NetBusinessBlogWork from Home, Business Opportunities, Websites for Sale - Run an Online Business

If you’ve been reading this blog in the last couple of days, you know I’ve been talking about the importance of having unique, quality, remarkable content. A well-known internet marketing slogan is “Content is king.” But is content being dethroned by social media?

Social media sites like Digg, Reddit, Netscape, Del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon are changing the online business game. These sites drive huge amounts of traffic. And all you need is good content and a lot of friends. Notice I did not say great content.

On Netscape I saw one blog hit the front page multiple times. Virtually every post on the blog made the front page. I read some of the posts. A few were great quality while the rest were merely good.

How did the blogger make the front page with his (or her) posts? Simple. He participated in the Netscape community. And through his participation, he made a lot of Netscape friends that voted for his posts.

This bring us to the key to social media marketing. Friends. The more, the merrier.

The growing popularity of social media is making the online world more like the offline world. It’s like high school all over again. The popular kids get noticed.

But there’s good news. You don’t have to be good looking to be popular online. You don’t have to be good at sports or be a cheerleader. You don’t even have to produce great content. Good is enough. You just have to work hard by participating with social media users. It’s these users that cause good content to have more traffic than non-marketed great content.

So, if you don’t want to lose to lower quality content, you need to add social media to your marketing arsenal. You need to start building friendships with social media users.

Will this add a time consuming task to your online business? Definitely. Just another reason to focus on fewer sites.

Your thoughts?

Popularity: 9% [?]

Popularity: 9% [?]

Photo by tome213

For many of us, we can’t spend a lot of time working on our online business. We have full-time or part-time jobs. Some of us have a spouse and kids. I have 5 freelance projects right now, so I have limited time to work on my own sites.

If you’re in this situation, what should your action plan be? If you have limited time, how should you spend that time?

Here’s a simple action plan I devised for myself. This plan helps me stay focused and not get distracted.

Action Plan

If you have limited time, the most important thing when starting out is to put all your effort into one site. This gives you the best chance of success because you’re leveraging all your free time for one endeavor. You’ll be more efficient and effective. Once you build one successful site, you’ll have the experience to manage multiple sites.

1. Learn your site’s industry inside and out. Produce valuable content your target audience will find useful or entertaining. Promote and market your site especially by building links. By doing these three fundamental activities, you’ll get a consistent flow of traffic.

2. As your traffic grows, focus more on monetization. Sell links and ads. Find great affiliate offers that fit your site’s niche. Tweak your AdSense layout.

3. When you start making money consistently, don’t cash out and buy a bigger TV. Do like a good offline businessman and reinvest your cash. How can you reinvest your money? Here are a couple ideas.

• Outsource your marketing and content creation.
• Work lower hours at your job (time is money, right?) and use the extra time to build another site.
• Buy a site.
• Buy resources like ebooks and memberships that will give you more internet marketing skills.
• Buy advertising.
• Buy links.

4. Rinse and repeat. Do the above three steps enough times and you’ll be able to quit your job. :)

This plan may sound simplistic, but it’s important to see the big picture before diving into the details. We’ll cover the details here at Net Business Blog, so stay tuned.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Popularity: 3% [?]

What is the optimum number of sites you should be working on?

I first found out about making money online through Darren Rowse of Problogger fame. I read Problogger and found out Darren had multiple blogs. He was making six figures. This inspired me to buy a bunch of domain names and start a couple blogs.

I thought I would spend a couple minutes a day on each blog and that would be enough to start making money.

I didn’t make a lot of money. In fact, I just had a couple blogs with low traffic. Also, my blogs didn’t get updated daily like I had planned.

Here’s what I’ve learned from my first foray into online business.

• The learning curve for making money online was steeper than I thought.
• I’m not Darren Rowse. I didn’t have his experience, so I wasn’t very efficient in my blogging. I didn’t know the blogging tips and tricks to save time.
• You need to be very familiar with an industry, or you’ll run out of things to say.
• Even if you’re a fast writer, it still takes time to think of a blog topic.
• If you link out a lot, it takes time to keep up with the other blogs in your niche.
• I greatly underestimated the importance of promotion and marketing.

Blogging is hard work. Blogging takes time.

I know I’m talking about blogs, but the same principles apply to other types of websites. Every website should be updated regularly with quality content. Every website should be marketed continually.

Here’s the fundamental principle I’m trying to follow. Build as many sites as you can without suffering in consistent quality content and promotion. If any of your sites are mediocre quality and you’re not doing much to improve it, you’ve started too many sites.

It’s funny that many of us think online business is so much different from offline business. Many of us somehow think it’s a lot easier to keep up an online business. However, we should be running our online businesses like offline ones. None of us would think of starting multiple brick-and-mortar businesses if we had limited time. In the same way, we shouldn’t start multiple sites unless we have enough time to manage all of them well.

How many sites have you started? Currently, how many sites do you think you can focus on?

Popularity: 5% [?]

Popularity: 5% [?]

Mark over at 45n5.com asked if he could join the video case study. I said, sure, why not?

We’re both trying to rank for worlds best internet marketing tools through YouTube. The search phrase has low competition and low search volume. Mark posted his video on July 15 and linked to it with the appropriate anchor text in his blog post. Three days later, his video is in 4th position. Check out this screenshot.

Interestingly, his blog post about this case study is ranking higher than his YouTube video.

I finally made my video. It took me a couple tries to figure out CamStudio.

Worlds Best Internet Marketing Tool
In this video, I talk about two of the worlds best internet marketing tools.

I know it’s hard to see the words in my video. I’ll try to do better next time. Here’s one thing to take from this case study. A video on YouTube can rank quickly for a low competition search phrase.

If you want to keep track of the rankings, here’s a link to the Google search results for worlds best internet marketing tool.  Hopefully, my video will join Mark’s in the top 10.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Popularity: 7% [?]

Looking for a site to buy?

I wrote about John Cow two weeks ago and now he’s selling his blog on Digital Point and Sitepoint. There’s already a private bid for $1,250. Not bad for a 2 week old blog.

In 17 days, JohnCow.com has 50 posts, 130 RSS subscribers, over 6,300 unique visitors, and a whopping 125,523 pageviews. All this without hitting the front page of Digg or Reddit!

Is this a good buy at $1,250?

Not sure. It definitely would be a fun purchase. Also, the price will probably go up, since both auctions just started.

If I had extra change, I would definitely buy it so I could have this conversation.

Friend: So, what kind of sites do you own?

Me: One of them is a cash cow.

Friend: Ok, but what industry is it in?

Me: It’s a blog about a cash cow that loves milk.

Friend: Huh?

What do you think of this quick sale? Anyone thinking of bidding?

Popularity: 3% [?]

Popularity: 3% [?]

I found out from BlogStorm (great new blog, by the way) that blogging just celebrated its 10th birthday. The BlogStorm post pointed to Mashable. Mashable asked bloggers to commemorate the event by listing your 10 favorite blogs. Here are my favorites.

SEO

SEO Book
In my opinion, Aaron Wall has the best SEO book on the planet. (Here’s our book review.) Aaron takes a holistic view about SEO on his blog. He often talks about less technical subjects that affect SEO like branding and finding a profitable niche.

SEOmoz
The staff at SEOmoz keeps up with the latest SEO developments. They do a great job of illustrating their posts with practical, hands-on examples. They have a quality SEO membership site. Also, they’ve developed a smart community, so you’ll see lots of good comments on their blog.

Tropical SEO
Don’t be fooled by the pink header. Andy Hagans knows what he’s talking about. This guy is the linkbait king. He’s hit Digg’s front page over 100 times with a variety of sites in different niches. He posts sporadically, but when he does, he gives a lot of value and/or entertainment.

Writing

Copyblogger
Most bloggers don’t quote traditional books. Brian Clark does… often. When a blogger quotes books from his industry instead of just other bloggers, you know they’re probably an expert.

Problogger
27,000 RSS readers don’t lie. Darren Rowse helps many people make money with their blog. He’s covers everything from adsense placement to the different types of blog posts.

Internet Marketing

Entrepreneur’s Journey
Yaro Starak gives great tips for running your online business. He also reviews internet products. I remember reading this blog over a year ago. Yaro wasn’t making any money then, but now his blog makes $4000 a month. His blog archives are gold if you want to learn how to build a money making site.

Income Blog
Anyone who owns the income.com domain knows how to make money. :) I like this blog because John Reese shares good macro level business principles. Also, he occasionally uses video, which is a nice change of pace from the average business blog.

John Chow
John Chow has been slapped by Google, Technorati, and Digg. Yet John has over 6000 RSS subscribers and made over $20,000 in the last two months. Not only that, he posts about cars and food. I guess having fun and being different from the rest can earn money.

General Marketing

Seth’s Blog
Seth Godin’s understands marketing. He popularized the buzzword remarkable. He’s known for creating distinctive phrases and words like ideavirus, permission marketing, purple cow, and small is the new big. He gives real-life examples to clearly teach his marketing principles. Google invited him to speak to their employees.

Social Media

ChrisG
Want to learn how to leverage social media? Reading this blog by Chris Garrett can definitely help you. Chris is a professional blogger. He started ChrisG in February. By March 9, he had over 1000 RSS subscribers. Don’t forget to get his free ebook by subscribing to his blog. Unlike other “guru” ebooks, his ebook actually helps.

Your Turn

What are your top 10 blogs?

Popularity: 3% [?]

Popularity: 3% [?]

Timing can make a difference in traffic and links.

For example, I have a fansite about the TV show Heroes. I mostly post up-to-date news from other sites. However, I decided to create some linkbait. Since most of the sites about Heroes did not publish opinion pieces, I wrote an opinion piece and sent it to a couple Heroes bloggers. Also, I submitted it to Digg and Netscape.

I got a couple of backlinks and some traffic, but I could have done much better especially with Digg and Netscape.

What could I have done better? Well, I published my article on May 29. The Heroes season finale was on May 21. There was no way I was gonna hit the Digg front page even though Diggers like Heroes. My content was old already. Diggers want up-to-date stuff. I should’ve written and published my post by May 22.

On the other hand, I posted about John Cow when he had less than 10 posts. I got a couple links from this blog post without having to ask for it. But imagine if I post about John Cow in December. Would I get the same amount of unrequested links? Probably not. John Cow would be very old news by then. There wouldn’t be any point to link to my John Cow blog post.

If you have content ideas, make sure you publish them in a timely manner. It’s frustrating to create quality content and not get links and traffic because you published it late.

Do you have any examples of timely, up-to-date content? What about examples of content that was a published too late?

Popularity: 3% [?]

Popularity: 3% [?]

I found an interesting forum thread over at Performancing. The forum poster, specialmiky, was wondering whether to focus on backlinks or content. Now some of you reading are probably thinking, you have to do both. While I agree with that, specialmiky wrote:

I know [both are really important] but you see, on a daily basis, I have a certain amount of time to invest in optimizing my website.

I replied that if you don’t have much time to blog, you can write a great article and then send it to relevant bloggers. If you have a quality blog post, you should get a couple links.

Another way to combine both actions is to link out to the blogs where you want links. This should send out a trackback. If it doesn’t, you can leave a comment with your blog post URL. Also, you can email the blogger and tell them you liked their blog entry and you posted about it.

If you do this enough, the blogger may stop by your blog, read more of your entries, and link to you. If you drop quality comments on their blog, your success rate will even be better. You know what they say, “The squeaky wheel gets the oil.”

Ahmed Bilal left a great response on the forum thread. He suggested producing a couple high quality content pieces and set them to post in the future. This gives you time to focus on promoting your site and building links.

What are your thoughts on this issue? Do you have any tips for saving time by integrating link building and content production?

Popularity: 7% [?]

Popularity: 7% [?]

Looks like we’re talking about cows again. :)

Seth Godin is my favorite marketer. He runs a great blog.

He wrote a book called Purple Cow. This book claims the markets today are saturated with countless similar products. Seth compares these products to the cows you see while driving on a country highway. The cows may be good quality cows. They may look interesting at first, but they’ll be forgetten because they all look alike.

Seth writes that seeing a purple cow would evoke a different reaction. The purple cow would stand out. It would be remarkable, because we would make remarks about it to our friends.

Seth suggests that businesses today must be purple cows. Businesses must figure out a way to stand out from the crowd of similar products. Today’s consumer has never had more products to choose from. Many of these products are good quality, yet most of them will be ignored. Why? Because the consumer is limited with time and money.

The consumer can’t buy every quality product. The consumer can’t be aware of every quality product. There’s too many of them. Most quality products will be ignored. However, consumers will buy the purple cows, because they’re different.

How can we relate the purple cow principle to online business?

We can ask ourselves relevant questions. Thinking through questions is a way to evaluate how “purple,” or remarkable, your site is. Here are some questions to consider.

• What content are you producing that your competitors are not producing?
• What makes your site different from other sites in your niche?
• What unique value does your site bring to the internet community?
• How will you promote your site in a unique way?
• How will your site stand out from other sites in your industry?

I asked myself these questions and realized I had to think of ways to make this blog different from the rest.

I can’t just be a great online business blogger. There are too many of those around. I have to do things that those bloggers aren’t doing.

With that in mind, here is one thing that should separate me from the crowd.

I plan on doing a lot of practical case studies like this one. I’m thinking of doing case studies on article marketing, pay per click, press releases, forum marketing, ranking for certain keywords through this blog, finding friends who will trade Diggs, and other online business topics.

I don’t know if this is the best course of action. But at least I’m doing something different from the norm. This gives me a chance to create a purple cow.

Here is a great quote from Seth from his Fast Company article:

Why There Are So Few Purple Cows
If being a Purple Cow is such an effective way to break through the clutter, why doesn’t everyone do it? One reason is that people think the opposite of remarkable is “bad” or “poorly done.” They’re wrong. Not many companies sell things today that are flat-out lousy. Most sell things that are good enough. That’s why the opposite of remarkable is “very good.” Very good is an everyday occurrence, hardly worth mentioning — certainly not the basis of breakthrough success. Are you making very good stuff? How fast can you stop?

Some people would like you to believe that there are too few great ideas, that their product or their industry or their company simply can’t support a great idea. That, of course, is absolute nonsense. Another reason the Purple Cow is so rare is because people are so afraid.

If you’re remarkable, then it’s likely that some people won’t like you. That’s part of the definition of remarkable. Nobody gets unanimous praise — ever. The best the timid can hope for is to be unnoticed. Criticism comes to those who stand out.

Playing it safe. Following the rules. They seem like the best ways to avoid failure. Alas, that pattern is awfully dangerous. The current marketing “rules” will ultimately lead to failure. In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.

Feel free to drop your comments. I’d like to hear your ideas about making your site a purple cow.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Popularity: 4% [?]

Last week I wrote about using online video sites to indirectly rank on Google. In theory submitting videos to YouTube should drive traffic to your site. But theory is just speculation.  We’ll do an actual test to get real-life results you can use. Here’s my prep for this video case study.

I’m starting with a low competition keyword phrase. If the video hits the top 10, I’ll try a more competitive search term.

How do I determine the competitiveness of a keyword phrase? There are a couple factors which I’ll talk about in a future blog post.

Here’s the target keyword phrase: worlds best internet marketing tools

I was surprised to find this search term had some search volume.

Here’s a screenshot from the Google Adwords keyword tool.

This one’s from the Overture tool.

And this is Wordtracker’s results. Wordtracker gives daily search volume instead of monthly.

I’ll make a short video, upload it to YouTube, and put the search term in the title. Also, I’ll place a link on the video description. This link will point to one of my sites. Hopefully, the YouTube visitors will click through.  I’m using Google Analytics to track the clicks.

I will try to finish the video by Sunday night. However, I make no guarantees. I’ve never used screencasting software before. Also, I haven’t edited a video in a while, so it might take me longer than I expect to produce the video. I’m setting aside a couple hours Sunday afternoon to work on this.

Stay tuned and we’ll see if video is truly a good SEO weapon.

Where do you think the video will rank? Top 10? Top 50? Top 100?

Popularity: 6% [?]

Popularity: 6% [?]