Track What’s Working And Use The 80/20 Rule

One of the best ways to double your income is to figure out what’s working and doing more of that. 

 

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? The problem is that you first have to know exactly what’s working and what isn’t. The best way to do that is to track everything. From there you look at your data and make a plan for what you should and shouldn’t be doing going forward. 

 

Your first step will be to decide what you want to track. This will be a little different for everyone depending on your business and what you do on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. A good place to start is to look at income and expenses, products or different sources of income, and of course where you spend most of your time. 

 

Let’s say you start to track where your income is coming from. If possible, go back and look at the last six to twelve months of financial data. Did you make money selling your own products? Did you get large affiliate commission checks? Did you sell advertising on your websites? 

 

Next you want to look at expenses related to that income. You’ll have some fixed expenses like hosting your website for example, that you should ignore for the purpose of this exercise. Look at cost directly related to each source of income. For example, in order to launch your products, you may hire a graphic designer, a VA, and pay for your shopping cart software. You may also be paying commissions to affiliates promoting your products. Subtract those costs from the income you’ve made to get a good feel for your actual profits. Other sources of income will have little to no expenses. Once you’ve adjusted your income figures to reflect the profit you’ve made, you can start to compare. 

 

Last but not least, look at the amount of time you’re spending to generate the income. It may take you a full month of working twelve-hour days to launch a new big course. On the other hand, you may be able to put together a short eBook or fresh membership content in a day or two by leveraging content you’ve already written or buying pre-written content. Look at the time it takes for each type of product and compare this to the amount of money you expect to make from the launch and going forward. This will help you decide what’s the most profitable way to spend your time. 

 

With all the information at your fingertips, it will be easy to decide what you should be doing more off, what you should be doing less off, and what you should stop doing. Focus most of your time and energy on the most profitable products and income sources. Work on it for a good six months and look at how much your profits went up. I wouldn’t be surprised if this one strategy alone allows you to double your income.

How to Make Some Good Side Money with Content Marketing

One of the best ways you can leverage the financial power of content marketing is not actually in the act of crafting content to market something you offer. 

 

Rather, it’s all about content marketing a good or service offered by other people and then sitting back while readers click on affiliate links and Google Ads. 

 

That said, here are a few of the most lucrative topics to write about—and how much associated Google ads will pay you per user click in 2018.

 

Insurance: $57 CPC. Insurance is the statistically the most lucrative. Car insurance, homeowner’s insurance, business insurance…everybody needs insurance for something. 

 

Gas & Electricity: $54 CPC. This topic is strangely also a gold mine. You could write reviews of different suppliers, and helpful articles on how to save on your bills. 

 

Mortgages: $47 CPC. A home is the largest purchase most people will ever make, so banks and lenders are willing to spend some big bucks to beat out the competition. 

 

Attorneys: $47. There are plenty of ambulance-chasers out there today, and lawyers are coming out of the woodwork left and right. Capitalize on the legal craze by writing articles about topics like hiring a lawyer, small claims court, etc.

 

Loans: $44 CPC. Whether it’s to pay off credit cards, to buy a car, or go to school, lots of people need loans. Write articles about this topic and perhaps direct people toward their options.

 

Donations: $42 CPC. From starving kids in Africa to a local recreation centre, there are plenty of causes that need fundraising, and fundraisers shell out the bucks to advertise. Write articles about this topic, such as the power of giving.

 

Conference Call: $42 CPC. This is something that all businesses need, and if you know anything about business expenditures, you know that companies toss money around more frequently than private individuals. Review different systems and write articles about phone etiquette.

 

Degree: $40 CPC. Everybody (and their grandmother) is going back to school these days, and usually online. Capitalize on education and write some degree-related blogs. 

 

Credit: $38 CPC. Americans (and increasingly everyone else) love spending with plastic. Write reviews of the best cards, or articles on how to build credit.

 

Final word: The content marketing you’re doing for these businesses doesn’t have to be free. After you’ve built some traction on your site, you may as well start selling your content to the businesses you’re writing about… it will prove to be an additional source of revenue, and if their Google ads are any indicator, they’re willing to spend.

Search Engine Friendly Pages

There is no point in building a website unless there are visitors coming in. A major source of traffic for most sites on the Internet is search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista and so on. Hence, by designing a search engine friendly site, you will be able to rank easily in search engines and obtain more visitors. 

 

Major search engines use programs called crawlers or robots to index websites to list on their search result pages. They follow links to a page, reads the content of the page and record it in their own database, pulling up the listing as people search for it. 

 

If you want to make your site indexed easily, you should avoid using frames on your website. Frames will only confuse search engine robots and they might even abandon your site because of that. Moreover, frames make it difficult for users to bookmark a specific page on your site without using long, complicated scripts. 

 

Do not present important information in Flash movies or in images. Search engine robots can only read text on your source code so if you present important words in Flash movies and images rather than textual form, your search engine ranking will be affected dramatically. 

 

Use meta tags accordingly on each and every page of your site so that search engine robots know at first glance what that particular page is about and whether or not to index it. By using meta tags, you are making the search engine robot's job easier so they will crawl and index your site more frequently. 

 

Stop using wrong HTML tags like <font> to style your page. Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) instead because they are more effective and efficient. By using CSS, you can eliminate redundant HTML tags and make your pages much lighter and faster to load.

 

The Importance of a Sitemap

A sitemap is often considered redundant in the process of building a website, and that is indeed the fact if you made a sitemap for the sake of having one. By highlighting the importance of having a well constructed sitemap, you will be able to tailor your own sitemap to suit your own needs. 

 

1) Navigation purposes

 

A sitemap literally acts as a map of your site. If your visitors browses your site and gets lost between the thousands of pages on your site, they can always refer to your sitemap to see where they are, and navigate through your pages with the utmost ease. 

 

2) Conveying your site's theme

 

When your visitors load up your sitemap, they will get the gist of your site within a very short amount of time. There is no need to get the "big picture" of your site by reading through each page, and by doing that you will be saving your visitors' time. 

 

3) Site optimization purposes

 

When you create a sitemap, you are actually creating a single page which contains links to every single page on your site. Imagine what happens when search engine robots hit this page -- they will follow the links on the sitemap and naturally every single page of your site gets indexed by search engines! It is also for this purpose that a link to the sitemap has to be placed prominently on the front page of your website. 

 

4) Organization and relevance

 

A sitemap enables you to have a complete bird's eye view of your site structure, and whenever you need to add new content or new sections, you will be able to take the existing hierarchy into consideration just by glancing at the sitemap. As a result, you will have a perfectly organized site with everything sorted according to their relevance. 

 

From the above reasons, it is most important to implement a sitemap for website projects with a considerable size. Through this way, you will be able to keep your website easily accessible and neatly organized for everyone.

 

Building Your List with Give Away Ventures

With the awareness of the importance of list building, comes a recent Internet Marketing trend which was started just a couple of years ago for the mutual benefits of all Internet Marketers and mailing list owners.

 

This method is more recognized as a “starting a Give Away venture”.

 

In a real sense, a Give Away event is much like a big time version of ad swaps. In a nutshell, a group of mailing list owners partner together and pool in their individual gifts in one limited-time event.

 

Each participating partner contributes a gift to the event. The gift can be a free product, membership pass or a product he is already selling (if he is kind enough to offer into the event).

 

The participating partner prepares a Lead Capture Page where he gives the gift in exchange for the subscriber’s email address. In other words, in order for a visitor to download the digital gift, he must opt in and subscribe to your mailing list.

 

When the gifts are pooled together into one event (site), every partner will then endorse the Give Away event to their own mailing lists.

 

The result: lots of visitors to one event as a collective effort of several participating partners!

 

With so many visitors downloading gifts from one focused event, it is a true win-win situation. This is because the visitors get to download several free gifts for their own use and every partner gets to build their own mailing list!

 

You can easily get notified about a Give Away event in the making by communicating with other Internet Marketers often or participating in Internet Marketing discussion and Joint Venture boards.

Using Free Reports to Build Your List

Aside from pre-selling your products and affiliated offers, the other purpose of your free viral report should be to build your mailing list.

 

This is because if you are unable to pre-sell, let alone sell, the products and services featured in your free report, the last-ditch effort should be to collect leads. In short, if you cannot convert the reader into a ready buyer, you should then attempt to convert him or her into your subscriber.

 

In that manner, you can still follow up with your reader on future offers and have a chance at converting him or her into your customer, preferably lifetime.

 

You can do so by offering a lifetime update to your report or a unique notification list your reader will be interested in subscribing to, which leads to having him or her subscribed to your mailing list.

 

One of the few success factors in viral marketing of your free report is quality. If your readers find your information worth sharing, and you encourage them to do so by giving them the right to give your report away for free, you will be able to have your name, status and links within the report passed around without any effort on your part – simply because others are willing to do so for you!

Weakness in Safe List

How would you like to send your commercial emails to people you do not know, but are expecting to receive such mail from you? Wait a minute. That does not sound right. How can this be?

 

It is simple, if you know what is really going on. Everybody who is on these lists, also known as safe lists, knows that they will be receiving emails from other members. This is possible because that is one of the conditions of their “safe list” membership.

 

And those who join these lists are willing to agree to this condition because they themselves would want to send out their own commercial emails to the others on the list.

 

The result: everyone is sending emails to each other but no one is reading them!

 

It gets worse when some savvy members sign up for the membership using a free or less-frequently-used account to store the useless emails they will never bother to open and read.

 

Having said that, it is always wiser to start your own mailing list and build it with opt-in subscribers, no matter how tempting safe lists can be or how many members there are in a safe list.

 

Refrain from Buying Bulk Mails

I am sure that you have definitely come across advertisements that read: “1,000,000 email addresses for $29.99”. And these bulk mail companies can even offer you these names in a CD at your doorstep.

 

Sure, having 1,000,000 subscribers is the best thing that could ever happen to any Internet Marketer and often sounds too good to be true. But very often, it always sounds too good to be true.

 

What many beginning marketers do not really know is that these bulk companies harvest the email addresses using robots and other wares on the Internet. That is how the 1,000,000 email addresses come about, whatever the amount is.

 

Now, the really awful part is that if you purchase the so-called 1,000,000 names even at a low price, not only is it a waste of money, you are risking being accused of spamming. It is no longer a surprise how you often receive spam mails on Viagra, OEM Software and things you do not even need in your inbox.

 

That is so possible, because of the 1,000,000 names, no one knows you or even ask to be subscribed to your mailing list.

 

On top of that, not all 1,000,000 email addresses are really in use because a portion of them can either be own by the same owners (one owner can own more than 1 email accounts) or are obsolete.

 

When you read such ads again, tell yourself that it is a waste of money.

Building Your List with Paid eZine Advertising

Some Internet Marketers can get clueless when it comes to unleashing the full potential of paid eZine advertising. One of the most common dilemmas is that whether should the Internet Marketer advertise the product or service he is selling directly to the subscribers of the eZine he is paying advertising for?

 

This can be a wise method, but with ifs and buts. For one, the advertisement must be compelling and attention grabbing. Secondly, there is no telling if the eZine’s subscribers constantly practice a buying habit until you put some money to find out.

 

Investing even a small sum of money can be risky to a number of Internet Marketers who are on tight budgets. But in spite of the risk factors, eZine advertising can still be rewarding, if done right.

 

Thus the solution: the marketer would be wiser if he or she uses eZine advertising to build his or her mailing list. It makes sense, anyway. Since some eZines display more than one sponsored advertisement, you can grab the subscriber’s attention by giving a free or risk-free product or offer through your ad.

 

When the subscriber clicks on your ad, he or she can opt into your mailing list in exchange for the free offer, which can be a free report or even a trial service.

 

While you are not making a hard sell through your advertisement just yet, building your list by getting other eZine’s subscribers subscribed to your eZine allows you to follow up with them in the future, as and when you have new offers.

 

Building Your List with Articles

You can build your list simply by writing articles, whether you have thought of it or not.

 

Quite simply, you write and submit your articles on your topic of expertise or business nature to popular article directories where eZine publishers and readers are looking for the information you provide.

 

Leveraging your viral marketing efforts on article writing can be rewarding, if done right. In the real sense, you are actually proving your worth and demonstrating your expertise about your business through the articles you write.

 

So, how can this method in effect build your mailing list? The answer: the resource box you attach to your articles. In your resource box (also known as bio box), you include a brief detail about yourself and your business site together with its URL.

 

It is strongly suggested that your resource box URL links to your mailing list’s landing page where you can get your visitor’s name and email address, which will in turn help you build your mailing list at no cost.

 

If your articles are found worth sharing, eZine publishers will republish your articles together with your resource box for their readers and subscribers. The wonderful result: viral marketing without effort on your part!

 

You can start by writing and submitting your articles to trusted article submitter sites such as http://www.articlemarketer.com/ and begin your article marketing journey today.

Ad Swap Magic

Here is a little used technique you can implement to build your mailing list for no additional cost. I call it “using subscribers to make subscribers” like much in the context of “using money to make money”.

 

This simple list building formula can be summed up in two words: ad swap.

 

Generally, you trade advertisements with other eZine publishers, preferably of the same mailing list size or bigger. You broadcast the eZine publisher’s advertisement to your mailing list while the eZine publisher endorses your ad to his list. Yes, you are actually cross endorsing or cross promoting each others offer to each of your mailing list.

 

Your advertisement’s goal should be to get as many subscribers possible from the other eZine publisher’s mailing list to sign up for yours.

 

The result: you grow your mailing list. This method does not require money, which means it can be done for free. And the return of subscribers? Infinite!

 

You only have to do this with one eZine publisher at least once, because his subscribers who are also your subscribers can now be followed up within the boundaries of your mailing list.

 

Perform ad swaps with as many eZine publishers as possible and soon, you will have a huge mailing list of your own – built free.

Converting Every Visitor into Subscriber

If a person visits your website and leaves, chances are that he or she will not come back, especially if there are no compelling reasons to do so. After all, we all behave rather impulsively on the Internet, so much so that we can easily forget where we were 10 web pages ago.

 

But the bottom line is that your visitor may not come back to your website again. If 1,000 visitors visit your website, leave and never come back again, you can imagine the amount of potential revenue lost, simply because they do not come back. You could have converted a fraction of the visitors into your customers.

 

Some may say that creating unique content can keep some of the visitors coming back, but very often, unique content is not the solution. The real, long-term solution lies in converting your visitors into subscribers of your mailing list.

 

Before your visitor leaves your website, you want to convert him or her into your subscriber via a simple opt-in to your mailing list. You do this by asking for your visitor’s name and email address through your opt-in form.

 

And if your visitor signs up to be on your mailing list, you can still follow up with him via email. You can get your subscriber to consider your offer, or endorse another offer to him or her.

 

All in all, you want to convert as many visitors into subscribers as possible and obtain the potential revenue you rightfully deserve – the easy, wise way.

What You Need to Start an eZine Publication

Starting your own eZine can be a lot easier than you think. This is because in the most basic necessity, all you really need to get started publishing your own paperless newsletter are wealth of content, auto responder with broadcast feature, and a website (which is optional).

 

Content. You can compile weeks of content ahead in advance and slowly dispense them to your subscribers. For example, you can compile 100 short tips in one day and dispense 10 tips once a week. In other words, you can compile 10 weeks worth of content in just one day!

 

Auto responder. Your auto responder is your asset. You need an auto responder to send your mails and eZine issues to your subscribers and store your data base of people subscribed to your newsletter. Some recommended auto responders include GetResponse.com and aWeber.com.

 

Website. You may be surprised that this is actually an optional component. In short, there are eZine publishers publishing their newsletters without a website! But of course, having your own website can offer you tremendous advantages, such as the ability to bring in more subscribers and having your newsletter indexed in the top Search Engines.

 

These are the things you need to get started on publishing your own eZine at its bare minimum. Do not underestimate the little you need, though, because several eZine publishers today succeed well with only an auto responder and contents, with or without a website. And you can, too!

The 3 Best eZine Formats

eZine publishers today use any one or more of the 3 most commonly used eZine formats which I am about to describe to you in this article.

 

Ultimately, you can decide which format is the best choice for you, though each winning format has its pros and cons.

 

The text eZine is the most commonly published. The advantage of this format is that other than writing, you do not require any special skill to use a Word or Notepad program.

 

While the HTML eZine format requires a certain degree of HTML skills on your part, you can add more sophisticated features to your eZine issues, making them more appealing to your subscriber thus increases your readership value, something that text eZines do not have.

 

You can decorate your eZine format, change your fonts, include pictures, and more. However, the drawback often faced by HTML eZines is that they often get trapped into spam filters before they reach their subscribers’ inboxes.

 

The third and least used among the 3 formats is the PDF eZine. Publishing your eZine in PDF format can consume a lot of time and effort on your part but often make up in quality readership

 

Due to the commitment, PDF eZines are usually published on a monthly basis. The great part, though, is that you can put in your affiliate links in your PDF eZine issue and allow your subscribers to pass the eZine issue around.

 

Given the choices, however, you do not have to necessarily choose strictly one eZine format, as some eZine publishers today do publish in more than one format.

Churning out eZine Content

Creating your own content can be a challenge if you publish your own online newsletter or eZine.

 

However, regardless of any topic you are publishing on, types of contents can be generally divided into four categories, namely factual content, short tips, mini stories and case studies.

 

Other than writing your own content, you can get your own unique content the quick and easy way by organizing an interview with an expert or leader in the topic.

 

Very often, this can be done for free and since the interviewee is writing out most of the content, there is nothing else for you to do other than giving the interviewee something valuable in exchange (maybe a meal!).

 

Now if you have money to spare, you can hire a ghostwriter to write your content for you without taking any credit. Recommended professional marketplaces where you can seek ghostwriters include http://www.elance.com/ and http://www.rentacoder.com/.

 

Another little known and underused method in getting your own content is via public domains. If you are not familiar with the term "public domain", "public domain" simply means anything that is NOT protected under US copyright law.

 

This includes ALL works published before 1923 and, under certain conditions, works published up to 1978. And in this case, we are referring “works” to written materials such as reports, articles and books.

 

Republishing and repackaging public domain information can help you save time and effort from creating new ideas and content as they are readily available. On top of that, you do not have to pay royalties or copyright fees on that work.

 

If you fancy the idea of publishing content without any writing on your part, this method is for you. 

Deciding the Nature of Your eZine

When choosing a topic to publish your eZine on, you must consider some important success factors that can determine the flow and goal of your eZine.

 

You are encouraged to write non-time sensitive contents such as short tips, mini stories and interviews. Doing so enables you to create content in advance so that you can conveniently dispense to your subscribers at a later schedule.

 

Topic-wise, you will do well to cater to a starving market that will always be on demand for the kind of content you offer. And by this, I mean that you should zero in onto a demand that has been, is and will always be there.

 

Relationships and dating are niches that have been on Earth long before the World Wide Web came up, for example. The food niche will always be there as long as there are chefs cooking for anyone with a stomach to fill.

 

Having said that, you also want to have a steady stream of products or services of your own or an affiliate for you can endorse to your mailing list and make even more money.

 

This is also the reason why the Internet Marketing niche will remain one of the hottest niches there is, as products and services are created almost around the clock. As long as their Internet Businesses are cropping out, there will always be needs to be fulfilled.

Publishing Your eZine – the Cons

As with any other types of businesses, publishing your own online newsletter a.k.a. eZine has its share of drawbacks, in spite of the several benefits it offer.

 

The purpose of this article is not to scare you away with the disadvantages of publishing your own eZine, as the benefits are often more attractive. However, I will also show you how you can easily tackle the cons.

 

One obvious challenge most beginning eZine publishers face is the creation of eZine content. Creating your own content can be tiresome, especially if you are not a gifted writer and that you run out of ideas every so often that your publishing schedule is threatening you.

 

A way of taking care of this problem is to create your content in advance. You can compile 30 days worth of content in one day, for example. If you are not blessed with writing skills, you can broker the writing task to capable freelance writers which you can find at places such as http://www.elance.com/ or http://www.rentacoder.com/. While you need to pay for such services, you are at liberty to take the credit for written articles.

 

Alternatively, you can republish articles from article directories such as http://ezinearticles.com/. This is a free method you can use in making content, provided you include the resource box of the original author and that the article has republishing rights conveyed.

 

In conclusion, you can easily tackle the content creation challenge using the mentioned methods that do not require writing on your part, free or paid.

Publishing Your eZine – the Pros

There are several advantages publishing your own eZine can offer to you. Thus, if the pros appeal to you, then publishing your own paperless newsletter can be ideal for you.

 

The most obvious reason publishing an eZine can be the most ideal business to you is that it is so easy to start that any individual can do. There is no need to invest in starting a brick-and-mortar business or even staff and heavy machines for that matter.

 

In fact, you can do this from the comfort of your home as the most important thing you will need is an auto responder equipped with broadcast feature. Auto responders such as GetResponse.com and aWeber.com are highly recommended when it comes to publishing your own eZine.

 

In spite of the low start up cost and monthly fees, you can make money from several profit centers within the spaces of your eZine issues. You can make money from selling advertising space, just to name one.

 

Most importantly, you get to build your own personal media and spread your marketing influence, making you more valuable to product and service owners thus do not be surprised if you receive Joint Venture proposals every so often.

 

Given some of the best reasons in the world of Internet Marketing, publishing your own periodical eZine can one of the best money vehicles you will ever acquire or even build.

Which One is More Important – Product or Mailing List?

If you would ask this question, “Which one is more important – the mailing list or the product?” any savvy marketer would answer you, “The mailing list”.

 

Principally, any wise business person puts the importance of hungry demand (and not just any demand) in front of the product. In other words, there is no product if there is no demand! And a mailing list represents the demand or your business if you would like to call it.

 

If you frequent the Joint Venture forums and membership sites of any kind, you will find that product and service owners need mailing list owners more than the other way round. This is because the mailing list owners have the prospects that the other type of partner is looking for to sell to.

 

And if you are a mailing list owner, you do not have to necessarily make money from selling your own product. You can sell advertising space or craft a Joint Venture with product owners in return of commissions, recurring or not.

 

Most of the biggest success web businesses on the Internet today often establish the mailing list (or subscribers) first before the product. One fine example is Facebook.com.

 

Facebook.com, in the nutshell, is a website that connects friends and potential friends from around the world through a free membership access.

 

While Facebook.com does not make money from the number of members who join the site, the business makes money from selling advertising space and partnering with other big-time merchants and businesses, owing to the established number of members Facebook.com has recruited.

 

This business is perfect example that demonstrates why every business should establish a need or demand before the product itself, and why you should do the same, whether you run a friend’s site or not.