Can You Build a 6 Figure Business From Home in 30 Days ( or Less) Using All Free Traffic?
Nov 2, 2008 at 10:30 pm in KARMA by ian
I say yes.
I had an interesting discussion on a popular online forum earlier today regarding free traffic.
The gist of the conversation, for brevity purposes – was essentially that free traffic was MUCH too hard to generate, way over-rated for conversion purposes and was sort of a poor man’s version of building a REAL online business when it comes to making money. ( as opposed to all PPC)
In some respects, I ALMOST agree with some of the points this putz was making…insofar as it pertains to social networking traffic ( I rarely bother) and even SOME natural, organic traffic efforts as well – as ANYONE who spends a ton on SEO will tell you ( I really don’t) that you can optimize your pages through the rafters, create GREAT content until your fingers bleed and your brain swells, but most folks are simply going to stop by, do a quick and cursory eye scan of your content, and be gone on the same out breath.
I like to think a lot of the content I have created on this ( and many other) sites is good, helpful and very targetted to my audience, yet…..on natural traffic it’s still unsusual for people to actually READ the content that brought them here ( through the SERP’s anyway) as illuminated by the 70% or more of folks who don’t even stay long enough to notice my bright and cheery smile and unusually fashionable command of the English language.
Which, to be totally honest, as a fragile minded meglomaniac, this perpetual pattern of early abandonment really hurts my feelings.
If your driving traffic for opt in’s – on blog and organic traffic - the numbers are worse – the percentages can be aneemic ( especially in the online marketing space) and quite frankly, unless you have a TON of free time to create content, a good argument could be made to simply suck it up and spend the money on PPC. (Where your opt in rates WILL go up exponentially with some decent copy and an attractive offer)
But, being cheap, resourceful and full of cafeine and ritalin, I refuse to take the path most traveled.
The simple truth is, and I hate to sound like a broken record, you CAN use simple article and press release submissions, for FREE, to build a MASSIVE list in one short month or less.
And I’ve got a BIG project planned for the next month or so, that I anticpate will be a 7 figure business within the first 12-18 months, where I plan on proving it.
Starting from scratch with no list. No product. And no site. Just a simple and exciting vision, and a comittment to make it happen.
And while I will be using a veritable avalanche of traffic generation techniques (including PPC to do it) a significant percentage of my blueprint will revolve around the very same FREE traffic techniques I’ve been preaching on here for a year or more.
In the meantime – I do believe you can start today, and using NOTHING more than free traffic techniques, (NOT including social network traffic which for the most part should NOT be a huge part of your short term montization strategy in my view) generate anywhere from Five to Ten THOUSAND visitors a DAY to a brand new site.…in your very first week.
You should be able to convert a significant percentage of those visitors to opt in’s (10% – 50% depending on your niche, copy, layout and offer) and with a half hearted follow up sequence, turn that into a 6 figure business in your first month. (extrapolated out over 12 months obviously)
Again – using a NEW site – and a very simple article marketing strategy, with only 6 articles over two days ( today is November 2, a Sunday – as you can see from the screen shot at the top of this article, these have only been live for 48 hours or so) these have generated multiple thousand views, several thousand URL clicks ( at a solid CTR of close to 30%) and over 500 opt in’s since yesterday.
Total time invested was about 3 hours, and that includes registering the domain, laying out the opt in template, writing the content for directories and squeeze page, and 1 hour of Law and Order Special Victims Unit while doing all of the above.
If this was a project I planned on sticking with (it’s not) as you can see, once you get the predictable part of the math down, ( average views per article, resource box conversion rate and landing page efficiency) you can scale this up and out to your little hearts content until your income goals are pretty much self fufilling.
The simple truth is whatever allows you to build a list, will allow you to build a REAL and enduring business you can count on. And the EASIEST way to do it for FREE is the above.
(Better than RSS subscribers, better than lots of comments on your blog and even better than a site with all kinds nice numbers on the google page rank totem pole of pointlessness.)
Plus if you are building sites to sell – there isn’t ANYTHING that is more attractive to a potential (smart) buyer than a site that comes with MORE than good content…..but a few thousand verified opt in’s to boot! You can do that – for free, using these very methods, and without ever buying one more internet marketing course, seminar or silliness, be on your way to where you want to be in time for Obama’s swearing in speech at the latest…;-)
It’s a wonderful idea. I don’t think the screenshots prove what your saying? How about a screenshot of the date the domain was purchased?
I’m not saying you can’t do it, It’s just not believable with what I see. I certainly would love to think it was that easy, even for you, Ian.
Hi Tony – I appreciate your skepticism! I’m just not sure which part of the data seems unbelievable ( or would be less far fetched with the date of a domain registration….which is sort of ancillary in terms of importance in my view) The important things I was trying to illuminate, which the screen shots were mean to illustrate are the following:
1)You CAN get massive exposure from article distribution in ONE day – and through LIMITED effort. ( article screenshot is time stamped from from Halloween day – which was Friday – all views came over the weekend – as screenshot was taken on Sunday prior to posting. Note: those figures are now even GREATER as of the time of your comment – Monday night the 3rd)
2)the bottom screenshot – which is fuzzy – is from the GMAIL account I have set up to notify me of new subscribers to this list – I don’t want the list name known obviously….or the people’s names and email addresses readable as that wouldn’t be very nice to do..:-) As you can see – each email is from Aweber’s confimration per new lead being added. The point was ONLY to show that those articles – which were FREE to do – took me very little timewise – have generated THOUSANDS of hits to a site that happens to be NEW (although that isn’t really that important….who cares if it’s 10 years old – you can see the PUBLISH date of the article content is what I’m trying to convey – this works EQUALLY as effeciently for an old, dormant and slothful site) AND…you can generate a BIG list off of the back of that simple effort.
So I now have a list ( 540 strong as of this morning not including junk emails and unsubscribes after getting the free report) on just about 6 articles. If you multiply that by 60 articles ( a few days worth of concerted effort) you are looking at mathematically speaking…or at least reasonable to expect – 10 times the registrations – or 5000 names. Even if it’s only half of that it’s 2500 names…..and you have the REAL basis of a business you can bank on – off of 4 or 5 days worth of work. (by the way – had I PAID for those opt in’s – ie – running ppc ads, those "clicks" and sign ups would have cost THOUSANDS of dollars on PPC ads (dating market)with NO guarantees…which was the point of the post in the first place..:-) Please note – I’m NOT suggesting that this is the END of your work on a campaign like this – rather JUST the beginning – but any reasonable metric of subscriber list value that has been carefully considered will give you a minimum monthly value for each lead you generate – even say at a low end of a dollar per verified lead ( which is low for this market) you have created the foundation for a profitable business in a few short days – which is much more than most will do.
But – no matter – I WILL be putting my money where my mouth is – I registered a BRAND new site about 10 days ago which will be the business I referred to in the post – that WILL be my primary focus going forward – something I’m passionate about that involves both making money online…and sort of helping others ( and myself) create real proseprity in a pragmatic, fun and genuine way – all while hopefully doing some real good in the world as well – if you are interested in seeing this scaled up and out from the very BOTTOM on up….keep your eyes peeled as I will use this a REAL and transparent example of all of this in action. (If it fails – it will certainly be AFTER I’ve already opened by big mouth and invited all to watch…I’m more than happy to take that chance – I’ve been promised my job back as chief fajita flipper at Taco Bell is all doesn’t go as planned..:-)
Thanks for reading..:-)
Very impressive.
I do not understand how you got so many article views in such a short time span.
Right now, 4 of my articles have been published on ezine articles for about 3 days.
Here are the stats for all 4:
Article views: 176
CTR: 104
The CTR is pretty solid (thanks to a strong resource box) but how did you manage to get that many views in only 48 hours?
I understand the keywords may have something to do with it, but I cannot see them making that huge of a difference.
A high CTR is definitely achievable, but I just don’t understand how you got thousands of article views in only 48 hours for 6 articles.
Great job by the way!
Hi Shawn –
Your CTR is very good – congratulations – that is FAR better than I typically get..:-)
The simple answer is three fold:
1) The Keywords ARE in fact important – but the real advantage here is further down the road – i.e. – as the articles “age” in the search engines, the better your initial keyword selection is, ( in terms of volume and competition) the more views you are going to get. But – as you accurately point out -that is NOT going to be the primary driver the first 48 hours.
But the next two are..:-)
2) The Title of the article is crucial – and I spend a TON of time on my titles – as you’ll see in some of the other article marketing posts on here – the difference between a so so article title – and a GOOD one can be the difference between one article making thousands of dollars – or – hundreds of sign up’s – or not.
Lastly – and arguably MOST importantly –
3) Your niche. My internet marketing articles – for example ( and I do VERY few of these) get aneemic views and even often aneemic CTR as well. Why? It’s not a “sexy” topic – and there is a lot of competition with many people saying the exact same thing (i.e. – I truly believe that the advice I can offer in this area is better than 99.9 % of the people who are publishign online – yet it’s very difficult to convey that in a short article – you have to start getting into exotic and esoteric marketing theory to impress that upon people…and it’s simply too much heavy lifting to do via article submisssions in my view)
However – the dating niche for example ( as these articles were written about – as you’ll notice I mentioned in the post) is a VERY easy category to generate huge amounts of readers, clicks and ultimately – site visitors to boot.
conversely though- this is one of the LOWEST niches for conversions off of the directories as well – hence, I only use this traffic for list building – or site building – as they will be loyal readers and purchase affiliate products from you after you relationship build.
(as an example of this – I did a series of article submissions in the dating market about 6 months ago that generated THOUSANDS of hits to an affiliate offer – and literally – only earned me 50 bucks in commisions. If you traffic build though with the same traffic ( i.e. – opt in – or RSS/email subscriptions – I have found this traffic stream can be very profitable indeed..:-)
So the short answer is – if you are writing content in a NON sexy market – don’t expect the kind of views I used in the example – but with the kind of CTR rate you shared on those views – you will be able to make money more quickly on straight affiliate redirects if you did your product and niche research properly.
(by the way – I do recall you emailing me with your resource box – I apologize for forgetting the niche – but I recall it was good – sorry – just very busy..:-)
Best..:-)
Don’t worry about it.
It was great to see my CTR go from 10% to 60% haha. Thanks to the great advice you have.
From now on I am going to spend much more time on the titles.
Thanks for letting me know about affiliate redirects though. I was still privately wondering if that was better than creating a landing page.
In my opinion, if I can presell the reader in the resource box it is much better to cut out another hoop (lander) for them to jump through to get to the landing page.
So all I do is grab a .info domain and redirect it.
Just need to improve keyword and product research and then I will be able to create a solid residual income (assuming articles get highly indexed)
I am hooked on this blog!
Excited to see how this experiment goes for you as well!
Hey,
When selecting products from clickbank do you go for high gravity and low refund percentage, or is it a combo of other things?
Currently I chose a product with a low gravity (40), high payout, and low refund % . Zero sales from about 200 URL clicks so I am going to do some more testing with higher gravity products and such.
Just as well there has been a lot made about putting the keyword in the title of the article in this type of format:
“Keyword – 3 ways to…”
I really feel that I could create much more juicy titles if I didn’t need to worry about fitting my keyword into the title. However, I do want my articles to get indexed in order to create a consistent stream of traffic.
What is your opinion?
btw, I think I am hooked on this blog. Better than anything that I have had to pay an arm and a leg for. Keep up the great work. Great karma!
Hi Shawn – thanks..:-)
I do actually use the keywords in the title – and you are right – that can prove challenging to create killer article titles. But – to get indexed properly you DO want to make your titles very focused – although I DON’T do the same thing in the articles. ( i.e. – no one likes reading articles that repeat the keywords often for "density" purposes – I find it stifles my ability to write good articles if I’m thinking about that – so I simply use the TITLE – the FIRST LINE – and bullet points or subheads in the article to restate my keywords, if I think it’s neccessary.
I will also give you another potential piece of bad news for tackling creative titles – but amping UP your article indexing potential is use the keywords TWICE in the title if possible – but use a secodary variation of a keyword you are targetting in the latter half of the article.
I.E. – Medifast Diet Tips would be the keyword phrase you are targetting in general for the article – yet – obviously the potential long tail derivations of Medifast ( the primary top level keyword…or Medifast Diet maybe – depending on what your research says) I try to attack a secondary part of the "long tail" with the second part of the title.
Medifast Diet Tips: 3 Proven Ways to Lose Weight on Medifast
(lose weight on medifast being another phrase your research has told you has volume worth considering….or simply – in this case – our common sense intuits instead..-)
Which by the way – I use FAR more frequently than the tools once I pick my niche. I don’t do a ton of clickbank stuff to be honest anymore- I hate the returns – and alot of the stuff on there is pure, embarressing abject dog poop for a product – and considering a lot of the popular programs on there fall into this category ( i.e. – fat loss 4 idiots, pick up guides, etc – I find it simply drains my general feeling of good will about myself to sell them to people – plus when they get kicked back I get all upset, have to go back to my anger management classes and in general my equilibrium falls into a fast state of disarray..;-)
But – yes, when I do – I try to stick with the high paying programs – high gravity – redisdual billing if possible, etc. I do recommend you check out CJ.com though and the other more mainstream affiliate netwworks – far easier to sell in my view – especially the products that are outside of the IM space ( which I don’t do much of at all either)
Keyword research which you asked about before – I go to the free google tool – which is the most natural source of traffic estimation – I take very high volume phrases – segmenet them out using secondary tools – - I use a tool that a friend of mine created for private use that isn’t sold…but it’s not neccessary – nichebot and that whole crew is ok for this too – if the niche is big enough – with laterally related phrases you can usually go forever on a profitable product.
Note: this is only for natural traffic – article submissions,etc – if you are doing any PPC ( which is good to do with your content once created) try some paid tools like Ispionage ( new and I love it) and even Spyfu I still use for PPC and organic idea generation. The bottom line is you simply got to get your face muddy and throw it all out there and see what happens – you’ll win some, and lose some and I do both everyday. On the clickbank 200 hits to the affiliate that you mentioned – don’t worry about that – it’s normal – many CB products will convert at LESS than 1% for affiliates – I have some of my best projects ever on CB that were 1/220, etc – but if you get enough traffic at them PER article, you can scale the math to your advantage very quickly! Hope it helps..:-)
Of course the EASIEST way to bring down the percentage is get them on a list first – and then follow up with a solid sequence ( you can often simply plug in the sequence the vendor has already created) which will dramatically bring down your numbers. ( or stated properly – drive your conversion percentage UP – often by a factor of many.)
Thank you very much for the help, Ian!
I will definitely take your advice and check out CJ.com and some other affiliate networks.
To be honest, I am going to do one more clickbank campaign since I believe I found a quality, high gravity product.
Here is what I plan to do:
Write some articles and use a straight re-direct until I get a couple sales just from that, and then create a squeeze page after that so I can greatly increase the conversion rate and also have a chance to cross-promote.
By the way, I am totally going for creating a 6 figure income business within the first 30 days (using the opt-in). I believe I now have the writing skills to do it, and the niche is a pretty sexy one (not IM).
I realize there is much more work to do to create a 6 figure business other than what you wrote about. But this is definitely the way to get it up and running.
I first got in to internet marketing to get the “easy money”. But now that I have been in to this for a little while, I have found that I actually enjoy doing this work.
I really cultivated a passion for it, and now I want to be successful more than ever.
Thank you once again for being so helpful. I really cannot explain how grateful I feel for the advice.
No worries, Shawn – I’m glad to help..:-)
There are good products on Clickbank – and I still promote some everyday ( mostly scaling up from campaigns I started long ago)
Straight redirects are part and parcel of the profit pulling process, so definetly use them to build up an income stream..but then, swap out the redirect page with an opt in – it’s an easy way to build a list – and on your “thank you page” you can promimently advertise your affiliate product as well ( the one you were re-redirecting to initially- I usually use a split page layout – one side says thank you – check your email box to confirm, etc – right side – banner, text link, etc to affiliate offer).
And if you build a blog with the content you are creating for directory submissions, etc – you can simply put that on your blog directory, you’ll get some natural traffic from that as well as it ages – good way to repurpose your content ( and a good reason to ultimately register .Com’s rather than .info’s – as they will invariably rank better, and faster, in my experience)
Remember – there are many paths to get to the same place – just play around, try different ideas and have fun with it..:-)
One thing is for sure… I am already having fun with it!
I am going to work on creating a powerful resource box for now and then do some keyword research.
This weekend is actually a four day weekend from university thanks to a 2 day (only 2 days?!) reading break. Great time to get a real solid campaign up.
Let’s just say I will be making some sales this coming week =)
Reading your posts (I have been living here lately haha) have really inspired me and opened my eyes.
Article marketing is only as hard as we make it. I know I deserve the success so it will come if I just keep with it.
Hey,
I have been looking around for a post about conducting keyword research for article marketing, but I can’t seem to find any.
I know that you recommend Keyword Country and Niche Bot, but I am trying to stick with all free methods until I can re-invest.
This is how I currently perform keyword research:
Go to the Google KW tool and type in the website to see what it recommends.
I then use those keywords to find synonyms and type them in to Google like this:
allintitle: “keyword1″
If the results are less than 2,000 I decide to write about it.
Do you think this is a flawed method of keyword research for article marketing?
I learned it from someone who said it lets you see “your real competition for the keyword”.
I hope everything is going great with you.
Can’t wait to read your next post!
Hi Shawn –
It is a bit flawed in my view, yes..:-)
I would disregard all of the nonsense out there about competition, density, etc – I do pay a wee bit of attention to it – but it’s only a small slice of the pie when you are determining your keywords, titles, etc – and here is why:
1) if you are creating content for parasite ranking purposes – i.e. – trying to borrow the page trust of Ezine articles for example – I have found that a lot of the measurement metrics are completely ancillary and a waste of valuable time, effort and energy.
Why? Because EZA will often OUTRANK just about ANY of the existing content out there almost immediately ( from 1 day to 10 days out) on anything that you submit. So rather than using the bum marketing metrics ( which are good, free and valuable and I don’t mean to disparage them) but they get too cute by one half with their recommendations (i.e. – if less than do “this” if competion is more than – do that)
Note: If you are creating content for your OWN site -these are more valuable, as your site will NOT compete well with existing, high ly competitive and well aged domains for the same keywords.
An example might be – ( and this is routinely proven to be true in my own experience):
I’ll put up a new site on let’s say Medifast diet for simplicity.
I’ll write 10 articles using derivations of my main keywords – but with NO consideration for competition,etc – just optimized for broadest, most attractive phrases (i.e.)
Medifast Diet
Lose Weight on Medifast
Medifast Diet Tips
Buy Medifast Diet
Etc –
My own site ( where I’ll stick the content) won’t rank on these for a LONG time (if ever) simply because the site is new – and honestly, only 1 of maybe a few hundred sites I’m workig on…which means I’ll forget about it fast..:-)
But –
Those same phrases WILL rank, often on first page, within a few short days, on EZA, simply on the back of the page trust that EZA has…and if I spent time trying to find smaller and less competitve phrases – I would probably rank just as fast…but with less desirable keywords.
(If I was REALLY going to build out the Medifast site as a primary profit center – yes, there are easy ways to get it to rank for those phrases within the year….as many folks do – but there is only SO much time in the day, and so many things to work on at once..:-)
Squidoo – and those sorts of sites have similar ranking power – as Jeniffers squidoo guide illuminates – ( I really like it – but honestly – I don’t do a lot of squidoo stuff either)
So – as I’m not sure if this answers your question – here is what I do ( which I think I pointed out before in this comment thread)
1) Google Keyword tool
Keyword – Yoga ( 1-3 million searches a month)
Hatha Yoga
Ivengar Yoga
Kundalini Yoga
Hot Yoga
Bikram Yoga
Yoga Supplies
Etc –
I then create sublists on each of the above using a proprietary tool that is not for sale – but can be emulated using somethign like nichebot.
Hatha Yoga Studio
Hatha Yoga Poses
Learn Hatha Yoga
Etc
You can then build an entire mini net of articles, content, sites, lenses, blogs, etc – all on the little islands off of the primary phrase – and either build a list – stragiht re-direct, build readers, all of the above, etc – and own the entire niche with some effort ( of course you can point all of the smaller derivations of the primary keyword – in this case Yoga – to ONE primary MONEY site – which sells an affiliate product – your OWN product ( best..:-) or whatever it is that you are building.
I will be doing somthign like this for my own business in the weeks to come as I pointed out in this post – once I tie up some loose ends and consolidate some stuff – and I’ll share more about it here – and on on the new site I’m creating for the above.
But –
Just don’t spend too much time with evaulation and metrics – pick your keywords – segement them out – and then attack..:-)
(also of course – as I mentioned before – you can go on ad infinitum with the above Yoga example simply by lateralization as well)
Yoga
Meditation
Sprituality
Eastern Philosophy
New Age
Psychic Abilities
Etc – I’m not sure what they would be, because the most stretching I do is for the cup of coffee on my kitchen table…:-)
See, I always had that in the back of my mind.
The fact that my article would always stay ranked high EVEN when many others were writing for the same keyword seemed a little off.
This really confirms the thoughts I had when I had people telling me how to write based solely on the competition.
Thank you so much for letting me in on how you work the research for campaigns.
Anyone who stumbles upon this post and finds these comments would find gold!
Good luck with the campaign, and I can’t wait to hear about it.
No Problem, Shawn – will do..-)
I’m working on tying up a few things – helping someone in my family launch a new product – and then heading to the Florida Keys for a few weeks where I’ll be putting my “new” business plan down on paper ( and pixel..:-) Will make a post here when it’s ready to roll out.
I’m excited about what I’m working on – will be totally from scratch and incorporate everything I’ve discussed above and in other spots( especially breaking down one huge niche into lots of smaller segments – yet keeping it ultimately under one umbrella) which should provide lots of monetization strategies for me – while keeping a lot of the content free for all to read and benefit from – especially from the standpoint of launching a new project completely from the ground up.
(i.e. – no jv partners/ringers waiting in the wings to mail to their list, no 3 year old domain with lots of traffic already, etc)
I’ll talk about it here – but that’s it – at least in the beginning. And no great revolutionary genius idea either – just somethign I’m passionate about(helping people make money and improve their lives overall) in combination with hard work, a solid system and some creative marketing mojo.
(And if it flops – I decided I’m going to learn to play the guitar and just hit street corners for tips – which honestly – as long as it’s sunny out, I wouldn’t mind doing either..:-)
I really believe you will be successful with this.
To be honest, the information you provide here is sheer genius so, unless you forget about everything you know, it should be a large success for you.
It is awesome that it is something you are passionate about.
I was working on an online business (currently on the back-burner for now) for the last 9 months that is on a topic I love.
But I think I invested way too much time (and money) into just trying to get it started. I made it way too complex.
For now I am going give myself some time to re-kindle the passion while working on this new found passion.
All the best.