Creating Niche Websites For Passive Income

Today I have part two of the report for you. In it we’ll cover list building, monetization and building a sense of community around your niche site using comments and social media.

Set It and Forget It – Part 2 (PDF)

Enjoy!

P.S. As always you’re welcome to share this report with friends.

P.P.S. Ready to learn more from me about affiliate marketing? Join Daily Affiliate Tasks for $10 per month. Learn more and sign up at www.DailyAffiliateTasks.com

That’s why I like to prioritize my workload into larger projects. If you look at my plans for this year, you’ll notice that I’ll be working on completely different things each month.

A while back I was putting a lot of work into revamping an older home organization site. I switched it over to WordPress, added new content and spent some time building links to it, optimizing the content etc. After a couple of weeks of doing that, I have to admit I got bored with it and started working on other stuff. I forgot about the site and just let it sit for the past 3 months or so.

Over the past week something interesting started to happen. I noticed about a sale per day for an affiliate product I’m promoting on that site. Nothing like $$$ to get my attention :) Sure enough, when I logged into Google Analytics, I saw a nice little jump in search engine traffic.

My point is that it’s ok to step away from your sites from time to time… this is particularly true for small niche sites that you’re building mainly as a passive side stream of income. Let them sit and see what happens. Go work on other stuff and then come back and invest more time and energy when things are starting to pay off.

P.S. I highly recommend you install Google Analytics on all your niche sites. This will allow you to pinpoint what’s happening and why you’re suddenly seeing more affiliate sales. Courtney Chowning has a great guide on making the most of Google Analytics at http://www.affiliatenichepacks.com/analytics Get your copy and get more out of the data you’re already collecting, or make this the week where you’re finally getting around to installing GA.

Thank You and Download Pages

Start by making a list of any thank you and download pages you have. Thank you pages are the pages you send your readers to after they sign up for your newsletter or auto responder. Download pages are pages they download info products they bought from you or even free reports they signed up for.

Once you have your list, come up with an affiliate offer you can promote on each of those pages. Make sure it’s a good match for your target audience. Then just write a paragraph or two recommending the product. If you’d like, include some graphics and headlines. Save and you’re done setting up a new stream of passive income.

A/R Messages

Next make a list of any list you own. This will include autoresponder lists, newsletters, customer lists etc. Many of them will already have auto responder messages set up. If they don’t, it’s high time to get started. Make a list of 3 or 4 autoresponder messages you can write that promote an affiliate offer. Make a schedule to write and add them. Last but not least, set a reminder to add a few more in a couple of months.

Info Products

We already talked about promoting additional products and offers on the download pages of info products and to your customer lists. But it doesn’t stop there. You can also promote related offers directly within your info products. I find it helps to promote the same things you’re promoting in your lists and download pages. People may not take you up on the offer the first time, but if it’s a good fit, they may buy the next time. Repurpose the copy you’ve written for the autoresponders or download pages and include it in your info product.

Cross Promote Everything

Last but not least, make sure you cross promote anything and everything related. What do I mean by that?

If you have an autoresponder about list building and an info product about email marketing, make sure you tell your customers about the free list and your subscribers about the info product. A good way to do this is to make a bit list of everything you own… Lists, products, free reports, websites etc.

Next, start drawing lines between things that are related and can be cross promoted. I like to get out another sheet of paper and start making a list of things I need to do to cross promote stuff. Then just work your way through that list.

That’s it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with a Friday Freebie report all about Passive Income.

It also means that I’ll have a little less time to work (unless I want to work much while we are at the beach, which I don’t necessarily want to have to do). At the same time, a second home mean added expenses. The solution? Focus on building some new streams of passive income that will pay the bills and allow me to go play with my family.

That’s enough about me though… how about you? What would some extra income on autopilot (once it’s set up) mean for you?

But what can you do to generate that new stream of passive income? Here are a few ideas:

A New Niche Site

One of my favorites is to set up a new niche website. I spend a weekend or a couple of hours here and there to set up a new site. I like using WordPress for all my niche sites.

Start by coming up with a list of topics you could create a niche around. Use my affiliate niche packs as inspiration or grab my short report on how to find a hot and profitable niche.

Set up the site, add some content and start driving traffic to it. You can monetize your site by adding affiliate offers, building a list and of course the simplest of all – Google Adsense.

To make it truly passive, spend a little time optimizing each page of your niche site for a particular keyword, and get it to rank on page one of Google.

Going “Old-School” With An Ecourse

Another good idea and something I need to work on more is to set up simple little ecourses that teach your readers a particular thing. A great example of this is my affiliate marketing ecourse at www.AffiliateEcourse.com.

Tip - If you’re considering setting up a new niche site to create another stream of passive income, sign up for the course. I’ll walk you through the process of doing just that over the course of 7 days.

Once you have your ecourse set up, monetize it by mentioning affiliate products throughout the content.

Compiling Short Reports

Last but not least, you should consider compiling some of the things you’ve already written (like articles and blog posts for example) into short reports that you can then spread far and wide across the web. Within the report you want to of course promote your blog or website as well as some affiliate offers.

You can see examples of these types of reports on my Scribd page.

P.S. I’m collaborating with my good friend Nicole on a short report about generating passive income. Keep an eye out for it right here on the blog on Friday.

What struck me most about this medieval family, was their start from very humble beginnings. They started out as Tuscan farmers, eventually working their way into Florence as simple merchants.

Florence at the time was a flourishing republic city where you could work your way up from farmer to prosperous banker (the bankers of God because of their close relationship to several popes), which is what the first big patriarch of the family, Giovanni di Medici did. I’m sure you can see the parallels between that culture and the one we live in here in the US. Even with the current recession, it is possible to build up a profitable online business from almost nothing… if you follow Giovanni’s example.

Be Consistent, Never Give Up

The first important lesson to learn is that it takes consistency and tenacity to succeed. Not only did the Medici start from very humble beginnings, they faced setback after setback throughout the 2 centuries of their reign. You don’t become the banker of the pope from one day to the next. You start small, moving from farmer to small merchant to important citizen of Florence.

The same goes for us. We don’t decide today that we’ll build a website and turn into millionaires by the end of the week. It takes time and persistence. Work on your online business every single day. Write an article, get some links, do an interview, record a video, hold a webinar. Do whatever it takes to help you move forward.

And don’t let those setbacks get you. When something breaks, a project doesn’t work out or you end up losing your entire customer base (happened to me), don’t give up. Dust yourself off and get right back to work. I promise it will pay off in the long run.

Reinvest

One of the reasons the Medici rose from obscurity to power so quickly was because the early heads of the family (Giovanni in particular) were very good at taken much of their profits and reinvesting them back into the family business. For example, they took much of their earnings to support a former pirate who would eventually end up becoming pope. In turn he used the Medici bank exclusively which earned them the name of bankers of God.

We can easily do the same. Use a portion of your online income to take a course, or buy some PLR for example. Reinvest in your business every single month and help it grow exponentially. It won’t take you long to see the results.

Finish Projects Others Have Abandoned

One of the major projects undertaken early on by the Medici Family was to help the City of Florence finish the dome of its Cathedral. It was started as the biggest dome in existence … an ambitious project, but had been abandoned long ago. The Medici took up the challenge and hired the brightest minds of the time to finish the cathedral, turning it into a shining symbol of Florence. What better PR is there to make sure your name is well known in the entire region?

How can we translate this into affiliate marketing? Don’t be afraid to buy or take over an existing web property and “finish” it. I’ve bought several sites in the past that needed quite a bit of work. I worked on fixing them up, hired web designers to help me “pretty it up” and have turned them into profitable gems. Not only do they help pay the bills, some of them are great example that showcase my expertise as an affiliate marketer, helping further my “image” and reputation, much like the dome did for the Medici.

Make Important Friends

One of the reasons the Medici become patrons of the arts (or the Godfathers of the Renaissance as they are often called) is because it helped them make important connections. By commissioning a piece of art by a renowned artist, you make a friend. That important friend can get you in touch with other important people … either in ancient Florence or in our industry.

Identify some of the players in the industry and get to know them. Connect with them via social media and meet them in person at conferences like NAMS. Not only can you learn from them and perhaps even arrange for  JV or cross promotion, they can also introduce you to other important players in their own sphere of influence. The end result can be some exponential grow for your affiliate business.

Help Others Move Up

Time and time again, the Medici family does what they can to help others prosper and move up. In fact, they take in a very young Michelangelo and raise him as one of their own, doing everything they can to further his talents and make sure he is recognized as the artist he truly is.

What does this mean for us a affiliate marketers? It means that we should be afraid to help out “younger” colleagues who are just getting their feet wet. The Internet is a huge place with plenty of room for all of us. Help out someone by showing them how to do things, promoting them to your list, giving them a link or being an encouraging mentor.

In return, you never know when you’ll foster the next “Michelangelo” and how you may benefit from this down the road. Plus it just feels good to be able to give back and encourage another budding web entrepreneur.

Godfathers of the Renaissance

That’s what the heads of the Medici family are sometimes called because they encouraged so many budding Renaissance artists. You could say that they bank rolled the entire Renaissance movement. We already touched on the fact that this was very good PR and helped them make important friends, but there’s more to it than just that. It feels good to be able to give back to your community.

Think about that, and consider what you can do to give back to both the online community and to your local communities. It’s particularly important this time of the year. Give a portion of your income to charity, or give some of your time by volunteering.

P.S. Ready to work on your affiliate business more consistently? Sign up for Daily Affiliate Tasks and you’ll get  list of things to work on each week. It makes it easy as pie (mmm… pie) to work on your niche sites each and every day.

Today we’ll step back a bit and talk about three different affiliate marketing models. I”m using all three of them and being able to mix and match is part of what makes affiliate marketing fun for me. After all, there are only so many blogs or authority sites you can keep up with. Sometimes it’s easier to just throw up a squeeze page or set up a “made for adsense” type site.

Niche Marketing

Niche marketing means building smallish sites in various niches. These sites are set up to promote one or more affiliate products. Some sites are set up to promote AdSense, although they do need to have great keyword-optimized content as well as the ads. I often use a combination of affiliate offers and adsense ads to make the most of these little niche sites.

One reason I like setting up simple little sites like this is because they are a great incubator. I set them up, add some keyword rich content, build a few links and then let them sit. If they start to take off and make some sales, I take a closer look and consider building them into larger sites (the third model we’ll talk about).

Mini Sites

Another method of affiliate marketing is setting up a pre-sell page to promote only one product. It might be a squeeze page or some other webpage that then leads to the product creator’s sales page. This works great if you’re already in a market, and want to promote a new product without having to set up a whole new niche site for it. Just register the domain and set up a page.

I find this works best when I set up a squeeze page that captures my readers email addresses. I then promote the affiliate product in the follow up emails.

Content Marketing

Some affiliate marketers do product reviews, or simply blog on their authority site about topics of interest or concern in their niche and mention various products as possible solutions. Quite a few of my larger sites follow this model. They require a lot more time and effort to both build and maintain, but it’s well worth the effort since they are also my biggest money makers.

If you have more than one of these sites, I highly recommend outsourcing much of the day-to-day work, like adding content, answering emails, approving comments etc.

There is more than one way to market affiliate products online. Keep in mind you don’t want to follow one way only; instead, create a few sites for each of the different models. It’ll diversify your income and make it more fun to work on your affiliate marketing business.

Today I want to introduce you to two of my favorite Super Affiliates: Nicole Dean and Lynn Terry. Both of them have become dear friends, but more importantly they are setting a great example of what to strive for.

What I’ve learned from these two awesome marketers.

From Nicole Dean- Nicole is really good at mailing her lists regularly (and building those lists in the first place). She’s very organized and has a schedule of what she’ll mail when.

Nicole is also the queen of repurposing and cross promotions. She does an awesome job at using content to put together viral reports, kindle books and now even print books. All those things are of course monetized well with affiliate offers and her own products.

Last but not least, Nicole makes quite a bit of money on the “backend”. Promoting related products to her customers in various ways. Nicole blogs at NicoleOnTheNet.com.

From Lynn Terry – Lynn takes a very different approach. Her hub is her blog at Clicknewz.com and she has a very large social media presence. Lynn makes a lot of affiliate sales by recommending a product or service on her blog and via Facebook, Twitter etc.

A big key to her success is the relationship she has built with her followers and readers. They don’t just like and trust her, they love her. She’s very straight forward and not afraid to tell you if something isn’t the right fit for you.

Lynn also holds several webinars per month that help her stay connected with her audience and of course they are a great way to get in front of new people.

While each of them approaches affiliate marketing differently, they both have several things in common.

The Right Fit. They look at the product and make sure it’s the right fit for their audience. If their readers interested in WordPress themes, widgets, and plugins, then products having to do with those things are the best fit.

Commitment. They commit to the promotion and decides to give it more attention than one quickie email.

Action. They come up with a game plan and work it. They often send 4 emails about the product, set up a video walk-through of the product, host a teleseminar answering questions about it, and offers customers bonuses.

Follow Through. These super affiliates don’t get distracted by the next amazing promise. They follow through and follow up.

Super-affiliates weren’t born that way. They pick products that fit their list base, commit to promoting them, take action and follow through.

P.S. I’ve written this blog post in less than 5 minutes using one of Peg Baron’s new article starter templates.

And I’m not the only one. Over the past few months, I’ve talked to quite a few different people both online and in the “real world” who’ve lost weight with a low carb approach. It’s a hot topic and one worth looking at as an affiliate niche.

And I’m not the only affiliate marketer who things so. My good friend Lynn Terry from Clicknewz.com has been building a very nice blog about low carb traveling. She’s taking it “From Start To Profit” in just a few weeks and you can see how she got started and what she’s done in this Case Study.

Ready For A Head Start?

If this sounds like an interesting niche to you, I have a great shortcut for you. Nicole Dean from EasyPLR.com has put together an article pack about Low Carb Holidays. It’s the perfect addition for any low carb living and dieting site this time of the year (or even a great little niche site all by itself).

Here’s a list of the article included in the Low Carb Holiday PLR pack:

1. The Basics Explained – Low Carb Diet Lingo
2. The Holiday Meal We All Hate To Love – Low Carb Diet Disaster
3. Choosing The Star Of The Feast – Low Carb Holiday Main Dishes
4. Start Your Feast Off Right – Low Carb Holiday Appetizers
5. Give Traditional Favorites A Makeover – Low Carb Holiday Classic Sides
6. Time To Try Something Totally New – Low Carb Holiday Side Dishes
7. Decadence Doesn’t Have to Destroy Your Diet – Low Carb Holiday Desserts
8. Enjoy The Spirits Of The Season – Low Carb Holiday Beverages
9. Big Dinner Out Of Little Healthy Bites – Low Carb Holiday Buffet
10. Cookies And Candy To Satisfy Your Cravings – Low Carb Holiday Goodies

Grab yours, and get to work. Once you have your new niche site up and running, it’s time to drive traffic and market it. I’d love to help you do just that with my Daily Affiliate Tasks.

I’m sticking to the low-carb lifestyle and am always looking for more information and product recommendations. Once your site is up and running, leave me a comment with a link to it so I can check it out.

By the way … monetizing your low carb site should be easy. There are all sorts of low carb mixes and products available online. I know I’m buying quite a few of them and I’m sure so will your readers.

P.S. In case you’re wondering… yes, there will be an Affiliate Niche Pack about Low Carb Diets. It’s in the works and will be available in the coming weeks.

Lynn Terry is a good friend, super affiliate and the owner of Clicknewz.com. David Perdew is the mastermind behind the bi-annual NAMS workshops as well as the new MyNams membership site (which you can still join for less than 10 bucks through the end of today).

In this short report, David interviews Lynn and they talk about:

• Why only 6% of everyone who tries Internet Marketing actually makes it: Learn how you can be one of those in that elite group!
• What are the two things you need most in order to be successful in internet marketing?
• If you are cut out to be self-employed – what does it take to be self-employed?
• How to start making some money immediately.
• How to create a sustainable long-term income.
• What are the 3 criteria for a solid, long-term online affiliate marketing business model?
• What are the 5 top things that people will spend their extra money on and how you can tap into that to make a decent income?

Download today’s free report here:

Getting Started With Affiliate Marketing (pdf)

Enjoy!

P.S. Today is the last day to join MyNams for $9.95. For less than the price of a pizza, you get monthly training materials, access to a members only forum with where you can talk with other NAMS members and instructors and you can get tickets to the bi-annual NAMS workshops for $97 (otherwise you’d pay around $500). Join today at http://www.AffiliateTreasureChest.com/nams

Most of you also know that one of my closest friends is Nicole Dean from Easy PLR and Nicole On The Net. We’re constantly chatting on instant messenger and one of the most productive things we do is share out to-do lists with each other. We end up challenging each other to get just one more thing done before picking up the kids from school, heading to the store, calling it a day etc.

This process usually works pretty well for both of us, but we both need a little extra motivation. Nicole has been in a bit of a funk and I’ve been super busy this week and am starting to feel a little burnt out. So… being the smart and slightly insane women that we are, we decided to take things one step further and share our to-do lists with you. The idea here is that once we’ve committed to something on our blogs, we’ll hopefully actually get it done.

That’s part of the story, the other part is that we are hoping to inspire you to get more done and share your tasks and accomplishments with us by commenting on our blogs.

Ready to get started? Go on over to Nicole’s blog and read her post “A Peek into My Days” Yes, right now… I’ll wait (and that link will open in a new window so you won’t lose your spot over here :) )

Great, now that you’re all caught up, let me tell you about my day.

1) Got up, drank too much coffee and got my daughter of to school.

2) Tweeted a bit and posted on Facebook about my new Daily Affiliate Tasks membership site.

3) Answered some follow up questions on Basic SEO after doing a webinar on the topic last night. You can read about that here.

4) Worked with the amazing Tracy Roberts on setting up affiliate tools for Daily Affiliate Tasks (which means I told her what I needed and she did all the actual work … did I mention she’s amazing?)

5) Wrote a blog post about a free report and set up a contest around it.

6) Talked to some of my awesome online friends about donating prizes for the contest.

7) Wrote and Sent out a mailing to one of my lists about the contest and two great PLR offers.

• By One Get One Free  on All PLR from All Star PLR
• 20% off on all orders over $25 from Easy PLR

8) Made some good progress on a chapter I was invited to write about an upcoming book. More on that very soon.

9) Writing this blog post.

It’s now 2:06 pm and I’m about to head out to pick up my little girl from school.

Most of the things above were on my to-do list for today … a few extra ones snuck in there once I had the idea for the contest (which was a spur of the moment thing).

There isn’t too much left for the rest of the day, but here’s what I’d like to get done …

1) Finish writing the book chapter and send it off to the editors.

2) Prepare for an audio interview tomorrow.

3) Write a blog post for the new Daily Affiliate Tasks Blog

4) Wrap up some awesome bonuses for DAT members.

5) Relax and spend some quality family time.

That’s it for me.

Nicole, when and how are we reporting on what we actually got done?  I don’t know about you, but I’m planning on taking most of the weekend off. Shall we pick this back up on Monday morning with new task lists?

Now it’s your turn … what’s left on your to-do list for the rest of the day?Leave us a comment either here or on Nicole’s blog.

*****

Update: Nicole and I were just talking on IM and we’re going to do updates directly in the comments section. This way you can get email updates if you’d like. Just leave a comment and click the little “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” thingy.