• Creating sites that promote someone else’s products (via affiliate programs), which I’ve had pretty good success with.
• Creating informational sites that earn with advertising — my bread and butter, and something I’ve been doing a lot more of lately (see my recent post about building passive income with AdSense sites)
• Creating your own product and selling it directly to consumers (and allowing affiliates to promote it)

Lots of experts will tell you that this third option is a great way to create real wealth online, but it’s one I’ve never really tried my hand at… until now.

I’m obviously not an expert at product launches, but I have learned a lot in prepping for the release of CTR Theme (my high click-through rate AdSense theme and ad management system).  This post will highlight what I’ve learned as I get ready to start promoting the product heavily.

Create a Product that Solves a Problem (or two)

In my case, this was easy — I didn’t set out to build a “product.”  I set out to solve my own problem.  I wanted a theme that would automatically do all the things necessary for me to get a high clickthrough rate on the AdSense sites I’ve been building.  I also wanted it to be SUPER easy to implement so I could spend less time actually building out my sites.

By the time I had finished my own theme, I realized I had a product that other people could use.  Let’s face it, everyone building AdSense sites has the same three basic problems:

1. They want to get more people to click on the ads on the sites they have
2. They want to build more sites more quickly (so they can earn more)
3. They want to drive more traffic to their sites (so they can earn more)

My theme solved problems 1 and 2 quite easily, but problem 3 is still a big one.  I didn’t want to build a product that only partially set people up for success, so I set out to solve problem 3 as well.

I already have a lot of SEO knowledge and experience, and in launching my own AdSense sites, I came up with a link building strategy that works really well for niche sites.  I put that together in a 40 page ebook that I include as a bonus product.

The resulting product is an “all-in-one” solution for people looking to make money with AdSense.  I know it works, because I’ve used it myself, and I’m committed to making it better by incorporating features requested by real users.

Test Your Landing Page to Increase Conversions

I like to think that I’m pretty smart about what sells and what doesn’t.  I’ve seen enough sales pages and analytics data to have a feel for what turns browsers into buyers… but I’ve also seen enough to know that your gut can be wrong.  There’s really no point in *hoping* that you have the optimal combination of graphics and copy to convert visitors when you can test it and let the market tell you what works.

That’s why I made it a priority right away to implement Google’s Website Optimizer.  I’m using optimizer to test different headlines and buy button text right now to get a good feel for what converts at the highest level.

I don’t need to test certain things — I know that social proof helps products sell, so I’ve got testimonials and personal use stories on the page.  I know that a product demo works, so I’ve added a demo video showcasing the back-end control panel.  I also know that money-back guarantees are effective, so I’m prominently featuring one (that I stand behind completely).

Put everything in place that you know you need, then test all the other stuff.

Get People to Test It Before You Sell a Ton of Copies

If you’re releasing an ebook, this is pretty easy — basically just get someone to proofread it and verify that all the links work.  My situation was a lot more complex — I’m releasing a WordPress theme and ad management system that could be deployed on a lot of different hosting configurations.

Since I build all my sites the same way and put them on the same hosting configuration, I couldn’t possibly find all the bugs that could be encountered.  That’s why it’s important to have a group of “early adopters” who can help spot some of the problems your buyers might run into.

My chosen test group spotted a few bugs that needed to be fixed, and I’m definitely glad they did, because I would have hated to go to market with those flaws in the product.

Provide Fanatical Support

Since there’s no guarantee that my selected test group was going to find all the bugs, it’s increasingly important that I provide exceptional support after the sale to people who buy my theme. I’ve bought products in the past that I needed support on — when I got great support, it seriously increased the likelihood that I’d tell others about the product.

In fact, while prepping this product for launch, I ran into an issue with getting setup as a vendor at Clickbank.  I could have easily gotten frustrated and selected a different marketplace for my product — instead, I contacted their support team, and they got everything straightened out for me.  I was so thrilled with their support that I would highly recommend them to other folks looking to launch a product.

Beyond that, listening to (and responding to) support tickets is also a great way to identify missing features.  Originally, CTR Theme didn’t feature built-in SEO components or layout-based channel tracking.  Those were feature requests from early adopters.  Answering support requests also helped me to find some bugs that occurred for people using CTR Theme in ways I didn’t exactly expect.

Make It Easy for Affiliates to Sell

Now we’re past a lot of the “nuts and bolts” stuff about creating a product and getting into the actual marketing of it.  For CTR Theme, my goal was to make it easy for people to become affiliates and incredibly attractive for them to do so.

I chose to sell my product through Clickbank because of the number of affiliates the provide access to.  Becoming an affiliate for my product is as easy as adding your Clickbank ID in my hoplink structure.

I also decided to start off by offering a HUGE commission (75%) to entice affiliates to promote my product.  Then, I went a step further and put $20k in prizes up for grabs for the product launch.  Beyond that, I setup a page devoted to affiliates, explaining my commission structure, how they can create links to my product, the contest information, and some graphics they can use to link to my site.

I’ve already had a number of affiliate sales, and I haven’t even started targeting them aggressively yet.  In March, I expect the number of affiliate sales to jump significantly.

Add Testimonials as They Come In

Social proof is HUGELY important in selling products online.  I’ve started off with a few testimonials from my initial testers and early purchasers, but I’m definitely looking to add more as I get more people to try out the theme.

The key for me was to get a few in place and launch — I’m not going to wait around until I can land the perfect endorsement before I launch the product.  A quality product, which is what I built, will have no problem picking up endorsements as usage grows.

Make the Sales Page Clear

One of the most frequent questions I was getting asked about CTR Theme in pre-launch (February) was whether or not the theme could be installed on multiple sites.  The idea behind the theme was to make it easy for people to build an army of AdSense sites that all get solid CTRs — so to me, it was implied that the theme came with an unlimited use license.  Turns out, a lot of potential users had no idea that this was the case.

Make sure your sales page conveys all the key selling points for your product.  You’d hate for someone to not buy because they assumed the wrong thing about your terms of use or included features.

What Do You Think?

These are the tips I’ve come up with as I’ve prepared to launch my first product.  I’m really excited about its potential and hope that it does some serious sales in March.  What do you guys think of the product and my approach to launching / promoting it?  What have you done to ensure success in your product launches in the past?

Getting Quick AdSense Results

I finally got around to launching a few sites in early December.  I knew I wanted to get quick results from my sites so that they could start funding more niche sites.  As a result, I tried to pick some lower competition niches where I could acquire exact match domains.  I also decided to “launch” a bunch of sites at once.

I put launch in quotes, because all I did was throw some unique keyword-rich content on them, point a few links at them, then track to see where they landed in the search engines.  I didn’t do much link building right away.

The idea here was to see where they naturally fell, pick the two best ranking sites and start building links for them.  For me, this proved to be a great strategy, as it enabled me to start generating some profit in my first month.  In December, my newly launched sites made $45 — not a huge sum, but it all came towards the end of the month when they started ranking organically.  In January, they made over $150, and in February a single one of those sites cleared over $250.  In four of the past seven days, that site has cleared over $20 per day — if it can stabilize at that number, it’s going to be a $500-600 per month earner.  I also launched several other niche sites in February that have started earning.

How I Built My Sites

A good AdSense site needs three things:

1. Unique, keyword-rich content
2. A design that caters to your ads (allows good ad placement for high CTR)
3. Organic search traffic

Here’s how I tackled each of these concerns:

Unique, Keyword-Rich Content

For one of my sites, I wrote the initial content (only 5 pages worth).  For the other, I outsourced content creation, splitting between a writer hired at oDesk (for only $5 per article), and TextBroker.com (around $9 per article for the length I requested).  At oDesk, you have a little more control over who you get as a writer, since individual candidates apply and you hire them specifically.  TextBroker handles the writer assignment for you — you just specify the quality level you want (I used 4 stars).

For these types of sites, writing is a commodity.  You want good, accurate information, but it doesn’t need to be the quality of a doctoral dissertation.  I was quite pleased with what I got back from both services.  Note that you should run your content through Copyscape to make sure it’s not plagiarized if you hire someone to do the writing for you — you need unique content if you want to rank organically.

Getting Ad Clicks – High CTR Designs

I decided to build my sites on WordPress, since it’s super easy to setup and get running.  Beyond that, it’s a great choice if you ever decide to sell the sites, since nearly everyone looking to buy a website is familiar with WordPress.

I started looking around for high CTR (click-through rate) AdSense templates and a good ad management plugin that would do everything I wanted… and I found myself pretty underwhelmed.  So I built a theme that would do everything I wanted, namely:

• Let me enter my AdSense code via WordPress’ admin panel
• Automatically color match my ads to the theme I’m using
• Rotate my ad placements between several high-CTR options
• Let me easily track ad channel performance
• Hide ads from editors at specific human-edited directories

The coolest part about having this theme is that it makes it SUPER easy for me to roll out new sites.  I just order (or write) some content, install WP and my theme on the domain, paste in my ad code in the admin section, and start building links (via automated tools).

As a quick aside, I’ve made CTR Theme (that’s what I’m calling it) available for sale in case you’re interested (I’ll write another post about launching CTR Theme as its own product later).  With that out of the way, that leads us to:

Getting Organic Traffic – Building Links to AdSense Sites

So, I’ve got good content and a high-performance theme in place that will turn traffic into clicks… now I just needed to get the traffic.  Easier said than done, right?

Actually, it is.  The keys for me are that I:

• didn’t choose overly-competitive niches
• used automated tools to “place” links, instead of trying to build them “naturally”

Google wants you to think that the only proper way to get links is to write amazing content that will *somehow* get discovered, linked to, and they’ll pick it up and rank it in their search results.  Then you’ll have a magical stream of high-quality traffic making you money forever and ever.  It just doesn’t work that way.

The bottom line is that with AdSense niche sites, you’re not writing about stuff people will naturally want to link to like crazy.  Especially if you slap ads all over the place — haters love to hate, and people get REAL stingy with their link juice when they know you’re going to make a buck from it.

So forget them.  Let’s do it all ourselves.

The core of my strategy was to create unique content (or grab existing content from my niche site), spin it using The Best Spinner, post it to ezine articles, then use Article Marketing Robot to blast unique versions of the article out to hundreds (sometimes thousands) of websites.  Then, I used Bookmarking Demon to social bookmark my money site, the ezine article, and the secondary articles.  For more difficult terms, I also do some other stuff (blog commenting, link wheels, etc).

I’ll be adding some tutorial videos about how I use these tools in the near future.  Keep in mind that everything I use a tool for, you can do manually… it just sucks a lot and takes loads of time.  But if you’ve got way more time than money right now, you’re not out of luck.  You’ll just have to work harder.

I’ve also written a 40-page ebook outlining my entire link-building strategy in greater detail that I include as a bonus with CTR Theme.

So, does this strategy work?

For low to medium competition keywords, it works like a charm.  Here are the results after a single article blast (and bookmarking run) for a low competition term:

That same blast also had a great impact on a secondary term, even though I hadn’t targeted that term with anchor text:

I’ve also got a site that I’m building that is in a MUCH more competitive (and profitable) niche.  I haven’t focused on it much, but this month I ran 2 blasts to see what they would do.  The first blast took me from ranking 222 to 83.  The rankings dropped a bit to around 125, then I ran the second blast, which shot the site up to 48.  It may still move up some from that blast, since I just ran it.  Here’s the chart showing that movement:

The site is ranked high enough now that I feel like it’s worth devoting some more time and energy to it.  I’ve got a bunch of other sites in lower competition niches that I launched in the last month or so where this strategy got first page rankings after 1 or 2 blasts.

I’m going to put a lot more attention into building links for this site and I’ll try to add updates as things develop with this site.  It’s worth noting that this site was already making over $20 per month in January and February with really minimal traffic (none from its primary keyword), so the extra effort could really pay off well.

What’s the Bottom Line?

AdSense is still a really viable option for monetizing niche sites, and I love how hands-off the income is.  It’s awesome to wake up every morning and see these sites earning for me without having to do any additional work (after they start ranking well).

Whether you intend to flip them or hold them, AdSense niche sites can be very profitable.

How I Got All the Tostitos in the First Place

If you have even a passing interest in American sports and you don’t live under a rock, you’ve probably heard the expression “all the Tostitos” a fair amount over the past ten days. Moments after Brent Musberger uttered the corporate-referencing final line (“this is for all the Tostitos”), social networks (primarily Twitter) started to blow up with #allthetostitos references.

As soon as Musberger said it, I knew it would go viral — so I jumped right on it, registering the @allthetostitos Twitter handle and http://www.allthetostitos.com.  A lot of domainers and developers would have stopped there — maybe putting a parked page up on the domain and cashing in a bit… not me.  Instead, I built out the website (staying up until 4:30 am after the BCS championship game) paying homage to the meme (using Twitter’s API, YouTube’s API, and some static content).

Traffic, links, and social mentions started to roll in.  Then I did something that a lot of domainers would think is crazy.  I contacted Frito-Lay and told them I wanted to give them @allthetostitos (and the accompanying website).

You see, I believe in the power of brands — that it’s possible to make a significant, positive impression in the minds of consumers; one that creates a tangible impact on long-term buyer loyalty.

I recognized this as a great opportunity for Frito-Lay to leverage an organic event to enhance their brand position.  I also knew that they wouldn’t be able to foster the growth of the meme without the right web presence.

Beyond that, I knew that I couldn’t manage the meme long-term… as funny as I think #allthetostitos is, I have my own job and websites to worry about.  Someone on their payroll could be a better brand-evangelist than I could in my (limited) spare time.

So How Does One Give Away All the Tostitos?

Thankfully, the people at Frito-Lay are pretty smart.  They hopped on the meme rather quickly, encouraging the use of the #allthetostitos hashtag on Twitter.  When I told them about http://www.allthetostitos.com, they responded enthusiastically to what I had created.  When I added that I wanted to give them all the Tostitos, it didn’t take long for them to accept the offer.  Color me impressed.

I know of several other domainers and web developers who had names that matched a company brand, slogan, etc. who were met with no response when they offered to give the names away.  At large companies, there’s often a bunch of red-tape to wade through before you can execute even the simplest of transactions.

Frito-Lay was the opposite — very responsive and agile, operating like a company of much smaller scale.  They recognized the opportunity and seized it.  The domain and Twitter account transfer were seamless.

What Becomes of All the Tostitos?

Today Frito-Lay started using the @allthetostitos Twitter account as the official Twitter account for the Tostitos brand.  They’ve wasted no time in putting the account to good use, as they’ve been giving out free bags of Tostitos today to some of the folks who mentioned them (@allthetostitos references).  I’ll be interested to follow the account and see exactly how they put it to use.

Here are some example tweets where they’re giving away product:

It’s worth noting that they changed the Twitter account’s URL to point to their Facebook page, and not allthetostitos.com any longer.  My guess is that they still haven’t entirely determined what they want to do with the site yet.

What Did I Get Out of It?

So I don’t have @allthetostitos anymore, and I don’t have allthetostitos.com either.  No truckloads of Tostitos have been unloaded at my house as of yet, either, though you never know what may come.  Frito-Lay hasn’t offered me a job (though, if they did, I’d be all ears).

It’s possible that as Frito-Lay begins using the account (and hopefully the website), that I’ll pull some press coverage, which would certainly be welcome.  Quite frankly, that’s the most I’m hoping for in terms of tangible benefit to me out of the whole deal.

But primarily, I get the satisfaction of knowing that I helped a brand connect with its consumers in a fun, community-driven way.  I get a great story out of the whole thing — a positive life experience.  If that’s all I get out of it, that’s enough for me; seems like a fair trade for all the Tostitos.

Include files

Including files, rather than rewriting the same code over and over again, was the first huge time saver I remember learning.  Common parts of a site can easily be reused.  The syntax in PHP for including files is:

<?php include("your_file_path_here.php"); ?>

This is a really simple way to drop AdSense code into WordPress themes (put your adsense code in a separate file, then include it in the theme wherever you want it).  It allows you to segment your code out into smaller, reusable pieces and organize it better, too.  My extensive use of include files in this way made the transition to the MVC (model view controller) structure of Zend Framework much easier.

Local development and local hosts file changes

Learning about this was a real game-changer for me.  For the first few years I spent developing websites, I had to upload every single change I made to the server to see what it did.

Eventually, I learned that I could install WAMP, MAMP, or XAMPP on my machine (I prefer XAMPP) and have a site accessible via my localhost (which really helped speed up development).  But combining a local development environment (using a vhost) with a local hosts file change was amazing to me.  That did two things:

1. Allowed me to develop a site without having settings saved with the wrong domain (requiring a later find and replace in the db to correct).  Perfect for WordPress installs, where file attachment information is stored using the full url, not the relative path.
2. Enabled me to make sure a site was functioning properly on a new server before changing the DNS.

Some of you might be scratching your heads still.  I’ll try to clear up any confusion.  Your local hosts file tells your computer not to bother with a DNS lookup for a website, and instead to point that site to the ip address you specify.  I’m on a mac, so to edit my local hosts file, I just open Terminal, then type:

sudo nano /etc/hosts

After entering my password, I can edit the local hosts file.  In it, you just add a line with the ip address and the domain name like this:

127.0.0.1    flipwebsites.com

That tells my computer that when I type “http://flipwebsites.com” in my browser (or any other application that will require a DNS lookup for that address) to just route it to my localhost.

The great thing about this is that you can keep a copy of your site on your local machine, then when you want to make a big change, you can do it locally first.  Once you’ve worked out all the bugs, you can upload the good code and know it will work on your site.

Changing the local hosts file is also important when launching a new site or changing hosting companies.  You can setup the new account, upload all your files, then point your local hosts file to the new server’s ip address.  This allows you to see the site as if you made the DNS change (without having to make the DNS change).  Make sure everything looks the way it should, then flip the switch on the DNS, and you should have a seamless transition.

Firebug inspect element

Firebug (a Firefox plugin) is an indispensable development tool, because it allows you to quickly troubleshoot why a page is displaying (or functioning) incorrectly.  For CSS fixes, nothing beats Firebug’s “inspect element” feature.  You just put your mouse over the element on the page you want more information about, right click it, and select “inspect element.”

From here, you can see which styles are being applied to the element, and which lines from the stylesheet are responsible for those styles.  This plugin speeds up development / troubleshooting more than you could ever imagine.  I’d hate to have to develop without it.

WordPress Shortcodes

I’m a big fan of WordPress for simple sites — it provides a clean admin interface and is super-extensible.  Plugins make WordPress an amazing tool.  Frequently, I’ve wanted to be able to drop some sort of generated output in the middle of a post or page.  WordPress shortcodes make it extremely easy to do.

Here’s an example of a quick plugin with code commenting showing how simple it is to create a shortcode:

/*
Plugin Name: Say Hello
Plugin URI: http://www.flipwebsites.com
Version: v0.1
Author: <a href="http://www.flipwebsites.com/">Eppie Vojt</a>
Description: Just a shortcode example plugin */

// Create the shortcode [say-hello], which calls say_hello()
add_shortcode('say-hello', 'say_hello');

// Code executed by shortcode
function say_hello()
{
    return "Hello.";
}

You can enhance your shortcodes by accepting attributes, so instead of just looking like [say-hello], our shortcode could be [say-hello name="Eppie"].  Our code to add a name to the Hello message would be:

/*
Plugin Name: Say Hello
Plugin URI: http://www.flipwebsites.com
Version: v0.1
Author: <a href="http://www.flipwebsites.com/">Eppie Vojt</a>
Description: Just a shortcode example plugin */

// Create the shortcode [say-hello], which calls say_hello()
add_shortcode('say-hello', 'say_hello');

// Code executed by shortcode -- note we added $atts as a parameter
function say_hello($atts)
{
    // Turn $atts into key-value pair. Set var key = value
    foreach($atts as $k => $v) $$k = $v;
    return "Hello $name.";
}

There’s a lot more you can do with shortcodes, but I think you can see how incredibly useful they are, and how easy they are to create.

Repositories / Version Control

If you’ve ever accidentally overwritten a file, had a server die (and not had backups of the files), worked with a team of developers, outsourced web development, or wanted to undo some changes you’ve made in the past, you’ll realize that repositories are a God-send.

A repository is a storage system that allows you to save multiple versions of files, along with descriptions for the changes that are made in each variation.  I use Mercurial, and host my repositories online via Kiln, which provides a nice online interface for non-technical users to utilize.

Using Mercurial, I can roll-back code to a previous revision, see a diff compare (which highlights the difference between two files), merge two different versions of a file into one, and much more.  It takes some getting used to, but once you get over the adjustment, you’ll never want to go back to not using version control.

What about you?

Do you have any great web development tips that I missed?  I’d love to hear the tricks you utilize to make your life easier.

What the AdSense Recipe is NOT

First a quick disclaimer — the AdSense Recipe is not a get-rich-quick book.  It doesn’t contain a “magic bullet” that will result in instant success.  It’s a process that WILL require work (or money to outsource that work) on your part.  It will require some time before you start to see major results.

What the AdSense Recipe IS

This new version of his ebook offers substantially more detail than the previous offering — including a beginner’s guide that increases the range of people who can benefit from the book.  From niche selection to ad placement to traffic generation (largely via link building), Cary covers it all in solid detail.

The “recipe” is broken down into 3 books, an action plan, and some videos.  Here’s a breakdown of what’s included in each.

Beginner’s Guide

• Definitions of relevant terms
• What kind of website should you create (including ways to get ideas for a website)
• Domain tips (keyword domains, which extension to use)
• Choosing a webhost
• Installing WordPress
• Adding content
• Tools that ease the workload
• Basic AdSense placement

Advanced Guide

• Keyword Research techniques (including determining potential traffic and  profitability)
• Determining keyword competition level
• WordPress tweaks and secrets
• Content creation (how much do you need, best places to outsource, how much to pay)
• Advanced ad placement (includes 20%+ CTR case study)
• SEO tips
• Automated link building services
• Manual link building techniques
• Tips for outsourcing link building
• “Ninja Secrets” (extra SEO tips, getting repeat visitors)

Between the Beginner and Advanced guides, there’s over 60 pages of material.  Cary also includes a bonus Mass Media technique, which seems interesting but would definitely benefit from having a successful example included.  This was the only disappointing component of the course for me, and I’m going to contact Cary to see if he’ll add an example directly to the ebook or send it out as a follow-up email to his buyers.

Why I Recommend the AdSense Recipe

Most attempts at launching an AdSense empire fail because people get discouraged.  They don’t see results immediately and stop doing the things that would eventually lead to their success.  They do this, largely, because they aren’t sure their efforts will ever be rewarded.

That’s why the step-by-step guide included with the AdSense Recipe is so incredibly valuable.  It tells you exactly what you should do on a weekly basis to create a successful AdSense site.  This, more than the explanation of techniques and ad placement, is what’s going to help people to succeed.

I compare it to Dave Ramsey’s success in the personal finance field.  Ramsey’s “Total Money Makeover” has been wildly successful because it’s easy enough for anyone to understand, and it’s specific in what’s required.  He understands that people need to have a roadmap laid out in front of them and achieve little wins along the way if they want to tackle a huge goal.

Cary’s recipe is set up the same way — win each week (by checking off the required steps), know that you’ve made progress, and eventually your earnings totals will reflect this effort.

So, if you’re looking to get started building quality AdSense sites that bring in a solid recurring revenue stream, or you’ve tried to launch AdSense sites in the past but quit before you started to see serious results, this course is ideal for you.

Check it out at http://www.adsense-recipe.com

Whether you’re selling product or leveraging traffic to move advertisements, this simple principle holds true — the people with whom you have done business in the past have a significantly greater likelihood of doing business with you in the future.  People who had a positive experience on your blog in the past are the ones more likely to find value in the future, to become loyal readers.

It’s the reason I advocate making your site sticky before implementing any large traffic campaigns for a website.  Do all that you can to ensure that you have continued access to these new visitors in the future.  Here are some ways to do that.

RSS is an option for this, but the best possible alternative is to have the user opt in to your email list.  There’s a reason you hear so many people say that “the money is in the list.”

The Power of a Targeted List

A good email list is a beautiful thing.  It allows you to:

• Cultivate a relationship with your reader
• Provide on-demand traffic to your site
• Get feedback from people interested in your niche
• Pitch special offers and generate sales

My email list enables me to bring a steady stream of repeat traffic to this site.  It also allows me to help my readers sell their websites (by sharing those deals in my newsletter), and to enhance my reputation with people who care about my field of expertise.  I consider it to be a very valuable resource.

A good, responsive list can also help your site fetch top-dollar when it’s time to sell.

That’s why I was thrilled to learn about Popup Domination, a plugin for WordPress that rapidly improved the number of people joining my list.

Stumbling into Opportunity

Before I listened to a single word of the video on the sales page for Popup Domination, I knew I was going to buy it.  In fact, I knew I was going to buy it before I even knew what it was called or where to get it.

You see, I stumbled across Popup Domination while visiting a site I read frequently.  On this visit, instead of seeing the home page, I was greeted by a lightbox promoting a free e-book.  Normally, when a lightbox comes on the screen, I’m on its ‘close’ button faster than you can blink.  This time, I paused… for a long time.  Here’s an example of what the popup looks like (on Flip Websites, not the site I ran across):

The design was really professional — impressive.  I knew it had to be converting like crazy if even I stopped to admire it.  I have Firebug installed, so I right clicked, selected ‘Inspect Element,’ and started looking at the source code, trying to decipher what plugin was being used to display the lightbox, and my detective work revealed that it was Popup Domination.

I immediately bought the plugin and installed it shortly thereafter, and the results have been very impressive.  To say the least, it’s been money well spent.

The Results

I’m going to cover my favorite features of the plugin, but first, I want to share my results with you (because that’s what really matters). Here’s a chart straight from my Aweber account showing weekly subscribers:

And here’s a chart showing my daily new subscribers improvement (plugin installed on 9/30):

In the 2 weeks before using Popup Domination, I was averaging 2.88 new subscribers per day (which is actually higher than the historical average for this site — see the weekly graph from Aweber for more context) . Now, I’m averaging 7.75 new subscribers per day — that’s a 269% improvement!  How big of a difference is that?

At 2.88 new subscribers per day, my list would grow by 1,051 people per year.  Not a bad little number to add to the more than 1,000 people already subscribed to my updates.

At 7.75 new subscribers per day, in a year’s time my list will have grown by 2,829 people!

What about Bounce Rate?

Admittedly, I was concerned about scaring people off with a popup — some folks might be inclined to hit the back button, rather than close out the lightbox.  Fortunately for me, that hasn’t proven to be the case.  Since implementing the popup, my bounce rate is actually down a little over 7%.

Unfortunately, I implemented the popup right around the same time I changed the site design, so I can’t say for sure that the bounce rate isn’t higher than it would be without Popup Domination installed.  I suspect the decreased bounce rate has much more to do with the theme change than with the popup.

Ease of Use

I could have easily designed a similar lightbox and implemented it on my site, but the time spent wouldn’t have been worth the relatively low cost of the plugin.  You know I’m a fan of outsourcing work.  I simply couldn’t design and code a plugin that would be as easy to use in the amount of time necessary to justify not buying it.

Here’s a quick highlight of the major benefits (as I see them):

• Works with all major mailing list companies (including Aweber – which I use, and MailChimp)
• Super easy to set up (took me under 5 minutes)
• Comes with both plug-in (WordPress) and stand-alone (for static websites) versions
• Includes 7 themes with 15 color options (easy to find a design that works with your site)
• Highly configurable — you can choose how often to show it (only show to a user once per x days), you can choose which pages to show it on, etc.

Why I Recommend It

Bottom line: it works, it’s affordable, and it keeps your site looking professional.  It increases the value you can pull from your websites while you operate them (increasing traffic and increasing sales), and it increases the value you’ll get when you sell (larger list is worth more, plus the value of the premium plugin).

The only way I’d put a popup on my site is if I felt it didn’t negatively impact my branding — I’m still running it, so you know I believe in it.  I suspect you’ll have the same positive experience I did with it.

Save Some Money on It

If you decide to buy Popup Domination, after you get to their site, make sure you hit the back button (or close your browser tab) — they’ll bring up an alert asking you to stay on the page, offering a $10 discount.

So you’re interested in starting a forum? Good for you… it can be a very fun and rewarding experience. However over the years, I have found that almost no one truly understands the amount of work and dedication it will take to build a successful forum from scratch.

The whole idea of “build it and they will come” just doesn’t work anymore. As someone that has created social communities small and large (from “do-it-yourself” forums to large venture-capital backed communities, and ones in-between) here’s some invaluable advice I’ve learned along the way. These tips won’t guarantee success, but they will help you avoid some of the most common pitfalls people make:

(1) Pick the right niche

Ten or twelve years ago, the idea of starting a message board covering every topic under the sun might have made sense, but in 2010, that would be just plain stupid. The market is simply way too oversaturated for something like that to work.

Instead, you should focus on a specific niche – whether that’s a specific topic (such as luxury hotels and resorts in the Caribbean) or a specific group of people (like those seeking to repair their credit after a bankruptcy filing). That will instantly set your community apart from the others and give you a more unique angle to promote it.

Warren Buffett once said “I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars… I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.” I believe you should also apply this mindset when choosing your niche. I don’t know about you, but I would much rather be in a niche where I can be number one, rather than just one of many. So gauge your competition and pick something that is relatively untapped, yet still a popular niche.

(2) Decide what features you want

Before you can pick out your forum software, first you need to pick out what exactly features and capabilities you want – both now and in the future. Do you want a plain old message board with no bells and whistles? Or, do you want the ability to also have CMS, blogs, etc. down the road? Deciding these things now will ensure you choose a platform that can meet your needs.

The good news is today’s platform offer capabilities that weren’t available in the past. As an example, vBulletin had no CMS option until late 2009. Before that, it was very difficult if you wanted to use your message board to host articles, reviews, etc. For example, on Credit Card Forum, things like this Marriott Rewards credit card review or Chase Freedom review would have to be done as a forum thread, even though they are clearly credit card articles. Today’s version of vBulletin has CMS capabilities to write real articles, but unfortunately, it is still very buggy and can even be confusing for many.

(3) Pick the right software

I can’t emphasize how important it is to pick the right software, because basically, you will never be able to seamlessly convert to a different platform later on. So choose carefully… VERY carefully… and do not let cost be a deciding factor.

You could plug-and-play the open source phpBB platform for free (which is nicely written code) but in my opinion, you will be somewhat limited in what you can do with it, depending on how complex of a site you want to make (i.e. including a CMS). Personally, I prefer vBulletin due to its versatility, but there are a still a few drawbacks; infamous for being buggy and a license will set you back a few hundred dollars. IP.Board (Invision Power Boards) is the other big player out there. I have heard positive feedback on it over the years, but because I’ve never used it, I don’t believe I’m qualified to draw an opinion on it one way or another.

Going back to vBulletin, if you end up deciding it’s best for you, make sure you also buy a vBSEO license for it. Do this on day one because it will give URL re-write capabilities (and obviously URL structures are something you never want to change once you have them in place).

(4) Work your butt off

Now it’s time for the real work to begin! Make no mistake about it – it will be a lot of work – but by building your forum from the ground up the right way, the work that lies ahead will be more likely to yield positive results for you.

For starters, you will need to recruit friends, family, and whoever else you can to regularly participate in your new community, because no one’s going to participate if they come to your site and see that nothing is going on. I’m not talking about doing this for just a week or two… this may be necessary for months or even a year or more (until your site achieves a good level of organic traffic). I’ve never used them, but I know there are some forum posting services where you pay a fee in order to get posts – I am highly skeptical of the quality of their work, so if you do end up using one, don’t use them as your only source (do it in conjunction with friends, family, etc.).

Concurrently, you want to be networking with related sites. If you are in a very focused niche, contact others in the same niche and see if they will help you out by adding you to their blogroll. For example, during the early days of this plastic surgery message board, we would network with plastic surgeons and offer them an interview on the forum, in exchange for a linkback from their website.

We also featured promotions like “10 posts made during the month of December will be randomly selected – their authors will be given a free $50 gift card to Beauty.com.” This, of course, encourages member participation (and you can ask those related blogs which are linking to you, to please help spread the word on the contest). Try and think up strategic relationships and other means of promotions that would be appropriate for your niche.

As the site grows, may notice members gravitate towards some topics more than others – that’s perfectly okay and you should embrace it. For example, on PlasticSurgerySpot, the rhinoplasty forum was a big hit – that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because it gives the site at least one topic (rhinoplasty) that gets a lot of active discussion. If you have at least one part of your forum that gets a lot of action, you’re more likely to have repeat visitors.

Conclusion?
There is no pathway set in stone for launching and growing a forum. However if you follow this advice and continuously work your butt off, it should gain traction sooner or later. Just make sure you’re ready to commit to this level of work – because if you’re not – then building a forum is not for you (buying an established one might be a better idea).

When I decided to purchase Flip Websites, these were my beliefs about the site:

• It has a good, memorable domain name that sets it up to be the industry authority
• It has high quality content that also indicates that position of authority
• Its design was a bit more “home brew,” not entirely matching that authoritative voice (particularly the logo)

It’s important to know a sites strengths and weaknesses when you acquire it, so that you can quickly develop a plan to improve its deficiencies.

What Makes a Good Logo?

A good logo must be scalable, memorable and meaningful.  It should reproduce well in one-color and look good in knockout (reversed on dark backgrounds, over photographs, etc).  A logo that does all of these things well will give off a perception of quality.

It doesn’t need to be overly complicated — in fact, some of the most recognizable logos are exceedingly simple.  Consider the following world-renowned logos:

One of the important things to note is that these logos don’t “try too hard.”  Compare these to what previously existed as the identity for Flip Websites:

Clearly, this identity doesn’t measure up.  It uses a heavy stroke around the lettering, a drop shadow (almost never used in a real logo), and the perpendicular type makes it difficult to read.  A website logo should ideally scale well to a very small size so that it can be used as the favicon.  This logo struggled to do that as well.

Outsourcing Logo Design

I’m a pretty creative guy, and I’ve done a number of identities successfully on my own in the past, but for this site, I was having trouble coming up with a concept I loved (and more accurately executing that concept).  I knew I could provide good creative direction, so I sought out some extra design muscle.

I thought about using a design crowdsourcing site (99 designs), but I had recently come across an alternative that looked promising — Upstack.  With Upstack, you set your price and create a project brief.  Then, the designers who have signed up with Upstack can indicate if they want to work on your project — you get to see their portfolios, and you can choose a designer you like.  If you don’t see anyone you like, you can cancel your project.

I was really impressed with the quality of the designers who submitted to work on my design.  I could have easily gone with any one of a handful and probably ended up with a great logo.  I selected to have only one designer work on my project — the one whose portfolio was easily the most impressive.

The Flip Websites Logo

Without going through all the details, by the time we hit our fourth concept, I knew we had found a winner.  The new logo consists of two elements – a ‘w’ (from the word ‘websites’) that looks like a bar graph trending upwards.  The final bar has an upward arrow.  This symbol is simple, clean, and crisp.  It represents the positive financial growth that can be achieved by flipping websites.

The second element of the logo is the type treatment, which is clean and modern.  The ‘p’ from flip has been modified to include an arrow curved in a flipping motion.  Here’s the combined logo in full color, 1 color (black) and knockout — you can see it translates well in each case:

Redesigning the Website

With the new logo selected, it became pretty simple to implement the redesign.  I wanted a design that:

• Really showcases the content
• Allows for certain articles to be featured
• Allows easy access to the main categories
• Prominently features the article’s author (to encourage guest posting)
• Accommodates standard ad sizes (468 x 60, 300 x 250, 125 x 125)

I’ve been modifying the outstanding Gazette Edition theme (from Woo Themes) for some time.  I feel that this theme meets all of the above requirements, so I used it as the base design, altering the featured content slider, the way posts display on the front page (including author image, full width instead of 2 across), and adding an author box to individual post pages.

Here’s a side-by-side of the old and new designs:

The Real Measure of Design Success

The way you know a design is successful isn’t that you believe it looks prettier (or that others tell you as much).  The real measure of design success is how the site is used.  Since implementing the new design, bounce rate is down, average time spent on site is up, and pageviews per user have increased.

That said, it’s been really nice to hear from people about how impressed they are with the new design.  I’ve received plenty of praise and no complaints, so I think it’s safe to say that the new look isn’t detracting from the user experience on the site.

What are your thoughts on the new design?  Do you have any other resources you prefer to use for outsourcing your design work?  I’d love to get your feedback.

To start out, I need to admit something. I have a pretty substantial advantage over most casual flippers.  I work professionally as a web developer, and although my expertise lies in the programming end of the spectrum, I also have a pretty good creative eye.  I’ve built $40,000+ websites.  I know fancy web technologies like ASP.NET MVC and Zend Framework.  I own Adobe Creative Suite 5, and I know all the keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop.  I could have sat down and created an entirely custom design for Better Parenting and built out a custom CMS that perfectly met my needs.  I didn’t do any of that.

What “Flip This House” Teaches Us About Website Flipping

If you ever watch any of the myriad of house flipping shows on television, you’re bound to encounter a situation where the novice flipper forgets that they’re building to sell.  Their renovation becomes less about the profit and more about what they would love to have.  Huge mistake.

I knew right off the bat that I wasn’t going to go crazy with custom solutions.  WordPress is free and takes minutes to install, not days to build.  I own developer rights to the fantastic Gazette Edition theme (by Woo Themes).  With slight modification totaling under an hour, that theme was pretty close to what I would have built from scratch.  No messing around in Photoshop for hours.  No need to code out all the XHTML / CSS from scratch.  A new site, ready to go, looking nice in almost no time at all.

I can’t stress enough the importance of spending your time on high-value activities and finding ways to minimize the time spent on low-value ones.  There’s a reason house flippers put their money into kitchens and bathrooms — buyers value improvements in those areas.  While design is significant to establishing the credibility of your site, for $150 you can own developer rights to 4 high quality themes.  You can leverage those over and over again, without any additional cost.  If your site starts making money hand over fist, and you later decide that you would really benefit from a custom design, you can always change it then.

Low Value Activities (you won’t get your money back on a flip):

• Creating a custom design
• Creating back-end admin functions
• Directionless content creation
• Social MEDIA

High Value Activities:

• Building links
• Keyword research
• Content creation (based on keyword research)
• Guest posting
• Creating link-bait
• List building
• Social NETWORKING

Remember, people don’t buy pretty — they buy profit (and sometimes potential profit).  It takes traffic (preferably targeted) in order to succeed.

I set out to outsource or eliminate all low value activities, and even some of the simple high value ones.  Where possible, I did so for free.

Leverage Your Best Asset

There’s a reason I bought an aged domain with relatively high PageRank — I knew I wouldn’t be able to create a good parenting site if I was the only writer.  I like to think I’m a great dad (my kids tell me as much), but they’re only 6 and 4.  There’s only so much I can provide insight into.  I can’t tell people how to handle their out-of-control teenage daughter.  Even if I could, my time is limited and the only way to make more time is to use someone else’s.  I knew that I needed to bring other writer’s on board.

I also knew that I needed credibility if I wanted to outsource writing on the cheap.  People would accept less (or no) pay if they thought they were writing for a substantial publication; if they found it to be an honor to be published on this site.  To marginally tech-savvy potential writers, PR 4 (rightly or wrongly… okay, totally wrongly) suggests that credibility.  The brand name pulled the rest of the weight.  Perceived brand equity was my best asset.  The only problem was I had an empty site that screamed the exact opposite.

A site with no content destroys all the credibility that otherwise flows from PageRank and brand equity.  This had to be remedied quickly.  For starters, I wrote a bunch of content.  I also set my wife to work, writing a few articles.  I had my mom do the same.  We started to build up a decent base of content that started to fill in the holes.  Then, I went on a hiring spree.

Where to Hire Writers

I went to oDesk and hired a bunch of writers to produce articles at $5 each.  I created a long topic list and had my writers choose articles they would be interested in.  The quality of writing for the price was quite good, and the site was quickly filling with content.  Later, I made a post on the ProBlogger job board, which resulted in over 300 submissions for a paid writing gig.  I added a few more writers from this crop — all very talented, all very low paid (between $5 and $10 per article, depending on skill).

The first month I spent around $100 for additional content.  I published at least 1 new article ever day and traffic was already growing strong (nearly 11,000 views on 4,300 visits).  And here’s where the magic started to happen.

How to Get Free Content

I installed the Contact Form 7 plugin for WordPress and posted a “Write for Us” page.  I described the benefits of writing for the site, a little bit about its traffic, and added a contact form (with file attachment capabilities).  I started receiving regular submissions from site readers who, seeing the large number of authors writing for my site, felt comfortable submitting their content as well.  By prominently featuring the multi-author nature of the site and making it easy for potential authors to submit their articles, I was getting new content for free.

I also set out to work existing relationships — I posted a note on my Facebook account about the site and asked any of my friends who were interested in writing to let me know.  A friend from high school (who now lived in New York and worked professionally as an editor) volunteered to write for me.  So did my brother’s neighbor, and a few others.

I started retweeting stuff from some parenting coaches who impressed me, told them how much I enjoyed their sties, and suddenly they were interested in writing for me too.  I had hit the free content jackpot.

What it Means for You

I saved money wherever possible in building and launching the site, and spent it where necessary (augmenting my content creation abilities) in order to build a site that projected an image of credibility.  That perceived authority is a content magnet.  You can do the same thing with your sites, and you’ll find that when it comes time to flip the website, you’re in position to fetch top dollar.  Even if you don’t want to be a “content magnet,” focusing on high value activities will ensure that you get the most money back for your efforts when you sell your website.

I know I kind of breezed through traffic generation — some of you are probably wondering what I did to go from 0 to 11,000 pageviews in a month.  I share with you what worked (and what failed) in the next article in this series.

P.S. — If you don’t want to miss any of the articles in this series, be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed.

There are a lot of ideas that can come to a person’s mind throughout his or her life. Ideas usually always sound great, especially when it comes to dreaming up website ideas that will one day make you boat loads of money, but one thing that has to be learned about ideas is that before an idea can be a good one, it has to stand the test of time.

One huge problem with great ideas with websites is that it can be forever before you even get around to making your idea happen, and the longer you wait to start your website the longer it takes for your website to start making money – and this my friends is exactly why we have all come to know the phrase, “time is money.” It can be a long time before your website is even worth money, and if you are trying to flip websites, you don’t want to be wasting time on a website that is never going to pan out.

What is a Placeholder Site?

A placeholder site is exactly what the name calls for. It’s a site that is pretty much taking up space and time on the Internet. They are very valuable because one of Google’s key ingredients for higher rankings is the age of a website’s domain name. Placeholder sites help you get your great idea started at a very low price because they require very little work and only the purchase of the domain and the cost for hosting.

A common placeholder site requires only a few things and they allow you to get great website idea’s rolling even if you don’t have the time or money for them at the moment. Placeholder sites can easily be made with a simple WordPress template, one page of content, and a good keyword density with about 500-600 words. They are best used for exact match keyword phrase domain names. A good use for placeholder sites is when you want to build a large volume of sites that you intend to work on in the future and hiring some article writers for article writing services can help save a lot of time and money.

What are Some Key Ingredients of Placeholder Sites?

One thing that you do not want to happen with your placeholder site is for it to get sand-boxed by Google – this defeats the purpose of of a placeholder site which is to get indexed by Google while gaining domain name age. There are usually only a few things you have to do to get indexed and avoid getting sand-boxed. You definitely need to do a small amount of link building.

Using a social bookmarking service like OnlyWire, mixed with a few free link directories, should be enough to get your website indexed. Remember, the idea is to just get your domain name age older and an intense link building project or hiring people for backlink services isn’t beneficial or going to work with placeholder sites. Another good idea with placeholder sites is too link out to authority websites that are related to your website. You should link out to at least two websites with high page rank and you should also link out to sites like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. After that, let the fun begin! Add some Google Analytics and see how much traffic your simple placeholder site can pull (just for the fun of it)!