I’ve seen others post blogs about this, in-fact one of the bloggers I regularly follow tends to use the phrase “if I was just starting out today I’d…” at-least once per week in his postings about money making strategies or new technologies; but I’ve never really given the question much thought for myself until this weekend. I was attending a Holiday gathering of friends and family, and a relative asked me, “Scott, if you suddenly found yourself without a pot to piss in, but still knew everything that you do about making money online what would be your plan?” NOTE: I apologize for the potty mouth of my relative, our family hasn’t evolved too far from the Neanderthal tree.

Anyway, I surprised myself with how quickly an answer–and in fact a plan for getting from zero to livable income–came out of my mouth. Without having to think on it at all I was able to clearly define what I’d do step by step. Also realizing that this might make for an interesting blog post of my own I made a mental note to write about it this week.

The first thing I’d do is beg, borrow or steal enough money for a hosting account with a reputable web host who offered a free domain name registration and multiple site/domain hosting. The initial free domain registration would keep my startup costs at near zilch and knowing that I’ll be building additional web sites later I’d require the ability to host several on the same account without having to pay additional fees. Basically, I approached the answer as a penny-less beggar and assumed I could get free internet access at a local library; and could scrape together a couple dollars each month for the hosting by collecting aluminum cans off the streets. Yes, I took her question very literally.

Next I’d join a contextual advertising service like Google’s AdSense or Yahoo’s YPN! to generate revenue from, and build my first site on the free domain around a topic that had a steady and constant upwards graph according to Google Trends for search and news interest.

Forget “hot topics” and “latest fads” in this case, I wouldn’t be able to afford the risk of them cooling off overnight, so I’d stick with a topic (or niche if you will) that was proven to be increasingly searched for and reported on with news stories (which Google Trends charts for you) to minimize any risk of a sudden loss of topic interest.

I’d also do my best to ensure it was a topic where advertisers were paying fair money in AdWords. I don’t mean for the number #1 ad spot, but also for the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth spots too. If your content can’t generate ads paying better than $0.05 per click across the content network you’re doomed from the get-go.

At this point my relative stopped me and asked, “But if the niche has constant interest and growth, plus high paying advertisers won’t it be saturated and impossible to compete in for a new site with no marketing budget?”

Last year I would have said “yes”, but today it’s very easy to get good search engine placements–even with high competition keywords–thanks to social and other various web 2.0 platforms. In fact, I explained that just about 8 months ago while writing my eBook on building niche Mini-Sites I warned readers to stay away from the most highly competitive markets, but since then have learned myself that anyone can compete in those markets–regardless of how competitive or saturated they are–with just a little bit of knowledge and planning, and that I’d made that clear to the purchasers of my eBook in a sort of addendum I wrote and emailed to all of them recently.

Now, once I had decided on a topic to build my site for I’d start creating content, ad my contextual advertising codes (hopefully optimized to get the highest click rates), create a free mailing list using either PHPList or DaDa Mail depending on my plans for it, add my subscription form for the mailing list to my site pages as well as build an additional “landing” or “squeeze” page to collect addresses from, and then I’d begin to promote the site and build backlinks to it everywhere I could.

Within a short period of constant promoting, fresh content and link building I should be earning a little steady money from the site and have a small email list established. I’d then reinvest some of that money into several new domain names, join an affiliate program like Clickbank, select a few products that are related to my first site topic in some way, then build several new sites (1 per affiliate product) and begin marketing those with the same content and link building efforts I’d used on the first site. I’d also continue cultivating the original site as well, and start using the mailing list to drive traffic (and sales) across the newer sites.

For the original site, as well as the newer affiliate product sites I’d use every free traffic technique I’d ever learned. Article Marketing, “Tell A Friend” links, Press Releases, Blog and Forum Commenting, Social Networks and etc. All of these serve multiple purposes. They generate backlinks that search engines find, they help to support your on-site SEO efforts and they bring real human traffic. Every human visitor is potential revenue for you, and better still, a potential source of free advertising if they use your “Tell A Friend” links or happen to give you a positive vote or rating on any social networks they belong to. Digg may be the best known or most talked about huge traffic sources, but I’ve seen a single user of StumbleUpon spawn thousands of visits to a web page with a single click. If your topic and content resonates with that crowd this can translate into a lot of money for you in the short and long terms.

With this plan and a little hustling it shouldn’t take me long to stop being that “penny-less beggar”, and I should have a fair income stream rolling in between my sites and list mailings. By the way, I’ll continue to promote the mailing list all along through this whole process. Better than free traffic to your web sites is repeat traffic from your list because these are the people who want what you’re promoting so bad they’ve asked you to keep talking about it with them.

Now is where I take it to the next level. Still reinvesting money from my growing income I’m going to develop my own product(s) around my topic. Maybe an information product, perhaps a software product or maybe both. And odds are I’m not going to create them myself, I’m going to hire someone from a forum or freelance site to create them for me. There’s plenty of good writers and programmers out there willing to work for affordable rates, so I’ll hire them and keep using my own time to continue growing and marketing my existing sites to generate more revenue.

Once I have one or more products of my own ready to release I’ll purchase more domains, for the first time in all of this I’ll enter the PPC arena too and begin investing money from my revenue into paid advertising for my own products. And I’ll begin using the affiliate program(s) I joined earlier in a new way. Not as a marketer this time, but as a Producer to get others to promote and sell my products for me on their sites and email lists. I’ll probably even add some free products into the offers just for affiliates to use as value-added bonuses. Affiliates love anything extra you can give them to help sell your products, and added bonuses always increase conversions among potential customers, so it’s win-win for everyone. The consumers get more for their money, the affiliates get more money from the increased conversion rates and I’ll accumulate more affiliates and ultimately earn more money… so value-added freebies should always be included in your product development and affiliate program planning.

And then I’ll create another product. Spend more on PPC. Signup more affiliates to promote and sell it for me. Rinse and repeat.

It isn’t Rocket Science, it doesn’t take any underhanded/black-hat/unethical tactics and there’s no real special secrets or skills required to build a livable income for yourself online. With just a few dollars for the initial hosting account and some basic SEO and social network marketing knowledge I have no doubts that I’d be financially comfortable again in a very short period of time. Then, being financially stable again I could (and would) move on from Internet Marketing to more exciting or experimental projects since selling stuff has never been my idea of fun by any stretch of the imagination.

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