Traffic to me is the simplest thing on the planet. It is so dam easy. All you have to do is provide people with epic stuff and they will come & they will share.

I have created over 100 ‘top list’ type posts which have been viewed by millions. They are so popular and well received that they have been featured on Reddit Homepage, New York Times, Yahoo News & one even became a Trending Topic on Twitter! The best part… I can get these types of posts created for just $25. Let me teach you how.

Why Creating Lists Wins You Traffic

When you Google, think what you are typing in, lets say you are looking for a cure for a health problem. Just for example, you are going to type in Cure Acid Reflux. That’s a big search term. Same with anything else in the industry that people are trying to cure. Firstly you would be surprised how many people don’t name the article what people are searching for in Google. This blows my mind. Why are you calling your article something fancy and using words people don’t ever use, just to make yourself look smart. No one is typing that in Google, so you shouldn’t be naming your posts that.

I’m no SEO expert, there I said it. But I do get around 200,000 visitors a month from Google alone so it’s kind of a big deal for me. Here’s what I believe: Google ranks sites which are naturally awesome. Forget everything about buying links and social love. Just imagine that your posts are so cool, people spend ages on your site and people love to share your stuff. That’s what GOOGLE wants! Great content because they are in the content industry. There job is to provide users with the right content and the best possible option, if yours is not that, then you don’t rank so well.

Back to my health post, I will call it :

10 Ways To Cure Acid Reflux

Somewhere I heard that odd numbers work better for open rates and marketing so I often will change the 10 for 7, 11, 13, 17 basically any odd number that looks good. I will decide how many I want before I even create the post.

But lets look at those silly people I love that make my life easy when I try to out rank their articles because they name their articles something stupid, for example:

Surefire Ways To Eradicate Acid Reflux

Are you freaking kidding me. I’m sure some idiot will type in Eradicate Acid Reflux every month or two but Surefire Ways? No Way!

You think this is an extreme example? Heck no, this is a nice example.

Tip 1. Name Your Posts Something People Search For!

Here’s where top lists dominate:

• Firstly, they are quite long so people tend to spend a while reading them.
• Each part is in section, for example, our Cure Acid Reflux post, its 7 cures, so we have 7 headlines with each option. Because of this, people can quickly decide YES, there’s something here I am willing to do, so I will read it all. I think a lot of articles don’t do well because people are not prepared to commit time to read a page if they don’t think it’s going to help them.
• The title says exactly what you get, so you know what you are getting into.
• When shared on social media, again, people know what they are about to get. I swear, people will retweet and share stuff just because of the title, not even knowing if the article is good or not.

Step 1. To Dominating Any Industry

Post a crap load of top posts. That’s what I do, I show up in dozens of industry’s and just do the same old top list posts but for different industry’s. Here’s some examples:

IncomeDiary (Blogging/Make Money Industry)

• Top 30 Most Influential People In Blogger
• 10 Reasons Why It Rocks To Be a Internet Entrepreneur
• 10 Christmas Gifts For Entrepreneurs
• 17 Tips To Cure Bloggers Block
• 20 Bloggers To Follow on Facebook

ExpertPhotography (Photography Industry)

• Top 30 Most Influential People In Photography
• 10 Reasons Why It Rocks To be a Photographer
• 10 Christmas Gifts For Photographers
• 17 Tips To Fix Bad Photos
• 20 Photographers To Follow on Facebook

WhyamIUnhealthy (Health Industry)

• Top 30 Most Influential People in Natural Health
• 10 Reasons Why It Rocks To Be Healthy
• 10 Christmas Gifts for Super Healthy People
• 17 Tips To Cure Acid Reflux
• 20 Health Experts To Follow on Facebook

Retireat21 (Young Entrepreneur Industry)

• Top 30 Most Influential Young Entrepreneurs
• 10 Reasons Why It Rocks To Be a Young Entrepreneur
• 10 Christmas Gifts For Young Entrepreneurs
• 17 Tips To Stop People Treating You Different Because Of Your Age
• 20 Young Entrepreneurs To Follow On Facebook

Are you getting the gist yet?

And it doesn’t stop there. Each post can be done in so many other ways. For example:

10 Reasons Why It Rocks To Be a Photographer… you could flip this on it’s head and do 10 Reasons Why It Sucks….

Tip 2. Turn One Top List Into a Series of Top Lists

Remember our post suggestion: 20 Bloggers To Follow on Facebook

How about doing that with every social network:

• 20 Bloggers To Follow on Twitter
• 20 Bloggers To Follow on Youtube
• 20 Bloggers To Follow on Pinterest
• 20 Bloggers To Follow on Google+

Instead of doing a post such as “20 Ways To Improve Your Website” – you could split it into a series and niche each one down, so for example:

• 10 Ways To Improve Your Websites Load Time
• 10 Ways To Improve Your Websites Useability
• 10 Ways To Improve Your Websites Blog Layout
• 10 Ways To Improve your Websites Conversion Rate

Step 2. Getting Articles Created (20 at a time)

So in order to achieve great success with my blogs, I need a crap load of content…. by doing basically no actual work. Want to know how I get articles written for $25 with a 24 hour turn around period, 20 at a time.

Just to confirm. I pay $25 for each article, I often buy 20 at a time and each article only takes 24 hours and can be written by thousands of different authors. The best thing is, if I don’t like it, I either get them to edit it or I can refuse to pay for it. Incredible?!?!!

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Love what you have read so far?

Get the rest inside the Traffic Domination membership site instantly.

Community Interaction: Love the idea of creating top lists? What I want everyone to do is, is comment below with your blog subject, then reply to someone’s comment with a ‘top list post’ title suggestion. Everyone who gives someone else a suggestion, will receive a suggestion from myself for FREE.

The post How I Get Over 100,000 Visitors a Month With Top List Articles appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

I’m a lifestyle entrepreneur. I began pursuing this path so that I could live a modest life of my choosing. So far, I think I’m doing pretty well at that. I’ve started a video production business that lets me hone my craft and travel the world for free (more on that in a bit).

I’ve already talked about some of the benefits entrepreneurs enjoy in my post about the top 30 reasons to be an online entrepreneur. In this post, I want to talk a little bit more about how to develop your business in a way that allows you to achieve your ideal lifestyle.

Honing Your Craft

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.
- Hippocrates

Let me tell you a little bit more about my ideal lifestyle. As a kid, I always wanted to be a novelist or artist. When I got a little bit older, I added musician to the list of “dream jobs”.

The problem with those professions, is that they’re not generally ones that you can make a living with right away. Stephen King worked as a high school janitor while trying to publish his first novel; Robert Frost used to change light bulb filaments for a living. In the arts, you should plan on honing your craft for years before earning a decent salary.

I understood this when I entered the job market three years ago and I chose to become an entrepreneur because I thought that it gave me the best opportunity to earn a living while developing the skills that I would need if I ever wanted to become a professional novelist, artist, or musician. I’ll explain…

How Entrepreneurship Lets Me to Hone My Craft

Entrepreneurs get to pick their own field of work and job description. If you do this right, you can essentially handcraft a job that allows you to practice your craft.

In my case, I knew that I wanted to work in an area that allowed me to (1) write, (2) practice visual design, and (3) learn about sound and audio. Video production was the perfect fit for me because it allows me to do all three of those things at once – while also providing value for other people and businesses.

In this way, with each video I produce I become a little bit better at my craft – and a little bit closer to becoming a professional novelist, artist, or musician.

How You Can Do It

The first step here is to understand what you really love and want to do. From there, you must find a way that you can provide value to others by doing something related.

This last point really can’t be emphasized enough. If you have a business, it isn’t enough to simply be passionate about it. The business must provide value to other people and businesses. So whatever your passion is, seek out ways that you can help others with that passion.

Photo Credit: Stephen A. Wolfe

Getting the Tools of the Trade

The mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.

- Confucius

Every dream life requires a few accessories. If you want to be a Professional skateboarder, you’re going to need a skateboard, pads, and possibly a personal practice space. When the business that you start as an entrepreneur is aligned with your other dreams, it can be an avenue for you to acquire the tools necessary to reach those goals.

Let’s say that your dream is to become a comic book artist. If you start a business as a graphic designer, you’ll be able to invest some of your earnings into buying a digital drawing tablet, a scanner, an external hard drive, and maybe even a new computer.

Before long, you’ll have all of the tools of a professional comic book artist – and that’s a big step on the way to actually being a professional comic book artist. There’s also the added benefit that many of your business investments are likely tax deductible.

How Entrepreneurship Let Me Acquire Necessary Tools

In my case, the first thing I needed to get upon starting my video production business was an Adobe Creative Suite with Adobe Premiere video editing software. I’ve since purchased microphones, cables, and – most importantly – a Canon 60D camera.

Each of these tools has been a big investment in my business, but they’re also expanding my horizons for personal creativity. In a few weeks, a film that I shot will be showing at our local theater in Fort Collins, something that would have been impossible without the camera, the software, and the expertise that I’ve acquired through my company.

How You Can Do It

This is a pretty straightforward concept, so the challenging part is in the execution. First, you must pick a business that aligns well enough with your other interests so that they share the same tools of advancement.

Then, you must actually save up a portion of your earnings to invest back in the business. I find that it’s best to have a set system (me and my partner split our earnings evenly between the two of us and the business) so as to ensure that you’re consistently investing.

Travel

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.

- St. Augustine

Travel is one of life’s great pleasures. Unfortunately, most career paths discourage travel by giving you a rigid schedule with limited vacation days per year.

Being an entrepreneur offers a different relationship with travel. In fact, I’ve traveled more in the last year than ever before in my life and I owe it all to my work as an entrepreneur.

How Entrepreneurship Allows Me to Travel the World

Last month, a company flew me out to Los Angeles, California to help them shoot video of a conference at the Anaheim Events Center. Two weeks before that, a different company flew me to New York City to shoot a Kickstarter video. I took the picture above while walking through Central Park at night.

For both trips, I asked for the return flight to be a few days later so that I could spend some extra time as a traveler. For me, it was a dream come true to be able to travel from one coast to the other for free.

If you want to learn more about how I got these jobs in the first place, you can read my article about how to attract leads and land clients online.

How You Can Do It

If you don’t provide an in-person service, then you’re probably thinking, “Well, that’s all good for him, but my clients/customers will never have any reason to fly me anywhere.”

That may be so, but it doesn’t preclude you from traveling. Cody McKibben works totally remotely as a marketer and web developer – and that’s what allows him to be a ‘digital nomad’, living primarily in Thailand and always traveling the world.

If you make a substantial passive income online through websites like Michael Dunlop does, then there’s nothing stopping you from traveling anywhere in the world, whenever you choose.

What’s Your Ideal Lifestyle?

Lately, I’ve truly been feeling like I’m living the life of my dreams. My work is allowing me to travel, hone my craft, and it’s flexibility means that I can devote more time to my music, writing, and film.

This probably isn’t your ideal lifestyle — in fact, you might be working 60 hours a week developing the next big online startup right now and that might be perfect for you. If so, then keep at it.

Mostly, I just want you to truly consider the lifestyle you’re looking for as you work towards your entrepreneurial goals. Personally, I still don’t believe there’s any better vehicle for achieving the lifestyle of your dreams than becoming an entrepreneur.

The post How to Get Your Ideal Lifestyle as an Entrepreneur appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Working from home can be a dream come true: convenience, comfort, and complete control. Today, more people are working from home than ever before – whether they’re telecommuting to their job or just using the Internet to make their own income like me.

I’ve been working from a home office for two years now and in that time I’ve learned that working from home is a double-edged blade. Do it well and it’s the best work experience you’ll ever have – but do it wrong and it will bring down your work and home life simultaneously.

Here’s how to make sure your home office is a healthier and more productive one.

Establish Your Home Office

“The biggest problem home workers have is the loss of distinction between work life and home life.”

Entrepreneur

Separating Life and Work

The first thing to do is to pick the area that you’ll be working in. Ideally, it’s a special room set aside specifically to work in. If you’re going to be taking appointments from clients, you’ll want to make sure the home office can be accessed without going through personal or communal spaces.

But separating life and work is about more than just physical separation. You also have to make a mental separation. This might mean setting very specific hours during which you’ll be “at work” and “at home” (even though they both have the same address). You may also want to wear different clothes to work so as to signal to yourself that you’re working and not at leisure.

If you don’t clearly separate your home and professional lives, you’ll find they bleed into one entity – and that entity isn’t particularly good for relaxing or for being productive.

Communicating with Your Co-Inhabitants

Chances are you don’t live alone. Whether you’ve got roommates or a family, the next step in working from home is sitting down and talking with the people you live with about where, when, and how you plan on working from home.

Establishing some ground rules from the onset will help avoid confusion and unpleasantness down the road.

Photo Credit: Fabio Bruna via Compfight cc

The All-Important Chair

“Nature gave men two ends – one to sit on and one to think with. Ever since then man’s success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most.”

George R. Kirkpatrick

Quality Desk Chair

Good work starts with a good chair. The right chair will help you to have a better posture, more energy, and more focus. From there, you will be able to work more efficiently, happily, and for more hours at a time.

I could tell you to pick a chair with sufficient lumbar support and adjustable height so that it can match up with your desk but really the most important thing is how it feels to you when you sit in it. I recommend going to office supply or furniture store and test out their wares to see what’s most comfortable for you.

I recently invested in a new chair for my home office and my only regret is I wish I had done it sooner.

Exercise Ball Alternative

There’s a trend towards sitting on exercise balls instead of traditional office chairs. The idea is that you’ll get more exercise, have better posture, and be healthier while at work.

If you’re thinking this is a little far-fetched, you’re probably right. According to The New York Times, sitting on an exercise ball does help you burn more calories (about 4 more per hour) but “the evidence that it improves posture is lacking.”

Exercise balls aren’t very expensive and can be rolled into the corner pretty easily, so you may want to consider picking one up as a change of pace from your more traditional office chair.

Photo Credit: ~ wryonedwards ~ via Compfight cc

Get a Big Desk

Why Size Matters for Desks

A desk isn’t anything too special. Essentially, it’s a glorified table.

But there is a big difference between a small desk and a spacious one. A larger desk will allow you to spread out, which is especially important if you’re brainstorming visual or relational ideas. It also leaves more room for extra equipment, like a second monitor (pictured above).

One way to have more desk space is to opt for an L-shaped, corner desk. This also gives you the possibility of having two separate work spaces for different parts of the same project.

Big Desks are Safer Too

Drinking water while you work is an important part of a healthy lifestyle and if you’re anything like me then you probably drink your fair share of coffee when you’re on the job too.

But liquids on a small desk can be dangerous, as you have no choice but to place them in spilling distance of your keyboard and other valuable electronics. This may seem like a fairly trivial point – but it wouldn’t feel so trivial if you lost an expensive piece of equipment due to a cramped work environment.

Standing and Working

There’s also been a lot of buzz lately about the health costs of sitting at a desk all day. If you’re looking for a change of pace that may help you work better and live longer, try standing up and working from a counter or another high surface. If you like it, you may want to invest in a stand-up desk as a healthier and more productive alternative to the traditional option.

Photo Credit: yprime via Compfight cc

Healthy Home Office Lighting

“To love beauty is to see light.”

Victor Hugo

Natural Light

If you want to be healthier, work in a room with a window.

A review from the Natural Renewable Energy Laboratory found that natural light in a workplace is linked to “general well-being,” “increased productivity”, and “better health.” The review also states that natural light “decreases the occurrence of headaches, SAD, and eyestrain.”

If natural light is simply impossible, then make sure you buy full-spectrum light bulbs. According to the review, “In buildings where daylighting is not or cannot be integrated, using full-spectrum bright lights has been shown to positively affect the workers in the buildings.”

Good Lighting for Video

Communicating with strangers across the globe is a big part of my job description – and I suspect the same is true for many of you. Because so much communication is non-verbal, video calls are a great way to build a more personal connection from afar.

But bad lighting in your home office will render your expressions unreadable and make you look unprofessional. If you’re going to be video chatting or video blogging, then you ought to take the time to create lighting that works well in your home office.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. The most important thing is to have a soft, diffuse light that’s hitting your face evenly. This can be as simple as a household lamp with shade, but you might want to try a few different approaches to see what’s best for your particular space.

The biggest problems that I see people have with lighting is (a) too much light in the background causing the foreground to be darkened in comparison and (b) a harsh light coming from the top or sides that’s casting long shadows across their face. If you can avoid these issues and get some soft, diffuse light shining across your face then you’ll be golden.

Task Lights

Consider getting an adjustable task light for your home office. You’ll be able to aim the light at whatever area of your desk your working on and it’s directional light will help you to focus on the task at hand.

Photo Credit: jnyemb via Compfight cc

Healthy Home Office Design

“To me, a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.”

Helen Keller

Planting Productivity

If you add just one accessory to your home office, make it a plant. Research shows that with plants around, “workers were more productive and had a 12 percent quicker reaction time. They were less stressed and had lower blood pressure.”

Plants that are dead or dying won’t be of much help at all, so when you get a plant for your home office you had better be ready to take good care of it – either that, or get a cactus.

Paint the Walls

One of the very simplest and least expensive ways that you can transform your work space is with a coat of paint. I recommend a neutral color or a shade of green, which is associated with harmony, balance, and refreshment.

Here’s what Colour Affect has to say about green:

“Green strikes the eye in such a way as to require no adjustment whatever and is, therefore, restful. Being in the centre of the spectrum, it is the colour of balance – a more important concept than many people realise.”

Photo Credit: Chrismatos via Compfight cc

Get Out of Your House!

Even if you’ve done everything I’ve mentioned above and you’ve got an extremely healthy and productive home office, eventually you’re going to want to escape it.

Go for it.

One of the great perks of working from home is that you don’t actually have to work from home at all. Depending on your line of work, you can be anywhere – be it your front lawn or a nearby park. In fact, as I write this I’m sitting in a local coffee shop.

A change of scenery will be a nice change pace… and will help you to be more productive when you’re back in your healthy home office.

Post Image: blupics via Compfight cc

The post How to Have a Healthier and More Productive Home Office appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Put together, these articles are a comprehensive resource. They’ll teach you how to start your first website, design it, optimize it for search, drive traffic to it, monetize it, and put it on auto-pilot.

But it helps to have directions through all of this advice. That’s why I’ve created a road map, to guide you every step of the way – from getting inspired to making a your fortune and everything in between.

If you’re just getting started making money online, then scroll down and start with the first section. If you’re already on the road to making money online, then you can check the table of contents to the right and jump straight to point you need.

Roadmap to Making Money Online

Getting Inspired

The first step before going on a long road-trip is to fuel up. The same is true before starting on your entrepreneurial journey, but in this case the ‘fuel’ is inspiration that will continue to motivate you and propel you forward on your journey.

One of the best ways to get inspired is to look at the successes of those who came before you. That’s why we’ve previously shared the life lessons of entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Richard Branson (just to name a few). We’ve also conducted many of our own interviews with top bloggers like Pay Flynn and Gary Vaynerchuck.

Just like with getting gas, you’ll probably need to fuel up a few times before your journey is over. So when you begin to feel unmotivated or pessimistic, you can return here and find more inspiration.

Starting a Blog

A blog is the vehicle for online success. Michael Dunlop has called blogging “the cheapest way to bring in new leads, customers and build a solid brand,” and the source of all of the money that he makes online.

Before you start blogging, first read these 7 Business Decisions to Make Before You Start a Blog from Nicholas Tart. They include deciding who your audience is and what the primary keywords are for your niche. You’ll thank yourself later for having started your blog with a clear vision of the end goal.

When you’re ready to begin, then read Nicholas’ guide for what to do on day one of your blog. From there, you can go through Michael’s 30 Day Plan to Create a Blog where he walks you through everything from buying your domain name name to running your first contest.

Creating Content

Great content is the engine the engine of your blog. It’s the reason people find your site and the reason they stay there. More than that, it’s the way that you provide value to your audience.

Nicholas Tart has written a step-by-step guide for writing blog posts that will take you from researching your post to publishing it. Michael has also offered up his own blog post creation tips, in which he discusses the best time to publish an article and how long your posts should be.

Part of writing good content is writing content that’s optimized for search. If you feel like your posts suffer from a lack optimization, check out these 10 SEO blog post publishing steps. If you would simply like to be a better online writer, you can find my 20 tips here.

Correcting Your Path

It’s not a road trip if you don’t get lost at least once. The same is true on your entrepreneurial journey: if you don’t make any missteps, then you must not be taking enough risks.

Still, once you realize that you’re not going in the right direction, you’re going to want to change your path as quickly as possible. Luckily, Income Diary has your back and we’ve written several posts designed to help you troubleshoot the problems with your blog and improve them.

Josh has chronicled the embarrassing mistakes he made as a beginner blogger – and how he overcame them to turn Expert Photography into the huge success that it is today.

Last spring, Nicholas Tart asked Income Diary readers about their struggles online. He received a ton of responses (the post has over 140 comments) and broke it down into the 33 most common online struggles. By far the most common complaint was that their sites weren’t receiving enough traffic (more on that next).

Photo Credit: jessgrrrr via Compfight cc

Driving Traffic to Your Site

Few people know more about how to build a site’s traffic than Michael Dunlop. Last year, I sat down with Michael and got his top traffic tips. Michael has also explained the fastest way to 1000 visitors per day with three words: Twitter, Facebook, and Lists.

One of the fastest, tried-and-true methods to boosting your traffic is to write a guest post on an A-list blog. Tommy Walker wrote a great first hand account of how to he wrote a successful guest post for Chris Brogan’s site. If you want a comprehensive list of techniques, Tommy has also written a list of 101 ways to drive more traffic to your website.

I find that it’s difficult to grow your blog’s traffic unless you have a reliable way of measuring it, so if you don’t do this already check out Kristi Hine’s excellent guide to how to measure your blog’s growth.

Making Money

More than anything else, Income Diary is about teaching people how to make money online. We have a wealth of articles on the subject.

Michael has explained the most powerful ways to make money online, which include selling products, building membership sites, and affiliate marketing. Since so much of his earnings have been through PopUp Domination, Michael has also gone in-depth on the six steps to selling a product online.

If you’ve already monetized your site but you’re just not making as much money as you want yet, you may want to check out these seven fast fixes to increase your website’s conversion rate.

Reaching Your Destination

Making money is great, but true wealth is in a business that expands even as you devote less of your time to working on it. This has been Michael’s focus lately, as he’s automated his site with writers like myself and invested in other sites like Expert Photography. I sat down and talked with Michael recently about the big picture and how to go from a blog to an online empire.

Personally, my focus as an entrepreneur is much more about cultivating my ideal lifestyle. My online business has allowed me to travel the world and spend more time with my friends and my music. If that’s a priority for you as well, check out these twelve tips for creating a freedom business that will allow you to travel the world.

Ultimately, a big part of being successful online is discovering your own personal definition of success. Like with a road trip, there’s some sort end result in mind – but also like with road trips, the journey is far more satisfying than the destination.

Parting Words

I hope you find this road map a helpful resource as you advance on your entrepreneurial journey. Happy travels!

The post The Ultimate Road Map to Making Money Online appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Thus, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is no longer a nice-to-have, but an absolute must for us internet marketers, and we all know it. Some of you reading this might even be “closet conversion optimizers” – you’ve been secretly running tests on your own but because you haven’t been seeing improvements, you haven’t dared come out of the closet to brandish your impressive conversion rate increase to your peers. Meanwhile, the tiny sliver of hope you have left about gaining more bang out of your marketing buck is hanging by a delicate thread.

But it’s not your fault. Most likely, you’re getting paltry results because you’re implementing some changes that are actually working against you. And most likely, the changes you’d been making are stemming from false assumptions and ineffective methodologies.

So here I discuss the most common myths and misconceptions that many people have that actually hurt their conversion optimization efforts. If you haven’t ran any conversion optimization tests yet (but want to do it or hire someone to do it for you), pay special attention as well because these revelations will save you a ton of time, heartache and money.

Myth #1: It’s OK to test whatever I feel like testing because conversion optimization is all about creating magic buttons, following “best practices,” changing elements willy nilly, and then seeing what works best from there.

“It’s not converting too well because the design looks outdated. So let’s redesign the logo, the brand identity and the entire flippin’ sales page. I’m sure the conversion rate will improve after that”, is a common demand we hear from first-time clients.

They can hardly be blamed though. At first glance it does seem like CRO is all about changing elements like the size of call-to-action buttons or the color of headlines and seeing what sticks, but it actually goes much deeper than that.

Imagine that your website is a bucket. Think of your visitors as water going into the bucket. Now think of the things that are making your visitors not buy or leave your website as holes in your bucket (and there are many!).

You can’t optimize your conversion rate until you know exactly what’s causing the holes in your business bucket.

Your bucket is leaking, BIG time.

And the thing is that in real life, you can’t easily see where the damn holes are – and that’s the problem.

Redesigning elements of your website without first investigating what could be going wrong is just like getting a flashier, posher, different-colored (but also hole-infested) bucket. It can’t better serve you or your customers if you are still stuck with the same problems as before, and you are several thousand dollars worse off.

The solution is obvious: you must thoroughly investigate and find out the nature, location and shape of the holes, and based on your findings, come up with the appropriate solutions to repair those leaks.

The conversion culprits could vary. Broadly speaking, it’s possible that:

• Your website is difficult to use or certain information are hard to find.
• Your copy is confusing or boring. Maybe it’s “too hypey”. Maybe it’s heartless, or maybe it’s simply flat out inappropriate because it’s tapping on the wrong buyer motivations.
• Your website doesn’t look credible/trustworthy.
• Most of the traffic you’re getting are unqualified, or they’re just researching/“window shopping” at this point in time.
• Your visitors don’t trust you or believe your claims.
• Some of your visitors think your offer is not the best one (at this time) for them.
• You’re forcing your prospects to go through an unnecessarily frustrating process to get what they want, so they exit.

As you can see, each problem would require a solution unique to itself. There’s no one-size-fits-all plug available, unfortunately. Like it or not, the only time you’d be able to take the appropriate actions to improve your conversion rate is when you know exactly what’s preventing your prospects from taking the desired action.

Simply put, your decisions must be data-driven, not opinion-driven.

Myth #2: I don’t need to survey or talk to my customers/target market. I know them very well and I know exactly what’s going on in their minds. I dictate what changes should be made.

Myth #2 is very similar to Myth #1, but coming from a slightly different angle. While myth #1 is essentially stemming from the belief “it’s OK to make changes without doing any research first”, myth #2 is more about the false assumption that since you can imagine being your customers, why bother asking them anything at all?

Remember that regardless of the industry you’re in, or even if you’re selling just one type of product, you’re likely to be marketing to many different customer profiles or different market segments who naturally would then have different motivations.

Take a weight loss product as a classic example. An obese and hormonal teenage girl would have different motivations compared to an overweight and heartbroken 49-year old male divorcee, or a 28-year old woman who just gave birth. Could absolutely know exactly how to think like each of these market segments effectively without asking them for feedback?

Communicate in a way that answers this primordial question for as many of your prospects as possible.

And that’s just the bit where we consider the buyers’ layers of motivation. I haven’t even mentioned different personalities or styles of processing information, like:

1. Methodical – or the I-actually-read-all-the-fine-print anal type
2. Spontaneous – or the just-gimme-the-bullet-points-please type
3. Social – or the I’mma-buy-based-on-what-other-people-say type
4. Competitive – or the just-show-me-how-it’d-make-me-faster-richer-sexier-better-stronger-I-don’t-care-about-anything-else type.

The point is different types of people go to your website. If you really want your site to convert, it’s best to gather feedback from the very people you hope to serve – and use the market intelligence you’ve gathered to help you craft your next experiments.

Myth #3: Conversion Optimization is a matter of guessing what to test using my gut instincts.

Using your gut instincts could be a great tool when forming hypotheses to test, but don’t rely on it alone. For example, you might suspect that the reason why you’re not converting well is because you’re providing too many packages to choose from. That’s well and good, but don’t go about creating a “6 packages VS 3 packages” right away.

Apart from surveys and heatmaps, creating usability tests is another way to really get in the head of your target market.

What if the real problem is not the number of choices per se, but that your prospects are unsure which package is best for them to pick, because the unique advantages of each package are unclear? If this is the case, then the appropriate test to conduct involves creating pages where the packages have clearer and easier-to-understand unique value propositions – NOT reducing the number of packages on offer.

Form your theories but do whatever’s needed to investigate and uncover the actual problems first, and then implement the appropriate experiment to find the possible best combination of solutions.

Myth #4: If I copy a great company’s website design, layout, colour scheme and words, I’ll enjoy the same high conversion rate.

If this is the case, then we can all just model all our websites after Schwan’s or Vitacost.com and we’d enjoy over 24% conversion rate.

Conversion case studies are there not for you to copy exactly, but for you to gain insights from. Just because someone changed their call-to-action button from a green square to a red rectangle and gained a 16% lift in conversion doesn’t mean you’d enjoy the same lift if you implement the same change.

Myth #5: Conversion Optimization is all about making a webpage look great and look high-tech and all fancy. It has nothing to do with anything else.

I’m a sucker for intelligent, beautiful designs, but design is not the end-all-and-be-all. In fact, there are many impressively designed websites that are not persuasive at all.

Design is just an element (and a superficial one at that) among many other elements that make up your website.

Design is just like hair, make-up, jewelry and clothes. You can dress someone up looking all snazzy and sophisticated, but at the end of the day, it’s still their personality, character, and the person they are inside that counts.

Similarly, sometimes what’s really needed in order to raise your conversion rate is not a website redesign, but changing an aspect of your business “inner game”. This could mean changing/rethinking your philosophy, your values, your product positioning, your brand strategy, your business processes, redefining your core competencies, restructuring your main offers, reworking your company culture, etc.

You have to be willing to change yourself and your business if you are really serious at dominating your market. At the heart of CRO is the principle continuous improvement. This should cover every single thing in your business and your thinking, not just your website. Otherwise the benefits you’d reap would be superficial and short-lived.

Creepy or genius? Clicktale is a tool that records visitor sessions. It’s just like looking over their shoulders as they use your website!

Myth #6: CRO is about manipulating as many visitors as possible to do what *I* want them to do: buy.

Of course eventually we want as many of our visitors to buy or perform whatever action needed to make profits for our business. But there’s a subtle added later of depth to this dimension. But understand that some visitors go to your website with an intention other than buying or subscribing. Maybe they are there to find a specific article they read before, and want to share it, or they want to just plain marvel at your awesomeness and drool over your pictures which isn’t bad at all.

Imagine you’re selling software online. It comes in standard and deluxe version. You make more profit if you sell more deluxe versions, so you really should gear your entire website to getting people to buy the deluxe version. That’s just right, isn’t it?

Well, over the short term, yes it could make you more money, but it could bite you in the ass over the long term if that’s your sole focus.

If the standard version is the best fit for Joe’s current needs, then it’s your job to help Joe understand this and help him make a well-informed buying decision. Sure, you could have sold him the deluxe version and made more money, but what if he used it and got put off by the extra features he didn’t need? What if he felt duped and put up negative reviews online and encouraged others to never buy from you? (Reflect about this especially if you have a high refund rate or member attrition rate or high number of complaints from customers)

CRO is not about manipulation so that you make a sale regardless of what’s the best fit for your customer. Rather, it’s a win-win process, in which you find out exactly what would serve your prospects best given their unique situations, so that you could align your business to meet their needs, thus helping them get exactly what they were looking for.

Myth #7: The shorter the sales presentation, the better. (Or the shorter the sales copy/video, the better).

Not necessarily. In fact, there had been cases where longer sales presentations or longer sales pages had been tested to convert higher.

People who read your sales letter have questions, concerns, doubts and objections. In order to convert them into buyers, you must uncover all of their concerns and address them in the most effective way possible.

Don’t worry about the length of your sales presentation. The fact is that people who are really interested in what you’re offering will put in the time needed to digest your information. The crime is not long sales letters per se, but flat, boring, unpersuasive sales letters that fail to connect with and move your audience to act.

Is it worth eliminating the fluff? Absolutely. But don’t aim for brevity for brevity’s sake alone. Instead, aim for aligned persuasion.

Myth #8: Sales conversion rate is the only metric I should care about.

Depending on your business/website objectives, there are many other metrics that, if you also track, would give you a much deeper understanding of how to achieve your goals faster and more effectively.

Case in point: for non e-commerce sites like news sites or blogs, useful metrics to track are Visitor Loyalty (how often people visit your site), and Visitor Recency (the amount of time in between visits).

The shorter the time in between visits means the more engaged your audience is.

So you see, apart from the question, “how to increase my website conversion to X%?” there are other interesting (and fun!) questions you could aim to answer in your research or tests, such as:

• Which PPC campaigns/traffic sources/search keywords are resulting to higher Average Order Value and why?
• Which content on my site are generating me the most [ad clicks/opt-ins/sales] and why?
• Which of my email marketing campaigns are generating the most opens/clicks/sales and why?
• Which price point results to most sales over the long term without hurting the refund or attrition rate?
• Which traffic sources are giving me the most engaged visitors/ highest-converting traffic and why?
• How much is my Cost Per Acquisition? 
• Which of my content are the top 20 most shared/commented on and why?
• Which traffic sources are generating me the highest revenues and why?

Which of your marketing campaigns are resulting to higher Ave Order Value (AOV)? What creative upsell tactics could you do to increase AOV?

While it’s good to know what your visitors did while on your website, it’s much better if you also know WHY they behaved the way they did. While it’s good to know how many transactions occurred or how much money you made, it’s much better if you also know the reasons why you made as much as you did.

Conclusion

To create tests without knowing what the real problems are is like a plumber trying to unclog pipes without knowing which pipes are blocked in the first place. Stop guessing and operating from myths. Instead, start investigating what exactly are the reasons why visitors are not converting, so you can start implementing the correct solution.

There’s a lot more to conversion rate optimisation than what’s on the page: you need to consider your visitors’ objections, motivations, personality, communication style, their stage in the buying cycle, their goals and expectations.

If you dig deeper to uncover the roots of your conversion problems and implement win-win solutions, you’d soon enjoy a higher conversion and you could finally come out of that closet.

The post 8 Myths that are Hurting your Conversion Optimization Efforts appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Everyone makes value judgments based on appearances. Unfortunately for me, that means I’ll probably never land a date with Adriana Lima (below).

It also means that simply having well-written articles on your blog isn’t good enough. A good blog post has to look good too — and that means using images to make your blogs stunningly beautiful.

How to Improve Your Blog with Images

How Beautiful Images Benefit a Blog

When you use quality images on your blog, readers associate your blog with that same level of quality. When you use dull or generic images not only will readers not click on your posts, they’ll also assume your content is dull and generic too. So use images that reflect how exciting, interesting, and beautiful you blog is (more on how to find those images below).

These types of high-quality images don’t just improve the perception of your website, but they increase its “stickiness” as well. Visitors are more likely to click on an article when the post image catches their eye or inspires a bit of curiosity.

Good images also help to make your post more likely to be shared on social networks. For instance, when someone shares an article on Facebook they have the option to choose one of the images contained on the page. If you want your content to go viral, you’d better make sure it contains some great images.

The Importance of Putting an Image Above the Fold

On most computer screens, the above image peeks just above the fold when this page loads. That means that every reader is guaranteed to see that there’s an image there — and almost every reader is going to scroll down and see what the image contains. Chances are, those readers are going to read the headline below the picture next… and so on and so on.

Simply convincing your viewers to begin reading and scrolling down is a big hurdle and it’s hugely important. It’s so important, in fact, that Michael asks that every single post on Income Diary have an image above the fold.

Does it work? Well you’ve read this far, haven’t you?

Cropping and Sizing Your Images

The best size image depends on the design of your site, specifically the width of the content area. The ideal size also depends on what works best for the individual image your using. If it’s a simple, iconic image it can afford to be smaller, whereas more intricate images have to be larger in order to view their complexity.

I’ll almost always center these larger images. In this case my favorite size is a big, beautiful 650 x 320 pixels, like the one above. This size is great for making an impact and creating separation between major sections of your article. Don’t use too many of these larger images, though. They’ll slow down the pages loading time and their larger resolution will go to waste on many mobile devices.

Thinner center-oriented images also look great and they can be used more often, like this 650 x 236 pixel image:

For left and right oriented images, I like to keep the width small (example  near the bottom). That way you can be sure that it won’t crowd the text too much, even on smaller screens. In this case I’m using a 180 x 180 square image. I orient my images to the left or right very often and that’s partly because they tend to look better in text-heavy writing with long paragraphs, whereas I prefer to write with shorter paragraphs.

On Income Diary, our post images are 345 x 180.

Where to Get Images to Use in Your Post

There are a lot of different image databases out there, but I recommend Compfight. Compfight is specifically tailored to help bloggers find images for their posts, so its easy to search for images within the creative commons and to attribute images appropriately.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for on Compfight (not bloody likely), then try Flickr or a good old-fashioned Google search.

Making Sure the Image is Licensed for Use on Your Site

Images online are licensed differently, which means that their owners have set different standards for how they can be used by others online. Images on sites like iStock have licenses which require that you pay money in order to use them, but most of the time you can find a great image that suits your needs for absolutely free.

On Compfight, it’s as simple as clicking ‘creative commons’ on the bar to left after you’ve made a search. Once you’ve found an image that you like, you can click on it and view the license agreement. There you’ll see other pertinent information, like whether you’re allowed to remix or adapt the work. I usually only use images that allow me to adapt because that way I can make sure that all of the images in my articles are sized the way I want.

If you’re planning on using an image for commercial purposes, for instance if its included in an ebook that you’re selling or as part of a membership site, then you’ll need to narrow your search further to only images that have a commercial license.

How to Credit the Photographer Online

If you’re using an image that you didn’t create, it’s only fair that you credit the creator for their work.

Again, Compfight makes this very easy. They provide you with a line of html that you can copy and paste directly into your post. Here’s the attribution for the image of Adriana Lima above:

Photo Credit: snobmodels via Compfight cc

Making Your Own Images

“For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time… ‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.”

- Timothy Ferriss

Creating your own images allows you to create custom images that work perfectly for your article. You also don’t have to add attribution or worry about licensing.If you’re a skilled artist or photographer, then making your own images will come naturally.

I used an original photograph of a stoplight in Bellingham, Washington to illustrate a quote in an article I wrote containing life lessons from Timothy Ferriss. I like when an image has a symbolic connection to the concept that’s being discussed and I also really like this combination of block quote right underneath a big, centered image.

In addition to original photography, I’ve also used my own drawings. The drawing below is for one of my most popular Income Diary posts (21 Life Lessons from Steve Jobs). In this case, it was as simple as taking a pen to paper, scanning the results, and cleaning them up a little bit in Photoshop.

But the most common way that I’ve made my own images is by taking screen shots of web pages (ALT + PrtSc) and editing them. This is on display right here in this article, like the image of the CompFight interface above. In a niche that deals with digital technology like Income Diary, it’s pretty common for a screen capture to be relevant to your article.

Can You Write a Stunningly Beautiful Blog Post?

If so, Income Diary wants to hear from you. We think that we can help our readers more by providing them with more content, more often.

That’s why we’re now accepting submissions for articles and the best part is that we’re actually paying for your work. This is chance to share your expertise with our audience of 10,000′s. Of course, you’re article will have to be informative, well-written, and stunningly beautiful.

You can fill out the submission form here and let me know in the comments below if you have any questions or other good ideas about how to use images in blog posts.

The post How to Make Your Blog Posts Stunningly Beautiful with Images appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

In experience gained flipping my own sites and working as a broker at Flipping Enterprises (I completed $1.3m in deals in 2012), when sales are done correctly, you could be rewarded handsomely and mitigate many of these risks.  I’m going to go over a 10-step plan on how you can buy and sell your first website profitably and relatively safely.

To get in the right mindset, think about buying and selling online businesses as you would with flipping houses.  A smart house flipper looks to purchase an undervalued property which can be improved at minimal costs that they’ll be able to sell for a profit after a certain amount of time.  Simply put, there are people who make a full-time living closing only 4 to 5 such deals per year.  One of the differences between short term house flipping and website flipping is that you’ll have the opportunity to not only make money upon selling your website, but add a monthly profit stream in the meantime.

Here are the 10 steps.  Enjoy, but most importantly, take action!

1.  Know your limits

• Money
• Time

You have to be honest with yourself. How much money can you afford to lose?  Really think about it.  If you lost that $5,000 that you are planning on investing, could you survive?  No investment is guaranteed no matter how attractive it is.  You need to prepare by knowing how much money you are able to put in.  Once you have that number, think about how much time you can commit to managing a new business.  While many websites are passive in nature, there are things you will need to be doing in order to increase its value.  Prepare to spend some time gaining the knowledge or skills necessary to work on your new acquisition.

2.  Know what sites will grow

A term you may have heard before is “evergreen” niches.  This type of niche does not have an obvious expiration date and is fueled by constant human needs and wants.  Examples include car insurance, consumer electronics, clothing, sports, business, beauty and health, etc.  Keeping lifecycle dates in mind on websites you may be interested in is critical.  If you buy a site that makes money on something that will soon become illegal due to recent passed legislation, or that is based on a fad, you may find yourself out of pocket.

A positive reason for buying an established site, no matter how competitive the niche, is that it has a history of performance to measure from.  If it has made $1,000 a month in profit from search engines, you’ll know what keywords it’s ranking for and where it can be scaled.  You’ll also see what revenue sources its used and what quick chances can be made to increase profit instantly (negotiating better affiliate payouts, optimizing ad placements, increasing conversions in sales funnels, etc.).  Just as a house flipper looks for simple fixes and improvements like replacing the carpet, painting, and renovating the kitchen, you should be looking for websites that can be improved on and scaled up.

Also, find those that align with your interests.  It will help keep you motivated when things get tough. Here’s a basic checklist:

• Evergreen niches
• Upside potential
• Aligns with your interests

3.  Where to find websites for sale

As some of you may have seen, the quality of sites for sale can sometimes be very poor.  Wading through it all is a part of the process, and something to remember for most cases, you get what you pay for.  Don’t expect to be able to buy a quality $5,000 a month profit earner for only $15,000 (3x monthly multiple) – it can happen when a site is still in its beginning stages and unproven, but it isn’t the norm.  Generally speaking, a good range to be in as a buyer is 12-18x the monthly profit average for a relatively small site (<$50,000).  If it’s making $1,000 a month, an asking price of $12,000 to $18,000 is reasonable.  However, each listing and its seller is unique, and great deals can still be made, especially if you can spot growth opportunities.  Below are some of the most popular places to find websites for sale:

• Website brokers (FlippingEnterprises.com, Wesellyoursite.com, etc.)
• Website marketplaces (Flippa.com, Bizbuysell.com, WebsiteBroker.com, etc.)
• Forum marketplaces (Experienced-People.net, Warriorforum.com “websites for sale” section, Digital Point forums, etc.)
• Directly from buyer (Google search and email contact or people you know)

4.  How to conduct quick due diligence

As a general guideline, use the following questions for each listing that you are interested in as a quick “rejection” filter:

• Why are they selling it?  Common red flags are dying niches, borderline products/services, such as phone unlocking or movie downloads, and recent Google update hits (losing traffic from Google updates can be recoverable and present a unique opportunity for those with the available skills and resources).
• Do they provide proof of revenue and traffic?  Look for screenshots of revenue that show the website URL or evidence it comes from the claimed source and traffic analytics from a trusted platform like Google analytics.
• Can you trust the seller?  Take a quick look at their account feedback and history and do a Google search on their name and look at least 2 pages of results.

5.  How to conduct thorough due diligence

If a site passes the first test and you’d like to dig deeper, most sellers will be willing to send you specific details.  Take a deeper look at:

• Traffic analytics.  Are there any periods where traffic was down?  Are their traffic sources well distributed rather than relying too heavily on one source?  Have a look at their referring sites.  Are any of those owned by the seller and will the links remain in place after the sale?
• Revenue proof.  If needed, ask the seller to provide a video of them logging into their affiliate or merchant accounts and prove it is coming from the claimed URL or associated account.  For example, get the “URL channel” reports for Google Adsense.
• Speak to the seller.  One of the best ways to gain trust is by speaking to the seller on the phone or on Skype.  It will not only help you get a feel for who they are, it will increase the chances they’ll be willing to work with you on the price when it comes time to make an offer.
• Speak to a professional. If you are unsure how to proceed or are not confident with the process, speak to a third party. Many brokers are willing to offer “buy-side” services and help with due diligence. A third party can help remove any emotion from the deal.

6.  Making the right offer

If you feel that this is the right website for you, it’s time to make an offer.  The key is to start with your lowest offer but to make it high enough to get the sellers attention.  If they are asking $10k and that’s an 18x monthly profit multiple, offering only $2k will most likely get you nothing but an annoyed rejection email.  70% of the asking price is a good starting point.

Giving reasons for why you are offering a lower amount by highlighting some of the website’s negatives can help your cause.  Also having the cash and being able to prove it, and helping the seller trust that you’ll take good care of the site are ways to sway them to pick you over someone else, even if your offer is lower.

To give you that edge going into making an offer, study this informative rundown on how to negotiate effectively, published by Inc. magazine.

7.  You own the site, now what?

The short answer to this questions is, get to work!  The more you increase monthly profit, the more it will be worth once you decide to sell.  Literally thousands of articles have been written on the subject of building traffic and monetizing websites, a few of the better ones can be found on Income Diary here and here, respectively.

If you don’t have the time, resources, or energy to do the work yourself, be sure that who you hire has good references/feedback and isn’t overcharging.  You may be able to increase your bottom line just by finding more affordable help, but just be sure you aren’t sacrificing quality – SEO (search engine optimization) work, customer service, and sales reps are good example here.

Another key point is to automate and systemize the website where you can.  A site that takes an owner only 5 hours a week to conduct basic maintenance will sell for more than one taking 20 hours a week.

8.  Making the decision to sell

If your website is attractive enough – steady or increasing traffic and earnings in a solid niche – it will most likely sell for more than what you paid for it, even if you’ve only owned it for a month.   Ask yourself the following questions to determine if it’s the right time to sell for you:

• Have you exhausted all possible ways to optimize traffic and earnings?  This is the reason many sellers decide it’s time to let go.  But don’t feel bad, buyers may see opportunities to expand that you don’t.
• What percentage of your investment has already been returned?  Will you make a positive return on your investment if you sell now?
• What will you do with the sale proceeds?  If you are selling to invest into a different website or project, stop and think about it for a minute.  How likely is this new website of project to earn more money?  Is it worth taking a potential hit on price by not waiting longer to sell – for example if you have a few down months or if it’s during the typically slower season for buyers during the summer?

If you need to sell it due to the website’s poor performance from a Google update, sudden change in available monetization options, etc. and you need to cut your losses, our suggestion is to do what you can to stabilize it or put it up for sale in time for someone else to stabilize it and hopefully grow it.  Once the revenue hits zero the value follows.

9.  How to sell it

This is the best part!  Selling a website works in the same way you would sell any other product online – it needs to be put it in front of your most targeted audience.  You’ll find the most qualified buyers in the same places you went to purchase a site, through brokers, marketplaces, directly, and in industry forums.  Key points to remember:

• Be prepared by keeping detailed records of traffic and income (Google analytics, monthly profit/loss statement, access to reports from affiliate networks or merchant accounts, etc.)
• Be upfront and honest and available to help with due diligence questions.  Most buyers just want to get a clear picture of the past performance and more importantly, that they can trust you.
• Don’t be greedy.  Unless you have the time and patience to wait for someone to jump up to your unrealistic asking price, it’s best to stick to the “sweet spot” which is where both buyer and seller feel it’s fair.  12x to 24x monthly profit multiples is a good range to be in.  If you are unsure, do a quick search on what similar sites have sold for on website brokers “sold listings” pages or Flippa.

Brokers specialize in selling listings for fair prices and in reasonable amounts of time for a success fee.  Most will give you a free valuation and advice on how to either sell it yourself if they can’t take it on, or how to increase its value.

If you venture on your own by listing in one of the marketplaces be sure to filter out scammers by always using an escrow service (we suggest escrow.com), review their feedback and past activity, and speak with them on the phone or Skype prior to accepting their bids.

10.  Rinse and repeat

Pay into the “University of Life” as my Mom used to say, by taking action and keeping notes.  Then, take the advice of many a successful internet marketer – once you have a system that works, repeat it!  If you do end up losing some money on your first deal, don’t give up.  You’ll have more confidence and experience to try again and hopefully make a profit.    

Conclusion

A colleague of mine bought a site for $2500 that was making $200-$300 a month in profit.  He changed how it was monetized and brought it to over $2000 a month, without doing anything to the existing traffic.  3 months later he sold it for $25,000 for a profit of almost $30,000.

While this is one of the more successful website flips that I personally know on a percentage increase basis, it’s not that uncommon to find. Just like traditional real estate, established quality websites and domains will increase in value over the long term.

If you have any questions about the process of buying and selling websites, feel free to ask me in the comments.  If interested in our website brokerage services, please visit flippingenterprises.com.

Thanks for your time!

The post 10 Steps to Making a Profit Buying and Selling Websites appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Someone recently asked me to name my 3 most essential secrets for success as an Entrepreneur.

My initial response is that it is not possible to name the three most essential things / secrets / lessons to being a successful entrepreneur because as soon as you think of three, another three that arguably are equally important will come to mind.

But still I got to thinking – what would I select if I could only have three?

As you will see below it was such a challenge for me that I eventually settled on four ‘secrets’ – mainly because I thought the 4th one which would not normally feature on any list, so important. Also, I am not that comfortable with the word secrets any more, I far rather say they are real world business lessons learned in some cases the hard way by yours truly.

Four Real World Business Lessons for Success

Secrets To Long Term Success In Business

Let’s start with the obvious first….

Success Lesson No1 – Be Passionate!

Self-explantory I hope. Really without passion you are unlikely to get started never mind succeed in business. Passion is what motivates you to work the long hours, take the risks and not give up. People buy passion – if you are not passionate about your products and your mission how can you expect your customers to be?

I always feel Steve Jobs was a great example of a passionate leader — and look how that transferred to his staff and customers.

Passion is so important I am letting you have two of my favorite quotes on it below…

“One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.”
~ E. M. Forster

“Chase your passion, not your pension.”
~ Denis Waitley

Success Lesson No2 – TAKE DECISIVE ACTION

More times than I can count I have wannabe Entrepreneurs come to me with their ideas for a new business – sometimes the ideas are even quite original and good but yet I will meet this wannabe entrepreneurs a few months later or even a year plus later and the still have not got started.

They have taken no REAL action on their idea! Basically they have over thought things, are waiting for the perfect moment (which will never come) and feel more comfortable talking about what they are going to do rather than DOING! Now I’m not saying don’t have a business plan or do research here – what I’m saying is do your research / sound your idea with a few trusted friends and then launch the business.

Even if the business doesn’t succeed I’m a great believer in FAIL FAST (Failure is just road signs on the way to success and honest I promise you it is very rare to find the perfect moment to do anything never mind launch a business!)

Or as American writer Sarah Dessen has put it:

You can’t always get the perfect moment. Sometimes, you just have to do the best you can under the circumstances

Success Lesson No3 – Stay Focused / Stay Calm / Stay Centered

Look there will be plenty of challenges in any business – no matter if it is the start-up phase or you are a long established business. If there is anyone piece of advice I would have preferred to have learned earlier in my business career it is this – Stay Calm / Stay Focused.

You have launched your business – it is succeeding but without the ability to stay focused and calm when challenges arise you cannot hope for long term success.

With hindsight I can say that fortunately for me I learned my lesson about remaining calm as a young entrepreneur (aged 16) when one morning I woke up to discover that my website hosting company (and my website) had disappeared overnight. (Not only that, I had no backup!)

Was I upset – you bet I was! At the time I was super annoyed with the web-hosting company owners – in reality I had been scammed. Now I had every reason to be upset but it was not until I calmed down and started thinking of solutions rather than being upset that a solution came to me.

Sometimes you just have to accept what has happened and move on or as my Irish Grandmother likes to say “no point in crying over spilled milk”

How long did it take me to think of a solution – actually not very long at all once I calmed down. Fortunately it was only a small beginner website (but it meant the world to me at the time) and using Google and the Cache feature I was able to rebuild the bulk of my website very quickly.

Had I not calmed down and got my head around that issue who is to know, I might not even being doing what I am doing today. Being calm and thinking solutions in business is essential for long term success.

Solutions come from Calmness in my experience – rarely from being annoyed and upset.

The thing, when you’re down two sets to love, is to stay calm, even though it’s hard, because people are freaking out, people are worried for you ~ Rafael Nadal

Now for the vitally important last and final secret….and perhaps most important

Success Lesson No4 – Some People Will Disappoint You – Get over it!

This is some what related to No 3 and staying calm but really to me learning this lesson is so important I’d almost be tempted to make it my No1 lesson / secret to success.

OK, lets get this straight, not everyone will disappoint you, in fact very few will disappoint you but those that do can leave you feeling very sore and often angry.

In my business I have content writers, JV Partners, Programmers, Affiliates, Web Designers to name a few that I deal with daily.

Occasionally some of these individuals don’t deliver and what is more when they don’t delivery they will even try and make it out to be your fault. I have had people steal my ideas, copy my websites, abuse my intellectual property, steal my software, fail to pay commissions owed and generally be rat-bags!

When this first happened I will be honest it got me down big time. If I’m really honest, it still gets me down but these days I suppose I have just become more philosophical about it.

Being ‘wronged’ like this is of course not right and really I advise you to take whatever legal remedies are necessary to protect yourself. (We for example use a DMCA service which removes pirated copies of Popup Domination from around the internet)

That said there will be times when legal action is just not practical / worth it, actually a lot of times you just have to GET OVER IT!

Whatever it is that has gone wrong it will almost certainly have cost you time and money – but getting down in the dumps about it and being annoyed will not help much, if at all. Indeed being annoyed and angry is more likely to cost you even more money, because I promise you it is hard to be creative and upbeat and run a business when you are annoyed and angry.

Believe me – I have tried it!

As long as we are in business we will be learning – even when it goes wrong we learn something, even if it is only that we have discovered a method that does not work!

Instead about being angry ask yourself positive questions like…

What have I learned from this? (I have had a chance to practice not letting anger get the better of me!)
What is good about this situation? (really!!?)
What is there to be happy about right now? (I am still alive and building a better more profitable business from the lessons I have learned)

I won’t honestly say that I am over that feeling of disappointment that comes when an individual you trusted lets you down – or even one you don’t know rips of your products but I will say this, I am committed to minimizing the effect on my business and on me personally by getting over it DOUBLE QUICK these days.

Want a longer list?

I appreciate this is not the usual long list of points that I might be better known for in a post but I do hope you agree there might just be something new here that can benefit you and your business. What is more I’d love to have your thought in the comments below and even if you have something that is usually not mentioned to add yourself.

And if you really want a longer list I recently came across this post : Ten Dirty Secrets Of Successful Entrepreneurs

Frankly I wish I’d written it myself – it sums up so many of my own thoughts precisely. Real world advice that I fully recommend to you.

And one final quote that really resonates with me at present…from Paulo Coelho and his novel: Brida

When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.

The post Real Life Entrepreneur Success Secrets appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

It wasn’t always this way: I used to struggle to get leads and only converted a small percentage of them into paying customers. But I’ve learned a lot in the last year and today I want to share it with you so that you can experience a similar boom for your small business, startup, or online service.

You’ll learn about the blog post that has earned me a ton of leads thanks to a little note that I added as an afterthought. I’ll also share with you a simple trick that my friend taught me that has had a huge impact on the percentage of leads that I’m actually able to turn into clients.

How to Attract More Leads Online

My clientele is about half local and half online. My local leads are more likely to become clients whereas I tend to get more online leads per month, so it all evens out.

The great thing about attracting business online is that you get to work with clients from all over the world. Last month, I worked for a company based out of Hong Kong. That’s the magic of attracting leads online (though admittedly it didn’t seem so magical when I was trying to schedule meetings with a 15-hour time difference).

From Interviewee to Lead

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: my network has been the single most important factor in my business success. One of the primary ways that I’ve expanded my online network is through interviews.

Last year, I helped conduct interviews with 20 of the world’s top online entrepreneurs for Web Domination 20. I gained a ton of insight into what it takes to build a successful online business, but I also formed a connection with the entrepreneurs we interviewed.

Four of the 20 interviewees ended up inquiring about hiring my company’s services over the next six months. That’s pretty amazing – especially when you consider that learning from these people and being able to share their advice with others was already more than enough incentive to interview them.

If you have a blog and you’re not asking the top people in your niche to sit down with you for an interview, then you’re missing out. It will expand your knowledge, create valuable content for your audience, build your network… and if you’re lucky you may just get some new leads out of it as well.

Write Blog Posts that Generate Leads

I’ve never written a blog post with the goal of it getting leads for my business, but many of my posts have done that for me anyway.

My most successful post ever at getting leads is ‘Ultimate Guide: How to Make a Successful Kickstarter Campaign‘. It’s an extremely in-depth resource (3,000+ words) designed to help anybody who’s interested in starting a Kickstarter project.

One of the sections is about making a great Kickstarter video. But by the end of it, I realized that I had really only scratched the surface about what makes a good video. So, I added this little note:

Still Have Questions about Video?

Video is my forte and I’ve produced a handful of videos for Kickstarter campaigns through my video production company. There’s too much that goes into a great video to cover fully here, so if you still have questions feel free to ask me a question in the comment section below and I’ll do my best to respond promptly.

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but ever since I’ve been getting emails from leads all around the world inquiring about my rates for Kickstarter video production. These leads have been especially warm and – after talking with them – I find that it’s because they’re impressed by the knowledge of Kickstarter that I displayed in the article.

You can use this same formula in your industry to attract leads. Write an amazingly valuable, in-depth article that will appeal to an audience of your potential customers. Then at some point in the article, let them know that you offer a paid service to those interested in benefiting further from your expertise.

Turning Leads into Clients

All the leads in the world don’t mean a thing if you can’t close the sale. When I first started out, I was letting most of my online leads slip through the cracks.

One of my big mistakes was writing long emails that included lots of complicated questions. Video projects are complex by nature, but it was my job to make it simple for the client. I didn’t realize that at first and the result was that I overwhelmed some leads to the point where they just didn’t reply back.

With each lead I’ve responded to, I’ve learned a little bit more about how to talk with somebody who’s interested in hiring my services. I’ve come a long way and today I feel confident that – as long as the our businesses are a good fit for one another – I can turn every lead into a client.

Seek First to Understand

When you get an email from a new lead, your instinct is probably to reply right away. But before you click ‘send’, make sure that you’ve done a little bit of online sleuthing into the identity of your new lead.

After a quick read-through of your lead’s website or LinkedIn profile, you can generally get a good feeling for the size of their business, their role in the business, and their likely objectives for the project. This knowledge will inform you as you consider the services you could offer them and the rates you will charge.

You may also get the impression that the person on the other end of the email isn’t likely to make a good client. Maybe you can glean from their website that they haven’t invested much time in their business, that their resources are very limited, or that they engage in shady business practices.

Not all leads are created equal – and some simply aren’t worth following up with. For those who are, the more you know about them and their business, the more likely you’ll be able to close the deal.

Get Them on the Phone / Skype

The best advice I’ve ever received about landing clients online came from Nicholas Tart. He told me that closing a sale over email is incredibly difficult and that I would have better luck if I instead used email to schedule a conversation over phone or Skype.

I tried this with my very next lead – and I closed the sale in that first conversation over Skype. Ever since I’ve taken up this practice I’ve enjoyed a significantly higher conversion rate.

Why Talking Voice-to-Voice is So Important

First, a phone conversation helps me to understand the client’s project and their needs better than email. I can ask questions of them and get immediate responses, one after the other (something that would probably take six emails over the course of a week otherwise). When I understand my clients better, I’m better able to offer them the right service at the right rate. Hence, more sales.

Talking to a potential client in person helps me to make a personal connection with the person on the other line. This is helpful in earning their trust – and trust is all-important in doing business.

The Shortcomings of Talking Over the Phone

While a phone conversation is great for getting the ball rolling, it isn’t the best way to seal a project in stone. After all, the details of phone conversation are quickly lost. That’s why I end each conversation with a promise to compile some of what we discussed into a project plan that I’ll send to them the following day.

The Power of Project Plans

I learned my lesson early on that it’s important to have some sort of written agreement between both parties that details the services to be rendered, the method and amount of payment, and all other important expectations of the project.

I used to call these documents ‘contracts’ but now I call them ‘project plans’. It may just be a matter of semantics, but I find that it’s made a difference both in how I prepare the documents and how they’re received by my clients. Project plans come off as more interesting – and less intimidating – than contracts.

What’s in a good project plan?

I start with a brief overview that describes the nature of the project and the services to be rendered very generally. Then I delve into the details for each service (broken up into Item A, Item B, Item C and so on). Next is a project timetable, followed by payment information.

At the top of each page is the full name of the client’s company and at the bottom of each page is the name of my company and all of my contact information.

Lately, I’ve been putting a lot of care and attention to detail in my project plans and the result have been spectacular. Clients see the quality of the project plan and rightfully assume that our work on their actual project will be of the same pedigree. More importantly, a well-made project plan provides answers to many of their questions, overcomes their objections to proceeding, and sets the whole project up for success.

Once your lead receives your project plan, they should have everything they need to make a decision about doing business with you. If you’ve presented yourself well up to this point, then chances are you’ve just converted your lead into a client.

The Single Best Way to Get More Leads and Clients

Just like how Michael Dunlop says that the best way to get traffic to your website is simply to write great content for it, the single best way to get more leads and clients is to do quality work. Do quality work and you’ll have a stronger portfolio, better testimonials, and more referrals.

For me, that means striving to make every video that we produce better than the one that preceded it. The result is that right now three of our clients are all referrals from one client we had last spring.

So the quality of your work comes first, but that doesn’t make the other strategies I’ve shared any less important. I’m interested in learning what techniques or approaches you have found most helpful in attracting leads and landing clients, so please feel free to share your responses in the comments below.

For more on offering an online service, check out my 20 tips for making money with a service business.

Photo Credit: MyTudut via Compfight.

The post How to Attract Leads and Land Clients Online appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Still, I get a lot of puzzled looks when I tell people that having a blog is the single most important thing a business, cause, or person can do to advance online. Even though ‘blogging’ has hit it big, most people don’t get what makes blogging so powerful, helpful, and beneficial.

To put an end to that, I’ve compile a list of the 20 biggest benefits of having a blog below. If you’re among the uninitiated, prepare to be enlightened. If you’ve already started a blog of your own (as I assume many of you Income Diary readers do) then you can consider this an affirmation of why you do what you — and a good place to direct people who still think that a blog is just a pointless public diary.

The 20 Biggest Benefits of Blogging

#1 Get a Better Job

According to MediaBistro, nine in ten companies mine online profiles before making a new hire. Employers want to hire people who have a strong online influence:

“Determining influence is so critical to brands because this is what drives word of mouth validation – typically the most powerful and cost-effective marketing method available.”

Mark Schaefer, from an interview on Inc.com

Put simply, employers prefer to hire people with a positive online influence and blogging is the single best way to achieve that.

#2 Start a New Business

Sometimes a blog starts out as a hobby only to become a full-time business.

That’s what happened to Pat Flynn, who created a blog called Green Exam Academy simply to share his thoughts and insights on architecture. When Flynn was laid off from his job, he decided to take his blog a little bit more seriously and about one year later the blog had become a $100,000 per year business.

That type of growth isn’t typical. But Flynn’s story is a great example of how a simple blog can be the foundation for a thriving business if you’re willing to commit to it.

#3 Get More Clients to Your Existing Business

Static websites don’t attract many new clients or customers. But a regularly updated blog can produce a constant stream of good leads from all around the world.

When you publish in-depth blog posts that help potential clients/customers solve their problems, they come to trust you and respect you as an expert in the field. If they want more help than a blog post can offer, then they’re likely to be interested in hiring your business.

I know that this is Neil Patel’s primary revenue model for Quicksprout and I’ve also used it to good effect for my video business.

#4 Become a Better Writer

The only way to become a better writer is to write – pages and pages, day after day.

Of course, that’s exactly what an active blogger spends his or her time doing. The more you blog, the more you write – and the better writer you become.

#5 Become a Published Author

The publishing business isn’t what it used to be and publishers are less likely than ever before to take a chance on an unknown author.

They would much rather give a contract to an author with a built-in audience of readers – and that’s where having a blog comes in. So keeping a blog isn’t just a good way to become a better writer, it may be your fastest path to becoming a published writer.

#6 Get Immediate Feedback

An author has to wait months between finishing his/her book and reading the reviews, but bloggers get to read their readers’ comments the same day they click ‘publish’.

This makes blogging a great way to get feedback on an idea that you want to develop further. Having an outside perspective and a little bit of constructive criticism is invaluable.

#7 Learn More About a Group of People

Bloggers spend most of their time sharing their ideas and insights with their readers. But if you listen, you’ll find that your readers share a lot with you too.

I learn a lot about the readers on Income Diary from your comments, your tweets, and your posts on the forums. That information helps me to know what type of posts to write and I know that it also helps Michael determine what products to develop that will help his readers the most.

Knowing about your audience is invaluable (this is why companies spend so much time and money testing out their products in focus groups). As a blogger, achieving this type of insight is a natural byproduct of your day-to-day routine.

#8 Gain Influence

What’s the best way to change the world? You could become a politican, activist, or volunteer.

Or you could become a blogger. A successful blogger gains a wide audience of people who trust and respect them.

#9 Establish Yourself as an Expert in Your Field

Anybody can start a blog on any subject they like. So you don’t get a lot of respect just for saying, “I have a website about that.”

But over time, as you write more posts and share more of your expertise, you’re website will change from ‘just another blog’ into a powerful demonstration of your knowledge in a field. When somebody visits your site and sees the insights you’ve shared on a subject, along with the community of people who respect and seek that insight, it will be clear that you’re genuinely an expert in the field.

Being an expert is a good thing. You may get consideration for careers, awards, or consulting opportunities.

#10 Build a Network

“The richest people in the world build networks.

Everyone else looks for work.”

- Robert Kiyosaki

Starting a blog is a guaranteed way to expand your network.

First of all, valuable and interesting blog posts attract readers who will then comment on your site and send you personal messages through your contact page. Many of your readers will be asking for help, but others will be looking to help you.

A blog is also a good platform for reaching out to others. Many of the first posts on Income Diary were interviews with experts in the ‘make money online’ community. With every interview, Michael gained a personal relationship with an influential person.

#11 Learn In-Demand Skills

Easy-to-use blogging platforms like WordPress have made it so that a person doesn’t need to have a grasp of computer programming in order to start a blog.

But through the process of blogging, most people learn some HTML and CSS simply because it’s easier to make minor improvements to your site by yourself than it is to hire somebody each time. That’s good news because fluency in web design, HTML, and CSS are highly valued skills in this day and age.

The same can be said for a whole slew of other blog-related skills, such as graphic design, search engine optimization, content marketing, and social media marketing.

#12 Improve Your SEO

Ultimately, search engines want to deliver results that are helpful to their users. When you write a series of in-depth, valuable articles around a topic, Google takes notice.

Each high-quality blog post that you publish is another opportunity to get traffic from search.

#13 Collect Emails

There’s a lot of talk about social media today, but email is still the most reliable way to communicate online. People check their email regularly and they’re used to receiving important updates.

Getting somebody to give you their primary email isn’t easy, but once you have it you have a direct connection with that person. You’ll then be able to get their attention whenever you find something that you think will benefit them or if there’s something important regarding your business or blog that you want to inform them about.

#14 Stay Knowledgeable in Your Field

If you’re looking for an incentive to keep up to date on all of the latest information on a certain subject, starting a blog is a great start. Your weekly quest to put up new content will lead you to always be searching for new information and sharing it with your readers.

#15 Sell a Product

A blog can make for a great virtual store. Michael has made a small fortune selling Pop-Up Domination on Income Diary and other bloggers have found success selling everything from e-books to membership sites.

#16 Talk to Your Idols

I first became an entrepreneur back in 2010 when I helped Nicholas Tart compile a book of interviews with 25 of the world’s top young entrepreneurs.

One of the entrepreneurs we wanted to interview was Joe Penna, AKA Mystery Guitar Man. Like me, he was a musician and producer of creative online videos. Getting to sit down and talk with him was an inspiring experience that I’ll always remember.

If we hadn’t had a blog, I truly doubt we would have had the online credibility for Joe to take the time and sit down and talk with me.

#17 Express Yourself

This one’s pretty simple: a blog is an expressive medium that can contain words, images, and sounds. Whether your blog is formal business affair or a personal “what-I-ate-for-breakfast-this-morning” diary, blogging is powerful form of self-expression.

#18 Help Others

Every good blog helps its readers. Income Diary does this by offering free information about how to make money online. Other blogs help people lose weight, raise their kids, and come to terms with life-threatening disease. Yet others mobilize groups of people to take action and raise money for important causes.

The power of a blog to educate, inspire, and bring like-minded people together makes blogging a great way to help people.

#19 Build Trust Online

Trust is a rare and valuable commodity online. You can’t buy trust. It has to be earned by demonstrating your commitment to your readers, time and time again.

As it turns out, that’s exactly what good bloggers do by regularly posting valuable, honest articles on their blogs. The more people whose trust you’ve earned, the easier it will be to accomplish your goals online.

#20 Take Control of Your Online Identity

Whether you’re a person or business, there’s probably lots of information about you online. When somebody searches for you online, you want to make sure that they get an accurate and complete picture of who you are and what you’re all about.

Starting a blog that covers all the bases is a great way to control your online identity and make sure that the top result on Google makes a the right first impression.

The Last Word:

After listing the 20 biggest benefits of starting and maintaining a blog, I still feel like I’ve left a lot unsaid. A blog can be more than just a way of advancing your online presence; it can be a way of advancing your life… a platform you create that can propel you forward in the direction of your choice.

One place your blog may take you this year Yanik Silver’s Underground Seminar in Washington DC. In case you missed it, Income Diary will be giving away scholarships to the event to ten deserving young entrepreneurs.

If you can think of a big benefit to blogging that I’ve missed, please share it in the comment section below. Otherwise, please share this post through your social networks so that people will stop giving me those confused looks when I talk about the huge importance of blogging.

Featured image courtesy of Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com  cc.

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