The Complete Guide To Making Money With Yor Own Website.

Introduction

Basic Mindset of Online Entrepreneurs.

There are a lot of eBooks out there that advertise “how to make money without working”…. yeah right…

The truth is making money online is always work, as long as you want to create something that will last and keep on making you money for a longer period of time. Prepare yourself to put in a couple of weeks of work and don’t expect to receive a great amount of money or response in that time. Don’t get discouraged because things will build up over time and once they are established the maintenance gets easier and you will earn more each and every month! I’m writing this because I want to cut the bullshit and tell you what you can really expect.

Sit back, get a drink and relax. In the next 30 minutes you will learn all the important things that I learned and that made my sites successful.

I considered selling this guide as an eBook for 47$ which is the regular price for eBooks like this but decided everybody can set their own price. If you find this guide helpful it would be great if you just donate some money or paypal me a beer. That’s always welcome!



Find the right niche

The first thing you should think of

Think about some things you are passionate about, that you enjoy or that you are interested in. This can be something you did in the past, some aspect of your job that you like and are good at or something that you really want to learn. Take a piece of paper and write those topics down.

If you are not an expert and passionate about white nose Madagascar rabbits it is very likely that your range of topics are too broad and if you are such an expert… your topic might not attract enough people with the same interests. It is important to find a balance between both. Not too broad (not too much competition) and not too narrow (enough people are interested in it) niches are great.


Reality check

Most areas and topics are already covered on the Internet today. Every day thousands of new websites go online and the flood of information multiplies every month. If you want to make good money for example in the “travel” niche you better have a lot of money to invest or you won’t stand a chance with the already huge and established networks and community sites already out there.
It’s not all that bad…

The good news is that you might not become the mecca for general travel advice but you may become the owner of the most read blog containing tips how to prepare a trip to another country. It’s all about narrowing your niche down to a size that will still have readers and is not too broad that you have too many competitors.
So how do you narrow your niche down?

There are several ways to do this. First of all do general research on Google for your niche. The basis of being successful online is working efficient. Here are some ways how you can get better results in Google.

“thailand tour” - Searches for the whole phrase like it is.

“thailand tour”+ island - Searches for documents that contain the exact phrase “thailand tour” and the word island. Both the phrase and the word have to be in the same document to get listed in the search results.

Also have a look at the advanced search of Google that lets you filter your search in a variety of ways. Those two mentioned above are just the ones I use most often. They come in incredibly handy for example, if you search for forums or online boards about a certain topic. Just try this for example:

“powered by vbulletin” + Thailand

“powered by vbulletin” is the note that is visible on all installations of the popular online forum software vbulletin. So this would be an ideal way to find a Thailand related online forum if your general search doesn’t give you the results you are looking for.





Researching your niche

Look at the existing websites for the topic you want to focus on and ask yourself what they are lacking. Can users contribute to the site? Does the site answer the most common questions people have? What would you do better?

You probably realize that some of the niches you picked are already overcrowded or have some excellent websites that really address everything you can think of. This doesn’t mean you can forget about the niche it just means you have to make your niche narrower.

Try to find directories, forums and online communities that deal with the topic you are interested in. You can start by using the Google queries you saw before or try some of these:

yourtopic + forum
yourtopic + commnity
yourtopic + directory

Some other very popular forum software:
“Powered By IP.Board” + yourtopic
“Powered By SMF” + yourtopic
“Powered By phpBB” + yourtopic

Read the topics posted in those forums and look for questions that are asked over and over again. Can you answer them? Could you answer them with a little bit of research? Forums and online communities are a great place to do market research and see what people are really looking for while directories give you an idea what other sites already exist.


The most important lesson you will learn in this guide!

Ok here it comes. This is really the single most important factor that will either result in your ultimate success or failure in making money online. Whatever your website will offer, it has got to have at least one (or ideally, even more than one) unique selling points. If you are just trying to be another news blog about a certain topic, while another blog that does pretty much the same has already been doing it a couple of months, forget it! Unless you are able to give it a real new twist.

A unique selling point doesn’t mean your design is new and very rarely means the technical features of your site. Those things will only give you a short term advantage because they can easily be replicated. You won’t be able to compete solely on features. In your approach to general marketing and branding you have to focus on intangible values. For websites that means the angle how you approach the topic should be different to others and you keep this difference consistent. If you are the blog that always has the most hilarious write ups on recent news about your topic with a good chunk of humor then stick to it.


An example:

There are hundreds of news sites about new technical toys (also called gadgets). A lot of them just focus on bringing the latest and hottest news. If you would like to get into this area and succeed you need to do something different. Here are some ideas how to approach this topic:

Research:

1. You realize the field is too broad and narrow the topic down to mobile phones and make it even more narrow and focus on smart phones (phones that have their own operating system and can have software installed on them)
2. You realize a lot of people have a strong opinion about their favorite operating system for smart phones (for example Windows Mobile versus Symbian)
3. Strong opinions lead to passionate discussions and you will see people fighting it out in the comments on general mobile phone blogs

Conclusion:

Give them a place to really fight it out. For example you could start a blog that compares two similar phones with the same technical specifications but different operating systems. Another idea would be to focus on the operating systems themselves and to compare the feature sets and offer your expert advice on it. A lot of blogs just focus on one system for example, and are dedicated solely to either Symbian or Windows Mobile.



Check the if the niche you picked has potential

Here are a couple of important things you should check whenever you think about doing a website for a certain topic:

* Am I the first one to do it? (First mover advantage)
* Have others tried it and failed? Why?
* Is my approach really unique?
* How easy is my site replicated by someone else?
* Can I break the niche down in several topics and maybe create more sites?
* What is the main benefit that people have when they visit my site?

Some starting points to give your ideas a unique twist:

* Can you combine two topics into one?
* Can you focus on addressing just one side of a topic?
* Can you write in a unique way about the topic? (Humour, Critic..)
* Can you offer advice about the topic? Maybe tutorials how to do something?
* Can you focus on a new development within your niche?


Timeless content pays forever

This brings us to another important point and one of the reasons why I do relatively well without working much. I have always focused on timeless content. Some topics don’t change that much such as languages or advice in some fields eg, cooking.

Whenever you write something that is helpful today it should still be helpful and worth reading in some months or years. This enhances the long term value of your site and will also bring you visitors over a longer period of time. Who wants to read a review of a three year old computer?


Is there really a demand for the information you are going to offer?

You can also learn a lot about the demand by looking at the online communities and the topics they are talking about as mentioned above. But the best way to find out if there is a demand for certain information is to do some keyword research which means you look at how often people search for a certain word or phrase.
Keyword Research

There are two great places to do your keyword research. The first one and my personal favorite is Wordtracker. Wordtracker was one of the first sites to offer this kind of service and has developed very user friendly tools to find what you are looking for. You can also export your research data to keep it in Excel for further evaluation.

Another alternative is Trellian who offer a service called “Keyword Discovery”. While it is not as user friendly as Wordtracker it is still a great resource and subscribing makes sense.

I suggest you just plan what you want to research and then subscribe to the cheapest plans both sites offer. You will have a limited amount of time in which you can access their services. In this time I usually do non-stop keyword research and export all interesting data to Excel for further evaluation.

The following two steps will help you to get most out of your keywords research.

1. Make a list of relevant words. Think what you would enter in a search engine to find more information about your topic. Ask friends to write down some words they would use. Go to sites like thesaurus.com and add similar words to the list.

2. Use keyword research tools mentioned above to see how popular the words or phrases on your list are. Note the most popular phrases and keywords. Try to start with broad words and then narrow them down with phrases and words that are used less frequently.

You can also start with Google’s free keyword research tool before you do more detailed research with Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery.


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