Oct
26
2008
Looking for a niche website that will generate holiday income? Here is a way to market a niche oriented site offline. Gift certificates are a huge item during the holiday season. Sometimes finding the right gift can be more of a challenge than we can handle. Enter the “Gift Certificate” website. There are several great affiliate programs out there that you can use to make money with gift certificate purchase. I use the following two step process to market this site offline for great online results.
Step 1: I build a nice looking website that is pleasing to the eye complete with different gift certificate purchase options and information. This site is constructed in such a way that as each holiday throughout the year rolls around, I can quickly change the look to reflect that holiday. In the case of the one I am working on now, it is Christmas oriented.
Step 2: I go to my local Staples or Kinko’s and I get 1000 business cards made that say “Looking for a gift certificate for a holiday gift?” or something to that effect. I put the website addess on it along with some names of various types of certificates (monetary, dinner, actual gift, discount, etc…) and I start passing them out. I always keep at least 100 cards with me at all times and my goal is to hand out 100 cards a day. If I run out I simply go and order another 1000.
When crunch time comes for gift purchases hopefully those people you have handed them out to will pull them out and go to your website. Don’t hesitate to email your friends and family with the website address and ask them nicely to pass it on to thier friends and family as well.
There you go. Two simple steps to market your holiday gift certificate website offline and generate online affiliate sales. Simple but effective (especially if you live in a smaller town like I do.)
Oct
23
2008
A lot of people say they will teach you how to make money online. Very very few give that information away for free. If you are like me you are probably tired of all the banners about sitting on the beach and making thousands of dollars, or learn to be a internet millionaire in ten easy steps, etc… Everyone has a secret forumula for sale.
Garry Conn is definitely not like that. In my opinion he has emerged as the only real “make money online” guru around. Why do I say that? Garry gives detailed, step by step instructions on how to set up money making niche websites. For instance, take yesterdays posting titled “Make Money Online Building A Blog About Gardening“. Garry explains the process from keyword research all the way through domain name selection and everything in between to set up a blog that will make money using adsense. He even provides a list of available domain names that he has researched. Garry also gives his thought process to each step so the reader can fully understand why he is doing what he is doing in selecting and building a niche site.
This blog posting isn’t the first time he has provided step by step instructions of this nature. He has done it several times and each time he lays it all out there for anyone to follow.
Of course he has developed some tools for the serious web entrepreneur but for the most part Garry gives away what he has learned. I am a firm believer in “what goes around comes around” and they way Garry gives away and shares his knowledge can only mean that he will be successful in all he does beyond his wildest dreams. I for one want to thank Garry for what he has shared.
If you are serious about learning how to make money online, then visite GarryConn.com and subscribe to his RSS feed and keep up with what he has to share.
Oct
15
2008
On Monday I made a post about creating niche sites and using it to market to your friends and family. Just a short follow up to that post. When I got out of the Navy back in 1987 I went to work for Mutual of Omaha (MOO) Insurance as a life insurance agent. Exciting eh - what a job for a former cryptologist. Anyway, the first thing they made me do was take a full day and sit and do nothing but make a list of everyone I knew. When I started I thought to myself how long could this list possibly be. This was going to be my core solicit list for insurance sales. MOO would take my list and send an introductory letter out for me and then I was to call each one and follow up.
I was very suprised at the end of the first day just how long that list had become. There were several hundered names on my list and the more I listed the more came to memory. Why am I telling you this. Try this same drill and see how many names you know. That is your core list for your holiday niche site. Let’s say you have a list of 200 people (it will probably be much much more than that) and in a best case scenario each one buys something from your Christmas affiliates at an average lead or sale price of $5.00 that is $1000.00. Ask them to send the link to your holiday affiliate website to their friends and it grows even more.
SImple idea isn’t it? Just make sure your holiday niche site is professional looking, not one of this single page splash sites that scroll down forever with multiple testimonials saying how wonderful everything is.
I would be interested to hear if any of you do this for the upcoming holdiday season and what your results are. With a site like this using your friends and family, you don’t have to worry about SEO or search return rankings. All of your marketing is done offline.
