A few months ago I decided to test building a brand new website, in a niche I had never operated in before to see how much work it would take to get a brand new website from nothing to making money.
You see, I have been an online entrepreneur for over 15 years now, and I have made several million dollars in affiliate sales and from selling websites. But for this project I wanted to prove that anyone, no matter how much (or little) experience they have can build a profitable website or blog with minimal effort.
Choosing A Niche
So I did some research and asked around to come up with a good topic that I had never had any previous experience with. I heard from a few people that were doing well as affiliates for a company selling physical gold and silver bullion and setting up Gold IRAs for people’s retirement.
I did some research on the company running the affiliate program and found it was being run by some pretty reputable guys in the affiliate marketing industry, so I decided to give it a go.
“Just to be clear, I have no experience with IRAs or the Precious Metals industry. But all I am doing as an affiliate is just generating traffic and directing it back to the experts who do know about these things.”
Finding a Mentor
I often read that the first thing you need to do is to “find a mentor” I personally don’t like the term mentor, I think it conjures up all sorts of undesirable images. But I do like learning from other people’s successes and mistakes. So I found a guy who was already doing quite well with this affiliate program and I asked him some questions.
He shared his strategy with me, the keywords he was targeting and the sites he was using to convert traffic, which is all very valuable information to have.
He was actually buying traffic through PPC networks, whereas I was planning to build a site to get free SEO traffic, but still the information works with both traffic methods.
Building the Website
I came up with a domain name and chose a webhost supplier (greengeeks) And within about 10 minutes I had a basic wordpress blog / website setup.
Choosing A Theme
Next I needed to install a custom theme to make the website look more like a professional website. I chose a premium theme that I found over at WPZoom.com
Adding Content
The site needs some content, and the affiliate I mentioned above had told me I could model off his successful site. So I headed on over to fiverr.com and found a copywriter. I simply asked them to “re-write” the 3 basic pages that I was given permission to use.
Plus I also added an FAQ page of my own that I thought visitors might find useful.
Within 24 hours I had received my content and posted it to the site. Along with some stock images I picked up from BigStockPhoto.com to make the site look professional and finished.
Affiliate Links
Once I was happy with the site, I applied to the affiliate program that I had planned to promote, which was being run through a network called ClickAgain who specialize in the precious metals industry. It took a few days before my site was approved.
I then logged into their affiliate system and grabbed my affiliate links and added them to the website.
I added a few banners in the sidebar, and some contextual links throughout the content and a few other placed.
If you want to see what the finished site looked like, you can see it here.
Traffic Generation
Once I was happy with the website, it was now time to generate some traffic. I have been doing PPC and SEO for over 15 years, so I know first hand how daunting (and expensive) it can be for a beginner. So I wanted to try something different this time.
The plan was to write and submit a press release talking about the launch of my new website. I chose a few targeted keyword and used them in the headline and throughout the body of the press release. Again I headed over to fiverr.com and ordered a 300 word press release from Brbaker on Fiverr and then I submitted the Press Release to a distribution network: MarketersMedia.com
Part of the reason I used MarketersMedia is because they are able to distribute throughYahoo News, which gives the PR a great chance to rank well and get traffic.
The basic strategy was that people would see the Press Release headline when searching Google, click on it, read the Press Release (or at least the first paragraph) and then click through to my website which was linked to from the Press Release.
Once the Press Release was accepted and posted online I immediately started to get some traffic to the site. After a few days a couple of leads started to appear in my affiliate tracking account, and within a couple of weeks I had received my first commission.
The ClickAgain guys have a killer followup system where they actually have a sales team call every single lead you generate, so their conversions are through the roof. Which means all you need to do is get people to their website and they will convert them for you.
It’s possible the easiest way I have ever made money online. (and I have make a lot of money using a lot of different techniques).
Ongoing Maintenance
After the initial traffic generated by the Press Release, I then decided to do some SEO work on getting that Press Release ranking in the search engines.
So I found the URL of the Press Release and I used a few SEO tricks to get it to show up at the top of google for some of my target keywords.
I did spend some money on this SEO work, all up I think I spent around $700 over the next few months.
$14,986 Affiliate Commissions
As of this writing, the site has earned a total of $14,986.
I have not done any more SEO work since the initial month, and the Press Release has dropped out of the rankings a little bit. But I am still getting leads through the system, and as of writing this, I have 3 more pending commissions which would add another large chunk to the Affiliate Commissions.
Summing Up
All in all I spent about 5 or 6 hours setting the website up and writing / sending the press release.
Plus the $700 or so that I spent on Webhosting, Premium Theme. Stock Images and SEO work. Means that I have made over $14,000 in pure profit.
Not bad for a few hours work.
I know $14k is not a huge amount of money, but its the method that is the most important aspect of this article. If you take nothing else away from reading this, just know this… This system works. It can work for any site, in any niche. You just need to do the work.
Imagine having 10 of these sites all producing a few thousand dollars a month, or 20 or 50. Can you see the power that this has?
People are always searching for the magic bullet (myself included sometimes) that is going to make them millions of dollars overnight. But in my 15+ years experience making money online, that type of thing is very rare, and I tend to think that when it does happen its more out of luck than anything else.
But there are proven strategies (just like this one) that will work if you are prepared to put in the effort.
Ok, that’s it for this tutorial, if you have read this far, I commend you. Now go do some work.
If you liked this article, do me favor and share it on Facebook or Twitter (or your fav social media site). I’d appreciate it.
Disclaimer: I have to add that my results are not typical. Most people who join affiliate programs never earn anything at all. Mainly because most people will never do the work required to taste success in this business.
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