PIP Module 2 – Building Your Niche Affiliate Site

Passive Income Project - Niche WebsiteIt 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.pstuts.com/

http://www.problogdesign.com/

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

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

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

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