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14 years ago

Just some comments by a passing-by-unestablished-yet-marketer...

Take a nice nap, get your priorities right, create a nice plan, take a neat clean print out, again call it a day, and start executing it. Building lots of sites would add to your maintainability overhead. Would suggest you to think out-of-the-box and start concentrating on a thing and be sure that you optimize it completely.

I am still curious to know your goal yet,

In order to satisfy my goal of lets say, $3,000 per month

OR IS IT ...

I want to hit $10,000 a month, consistantly, within 12 months

Whatever it is, with self belief, patience and sincerity, I am sure you can add a couple of zeros to your aim. Obviously, it is necessary to be contended as well... And stop using that napkin of uncertainty... There are many other good brands available. I hope you 'comprehend' what this weird un-established marketer is trying to say...

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John Romaine

14 years ago

Well to be completely honest, Im pushing for $80K+ a month. The figures above were just for examples sake. I have no doubts about my ability, its the method that Im currently implementing that Im unsure about -- as in blasting more and more sites/products out there.

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Brad Gosse

14 years ago

Thanks for including me :-)

I don't have enough details to determine whether or not you are on the right track. It certainly sounds like you are based on the amount of work you're putting into producing products. Ultimately everything you produce puts more money in your pocket.

There is more than one approach to reaching your income target. The question is are you doing what you love? If you are passionate about your products, a bigger audience will find you eventually.

I would like to have a call with you to discuss your business in more detail. I might have some scaling idea's.

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Daniel Brock 14 years ago

I think one of the biggest issues for you will be to keep your traffic machines rolling.

Promoting 10 products you created is no easy feat - especially if they are all in different niches.

If they are all related in some way, you will have a much easier time with it.

What I think you should do is focus on one product at a time until you have the entire thing mapped out - sales process, follow up sequence, traffic machines, etc.

Once its all mapped out, make some video tutorials to teach someone else how to promote it for you. Send those video tutorials off to your outsourcer so that you can move on to your next machine.

Regards,
Dan
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John Romaine

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Brad Gosse

Thanks for including me :-)

I don't have enough details to determine whether or not you are on the right track. It certainly sounds like you are based on the amount of work you're putting into producing products. Ultimately everything you produce puts more money in your pocket.

There is more than one approach to reaching your income target. The question is are you doing what you love? If you are passionate about your products, a bigger audience will find you eventually.

I would like to have a call with you to discuss your business in more detail. I might have some scaling idea's.

Brad, that would be awesome. Any time just PM me.

Thanks

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Zeus66

14 years ago

Hey John, honestly I don't belong mentioned in the same breath as people like Andy Henry or Brad Gosse, but I'm honored you'd mention me. I know how hard you work because we exchange PM's occasionally and I've read your posts here since you've joined, for the most part.

So you have the work ethic part down. That's a big portion of this, believe me. The people that fail are the ones that pop in, want that 'get rich quick' fix, and don't want to listen to anyone telling them this is BUSINESS, not the lottery. You don't have that problem. So it's really just a matter of picking one or at most a handful of good income sources and getting down to business.

Within the IM/MMO industry, so much of this is about relationship building. You need to build lists, then develop some serious good will with your subscribers. If you're selling non-IM products or services, then it's still about relationships, but it's also about getting to know the niche and what the people in it want. I believe strongly in going where your audience hangs out and learning from them. That means forums, mostly. Find out the common questions and concerns, then find ways to answer and give them solutions. Money will follow that.... always. Doesn't matter what niche we're talking about.

Don't just build sites to increase the numbers you can tell people about. I'm not saying you do that because you don't strike me as that kind of guy, but it's an easy trap to fall into nonetheless. I've been there before. I guess what I'm saying is - overall - find what makes you money and repeat those things. Don't stray into things that eat time but aren't making you money, either immediately or in the near future (like developing rapport with your list members).

Hope that helps, my friend!

John

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John Romaine

14 years ago

Steven? Any thoughts mate? Id value your opinion on this.

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Dennis Gaskill

14 years ago

Hi Johnny - I know I'm not on your A list but I thought I'd chime in anyway. Feel free to ignore me completely, I can take it.

In addition to what you are doing, which seems fine to me, you might want to also build one main site that features all your products. This is what I do, well, it features most of my products anyway...plus on that site I have lots of content there to feed the search engines.

As a rule the search engines generally aren't real keen on small product based sites, they prefer content based sites. Consider this, I have about 270 content pages and 30 product pages on my "big" site. That's a lot of entry points people can come to my site through. Of course, this really works best if all your products are based around one unifying theme, otherwise it's hard to establish any kind of authority.

Just a thought. I've earned my living online with this strategy since 1999. I'm not making the $80,000 a month you aspire to because I reached a comfort level that I was satisfied with. I'm just now starting to ramp things up a few notches, as my needs have changed since I first started.

Hope that helps, good luck.

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John Romaine

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Dennis Gaskill

Hi Johnny - I know I'm not on your A list but I thought I'd chime in anyway. Feel free to ignore me completely, I can take it.

In addition to what you are doing, which seems fine to me, you might want to also build one main site that features all your products. This is what I do, well, it features most of my products anyway...plus on that site I have lots of content there to feed the search engines.

As a rule the search engines generally aren't real keen on small product based sites, they prefer content based sites. Consider this, I have about 270 content pages and 30 product pages on my "big" site. That's a lot of entry points people can come to my site through. Of course, this really works best if all your products are based around one unifying theme, otherwise it's hard to establish any kind of authority.

Just a thought. I've earned my living online with this strategy since 1999. I'm not making the $80,000 a month you aspire to because I reached a comfort level that I was satisfied with. I'm just now starting to ramp things up a few notches, as my needs have changed since I first started.

Hope that helps, good luck.

Hi Dennis,
Thanks for your thoughts. Out of interest, how many mini sites do you currently own and what sort of monthly revenue are you generating. PM if you prefer. Hope you dont mind me asking, I just have this notion of "more sites/products" more income - and I want to ensure that Im right in thinking this.

Cheers

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Dennis Gaskill

14 years ago

Johnny, let's just say I have more than a handful but way less than Andy Henry.

Most of my income comes from my main site, but that's to be expected for several reasons:

- I started with the main site first.

- All my information products, even from the small sites, funnels people to my main site.

- My main site gets a lot more search engine love and volunteered backlinks (the kind we don't have to create ourselves).

I originally started the small sites for affiliates to send people to specific products without the distraction of all my other content; but first I wanted to test search engine optimization concepts for minisites.

I haven't got the affiliate stuff implemented yet because I'm still testing the seo stuff, plus I came with a couple "big project" ideas that have been taking up a lot of time. The sites do get some organic traffic that earns money, but it isn't a lot yet, anywhere from $50 to $150 bucks a month or so, but that's not bad considering I haven't promoted them other than a few links to them to get them indexed. Making money from them hasn't really been my main focus with these sites yet, but that focus will change in 4-6 months.

I'm kind of doing what you're doing, only in reverse. I started with the big site and I'm building a network of smaller sites later. I'm still doing some search engine testing for seo for minisites, so I'm not ready to open them to affiliates yet. I just wanted to introduce the idea of having one main site in addition to your collection of smaller sites for your consideration. The "big site" concept has been very good to me, very good, so I wanted to get that idea across to you.

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Mr. Enthusiastic

14 years ago

Originally Posted by ramone_johnny

I eat hard work, discipline, focus and dedication for breakfast, BUT I still use the napkin of uncertainty to wipe my mouth when Im done.

I just want to appreciate that tasty metaphor.

I've not reached your goals, but I might be able to help you think about some ways to reach them.

You said your goal is an $80k/month income by the end of the year.
There are ten months left in 2010. To reach your goal, you need to build an additional $8k/month income each week. That's an average of an additional $2k/month income built by each week's work. If you let yourself have weekends, that's an average of $400 monthly income built for each day's work.

If you have the stamina for ten hour days, that means that each and every hour's work needs to create an additional $40 monthly income.

If whatever you're doing for ten hours a day builds $400/month, all you need to do is more of it. You mentioned you're already outsourcing.

If you are not consistently generating an additional $40 monthly income for each hour's work, then your primary task should be to find some more effective use of your time. To get there, you might need to be more efficient with your existing tasks. Or you might need to replace them with completely different tasks.

What one-hour project can create your next $40 monthly income stream?

I see you're a War Room member. What do you think of Allen's advice to become a product creator, rather than an affiliate? What's your overall strategic plan?

Chris

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GoGetta

14 years ago

Hey Buddy,

Yes, in one word I think you are doing the right thing. Having your own products is a great approach. I actually follow a similar model to you and am having awesome results right now.

I do have a lot of products, in different niches, not just IM, and my next aim is to take what I got and move it up further.

Just like Alexa says, why not take the 10 products you have and put double time into promotion on these for a month. After a month, evaluate your progress and then decide whether to create more or scale even further with what you already have!

Daniel also has a great point about outsourcing! Find out the way to scale your sales in the next month and then get your outsourcers to take over while you move into other markets if thats what satisfies your appetite!

This is pretty much the model I have worked with success. I love building new products and will always build new product because I know it helps others!

A way of looking at it is,

Is it easier to take a product you already have, thats making $$$, MAKE MORE!

Or,

Start from scratch with another!

I would bet its the first option!

Good luck buddy and if you need any help, just PM me!

GoGetta

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Andyhenry

14 years ago

Hey Johnny,

Here's what I think.

You're doing great, but you've accidentally got yourself in the "it's a numbers game" way of operating.

So, if you want to reach your goal using your existing model then yes - you need to keep building more.

However, I wouldn't suggest you just do that without thinking of how to get more focused.

It's my experience that it's easier to hit bigger numbers by having more focus on one market than by diversifying into lots of others.

Let's take an example - Say your main niche is golf and you're currently making $400 a month selling your golf ebook and collecting emails as you go.

Rather than go build a new product about stamp collecting, build on what you have and be creative about other ways to build and monetize.

So, maybe you're getting 200 visitors a day to your site and converting 4 of them into buyers - that still leaves 196 that didn't make you any money.

One easy way to increase the revenue of your site would be to sell advertising space on it. Maybe that's not your thing though, so you might prefer to spend some time finding other golfing websites and doing JVs for them to sell your ebook (and get you more email addresses). Perhaps you're not spending much time cultivating the relationships you already have with your existing visitors and customers and putting some great content into your autoresponder might be a good way to go (with some opportunities for them to buy more stuff that they want).

Maybe you want to go offline and contact a bunch of golf clubs and let them sell your ebook (maybe even hard copies of it). You could sponser some of their golf events - put up a box of balls as a prize and get some advertising for your site/book.

Maybe you just call around your local country clubs that have golf courses and find golf coaches / teachers that you could interview and include them in your next ebook and use videos of the interviews to drive more traffic.

You could even get some software created that lets golfers keep track of their scores and trend some important things to let them see improvements - if they're struggling with their driving, your software gives them tips and recommends clubs that have bigger sweet spots. etc. etc.

There are a LOT of ways to make more money from your niches.

I think that ultimately it's better NOT to play the numbers game because the more you do - the harder it is to keep track and be effective.

I have no idea what niches you're in - but I would look at building out your existing businesses and filling up your funnel to get a higher lifetime value per customer.

It's much easier to make more money with the same customer than to get the same money from a new customer.

And let's not forget leveraging other players in your niche who already touch most of your target audience and working with them to make a win win way for them to help you.

Does that make sense?

Andy

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John Romaine

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Andyhenry

It's my experience that it's easier to hit bigger numbers by having more focus on one market than by diversifying into lots of others.

Let's take an example - Say your main niche is golf and you're currently making $400 a month selling your golf ebook and collecting emails as you go.

Rather than go build a new product about stamp collecting, build on what you have and be creative about other ways to build and monetize.

So, maybe you're getting 200 visitors a day to your site and converting 4 of them into buyers - that still leaves 196 that didn't make you any money.

One easy way to increase the revenue of your site would be to sell advertising space on it. Maybe that's not your thing though, so you might prefer to spend some time finding other golfing websites and doing JVs for them to sell your ebook (and get you more email addresses). Perhaps you're not spending much time cultivating the relationships you already have with your existing visitors and customers and putting some great content into your autoresponder might be a good way to go (with some opportunities for them to buy more stuff that they want).

Maybe you want to go offline and contact a bunch of golf clubs and let them sell your ebook (maybe even hard copies of it). You could sponser some of their golf events - put up a box of balls as a prize and get some advertising for your site/book.

Maybe you just call around your local country clubs that have golf courses and find golf coaches / teachers that you could interview and include them in your next ebook and use videos of the interviews to drive more traffic.

You could even get some software created that lets golfers keep track of their scores and trend some important things to let them see improvements - if they're struggling with their driving, your software gives them tips and recommends clubs that have bigger sweet spots. etc. etc.

There are a LOT of ways to make more money from your niches.

I think that ultimately it's better NOT to play the numbers game because the more you do - the harder it is to keep track and be effective.

I have no idea what niches you're in - but I would look at building out your existing businesses and filling up your funnel to get a higher lifetime value per customer.

It's much easier to make more money with the same customer than to get the same money from a new customer.

And let's not forget leveraging other players in your niche who already touch most of your target audience and working with them to make a win win way for them to help you.

Does that make sense?

Andy

Thanks Andy, and everyone else for their input. Especially Alexa...*kiss!

It seems theres a definite trend here, and that is maximize the earning potential of each site/product/niche before moving onto the next, which I guess makes good sense.

Im going to apply the brakes at 10 sites and then go back and do exactly this. Maximize the earning potential out of them, by pushing the promotion side of things. I know I can probably increase conversions just by "tightening up" my keywords (I dont use PPC, just articles) so that will be a start, then from there Im thinking of offering more products per site. What are your thoughts on this Andy? Lets say I do have a golfing ebook on "How to improve your swing". Is it worthwhile offering a number of other products related to the golfing niche that they *might* be interested in? All on the same site? Before you say, "too many options, you'll confuse them..." Perhaps I could send over the sites that I currently have, and you can see the layout im using. *shrug

You mention advertising space. I was using Adsense on these sites and making about $3 a day from 2 sites. Alexa told me to get rid of it, as did a few others here so I did

I felt a bit silly about it, but i was just trying to squeeze every cent out of each site - bad move?? :confused:

I dont want to get involved in offline marketing. I want to have sites/products/niches generating passive income, purely from the implemented business model - that being - mini sites selling info products.

I got some thinking to do, but appreciate your input.

Thanks all

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Andyhenry

14 years ago

Originally Posted by ramone_johnny

Thanks Andy, and everyone else for their input. Especially Alexa...*kiss!

It seems theres a definite trend here, and that is maximize the earning potential of each site/product/niche before moving onto the next, which I guess makes good sense.

Im going to apply the brakes at 10 sites and then go back and do exactly this. Maximize the earning potential out of them, by pushing the promotion side of things. I know I can probably increase conversions just by "tightening up" my keywords (I dont use PPC, just articles) so that will be a start, then from there Im thinking of offering more products per site. What are your thoughts on this Andy? Lets say I do have a golfing ebook on "How to improve your swing". Is it worthwhile offering a number of other products related to the golfing niche that they *might* be interested in? All on the same site? Before you say, "too many options, you'll confuse them..." Perhaps I could send over the sites that I currently have, and you can see the layout im using. *shrug

You mention advertising space. I was using Adsense on these sites and making about $3 a day from 2 sites. Alexa told me to get rid of it, as did a few others here so I did

I felt a bit silly about it, but i was just trying to squeeze every cent out of each site - bad move?? :confused:

I dont want to get involved in offline marketing. I want to have sites/products/niches generating passive income, purely from the implemented business model - that being - mini sites selling info products.

I got some thinking to do, but appreciate your input.

Thanks all

Hey again Johnny,

(PM me a link or 2 and I'll check it out and send you feedback)

For the Adsense - there are good times to use Adsense but probably not for the model you're working. It's better to keep things focused and get your visitor value from optimising your lead generation and conversion process, then having a nice funnel which gives your customers a lot of value but also a lot of opportunities to make you money.

Make sure you have an affiliate program and that your customers are part of it.

Make sure that your autoresponder has plenty of messages in it and that each one of them has a way for someone to buy something (even if it's just in a "things you might like to check out" section at the bottom of each one.

Check out your niches for supplementary products of different values (if you're selling an ebook, find someone selling videos or a home study course etc.) and give your customers the chance to buy high ticket items - for one high ticket sale you can save yourself having to make 50 low ticket sales.

Make good use of OTOs and your thank you pages. (you might even want to do a traffic exchange or find a group of sites to all promote each other on your thank you pages)

It's easier to focus on what you've already been able to get money from doing and pass any lessons from that to the rest of your business and go for 80% improvement with 20% tweeking first.

It's important to get a nicely filled-out offering that keeps your customers interested and able to purchase - if you get the traffic generation right, you might have a hungry group of buyers and just not be offering them as much as they would buy, just don't do it all in once place - put the extras in OTOs, offers and autoresponder messages.

If you get it right and get a good portion of your niche targeted, you can keep making money every month even if you're not making new sales - with the new sales too, you multiply your results.

You might also consider Co-Registrations for your ezine too, it's a quick and effective way to grow your list and find JV partners or other product owners with stuff you can offer.

If you take the golf niche as an example again - you may be selling a report on increasing your driving distance, but the same person could end up buying clubs, bags, trolley etc. via one of your affiliate links.

The important thing is to keep focused and build up in a logical way that supports and enhances what you already have.

The same thing goes for branching out in to new niches - do it, but try to make them related to your existing ones, so that you can have a bigger plan (to eventually turn all of your info products into a larger package) so that as soon as you create something new - you already have a list of relevant people to tell about it.

It doesn't make sense to keep jumping on things that are unrelated as it makes it harder to keep focused, less efficient to create value for them all, and stops you leveraging your existing work to give new sites/products an immediate boost.

Andy

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WD Mino

14 years ago

Hi John,

No need to be on a list man way too many people in here to be above or singled out but thanks for thinking I might have something to offer.

Best thing to do is just focus on one site get it"right" and duplicate the process.
the problem with branching out into different market niches is you can easily become sidetracked and overwhelmed.

What you are doing is exactly what needs to be done but just focus. you already have a good product perfect the sales end and then you can easily duplicate what you have done always go from A-B never from A-C in the time I have known you you have come up with some good stuff so just hone what your doing once you do that you will have the original product/site generating while you focus on the next and then after that you will have 2 so on and so forth.

Best of success my friend
-WD

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Kelly Verge

14 years ago

Here's an example (albeit on a smaller scale than you're talking about):

Assume you have a site that's converting at 2% and today it's averaging 20 visitors a day. Since you already have a converting site, wouldn't it make much more sense to ramp it up rather than trying to start another like it from scratch?

Obviously there's a cap beyond which this is no longer true (would a worm-farming niche EVER produce $80K/Mo?), but you should consider where your site is compared to the market potential before branching out.

And yes, you need to start doing some strategic planning.

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mello

14 years ago

Originally Posted by ramone_johnny

Id really like some feedback on this, would appreciate it greatly.

Thanks guys.

John

I can't add value for you mate but appreciate you asking the question as you've got some great feedback the rest of us can take onboard. Thanks for the thread. Sounds like you've got a plan to move forward.

Btw - love that you're from Bris Vegas

Cheers
Mel

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AndrewCavanagh 14 years ago

The answer is...maybe.

You should be looking at where you're getting your best, most consistent results and do more of that.

Also are their niches where you're getting much better results?

If so you may want to do more websites and products in that niche....targeting sub niches.

That way you can be selling multiple products to each prospect who enters your sales funnel in that major niche.

You may also want to think through a more agressive sales funnel with some very high priced products and services as back end.

In some cases you could be promoting high priced back end products and services with good commissions as an affiliate.

But thinking through that sales funnel and maximizing your profits from the sites that are working would be an obvious step.

In other words...increase your efforts where you're likely to get a higher return.

Also if you have a model that's working and making a profit you may seriously consider outsourcing some of your work so you can increase the rate you're doing this work at.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh
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John Romaine

14 years ago

Thanks Andy, PM sent

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MikeHumphreys 14 years ago

Johnny,

Look at each one of your product's conversion rates. Set up some split testing or multi-variate testing on their sales letters. There's a lot of things you can test but even just testing two different headlines can mean finding a new one that converts higher than your current one.

Set up a back-end of complimentary products and services for your existing products. Don't have it be 1 sale and done forever with each customer. Give them more products that they can choose to buy from you, especially things that are useful tools, like software or business templates, and not just 20 different 'how to make money online' plans.

IF you do any or all of the above, you can easily raise the average sale per product on your existing sites significantly... maybe double or more.

Hope that helps,

Mike
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danolund

14 years ago

John, great post and look at all the help that arrived.

I learned a lot by reading the replies.

But the main themes and most important ones I believe are focus and passion.

I get way to distracted and off track myself, In the forum instead of working for example, but glad I took this moment break to read your post.

Dan

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