how's this for a $4000/month plan?

14 replies
G'day,

so far I've been treating Internet Marketing like a "JOB" (apologies for using such filthy language here...):

all my efforts were so far either

- 'create product, flog it, move on to next', without building a real list (yes, shame on me) or
- do an affiliate promotion by building websites, driving traffic to it and cashing in the cheques (some rather successful in terms of cash generated, but again, no list)

So, in an attempt to become a 'real' Internet marketer, with passive income, here's my (ambitious?) plan for March 2010:

I'd like to set up a bunch of affiliate sites that

a) build me a list AND
b) generate on average $1000/week

(by the end of the month).

Here's my thinking (and this is where I'd appreciate your input):

going backwards, to make $1000,

one way to look at it would be to take the good ol' rule of thumb: for every name on your list, expect to make $1/month. So: "all" I need is to add 4000 people to my list and I'm done...
Say I get a good 'freebie' offer out, can I expect a 10% signup rate?
If so, I'd need to have a tota of around 40.000 visitors to my sites in a month, i.e. around 1333/day and I should have my list within 1 month.

any comments so far?

here a maybe more practical calculation:

so, the other way would be:

assuming I have:

1) average profit per sale: $20 (so I'll pick affiliate products with an average of $20 payout)
2) average signup-rate to my list: 10% of visitors (see above! I know some people talk about 30-60% signup rates, but, let's start at the lower end -- I have picked a bunch of keywords for which I have a great offer, so fingers crossed the 10% is ok...)
3) a 10% sales-conversion (ok, ok, hear me out): follow-up the list with 5-7 pieces of great content (plus a "share my private resource"-section where I review related affiliate offers), then the affiliate sale. I know, 10% is high, but if you look at the usual "cold traffic" conversion rates (where people report between 1-2%, then 10% (sales) of 10% (signup to list) is the same as 1% from cold traffic. Except, this is no longer cold....

then I need to have

10 signups for 1 sale ==
(10 * 10 signups) = 100 visitors for 1 sale
as I need $1000/20 = 50 sales per week, I need
(50 * 100) = 5000 visitors/week to get my 50 sales/week.

that's just over 700 unique visitors to my site every day.


so, whichever way I look at it, I need around 700-1300, let's call it 1000 visitors/day to my site.

If I were to go the SEO route (not likely in the 1-month time-frame, but like I said, this is my 'passive income' project), then assuming I'm getting 20% of front-page traffic once on page 1, then (and here's my question to the SEO gurus out there):

can I assume that if GAKT gives me a daily search-volume (exact match) of 100, then if I'm in 2nd or 3rd pos (make an effort to have a double-indented listing) I can get around 20% of those clicks?

If so, I'd need 1000/20% = 5000 exact match searches per day according to GAKT.

Meaning: assuming I can find 10 KW with around 500 exact match searches per day, then *all* I need to do is build 10 sites, get them ranked for that keyword and I *should* be done.

Easy;-)

in the meantime, any other suggestions on how to drive around 1000 visitors/day to my site(s) to get this up and running until I'm ranking?

Cheers

Veit
#$4 or month #$4000 per month #front-page #plan #seo
  • Profile picture of the author Marhelper
    I think the plan is doable but make sure that you treat your list like people not numbers and potential sales. Provide above and beyond value to your list.
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  • Profile picture of the author Rupps
    Wow, that's a lot to go through.

    I think to get the traffic you want you need to go extremely all-out viral (like youtube) or gets some good JV's to send traffic to your sites/offer.

    Expecting to get top rankings with 10 KW's in one month that will pull in those numbers would be a pretty good feat to accomplish. Hope you pull it off.

    Best of Luck!
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    • Profile picture of the author cellcom
      Great Post - couple of thoughts.

      #1 - I am not sure where that $1/name/month "myth" came from but I have always heard it myself, and see it often - my personal results are no where near that - perhaps if you have a list of people who already bought a product from you you could achieve that, but on a new list just from opt-ins I do not think you will achieve that.

      #2 - Do you have your own product or only affiliate products ? The reason I say that is if you have your own product (or are good at creating them) I would recommend doing 1 or 2 WSO's. That should easily generate about 1/2 (or more) of your income which would take a lot of the work & pressure off - then you could implement the long term strategy you outline in your post of building websites with traffic & lists for you to market too.

      I think you have a great plan - I just think you are expecting too much, too soon using the techniques outlined in your post.
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      • Profile picture of the author VeitSchenk
        thanks for the feedback.

        yes, the creating own product thing is what I generally do, and doing special versions of it is something I'll do this month.

        the focus of this was: "create a stream of PASSIVE income".

        and yes, doing it the SEO route and expecting that level of results in a month is not something where I'd be confident (having done no real SEO before...)

        Cheers

        Veit

        Originally Posted by cellcom View Post

        Great Post - couple of thoughts.

        #1 - I am not sure where that $1/name/month "myth" came from but I have always heard it myself, and see it often - my personal results are no where near that - perhaps if you have a list of people who already bought a product from you you could achieve that, but on a new list just from opt-ins I do not think you will achieve that.

        #2 - Do you have your own product or only affiliate products ? The reason I say that is if you have your own product (or are good at creating them) I would recommend doing 1 or 2 WSO's. That should easily generate about 1/2 (or more) of your income which would take a lot of the work & pressure off - then you could implement the long term strategy you outline in your post of building websites with traffic & lists for you to market too.

        I think you have a great plan - I just think you are expecting too much, too soon using the techniques outlined in your post.
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  • Profile picture of the author Matt Bard
    Veit, to sum up all of the math above,

    Traffic x Conversions x Price = Profit

    You need 100 people a day with a sales page that converts at 1% and a profit margin (you make per sale) $25 to make $25 a day.

    To make between $3000 and $4000 a month you need to get more traffic, get a higher converting sales page or sell a higher priced product.

    The most difficult of the three is a higher converting sales page.

    (The industry average for sales page conversion is around 2% but be conservative at 1%)

    The easiest is to find a higher priced product. ( sell one product a day for $100 profit)

    You can increase your traffic. (400 people a day = $100 a day for a $25 product)

    Make adjustments to increase the value of all three. (Traffic 200 x Conversion 2% x $30 = $3600 a month)

    Your idea of using a list to "warm up" to higher conversions is a good one but that still does not guarantee a 10% conversion on each offer but you know that.

    Next the search math.

    Not everyone who types in a search term (keyword) and hits the "Search" button go on to click on any of the site links that come up.

    There is a percentage of people that realize that they made a mistake, or the phone rings, or any number of other reasons to stop them from continuing with that search.

    So the "Monthly Search Volume" will show you a number but there is around 4% - 8% that never continue their search. So you need to subtract those from the monthly totals.

    Just to be safe, I deduct 10%.

    Then out of the 90% that actually click on a link at the search results page almost another 12% turn to the second page of the results.

    Of the 78% that click on the front page, 70% of the clicks go to the top three listings and the rest trickle down the remaining 7 spots out of the 10 on the front page.

    That is around 8% that 7 people are competing for. If your site description was like a "killer headline" and got half of those people, you are still only talking about 4%. It is safer to think of 2%.

    So when you are talking about getting 20% of the searches, you would have to be in one of the top three positions on the front page.

    Try adjusting your numbers based on getting around 2% - 5% of the search numbers so you will not be disappointed.
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    • Profile picture of the author VeitSchenk
      wow, cool, that's exactly the info I was after! thank you very much
      (bit thank you to the other posters as well)

      especially the "what percentage of traffic can I expect to click", that was the crucial part ... bummer it's so low....

      just to clarify, the SEO route is medium/long term.

      right now I'm wondering what other methods YOU would use to drive that level of traffic to a site/several sites? (i.e. if you had to start this, knowing what you know now, what would YOU do?)

      cheers

      Veit

      Originally Posted by Matt M View Post

      Veit, to sum up all of the math above,

      Traffic x Conversions x Price = Profit

      You need 100 people a day with a sales page that converts at 1% and a profit margin (you make per sale) $25 to make $25 a day.

      To make between $3000 and $4000 a month you need to get more traffic, get a higher converting sales page or sell a higher priced product.

      The most difficult of the three is a higher converting sales page.

      (The industry average for sales page conversion is around 2% but be conservative at 1%)

      The easiest is to find a higher priced product. ( sell one product a day for $100 profit)

      You can increase your traffic. (400 people a day = $100 a day for a $25 profit)

      Make adjustments to increase the value of all three. (Traffic 200 x Conversion 2% x $30 = $3600 a month)

      Your idea of using a list to "warm up" to higher conversions is a good one but that still does not guarantee a 10% conversion on each offer but you know that.

      Next the search math.

      Not everyone who types in a search term (keyword) and hits the "Search" button go on to click on any of the site links that come up.

      There is a percentage of people that realize that they made a mistake, or the phone rings, or any number of other reasons to stop them from continuing with that search.

      So the "Monthly Search Volume" will show you a number but there is around 4% - 8% that never continue their search. So you need to subtract those from the monthly totals.

      Just to be safe, I deduct 10%.

      Then out of the 90% that actually click on a link at the search results page almost another 12% turn to the second page of the results.

      Of the 78% that click on the front page, 70% of the clicks go to the top three listings and the rest trickle down the remaining 7 spots out of the 10 on the front page.

      That is around 8% that 7 people are competing for. If your site description was like a "killer headline" and got half of those people, you are still only talking about 4%. It is safer to think of 2%.

      So when you are talking about getting 20% of the searches, you would have to be in one of the top three positions on the front page.

      Try adjusting your numbers based on getting around 2% - 5% of the search numbers so you will not be disappointed.
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      Connect with me on FB: https://www.facebook.com/veitschenk

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  • Profile picture of the author Nic Lynn
    Though the math hurts my head, your plan is solid, but it will take a bit more than a month to do this the SEO route. I like you being conservative in the numbers and the formula... I'd even be more conservative in the 10% list sign-up and sales conversion variables (though this will depend on som many things such as message, offer, topic and audience).
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  • Profile picture of the author Matt Bard
    Veit, the most effective ways to get traffic is to pay for it and or JVs.

    Everything else is a big test. The SEO route puts your plan in the hands of a search engine that can change anything at anytime. (I'll probably get blasted by all of the SEO people now)

    Finding someone who already has a big list saves you a lot of time trying to build yours one person at a time.

    p.s. Loved your videos by the way. You are a natural in front of a camera and you could do more videos to promote your opt-ins. You could also find a way to make a video promoting a product for someone who has a list
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    • Profile picture of the author VeitSchenk
      Matt,

      great idea, look out for that WSO "I'll do your promo-videos for you" (as long as you're male, have a European-British accent and don't like shaving;-)

      Cheers

      Veit

      Originally Posted by Matt M View Post


      p.s. Loved your videos by the way. You are a natural in front of a camera and you could do more videos to promote your opt-ins. You could also find a way to make a video promoting a product for someone who has a list
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        Veit, even if your plan never works out as you've laid it out, showing your thought process so clearly will help a lot of newbies. If they also take in Matt's contributions, they should end up with a much more realistic scenario.

        Based on that contribution alone, you are forgiven for using such a nasty word around here... :p

        To answer your question, though, I'd look at paid advertising for testing. Regular PPC if you have the budget. CPM on places like Facebook or the Google content network on a more modest budget.
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        • Profile picture of the author VeitSchenk
          John, your signature just made my day.

          THANK YOU!;-)

          I have to sneak out for a cheeky steak (shows you who's really wearing the trousers in my home...;-)

          Veit

          Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

          Veit, even if your plan never works out as you've laid it out, showing your thought process so clearly will help a lot of newbies. If they also take in Matt's contributions, they should end up with a much more realistic scenario.

          Based on that contribution alone, you are forgiven for using such a nasty word around here... :p

          To answer your question, though, I'd look at paid advertising for testing. Regular PPC if you have the budget. CPM on places like Facebook or the Google content network on a more modest budget.
          Signature

          Connect with me on FB: https://www.facebook.com/veitschenk

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          • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
            Originally Posted by VeitSchenk View Post

            John, your signature just made my day.

            THANK YOU!;-)

            I have to sneak out for a cheeky steak (shows you who's really wearing the trousers in my home...;-)

            Veit
            There's an American comic named Ron White who does a routine about a friend who has become a vegetarian. The friend quit eating meat because raising cows contributes to greenhouse gases (methane in bovine flatulence, i.e., cow farts). The friend then asks Ron what he is doing for the environment. "I'm eating the cows..."
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  • Profile picture of the author karakoram
    I'd recommend creating a site that makes at least (on average) $5 a day or more.

    Then, build 100 more sites just like it in other niches.
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  • Profile picture of the author tgeo
    Buying solo ads from closely targeted newsletters or list owners can bring in a slew of visitors, and of course if you had your own list of 10k or more could bring in a few thousand visitors a week.

    T Peterson
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