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Under The Radar with PotPieGirl
Under The Radar - by PotPieGirl
Day 3
Assets
Welcome to Day 3 of my series - "Under The Radar". If you missed the previous days, you can find them here:
Under The Radar - Day 1
Under The Radar - Day 2
Yesterday we talked about snowballs and the snowball effect with internet marketing.
I also talked about when I was getting started how I didn't have the money or knowledge to make it snow to even begin to make a single snowball so I had to follow my own action plan to learn how to make it snow for free.
Snowballs are niche sites.
Each niche site is its own little business.
Better yet, each niche site is its own little business that runs itself after your intial work is done.
But the best part is, each niche site that you own is an ASSET.
An asset is something that you own, that has value, and something that can be sold.
I always know that whether a niche site of mine makes money now or not, it is still an asset to me.
I own it. It has value. It can be sold.
Every day that these little sites are online, aging, gaining back links, and rising in the search engine rankings, they become more of an asset to me - and to others.
God forbid, but if ever something horrible happened in my life or in the life of one of my loved ones, I could pop one, some, or ALL of my niche sites online to sell them and quickly generate the cash I needed.
So no matter what those niche sites are doing directly for me at the moment, those assets provide me with peace of mind.
Also, these niche sites of mine are very valuable in another way.
Let's say I run across an already profitable website that is for sale - and I'd like to buy it.
However, it might be a bit more than I want to spend.
So, how can I generate the cash to buy the bigger/better website?
Sell off assets.
Yup, sell some of my smaller websites to generate the money needed to buy the bigger/better site.
Assets rock....pure and simple.
They give you options, choices, passive income...and peace of mind.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
(sorry, couldn't resist saying that...lol)
So - what goes into building a niche website?
This is something that I teach the basics of (for free) at my 6StepNicheSites.com site.
I walk you through the very basics of creating small, targeted, revenue generating, niche websites with WordPress.
Is building niche sites really hard?
No.
To me, being a roofer in 100 degree heat is really hard.
To me, being a single mom with no job is REALLY hard.
To me, working a 60+ hour a week job you hate because you have a family to take care of is really super hard.
To me, losing a loved one is tear-your-heart-out hard.
Learning to make small niche websites with WordPress is not really hard like that at all.
BUT, there is a learning curve...and it IS time-consuming...
And sadly, it is absolutely hard enough to keep people from doing it.
There are a lot of details involved in building an effective niche site. While it's not "really hard", it can be challenging and frustrating - but it's the work you must do to be able to get to where the real money happens - marketing your site and getting it to snowball.
In relation to other "really hard" things in life, making a niche website is not hard like that at all once you learn the skills - or learn a shortcut.
Now, please notice I said it's not "really hard", but I did NOT say it was effortless =)
Passive income streams and assets are built or bought - they don't appear magically.
So, for those of you that don't know a thing about creating a niche website using WordPress, head on over to 6StepNicheSites.com and read the lessons there.
The Steps To Make a Niche Website
In short, there are about 20 steps to making a niche website to get it off and running (ie, to where the worst of your
work is done).
1. Decide what you website will be about
2. Choose keywords
(note: #1 and #2 can happen in either order. Sometimes you get an idea, sometimes you come across a keyword. Regardless of which order it happens, always be sure you have at least one idea of how to monetize the site in your mind.
Also, speaking of keywords..... I have tried and worked with a LOT of keyword tools - and when I say a LOT, I mean a LOT LOT LOT.
Recently, I have found myself going back to the same keyword tool over and over. It sets up perfectly for me, I like the way it's set up, I like the way it looks and the way the data is presented, and I LOVE the results I get from using it.
I'm gonna go off on a tangent here for a second, but let's talk about keyword research.
If you follow my blog at all, you know how I do keyword research and the things I look for before choosing profitable keywords and words I can rank for.
If you haven't read my post on how I do keyword research, you can read it here:
http://www.potpiegirl.com/2009/01/keyword-research-how-i-do-it
Or just google - keyword marketing research - I'm usually #1 - #3 for that phrase. Not bad out of over 23 million competing pages =)
So, back on topic.... this keyword tool I've been using and that I have fallen in love with gives me exactly what *I* look for when doing keyword research...and it presents it the way *I* want to see it.
In fact, I like this keyword tool so much that I have a new site totally dedicated to it!
Take a look....
http://www.Niche-Keywords.org
Ok, let's get back to the list)
Alrighty... where was I?
#1 and #2 were to decide what your site is going to be about and finding keywords all while keeping monetization ideas in mind.
3. Buy a domain name
4. Get hosting/ or add new site to your current hosting
5. Load WordPress onto your new site
6. Set up site/SEO optimize it properly with right techniques and right plug-ins
7. Find a theme you want to use to customize how you want your site to look.
8. Write unique content for site, or pay someone to write it. About 5-10 articles is a good start.
9. Load the content on to your site.
10. Create About Me, Privacy Policy, and Contact pages
11. Monetize it
12. Appearance and site tweaks (this can take some time and patience as you learn how to tweak the php files in your
site)
13. Add analytics/stats tracking
14. Create Site-Map/ Final SEO touches
15. Get Indexed. Gotta get Google to find you for this to ever work.
16. Add an Opt-In form to start building a list (by the way, an email list in a targeted market is a VERY valuable asset!)
17. Create Bonus/Incentive for folks to opt-in. (I found a very cool,and very inexpensive, tool that really, really helps me with this - saves me a BUNCH of time!. You can check that out here)
18. Create follow up content for list subscribers (again, that cool tool really helps with this, too)
19. Build back links for improved ranking and gaining Page Rank
20. Generate traffic.
That is pretty much the entire process in 20 steps.
Those of you that follow One Week Marketing and have a nice amount of campaigns out there will already have the resources to accomplish #19 and #20 - but I'll talk about resources later.
So, are those 20 steps REALLY HARD?
No.
They can be mundane.
They can get frustrating at times.
They can be very time-consuming.
Many of them can be avoided, but as I said, I'll talk about shortcuts later.
But is all this really hard? No.
It is simply what you've got to do and got to learn in order to even begin experiencing the snowball effect.
Know what you do after you've done these 20 steps?
YOU DO THEM AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.
We're making snowballs here!
Grab the snow and build that snowball with those 20 steps....let it get traction and then let it roll on down the hill and build yet another valuable asset for YOU.
I'll see ya tomorrow!
Jennifer
~PotPieGirl
Read Day 4 Here
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