WILL THIS WORK? - HELP ME IMPROVE MY STRATEGY

[TheGodfather]

Hi guys,

I've been reading a lot of posts on the forum. I'm relatively new here and I'm really proud that I am a member of a forum where such great people come to help each other out, this is the Internet at it's best.

Well I'm new to IM so I tried to come up with a step by step strategy to get visitors and make some sales and maybe, for the first time earn some money (except for the first $2,50 i made on Ad Sense last year ).

Anyway here is my strategy (so far), feel free to comment, improve and critique my approach. All help is much appreciated.

1. I found a niche in which I'm gonna work (for now)

2. I'll get a web template made by the affiliate program for the product (they really want it badly to sell their products )

3. I'm gonna do A LOT of keyword research and SEO the site

4. I'm (currently) in the phase of collecting articles and rewriting them, I'm gonna use them to drive traffic to my site.

5. Gonna get a domain name and put my site up live and start to publish articles on a daily basis (2-3 pre-written articles a day/week)

6. Set up an AdWords account and make an ad promoting a free newsletter, and as a bonus a free ebook on the subject.

7. Use email marketing to sell the products from the affiliate site i'm promoting.

My final goal (for now) is: about $500 a week or at least $1000 a month.

Also, from your experience how long do you think will it take to get to that point that i can make that much money?

[Alminc]

As I understand you are planning to promote 2 separate pages:
1. website homepage
2. squeeze page for the newsletter (using ppc)

PPC is expensive if you are not professional and it can ruin your budget.

One cheaper alternative is to create a popup or exit popup on your homepage.
You can offer something of value for free in the popup window in exchange for email address, that strategy works well.

In order to have a popup you will need to include some javascript code in your homepage source code, and considering SEO you should place all javascript code into
separate file and call the file form your homepage.

If you are going to use the template from the company, change the design, make it
look better and unique. You need 5-10 well optimized static pages. On-site optimization is very important, don't forget alt-text for your images, it matters.

You didn't mention a blog. Install optimized wordpress blog in a subfolder, post keyword rich articles regularly and submit your rss feed to top 30 rss aggregators.

If you want to rank in google, concentrate on 2-3 keywords that bring most traffic
and build links with those keywords as anchor text. Find high PR sites where you can post articles and comments with your links, no spamming but relevant posts. Build 15-20 keyword rich links a month.

When you get subscribers, don't hit them with offers, give them good content and more freebies first. They must believe that you are the expert and your recommendation counts. Then hit them with your offers.

Hope this helps a little.

[TheGodfather]

Well i was thinking more of something in the line of making my homepage my squeeze page and offering free reports, and articles on my page. Also I was going to ad a separate page with "special offers" with affiliate links to the sites I'm promoting, but also include the same links in the newsletter and promote the products that way. The ppc would be to get visitors that like the free ebook and articles, that would have to submit their name and email to get the free ebook report, and then receive it in the email.

I was thinking about a blog also but i was dwelling on that since i was gonna do article marketing also so i basically taught that it would generate the same amount of traffic

[New Life]

good luck with the project, being new to this myself, ive an idea how much planning is involved!!!

[urbanned]

I suggest you cut step number 6 which is doing ppc to get newsletter sign up. Its just too expensive and not worth it. Instead create a blog, make it a personal blog of your journey to make money (creativity I'll leave it to you) . Add the sign up newsletter somewhere on the sidebar, with a free ebook so attract more readers to sign up. Much cheaper and you can use your blog for anything!

[cashcow]

I don't think you need to scrap your plans for #6 (The PPC) but you might want to hold off until you are making sales and can figure out the how much each visitor is worth to you, then you will know exactly how much you can pay for PPC and still make a profit.

Lee

[TheGodfather]

thanks to all for the feedback, I appreciate it

[Calvin]

My two cents run thus:

You are making certain assumptions about business online, and are setting yourself up for a long, difficult road. Make it easier on yourself.

If I were advising you, and for the moment I guess I am, here is what I would tell you.

Disclaimer: I use all the services mentioned myself. I have joined the affiliate program of those with affiliate programs. But none of the urls in my post are affiliate urls, and I have no other business or personal connection with any of the sites I mention.

Take care of your hosting, and your autoresponder. My suggestion is a Unselfish Marketer Invites You To Dig Deep In His Pockets! subscription. Hosting and autoresponder is included in the membership, and you also have access to many other useful products and services and memberships. Plus, not to get too ahead of myself, the vault there is filled with PLR and MRR products. If you are going to be promoting stuff anyway, why not promote things where you get to keep 100%?

Whether you join Unselfish Marketer Invites You To Dig Deep In His Pockets! or not, I will now assume you have hosting and an autoresponder.

Create an autoresponder account and generate the code for your opt-in form.

Set up a wordpress blog. No argument, just do it!

Buy slideup FX from SlideUp FX - Instantly Create Effective And Unobtrusive Slide Up Ads For All Your Sites and put it on your blog. Add your opt-in form code to the slide up. Now every page of your blog will have an eye-catching opt-in form. There is also room in the slide up ad to include your "sign up and get this cool free report" blurb. (Hint - this software is included in unselfishmarketer. I'm just saying...)

Create individual Pages on your blog, one for each article you have. When you have a new article, create another page for that article and add it to your blog. Yes, lots and lots of pages. These will all be, or should be, permanently listed on the sidebar of your blog.

Of course you only start with the articles you have, and add new articles as they are written. 3 -5 to start with is just fine.

Only after an article has been on your blog for a couple of days, and "PINGED", do you submit it to the article directories. I use Massive Backlinks and Search Term Domination. Article Marketer.

Unless you are using an article specifically to promote a product directly, the "author's box" at the end of your articles should all reference your free report, and point them back to your site to get it. (See, then people visit your site, see your slide up ad mentioning the free report when they sign up, and then they sign up.)

Now, sign up at Syndicate Kahuna - Home and start getting articles posted to your blog. Depending upon what your niche is, you might have to resign yourself to getting articles which are targeted to a more general category that your specific niche is in, but that's OK.

The articles you write (or have written) yourself, are going to target your niche specifically.

The articles you get from Syndicate Kahuna can be autoposted to your blog, or you can make it so that the articles are sent to your blog, and then wait for your editing and approval. These articles will have other people's links in them, but that is OK. You can edit the articles for clarity, and appropriateness, and ignore and delete any articles which are unfit for human consumption. Just leave the author's links alone, and you will be fine.

An option here, is to make the home page of your blog a static page where you can promote your best product or affiliate product. It's up to you. If you were going to go the route of a static home page, I would make it a page with my opt-in form on it.

Even though the opt-in form is already sliding up on every page, it can not hurt to have your blog's home page a squeeze page also.

But personally, I just let the most recent blog post (article from synidcate kahuna, which I have edited and refined before allowing to post) be my blog's home page.

I set up the syndicate kahuna articles to be frequent enough that I can make one or two posts daily. You should tweak it to find what frequency works best for you and your niche.

Now, you have the articles from SK being pinged when you post them (or when they are auto-posted), you have the articles you are adding as pages pinging when you add them, and you have your articles driving some traffic when you submit them to the article directories.

And every page of your blog is showing your opt-in form, so presumably you are also building your list.

If you have read this far (and let's face it, why not?) please if you only take one thing from this take this advice: DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON PPC!

Especially for your purposes. You are intelligent enough to want to build your list. You also have enough money to spend some on PPC.

Skip the PPC, and build your list directly with that money instead.

I would set up a separate opt-in page (outside of the blog itself) and an account on my autoresponder set up specifically for opt-in leads.

Then sign up at List Building - Opt-In List Building - Email Lead Generation - Co-Registration (which is where I am signed up) and purchase your list there. With a LBP subscription, you are basically outsourcing your traffic generation.

Instead of trying to drive traffic and use that traffic to build your list, you get to jump directly to the building a list part. Your focus shifts from traffic generation, to relationship building and promoting.

Although, I do suggest that you purchase the addon's to filter your list. Otherwise you will most likely end up with a bunch of useless emails from freebie seekers.

Listbuilderpro was not worth it to me, until I started paying to have my leads filtered. Now, it is a vital component to my online business.

Once you are signed up at LBP, your list will grow every day, regardless of how well or how poorly your traffic generation efforts were that day.

It's up to you, but I highly recommend it.

And that is my advice: Unselfishmarketer, Autoresponder, Wordpress blog, SlideUp-FX, Syndicate Kahuna, Article Marketer, and ListbuilderPro.

Those are the exact websites I use, and the exact method I use in building my own niche websites.

And right now, I am starting to toy with the idea of forgetting about setting up a blog and website altogether, and just build my niche lists using Listbuilderpro, and setting up sales pages and download pages on a single website using Money Page Manager, which you can pick up at:

Money Page Manager

So far, the results look pretty good, at least for my business. Your results may vary.

Hope that helps.

Calvin