If you had 3 months to work fulltime on building a web income what would you do

That's excellent advise. While my drugstore income is not my entire source of income I am nonetheless concerned that I have a lot of my eggs in that single basket. However better to get it while you can than never to have gotten it at all.

 

The secret to most affiliate programs is sheer volume of visitors. That is how Shawn does so well with CJ. But if you don't have 1,000s of uniques a day it's very doubtful that you will make much money.

The other area that can pay well is casinos, sportsbetting, and poker, but it is also very very competitive and very difficult to get top SERP placement.

 

Yes, get the eggs while you can but in the process buy a new chicken and start breeding.

We had to take a look at our online businesses back in early Sept. Not enough diversification. We create a few new sites and went on a small shopping spree, we even decided to liquidate one. Sometimes it's easier and faster to take over a site than it is to create one.

 

You certainly need either a lot of traffic or very targetted traffic, my stats for this month are:
Sales 3
Leads 0
Clicks 376
Impressions 199,843
Each of those sales brings me a very nice profit, but I need to multiply it by 10 to get a serious income from it. I do think there is a heathly income to be made from well targeted and optimised affiliate sites.

 

That is the key ingredient to everything on the web. If you have volume you can make money with just about any business.

 

Great post - I find myself potentially in that position - with a lot more than 3 months off. I've already started planning my campaign and its really taken off in the last couple of months. Basically, several revenue streams:

The blogs - continue building and maybe move into Niches.
Other sites - Articles, content, AdSense.
Ebay - Start trawling the carboots and increase the amount of paintings I do to flog there.
Forum - niche forum...
Redo all my older sites to raise their game to the level of my newer sites.
1000s of unique pages! Eek.

Then sit back and watch the cents roll in.

 

I would start a site about something I am really into and create a forum, blog, chatroom, everything. Create a community. Mass volume. A good name and logo to brand it and then go for it all the way.

 

I wouldn't do it either of those ways - shotgun blogs or affiliate. I'd start building a site that I'm passionate about - something you love to do, maybe restaurant reviews or art shows or home repair or building computers. You need to find something you do better than almost anyone else (or can get to that level at some point in).

Then, I'd join the communities in that area - the forums and resource sites and ICQ channels and bulletin boards. Start posting and reading. After 1-2 weeks, you'll have a great idea of the kinds of content currenlty lacking in your community - build your site with those, then link to it in your signatures and promote it very slowly and not too blatantly.

Within 3 months, you'll have a site that gets plenty of traffic without any help from the SEs - just from return visitors and referral links. That kind of traffic is invaluable. Make sure your site does hav a blog - something where you write 2-3 entries a day, so users keep coming back again and again. Every 1-2 weeks, add something extraordinary or funny or controversial that will get you lots of links.

At the end of the 3 months, your site should be in the range of 500 uniques per day no counting the SEs (depending on the niche you've chosen). At that time, you should start adding SE-targeted keyword rich content. Go after the tough phrases in your industry, but continue to serve great content for yout community visitors - it's so easy to tell a site that someone's passionate about vs. an affiliate or blog4ads site.

In the long run, this hobby/passion can create a great income for you - whether you choose to offer advertising, serve AdSense or link to affiliates - the community and traffic and respect is built-in, so any search visitors are just a bonus (although they eventually make up 60-90% of your traffic).

What I love about this method is that you're not just building a site for short-term income or relying on the SEs - you're building something of value that you love and that web visitors really want and need.

That's my $0.02

 

lol, we posted something similar at the same time

 

Really? It seemed like about $10.02
But there is certainly nothing wrong with that approach. You just have to be sure that there is in fact a market for it, whatever "it" is, and that people are prepared to pay and don't think it should be a free service.

 

Thank you randfish and Sitetutor, I started my first site out of passion for the subject and it certainly shows via natural links. I need to find a more profitable passion.

 

Give it time ...

 

Sorry, if it's already been mentioned, I've not had time to read through all of the threads, but I would certainly pick projects in a subject you enjoy. This will make life much easier.

Darren

 

Unfortunately that ain't going help, my Delphi site is an ever diminshing market and I will admit the passion has gone some what. The last time I start Delphi up was to help a DP member with a question

 

What like the "Kalina Shrine"

 

LOL dct if that's what you'd enjoy.. sure!

I've read a few of the posts now, and I'd agree if though it's got to be something you enjoy, it has to make an income. Oh and been motivated definatly helps..

 

There are other opportunities besides Adsense and affiliate (as Randfish pointed out), but be sure to consider what YOUR long term goals are. When you go back to work how much time will you have for these new sites? Keep that in mind, and don't create a business venture that will collapse once you quit working on it fulltime.

I find the best place to start is what I'm familiar with...either something I'm passionate about, and/or an industry I've been working in. You can use work experiences to leverage 'insider' status. Unlike the common belief that you have to give all your content away, if you specialize in something you can often charge for that knowledge. I started my first Internet biz in 97 using this method and I've been working for myself every since. I focus mostly on b2b because businesses are more willing to purchase information (or services/products) especially if you can prove that you'll save them time and manpower.

Blogging isn't the answer to everything, especially in b2b. People are busy and they want what they want fast. I might spend 10 hours writing up some cool stories for a blog and plugging in Adsense, or I could spend 2 hours packaging something into a quick outline and sell it for X times more.

The value 'X' just depends on what I'm selling and who I'm targeting. If you're marketing to the right crowd it's not hard to land individual sales that are in the hundreds.

At that point affiliate sales simply become icing on the cake.


I'm not bagging on other forms of web income...just pointing out that there are other ways to make money online. It's all about the packaging.

My 2 cents...

 

Some ideas you have today may not be able to pay even your car insurance for another 2 or 3 years. but if they are good and you are behind it for the long run, it can turn into millions down the road.

 

Dreamshop, that's a good point - there's nothing worse than working full time and then running a growing business, especially if you have clients you want to perform a quality service to, you don't want to reduce your quality if your working full time otherwise that income could disappear.

 

Lady666? You mean me? 666? Hey, that was ONE blog entry and I was having a bad day, the devil made me do it. Normally I am sweet and kind. lol. But thanks, I think that was a compliment. Now I am off to read this thread from start to finish, I'd like to know all the ways to make money online too.