Andrew Hansen says he maintains 20 mini-sites that make anywhere from $300 to $3000 a month and together they make him “5 figures a month”. Lets assume that one site is making $300 and one is making $3000 and “5 figures” means $10K a month. That would mean that the other 18 sites would be making $373 on average a month or to put it another way, all 20 sites are averaging $500 a month (this is where averages really skew things).
In order to do this, Andrew follows a fairly easy process:
1. Find high traffic keywords with low competition that is something he can sell – this is a ‘go with the flow’ method where you go where everyone already is searching for something they want, but they can’t find it – and then sell it to them.
A. Use Wordtracker’s keyword tool and search for “does work” to find things that people say works or other phrases like this
B. Determine if any of the keyword results are products that you could sell as an affiliate
C. Use the normal due diligence to vett a keyword and competition.
2. Write 5-10 pages of original content and then build up to 10-20 pages AND backlink OVER TIME.
A. The 5-10 pages includes the home page (1), which should have no ads ‘above the fold’, the about page (2) – which should be a sales page as well, and 3 to 8 articles to begin (3-10). They should all contain original content and each page should be backlinked to, not just the home page.
B. Post one more article a week and backlink to the new article each week until you have 5 to 10 more articles (5 to 10 weeks). This does two things: matches what Google expects as far as backlink growth and site growth AND shows Google that your site is growing and therefore can be trusted.
Ideas for the about page: use this area to write about things like “how [your product] works” – stuff that isn’t sales keywords, but can grab traffic. You can also write about secondary (cousin) keywords here by saying how your product is like this other product and if you monitor your analytics you might see a desire for one of those other products, which could become another site for you.
Ideas for Blog Posts
If you have multiple affiliate vendors then you could make a post for each such as “Top 10 [Products] at Wal-Mart.com” and “Top 10 [Products] at Amazon” and on down the line. For products that overlap, you could compare affiliates and get paid either way, for example, “Compare [Product] at Wal-Mart.com to Amazon – Which is Cheaper, Faster, and Has a better Refund”. Basically what you want to do is mix and match, compare and contrast. Another example is to make categories that Amazon or Wal-Mart aren’t willing to do. For example, the retailer might just have a category for flashlights, but you run a flashlight mini-site so you have posts about LED flash lights, camping lights, pocket lights, and hand-crank lights.
Oh, I forgot to mention that Andrew’s goal is not to just earn money – he says there are easier ways to make more money. What he’s interested in is the amount of money he can make for the least amount of work because what he is interested in is traveling. Affiliate marketing allows him to travel one week a month so in essence he makes at least $10K a month by only working 3 of those weeks finding good keyword, low competition niches, developing original content, and backlinking it. That’s essentially what I’d like to do both with product marketing and app development. I like the freedom and the work-to-income ratio it has the possiblity to provide.
I believe that I can do this by pursuing a profession in Internet marketing and app development, which is a field of digital content creation and marketing that I call “niche publishing.”
Niche publishing has a lifestyle that can free me from the burdens (security) of a 8-5, office job and a traditional ‘boss’. Even self-employed service businesses like computer repair or web design involve bosses – the customer. Although niche publishing has customers, they are much more passive.
Digital content has the advantage of ‘build it and forget it’, ‘asset building’, and ‘multiple streams of income’, which service industries and typical 8-5 jobs do not provide. Imagine if every report or function you built at your 8-5 job would continue to pay you money over time and the more things you made for your job, the more money you made over time. That’s how Internet marketing and app development can work.