Federal Government and School Closings in Washington DC From Blizzard

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Feb 2010 D.C. Blizzard Live Blog and Snow Accumulation Totals

I know that when you’re trying to succeed with making money with a website, it’s extremely tempting to go a bit stats crazy. What do I mean by that? I mean spending way too much time of your day, every day, checking on your stats. How many visitors did your site see today? Which pages did they view exactly? How many clicks did your visitors make? How many items were purchased? All of this is valuable information and viewing it should be a piece of your niche marketing strategy. However, spending too much time doing this is only going to end up hurting your bottom line while preventing you from being more profitable and productive.

I know from experience that it’s easy to get caught up in your stats, particularly when you’re just starting out with making money with a website. It’s all too easy to log in to Google Analytics, your affiliate programs and so on to see the up to the minute stats for the day and the week. But what is this really accomplishing? It may make you pleased or unhappy, but either way that’s a fleeting feeling and it only represents a small piece of the picture.

All you end up is doing is spending way too much time tracking the minutiae of your stats. Ten minutes here and fifteen minutes there quickly piles up into an hour or more every day. That’s 5 hours a week and 20 hours a month where you’re doing nothing except looking up stats to satisfy curiousities. If you reinvested 90% of that time into further development and marketing of your websites, then when you do see your stats you’ll have something to really be happy about!

Instead of frittering your time away, plan out time to check up on your sites and look at your stats. Trends for a period of a week are much more meaningful anyway than the day-to-day fluctuations that will occur. You will still find all of that valuable information you need – where your visitors are coming from, what they are interacting with and how they are doing it and on down the line. But you’ll save yourself a ton of time and you’ll make that much more progress. 30 minutes a week or 5 hours per week… which sounds like you’re using your time more effectively?

I’ve been too stats happy before in my past, and in many ways I’m sure I can still cut down even more. I’m making it a goal of mine, and you should as well if you want to spend more time making money with a website and less time looking at how much money you may or may not have made so far… today… in the last hour… from one content page… filtered by visitors from Canada… who arrived between 3 pm and 5 pm on weekdays.

Remember, making money with a website is accomplished by producing and marketing those sites, not by checking up on them incessantly. Plan out some time at the beginning or end of a week, or twice per week, to check your stats and leave it at that. Unless your running any special promotions or expecting huge numbers for one specific day or new post, then forget about checking in. You’ll save time and effort, and you can put it all back into your sites so you end up more productive and successful.

One of the most important tips for making money with a website is to start treating it like a real business. It’s easy to get lost in the mindset of “this is a hobby” or “this is a side stream of income” or anything else. But whether you are going at it for your full-time gig or you are delving into it when you get some free time, you have to be more serious about the potential outcomes that you’ll be dealing with. One of the best ways to improve your results is to start keeping detailed records for yourself about your performance, including the time you spend, the money you earn and the expenses you pile up.

This is an easy and straightforward way to start seeing what piece of your day is spent really being productive and what is just wasting your time. Obviously sites need time to develop, but after a few months if you find that your spending 10 hours a week on a website that isn’t producing any income… you better go about changing your niche marketing strategy or focusing your efforts on other sites!

The same goes for individual affiliate programs. Branching out and diversifying is always a great idea. However, you may see that some of your new efforts simply aren’t producing at the level you’d like them to. If X affiliate program is earning you more money and isn’t leading to any problems, and Y affiliate program isn’t earning you anything… why should you spend time developing with Y?

Another benefit to incorporating tracking to your niche marketing strategies and tasks-list is that you’ll see which of your websites or programs are being underdeveloped. At the end of a few weeks you may suddenly see, “Wow, I’ve spent 20 hours on this site, but only 2 hours on that site!” It will be much clearer what you’re spending your time doing, and then you will be better able to schedule out your time and make room for everything. When your personal collection of websites grows to beyond a handful, this is extremely important.

Finally, don’t forget to keep track of your expenses either. This includes software you purchase, resources you invest in, web hosting, hiring SEO content writers and more. When you keep track of your expenses and subtract them from your revenue, you’ll have a real sense of what your true earnings are, and more importantly you’ll see which expenses directly led to earnings as well.

The bottom line is that it’s extremely important to keep track of all of this data when you’re interested in making money with a website. It’s a niche marketing strategy that you cannot overlook, and it will pay dividends for your business, guaranteed. Remember that, it’s a business, so treat it like one.

My journey towards earning 4 figures a month as an affiliate marketer took about 14 months, but in reality only 6 months of those were spent really applying myself. The first part of that time I was too occupied with my day job to spend enough time into developing and marketing my sites. Luckily that changed, and the results are certainly speaking for themselves right now. If only I spent the time developing my own sites that I do producing content for others, then I’d really be in business!

Here are some of my favorite tools and resources that I used to help me on my journey. All of them play an integral role, and have different purposes.

1. Build a Niche Store – The definitive tool for building niche websites focused on selling through the eBay Partner Network. Great way to build a website from scratch without needing to code, and great way to hook up with many existing eBay products. Don’t make the mistake so many others have, and start producing content rich, valuable websites.
2. Micro Niche Finder -This is a fantastic tool for learning how to find great markets for niche websites. You’ll find some great keywords that you can target, you’ll avoid markets that are too competitive and you can dig deep to find long-tail keywords for individual pages and posts. Easy to use and extremely effective.
3. Reviewazon -Reviewazon lets you show Amazon products through Wordpress. It integrates fantastically into your posts and provides many options.
4. PHPBay -PHPBay lets you show eBay products through Wordpress. Similar to Build a Niche Store, but for the Wordpress platform, PHPBay is therefore a bit more flexible. PHPBay and Reviewazon can also be used together and integrated in the same posts.
5. Chitika -Chitika is similar to Google Adsense, but instead it only displays text ads when somebody finds your site through the search engines. The ads are highly targeted, showing their exact search query and producing ad results based on that, leading to high click through rates.
6. Number 1 Way to Make Money Online Guide – This guide will walk you through all of the steps in building and developing niche websites. You’ll learn how to pick a market, plan and build a site, market that site and then turn 1 site into 10 or 20. Great tool for beginners interested in learning the right way to build niche websites.

Are these all of the tools and services I’ve used? Of course not! Google Adsense, Amazon affiliate program, Commission Junction, Popshops, Clickbank and more are just a few of the additional programs and tools I’ve spent time dabbling with to some degree or another. It’s all about testing what works for your sites and your markets, and continually trying new programs and using new tools to refine your tactics.

After my first month earning $1,000 as an affiliate marketer, I’m certainly not slowing down now. My next goal is to keep that number up even though the holiday season is over, and then to double it to $2,000. I have a handful more websites I want to develop, and I also have revitalization programs in store for some of my under-performing or untapped sites.

The point is though, if you’re just getting started with affiliate marketing, niche websites and making money online, keep working hard! You can reach your goals if you follow through. Consider using some of the software and tools above for increased success and profits, and if you need help producing content that raises your rankings in the search engines and converts your traffic, then consider hiring an SEO web content writer such as myself to help get the job done.

1. Brainstorm: The first step is to brainstorm the kind of website that you’re looking for. When you brainstorm, think about subjects and topics that you have a strong interest in, or at least a lot of experience with. Sure, you can learn how to find a niche market on any topic, but if it’s something you have no interest in pursuing then you won’t make it very far.

2. Check the Competition: Now that you have your ideas you can begin narrowing down your options by taking a look at the competition. You want to see how many competitors you have, but you also want to take a look at how strong these competitors are. In other words, how entrenched and powerful are the big dogs in your market?

To make this task easier, I always use the Micro Niche Finder, which gives you quick access to information ranking the strength of your competitors. Yes, this can be done on your own, but you’ll save hours of time and tons of stress and hassle by letting this program do it for you in seconds.

3. Look up Products: The next step in learning how to find a niche market is checking for products and other monetization programs that are available. Obviously you know there are lots of places selling NFL merchandise, but for something more obscure you need to make sure there are actually products and services for you to promote. Do a Google search for “your niche affiliate programs”, check in with Clickbank, look on eBay and Amazon for merchandise and more.

4. Find Your Keywords: Now that you know you have a viable market and there are products to sell, it’s time to find the keywords you want to use. Once again, I strongly recommend Micro Niche Finder, which I use for all of my keyword research. It’s a great way to get hands on in learning how to find a niche market, and you’ll be able to dig up some great long-tail keywords.

This of course is just a basic guide for you to learn how to find a niche market. There are other steps in involved, and as you get started for yourself you’ll see what works best for you. The fastest and most successful way to learn is to dive in head first, and to get dirty experiencing it on your own.

For more information on how to find a niche market and learn how to be successful with a wide range of niche marketing strategies, you can also check out the Number 1 Way to Make Money Online. It’s another strongly recommended resource that can help you in your journey.

If you’re already underway with your development of websites and your pursuit of niche marketing strategies and success, then feel free to check out my SEO web content writing services. I’ll help you get the high quality, optimized content that you’re looking for.

An SEO Content Writing Service Can Help

A web content writer who is experienced in producing content for affiliate websites and niche blogs will know exactly what your website needs in order to start turning those traffic figures into dollars and cents. There are several different important pieces to the puzzle; overlook any of them at your own peril.

1. Finding the Traffic: Of course finding traffic and driving it to your website is still the primary goal. Using the right keywords in the right places and in the right frequency will help you rise through the search engines. Sounds simple enough, but it takes practice and an SEO web content writer will know what to expect.

2. Providing a Match: Now that you’ve found that traffic, the content that your visitors are viewing has to be a match for what they were looking for. If you want to sell somebody a car, but you optimized your content for car repairs in Indiana because you found some great keywords, you’re only going to end up with a high bounce rate.

3. Filling the Information Gap: When people use a search engine to look up something they are looking for information and help. The material and content you have on your website has to be of real use and value to your visitors. Again, this is where hiring an SEO content writing service can come in handy.

If you have a site selling a guide about distance learning, people are going to want to know which programs are the best, what the downsides are, what the benefits are, how to compare schools and on down the line. Therefore you can’t just have random, optimized articles. You need informative content that’s on topic and earns the trust and respect of your traffic.

4. Making the Push: This is the last step, and far too often it’s overlooked entirely. You’ve found traffic and you have delivered them matching content that earned their trust… but you still haven’t made a dime. Now you have to convince your visitors to do whatever it is you want them to do. Whether that’s buy a product, fill out a contact form or anything else, you need to actively work to achieve this final step.

Don’t shy away from asking, or from leading people down the path that you want them to take. Instead, be upfront and direct and make it as easy as possible for all of your visitors to do whatever it is that you’re seeking. Your conversion rate will soar.

The bottom line is that in the vast majority of cases the more traffic your website receives the better. However, you can do more with less by properly engaging and converting your website visitors. You’ll enjoy higher clickthrough rates and increased profits, and you’ll even be able to attack smaller niche markets because you don’t need a massive quantity of visitors in order to produce results. That’s the difference that a high quality SEO web content writer can make for you.

If you’ve seen enough and want to get your website converting the way it should be, then you can get started with my SEO web content writing service today. You can also feel free to contact me with any questions you may have about finding an SEO web content writer.