On my quest to generate full time income and web independence, I have noticed a few things.
1. It rarely happens.
2. It rarely happens.
3. If you are trying to be a guru, it REALLY rarely happens.
I spent a year developing a guru blog, and after spending a couple hours a day on it I realized something. This just isn’t the most cost effective approach to making money on the web. If you are Darren Rowse or someone of that caliber, well then yes. But for me, a new blogger, I just wasn’t able to get enough readers to make the bigger dollars.I was able to make a little money from the website so it got my mind working overdrive in developing, what I feel, is a great system to finding finacial independence online.
When I think of financial freedom online, I am talking about the ability to sit at home and earn a full time salary. This is not a ‘get rich quick’ plan, and it requires full time effort and work from home. This just lets you be your own boss, and you control the amount of income you can make.
Keep in mind that my goal isn’t to be a six figure blogger, it is to make $100 dollars a day, or $36,500 dollars a year. This obviously isn’t enough to raise a family, but I feel that would be considered full time income. What you do to supplement or surpass those goals is up to you. My personal goal is $100 dollars a day.
I call my system 100 websites in 100 days. This plan, however, is actually a 6 month plan. My goal is that in 6 months, I will be able to make $100 a day from my 100 websites. That averages $1 a day per each website. It is a multi-pronged attack utilizing advertisements, product blogs and sponsored reviews, and here is how it will work.
If you are looking to use the plan that I am suggesting, a couple words of caution. First off, you need a Google Adsense or Bidvertiser account. While there will be many facets to how each person makes money, one of the leading ways the websites will make $100 a day will be off of those types of ads. Secondly, the amount of money spent on hosting and domains will greatly impact how much profit you can make. I am using a $10 a month host that will cover all of my websites. Lastly, keep in mind that the quality of the domain you purchase will also help determine how successful the plan is. My version of the plan uses 40 dot com domains, and 60 .Info domains. The reason for the .Info domains is GoDaddy sells them for a dollar each, where as in .Com domains cost about 10 dollars each. Since a lot of the plan is using your own websites to help create backlinks, not all of the websites need to be essential and have a nice domain. In fact, roughly half of the websites will have static content you will never have to update. As you can see, however, you do need to put in some money in order for this plan to be successful. The way I am configuring it, I am spending about $500 dollars on the domains to get it up and running. You can go al ot cheaper if you wanted to by more .infos and less dot coms, or if you decided to use free websites like blogger, or wordpress.com. Keep in mind if you go that route, it will be harder to turn a profit.
Also, knowledge of how blogging works is very important. This wasn’t created to teach you how to blog (using comment, how to get back-links, creating pillar posts, SEO). Hopefully you have taken the time to learn how to do those things already, because using blogging common sense is paramount in having this plan succeed. There are several great posts on the web for this, and my favorite is by Coutrney Tuttle entitled ‘5263 Word on Starting a Proftible Blog’
This will be broken in to three essential segments. Segment One is creating the websites and which style websites to use. Segment Two is how to augment the content and develop money making patterns, and Segment Three is how to promote your network.
Segment 1: Creating the Websites.
Below will be what I consider the best way to format and organize your websites in order for the plan to be most successful. Here are a few things you should expect and need to know about the plan.
- It is not a get rich quick scheme. It is a plan to earn reasonable full time income online. Key on the word reasonable.
- It costs money to make money. You need to buy domains, potential purchase ads, and possibly even pay for content.
- It requires time and effort. The first initial 100 days expect to work about 1-3 hours a day, and the next 100 days expect to work 4-6 hours a day.
- This plan will turn blogging and website creation in to a job in which you work from home. The key here is work.
- The amount of time, not the quality of content, will ultimately decide how much money you will make. This is not guru training.
- Leave your ego at the door. The point is to earn income, not become a celebrity.
Step 1. Create a Network or Networks
Step one of the plan is to create a network, which is a series of websites that utilize a similar concept. For my plan, I have actually created two networks. In order to have a successful network, you need to make sure the idea of the idea of the network is interesting and has the ability to draw a lot of traffic on its own. For my two networks, I have created an anti-celebrity network and a mid to large market city zine reviewing network. The anti-celeb one was created with casual traffic in mind, and the review network was created with third party advertising and quality content in mind.
Tip: Just because something has been done before, if it is successful, it is worth trying to model a network or website after it. Part of this plan is to average $1 dollar a day. So if you notice that Fail Pictures are popular, create a website with that in mind. It might not draw nearly the traffic of the more popular ones, but it will draw traffic and will aide you in making one dollar a day per website.
I prefer WordPress as my back engine for the websites, but you can use any variety of website creation tools.
The Casual Traffic Network (or CTN) is essential in the plan. I currently run World of Fail, which is one of my casual traffic blogs. This website averages upwards to 1000 hits a day with no promotion and no real content, just new photos posted a couple times a month. I spend MAYBE 2 hours a month on it. This website, however, does generate an average of 3000 AdSense impressions a day, and makes me anywhere from $.30 to $4 dollars a day. This will help your CTR rate on AdSense if you decide to augment your clicks using a variety of methods we will not discuss here as Google does not like people working around their terms of service.
The Ad Revenue Network (or ARN) is the one you will find yourself putting the most work in to, because the hope is one or more of these websites will take off and become the cash cow of the group. Having a cash cow in not essential in making $100 dollars a day, but if you can get a website to that level, it sure will make things a lot easier. Remember, this plan does not require that you have a successful or large blog. But if you already have one, or stumble upon creating one, that will help you get to where you want to be a lot quicker.
My networks consist of 30 dot coms that relate to the above networks. I plan on increasing that percentage as time goes on, but as of now that seems to be the most effective way to go. I currently have 18 on the CTN and 12 on the ARN. The main reason for this is the websites on the ARN take more time to develop.
Creating a Network Tip: Each network must have a flagship, or pillar website, that will do 60-80 percent of the traffic for the whole network. After a few weeks, find which website you feel will draw the most traffic and spend a nice window of time working on those website. For my networks, Review Chicago and World of Fail are my pillar blogs.
Step 2: Creating Blogs With Paid Reviews in Mind.
When people are looking to score a buck online, they are hoping that their cash cow will be affiliate sales or ad revenue, because they won’t actually have to do any work for it. Many people create guru blogs, recycle the same old how to make money online posts, throw up some 125 x 125 boxes and expect to make $100,000 selling hosting at Gatorhost. Another example is the ‘Stay At Home Mom’ blogs, such as Dooce.com. Come on, this is so worn out. I am sure there are some bloggers who do make decent money that way, but it is so out of your control its not worth it if your goal is to make reasonable income. If you create blogs for writing and artistic reasons, I can see the lure but it still difficult to make it large enough to see real money.
I feel paid reviews are a solid way to augment income to get to that $100 dollar a day platuea. And there are so many websites out there you can sign up for, such as Sponsored Reviews, Review Me, and Pay Per Post.
What I have done in my plan is create 10 websites with those kind of sponsored posts in mind. Most of the companies have really specific rules on how the blog must be formatted, how frequently you post, how much traffic and back links there are, so it does take a while to get these sites up and running to the point you can turn a dollar on them.I will discuss more detailed ways to help you get to that point faster in the upcoming content building section.
Tip: Make sure you use a dot com or a dot net for the sponosored post websites. These websites rarely let you use other style domains or free sites like blogger and wordpress.com
Remember, These websites will not start making money until about 3-6 months in, so that is part of why this plan is set up to be a six month plan.
Sponsored Review Tips: Creating several pay per post websites will allow you to meet the requirements set by each of the popular companies. These companies have many posts that only pay a dollar or so, but if you spend 2 hours a day on 10 different blogs, you can easily do 10-20 posts of this variety on those blogs. After a little time, you will have the opportunity to get higher paying pay per posts. It is feasible that with proper energy and care, you can make your $100 dollars a day straight off of this method.
Sponsored posts are often overlooked online. There are many successful bloggers who have used it, such as Ben Cook, former owner of the Blogging Experiment. When you have a guru blog, you might be hesitent to place a sponsored post within your content because it might alienate readers or make you look less like a superstar (Remember what was stated before, lose the ego) . The best part about my plan is there is no place for ego. You have created these websites specifically for sponsored posts. If you alienate readers, so what? These websites were created to make you money, not garner readership.
Tip: Traffic will help you get the higher paid reviews, but backlinks will be enough to get you listed and let you do the cheaper reviews. If you create 10 websites with this in mind, you could hypothetically make lots of money without even having a single legitmate reader.
Step 3: Create A LOT of static content websites or junk blogs.
There are people that do not agree with this part of the technique, but it does work. Google snipping still exists, and this is a great way to help build back links to your money making websites, which are the network websites and the sponsored post websites. So far, I have outlined what 40 of my 100 websites will be. All of the websites in my networks and the paid review blogs are ALL dot com domains. The last 60 domains I am using are all .info domains. I have created them with hot button topics and standard high google searches in mind, in order to maximize the quality of the backlinks.
An example of website would be something like, amazingacnetreatments.info.
The purpose of these websites would be to either create backlinks, or to have static affiliate links to try to generate addition income by that means. In addition, all the websites will still have your AdSense or your Bidvertiser ads, so the potential to make a random hit or ad impression also makes these website worth having.
Step 4 (optional): Create or Keep Working on your Guru Blog
Maybe people already have a flagship or guru blog which will not fit in to their networks. If you are one of these people, you can continue to build this blog with hopes it will launch you into web-celeb status. It can’t hurt. Just remember to use this blog to leveage traffic to blogs in your network that might actually make you money, or if your blog is making money, use it to create quality backlinks to your network. That is what I did with my guru blog until I sold it to focus on designing and implementing my plan.
Segment 2: Create Content and Money Making Patterns: In this segment, I will discuss various ways to augment content and help establish a routine for making money. Several key points and things to keep in mind are:
- Remember, you are not creating guru blogs. Write fast, effectively, and don’t worry to much about the quality on non-network blogs.
- Make sure your blogs meet the requirements of the ad services you intend to use.
- Enlist the help of others to make sure your network stays current and relevant.
Step 1: Creating Content for Your Networks
Most of what follows in this section relates specifically to the networks I have created in my example. Since each network is user specific, there may be different means to secure and building content. Keep that in mind while reading below.
Depending on what you plan on doing with your network, you may want to enlist the help of other writers. Since my first network (ARN) started as a legitimate business idea, I have brought other people in the fold to assist with the writing of content and promotion for these websites. Although my ARN has a long term goal to be a legitimate business, since it is not seeing any third party ad revenue as of yet, no one is recieving compensation for the content they have added. Once I am seeing 3rd party ad revenue from the website, I do intend on giving writers a percentage based on the amount of content they have provided the websites.
On my review zine network, I intend on using non-city specific content on all the websites. This will ensure that each market has enough content, and also ensures anytime I post a backlink to another one of my sites, it will be referenced at least 12 times. I have also secured writers in all markets to add content on a volunteer basis. You are giving them an outlet to creatively write and have decent traffic and bylines, they are giving you quality content that you do not have to pay for. It works for all involved.
Hopefully, after some time, this network will be doing AdSense revenue as well as third party ad revenue. Once you enter the 3rd part realm, your network has outgrown the $100 dollar a day plateau, and since other writers will probably have to be compensated, you could remove this network from your group and start a new one with the intention of $100 dollars a day and focus on profiting on both avenues.
Tip: If you ARN network is successful, a large chunk of what you set to accomplish has been met. If you are the sole contributor to the network, hats of to you, but don’t be afraid to reach out for help with content, even if you have to pay for it.
For my CTN, I picked something than can easily be managed and updated. That is always the key with a traffic based content network. How can I maximize my traffic in the least amount of time. Keep in mind, part of this plan requires writing several paid review daily, which are promised income, so I would rather spend more time on those. For my example, I selected Anti-Celebrity websites. Basically, the point of the website is to take famous celebrities (usually ones who kids like or dislike) and create an outlet website for those parties to argue back and forth. For example, one of the websites I have created is an anti Mylie Cyrus website. She is obviously talented and popular but she is also out there so much, there are quite a few detractors. So what the website does is instigate a discussion that a target market will come to the site to partake in. The hope is, these users will not be as web savy and will click on Google Adsense ads. I can make simple instigating posts, like I have on this anti-Lebron James website.
It is a fast, easy to update way to bring lots of traffic and create AdSense clicks for yourself.
Step 2: Creating Content for your Sponsored Review Blogs
As we discussed previously, one of the main money making components is the pay per post part of blogging. In my example, I have created 10 of these websites. First, you MUST make sure all your blogs conform to the regulations of the sites you are using (Such as Pay Per Post, Review Me, and so on). Once your domain and theme are compliant, it is time to upload a Content Set.
A content set is something I have discovered works the best in getting these blogs up and running. What I personally did was take all the posts I had written for my two solid traffic blogs, and exported them to the Export WordPress file. I then imported them to another WordPress I had set up, and modified the posts so there were 100 posts that posted over the past 5 months. This meets ALL the pay per post site regulations. They all want blogs with frequency, this ensures you have frequency. I made sure my back posts all had plenty of backlinks, so when the sites check the stats they will see your site has plenty of backlinks to match the content. I then left 30 additional posts in the draft section of WordPress, because most pay per post sites want their review to followed immediately by a non-sponsored post. This ensures you have content ready to go if you are busy and cannot write sponsored and non-sponosored posts every single day. At this point I exported the file and saved it on my desktop. Now, each time I start a sponsored blog, I will have a content set ready to go. I have uploaded these content sets to each sponsored blog I use, rearranged some dates, and added and subtracted posts to make them all feel original and natural. This is also because I have multiple blogs on each of the pay per post style sites.
Remember that these blogs usually want your site active for 3 to 6 months prior to approving you, so it will take some time. Use this time to add additional content to these blogs, and make sure your themes look pleasing to the eye. You can spend the time you are wating for them to become sponsored by building some traffic to your sites, because once you start doing the paid reviews, you no longer need to promote the sites because the whole purpose will be to generate income, not be a guru.
Step 3: Creating Content for your Static sites or Junk Blogs
The wildcard in the whole plan is the junk blogs and static sites. This could help make or break the whole campaign. Problem is, this part of it is a lot more subjective. My exmaple has 60 junk blogs and static websites. Those are divided with 40 blogs and 20 websites.
The 20 websites consist of affliate style websites which you can make money from direct consumer searches as well as AdSense. I have created webites for such searches as Acne Treatment, Weight Loss Treatment, Make Money Online and Depression information among others. Although these sites won’t be anywhere near the top of Google, but they will still filter traffic, and those who are doing targeted searches will be more likely to click on an ad or affiliate link.
You can also use free content at websites like EzineArticles.com, they have great content to use.
For the 40 junk blogs, I created a generic post set and uploaded them to all the websites. The sole purpose of these websites is to make legitmate backlinks for my two networks. Every 2 weeks, I upload another post set to all of them. Occasionally, I will post a relevant post on a blog here or there just to keep them unqiue. I also use a very SEO and AdSense friendly theme, with the hope of getting an occasional random ad click.
I will finish up the second part of this post tonight!
0
