Author: Elijah

Epic Fail: Passive Income Site Off To A Bad Start!

A little update from my on going series of posts/tutorials on how I AM building my passive income through niche affiliate websites and automated blogs.  So if you remember, our mission Tiffany lamp website got off to a good start.  I got on a one on one basis with my affiliate manager (Linkshare.com is the network and LampsPlus.com is the advertiser our website is promoting) and I got some good old social website traffic heading to our posts, which basically feature a product from the vendor site, with a little blurb and some anchor text.

Everything was going well and the site is getting increasing amounts of traffic and clicks – but what do you see wrong with the screen shot below (taken today from my linkshare account):

I’m staring at an order, but zero commissions or sales reported?!?!  Anyways, so after a while of sifting around, and calling my affiliate manager to inquire, I ended finding out how to generate detailed reports (Linkshare’s selection of vendors is AMAZING for niche sites, but their reporting system is not user friendly).  Here’s what I see in the report I generated which details the transaction in question:

EPIC FAIL MOMENT: Our first sale for our much anticipated, super killer niche website was canceled!  How’s that for a bright future??  All joking aside, I felt it was necessary to share this with you guys to prove a point…

If you fail, try again.  Plain and simple, just like they tell you in the text books, at school and at your AA meetings.  Just because our first referral canceled their order, it doesn’t mean that everyone else is going to as well.  More importantly, it doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with the website or what we are doing.

Shit happens!  I don’t want to hear any excuses about why you’re not putting what you know into action.  Even if you don’t know everything that’s needed, allocate energy towards learning where you lack.

How about that for a kick in the balls Epic Fail?!?

Cheers,

Elijah

Mindless Distractions: Taking a Break From The Internet Marketing Game

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfIpOXxZV8k

Internet marketing causes insomnia.

I know there are more than a few of you out there who suffer from this addiction I have (financial and mobility freedom via making money online).  Some nights I just simply can not turn my brain off.  It’s almost as if when I lay down to sleep, my brain turns on.  Occasionally, in the midst of domain names, methods and tricks flashing rapidly through my head, I will hit something that is genius.

Most of the time it’s a pain in the ass and stresses me out.  I’ve never been a good sleeper – natural born insomniac.

When I know I need to get to sleep sooner than later, I will stop all work related stuff and randomly watch videos on good old YouTube to distract me, empty my brain and help bring me down.

Tonight was flipping through the recent hockey fights on HockeyFightsDotCom tube channel.

Say what you want… lol.. I’m Canadian, I love hockey and fighting is what we do when the passion is high or someone cheap shots a team mate of ours.  It relaxes me.

WHAT DO YOU DO TO TO RELAX BEFORE BED?

Fact: An Alpaca Could Make Money Doing This…

Shit – I really lost track on keeping the Passive Income Project posts up to date with my actual site, so let me be the first to apologize!

The videos haven’t been canceled, just temporarily postponed while I’m paying off some debts and expanding a couple of partnerships in the offline SEO market.  One of the reasons I am so busy serves as the topic of this particular rant…

FREELANCE ARBITRAGE.

Rather than write out a long post, I typed up a quick start PDF that will take you through step by step on the mindset and tools needed to make money using this method.  This is the absolute real deal, and If you’re not taking advantage of others peoples services and market demand, you’re missing out on an easy way to make hands off money using your computer and a comfortable pair of pajamas.

Click HERE to download my little money making report.

If you’re familiar with this method and would like to elaborate on what I’ve laid out, please share your expertise below!

Cheers,

Elijah

PIP Module 1 – Finding The Money Niche

Good riddance to all!

As promised, I’ve just completed and uploaded the first video tutorial in our Passive Income Project series (PIP) – and this area is probably one of the most challenging to newbie bloggers and online money makers.  I’m sure you guys have all heard the term “Money Niche” and if you haven’t, it pretty much means a market and set of keywords that are targeted to buyers and those who are in the shopping state of mind.

These Money Niche markets typically revolve around a retail product, and can be as specific as the model type or brand.  The reason websites in these markets make money is because the person on the other end of the computer is already in the mood to click and spend money – they are looking for something specific and it is our objective to step in right before they make the purchase and be that deciding resource for their purchase decision.

It took me 12 minutes to find a profitable Money Niche Capable of generating $500-$1000 per month.

You heard right!  Using the process Veronica and I have developed it took me less than 15 minutes to find a killer keyword, product and keyworded domain name.

You’re going to have to watch this to believe it – no editing either!  I jam packed all kinds of killer info into this 20 minute video – so sit back and enjoy part one of our Bloggerhood quest for passive freedom!

CLICK HERE to watch PIP Module 1 – Uncovering the Money Niche

Cheers,

Elijah

Cashing Out On The Local Search Demand

A little offshoot of our upcoming Passive Income Project – I wanted to give all of our bloggerhood buddies some insight towards a method of making a full time income by capitalizing on local businesses and geo targeted search traffic.  This is nothing new, as there are thousands of internet marketers who’ve been stacking loot providing offline businesses with simple SEO and web related services for quite some time.

A little back story before I hook you guys up with one of my favorite methods – In the late summer I did some copy writing for a Toronto-based SEO named Jeff Schnurr, who then commissioned me to do a 5 page WordPress-powered site for a client of his.  Months later, I’ve completely absorbed his insane knowledge of local search, link building and niche keyword research – and Veronica and I have partnered with his company to take over the Canadian local search market.

This among everything else we’re trying to do!

While there are plenty of tried and tested methods to making money with local search and offline businesses, I’ll take a minute and list one of my personal favorites that I am currently trying out:

METHOD – Local Retail Domain Flipping

Research keywords that are location specific and relative to a retail market or profession.  For example, my latest experiment is with the keyword Downtown Toronto Florists – you’re starting to catch on now, right?  You find keywords/domains that are relative to a local market, highly competitive (lots of Adwords on search results) and are specific to some sort of product/industry.

**TIP**  This method only works if the “keyworded” domain name is available.

Once identify the market/competition, you throw up a quick wordpress site on the domain, get that site ranked for it’s primary phrase (or multiple phrases of course) and once it’s in that top listing, you contact every competitor which shows up in the search results (Adwords too) and advice them of your domain name, it’s ranking and how they are wasting money paying for traffic when they could have the number one spot.  Let them know that you have contacted the other players in that market and are still accepting offers.

Cash in the bank. This method can be twisted so many ways, and the great thing about local markets is that the competition isn’t as heavy as trying to rank for a global search term, and because you have the keyword domain, ranking for your term shouldn’t be too hard at all – most of the time it can be accomplished in a couple of weeks.

A little hint… use Google and Yahoo’s local business listings, create an address close to the center of your city and submit your “business” profile to their directory.  And you’ll end up like my current site – Click to see.

Pro’s to this method:

  • The only cost is a domain name
  • If you take advantage of holidays in certain markets, you could get some super high offers
  • Because the business owner you’re contacting knows you’ve also been in touch with their competitors, this is going to make them want the domain even more – you can expect to get anywhere from $200 – $500 on average for a good local domain because this is chump change for offline businesses.
  • A little bit of bookmarking, a couple article submissions and your business listing is sometimes all you need to take the number one spot.

Con’s to this method:

  • Might be challenging for someone who’s never taken the “number 1” search spot before, on purpose.
  • This method only works well with the top 1-3 search positions, though you could get luckily with lower rank.

Anyways, I’ll keep you guys posted on how I do with my Downtown Toronto Florists local domain flip (I also bought the .ca) and would love to hear your feedback, as well as any way you can think of twisting this – email us if you have any questions!

Cheers,

Elijah

Passive Income Project Introduction

Our demented minions,

Elijah and Veronica here with some great news!  Well, a few pieces of worthy buzz for sure.  Since our whiteboard optimization video, we made the decision to spend more time on our passive income streams i.e. organic niche and micro niche websites which concentrate on one or two advertisers from top performing affiliate networks such as Neverblue and LinkShare.

We also came to the realization that if we were going to be setting aside one day per week to work on our websites, why not document our steps (which have been laid out) and post them up on the blog via step by step, hand-holding tutorials?

Pretty sweet right???

We will be walking you along as we complete the following modules:

  • Uncovering the Money Niche via Niche Keyword Research
  • Choosing a High Converting WordPress Theme
  • Plugin Set Up and WordPress Optimization
  • Ninja Style CSS/HTML Customization
  • Preparing Your Website For Launch Date (kinda sounds like an Italian guy saying “Lunch Date”)
  • Content, Link Building and Social Networking Schedule
  • Quarterly Goals, Outsourcing and Maintenance

As you can see – really straight forward, step by step and leaving no stone unturned.

Follow along with us as we build our passive income generating niche website.  If you have a question, you know where the contact form is.  Stop wasting time, stop being afraid and invest $10 into your future freedom.

If we stick together – we can do this!

Cheers,

Elijah