Expanding On A Good Idea

Earlier this week I posted about a new script of mine that I created as a tool to help build fast, content rich and quality niche sites with. Basically, a mashup script for pulling the latest content and videos related to whatever keywords are plugged into it, so I called it NIMS (Niche Instant Mashup Sites).

In looking at how NIMS works and performs, the thought came to me that it might be able to serve a secondary purpose in addition to building multi-page sites specifically for entering into a niche market… since it takes less than 5 minutes to setup and have a keyword focused main page with tons of content I wondered if the script might not also be useful for some of the dozens of parked domains that I have sitting around?

The pages created by NIMS are certainly optimized for revenue. If you look at the image below, it shows the “above the fold” screen capture of a page built with NIMS, and what should stand out is that the display is designed to draw a visitor’s attention to the advertising and/or affiliate money links:

By having the money links prominent as it does, it encourages the click of a blue (money) link to leave the page.

As I mentioned, I have a ton of unused domains sitting around all the time. Most are parked with various services and I leave them there until I’m ready to build a site on them because the parking services generate a little revenue from whatever traffic the domains get.

But, that revenue is fairly low, so my thinking was that maybe spending 5 minutes throwing up a single page NIMS site on domains instead of spending 5 minutes parking them with a service would be more beneficial in a couple different ways.

First, the earnings might be higher. That would be great. With parking services the default pages are often spammy looking (promote low click rates) and you have to share the revenue with the service. Using NIMS would create better looking and more useful pages, and I wouldn’t have to share the earnings with anyone.

Second–and perhaps more important–by having actual content that’s constantly updating and relevant to the domain topic/keyword, in theory there could be some long-term benefit with search engines over just having the parking service advertising displayed on my domain main page.

To begin testing this I took a few of my domains and threw up single page NIMS sites on them 3 days ago.

It’s important to keep in mind that these are domains which have been just sitting out there with no promotions or backlink building in place. The traffic to these is super low. Several of them have been getting single digit visits daily and the others have all been averaging between 10 and 30 daily visits each for the most part.

The goal with parked domains isn’t to earn large money (unless you have a super domain), but to just maximize what you can earn from them until they’re developed into sites or you sell them off.

If you’ve got 20 domains out there each earning you $0.10 per day then that’s an extra $2 per day you make. My hope was that NIMS might turn that $0.10 into $0.15 or $0.20 or more for me without having to spend any more time setting up NIMS on the domains then it takes me to park them with a service. i.e. more money for the same labor time investment.

Now, obviously it will take some time (and a lot more test sites and data) to determine if there’s any long-term benefit for the domains with search engines by using NIMS on them instead of the default parking service ads, however in the last 3 days my test domains have earned me more money from their traffic than they ever did in a 3 day period with the parking services.

Sure this is a small and unscientific testing, but the early results are what I thought they would be and for good reason. People are blind to a lot of the advertising methods out there; just try to get decent click rates with a flashing 468×60 banner.

So when they land on a web page that looks like it’s all ads, or in some cases looks like search results (where you get paid for their clicks on listings) if they weren’t expecting search results, there’s a higher probability that the visitor will use their browser “Back” button instead of clicking unknown and untrusted links on the page.

However, if they land on a page full of content that’s relevant to the topic they were expecting, then there’s probably a better chance to grab their attention. And if you get their attention you should be able to guide them to your money links.

That was my theory anyway, and the early results suggest to me that it was sound.

In the immortal words of Col. John “Hannibal” Smith, “I love it when a plan comes together”.

Technorati Tags: domain parking, niche sites

Posted in Business | 2 Comments »

Blogs - The Underused Asset of Affiliate Marketers

I’ve been involved in a discussion recently about researching methods for getting into the minds of potential customers.

All of the “usual suspects” were thrown out: talk to family and friends, participate in forums for your niche, monitor news vines for stories related to your niche, use surveys and so on…

But the one thing nobody mentioned until I finally put it out there, was personal blogs.

These are a gold mine for information on just about any market you could come up with, and best of all they’re absolutely free to read and available 24/7 for you.

And personally, I’ve found in many markets they’re the absolute best source for real information about your potential customers, far better than forums or surveys.

Here’s why, lets say you’re a man about to launch a new women’s shoes site. There’s certainly nothing wrong with a man owning a women’s shoes site, however it may be a little difficult for him to fully understand what really motivates his customer purchases. It’s not always about the “best deal”, or even the “latest trends”. There can be a matrix of complex triggers and motivators beneath a customer’s purchasing decisions, and without understanding those you can’t effectively market to them.

That’s where personal blogs step in as a treasure chest of wealth for the marketer. Unlike a forum or survey, where people might be a little guarded in what they say, or may skew their responses to “fit in” with the crowd (happens all the time), on a personal blog people tend to be more personal, candid and free with sharing their inner thoughts.

Sally Doe may post on her blog about the latest set of heels she just bought, explaining why she “just had to have them”, and without even realizing it give a smart marketer more valuable data on her purchasing motivations than he could have ever collected from hanging out in forums.

And if he finds similar motivations mentioned or implied after researching several other blogs, he can create a strategy to test for marketing to those motivations on his web site.

So, while researching blogs can be a time-consuming process, it can also be the best source of real information you’re likely to find online about your target market in some cases. It’s definitely worth the efforts.

Technorati Tags: blogs, niche research

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Discovering An Opening To Explore

An interesting thing happened over the past week that I think makes for a good story to share here. It’s about how I accidentally recognized a market opening that isn’t being completely filled and am attempting to step in and explore the opportunity.

Last Friday I posted on a number of topics, and among them was my disdain for folks selling “neat package” business models that promise wealth and riches with a single mouse-click (or some such similar nonsense in their sales copy).

And in writing about that I realized that every day there are more and more people trying to turn their online time into profits. Some out of a sense of entrepreneurial spirit, but many out of desperation to just make ends meet in their daily lives.

This all got me to thinking about another post I made last year on what I would do if I had to start over again from zero.

I went back and re-read that posting and still believe the strategy I laid out there is sound. Which got me to thinking, are there any good tools available right now that would be helpful for someone in that position?

The first thing I did to answer that question was write down what someone just starting out would need:
1. help finding good topical keywords to build their pages from
2. help to build content rich web pages based on the keywords they find
3. a path to revenue for their pages (like contextual or affiliate advertising networks)
4. help driving traffic to their pages

For #1 there is a fantastic and free tool available at Wordtracker, so that’s covered.

For #2 there are some site building and content generating programs out there, but I don’t care for most of those because they usually leave giant footprints (warning search engines your site may not be original or unique), or they attempt to dupe search engines and visitors by rewriting other’s content… basically most of them work really well for what they do but doom your site to a short shelf life.

So, #2 is something that needs looking at closer.

For #3 that’s easy, Google, Yahoo or any one of dozens of affiliate networks are all free to join, so there’s an easy path to revenue available.

And for #4, traffic, there’s no shortcuts (other than paying for clicks with Google or Yahoo) for this. Traffic just takes hard work to build. But, if you start with good keywords from #1 then with a little smart social bookmarking of your pages (using delicious, reddit, faves.com and similar sites) then you should have a shot at good placements in the search engine rankings.

Add in some basic article marketing and the traffic should start to slowly come and build for you. It just takes putting in the work.

To Recap

Of the 4 things someone starting out would need, 3 have great resources that are freely available to them already. That’s not too bad.

The sticking point is for building great content pages. Sure, anyone could site and manually write good content pages, and I suggest doing that most of the time because it’s the best solution for getting original, quality content.

But I wondered if there couldn’t be some easier way that was also still ethical?–meaning you could generate lots of good content fast but without risking a short shelf life for your web site. What came to mind was mashups

NIMS - Niche Instant Mashup Sites is born

A mashup is simply a site or page that aggregates content from multiple sources and serves it up (displays it) in a single centralized location.

For example, at their core all RSS Newsreaders act as mashups. They let you subscribe to numerous RSS feeds and then you can read them all in a single place.

That got me to thinking about how cool it would be if you could easily create mashup pages based on the keywords you wanted to target, where the content would always be fresh and current. Creating a script like that seemed easy enough, so I began coding.

In no time I had a script that could gather the latest articles and news stories related to whatever keyword I wanted and display them on page.

Then I decided to pull data from the Yahoo! Answers feeds too, because there’s great information there and the point of this script is to get good content for my pages that would be of value to visitors.

And finally I decided to make the pages even more interesting and valuable for visitors by also pulling in the latest videos from multiple sources that were related to my keywords.

Once I had it working I cleaned up the coding a little bit, made it simple and fast to build lots of individual pages with, and began adding in easy ways that users could add their advertising codes into the pages.

When I had it all together I put it up on a demo site (split screen image to show the page in full, and also the same page with all of the features highlighted and described):

And it’s working great! In just a couple of days and with only minimal social bookmarking efforts (no article marketing yet) I’ve already earned a little money with the demo site. How cool is that?

So, how easy is it to use?

You upload the few script files to your domain, edit a couple of options to select whatever advertising sections you want to use, paste in your advertising codes, then edit a couple of options for how the site layout works (to reduce you site footprint), and finally build pages by selecting a couple of options and entering the keywords to target for each page.

The initial site setup should take between 5 and 10 minutes for most people, and then about a minute each for every page you want to create. And from that point on your pages will always have the most recent, fresh content on your topic keywords, which visitors should enjoy and bots should love since the content is always updating.

For more information about the script or if you want a copy it’s available here

Technorati Tags: mashup, niche, script

Posted in Development | 2 Comments »

A Little Friday Hodgepodge

I have a few things to discuss briefly today, so hodgepodge seemed a fitting title–not to mention it’s just a fun word.

Neat Packages
I’m seeing a recent rise in what I call “Neat Package” online business promises out there. These are those “everything you’ll need in a box” type deals (often called cookie-cutter site/businesses because they turn out tons of the same exact thing over and over) that some Guru swears will allow even a monkey to make money online with ease.

I call BS!

Even if the people selling these products did have success with the templates and systems included, there’s a fade effect that’s going to occur once they start selling their “neat packages” to others. The templates are going to have footprints that search engines will pick up on and begin filtering sites using them, and with each person who buys and uses the system the effectiveness of what’s being done is going to drop.

That’s what happens online, period. That’s why so many “systems” become outdated so fast, and then you see so many version 2’s of popular systems come around.

I feel sorry for the people who get duped with that flip. You buy the exciting new system that everyone has been talking about (usually for paid compensation) just as it becomes obsolete and miss out on the “wealth and glory” that the buyers ahead of you supposedly got, but don’t despair because the Guru has been “working hard in the lab” and was able to come up with all new information and techniques that are sure to work for you now, just pull that credit card back out and purchase version 2 of his Instant BS!

To be fair and clear, I’m not harping on anyone who sells honest and valuable information in eBooks. I’ve done it myself and know there has to be some value placed on the time and efforts that go in to putting a real resource together.

I’m just saddened by seeing so many “Snake Oil Salesman 2.0″ taking advantage of enthusiastic–and often desperate–people who are just trying to get ahead online.

Pedomarketing
With the latest celebrity scandal that I’m aware of, though I don’t stay on top of celebrity scandals so this could be old news by now, concerning some risky business photos taken of Miley Cyrus this might be a timely point to make.

Every so often I get a free product from someone asking me to review it for them, and once in a while some service will send a goody-bag of stuff (usually hats or t-shirts or other similar things with their logos on them) and they may or may not ask me to mention them. I appreciate free stuff (who doesn’t?), so I have no problems with this kind of thing as long as there are no stipulations on what I might have to say about the product or service.

Now, I don’t get free stuff like this all the time, and certainly not as often as some bloggers out there do. That’s fine by me though, because when someone sends me something I feel obligated to try it out and talk about it, whether my impressions are good or bad (hey, I didn’t ask for it so don’t expect me to be gentle if your product sucks!).

The problem though, is if I was getting lots of stuff like some bloggers out there are I wouldn’t have time to write about anything else, so I’m cool with just getting the occasional mailing here and there as I do.

But here’s what I’m not cool with: don’t send me child-size ANYTHING and expect pictures of kids wearing your brand with smiles on their faces!

You’re essentially asking bloggers to pimp out their children by doing this, STOP THAT!

There may be special circumstances if your entire product line is for children, or you work in the marketing department of Parenting magazine… but if you represent an online advertising network or media group there’s no sane reason in the world for you to send bloggers child-size anything.

It’s pedomarketing and it’s disgusting.

Technorati Tags: hodgepodge

Posted in General | No Comments »

Only fools don’t use tools - part 3

I’ve talked about using tools to save you time online twice before (part 1 and part 2), and since today is RSS Awareness Day I thought it was a great time to revisit the idea of using tools wisely to save time, and specifically, the use of RSS Readers.

First, if you’re trying to start a profitable web site, whether your goal is to earn a little extra beer money each week or to build a full time business for yourself, you should be following blogs and news sources that cover your general topic to stay up to date.

The problem with that is you can quickly lose hours of your day going to each site and digging out the latest information. Or worse, you may visit some sites and find there’s nothing new for you there today… that’s wasted time and it does add up.

Here’s where RSS and readers really fill a need. By using an RSS Reader, you can have all of the latest stories from every blog and news site you follow collected in a single place for you, and only the latest stories will be displayed so you won’t waste time looking at anything you’ve already seen or read.

I’ve mentioned this here before, but I follow well over 100 different blogs every day. I also follow several dozen news and trade sites too. It would take me until lunch time every day to actually visit and sort through all of those sites each day if I visited them each individually.

But I use Bloglines and Google Reader instead, and only have to visit 2 sites to get all that information rather then hundreds. And again, because these only show me what I haven’t already looked at in them, I never waste time looking at the same stories twice unless there’s a specific reason I would want to.

I could even reduce that to one site, but I’m a little bit anal about organization and like to keep certain RSS feeds separate, that’s why I use both Bloglines and Google Reader.

Using RSS and RSS Readers, I’m usually able to get through all the sites I follow in under a half-hour each morning, and then through the day I’ll check for any updates here and there, which only takes a couple of moments. It’s a super time saver.

The folks at CommonCraft put a sweet video together showing the advantages and ease of use for utilizing RSS and a reader program, so check it out and then subscribe to my feed and start saving time:

Technorati Tags: rss, rss awareness day, rss reader

Posted in General | No Comments »