Just kidding… but on the real, we had our webinar recently  on NO B.S. methods to make money online.   In this webinar, we showed the audience how to create online revenue via inexpensive website creation and promotion methods, with subsequent affiliate program monetization. 

Check out the webinar by Clicking Here…. It’s  Free

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Yesterday, I was chatting with my oldest son about the economy and his job situation.  He has taken a “non-traditional” route.  By not finishing college, he has had a little harder road than some of his other friends who did finish school.

As I sat there trying to encourage him, I did take the opportunity to try to interest him in learning all that I do.  Now, granted, I have been doing this for years… so perhaps it looks a litte more intimidating than it really should.

I showed him some affiliate commissions…

Affiliate Commissions for Slim Chews

Braids By Breslin Affiliate Program

But with all of that, I am still not sure that he understands all of the streams of revenue join together to make some cool cash flow.

I TRIED to show him, (in terms he could understand), search engine optimized pages of mine showing a number 1 spot… but still not sure that he got it…..

Google Search Engine Optimization

I even tried to show him where his family, owns and operates BlackAtlanta.com and 30 other African American city sites with Number 1 Google Status out of 15 MILLION results, which brings miscellaneous affiliate dollars and ad deals from all kinds of companies…

Google Black Atlanta Positions

I even showed him how we get small daily checks from Google….

Google Daily Clicks

BUT… with all of that

I think the easiest for him to imagine was when I sparked his imagination by telling him that he could take something that he loved…. turn it into an electronic ebook… and then SELL it.

I helped him calculate the total hours that he thought it would take to write the ebook… and then what it would take to get it in front of a hungry audience who wanted it.  (it is a HOT idea… and if he does not write it, I will!)

Not everyone has an internet marketer for a dad.  But EVERYONE & anyone can acquire RESOURCES.

Personally, I would check out Tim Harris’ sytems.  He shows you how to “Beat the Recession/Depression By Learning How You or Anyone can Generate Instant Fast Cash with no mony, no special skills, or no connections on the internet. ”

Now, I am a realist…. so I preface my recommendation with two knowns for acquiring success..

• There are people in this world who have a silver spoon and the royal hookup.  They come from money, generate more money, and pass money to their kids.  Nothing wrong with that…
• THEN, there are hard workers….. who start with nothing and make something.

If you fall into the first boat, good for you.  Otherwise, in the second bullet, you summarize most of us.  You summarize my son, who can come up with unconventional ways to make cash, even though he did not do the “traditional” college route.

Tim shows you how to:

• implement cash generating strategies for the internet
• how to monetize web sites
• use tools to get started
• produce internet products within 24 hour
• write sales letters
• get people to endorse and praise your product.

Better yet, he has a 2 hour course on how to make money from CPA networks, (like I showed you above in the Slim Chews Money Screen Shot)

Again, click here to check him out…. If my son would read all of these helpful guides, and watch the videos, he too would be on his way….even if he has a marketer for a dad!

More Reading from BlackInternetMarketing.com

• See how I was able to use landing pages to market the Braids By Breslin program.  Click here.
• See how we started marketing a version of the Slim Chews CPA program by clicking here.
• Check out our comments on landing pages in the weight loss sector.. .Click here!

Good luck!

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Hair Braiding Tests

We utilize Zac Johnson’s Landing Page template to see if we can get a domain name ranked, and start sending traffic to an Affiliate Program.

In our articles Hair Braiding: How Hair Braiding Videos Padded My Pockets and Zac Johnson: Comparison Landing Page Template | SlimChews.net , we went over:

• Hair braiding DVD’s as an affiliate revenue stream
• Landing page templates, of which a couple great ones are located over at Zac Johnson’s blog.

Today, we launch an experiment to:

1. get a DOT BIZ domain name ranked, and hopefully well for the terms “hair braiding” or “hair braids”.  www.hairbraids.biz
2. utilize landing page templates by Zac, which we have definitely used successfully for conversions.

We will eventually utilize Google Optimizer to do an A/B test against Zac’s product comparison landing page and the regular landing page template available at his site.

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I was telling a colleague the other day that one of our sites, brought in about 600K visitors from January – November 2008.  The site is well monetized… or at least coded for offers… but conversions are low.  We talked about Quality vs. Quantity of traffic in our post “What’s More Important:  Quality or Quantity?”

What does work is this:  Google Adsense… Why?

Organic/Relevant Search Engine Traffic

My hypothesis is that the contextual basis of Google’s algorithms deliver the most conducive content based on the organic traffic coming to the site.  (WELL… EVERYONE knows what Google Adsense does in delivery of the contextual ads based on the content –>  So, it’s really not a hypothesis.  More so a confirmation!)

As we see in the graphic, the results of the search engine search are very pertinent to the user’s interest… So we have the best opportunity to make that cash.

So for 2009… As a marketer, I am faced with a good problems to have….  Having lots of traffic, but with a need to segment and address it….. or  finding ways to get more qualified traffic for conversions.

2.1 Million Page views.

If I can convert 1% of these page views from January – November 2008, with a $5 offer… how sweet life will be for 2009!   1% is 21,000 of the page views… OR Perhaps doubling that and making $2.50 per page view … Can you do the math with me?

For 2009, in a recession-ridden economy, it is very important for your site to have the best opportunity to convert.  To do this, you must either:

• Feed your site’s ecommerce engine the best fuel (qualified traffic) OR
• Have ways in place to study, analyze, and segment the traffic that you have, in order to convert.

The all so famous sales funnel

That famous sales funnel is so correct… IN 2009, let’s all focus on increasing the leads, and as our friend Mwangi stated in his comment for increasing “…sales, sales, sales!”

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Hair and Fashion have a huge market place online.  Do a web search for Hair Braids or Hair Braiding or Braids By Breslin to see how…

A couple of years ago, I advertised on BlackAtlanta.com for a company called “Braids By Breslin”.  The banners did not really have a very high click through rate for the general population of site visitors.  However, I quickly noticed in the stats that the term “Hair Braiding” was quickly becoming very popular as far as natural organic traffic for the site.

This was because of some ancillary content that I had added as a landing page for the terms.

So I contacted Braids By Breslin by email, and coincidentally, they were starting an Affiliate program.  I was their first affiliate.

For months, I enjoyed easy affiliate commissions from natural search engine traffic for “Hair Braiding”, and was even able to tweak search engine optimization for other keywords like “hair weaving” or “Kinky Twists”.   And then the GOOGLE flip out occurred.  Google flopped on me and my stream of revenue went down the drain.

Some Key Learnings

• Search engine optimization is a GREAT way for free traffic opportunities.  It is also VERY direct, in that the end user is definitely looking for your product or service.
• However, when Organic traffic is the ONLY source, if SEO efforts flop, then one should be prepared to supplement traffic in other ways.

A Solid Hair Braiding Product

Another key learning opportunity was basically that, you should promote strong products.  In this case, promoting an affiliate program, with strong products.  Here are some high quality Hair Braiding Examples!

With The Complete Training Package, You Get…

The Braids By Breslin “Four Hairstyles In One ” DVD

The Braids By Breslin “Cornrow Compilation” DVD

The Braids By Breslin “Weave Compilation: Volume 1 DVD”

The Braids By Breslin “Weave Compilation: Volume 2 DVD”

The Braids By Breslin “Master Wig Maker DVD”

The Braids By Breslin “Fusion DVD”

And The Braids By Breslin “Extensions” DVD

So,

1. Look for a niche in your traffic (Check your Stats!)
2. Then look for a product in which you could put in front of that demographic to buy!

Good Luck!

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The whole dot com boom really made people skeptical about investing in the net.  But I can tell you, done strategically, and the domain name business can be a great paying hobby, or a full-time profession.

The most ever domain names I had at one time?  about 150.  Man, the registrars made great cash on me.  But honestly, lots of them were acquired from many different “FREE” or reduced rate registrations.  This meant that I caught some deals that were free for the first year, or maybe just a dollar or two.

But think about it.  If I had resold about 10% of those names for about $50 a piece, then I would have generated capital to run other parts of my online business.  (Remember, all it takes is a seed!)

Well, this post gives reasons WHY:

• you should consider selling some of your inventory (domain names)
• you should ALWAYS be looking for new ones to acquire

Here we go….

1. Cost:  A domain name costs, generally less than $10 at most registrars (except for DOT TVs).  PS… I like GODADDY, The World’s Largest Registrar
2. Economics:  Your “Break-even” on a $9 domain name is… YOU GUESSED IT!  $9!

This means that if you buy the name for $9, then doing some minimal work(maybe a few hours) could boost the value of the name up!

In our post of selling Difluprednate.com, we bought strategically important names and then placed a simple blog on one of them to drive SEO traffic.  During that time, we also posted under 10 posts off and on… With fantastico hosting on hostgator.com, we are able to launch a blog within minutes!

So, the keys to the domain name resale for PROFIT, is going to be:

1. Purchasing a name that is desirable in some niche.  Don’t buy s0yasud8fua-23.com and expect to have a winner….
2. Expect to add at least a landing page (Your own!).  I have not made much money from Sedo.com in the past nor other parking packages.  Use your own traffic!
3. Gauge your traffic from SEO. You may not get that much traffic at all… but determine where the page traffic is coming from.  This will give you sales opportunity.
4. Steer your content towards your proposed target demographic for sales.  In other words, if your site is about dogs, then steer content towards dog lovers!  

Our auction listing Sitepoint currently has 4 days left.  Just 1 day into the auction, it has 3 bids!  Via those bids, we have broken even and surpassed our domain investment and time to create the site.

I am hopeful that towards the end of the auction, we will continue to get higher bids.

Good luck on creating your domain name garage sale!

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SlimChews.net… A Start for Conversions.  A Great Implementation of Zac’s Landing Page Template

As we discussed in our article “SlimChews.net: A Look at a Weight Loss Review Landing Page“, we discussed SlimChews.net.  In that article, we discuss the creation of landing pages in niche industries and subsequent matching with affiliate programs to take advantage of the market.

We are proud to report a 4.3% conversion rate. This means:

1. Once they click from my page to the landing page, a cookie is set.
2. Once a visitor is on that page, they 4.3% of the visitors to that page are signing up for the product.  That is a Great conversion rate!

We used Zac Johnson’s Freely available Comparison Shopping Landing Page template . . . Go to the site and download your own.

PS… here is a screen print of conversions.

4.3% Conversion

UPDATE: Since launching this post, you may find this article useful:  http://blackinternetmarketing.com/hair-braiding-revenue-generation-meets-zac-johnson-landing-page/-/Black-Internet-Marketing/2009/01/17/

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I am intrigued by products that make assertions like this.  Are you?  But I want to tell you… this is FREE to start.  

If you are like me, I at least try a lot of different Internet Marketing programs to make my own discernment.   Of course, there are always those small print disclaimers. 

But just think about it… What if??????

Click here or on the banner to the left and try out the process yourself.  Let’s report back here and figure out if any of us were able to crack the $2k a month nut!    

Comment below on your ideas, good or bad, when you see programs like this… Also, comment after you have filled out the Google Easy Profit form and started to work the program.  Remember…. It’s Free!

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1.8 Million Results for WUYI

Google Search Engine for the term ”Wuyi”.  This was an attractive number for us, as the results competition for our approach to organincally promoting the page via search engine results would have been easier.

• Domain Name: Wuyi.tv was purchased.  It was the only TLD (top level domain) that was available from a base level of including the term WUYI.  Plus, there were no other domain names in the top search results EXCEPT the main manufacturing company.  This may be of benefit to search engine results.
• The Server: We will be hosting with Hostgator.com.  As we discuss in our post entitled “Web Hosting for 1 Penny“, Hostgator provides a great hosting service.

For the rest of this post, we concentrate on changing the DNS of the domain name to point to the server.

DNS.

In easiest explanation, the DNS helps to redirect a name towards a server address called an IP.  An IP address can be a very long number based on the following number layout:  111.111.111.111.

Challenge… Can you memorize the following number:  206.190.60.37?

This is the IP address for yahoo.com.  So you can type http://206.190.60.37 or http://yahoo.com .  Your choice!  What DNS does is associates yahoo.com to the server with the address of 206.190.60.37.

Today, we are going to:

1. Login to the control panel of our domain name registrar.
2. Change the DNS values to the IP addresses of the servers at Godaddy.com where we will install the Wuyi.TV site.
3. Allow up to 48 hours for “propagation” to occur.  This means, in laymen’s terms, that the all of the “directions and turns” that a request for the site www.wuyi.tv must make in the World wide web, must be carved out in those first 2 days.  Normally, it is done within hours…

Next steps… In post 3, we are going to load a landing page or some sort of site on the server hosting www.wuyi.tv and start the SEO optimization.  We will most likely start a blog or some sort of dynamic page site, that will allow us to get good SEO value, while changing the content on a frequent basis.

We are also going to talk about the affiliate program that we applied to in anticipation of promotions.

Here we come WuYi!

For our other WuYi Tea Experimental posts:

WU-Yi Tea Experiment: Planning WUYi.TV Weight Loss Site | POST 1

WU-Yi Tea Experiment POST 2: Changing DNS… Preparing for Site

WU-Yi Tea Experiment POST 3: Creating a Simple Site for SEO Aging

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A QUICK example.

1. Client needs site and can pay up to $1000
2. Outsourced web development company does site for $500
3. You have $500 disposable cash to account for issues or additional development time.

The BEST way is to have an established rapport with dependable firms.  This MAY TAKE TIME and an effort to really build a reliable business relationship.  However, the basic steps, go like this:

1. Find 3-5 good outsourcing development groups in web design, graphics design, and copywrighting.  A lot of the times, the same group can do the web and graphics design. 
2. Check out their online work and portfolios.  This will help you to choose who you like and be able to match to the needs of the job.
3. Let the development group know that you have jobs and figure out rates for generic orders.  In other words, for a 3-5 page website, see what they will charge, how long it takes to develop, how many iterations they will give you to satisfy the client. 
4. Check out any credentials they may have to validate work.  Look for dependable and proven testimonials.  See if they have certifications or are parts of organizations like the Better Business Bureau.
5. HIRE THEM YOURSELF.  This is an important step before you put your name out for real jobs.  Ask them if you can get a reduced rate for a job in order to establish an outsourcing relationship.  Look below under TIPS and Techniques to get a super idea to do this.
6. Once you get a development group and a possible lead for a website, then create an outline of the development needs and share it with the groups.  See who offers the best rate and turn around time.  NOTE:  in some cases, the development groups may even give you a MOCKUP, or a JPEG image of a rudimentary layout.  (Show these to your clients for direction and early approval of design)
7. Select a Development group based on the matching needs of the client.
8. Project Manage the web development.  Act as the intermediary between the client and the web development group. Take constructive criticism and advised direction of the client and translate for the web designers.
9. Always act fairly for both your developer AND your client.  You must be realistic as to the number of iterations of development based on the price and promise. 
10. Complete the site once all parties are happy.  Ask for referrals from the client.

Tips & Techniques For OutSourcing and Additional Revenue!

• Test the development group first.  A great way to do this is to ask the development group to make you an OUTSOURCING website.  This lets you see their work.  They normally will also do it relatively inexpensively OR in some cases for FREE.  Again, this is helpful as it helps you to see their work and best of all, can give you a slick website to generate leads and from which to conduct your new found business.
• If you have lots of leads for web jobs:  Put a development firm on retainer.  A flat rate of $1500 a month for a pre-allocated number of development hours may be cheaper for you than on a “by the job” basis.
• Learn to Upsell:  find out the total needs of your client.  If they need business cards and logos, then that is something that the development/design group could possibly couple with the web site. 
• Couple in Consultation with Web Development:  Another upsell, is to let the client know that once a site has been developed, that there is a definite need for promotion.  Search engine optimization, pay per click campaigns and more give you room for consultation and perhaps, a monthly income residual.
• Make money from hosting:  The client will need hosting.  I like to take the headache out of my hosting situation by making my money in advance.  If you do lots of web sites by outsourcing, why should you want to trust that this client will be yours for months or years?  Become an affiliate of HostGator.com or another reliable hosting company.  Make your money UPFRONT from the hosting, as many of these companies pay well for the affiliate referral.  Hostgator pays between $50 and $125 currently to affiliates!
• Use an Escrow Service:  An escrow service, when used properly, allows the web development firm to know that the money for the service is safe and ready once the job is complete.  Once they deliver the product appropriately, then you release payment from the escrow service.  This protects you AND the service provider.  But don’t be surprised if they watermark their work until the finished product is delivered.  If you are REALLY frugal, ask the web development company to split the costs with you. 
• Use a Freelancer Service to find web development firms.  Services like GetAFreelancer.com have a very high number of firms bidding on jobs.  Go there, pay the $5 needed to post a job.  Then post a job… like a 5 page website.  See how many firms write you to bid on the job.  I have posted many jobs like this to develop relationships and it was at LEAST 10-15 bids per job!  Check out portfolios and work from there.
• Resell the Domain names:  The customers will need Domain names.  Use your affiliate ID for a  registrar!

My advice is of course, is that you are qualified to scope these jobs and manage the design/development projects.  You should Plan to be competent! 

Good luck and if the role fits, good luck on outsourcing!

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