You read this article and assume I’m going to tell you about the newest “scheme” that you can buy into for only $90/year. WRONG! I’m going to tell you how you can start your own business, with products of YOUR choosing, at the domain name of your choice, writing your own ads and doing your own promotions – for less than $90/year. You do everything your way – keeping 100% of the profits, choosing 100% of the products, and making all the decisions.
But don’t worry; it’s not as hard as it sounds. I am about to guide you through the whole process. You are going to learn:
· How to find a niche
· How to find and choose products
· How to get the right hosting and a domain name
· How to do site design
· How to build content
· What payment processor to use
· How to promote effectively using different forms of free advertising
And I’ll teach you where to find everything to do ALL of these things for you automatically, with little or no effort, and for less than $90 a year.
Think I’m kidding? I’m doing it. I spend no more than $90 a year on my online business, and it is more than blossoming! In fact, as I write this article I have plans in the works to go back to school and get my law degree, paying for it with the money I make from my business. And I can run my business in my free time!
Okay, let’s get started.
The first key to any successful business is NOT developing a product. I see people do that every day and it is the biggest mistake a person can make when going into business for themselves.
Your first step is to find a niche market. A niche market is defined as a segment of the buying population that has a need that you can fill. There are several hundreds of ways to find a niche market but my favorite is this tool - http://www.nichewords.com/niche.html
You should be able to automatically click on that link. And for the record, I do not own this site nor do I benefit from your use of it. The same goes for most, if not all of the sites I will recommend in this article.
When you go to this site, you will see a very simple page with several drop-down boxes. The first will be called “Daily Value”. This is how much revenue is being brought in through that particular keyword across the net every day. You can search anything from 0-$99 all the way up to $1000+. You will be tempted to look at the highest valued keywords. So was I. But the most important drop down box on that page will show you why it is a bad idea… Look for the box called “Competing Sites”, which should be the fourth box down. This tells you how many sites across the web are competing for the revenue for any particular keyword. If you select $1000+ in Daily Revenue, and less than 10,000 competing sites – you’ll get a blank page.
Why does this happen? Because any keyword that makes more than $1000 a day has tens of thousands of other sites scrapping for the revenue.
By the same token, any word worth 0-$99 with less than 10,000 competing sites is going to be a brand name. If you don’t believe me, check yourself. The only keyword on that whole page that is not necessarily a brand name is “Illinois”, which I’m sure, is branded by some company.
Bottom line is there is no keyword in the world with less than 10,000 competing sites unless it is a registered trademark.
My best suggestion is to select “All” under daily value. This will give you all of the keyword options you can handle, depending on how many sites are competing for it.
So, what you have left to work with is determining how many sites you want to compete with. Until you hit 200,000 sites, you really have nothing to work with. Just keep at it until you find something that interests you, has a decent daily value, and has less than 100,000,000 competing sites for that keyword.
Too much work? I’ll tell you the secret niche, that isn’t so secret. If you can find a way for people to make money, people will pay for it - plain and simple. Internet marketing and online business are two of the hottest markets on earth today. Millions have been made in this market, and there are billions left for grabs. This is the niche I focus on, and it has never failed me for one simple reason – there is always someone in the world that needs more money. Always.
Now that you have a niche, you need a product.
To help explain this better, I’m going to give you three scenarios in which my favorite fictional character, Mr. Joe, develops a product three different ways.
Scenario One
Mr. Joe searches for wholesalers online that sells a product to suit his niche, golf. This particular wholesaler sells golf clubs. Mr. Joe either orders the product in bulk, or sets up a drop shipping account (where the wholesaler ships the products individually to your client, instead of a large quantity to you). The wholesaler charges $150 for a set of golf clubs. After doing market research, Mr. Joe determines that the average sale price of a set of golf clubs is $200. So for every set of golf clubs Mr. Joe sells, he makes $50. After he deducts shipping fees and order fulfillment fees charged by the wholesaler, Mr. Joe makes $20. Yes, $20 profit for a set of $200 golf clubs. Mr. Joe is not on the fast track to millions this way.
Scenario Two
After his brush with bankruptcy selling golf clubs, Mr. Joe decides to write an ebook on golf instead. After 3 months of research, Mr. Joe manages to write the book in a month. During that 4 month period, Mr. Joe is not getting paid. When he finally begins to sell his new eBook, nothing happens. Mr. Joe is not a good name in golf, nor does he know much about writing marketable eBooks. Although Mr. Joe is set up for everything to happen automatically, and gets 100% of the profits from the sale of his eBook, he still doesn’t do very well. He doesn’t know how to write a marketable eBook, and it takes him 4 months of unpaid work every time he wants to release a new one. Mr. Joe is doing better, but not well enough to pay the bills.
Scenario Three
Mr. Joe has learned his lesson. He needs a digital product written for him, that he can sell right away. And it needs to be written by someone who knows how to write marketable eBooks. While surfing away, Mr. Joe finds a website. The website says it will deliver him brand new, fully finished products every week that he can sell. And it only costs $5 a month. Mr. Joe, being skeptical after his past experiences, looks around the net to find other resale rights. And, just like what I found, Mr. Joe can’t find resale rights any cheaper. In fact, eBook publishers are charging $200 a piece for resale rights to their eBooks! Mr. Joe, astonished at the highway robbery he has seen, goes back to the website and orders the resale rights subscription. He puts up a website, and starts to sell the eBooks he got as a bonus for signing up for his resale rights. Mr. Joe now gets a new digital product that he can sell right away, written by someone who knows how to write them, delivered to his email address every week. Mr. Joe has found the secret of what to sell – and how to get it – on the internet.
Do you see what happened? Our good friend Mr. Joe learned the hard way that selling tangible goods is an expensive, low profit business. And he learned that writing eBooks is not as easy as some would like you to believe! I know - I’ve tried it. Mr. Joe found the solution that is actually a really hot market right now – resale rights. If you can write a good eBook, resale rights can make you $$. If you can’t write a good eBook, resale rights can make you a killing – by selling the products you have rights to.
Learn these lessons from Mr. Joe, and don’t try to start out at the top. Resale rights give you 100% of the profit and 0% of the hassle. I know I’ve been making money from them for years. Here’s the site that myself (and the fictional Mr. Joe) found, that gives you the resale rights for $5 a month. http://www.novuslife.com/subscriptiontoprofit.html. This subscription is 60 dollars out of your budget, but it really is worth it. You’d kill yourself coming up with your own new product once a week anyway!
It really is neat, and you get all kinds of products – not just stuff on internet marketing like all those other sites. Resale rights are the way to cash in on the eBook market – trust someone who has done it.
How to get hosting and a .com domain name for $30/year
When I first started in business, I had a very limited budget. I don’t mean $500, I mean $5. I was that low on funds. But I found this host, and I’ve used them ever since. For less than $30 (I think its $24.95US), you get a .com domain name and free hosting for a year. Don’t be scared away by free hosting, it really can handle everything you need it to do – and there are NO ads forced onto your page. The only downside is that it cannot handle MySQL databases, but if you use the tools I’m telling you about you won’t need them anyway. For the record, there is an affiliate program. But I am not a member of it. Here is the direct URL – http://www.newbiesite.com. Just like the other resources, I’m not affiliated with them. I just use them and think they’re good enough for what I need.
Here is a tip – and this has helped me GREATLY. Choose a memorable, unique domain name – that is NOT descriptive of a certain market or product. Even though you can’t be everything to everyone, you don’t want to have to spend another $30 every time you change your mind about what to sell. Don’t limit yourself, and choose something generic but memorable.
Site Design
Boy oh boy – we’ve already spent our $90. How on earth are we going to hire a web-designer!? You won’t. There are plenty of sites on the internet that give you free templates that make GREAT websites. I personally have never designed a site from scratch, even though I know how. These templates are so easy to use. Just get a simple editor (Dreamweaver MX is my favorite, and they do offer a free trial version at http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/download/), then go to the site listed below. Just pick your template, download it, load it in your editor, and type in your content!
**Note: If you’re really new to HTML, get DreamWeaver. They have a tutorial that will show you how to edit everything, and it is really easy to learn. You don’t even have to learn any HTML – just fill in the blanks.
My favorite site for free templates (all of my sites have used templates from this site, I highly recommend it): http://www.interspire.com/templates/
How to Build Content
Don’t think content is important? Think again. You’re reading this article because you want information. It is probably posted on a site that is selling something. Would you even be on this site if you weren’t interested in the information in this article? Probably not. So you need the same for your site. But where on earth can you get free content to use as you please? The answer is… EVERYWHERE! You can do RSS feeds, news updates, or my favorite – post articles. And no, you don’t have to write them. And yes, they really are free! Here are some great sites to get free content from. The only rule is, keep the author’s bio attached. That is what they get in return for providing you with content, so be courteous and abide. We’ll talk later about using this method from the other end – writing articles and having them published all over the web, linking back to you.
Article Sites:
http://www.a1articles.com/
http://www.articlecity.com/
http://www.simplejoe.com/free-articles-website-content.htm
http://www.isnare.com/
http://www.impactarticles.com/
http://www.ezinearticles.com
Choosing a Payment Processor
If you’re going to sell anything, you need to be able to get the money. No doubt about it, if customers have to send you a check in the mail to get an instant download you’re not going to sell a whole lot. I use PayPal. It really works out great for me, as funds can be directly deposited to or from my PayPal account from my regular bank account in as little as 2 days – plus, if I buy anything, I can use an eCheck and it will instantly buy the product and deduct the cash from my bank balance. PayPal is definitely a good system.
How to Promote Effectively Using Free Forms of Advertising
Here is where all of our budget conscious friends get excited. Free advertising. No, it’s not as fast as paid advertising. But, it can be more effective than any ad. Here are a few suggestions for some free advertising:
Start an affiliate program – having thousands of people working around the clock to sell your product is something we all dream of. But you can have it – and it won’t cost you a thing! Everybody used to use ClickBank, but now they are all switching over… There is a new guy on the scene making waves, because they don’t charge a set up fee. Or a monthly fee or such high commissions, or set a limit on the price of your product. Mike Filsaime set this up, and did a pretty good job, too. PayDotCom is the next big thing. http://www.paydotcom.com
Write articles – just like this one, and submit it to all those sites listed above where you can get free content from. Add information about your product at the end, and people will see your product hundreds of times a day!
Do a joint venture – with someone on the same level as you. Tell them that if they will send out an email to their subscribers telling them about your new product, you’ll give them a portion of the sales they make. Just be sure to give your partners a higher commission than your affiliates. They are worth it.
To recap…
Here is everything you just read, in a really small nutshell.
Find a niche before you develop a product. Resale rights are the easiest way to get products, and the cheapest ones are at http://novuslife.com/subscriptiontoprofit.html. NewbieSite offers the best hosting deal around for ecommerce sites, at less than $30/year. Just be sure to pick a domain name that is generic enough to reuse for something else at http://www.newbiesite.com. Site design is easy, if you use templates. Get free ones at http://www.interspire.com/templates/. To edit your templates, I suggest getting DreamWeaver MX at http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/download/. Getting content is easy and free at the following websites, among others… http://www.a1articles.com/ http://www.articlecity.com/ http://www.simplejoe.com/free-articles-website-content.htm http://www.isnare.com/ http://www.impactarticles.com/
http://www.ezinearticles.com. PayPal is the best and most secure payment processor, and it lets you accept all kinds of payments. Get it at http://www.paypal.com. The three best free advertising techniques are an affiliate program (http://www.paydotcom.com), writing articles and submitting them to the directories listed above, and doing joint ventures.
And where did the $90 go? Simple.
$30/year for hosting and a domain name at http://www.newbiesite.com
$5 a month for products at http://www.novuslife.com/subscriptiontoprofit.html
So there you have it - $90 a year with unlimited possibilities. And I guarantee you, if you don’t take my advice someone else will. So do it!
