I’m in the business of creating and flipping websites. One thing is abundantly clear when dealing with my customers … there are a lot of people out there who are trying to get in this business or just make a success of the web properties they buy or create that don’t know the first thing about how to set up a blog, what to do with it once it is set up, how to promote it, how to get it indexed, how to get traffic and make sales.

I just launched Niche Demon exactly for this reason. If you fall into the category above, this ebook is for you. Geared towards newbies, it gives detailed information on how to set up a WordPress blog and then drive traffic and make sales from it. This is a 98 page ebook jam packed full of information that even some more experienced affiliate marketers don’t know … ranging from setting up a website to marketing, social bookmarking strategies on autopilot, traffic and linking strategies that will send your site to the top of Google results, to setting up a Google Adwords campaign. Read the rest of this entry »

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I’m writing this because probably a lot of my readers are newbies who buy sites and may be buying from Sitepoint and other forums/auction sites.  I use Sitepoint to sell my sites and occasionally buy some sites from Sitepoint.

If you buy sites on Sitepoint, you really need to do some homework. There are a lot of sellers who are purchasing MMR products that cost $10 or less, setting it up on a domain, and selling it for $167 more or less.  When I say a lot, I mean a lot.

Some of them even try to pass these MMR sites off as unique.  They advertise them as unique, but they are far from unique.  I saw yet another one of them two days ago that advertised the site as unique.  I found it for $49 by Googling and this scammer was charging $797 for this site.  I pm’d him and gave him the $49 link to the exact same site.  His response?  He gave me a link to the exact product that costs $5.99.   What can you say to that kind of arrogance and pure rip-off mentality?

Apparently this type of thing is not against TOS, so it is up to YOU to research the site before investing your hard-earned cash.

How to Flush Out the Rip-Off Artists

Use Copyscape.com for starters.  It will tell you if a site has duplicate content.  In addition, you can use Google.

Take a headline or paragraph and do this

“place headline here or paragraph or sentences” in Google with the quotes.  It will return any content within the quotes.  When you look at the results, look for Master Resale Sites listed and check it out.  You may find that there’s a Master Resale Rights product for a couple of bucks identical to what is being sold as a unique product on Sitepoint for over $100 or you may find that the site being sold is using PLR articles that are already all over the Internet.

Here’s another tip on how to spot the scammers.  Click on their profile and check all the sites they’ve been selling.  Click on each of them to see if they keep selling the same sites over and over.  Right now there’s a little scammer on Sitepoint who is selling the exact same “traffic selling” site over and over, just changing the template and domain name, but it’s the same site and he’s listed well over 20 of them so far.  And people keep buying them.  Not only is the market completely oversaturated with this BS site he’s selling, but Sitepoint is now overrun with people trying to sell “traffic” from these clone sites.

Take the time to do the research.

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I have close to 300 domains … some of them crappy, but quite a few domains that are worthy of developing. In my experience, the quickest way to sell off my domains is to develop them. Quite a daunting task when you have a lot of domains. My problems are solved. I just purchased the unlimited version of Autoblogged, the best damn autoblogging plugin for WordPress I’ve seen, bar none. Check out this site I put up yesterday using it. TekPop.com. It has nearly 200 posts being pulled in from the top technology blogs on the web, all citing the sources, pulling in the images and saving a local copy, tagging and categorized. You just set this up and your domain is good to go … instant quality content on a regular schedule. Check it out below.

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In a heated bidding war, ToysRUs bought the domain name Toys.com at auction for $5.1 million. ToysRus really wanted the domain, for obvious reasons. Everyone except ToysRUs and domain holding company National A-1 (owner of domains such as free.com, boys.com, girls.com, and divorce.com) bowed out of the auction at $3 million. The last $2 million was just those two companies going back and forth for hours.

ToysRUs really didn’t have much choice. If it wants to be the first thing people associate with toys it really couldn’t afford to allow anyone else to own that domain, even in this economy. Who says real estate is dead?

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With the current state of the economy here in the US some of you might wonder if domaining is still a viable means of online income.  Here’s my experience.  I have a lot of domain names just sitting parked right now, but one by one, I am developing them.  I choose the best, most interesting names, develop a site, get it indexed, get some traffic and sell them at a nice profit.  All this, of course, takes work.  So many people want to just buy a domain name and sell it at a huge profit without doing anything to it.  That works for some really high-powered domain names, but for the average portfolio, it doesn’t … at least not for me.

Even if you don’t want to develop, in order to get more than reseller profit from a domain name, it’s going to take work.  In order to make a real profit from a domain name, you need to sell it to an end-user rather than a reseller.  Finding and contacting those end users takes time and work.  I’ve done it both ways … finding end users and developing.  I enjoy developing more than cold calling (via email) end users.

There’s a trend to develop mini-sites rather than park a domain.  That’s a good start, or at least a better alternative to parking sites, but I develop full sites rather than mini-sites.  It’s all about the end user.  As an end user myself, someone who purchases sites, I never throw money at “made for Adsense” mini-sites.  Number one reason is that I could throw that up in no time myself.  Number two reason, I don’t find them fun or appealing in any way.  If they make you some money … good, but people pay pretty well, even in this economy, for a well-developed and designed site in a hot niche.

Here’s some sites I’ve sold recently:

Land of Shopportunity
Anime Zoo
Dot Com Mogul

Here’s some I have in development:

eMovieTrailer
Simple Yoga

That’s just a few of them. I have more in different stages of development. Once they are developed, I get them indexed and get traffic going to them. How do I do that? Simple. I own Firestorm Forum, a social bookmarking exchange community and when I exchange bookmarks, let’s say Stumbles (that works best for me), the site is indexed within 48 hrs .. usually 24 and has great traffic stats immediately (unless, of course, the site is a real dog). It works beautifully and having the site well-indexed in Google and traffic stats to show off adds a great deal of value to the site and gives you some selling points for listing.

Where to sell?

I have my best luck selling on Sitepoint. It costs money but has been well worth it for me. One tip for selling a site on Sitepoint is to make a great sales page. Be sure to mention all of the assets of the site … how many posts, how much traffic, revenue if any, site features, potential to make money (ie … do you already have Adsense and ads in place?). Here’s one of my listings to give you an example of listing the site’s selling points.

One thing about developing nice sites to sell … you can even flip a weak domain name if you have a great site established on it … not a really crappy domain name … just a bit weak. Of course, if the site is really great, it might even sell to someone who purchases a better domain name for it.

What kind of sites to develop?

I have two favorites … WordPress blogs and Joomla sites. Many people know how to set up a WordPress blog, so that is probably the easiest site to get established. Joomla sites are a bit more complex and often the best components to add features to your site are commercial, so you have to sink a little money into the site. To tell you the truth, 6 weeks ago I wouldn’t have been able to put a nice Joomla site together to save my life. Then I bought one really cheap and had to buckle down and get to know Joomla in order to add value to the site and fix some problems. It didn’t take long to become a Joomla enthusiast and all in all, it was a pretty short learning curve.

So that’s it …my advice for selling domains in a bad economy. Works well for me. Hope it does for you as well.

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With more than 64 million active users and around 250,000 new users joining every day, you can tap into the social networking revolution with a free page on Facebook for your blog or business … yes, I said free.

Previously you had to be BIG business with a BIG marketing budget to create a corporate or company Facebook account. Blockbuster Inc., CBS Corp., The Coca-Cola Co., Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., are examples of well known companies that have a corporate presence on Facebook. Facebook members could then become “fans” by adding your company as a friend.

Now, this option is open to any business. Businesses can add any content they want, including photos, videos and music. Facebook users can share information about a business directly with the company by adding reviews or other information to that business’ page. Small businesses now have the advantage that only Fortune 500 companies could afford previously. It’s simple: here’s how you do it:

Creating A Facebook Business Page

1. Visit this URL

2. Choose the best category for your business.

3. Just enter your business name and then click “Create Page”.

4. Now you can add a description of your business and a website address. You can also add a photo or logo. There are sections to add more photos, video

5. Then click on your hyperlinked business name in the top left corner and click “publish this page.”

6. Finally, from your new profile page, become a fan of your business. This is important as all of your “friends” will now be able to see your page when they visit your profile and it will be shown in the news feed that “Suzanne is a fan of Dot Com Mogul”. With some social networking, some of your Facebook friends will also add your business as a friend and then their friends will see a message… and on and on.

To the left is a screenshot of your admin panel. You can send updates to fans of the business and there’s a link to Promote Page with an Ad. You can also use the pages’ discussion board to start topics, list events, or write on “the wall”. I’ve just added a page for my blog, Dot Com Mogul. You can see it here. (While you’re there, add it as a friend I plan to add more interesting info and a video to it, but this is the beginning page with minimal information. If you’re wondering why you should do this, just check out the Facebook statistics below, and did I mention …. it’s free.
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I made a list of CPA Affiliate Networks in an earlier post. This is a list of US and International Affiliate Networks that you get commission for selling products, rather than generating leads. I’m a member of Commission Junction (CJ), Linkshare (LS), Affiliate Future US, ClickBank, PayDotCom.com, ShareASale (SAS) and MarketHealth, with MarketHealth being my best performing now, but PayDotCom.com the best in the past. Hope you’ll find this list useful when searching for products to promote. If you run an affiliate program that is not listed, leave a comment and I will add it. More information needed to choose the best networks can be found in my newest Dot Com Mogul article: Is the Cookie Monster Eating Your Commissions?

The Largest Affiliate Networks

AMWSO – Affiliate Management Consulting firm lead by Chris Sanderson, manages 20 affiliate programs from leading merchants such as Western Union, Panda Software, Shopster, GoodTimes Entertainment, Gaiam, South Beach Diet and Forzieri.

Commission Junction (CJ) – a ValueClick company, delivers performance-based online marketing solutions. Network access to the USA, UK, Germany and France.

Linkshare (LS) – LinkShare pioneered online affiliate marketing, and today runs one of the largest pay for performance affiliate marketing network on the Internet. Network access to the USA, UK, Canada and Japan.

Microsoft adCenter Affiliate Program – If your site is focused on Internet marketing, search marketing, web development or business you have the opportunity to generate revenue by referring new advertisers to MSN adCenter, via the Microsoft® Affiliate Network.

PartnerCentric – manages 40 top affiliate programs including well known brands like National Geographic, BriteSmile, Medifast, 21st Century Insurance, The Company Store, Lamps Plus, Domestications & Quicken Loans.

Performics – Now owned by DoubleClick, provides performance-based online marketing services and technologies for leading multi-channel marketers. Clients benefit from Performics´ custom approach to affiliate marketing, search engine marketing and lead generation programs.
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One of the top ways of monetizing websites is lead generation. Here’s how it works. Becoming a CPA affiliate is fairly simple. You sign up with numerous CPA Networks, drive traffic to the custom landing pages they provide or make your own landing pages, and get paid whenever a site visitor fills out and submits a form. One of the best ways to drive traffic to your CPA Offers is through PPC program like Adwords or Yahoo.CPA networks are clearinghouses bringing advertisers and publishers together. The advertisers provide custom landing pages and forms, pays the network commission for making it available to affiliates, and affiliates are paid for driving traffic and generating signups.

CPA stands for “cost per action.” The action is the site visitor filling out the form. Compared to traditional affiliate marketing, it is often a much easier and more lucrative way to monetize a website.

Traditional affiliates have a tougher job. They have to get the traffic, presell the product, and send visitors to the vendor through an affiliate link, hoping to generate something like 1% to 5% sales. Conversions are highly dependent on the vendor’s sales letter and product. If the vendor does a poor job of selling, or has an overpriced or poorly received product, the affiliate has spent a lot of time, and perhaps money, for very little return. Read the rest of this entry »

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The latest buzz word in marketing is “Conversation Marketing.” Without ever hearing about conversation marketing until recently, this is the way that I prefer to get a message out about something that I’m endorsing or yes … if you want to hear the dirty word … selling. The phrase that really stood out in my mind was “All marketing is a conversation.”

“The awful truth about marketing is that it broadcasts messages to people who don’t want to listen…. much of business communication is written in contrived and artificial language, supposedly designed to impress, but actually signaling just how impersonal the firm and its professionals are.”

I see so many of the long, hypey big red lettered sales letters and still wonder how that type of marketing can be successful. I know that many “gurus” use them and make money, but in my opinion, you aren’t reaching a large part of the market through this method of communication. Basically, you’re reaching an audience who is looking for a “dream in a box” solution and willing to believe anything that promises that.

To me … and maybe it’s just me, I find those type of sales letters to be more annoying than persuasive. It’s packaged marketing, spoken in a fake voice and often uses scare tactics and unfounded promises to reel their customers in. Many marketers see marketing as a one-sided dialogue … nothing more than a propaganda campaign. This type of marketing rarely answers any questions I might have about the product.

The marketer that is able to reach his market in a real voice and engage his audience in a two-way dialogue is the marketer who is going to be able to build trust and relationships that convert into sales. In the offline world of marketing, where you meet your prospective clients, you have a greater opportunity to employ Conversational Marketing. Instead of giving yet another boring presentation, you can have a question and answer session. In a personal one-on-one presentation, you can give your prospects a handout and then instead of launching into a one-way dialogue of your capabilities and contract issues, see if you can engage your prospect in a conversation to determine what his problems and needs are. Read the rest of this entry »

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