New to Internet Marketing: No Need for Student Loan next Year?

Hi there,

My name is Joe; I've been an extremely avid reader of the Warrior Forums for the past week or so. (By 'avid' I mean I was reading an AdSense thread during my walk home from the takeaway tonight - I just can't stop myself!)

I've found everything on these forums absolutely intriguing. I love the idea of having a passive income, particularly during uni where a couple of extra quid to buy a round at the pub wouldn't go a miss.

I've taken so much information in I can't possibly act on it all at once, particularly as I've read such varying methods of monetizing sites, finding niches, creating traffic (you get the idea...).

My Internet Marketing model

I'll summarize this quite a bit, partly because I'm not entirely sure how I'll go about some things, and partly because I flat out don't have a clue how I'll go about other things

I am planning on creating a series of micro niche websites. I can't really say an amount of websites I'd like to have because that depends on how successful each website becomes. Obviously I could strive to reach a goal of 100 websites by February, but this may net less than creating 30 websites would by February if I made myself traffic and revenue targets. Seeing as revenue is my one and only end goal for this, I'd take the latter any day.
- So I'll leave this part pretty empty I guess, a figure in my head I'd like to have possibly by February is 10-20 I would say...

Monetization

I plan on monetizing with AdSense placed in areas in which I have read convert the best, but I will also attempt my own testing with ad placements and colours. I will also be placing Amazon affiliation links within the content of my sites.

I don't see myself really attempting to sell digital products unless a particularly good niche opens up and there's a market for them. In that case I'd just follow where the money was and try monetizing with Clickbank.

Outsourcing?

I won't be outsourcing anything whatsoever. I (think) I enjoy writing. I am, however, not experienced at all and have not yet had to write large amounts of quality material as of yet. (Other than a few A level essays!)

I am familiar with the popular CMS's, I'm going to be using Wordpress though as I find it the easiest for the simple things a micro niche blog needs, and is easily customizable with regard to layout.

Finding A Niche

I think this is kinda the holy grail of this business model, is this correct? I'd also imagine that once you're able to find a niche, you're able to find more niches. By this I mean, once you have your niche finding methods in place, finding them shouldn't be 'too' hard?

Some of the methods I'm going to use:

• Google Keyword Search
• Ebay Pulse
• Amazon (general categories)
• Other retail stores - Popular products etc
• Making notes on my phone if I think I spot a potential niche when generally out of the house

I believe there are hundreds/thousands more ways of finding a profitable niche, you just need to think outside the box and use your head. I think I can relate my recent niche finding to being on youtube... I always get carried away with the related videos, I can sit there for ages, but it always leads to something I like. This kinda happens when I use Google Keyword Search. (Sorry, I can't explain my thoughts properly!).

SEO

I hope I'll be finding good enough keywords that I won't have to do a ridiculous amount of backlinking and all that jazz.

I'll be using 'All in one SEO' for Wordpress for my on page SEO.

I'll be submitting articles to the popular directories, I don't know how many yet as it varies for every site. I guess it'll be between 1-5? (not a clue with this really).

To conclude

I apologize for not (being able) to go into detail about all the points raised above, I do however hope to gain enough experience over the next few weeks to be able to answer them in more detail.

You may have noticed I've used words such as 'plan' and 'hopefully' quite a bit in this OP. This is because nothing I've mentioned this far is set in stone, I know how things in business change very easily, so I need to be able to adapt to changing conditions in the marketplace/s and with the various IM practices.

I have hosting already which includes 2 databases. My knowledge of the CMS's is from tihs previous year where i've been teaching myself how to make a website, but with no real end goal - not with IM in mind. So I am completely new to IM (adsense, affiliates etc).



I have one question for the moment if that's OK...

I think I've found a real nugget of a niche by using the keyword search combines with checking out Amazon. Some of the combinations of keyword (some 3 words long) have CPC's of £100+. This is with 1000-2500 searches a month, and only 8 results with the allintitle query.

1. Does this seem like a good niche? What other figures should I check out before pursuing?
2. How accurate is the big G's estimated CPC?
3. Is the CPC the amount I personally get paid per click? Or the amount the advertiser is paying in total in his campaign?

I'll be checking this thread non stop, it'd be great if we could get some questions going or if some other people want to hop along and start at the same time as me.

Thanks for reading,

Joe