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Making Money Online Online Business Passive Income

How To Create Your On-Line Business For Beginners

Many people dream of making passive income online  or starting their own online small business, probably home based, how to make money online they ask?

Follow your dream to an online business
Follow your dream to an online business

Let’s face it there are an awful lot of us who dream of firing the boss and working in their PJ’s.  Few succeed though the figures often quoted is that between 95% and 99% of people who start a blog or website fail to make any money doing it.

I guess that’s why some people are looking for the “business in the box solution”. The follow this plan and all will be well. After all most of us who are trying to make money on-line are doing it after spending years as good little employees. You know do what the boss tells you what to do, when to do it by, and then praises you for getting it done correctly – or not.

Business isn’t like that. On-line busines is different from real world business – but not as much as many people believe.

Why Do Small Businesses Fail?

Apart from cash flow issues, most small businesses fail because they can’t get enough customers. There is no demand for their service or product. Think of the local lady who makes beautiful handicrafts, but no one buys. Think of the coffee shop that makes great coffee – but is 1/2 empty because its tucked away in an uninviting backstreet. Or the geek who can fix your computer just like that – but doesn’t know how to explain to potential customers what he can do.

Now consider the on-line business version of these businesses:

♦the blogger who blogs about their passion for Ancient Roman Gladiators  sports – they have a beautiful blog, with lots of great information and pretty pictures: but no one wants to buy anything there because they cam looking for information which they got in spades on the site;

♦the site which provides great baby gear at the right price – but no one can find the site because the site is called “Kute Kiddies Kool”, all the links to the site are by its name – and people who search search for “cheap baby clothes online” or “cheap organic cotton baby clothes”

♦the site which is developed by a design specialist – its full of cute visual effects and great graphics – but the search engine doesn’t know that the site is offering  computer setup support in the Bay Area because Google can’t read flash or images.

Luckily on-line its very easy to work out whether you will have customer for your site or not – we call them searchers.

Simple Steps to Make Your On-line Business Work

  1. Decide whether or not you are in business. If you just want to make a few dollars from a blog – then you are not in business, you have a hobby.
  2. Work out which business model works for you: provide services (writing, technical, whatever) to others,  develop sites which bring you in passive income, or use your on-line business to support, funnel visitors to your real-world business.
  3. Focus your website on keywords which a) get traffic and b) are buying keywords – terms people search for when they are looking to buy something not just for information.
  4. Check that there is not too much competition for your search terms: either use free tools or something like Market Samurai
  5. Decide on your method of monetization: either funnelling traffic to your real world business or getting paid by eBay or Amazon affiliates, other affiliates, promoting an e-book, promoting your own services or Adsense.
  6. Build a website which focuses on your chosen keywords: whether you use WordPress, handcode html, use MyStarterBlog or Dreamweaver – doesn’t matter – just do it -its the easiest part of the process. Make sure you on-page SEO focuses on your keywords i.e. get the keyword in your title, sub-headings and content.
  7. Get your site ranked in the search engines: get it ranked for your keywords by getting backlinks which anchor that term. Get backlinks from article marketing and supporting sites like today, hubpages and squidoo. Submit articles to ezine articles.
  8. Rinse and repeat.

So I have a question for you guys: what bit is so hard and scary that you can’t get started? Which bit makes people search for the simple, one process fits all, turn key system. This is being in business people; its scary, there is no one-size fits all that will work for everyone – otherwise no business would be able to hire an employee.

If you are looking for a supportive membership site which will help you succeed check out my review of Keyword Academy Video Crash Course

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Rants

Update on “Site Build It Scam” Post

Here at Passive Income – it seems we are famous! Apparently my previous post which had the title of Site Build It Scam Review has got a little infamy! I never thought that  the “everyone gets 5 minutes of fame” thing applied to me – I guess I was wrong 🙂 Sorry to any one who subscribed to comments early on – bit of email overload I guess!

So for a brief re-cap on those who don’t have an hour to wade through the thousands of words of comments  in the early post – the recap is like this:

Categories
Online Business Passive Income Product Reviews Rants

Site Build It Scam Review

Site Build It has been around for a while, the question is – is it a good way to make Passive Income?  There are some good parts to it. But that doesn’t make it any less a scam. I’ve thought about reviewing it before but now I am MAD – and Steve Pavlina is the reason I’m mad. I like Steve –  his motivational writing is great – but now he has sold out to the other side and is pushing the old Site Build It scam review bandwagon!

Latest Update Jan 2011 – read my latest Site Build It Review

UPDATE: If you are late to the riot you may want to check the comments section and also the next post for the update on Site Build It scam review.

Your site all tied up
Your site all tied up

What is Site Build It ?

Its a “one stop shop” for someone who wants a website but doesn’t know where to start. You pay them a heafty fee- PER SITE – around $300 ANNUALLY. And for this sum you get:

  • “free” domain name
  • “free” hosting
  • drag and drop website builder
  • newsletter manager
  • autoresponder
  • search engine ranking help
  • traffic reports
  • hand holding: forum, tutorial etc.

Now if you Google for “site builder scam” – you will find a lot of  “reviews” which are just affiliate pitches.  Why? Because Site Build It pays affiliates around $75 a sale, and that’s an annual fee too remember. You don’t even have to be a user of SBI to be an affiliate – how can you sell something you don’t use yourself – that’s what I turned me off affiliate marketing initially.

You will find no link here for SBI – if you want to join – type in their url direct and then sign up as an affiliate and pay yourself the commission as a discount!

So Why is Site Build It a Scam?

  1. You don’t own your domain – the Anguilla-beaches .com site which features prominently in the sales pitch is owned by Ken Evoy – who owns site build it – according to domain tools anyways; UPDATE: yes you do own your site but this is still disingenuous marketing
  2. You can’t just move your website elsewhere to say cheaper hosting – you are tied up with SBI for life. You have to make $300/year just to break even on the deal! UPDATE: you can with varying degrees of difficulty – its not easy appears to be the consensus
  3. They spend a lot of time quoting Alexa rank of SBI sites – Alexa ranks just proves that you have a bunch of internet marketers visiting your site – probably because of the link from the sales page – as they are the only people who use the Alexa tool bar. Internet marketers are unlikely to buy your homemade chocolates or rent your condo in Puerto Rico;
  4. The search engine help according to Ssite Build Tt’s own sales promotion video involves submitting your sites to the search engines –  do not ever do this – this just prooves to Google that your site is not worth visiting cause no one is linking to it. Read Court on why you should NOT submit your website to Google
  5. Then to rank your site they suggest you use pay per click (PPC) advertising – this is as about as risky as say foreign exchange dealing as it not something any new on-line marketer should be doing.

So, no, SBI! is not a traditional scam. They no doubt deliver on what is promised – though you no doubt have to pay extra for the PPC champaign. Yes traditional hosting and free software won’t give you support on how to build your business.

But $300 for support is pretty darn expensive.

What Does It Cost to Build Your Own Site:

  • under $10 for a .com domain name ;
  • around $5/month for cheap hosting BTW that will cover more than one website to;
  • Drag and drop software to develop the site WordPress free ;
  • keyword research – free use adwords external ;
  • traffic analysis Google Analytics or Statcounter – both free

Yes its not all in one place, you have to learn to do some odd stuff along the way – but you are building a business aren’t you? SiteBuildIt is basically a franchise model applied to building websites – without the brand awareness that having “McDonalds” or “Avon” in your business does to customers in the real world. UPDATE: Its more like a cult – its a pretty scary one to, see the comments! Your visitors won’t feel more likely to buy from you just because your site is a “site build it!” site!

UPDATE: April 2012 The latest update of SBI’s software appears to have been a bit of a technical disaster. So rather than dealing with his customer’s complaints and sorted out the glitches, Ken Evoy has taken to hurling abuse at people who dare to complain that their website’s are broken -and has even, according to reports, banned some from the forums, and possibly even from SBI! 

Think about it – do you really want to have your website held hostage to someone who behaves like that? 

Yes they don’t promise that you will get rich in your sleep. Whatever tools you use to develop a website that’s the easy bit – getting the traffic is the work bit.

Bottom line with the  Site build it scam  you put the hard work in – you get your keywords to rank and you don’t own your website UPDATE You do own your site but you are locked into the SBI tools and although you can take the actual words from the site and you lose the access to the tools that you use to maintain and develop the site.

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Making Money Online Online Business Passive Income Rants

Passive Income: My Dream! I Do Believe!

I have a dream: to do what  I want when I want – and I am very, very lucky to be living it! Passive income isn’t a terribly easy goal – but  I am getting there – and I think I just turned a big corner, let me explain. Not income wise, but in the psychological, mumbo-jumbo department!

confusion

When I did my last update I had had a pretty bad month. I lost my part-time job in late January – and it had stuffed up my productivity! How so? Even with only 2 days a week work it gave my week structure. Now it was gone and I appeared to be going nowhere. I admitted my frustration in a private forum I am a member of (sorry closed to new members at the moment – I’ll let you know if it re-opens) – and got jumped on pretty hard. I thought my problem was keyword research – but it wasn’t – the problem was I hadn’t down enough work!

That is not to say I wasn’t spending all day at the beach, nope worse than that, I was distracted by forums, commenting for fun, twitter and a whole lot of other unproductive stuff! In fact an on-line friend asked me what sites I wanted to promote in a mutual-help group he was starting – and I didn’t have any I could be bothered with anymore!

I wasn’t being lazy – not logging on lazy – but I was unfocused I hadn’t figured out what I had to do to succeed – even though I did know – and have known for nearly a year – build more sites! For goodness sakes the original name of this blogs was “Journey of 100 sites!” Had I developed 100 sites – nope!

I got mad – first at my colleagues in the forum – and then at myself!  Someone called me stubborn –  I laughed out loud – its odd how someone who has never met you can pick out some major personality trait like that!

My main issue was:  people say you can’t achieve unless you believe that you will achieve – but I don’ t believe in anything I can’t touch: the Easter Bunny, Father Christmas and God being my main examples.

I’m not much into the pop psychology, “law of attraction” crap. I did however, somewhat in desperation, do a bit of a google – and came up with the concept of visualisation.   Sorry I don’t know where I got the check list from  – I wrote it on a bit of paper – and it was very useful- leave me a comment if you recognise the source! Having decided on what your goal is: in my case passive recurring income from niche sites – you need to go through the following steps:

  1. Is the result possible. Do other people do this?
  2. Is the result possible by me – do I have the skills?
  3. Do  I really want this result?
  4. Do I deserve the result?
  5. Does the goal contradict my other beliefs?
  6. Create a plan to achieve the goal
  7. Do the steps in the plan contradict my beliefs?
  8. Do you can do the steps in the plan?
  9. Do you believe you will do the steps in the plan?
  10. Believe that you will achieve the goal.

OK nothing better to do at midnight when I couldn’t sleep so I worked thru the steps.

  1. Yes I know other people who make  over $10k /month with this model.
  2. I believe I have the skills – the technical stuff is pretty easy, the writing is fine, I can outsource what I can’t do myself
  3. Oh yes!  I felt like trapped in corporate IT. Even if there wasn’t a financial crises  I wouldn’t want to go back! Its waaay too good havin control of your life.
  4. Why the fuck not? No one will get hurt in the process and I certainly own my partner over a year of him working and me not producing any income.
  5. This was infact my initial issue with Internet Marketing – but I found out a while ago that its perfectly possible to sell on-line without ripping anyone off.
  6. Plan – its in my head – its not that hard:
    1. find long-tail keyword to target
    2. find a way to monetize
    3. build site
    4. promote site to top of SERPs
    5. rinse and repeate
  7. No
  8. Yes
  9. Yes
  10. Well bugger me  I think I might believe in my goal now!

Sorry for the ramble – now I have to go and build some more sites!

EDIT – this post moved me to tears writing it – and this video totally expresses what I not have the skill to say in words:

http://youtu.be/RxPZh4AnWyk

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Online Business

Overdue February Update

Sorry guys, its been a couple of weeks since I posted on passive income online, and yes  I am a bit unhappy about the lack of progress  I have to report.

So the good stuff is I fleshed out this blog a bit:  tidied up the blank pages on the header which were getting traffic but actually had nothing on them!