Everyone seems to want to be the big fish in the big pond these days when it comes to both website traffic and subscribers to their blog. Don’t get me wrong I love looking at my stats page too and I’m no stranger to hitting the F5 key repeatedly hoping that my feed count has gone up. However I’ve learnt over time (the hard way) that its quality and not quantity that really matters when it comes to making real money on the net.
To give you an idea of just how much you can make from so little I’ll give you an example. I have a small blog in the travel sector that never gets more than 50 visitors a day yet consistently makes over $400 a month. To some of you this will sound impossible but when you understand the mechanics of what’s actually happening it’s quite simple. To help prove my case ill list a few essential rules for creating this type of site.
- The traffic you get to this site must be looking to buy.You will know this if they find your site by typing a buying keyword into Google such as “discount vacations in Colorado”. The fact that they are adding a price modifier such as “discount/cheap/luxury” means this visitor is really thinking about making a purchase, if they find your site using a buying keyword then affiliate commission won’t be far away.
- I mentioned the phrase “discount vacations in Colorado” above and I really wasn’t joking about building a site around something so specific. You see if a query is very specific it means the person searching for it knows exactly what they want and in most cases they need very little selling to seal the deal. In the marketing industry this is known as the “long tail” which really just another way of saying an obscure or abstract term.
- Understanding volume is very important when it comes to the long tail. You see many people look down on these terms/phrases in the industry because of the low volume but this is one of main reasons the long tail works so well. Because everyone else is ignoring such a specific but still high value term there can often be very low or in some cases no competition at all. That doesn’t mean there won’t be sites on the net out there that have a page or two on the phrase but because you are going to build a whole site around the term who do you think Google is going to choose?
- My last essential rule is probably one of the most important but one that many people have as an after-thought. While Google adsense is great for a one size fits all solution it will rarely earn you the most money from your traffic. Instead find a big site who is actually selling this product or service in large volume (so they know what they are doing and know how to convert traffic into sales). Once you’ve signed up to their affiliate program you want to get something from them that you can integrate into your site to help convert your traffic.
I don’t want to give the impression that everything I’ve listed is all you need to make some quick and easy money from the Google/website combo. You need some luck in picking the right niche at the right time and also some hard work in promoting the site and building content. However if I can do it I really believe anyone can. Trust me that there is money out there for the little guy if you look in the right places. Until next time, PB.
PB has started a new blog helping internet marketers come up with some great ideas to earn money online easily from home. There’s lots of free advice for both veterans of internet marketing and newbie’s alike.
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