It seems no matter how hard I try – Posting on my own blog and building passive income, among other things, always seems to take the back seat. Let’s not forget to mention that I currently have no means of recording audio (no microphone/mixer is out of commission due to a fried preamp). So, rather than be a complete douche bag and use this as an excuse for not continuing my Passive Income Project series, I’m going to write out this next module with hopes of recording a video later.
In the first video, I talked about various ways I do my gold digging to uncover profitable keywords, products and domain names. Once you have everything in place they next step is to build your website, and even if you suck, I’m going to give you some tools and tips to make a killer site regardless.
Remember – I AM NOT A GRAPHIC/WEB DESIGNER! But I do know enough to make things look and perform well. How did I learn? I did the same thing anyone does when they want to develop a new skill… I scoured the Internet until I realized that I could just harass the living daylights out of my bud Jay aka Suite J to teach me every ninja photoshop, CSS, HTML trick in the book. This was so much easier than reading about code and it was also free!
So TIP NUMBER 1 is if you suck at building sites like Justin Bieber sucks at growing chest hair, find someone to take you under their wing and absorb absolutely everything from them until you vomit on your keyboard. Watch tons of photoshop tutorials on YouTube and TRY everything. Don’t be afraid to mess something up or get crappy feedback on your sites – because the more you do, the better you get.
Here are some killer places to start:
http://www.davesite.com/webstation/css/
TIP NUMBER 2 – If you don’t want to do it yourself, find someone good to do it – for really cheap! When it comes to outsourcing your niche websites, the name of the game is FOREIGN EXCHANGE. How much is your dollar worth around the world? Find a great market and take advantage of the conversion, for example, $10 USD could get you a great looking website if you outsourced it to the Philippines – where the US dollar is of great value on the market.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
TIP NUMBER 3 – You’ve decided on how the site is going to be built, and which niche market/keywords you’ll be targeting, it’s time to find a killer advertiser to promote. Now to make this really work, you want to have one primary keyword, with the domain for that keyword, and promote one single advertiser. You’re not necessarily trying to build a micro niche website, because you might have a keyword/domain that is in a larger market, but you are trying to keep the website as targeted as possible and rank on the first page/first spot for your primary keyword.
I use LinkShare because they have every niche, great resources and make most other networks look like the bottom of Lindsay Lohan’s purse on a Monday morning. Click here for more on LinkShare.
TIP NUMBER 4 – For my passive income project website, I chose to promote LampsPlus.com, which is a reputable lighting and home decor franchise. When it comes to designing your website, you want to make sure that it shares a similar look and feel to that of the advertiser you’re promotiong. Why? Because when people find your site online and click on the ads or links, they won’t realize they’ve been sent to the advertisers website.
Is it okay to copy your advertisers website? No. Is it okay to mock their colors and styling to increase conversions? Absolutely. Just take a look at my website, MissionTiffanyLamp.com and click any of the ads referring to LampsPlus – doesn’t it feel like you’re on the same website? This is the whole point.
TIP NUMBER 5 – Keep your website as frequently updated as possible. If you can only write one post per week, great. One post per month is fine, as long as you’re compensating with an increased amount of social bookmarking per new post published. Every article you write or have written for the website will essentially be a short summary post, reviewing a product in particular – using your affiliate link for the image as well as throughout the content.
This is very important****IF YOU DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOUR NICHE WEBSITE, OR DON’T CARE HOW IT LOOKS AND PERFORMS, YOU WON’T MAKE ANY MONEY. So the opposite of that would be to actually care, work hard, and if you don’t know how to do something – learn or hire someone for dirt cheap to rid you of the burden.
In the next module I’ll actually take you guys through how I set up the WordPress niche site in the back end so you have on board stats, click tracking, link cloaking, etc.. I’ll show you how to make your website run like a champ (Rocky to be exact). Not sure when I’ll get around to doing the video – but I will!
Cheers,
Elijah
ftp://gi-kimono.com
Hey Elijah, good to see you back here again…. Sucks about the preamp!!
Looking forward to the next part.
@Forest – Hey dude! On the plus side, that mic pre amp has been through hell and back. I’ve easily clocked 10k hours on it – and originally paid $350.
Just dropping in on you E. Had some people asking about your music that I use for the intro of my videos, you know: Electric Girl. Awesome cut!
Anyway, hope all is well, home boy!
@Freddie – Yes sir! Electric Girl actually released in France earlier this year. The producer who made the beat came out with his debut LP and that track made the cut.
“I met this electric girl, worlds apart, made my heart blaze a spark, when I plugged her in and turned her on. Felt her skin burn when she heard this song…”
Yeah baby!
Elijah
Thanks for your TIP #4
I like your idea of having your website share a similar look and feel of the advertiser you are promoting. Will keep this in mind when building sites.. never thought along those lines..glad to see you posting again..
Love your site and I followed your first video which resulted in my newest site, kitchenwinebar.com, and I got on the front page of Google in just a few days. But my traffic isn’t looking as good as I thought. Can you give me some suggestions? Thanks for this site and the motivation for us to keep building.
@David – It was an interesting “aha” moment when I realized that a single affiliate program, with a mock designed site would convert really well with little traffic.
Sidenote – IBuildChoppers.com is a great domain! With a stronger header graphic and some CSS tweaks, that site and domain could really be an authority – are you ranked for anything?
@Joel – Well the first thing I notice is the site is very out of the box regarding the design. If you think of the major sites in that niche, ikea, pottery barn etc.. they are visually appealing – so more quality image sets in posts would be a great place to start. I’d also look into writing some unique content, featuring specific products.
Are you just planning on amazon with wp robot, or are you still searching for a dedicated affiliate advertiser to work with. I did notice that the term kitchen wine bar gets tons of search, but all of the first page sites are for actual wine bars located around north america, whereas your site is promoting wine bars, racks etc ..
I would make a list of 5 product related keywords to target and get first page ranking for them i.e. specific brands of wine racks etc.. This way someone who’s searching for this is already in purchase mode in their head.
I would take a peak over at ThemeForest.net and check out some themes as well as getting a logo up on the site.
Hope this helps!
Elijah,
This is just an hobby site of mine. I build the choppers you see on http://www.ibuildchoppers.com from recycled parts which I get from old VCR’s, computers,cell phones etc.
I do not sell the finished product. What I do on my site is show others who are interested in this sort of craft how to build them..
What I am finding is that people who search for choppers are expecting to find the real thing, so when they land on my site I guess they find that they won’t be able to ride my choppers… I guess I would be ranked for choppers..
@David – That is super interesting man! I had no idea such a thing could be accomplished using recycled parts…
Hmmm… So maybe your market is, rather than the motorcycle rider, the DIY market. Here are some keywords I just found that you may want to start focusing on, if you don’t have these already:
build chopper frame
custom build chopper
build mini chopper
rigid frame chopper
These all have decent search and next to no competition. Ranking #1 for these would be cake since you already have “build choppers” in your domain name.
Maybe a new static page with an article for each keyword. Then do your basic bookmarking and social stuff.
HEY I want you guys to feel free and put your primary keyword for your niche site in the name field of our comment form as I did. This way as this conversation continues, we’ll all be getting some PR2 juice from TheAtHomeCouple.com!
Give all you LURKERS some incentive to join in on the conversation!
Elijah
Thanks for your suggestions. I will try it..I also have a photo gallery of more choppers which I will be adding to my site soon..
@David – That’s great! Visual is an important element with any creative niche. Don’t forget to use keyword driven title and alt attributes for each image, as well as naming each image file with your keywords.
Image optimization plays a larger role in SEO than most think!
I don’t usually post on blogs but had to on yours. You have a very easy to read writing style. I really enjoy posts about this topic, they give me a lot to reflect on. I don’t have time to read everything right now, I found this site when looking for something else on Yahoo, but I’ve bookmarked your homepage and will check back soon to see the latest thoughts.