one to play by.
Rubbish - this is nearly always what drives innovation. Ask Bill Gates, G or HP.
danieljean - your plan is flawed. You need to at least test something with PPC before committing so much effort to it.If you spend $100 proving it works then fine, build that site, but try and use a general type of area like finance where the decision of onemerhcant to quit won't destroy your income. Better to waste a $100 than so many hours of your life, and I could see he failure as demotivating big time!
It's also highly unlikely that you'll make really big money from Adsense unless you have tons of traffic.
And, uhm... that formula above only gives expected traffic. Not everyone is going to click an ad, so I'm assuming you can divide that number by 100.
An area I'm looking at has a median bid on OV around $2.50, and 10k searches a month for one of its kewyords. So with that formula:
3% of OV hits * 5 * (median OV bid/2) * CTR
3% of 10,000 * 5 * $2.50/2 * 0.01 =
1500 * 1.25 * 0.01 = $18.75
That, I hope, gives me a rough idea of how a page targetted to that KW could perform. Most pages don't have that number of searches, though :(
Affiliate programs would hopefully add a lot more revenue, but I'm counting on Adsense in case that doesn't pan out.
/me thinks he can make a few hundred dollars a month with this for a half-hour's work a day once set-up... this looks like it would be a good learning experience, so off I go! :)
I know I won't get rich off adsense, but it will do 2 things:
1.) Give me a flagship site I can promote, feel good about, and share with my friends. It's really mine, and it feels good. Maybe I can start a community.. and
2.) Get and hold PageRank that I can pass off to small affiliate sites once I get them going.
"Innovation and motivation should not be inspired by your competitors nipping at your heels"Rubbish - this is nearly always what drives innovation. Ask Bill Gates, G or HP.
No they don't innovate, they see what works from there competitors then they make cheap copycats of them for there captured audience.
Even Apple does that. Even though they innovate a lot of things, why do you think they have there code open source. Tons of 3rd parties make great little apps for there OS for a small price and as soon as any of those 3rd party apps start really taking off and they see everyone is using them, they will integrate that feature into there next OS update and make that 3rd party programmer obsolete.
It's more about dominating a customer Base and locking them in, then innovation. That's what Bill Gates did and why they can keep there OS as total crap and still make a killing.
Well I'm confusing myself now. I guess all I'm trying to say is that it seems when in a competitive market that there really is true competition and companies need to work hard at keeping up, that drives very fast improvements. But when a company has such a dominance that they don't really have any competition it doesn't push them and motivate them AS much. If 90-95% of an entire market uses Windows, how is there any competition for them? They don't have any that is anything to worry about beating.
Real competition with companies that are on the same level is what pushes progress the most.
Sorry if that opinion is offensive. It's just my personal opinion.
3% of OV hits * 5 * (median OV bid/2) * CTR
3% of 10,000 * 5 * $2.50/2 * 0.01 =
1500 * 1.25 * 0.01 = $18.75
Oy, can I simplify this?
1. Think of a product/line of products that sells for hundreds to thousands of dollars.
2. Ask yourself if this is something somebody might conceivably buy over the Internet.
3. Check the competition: are there tons of great sites already, or could you conceivably get into the top 10 on Google within a few months?
If yes, build info/review site about product. I usually start with about 20 articles. That's far less intimidating than 100, and it can get you good results while allowing you to test the waters without committing a huge portion of your life.
SEO and keywords are important, but don't get caught up in that as the end all solution to riches. My best earning content site (about 3K a month) resides to this day on my ISP and was built before I really knew what SEO was.
PS. These comments are meant for people going the content site/Adsense route. I don't pretend to know nothing about affiliate riches (yet) ;) Though I may break four figures at Amazon this quarter, heh.
Michael Anthony:
Bill Gates invented several operating systems, AW_Learner, before any of his competitors even existed. It'd pay you to read up on his biography before posting such innaccurate opinions.
I would love to read this sometime. Everyone in my family always tells me that he stole all of his idea's from other people, and basically theived his way to what he is today. I try telling them that they are just that... "idea's" nothing more.
My dad also says that pretty much every self made millionaire screwed people over to get that far. He says that all of them got a break, and don't really work hard. Sometimes I hate talking to him because he really has no hope... Sorry for the rant.
C.K.
Carpe Diem!
Nope - real people with dreams and determination is what pushes progress the most. Competition is a help, but most great successes start with someone asking themselves how something can be done rather than telling themselves it can't. A bit like quickly getting to $100-$200 a day!
Cody - that Bill Gates book is in my loft somewhere as I'm extending my house to include a library. I'll try and dig it out and let you have the title. Your dad's wrong, and clearly not a multi-millionaire himself?
Nope - real people with dreams and determination is what pushes progress the most. Competition is a help, but most great successes start with someone asking themselves how something can be done rather than telling themselves it can't. A bit like quickly getting to $100-$200 a day!
True. Especially in the beginning of anything competition is never the issue. It is the dream and idealism.
Nope - real people with dreams and determination is what pushes progress the most. Competition is a help, but most great successes start with someone asking themselves how something can be done rather than telling themselves it can't.
Well said.
There are a few millionaires in my family- it's not hard to do. An MD with a family practice, or even any professional can retire with a million dollar pension fund. A plumber or tradesperson could too. I have however no multi-millionaires that I interact with on a regular basis that are ready to mentor me and help me choose a lucrative education path and help me start in business. Most of the "working-class" people I know that are trying to be "entrepreneurs" are aiming to make $200/day when their business is in full tilt after 1-2 years of grinding poverty. I'm not interested in that type of livelihood.
That first $1-200 dollars a day is NOT a lot of money. Once there, we have the leisure to duplicate our success, and look for more opportunities. IMO, it's as much a financial milestone as a psychological one.
when you grow up in that kind of family, you tend to hear about opportunities that others would not.
Not always. And doesn't always mean that the person will have enough motivation and discipline and vision to do the same as family.
My dad's father was a multi-millionaire and yet my dad was always broke all his adult life going from one mediocre business to the next. He never had the focus and responsibility to master anything and be truly self-sufficient. Maybe he spent too much energy chasing women rather then money.
But seriously, the biggest barrier you'll find in your life is other peoples perceptions of you - The people that society look up to are the people whose opinions are also valued, by yourself and your peers.
However their opinions are are often based on ignorance and prejudice in very subtle ways, which isnt always noticable, consqeuently when they tell you you cant do X because your too stupid/no qualifications/'cos your you, its held to be true. Others who wish to curry favour with them accept it and repeat it - ultimatly you'll belive it.
Focus on what you like doing and take no notice others opinions on what you can and cant do.
The money will follow.
