The Process That Makes Me Thousands of Dollars Per Month Online
Written by Glen, this post has 121 Comments
Unless you’ve read Cloud Living, you probably have no idea how I make money online. My about page makes it clear that I do make a great living from the internet, but I’ve never wrote about how. Until today.
I’m not going to claim my process is anything new, because there were people using similar methods for a long time before me. I am however going to take you through the steps I follow in order to build profitable websites that allow me to live my location independent lifestyle.
My first major website made money through contextual advertising (Google Adsense) and selling ads on a CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) basis. I was running a community site at the time and besides premium memberships, they aren’t that easy to monetise.
I’ve started websites from scratch, quickly built them to 50,000 visitors per month, and then sold them on for an easy profit. I’ve hired programmers to create scripts that I later sell to niche communities for a great return and I’ve also built and sold popular blogs.
There are many more ways to make money online, but the process that generates most of my income is simply this: I direct search engine traffic to landing pages, and then send that traffic to product pages as an affiliate.
If someone buys a product on the site I sent them to, then I make a commission. The product is obviously relevant to what they were searching for, and this strategy results in a win-win for both parties (I only promote the best products / services I know of).
Although this method makes me thousands of dollars per month, it’s still a very simple process. Nobody said making money on the internet was difficult. In fact, I think it’s very easy; as long as you take right action.
I’ve just given you a quick overview, so let’s get into the specifics.
I Write Down My Passions, Fears, and Problems
Most people online are looking for something to fill a need. People playing games might just want to avoid the school or office work they could (should?) be doing. People reading weight loss blogs may be doing so because they want to attract members of the opposite sex.
Some people really want to quit their day job and leave the rat race, so they read sites like this one. Generally, everything anyone does online is to help them personally, whether you like how that sounds or not. This is probably why Seth Godin refers to eMail as Memail. We care about ourselves, naturally.
To understand what other people might be interested in online, I look at what I’m interested in.
What are my passions?
- DJ’ing
- Internet marketing
- Driving
- Reading useful, non-fiction books
- Socialising with friends
- Going clubbing (I think my record is around 36 nights out in a row, mostly with Diggy)
After I have these written down, then I’ll do the same for fears and problems I have in my life, or I’ve had in the past. Things that I know about. Generally I don’t need to write down these things as I know what I like, fear, and have issues with. However, it’s useful to have a written record for the next step of the process.
I See If There Is a Market with Similar Interests
As I’m relying on search engine traffic to drive new visitors to my affiliate site, I need to if there’s a decent market size with similar interests or problems. To do this, I use the Google external keyword tool. The tool gives you a good idea of how many people are searching for X (X being anything) in Google.
Note that many people use PPC (the ads you see in Google search results) to drive traffic to their sites, but because I know SEO well and can rank my sites fairly easily, I prefer organic (free) traffic.
When I first started building websites, I would pick keyphrases that received around 5,000 exact searches per month to decide that a market was large enough for me to enter. Generally, the lower the figure, the less money you can make. 5,000 searches means that I can make a decent amount of money if I get on the first page of Google for a relevant keyphrase.
However, now that I’m doing well with this process, I’m happy to go for keyphrases with 100,000+ monthly searches. This means that I’m going to have to work a lot harder and the process is going to take a lot longer, but the reward is much greater.
Once I’ve ran my terms through the keyword tool and found something I know about that has a decent audience size, I’ll also check Google Trends to give me an idea of whether the audience is growing, declining, or staying at a steady level.
If something is declining sharply, then I’ll generally stay clear. Finally, I’ll then run my keyphrases through Google and perform backlink checks on top ranking results to see how hard it is going to be to rank. If the sites in the top results have thousands of links and the market size isn’t that large, I generally won’t waste my time.
However, for small industries, the sites that rank rarely have an unbeatable backlink count.
I Find a Relevant Product I Can Promote
There are times when this step and the previous step swap position, but generally I find products around what I love, rather than just promoting something because it’s popular (like most affiliate marketers).
I know for a fact that I could make a lot more money online by promoting things I’ve never used that I know convert well, but that just doesn’t align with me internally. We only have one shot at life, and I like to spend my time doing positive work. I don’t judge others who just promote things for the money, but it’s simply not for me.
There is the odd occasion that I will fall in love with a product or service and then test the market to see if there would be interest in it, but most of the time I pick the products afterward.
To find products I use companies like Clickbank, Commission Junction, Motive Interactive, and a few other niche companies that only have one or two specific products. If I can’t find something to promote around a keyphrase then I will either:
- Search Amazon and try their affiliate program (though commissions are low)
- Create my own product in that niche
- Search Google for things like “niche affiliate” or “product affiliate” (substituting niche and product for relevant terms)
- Pick a different industry
Companies like Clickbank allow you to promote digital products (usually eBooks). A lot of products will offer up to 75% commission on what a user spends. For example, if you sent a search visitor to a product page and they spend $47, you’ll receive a $35 commission. The product creators can offer such high commissions because digital items like eBooks are free to duplicate.
In Cloud Living I talk more about the criteria I use to pick certain products but generally, I just pick things that interest me, rather than worrying about how much money I’ll make. Maybe I’m not the greatest businessman, but I jump out of bed each morning looking forward to doing what I do.
I Build a Website Around That Product
Once I have chosen an industry and found a product I want to promote, I then go and build a website around that product. These don’t have to be professional and they don’t have to take that long, but I prefer to build an entire site around something, rather than just putting a link on a blog post or adding a page to an existing site.
To start with, I choose a relevant domain. If you can get the .com for your keyphrase (like I did for a keyphrase which now gets 135,000 exact searches per month) then take it before you realise how lucky you are. Generally you’ll have to add words to a domain such as ‘mykeyphrase.com’ or ‘keyphrasehq.com’ or even ‘key-words.net’. My favourite extensions in order are:
- .com
- .net
- .org
I would rather have keyphrasehq.com than something like key-phrase.info. I then either use a CMS like Wordpress to build my site or build a simple 5-10 page static site in HTML. There’s a great resource here which gives you a lot of free templates you can use for your site. You will have to customise them with call-to-actions in order to get people off of your website and onto the product page.
The pages I have on the site are usually:
- A homepage, which talks about the topic / product and then links to the product page as an affiliate
- A contact page where people can ask you questions. This also makes your site more legitimate
- A privacy policy which also adds to the legitimacy and is recommended if you ever advertise via PPC as it will increase your quality score
- 5 – 10 unique articles on the topic that fill out the site and show search engines that you are a decent resource
Building a website around the product is not enough to start making money though. We need traffic, and the method I use is to rely on search engines to send it to me, for free.
I Work on Getting Search Engine Traffic
While on-site optimisation is important to increase the relevance of your site to the keyphrases that you’re trying to rank for in Google, the main thing that determines search engine rankings is links to your website from other websites, otherwise known as backlinks.
Not all links are created equally, so it’s far better to get links from quality, relevant sites rather than spamming blog comments or asking your friend to put a link on the sidebar of his blog which is in a totally different industry.
I won’t reiterate here what I’ve covered in detail elsewhere, so if you’re interested in more on this topic then read my post on Wordpress SEO (which will help with on-site SEO, even if you’re not using Wordpress) and then my guide to building backlinks, which is one of the most in-depth resources on the subject you’ll find.
A Diagram of the Process
They say a picture speaks 1,000 words, but I hope this one below helps you visualise the 1,700 words before it. Here is the process I’ve just explained as a diagram:
Benefits of This Process
As I mentioned earlier, there are thousands of ways to make money online and I’ve made money in lots of different ways. However, I really like this process for a few reasons:
- Low Start-Up Costs – There are a number of business ventures you can pursue online which don’t require much of an investment, and this is one of them. If you can afford the $9 for a domain and $5 for monthly web hosting then you’re good to go.
- Work In Your Spare Time – Unlike blogging where you really have to keep some form of consistency in order to be successful, your affiliate site is happy to wait until you’re ready to work on it. Just a couple of hours per week are all you need to build the site and start working on building links.
- Create a Website Around Something You Love – Building a niche affiliate site like this is one of the easiest ways to create a website around something that you’re truly passionate about. Blogs, forums and other types of community sites take a long time to grow and build some form of traction. With this method, you can have a great resource online in 2-3 hours.
- You Can Make Money In Your Sleep – One of my friends is a professional poker player and another is a freelance writer. Both love what they do, but for both of them, work = income. The great thing about this process is that even when you sleep, the internet doesn’t. Once an affiliate site is ranking, you can generally leave it and it will make money for months or even years to come with little to no extra effort on your part.
I don’t build many sites like this anymore, simply because I’m putting money into buying a lot of profitable websites instead (if you’re selling a site that makes at least $1,000 per month, please email me). However, I am still actively working on my $1m case study website and have hired an FHM model to create videos to help me with universal search (videos in search results) and to make the website more legitimate.
There will be an update soon on how the case study is going. If you have any questions about the process, feel free to ask in the comments. As always, I’ll answer them all!
Great post Glen. I think it’s really important to find a product that you love somehow. In fact I have just written a post about how I ended up cancelling some of my websites because I didn’t care about them and how much important is to create something of value.
On a related note, those traffic figures are pretty huge, are there in a blog like website, or do they come just for search engines?
Just from search engines, to a static website.
Thanks Oscar!
Awesome to see you sharing this for free Glen!
I do a similar method, in fact its pretty much identical. Finding a product that interests you certainly makes the entire process easier.
I’m excited to see how you $1 million case study works out
Awesome.
Me too
Loved the post, glen.
It is very motivative for some Guys like me.
Thanks for the piece.
Hey Ankit,
That’s great. You’re welcome. Nice to see you leaving a comment.
Great shares as usual, Glen. I think you’re probably the most open person in this arena. Thanks for a very beneficial post. A lot of times, it’s the technical know-how that stops people from doing this.
Thanks, really useful post – especially for someone just starting out and learning about building these sites.
It’s good to see a clear (and simple) method too, which makes things easier to approach and implement.
Perfect as always. Great to see someone talking straight in the business. I’m quite happy to came across your blog a few weeks ago.
Perfect Monday morning boost! I was thinking of re-reading Cloud Living to revise and experiment very soon.
I love the image of the process. I will print it out; maybe my sister and friend won’t give me a confused stare next time I explain the process in excitement.
FHM model? :O Do we get to see pictures?
Hey Glen!
Once again, totally awesome article!!
That is indeed the principle behind making good money online. Find a market or audience that has a specific need. Then find a product or create a product that will give your audience exactly what they are looking for and create the medium to connect the two of them.
Thanks for the link!
I wanna see footage from today!
This is the most detailed, step-by-step explanation of affiliate marketing I’ve seen. Great post!
Hi Glen,
After following your posts for some time here I decided to comment. I think your idea about building site around just 1 product could be quite good for a start although less potential. As an employee and as an individual I’ve always chased the top industries with fierce competition (even just yesterday launched one such site) and I know how hard it is to get to even 1000 visits a month. For those of us that don’t have the writing skills like you do, we have to thrill the SEs with links and from what I experience those become harder and harder to get (without paying and not considering blogs here). Just no one links to the next commercial site just like that. I would experiment with your tactics – e.g. instead of building hosting comparison site, choose just one company and focus around it (although in this niche this is also over-exploited). I’ll have to dig and find a product to experiment with. And I don’t have to enjoy it – for me its enough to understand it
Loving the info Glen and I really appreciate your candidness in helping the rest of us learn the process. I’ve been consistently impressed with your openness in this space and will try my hand at it soon. Thanks again pal, and look forward to the border-free lifestyle soon.
You’re very welcome Kevin.
Comments like that are why I do what I do
Thanks!
Will backlink this site on my free software website. Useful info. Thanks.
Awesome.
Thanks, Matt!
Glenn,
Have you ever considered starting an ecommerce site? The value of your visitors goes way up when the visitors are actually bringing money to the table. I guess it is kind of similar to the Affiliate stuff you do. There are a lot of companies that can dropship products for you. I am doing this with decent success, but I’m sure you could do it way better.
I’m starting another site soon. Just paid someone to develop it. SEO will be a little tough in this niche as there aren’t too many blogs on the topic…
Anywho, Question for you. For a fairly competitive keyword w/ 5,000 searches per month, about how much were you making from these type sites? Love your blog, hope to hear from you.
Hey David,
There really isn’t a figure to give, to be honest. There are too many variables (conversion rate, product price, industry, whether it’s a general keyword or a buying keyphrase) etc.
Wow, I’m glad that I read this post.
A friend post it on a forum, and I follow through the link.
Really great info, and very understandable to do.
Thanks for sharing, really Appreciate it…
Awesome,
Good to have you here. It seems like a lot of forum traffic is being sent here lately
Hi Glen, great post. Have you heard about the new law in Colorado regarding affiliate marketing? Wondering if you had any thoughts about it.
http://bit.ly/9yPzxJ
Interesting timing based on your post. You had me all jazzed to do it, but now I’m not so sure.
Hey Shawn,
This has been happening for over a year. There are other states affected to my knowledge, but only though Amazon. I make pennies through Amazon; they are a last resort in my opinion (through experience — there are people doing well).
You continue to impress me with your insight and strategy. Seriously. You make me feel like I wasted my teenage years and my 20s.
I know how you feel. It’s like I wasted my 0-15’s
Seriously though, it’s never too late to start and make things happen. Nice to see you here again
Hey Glen,
Great guide, Glen. I know you said you don’t do sites like this anymore, but on average, how much would you expect to earn per month on average from one of these sites from only search traffic?
Also, I’m finally getting a few sites that consistently make money. How do you evaluate how much a site is worth when you sell it?
Thanks,
Clayton
Hmmm, do you think it’s easier to buy a site that’s already profitable and tweak it to make it more profitable than start from scratch? And how much would you pay for a site making $1000/month from affiliate links? I suppose it depends on how much more you think they could make in the future.
36 nights in a row clubbing with Diggy! Sweet:)
I am amazed and very appreciative that you give all this information away for free. I’ll be buying your book as soon as I get get home from my day job (that I love but doesn’t pay more then just bills.)
Wow interesting. I didn’t realize you could make any legitimate money from doing this sort of thing. I am still a bit curious and confused as to how you get your very small websites to rank up high on search terms. Only 5-10 pages hrmm. I have only started my blog in January but I have already written 20+ quality articles and only get about 10-20 visitors per month.
I’m trying to learn all I can about generating traffic. Thanks for the post!
It’s not how many pages on the site that matters so much, it’s how many quality links you can get to it.
If your site is new then that doesn’t surprise me. Check the earlier ViperChill monthly reports and see how few search visitors I was getting.
Glen. I have been following your blog for a month or so and wanted to say how much I appreciate your in-depth posts. I have a good understanding of SEO but have yet to build an affiliate site to try and monetize. One question. Can you share some tips for buying an existing site? You turned me on to flippa.com and I would consider buying an existing site but don’t want to get ripped off. What criteria do you suggest I use when searching for a good buy?
A few things I usually check for:
– At least 6 months revenue
– Get accurate details of the expenses (this can be surprisingly high on some sites)
– Use Escrow if you’re buying a very expensive site ($10,000+)
Speak to the owner in private (on something like Skype) before finalising the deal through Flippa.
A lot of Reading…
I am hopping to have a similar story to contribute to the community anytime soon.
But still not too long ago, I’ve read a method like that,
Very Interesting story: http://tinyurl.com/y8v97l5
But anyway, the guy’s goal was to make 30K a year
When you break it down, it’s only $82.19 a day Income.
Unbelievable, Hope lot of people could be motivated to make it works for them as well…
yet another great post, thanks for the info it usually helps me stay focused.
Hey Glen,
Awesome post, just like Cloud Living!
Could you suggest a Privacy Policy template that I could modify for my minisite, or this is something that one has to write himself?
Also: I used your template to create my minisite (haven’t finished the process yet). I decided to add a “Blog” page that will link to a WordPress blog (which is installed on the same server in the html_public directory) and I will write that blog myself about the topic. Do you think if the blog posts contain relevant keyphrases that will help with Google ranking? A technical question: does the Wordpress Blog’s location on the server matter?
Thanks and keep up the good work!
Cheers,
Balint
Hi Glen, I discovered HQHow by accident. I read through all the material but it took time for me to get started because money is extremely tight. Unfortunately, you deleted HQHow before I was done. I still can access the videos but I don’t have the Free Affiliate Landing Page. Could you send me those files please. I know that your ebook most likely will have them but it would take awhile for me to get that money together. I would like to get my first affiliate up and running ASAP. Thank you in advance whatever you do.
The reason I removed HQHow was because some of the information was dated and despite being hard to contact, I was receiving up to 50 support requests per day through the site. Right now, I just don’t have time for so much one-on-one interaction when I could write blog posts that answer all questions.
I hope that helps.
I’ve been lurking on your site for a month or so now. Love it. As a relative newbie (I’ve made all of $65.00 so far, and that was to a friend who bought through an affiliate link), I’m going to follow this article exactly and see how I do. Hope to make some money by the end of this month.
Thanks a bunch for your great content.
Hey Bo, I really like your honesty.
Thanks a lot for the comment, and best of luck on your own ventures.
Hi Glen
Could you detail a bit what do you call decent sales for an affiliate site. My own calculation:
5000 search / month, if you’re nº1 (best case) should end around 2000 visits/month. 0,5% convertion rate –> 100 sales/month. 15US $ commission/sales = 1.500 US$/month. Quite high, ins’t it ?
Depending on how many hours you have invested to set-up the site and rank it well, and the number of hours you need to maintain your rankings, affiliate niche micro sites could offer a great hourly ROI. The fact that you know how to get free qualified traffic is key in that equation…
I have sites that get much less traffic but have a much higher conversation rate, and sites that fit more into the model you’ve posted about.
There are just so many variables that it’s hard to guage, but you can definitely make that kind of money from 2,000 visitors. You can also make a lot more
Dear Glen,
You post looks fantastic in a step by step method that outlines how to get a site going with all the tricks of the trade.
What is not mentioned in your blog that is soooo very important is your impressive copywriting skills, your attention to detail for testimonials that pull at the heart (people who can now..do what they want, have their own freedom, aren’t bogged down in a 40 hr work week etc). Plus if you were really clever you might even add some comments that display the “I’m not so sure..but because you answered me…I will trust you” – along with links that will drive more traffic to your affiliate from your original post. You in fact used several resources – your CloudLiving Article, SEO, [removed as i'm getting too many emails. Will talk about it in a future post] and more. All driving traffic to several places at once is like multitasking brilliantly on the fly.
I don’t know if the bookmarking resource works or not….but two things are clear – if it was such a great tool would it need such a huge copywriting page – oodles and oodles of testimonials, descriptions…it’s like a suspense film building you up – getting you exciting , slowly eliminating all your fears as you check off comments that align with your beliefs of trust. Number 2 – we all have a passion for wanting a more free and do what I want life if we are reading this – hence you are not writing about the fascination of glue properties that are found in a particular species of slugs in South Africa – therefore the site holds our attention so well( anything around money really).
My only thought after many years of trying different things is that your passion is definately required – without out you lose a fuel filled perspective that makes your writing and site great. I also consider it somewhat misleading for having to market to people in such a way – such an effort to build trust with so typical marketing ploys([removed as i'm getting too many emails. Will talk about it in a future post] site) – See Persuasion – The Art of Getting What You Want. True enough – it’s where we are at and maybe in the internet business – until you have brand recognition these tools – tweaked to a fine tune machine are what move people to buy at a typical conversion rate. I always believed our hoped there was a better way – do you have any insight into this now that you consider yourself successful?
Lastly, nothing comes easy – there is always years of ideas and trials behind a product or even an simple idea. Simply trying to tap into the easy idea without the passion makes the motivation more and more difficult. I do believe that Viperchill is passionate about what he does and that he does it well. Where does that passion come from? How do you maintain it – can you honestly say that money drives it because for many years I simply wanted to reap the rewards before knowing what fueled them.
I still think this is a great resource, I applaud the resourcefulness and “I’ve Done It” attitude here – but caution..don’t get caught in the goal, in the easiness of things. If you find your passion then life does seem easy because its so enjoyable otherwise its like additional work trying to get out of your first work. You certainly can guess what my hang-ups and trials have been – but indeed I have found my passion, I have perspective and I will use this site as a resource…but certainly not as a ten step method to financial freedom. Thanks for listening.
Hi Jeff,
Impressively long comment
. Just to be clear, I make only a small portion of my income thanks to BMD and Cloud Living. In fact, BMDHQ was just a site I did for a case study as people wanted proof I could do what I said I could do. So I did it. As I mentioned in the post, I have sold most of my sites, as I wanted to have a nice amount of cash to put into other projects.
We don’t buy things from sales pages, but people who want the product do. Think about that. Do you want the product you can’t find out much about or the one that answers everything in a long sales page?
I don’t understand your question, but I don’t consider myself successful. I am happy with my achievements, though.
Again, I’m not really sure what you are saying here?
I didn’t even mention the site in the post. However, I did say I would answer all comments, so that is what I did.
Feel free to use the information here in any way that you wish.
Thanks for stopping by
Seriously dude, you are real inspiration.
I was following you for some time and now I realized that you are the most valuable source of information and inspiration on the net. I have been subscribed for like dozens of different blogs about IM, Self-Development and so on…but I have unsubscribed from all of them, because you provide just what I need – valuable information. You personality and writing style makes it even easier to relate to you and your ideas.
Basiclly, we share the same passions. Same as you I also love music (mixing), reading (non-fiction), socializing and clubbing…and on top of that health and fashion
And you know what…we share the same dream of opening our own nightclub. So trust me bro, you are all inspiration I need to dig into affiliate marketing. I always wanted though, but hesitated to start. I don’t know what sort of things kept me from start doing this, but on this weekend I’m going to do my homework and make that niche research.
Your articles carry so much value, in return I just want to say…thank you Glen
excellent demonstration Glen , i am also considering buying cloud living
Hey Glen,
i like the openess in your writing and find you had been kind to share your success method.
i had a few affiliate products.
hope to see some result. meanwhile i hope to continue following your blog.
Killer dude!
I like the new perspective on your process.
I’m totally copying you! LOL
Making videos with an FHM model? Lots of
flourescent light with diffusion will give you
that modern porn look. I kid…I kid.
If you have any technical queries for your shoot
send me an email. Having worked in TV for years
I’m sure I’ll know the answer.
I love articles like these, Glen where you spell everything out. I have actually made my first dollar on the internet, funny enough it was as an affiliate for Cloud Living
So, thank you very much.
A couple of questions for you: which domain and hosting company(s) do you recommend? The $5 and $9 are very cheap and I currently pay a lot more.
Also, can you provide an example of one of your search terms and the corresponding site you developed so that we can check out the entire process from start to finish to see how you did it? It’s hard for me to visualize how a site with only 5-10 articles and hardly ever updated would be able to rank so high for organic terms in Google and be able to maintain the ranking (and traffic).
Great job, as always.
Karen
Glen…I am usually not a huge an of huge posts but this is nothing but quality! Very motivating read. Going to look over the SEO posts as well and hopefully hit the ground running!
Hey there glen!
Have been following your blog since your 7th post but actualy never dared to leave a comment!
Just wanted to say thanks for all the valuable informations you provided in those past months.
I tried to implement all your suggestions and knowledge into my newly launched,hopefuly one day “passive income compatible”, project called : http://www.buxler.net
It is a Pay To Click plattform, where users get paid to click on ads and advertisers can buy clicks to get unique, long lasting and even revisited traffic for fair prices.
PS: If you are aiming for some quality 100% unique traffic for your niche sites to boost your alexa rank for example, let me
Appreciate your work.
regards,
Dave
Hi Glen,
Very interesting article.
I was just wondering if you could show us a few examples of your sites?
Regards,
Johan
What about using keywords that are getting 2,000,000 searches a month? Does that make it too difficult to rank highly on Google.
Do the top results have a lot of backlinks?
The first result gets about 50k in backlinks, but only one of the next five is in the hundreds. The rest don’t even break 50. That seems positive. What do you think?
Actually I had made a mistake I think. If I check the url specifically for that page, the top spot for my keyword is in the low hundreds in terms of backlinks.
(Geez, why do you have to be so popular and helpful that everyone wants to ask you a million questions?) Seeing what you do is just as helpful as reading about it. Example sites are always nice, but I know that generally they get a lot of questions/copycats/etc that makes a lot of bloggers reluctant to post examples (it seems).
Very helpful post. But of course the hard part isn’t reading about how to do it. It’s taking that information and actually doing it. Now I’m off to try.
Exactly Mary. Information like this is not that hard to find (although you generally have to pay for it). The success lies in not giving up before you actually give it a chance to work.
Hey Glen,
Thanks again for the Skype chat the other day. I’ll be trying this method again with better performing keyphrases using ecommerce sites and affiliate sites. I’ll keep you updated on the progress!
Tony
Hey Tony,
Not a problem. I hope we helped
Thanks Glen,
As per always you provide right-knowledge and set an example of internet integrity.
Free I
Hi Glen,
I’ve set up a minibsite using your template (from Cloud Living), but I can’t set up Google Analytics to track the conversion. I’m using the cloaking script that you provided – question: how do I have to set up Analytics so that it would show me how many people actually click on the link?
Thanks!
B.
You can set-up event tracking and then add the onsubmit javascript to the link. That’s what I do.
I might be lame, but could you go into the details a bit more? Thank you!
I followed this guide: http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-count-your-outbound-click-stats-with-onclick-in-google-analytics/
It’s very useful
Yeah, thank you! I got there!
But since the link is in the “cloacking” php file, I don’t know how to include pageTracker function. Any other reference? 
Thanks!
Well..how do you link to the cloaking file? Add the tracking to that…
Oh and no problem. Happy to help
Thanks for the help! Managed to work it out!
Hey Glen,
Bought your cloudliving product. Man I can’t tell you how awesome this e-book is. Totally worth the money. I bought it two days ago, read through the whole thing cover to cover in one day. The next day, I literally went step-by-step through your affiliate minisite section and had my first site up in about 3 hours. I still need to write a few more articles for the site and then I’m going to go full speed ahead on building backlinks using your recommended strategies. I thought it might be worth mentioning that creating simple 5-6 minutes videos and launching them on tubemogul.com or some other submission site could be another great way to get traffic to your site. I’m planning on doing this myself once my site is fully setup.
Any way, sorry for the long comment, I actually had a question for you. While building my site, I thought about adding in some feature to start gathering email addresses to build a list. Maybe give away some free e-book or something in exchange for the person’s email. I’m just curious what your thoughts are on this strategy for affiliate minisites. My main concern is distracting the reader from clicking my affiliate link. Thanks for all your help.
Hi Robert,
Thanks for the feedback. Your testimonial almost sounds like I paid you to write it (which is awesome)
I don’t use list building like that as a sole source of sales (most PPC marketers do, however) but do add it to some of my websites. I generally offer a ‘7 day course’ with follow-up emails and provide massive value for 6 days. Then, on the 7th, offer a product for more.
I rarely do this though. You could add a pop-up when the user goes to leave your page that offers an email course as well. This is annoying to people, but if they’re going to leave your site anyway, then you don’t have much to lose.
Thanks Glen for this post! As always, so helpful and informative. Now its time for me to put this all into action.
Glen (or is it DJ)
I just browsed through Cloud Living, and am amazed at the value shared not only in the e-book, but in your frequent posts. you’re an inspiration to a 39 (just yesterday) marketer, who is looking to expand his base and market. I’m so glad I found your blog and bought the e-book.
I’ll be updating you regularly w/ my progress!
Thanks again,
David
Thank you David, that means a lot to me.
Glen,
So, I’ve done my Keyword research in my chose niche (heath & fitness) and chosen some Clickbank products to promote.
The Keyword analysis processes discussed in your e-book made a lot of sense, and I was surprised to find that there are some “unexploited” long tail keywords available which meet the criteria. So I’ve bought a couple domains, and am rocking out to Phoenix while coding my pages.
Quick question: I have a PR 4 blog that’s about 5 years old, in a pretty specific niche (my ID url is it) – to get my new sites quickly indexed by google, would it harm my SEO mojo on the old site to reference the new site? My main goal would be: 1. Get it indexed by google quickly, and 2. have a good PR linkback to the new site; even though it may be in an unrelated topic.
Your thoughts appreciated,
and keep kicking ass!
David
It shouldn’t be an issue, no. Just don’t do it for a lot of sites.
Quick update: Just logged on to my CJ account, and found I had my first sale w/ them! Of course, this was before I found out about Cloud Living, so I can’t attribute it to your inspiration, BUT, with the knowledge & processes, I’m sure I can turn it into something worthwhile.
The biggest benefit, is as you describe: Set it and Forget it; or putting the system on auto-pilot. Although 1 (first!) sale small beans, It’s from something I set up a couple of months ago and forgot about. Now, I’m going to dust it off, promote it a bit, and turn it into something real!
Thanks again,
David
Hi Glen,
Wanted to say thanks for the tremendous value you freely provide in your posts. They are truly awesome, and head and shoulders above what many of the so-called “top internet marketers” post.
Would it be possible for you to give me a few tips when going to hire article writers? I’m putting up a minisite to promote a product in the health niche, and trying to write articles for this particular niche is frustrating. I’m great at polishing because I’m good at copywriting, but I just suck at writing stuff that relates to health. I’m willing to put out the money for decent articles, but I don’t want to be ripped off.
Thanks again
Thanks Rob,
I use the Digitalpoint services forum usually for this and always ask people to send me samples of their previous work before choosing anyone. Don’t pay all of the money upfront either (50% is usually fair) if you’re worried about them taking off. Digitalpoint has a feedback system so you can see if someone is good or bad in this regard.
I hope that helps
Hello,
I would like to know what animation software do you use for your blog. Thanks!
What do you mean?
I thought there is a program that helps you create the images you post on your blog. Am I right?
Oh, I buy the ones of the small men.
For the rest I use Photoshop.
Thx for your reply. Yes, I was referring to the little men. I thought there is a program to create them.
Hi Glen,
Another nice article…
I came across your blog relatively recently via google (7 Steps to Dominate your Niche) and I’ve enjoyed popping back in for a read (mainly through your email subscription).
I have been tempted to start my own blog for a while, and i think that i’ve gathered enough inspiration now to start! I’m not looking to make money mind… more of a hobbyist perspective.
I’d like to ask you what blogging site you use? (TypePad etc…) or do you build them from scratch?
I ask because I am a web developer and I’m trying to find a blogging platform that offers me free reign with HTML/CSS & Script…
Hi Ollie,
Thanks for the kind words!
I use Wordpress.
Hi Glen,
Question for you. When you look for a product to sell, do you focus on Grav? And if so, is there a key number that would work best? Thanks in advance
Nope. Just focus on what is most interesting / exciting to me.
Glen,
So I’m continuing to work on my first mini-site with the template you provided. Adding content, building a few backlinks for my keywords, etc…
Just curious – this affiliate model doesn’t seem to address “squeeze pages” – or email/name capture, which some argue is the “most important” aspect of internet marketing. In other words, let’s say I’m driving SEO traffic to my mini-site which optimistically gets ranked well for my keyword. I can either:
a) send the traffic to my masked hoplink
or b) send the traffic to my squeeze page, in exchange for some “freemium” such as an ebook, or video, or other attractive bonus.
The benefit of developing my own list would be that I could potentially pitch other affiliate offers if the visitor doesn’t buy the first offer.
I know that the primer is meant to be “K.I.S.S.” or Keep it simple, but I’m curious to your thoughts on this, perhaps you’ve tested both methods?
Thanks again,
David
Google want to give visitors the best search engine results. The easiest way to get traffic to those squeeze pages is via PPC. Sure you could get a site ranking and then transform it into a squeeze page (who is going to link to one?) which is an option.
Glen:
quick update: put my website up on March 15, installed google analytics, submitted one article to EZA (pending) and put one link up on my PR4 blog. The website is not yet fully built up (just title, meta tags, a few bullets; working on the content…
Currently showing as result #23 in google.
I’ve submitted a couple of PMs on an internet marketing forum (as described in Cloud living, page 69) to follow up on the tactic explained on that page.
I’m expecting that I’ll crack top 10 in another week or so.
I chose my keyword based on 1600 exact searches each month.
Another value packed post. Glen I just want to say thanks a million for your efforts.
I really must go buy your book! My thinking here is that if you are giving away this kind of value for free what must be in that book!
No doubt its awesomeness is busting at the e-books digital seams!
Keep up the good work,
Neil
Excellent post. My first action item. Create a list of passions and begin expanding on topics about those passions for my writing. Thank you.
Thank you!
Hey, i am extremely new to anything to do with affiliates or basically anything profitable online, and [formerly] your blog PluginID was what got me interested.
Can you suggest a good way to scout good affiliate programs? That’d be great!
Thanks!
What do you mean exactly? I’ve linked to a few of them in this post…
I was referring to agencies which list affiliates. I think i missed it while reading the post.
Great post! thanks a lot
Hi Glen, thank you so much for this insightful and detailed post. It’s very eye opening.
You mentioned: “I then either use a CMS like Wordpress to build my site or build a simple 5-10 page static site in HTML.”
Would you mind posting some sample “mini site” urls for reference? It would be very helpful.
Thanks,
Kevin
Nice post man! I think I do the same thing as you, for the most part and make good money as well. But I guess my only question really is: how often do you update these sites?
The reason why I ask is the fact that I’m making good money but it seems as though I’m in need of updating more frequently than I want to.
But again, good read and it looks like you have some good posts I may share with some of my subscribers.
Jay
Hey Glen,
Read CloudLiving and plan to start over on a new minisite — with the current one I have, I haven’t gotten any traffic (maybe 1 or 2 people a day), even though i used BookmarkingDemon for them. I’m reading through your posts also because you’re living the exact lifestyle that I want to live. I will not give up!
[...] The Process That Makes Me Thousands of Dollars Per Month Online [...]
Glen,
I just wanted to give a quick update re: niche site creation. It’s been about 15 days since I put up my site – and although I’m still about 23 on google – my new site is #1 on yahoo, and I’m starting to see some organic traffic. I’ve put a few more articles up which are also ranking well on P1 of google. Still working the program – and it’s starting to work! now to get the aff links up!
David
what a good post. I love reading your post because it inspire me to try and do better with my existing sites. Thank you for sharing this valuable information.
oswd.org link doesn’t seem to work
Every time I read posts like this one I get pretty excited and inspired. I am also in the online industry but unfortunately the results I achieve are far lower than yours. But I hope to get that high some day.
Just wanted to thank you for sharing your knowledge. Good luck with your 1M$ case study!
excellent business plan. your method of finding a market in unique and I am going to work on my list of passions, fears, and problems today. In fact my fist problem is procrastination so I am going to just go work on this list now, I have my first item for the problem catagory.
Glen: Just printed out your recommendations. I am somewhat computer savy but will need help implementing all of this. Is there any way you can help me through the process? I am on disability and have been looking for a way to supliment my income (about $500.00 a month). Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated. In peace-Jawana Jackson
[...] affiliate products found on sites like Clickbank. If you want to know more about the process then read this long blog post I wrote which covers the topic in more [...]
Hi Glen,
I’ve read through Cloud Living and I have a question:
When you do the keyword search and find something cool, you write it down. But you said you might find more than one. Do you usually optimize the whole page around just one keyphrase? That means you always use that in your posts? Or if there is more relevant keyphrases that are worth it to rank for, how do you go about it?
Let me give you an example:
Say, I want to rank for “organic green tea”, which gets about 5400 searches a month. I then buy organicgreentea.com, create a blog with WP, write 10 articles about green tea. Another good kephrase could be “green tea health benefits” so one of my posts will be titled as “green tea health benefits – detailed guide”. I then try to get backlink to this post with the anchor text “green tea health benefits”, plus for the homepage with “organic green tea”? This means, sooner or later, my homepage will rank good with the keyphrase “organic green tea”, but if someone searches for “green tea health benefits” then chances are that my blogpost will be in the top 10 therefore I’m getting traffic for that keyphrase too?
Or I completely misunderstood you and you only have to go for one keyphrase and push it as hard as it’s possible?
Thanks for the insight!
H.
Hi Glen,
My questions exaclty. In Cloud Living you mentioned that it’s much easier to rank a homepage (basically the landing page) rather than an individual page. This means that you only have to “push” your homepage only, because you want to rank that in the search engines? Or do you need to get backlinks to your individual pages in order to improve the homepage ranking? Why easier to rank the homepage? Thanks!
One strategy is to become a registered registrar with Icann. It isn’t that expensive. Then, you can artificially age your domains with fake registration dates. You can also help the process by sending fake site information to the wayback machine. Then, put all the sites in fake names and use them as your backlinks. While doing this, purchase a high pagerank site and throw all your main sites on it for good rankings. Build lots of sites so that you can own the entire niche. Then, sell the sites for a lot of money. After the sites sell, pull off the backlinks and put them on something else. Then, distribute keyloggers and and other malware to gather niche ideas and intellectual property. Do the whole process in an automated fashion. Then, use cross site scripting to link registrar accounts to your computer and register valuable domains, in a split second, before other entrepreneurs can. Finally, hire lots of people to cut and paste all day long so that you can have huge sites. Lastly, don’t use overseas people unless you have a really good relationship with them and can manage them properly. Anybody that pulls all this off is guaranteed to make millions of dollars.
Hi Glen,
Like everyone else here has been saying, GREAT post and thank you for sharing this with us. Question related to the business aspect of this; Do you have to actually say (for tax purposes) that you “own your own business” meaning, do you have to fill out any paperwork or do things on the business side of things to make it a business?
Any chance you can show a example site, maybe even one that is expired. The ideas are great and I understand all the SEO stuff, just having a hard time picturing what the final product looks like.
Please…….
While trying to figure out a competitors backlinks, should I be concerned with both the sitewide links, as well as the page backlinks?
Reason I ask, I’m doing some research for a keyphrase, one of the top competitors have backlinks as follows:
301,979 Yahoo (Site wide)
84 Yahoo (This URL)
Should I pursue, or there is now way possible?
The results are from a Yahoo search on a keyphrase, that’s why I have Yahoo next to each number
This is a awesome article! Very inspiring! I am hooked and sold on this. I have a business question…..? I’m trying to find out if you start some of these internet sites or affiliate sites do you have to file each one as a separate business with your city, county, state or can they be filed under one name? This may not be the right place to ask this but I figure someone who has created some of these sites knows the answer to this?
Thanks
Glen, Thank you for sharing all this. I really have a lot to learn. Sometimes its not easy because english its my second language and I can speak it only with people online, but that is not a problem. The problem is you not always find that info you need to grow.
But, time is passing by…
Thanks for providing useful info and encouraging people.
We all have the same chances, so everything depends only on us!
Glen,
I don’t get why you listed all your fears and problems besides passions? Passions reflect your interests and its obviously useful to do business in the area of your dreams. But fears and problems? I don’t want to start dealing on daily basis with something I fear!?
Because people want to overcome their fears and problems, and will pay money to do so. Simple
Hi Glen,
I follow your path since the old pluginid days and I remember the 30-days-case-study you did on Hqhow.com. There was an awesome free template in it, for which I had no use back then, but which would be very helpful for a current project of mine. I just recognized that hqhow.com is down. Is there a chance that you post a download link or send it to me per email (First choice preferred, because I am probably not the only one, who would like to have it).
I realize that you are probably very busy, but it would really be a shame to withhold a great theme like that from the world.
Because I usually don’t comment here let me conclude by saying that I really enjoy reading your high quality, in-depth and info-packed posts. Keep up the great work!
Greets from Germany & excuse my probable bad grammar,
Lennart
Glen,
You are really an inspiration to guys like me that have been working hard their whole lives. I have a brick and mortar business that does well but lives and dies by me and my wife being there and working long hours each day.
My internet experience has gone well and has taught me that there is another way in life to make a living that gives you more freedom. I went with my passion and something that I have done my entire life, fitness and working out. It is a lot easier to write content about something that you are passionate about. Thanks for the detailed post and I look forward to learning more from you down the road!
-Kelly