You Don't Have To Be Stompernet To Be Successful...Share Your Business Model

I like to just do what other people are doing, but try my best to do it better.

One of my personal philosophies is that people very often will become like the people they surround themselves with. I know that, during my time as a soccer player, I progressed very little from junior to senior year, as I was varsity, and one of the better players in the league. I joined a traveling team with older guys that had 2 or 3 years on me, and I was one of the weaker players in the league.

I got noticeably more skilled every few weeks, as the level of my peers stepped up, I found that I had to as well, or get the boot. Part of me wanted to impress, part wanted to prove that I could, and the rest wanted to be even a little better.

Sorry for the corny story. I have several business models that have worked for me:

1. Site selling. I identify a strong market with fair competition, find a suitable and converting product, create the site, create the advertising campaign, and use my knowledge of what works and what probably doesn't to make it as profitable as I can within a month or two, outsourcing all of article writing, submission work, stuff like that. I then list it for sale and wait for the money to come in. It's pretty easy, sometimes it feels hit and miss and get nerve wracking wondering if it'll pay off like last time, or the time before that, or if it' will flop. Proving potential growth and relaying that to a potential buyer is really the difference between a $3,000 sale and a $10,000 sale. Not for everyone, but big payouts are fun

2. Moving into a broad, high traffic niche that I can use a lot of viral and social networking for, and creating multiple niche products within that broader niche. I have a unique autoresponder for each sub niche, that when completed, moves the user into the mailing section for the broader niche. On the back end of each smaller niche is a monthly subscription that offers access to all of the other related niches, within the broader niche.

So I have a list that passively sells to each smaller niche, keeps track of who was in the small niche, and also combines them into the same category as the broad niche. So I can market products within this broad niche to their respective "sub-niche". I can overlap them, send them to everyone, or just one sub-niche at a time if I please.

Pros: I can market products within this broad niche perfectly to any sub category, while still maintaining a large list for JV power.

Cons: Can be a freaking bitch to set up. Sorry for the language, but it's very time consuming, and can be a challenge to find a broad enough niche with a enough sub niches to make this worth while. A lot of outsourcing goes on here, and if you aren't comfortable with it, may not be for you.

I have to give kirt christensen credit for the basic idea. I made some changes, but generally it was something he briefly mentioned to me as a solid business plan that I really took to heart.

3. Break into overly-saturated, crazy high traffic markets, and appeal to the affiliates and other traffic commanders. Rather than try and take down the competition by having a bigger list, or a badder adwords account, or higher ranked keywords, sometimes its just easier to realize that they can be your biggest traffic sources.

I pride myself on product creation (the entire package, not just the product itself) in that my partner and I can identify what is working, what is selling, why it's selling, and how we can recreate it, but better, or at least on par. This is similar to appealing to offline businesses by offering online services.

I've found its pretty simple to create a product or service that affiliates in that niche would love to promote, or a tool they would love to use. You can use several methods to figure out the big players, get on their lists, find the other players, get on everyones list, and see what everyone is doing. It takes about 2 minutes every morning to flip through my gmail account and see what these people are doing. If you see the same thing a lot, odds are its doing well, if its high in clickbank it probably converts better than the others.

You can only sell something in so many ways, so its not hard to stay on track of good copywriting. Having a quality designer, doing some quick research, doing a product thats similar but has a fresh twist, or a similar product that is more in depth. We also outsource a lot on this one, we'll use copywriters in that niche, we'll use ghostwriters to get the basis of a product created. Generally, we create the sales letter first, and what we think we can live up to "in terms of promises", and create some teaser copy, show the price points, upsells, and then present them to as many affiliates as possible.

Really, getting a hold of the bigger affiliates is the only hard part, and in Niches outside of IM, it's MUCH easier, and often your competition functions a lot differently than we are used to with IM products, so its a fresh and interesting usually. Not always, but usually.

I think if I had to recommend a business model to someone, it would be the basic create a decent profitable site and sell it for quick money, knowledge and capital for other projects.

I think the best business model though, is one where you have successful operations and place, and have capital and time to keep trying new things.

Haven't you posted a thread or two like this in the past, and got pretty weak replies?

Seems like maybe there aren't that many people trying to operate on a business model, rather people trying to "make money online".

a lot of people i think follow the big guns and try to do what they are doing. Most will fail.

Plenty of people spend all day on here (guilty as charged sometimes). Take action is what you must do..

What ever business model you choose stick to it until you succeed. do not give up and move on to the next one and then the next.

There is no such thing as a get rich quick way. take the time to build an online business.

I'm with Steve on this. I'd much rather keep control of what I do and make a good living. As I'm still building things up I'm not at 6 figures per year but I'm on the way.

It might be interesting when I'm earning more to do a little test with an outsourced site against one of my own in the same niche and see what the difference is.

Here is how my career progressed on the internet.
I started out last year trying to figure out how to pay for University. Here is a rundown of the many different directions I took and finally what is working for me here and now.

1. My first idea ever was to create an online lottery. Crazy, I know. People would pay 1 dollar to win an ever increasing line up of cash or prizes. Didn't go anywhere for obvious reasons.

2. I started a website about Apple thinking I could compete with sites like "apple insider", and "mac world". I gave up after three miserable weeks when I couldn't figure out why I was not on the first page for "Apple". I gave IM up for three months.

3. I then created my first ever affiliate review site. I had bought a few products on affiliate marketing and gave it a whirl. I finally began to understand keyword research, picking a niche... and so on. I made the site and then sold in on sitepoint for $250 and my first real payday. That was only January of this year.

4. I started to flutter around doing CPA, Video marketing, buying domains for parking (funny to think about now), I was buying a few WSO every now and then flapping around getting no where.

5. My big break actually came with a war room post I read and I began to see the error of my ways. I started a simple membership site for a niche that I had not seen one in before. The newsletter idea was providing weekly emails with an interesting lesson in the niche. This finally worked because I focused on creating something of value and seeing it through until the end. Member ship was $5/month and I found recruiting offline people into the program very very easy.

6. I started an offline consulting business that has done very well. I offered my service for free to a couple of local businesses, created a complete online marketing package and then it took off in my town. It is basically the offline gold report to the tee. That now generates after a summer of work substantially more then what a University kid needs to live on every month

7. Right now I am clearing out my portfolio. I will keep my offline business, my membership site and I am focusing on building a recurring income from simple affiliate marketing. I realized I found it easier to find a great product to promote that gives me money every month by simple getting in front of the audience (both offline and online). This idea was inspired by a post by Willie Crawford a little while back on generating a $100,000 business.

I have certainly come a long way in just over a year now. I think too many people get caught up by what the guru's might be pushing. You really don't need another product to give you the business model. I have stopped purchasing informational products entirely because I know I have enough on my computer to create any sort of business I want.

If anybody has any questions about any of my adventures I would be happy to elaborate.