Joined: 07 Dec 2004 Posts: 45 Location: Dublin, Ireland
Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 8:47 am Post subject: Summer Project - Help.
Hi,
This post is a little long but this is necessary in order to get our message across. Apologies in advance.
My son (Dave, age 16) and I have done a deal. We have agreed that he will spend a certain amount of time each day during his summer holidays working to learn how to build a business on the internet. We have a business plan in place that provides him with a small weekly wage in return for reaching certain targets.
The objective of the venture is to establish whether or not it is feasible for both of us to generate a residual income from doing business on the internet. If successful my son will use the income to support his needs while at college while I will use it to help towards achieving my goal of early retirement from my current job.
Our strategy is that over the course of approximately 2.5 months during the summer period we will explore the possibility of generating an income from the internet by:
-Developing an understanding of internet marketing basics.
-Seeking advice and guidance on internet marketing forums.
-Studying what others are doing to make money on the internet.
-Testing certain internet business strategies.
It is the intention to review tested strategies fortnightly and to decide on whether to continue with the strategy or not. The plan is to implement a new strategy fortnightly regardless of whether the previous strategy is discontinued. It is the intention that this will eventually result in a number of successful strategies operating at the same time.
The financial target for the 2.5 months is to be in a position where the business is generating 40 Euro profit per week by the end of August.
Interim targets are as follows:
-End of June ? Initial understanding of basic principles of internet marketing. Decide on strategy.
-End of July ? Income/Expenditure break even. Review strategy.
-End of August ? 40 Euro per week profit. Review strategy.
The launch of the business will be funded with an initial investment of 800 Euro.
A budget will be established for the venture which will forecast income and expenditure for the period up to end of August. Financial information will be presented in the form of cash flow and profit and loss spreadsheets. These reports will be updated and reviewed on a regular basis but at least weekly.
What we are looking for now is:
-advice on what reading materials or other resources will give us the best guidance on implementing our strategy.
-guidance on what strategies to implement in order to be in the best position to meet our targets.
-a MENTOR - somebody who would be willing to guide Dave through the maze that is internet marketing.
We would also be grateful for feedback on our overall plan.
Thanks for taking the time to read this far!
Dave (Snr) _________________ Remember - Success comes in can's, not in cannot's.
Visit our internet business progress Blog at www.i-bol.com
Our first real site - www.buy-electric-guitars-online.com
Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 6231 Location: by the beach, Australia
Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 10:37 am Post subject:
Congratulations on creating a plan. I'm sure that's more than most affiliates do when they start.
My advice would be to increase the sum of money you intend to make considerably, but also lengthen the time in which you hope to reach that goal. It often takes affiliates four to six months before they make useful money.
You need to be prepared for that when you start so you won't be disappointed.
Here's my effort at creating a training course for people starting out like you:
Joined: 09 Aug 2003 Posts: 1838 Location: Columbus, OH
Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 1:12 pm Post subject: Re: Summer Project - Help.
davemorris wrote:
If successful my son will use the income to support his needs while at college while I will use it to help towards achieving my goal of early retirement from my current job.
That's a great goal. I've been able to cut back on my regular "job" hours during the school year because of the revenue my Internet business spins off.
Don't be disappointed if you don't see results immediately, it does take some time.
I recommend that you give James Martell and Gary Antosh's material a look, they'll certainly help you create content based websites. _________________ Robert
Instant Site Comments - Allow Visitors to Comment On Your Content! EbookNiches.com - 4 PLR Ebook Packages Each Month
Learn About DropShipping
Joined: 07 Dec 2004 Posts: 45 Location: Dublin, Ireland
Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2005 10:04 am Post subject: Thanks for the encouragement!
Thanks to everybody so far for the advice and encouragement. Things are moving along nicely. Its already very much of a steep learning curve. Dave already has a niche that he will start with. On target for the first week.
akany,
We are thinking about the blog idea - I wiould be interested in hearing from others as the merits of this.
Allan,
Do you think the test period is too short? If so what do you think is the right period to be aiming for a positive cashflow?
Joined: 14 Jul 2003 Posts: 1761 Location: Bangor, Maine
Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2005 11:21 am Post subject:
I am not Allan, but I have my thoughts on the test period.
I think your test period is a great timespan to get your first site moving. At the end of that period, go back to Step 1 and start a new niche site. New domain, new niche, new content etc. This time, sprinkle in some new content on the 1st site while building site #2. Do this again with a third site at the end of the 2nd's time frame, and you should start seeing some good income rolling in from Site 1. Keep adding to Sites 1 and 2 while building 3. Keep doing this for as many websites as you can handle updating. And don't be afraid to outsource for your content or such. You'll find that the most profitable affiliate marketers have many many websites. _________________ Eric D. Burdo They Made $6,513 a day With Clickbank Doing This...
We are at the end of our first week and this has to be seen as progress
Dave (x2) _________________ Remember - Success comes in can's, not in cannot's.
Visit our internet business progress Blog at www.i-bol.com
Our first real site - www.buy-electric-guitars-online.com
What a wonderful idea....working with your son on a website. Teaching him to be self-sufficient and forge ahead with his own business is something I wish I had done with both my sons.
In any case, if you need content for your site to get it up and running a bit faster, a great place that I've found for submitting articles and finding articles to use is http://www.ezinearticles.com/ . You can submit up to 10 articles yourself, and can use up to 25 articles per year per unique domain from the article database. (I have no affiliation with them. I just use them for my own articles and building my sites).
I also browse through their databases to get ideas on articles to research and write. I've found it handy for building up my own web sites. Keep in mind that having good content related to your website is what will attract visitors (and potential customers).
I also have James Martell's ebook. It's one of the few I actually use and refer to often when planning out my sites (and content). His approach is to build very large content sites, but also they tend to be self-sustaining....meaning you may add new content, but you don't have to keep updating affiliate links and such like you would if you featured a bunch of individual products. Whatever affiliate links he adds are only found on 4 to 6 main pages and all other pages of his sites will point back to those main pages. Easy to maintain in this way.
Hope this helps you out somewhat. And best of luck! _________________ Rose Smith
Dave, I really can't speak for how long your projections and goals should be. However, I can give you 1 personal example of how things have worked for me, in terms of time.
My very first website was staretd 1 year ago. I worked diligently on it for all of 3 weeks, then became discouraged, and focused more engery on my primary business. At this point, the website had about 35 pages, and was making $5.00 US a MONTH
I did nothing to the site to improve it after this.
Around December of 2004, Traffic suddenly jumped up from 15 visitors a day to about 60 visitors a day. I became excited, and started writing more pages, and distributing more articles. I even hired a writer to make pages for me (at a price of $10.00 per page)
By March, I had about 100 pages of content, and had distributed about 20 articles to 25 different websites. I have not added a single page or asked for a single link after March of this year.
However, my income had only increased to about $180 U.S. a month. Still FAR less that I was hoping for.
Then, in april, my traffic started picking up, as did my income. This seemed to happen on a weekly basis, and has still shown no sign of stopping.
Now it is 1 year after starting my first website. I now receive 400-500 visitors a day, and the site has already made $600 this month, and it is on track to make $1000 in this month of June.
This is just one example, and I did NOT always focus on this website. In retrospect, I could have had it completed within 6-8 weeks, and then it would just be a waiting game as the traffic builds. Probably coulda made that $1000 a month about 7 months ago, but hindsight is always 20/20
So, it took me a year to hit the $1000 mark with one site...but it was well worth it, and now I know I can make more sites of this caliber in about 6 weeks each. If each one makes $500-$1000, this business should be making between $5000 and $10,000 each month by this next June.
I just want to illustrate the point that this is NOT an overnight get rich quick business. However, if your are diligent, patient, and work on it every day, you will most likely have a very comfortable income in 1 - 3 years.
Most businesses have 1, 3, and 5 year projections and goals. This one should be no different.
Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 1324 Location: Gainesville Florida USA
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2005 11:40 pm Post subject:
Dave,
Great post, great project, thanks for letting us be a part of it.
I think one of us must have ESP because just today I was thinking it would be interesting, and educational for all of us, to have a section on this board where each thread was focused on one person's new Net biz.
Each thread could be titled with the person's name, and we could follow each person's progress over months and years, and assist where possible.
And plugging in to newcomers energy can be good for us slightly burned out old timers too.
I've been feeding off her enthusiasm, energy, confidence etc, very helpful. I learn stuff too!
Anyway, I nominate you and your son to be the first formal case, as it's clear you have it together, and everybody likes to ride a train that's going somewhere.
A summary of that thread would be advice to not get drawn in to trying to learn everything about everything right away. Lots and lots of folks have been sucked down that rabbit hole never to return. Been there, done that myself.
The consensus of that thread seems to be that these three elements are the heart of the kind of Net business discussed here:
1. keyword research
2. link building
3. quality text content
How about replacing an overall evaluation of the market with a tight focus on those 3 things?
Agree with the others on the income time schedule. Every minute spent thinking about that is a minute not spent writing a quality article, imho.
The schedule to consider might be, how long will it take your son to write 100 quality keyword rich articles on a at least modestly profitable topic he is sincerely interested in?
Another consensus seems to be that for the first time out, passion and learning are more important than profit.
Wally and Allan, here's a vote for a section of the board where each thread is about a specific new person and their attempt to join our world.
Look forward to watching your family story unfold Dave. _________________ Free Forum And Ezine Hosting
http://Engage-Engine.com
Good luck to you, I hope everything turns out great. I'll keep my eye on your blog.
Greg P, could you post a link here to your first site? This would be a great example of a working site that generates profit. They would have a real example to analyze not only theoretical info gathered from forums etc.
Tuisu, I'd rather not post the web address, however, I'll tell you that it is in a profitable niche (for my primary keyword, the cost per click on google adwords is approx. $4.00)
Also, what I did is review about 15-20 products related to my niche, and then wrote about 100 pages on general information related to my niche.
Also, I followed James Martell almost to a T....so get the guide, it works!
I only did two things that he doesn't much discuss. I have some non-affiliate links to other MAJOR sites in the industry. I know my site isn't the only one with useful information, so i link to others that do a good job.
Also I link all my related pages together. (for example, if one page discusses dog health, i would link it to another page on my site talking about where the cheapest dog medication can be bought).
Other than that...just follow martell! _________________ http://www.trdiamonds.com - Manufacturing Fine Jewelry for wholesale and dropshipping
Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 6231 Location: by the beach, Australia
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2005 6:30 am Post subject:
Phil Tanny wrote:
I think one of us must have ESP because just today I was thinking it would be interesting, and educational for all of us, to have a section on this board where each thread was focused on one person's new Net biz.
Each thread could be titled with the person's name, and we could follow each person's progress over months and years, and assist where possible.
And plugging in to newcomers energy can be good for us slightly burned out old timers too.
I love it!
I've started a new discussion here to see what other people think:
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