Showing posts with label Make Money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Make Money. Show all posts

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Massive Growth at HostGator is Exciting to Watch

hostgatorIt’s always great to see awesome companies online succeed, especially ones that you have been working with for many years. The funny thing about online companies, is that they really don’t need to do “real world advertising”, since they can do it so cost effectively and well online. An extremely well known hosting company in the internet marketing space is HostGator, and not only do they host a great majority of affiliate related sites, but they also make affiliates a massive amount of money as well! Over $400,000 is paid out to Host Gator affiliates every month! How sick is that!?

Host Gator just sent out one of their monthly mailing and it had some pretty exciting highlights for the company, which saw explosive growth in 2010. Here are just a few of their company highlights.

HostGator in the News

In 2010, HostGator grew by over 2 MILLION domains! At the beginning of 2010, the company had 2.9 million domains, and are now at nearly 5 million domains. The company has also expanded to over 500 employees, along with 64 new reps to handle customer support. But even more fun and exciting is how HostGator is making a big name for themselves in the offline world… look out GoDaddy, here comes HostGator!

hostgator

The latest additions to the HostGator branding and marketing campaigns include billboards, a real NASCAR sponsorship and even being seen in an EA Sports UFC video game. Will we soon see a new celebrity sponsor for HostGator next? HostGator doesn’t just spend mad cash on ad campaigns… they’ve also donated $100,000 to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development Fund.

I’m glad to see HostGator doing so well. Not only do they host millions of web sites, but they have also made a ton of affiliates a TON of money over the years with their amazingly successful affiliate program, which is available through their in-house affiliate program and through Commission Junction.

HostGator Web Hosting Solutions – Save 20%

I have a few servers with HostGator and you should too! Web hosting plans start as low as $4.95 a month. Another excellent perk of hosting with HostGator is they have one click install software for many applications and programs like WordPress. If you are setting up a ton of mini sites or completely clueless when it comes to installing software, HostGator makes this extremely easy to setup. Use coupon code ZACJOHNSON to get your first month of only for only 1 penny!

Setup Your HostGator Account Now.

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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Make Money Blogging in Your Spare Time

With the new year just a few weeks away, one of the most popular resolutions to make, is to make more money or to start a business in the new year. No matter how many people attempt to make the resolution, only a small fraction will take the plunge to actually get started, while even a smaller fraction will actually make any extra money in the new year.

A very simple way to start making a few extra dollars online in the new year, is to start a blog on the side. While you probably won’t get rich off blogging, you can definitely start a fun project on the side that “could” grow into something much more. The actual cost of creating a blog is only a few dollars ($7 a year for a domain and under $10 a month for web hosting), so there is a lot more upside then potential down side.

For those of you that have never created a blog, or still unsure where to start, I’ve created five different categories for you to choose from. Even if you start a new blog and only post once or twice a week, that is still 50-100 posts per year! By continually adding content to your blog, you are also building a resource which could turn into a nice long term revenue source. The categories listed below are in order of “revenue potential”.

Blogging for Passion

We hear it all the time, do something you are passionate about and the money will follow. While this may be true in some situations, it doesn’t apply to everything. However, if you are just starting a blog and have no idea where it could go, or how long you will stay interested, you might as well write something you are passionate about. This will not only provide quality content that you really know about, but you will want to stay active with your blog and it won’t die out for lack of interest. Depending on how many other people share your interest, and the success of your blog, the potential in this area can swing either way.

Revenue Potential: Varies based on topic/blog structure…

Personal Blogging

As expected, many bloggers have started out with their own personal blog, before trying to make a blog that makes money. Having a personal blog is a great way to teach yourself how to use the WordPress platform, while building a blog of your own. Once you have a good understanding of how to make posts, pages, use plugins and different themes, you blogging potential is limitless. If you are going to start a personal blog, you should not expect to make money with this type of blog.

Revenue Potential: 1/4 – A personal blog is made for exactly what it sounds like, “personal”. Personal blogs should/can share your every day experiences, posts about you and your family, and can be your online diary to share with the world.

Sports Blogging

This one can easily fall into the “blogging for passion” category. It isn’t enough to simply watch our favorite players and teams on TV, but we also want to have our own thoughts and opinions and meet with other fans of our teams. Having a sports blog about your favorite team or player, is a great way to start a blog that makes you want to keep writing more and more content. If your sports blog gets enough attention, you may even be able to score some free game tickets, press passes or interview a few sports players. Revenue wise, sports blogs are tough because there are so many, but many sites offer affiliate programs where you can earn commissions on any referred sales for sports tickets, memorabilia, apparel and sporting goods.

Revenue Potential: 2/4 – The majority of sports blogs out there are providing information, pictures and the latest news and scores. How many times have you visited a sports site with the intention of buying a product? Probably not many, if ever. If you end up creating a high traffic sports blog, you may be able to sell direct advertising on the blog as a revenue source.

Reviewing Household Items and Purchase

Shopping and review based blogs are definitely a big money maker. When customers are looking to purchase a new product, or see a commercial on TV, before paying for it, they want to see what other people are saying. Blogs about products, services and customer experiences are a great start for creating a revenue generating blog, but you are also providing a useful resource in the process. If you are going to blog about products you buy, you can easily link to Amazon’s associate program and earn a commission should anyone buy through Amazon, after clicking on your site. In addition to direct sales, Google Adsense and coupon affiliate program would work well on product review blogs.

Revenue Potential: 3/4 – A review site is for product reviews, and this is exactly what people search for online before making a purchase. For a customer to search “product name reviews”, they are already in a buying mode. Make sure your review blog provides them with the information they are looking for, and a place to purchase.

Niche Blogging

A different, but very effective methods for making money with blogs, is through niche marketing, or mini sites. The concept of niche blogging is to create a blog on a small specific topic, then being one of the best blogs in that niche (mainly to rank high in search results). If you wanted to make a niche blog about “red widgets”, you would want to get an exact match domain name such as “redwidgets.com”, write specifically about red widgets, link to Amazon red widgets products you could buy, adding Google Adsense to your site and so on… Having a tight niche blog is a great way to teach yourself how to blog, while giving you the best chance for making some money in the process.

Revenue Potential: 4/4 – Niche blogs and sites are built specifically to generate revenue and sales based on the tight focus of the product or service the blog is based on. Search Google for any specific toys or products, and you will most likely find a few niche blogs in your results.

No matter what type of blog you start, the main point I’m trying to get across is that you must GET STARTED! Don’t wait another year and find yourself making the same resolution.

I’ve created a ton of web sites and blogs over the years, and many of them I was really thrilled about starting up, then fizzled out and got pushed to the back burner. However, a good amount of those web sites and blogs still make me money months and even years after I’ve touched them. It’s all about building content that people are searching for. Remember, a blog or web site works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year… if your blog makes just $1 a day, that’s an extra $365 a year… and over $1,000 if you can earn just $3 per day!

We can all use a little extra money during the holidays, but imagine getting a few small checks everything from your own tiny blog? It is possible for even the untrained blogger, you just need to get started and take action.

For a step by step guide of how to get started as blogger, or how to make more money with your blog, download my free 137 page ebook, “Six Figure Affiliate Blogging“. You can also submit any blogging questions you have to my “Blogging Q&A” post.

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Friday, December 10, 2010

Your Biggest Investment: Time and Dedication

One of the biggest problems we see when trying to teach and motivate others to make money online or start their own business, is that they won’t put in the time and effort. Usually it’s because their either too lazy and not dedicated, or just expect to see immediate results…. but why should you expect immediate results? Whether you run a retail store or a web site, business is business and the same principles always apply, you need a solid structure and plan to make anything work.

In times like these, a situation many of us have gone through, is furthering our education. How many of us will go to college for two, four or even eight to twelve years… then graduate, just to try and pay off the debt from the last several years for the remainder of our career, and maybe even lives? Imagine the amount of success individuals could have if they put this same work and effort into starting/running their own business or online marketing campaigns, as they had for college.

You can’t simply walk into a high paying career right after high school and expect a job, and running a business should be looked at the same way. College is a very expensive way of investing in yourself and planning for the future. The truth is, students graduating from college, now have more debt than ever. A recent report shows students graduating from college are now leaving with over $20,000 in debt. Double or even triple that number for higher education such as Masters and PHDs…

Am I saying college is a waste of money and time? No, but a great majority of affiliates and internet marketers have passed on college and even dropped out to bigger and better things. It’s take a certain mentality and drive to be successful in business, but those dame principles can be applied to anything you try and achieve. The point I’m trying to make, is that whether you are aiming to work for a fortune 500 company, or run you own business, they all require the necessary mindset and time/work investment to reach your goals.

Anyone who says money doesn’t make life easier is lying. Money is great, but your time and dedication is the difference between getting to where you want to be versus where you are headed.

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Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Niche Marketing Breakdown

Before jumping into your next ad campaign, or even starting a new web site or blog, take a step back and look at exactly who you are tying to target. We often come up with great ideas for new ad campaigns and site, then start getting excited with our ideas, without looking at the big picture and room for improvement. It’s not enough to target a niche, but it’s now more important than ever to focus on niches within niches.

An excellent example of a huge site in it’s own niche, is IGN.com, which is one of the largest video game sites on the internet. They don’t just cover computer games, they cover all games! Everything from XBox, Playstation, Wii, Computer Games and more. IGN has the massive exposure, staff and funding to take on this massive and competitive niche like many others can’t. Pushing out quality content and video on a daily basis isn’t a problem for them. With all of that said, do you think you would be able to compete with a player like IGN.com if you wanted to get into the video game space? Probably not.

You want to focus on video games, but how can you compete at the same time? Simple… break down your efforts and focus on a niche group. Instead of trying to create an ad campaign, web site or blog that focuses on all games, you need to be selective on your targets and ad copy. An excellent way to do this, would be to focus on one of the big three (Wii, PS3, XBox). To break down your efforts and increase your return on efforts, you can go a level deeper and select specific games which are only available on one of these system.

Using Google’s Keyword Tool, we can pull up quick reports on how many time the big three gaming systems are searched in a given month. Among the three systems, you have over 300 million searches every month. Even if you were to grab just one tenth of a percent (.001%) of this traffic, you would have 300,000 visitors to your blog… but the competition for these keywords is phenomenally high, as you can see from the “competition” bar below.

Break down each of the gaming systems to another level, such as the most popular games from each system. You can see we still have millions of monthly searches, and they vary heavily based on the game search. Competition is still extremely high, which usually means there is good money to be spent and made in this area… but the majority of these advertisers are probably big and well funded sites in the video game space.

One last time… let’s take one of the search results from above and break it down by itself. You are now given a selection of top keywords searched just on this one search term. Now you have a massive amount of search results and topics all on this one tight niche group. Had you created a blog on call of duty when it first came out, you would have reaped the benefits every time a new version of the game came out.

This breakdown is a perfect example of how you can take one niche and continually break it down til you have a super tight and high traffic topic. Instead of spreading you and your ad campaign or web site thin, why not focus on a single topic with a large following and search traffic? You will find that not only will you provide exactly what your customers and site readers are looking for, but they are also more likely to be in a buying / action mode, which increases overall revenue.

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Thursday, September 23, 2010

Procrastinating Lately? Remind Yourself of What Is Important In Your Life.

I believe we all need to deal with procrastination sooner or later. Bloggers and webmasters are especially vulnerable to this problem, because we work alone, usually from a home office, and the possibilities to do something else other than work are both plenty and tempting.

Why write that long blog post now if you can go play the Xbox 360 instead? What about going out for a bike ride, taking some pictures with the digital camera, or simply sitting in the sofa to watch that movie you rented? You get the idea.

If you have been struggling with similar stuff lately, here is a trick I started using that is working like a charm. In order to stop procrastinating and get back to work I remind myself of what is important to me, of the things I want to achieve, of the lifestyle I want to have and so on. Then I realize that playing the Xbox 360 or sitting in the sofa watching a movie will not get me any closer to these things.

Suppose your website is currently making $100 monthly, and you are working on it to see if you can reach an income level of $1,000 monthly, because that will allow you to buy that new car you have been dreaming about.

The next time you find yourself going to play a game instead of working on your website simply stop and think: “What is more important to me, the quick fun I’ll get from this game or buying my dream car? For sure the car, so let me roll-up my sleeves and get busy on something that will help me achieve that.”

There is a line from a movie I watched a long time ago that illustrates the concept. One of the kids in the movie was reluctant to do his homework, so his father told him: “We do what we have to do in order to do what we want to do.

This guest post was written by Daniel, who started working on the Internet back in 2005. His latest project, HowToMakeAWebsite.net, is a step-by-step tutorial for those who want to make their first websites.

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