I turned $2.17 into $5000

A year ago I spent $2.17 and about 4 hours that turned into $5000 over the next 6 months. I've milked it for as much as I can without dedicating more time to it, so I thought I'd share.

I work an early morning job (for the insurance) and listen to talk radio on my way in. I kept hearing this short radio spot advertising a website. I'm sure you know the type. They kept saying the name of the website over and over and over again, hoping the listener would remember it once they were close to a computer.

Luckily, I did. I went to the site and realized very quickly it was just a simple CPA offer. Email submit for a free something or other, but only if you then completed 7 additional offers.

At this point in my internet marketing career, not only was I working early morning at a warehouse, but I was also working day time customer service for an online retailer. I spent everyday on the phone with people who had bare minimum computer experience.

9 times out of 10 when I told a customer to go to a specific website address they would type the URL I gave them into Google and search for it.

I realized that most people hearing the ad would type the URL into Google and search for it. Come to find out, the URL as a keyword phrase, had no competition. There were no trademarked terms and nobody was optimizing for that phrase.

I registered the .net extension of the site ($2.17), forwarded the URL to my own CPA link for a similar offer, put up a Squidoo lens with an honest review of the site and what to expect and directed people to my own link. I then did about 15 minutes of social bookmarking and let it go.

I finished this late one night, probably at 11:30pm. Before I left for my early job (4:30am) my Digg of my lens was #1 in Google for that keyword phrase.

I did this with 3 or 4 other offers, kind of as a side note experiment, and ended up with $5k by the end of July. Not bad for a minimal amount of work.

Guess what, there are a ton of advertisements on radio and TV driving traffic to a website. Take a few minutes and check on the URL as a keyword. How hard would it be to get ranked for that URL? Not Hard! I'm glad somebody was paying for the advertising, because it paid off for me.