Plan for September
Continuing on my program to explore a new business idea every 5 weeks. For September I’m going to be focusing on continuing and expanding on the things I’ve learned from doing the 30 Day Challenge.
My process for the month will go something like this:
- 1 week of research. This includes finding one good niche with about 30 related keyword phrases where I can get about 100 visitors/day. That means finding one with lots of people looking for it but poor competition so I rank highly in search results.
- I’ll find a good affiliate product to match the niche to use to test to see if the market will convert.
- for week 2 I’m going to create 10 content pages on sites like Squidoo. Each site is highly targeted to one of the keyword phrases, and has the other phrases in there for that extra oomph. Each page will try to funnel people into affiliate product pitch page.
- Then a week of focusing on traffic. Perhaps write a few more content sites and do some traffic generating stuff like put them on digg, or stumbleupon. Have friends help spread the word.
- On week 4 I should have a good idea if the market will convert. If there’s some potential I’ll continue if not, then go back to the research phase and find another niche.
- At this point I’ll have to buy some things. I’ll have some content written professionally, probably a guide to give away for free and a number of email posts with tips or whatever is appropriate for the niche. Each email will also attempt to sell something. It would be nice to have about 20 days worth of emails to put people on once they subscribe from my squeeze page.
- If everything looks good I’ll buy a domain name for that niche and get some hosting. I’ll redirect all my content sites to my site which will host a “squeeze page” to collect emails and email out a free guide before forwarding people to an affiliate site.
- Over the next 20 days those people will receive a nice email with a great piece of information and a sales pitch with a link to an affiliate site. Hopefully over the 20 days they might find something that strikes their interest.
- As the site makes money I’ll expand in several key ways. I’ll develop my own products to replace the ones that are affiliate sales so that instead of making 30% of a $30 product I’m making 100% of a $50 product. I’ll add more content sites to direct traffic. Start a campaign to use Google AdWords. And find related niches which I can point people to from the emails or website. Finally I’ll further develop the hosted website with more content so that people can arrive there and find other things that they might be interested in.
It’s important to note that the content pages are not filled with crap. It’s not simply create a page and put a bunch of links in there and hope for the best (and annoy everyone looking for information). These are top quality well written pages that people will enjoy reading.
Once this network is in place it’s very hands off. Some maintenance here and there, and testing new product offers, expanding or trying new things in the email sequence. There’s going to be some fine tuning to get the click through rates up and tweaking the copy. Hopefully at this point the network is making some decent income.
The approach you outline and the focus on quality content look to be a sound way forward and should produce long term success. Many internet marketing initiatives start this way and much is said of the importance of selecting the right niche.
Another very important point, particularly with the approach you have outlined, is to choose the right merchant whose product you are going to promote. Whilst you can see their popularity in places like clickbank or the affiliate networks there is no substitute for reviewing their conversion journey.
Oftentimes a very sound niche and content driven approach, such as you mention, can be spoiled by a poor merchant journey. If their site is slow, has frequent time outs or just has a badly laid out journey then your traffic generation efforts will produce little income. You can decide which merchant to partner with but one the decision is made your success is in their hands so choose wisely.