Forum Moderators: buckworks
However I really have some difficulty fidning good ideas! The one thing that really got me wondering is: What type of (affiliate) products could I sell?
I was thinking (affiliate) e-books would be good as I could get a decent profit considering the profit margin of e-books is so high. I guess that would only work if there are decent e-books on my topic of course (if everything works out great I would consider writing an own e-book of course, but until then Ill have a long way to go).
What type of things do you sell?
Think about it; when you can buy Harry Potter (hardcover, 606 pages, $16 / £8), would you pay $69.00 for a 76pp ebook written by someone you never heard of, making promises no-one could keep?
I'm generalizing, of course, and I'm sure many people can offer examples of ebook sales that are excellent value for money - and selling like the proverbial Hot Cakes! :)
A more serious point, when planning web sites, business or pleasure, my advice is to start with what you know and care about.
Fishing? Football? Humvees? It's much easier to build the site, and it's never a drag - plus you will KNOW what's good value in affiliate schemes, and you will KNOW what your audience want.
I'd draw the line at Paris Hilton - she's been done too many times before, and the commission is low - and if your hobby is real estate, then you may like to consider a new interest!
Yes, I'd second that. The times where you could make easy moneay with some minor knowledge on SEO and website design are long gone.
To find niches for product-lines that might sell, now normally is a mixture of luck/fortune, sophisticated experience in one or more very practical topics, and very labor-intensive research on keywords.
Nevertheless it is a good idea to register a domain NOW, fill it with content during your studies, and see how much traffic it attracts when you have finished. Search engines seems to like sites that have no commercial interest in the beginning. The content of the sites should have to do something with your college-topics, because then you can use many of your papers for a second time. Try to build a community around it. By the time visitors start to ask questions, you will automatically find out about what might sell: Listen to your customers (which is no different from ordinary business)!
Why not work at creating a great information site about something that you like, and monetize it with Adsense and/or affiliate offers? Include a blog for easy content addition and blog search traffic. If you have to take a few days off from the site when your study load is more demanding, no problem...
Naturally, you might want to choose an interest that has better monetization potential (higher priced clicks, better aff deals). As was pointed out above, working on a topic you enjoy will be a lot easier.
I've been trying to come up with ideas and have thought and analyzed the crap out of them while learning about SEO, marketing, basic web development, PPC & web analytics (like 10 hours a day on average for the last 10 months). However I have still not found any really good ideas :-).
Im looking into things which I will at least be somewhat interested in (meaning its not necessarily a hobby of mine right now, but Ill be able to take interest in reading about it and creating content for it) and that have at least some potential.
I still have two questions, though:
- say it's a site about my interests (which will make it easier to get links) how many links (roughly) should I expect to be too competitive? Is "possible top ten ranking on a few hundred links/definitely less than 1,000 links" a good rule of thumb to determine whether the market is too competitive for a small player like myself?
- I'm planning on going on a vacation during my last month before Im back in college...in order to go back to college I really need to relax for a month or so after spending so much time every day on learning about online marketing.
If I won't be able to actually create the content for the sites (I plan on starting about 3 or 4..though Ill focus on one of them of course) in about 4-5 months from now and only have 3 weeks left will it make sense to just create a website of less than a handful of pages (for each idea) just to help the sites get indexed? Will that help me with the "domain age factor" in the search engines at all?
this will give Google chance to assimilate the pages and get over the 'new' issue while you study.
To make things more effective, do submit the sites to a few quality diretcories (if there's enough content to justify that), but don't worry about 10,000 links, etc - these dauys it's Quality links that count, NOT quantity - at least for Google.
It's just that I have no experience whatsoever how hard it will be for me to get links..and I was using "number of links" sort of as a proxy...Im just wondering how to determine if I stand any chances at all in a field. I assume if the competing websites (those that are homepages/websites focussed on the topic, not just subpages) have a bit less than 500 links (say 200 or so from different websites) or so it shouldn't be too competitive for me?
Sounds like you may be suffering from "paralysis by analysis." Been there, done that, finally decided I was tired of being a perennial (and broke) student of ecommerce waiting for the "big" idea to jump in my lap.
You don't need to start with a perfect idea, or even a great one. Start with a halfway decent idea centered around a potentially profitable niche that you have some interest in and knowledge of. Build a small site around it and try various ways to drive traffic to it and convert the visitors who arrive. Take notes on everything you do.
You probably won't make much money (at least not at first), but you'll learn a LOT about what to do and what not to do from running a site like that.
None of this SEO stuff is relevant until you have a site to apply it to. Wishing you the best of luck!
10 hours for 10 months - learning with no site... Seems like college.
I was thinking (affiliate) e-books would be good as I could get a decent profit considering the profit margin of e-books is so high.
You might try visiting clickbank to get the ideas flowing.
FarmBoy
Yes, I'd second that. The times where you could make easy moneay with some minor knowledge on SEO and website design are long gone.
I disagree with this to an extent, although it depends on how "minor knowledge" is defined.
Information is still the world's most valuable commodity.
There's the old story of the Baptist minister who was counseling a young married couple. He shared something with them they had never heard and they forever thought he was a genius.
From his perspective, he just told them something from the Bible that he knew but they didn't.
Take that and apply to any of tens of millions of other aspects of life and you can make money from it.
Then rinse and repeat.
FarmBoy
It's also important that Oliver's quote specifically refers to minor knowledge about "SEO and website design".
Noted.
However, I still disagree to some extent. A novice in site design and SEO can still enter and make money. In some cases, the lack of site design skills might actually be an asset.
I think a big problem is so many people, for some reason, are forgetting to "think outside the box" (to borrow a phrase from yesteryears)
One example:
Affiliates used to put links to products on their own sites. Then PPC came along. There are a lot of people now involved with affiliate marketing who only think in terms of PPC. Their every decision is based around PPC - landing pages, conversion %, etc.
When PPC hits a bump in the road, they're going to have problems.
FarmBoy
