Seven Steps to a Revenue Site

Starting a web site or blog to generate revenue in seven simple steps:

1. Find an area of personal interest and a meaningful name to describe it.
2. Get the corresponding domain, a ".com" if possible.
3. Create a blog where you can post regular information about your topic. Point your domain to the blog.
4. Write informative and interesting posts about your topic; add lots of links to other blogs.
5. Find affiliate products related to the topic, preferably ones with high commissions. Sign up with the corresponding affiliate vendors.
6. Associate the products to the posts in a way that makes sense to the reader; the affiliate ads should add value to the content, rather than distract the user.
7. Apply SEO principles to gather meaningful incoming links from other sites/blogs. People should want to link to you for the content, rather than for money or as part of a link exchange.
   

Iterate repeatedly on items 4-7. That's it!

Plan for two bizs

CF:
Blog, services, products and consulting for E-Commerce retailers
Who: Owners of small-medium E-Commerce web sites

SA:
(a) Technology bookstore (b) Publishing house
Topical & Timely Lists, Specialized Bundles, Loyalty programs, low-cost, great service
Focused on Technology and Success literature
Reading advice, related solutions and (affiliate) products
Repeat sales based on interest
Book Reviews, technology blog
Continuous interaction, memberships

- Start with Amzn links and CJ affiliate items
- Eventually, sell books and publish custom books (topical & timely)
Buy other niche web sites/blogs as needed

Who: Young technology professionals focused on career and business success
[More specific: 25-40 year old SW professional who wants to start his/her own business]

Referrals InStream -> Conversion -> Upsell/cross-sell -> Purchase -> Repeat Business -> Back to Conversion

SEO Tools

LinkVendor.com

Researching/tracking Keywords:
WordTracker, Keyword Discovery
inventory.overture.com
Google AdWords tools

Affiliate Merchants:
Clickbank, Commission Junction

Target Demographic is very important

Key Strategy:

You must have a very clear picture of target demographic and satisfy that person's needs.

• Who are you selling to?
  
• What are you selling?
  
• Why will they buy? When will they buy?
  
• What do these users look like, in detail?

Sticking To It - 2

Had another crisis of confidence last night - what do I really know about the E-Com biz? Should I try something else? The current economic climate, with the recent stock market collapse, is brutal. [There are many who think this is likely to be a *long* downturn:
http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=477k3d8mh2wmtpc4b6h07p4hy9z83x18
]

But I'm sticking to it. E-com can only grow worldwide in the next 10 years. And all those sellers will need services, consulting and products to help them, especially in a downturn.

To heck - I'm sticking with it!

Additional Ideas

Second Business: The SAb Tech Bookshop
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Initially, the books are image/text links into Amazon; later, can sell and even publish books.
Create a set of lists that expands and gets link-love: list of "Books to Read During a Recession", "Books to Read for Learning ", ...

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AltBiz

Another business I should start is an E-Commerce store targeted at a very specific segment of the population. As a VP of Marketing at BMW said - "our buyers tend to be fast-track young people who achieve success early in life". Now that's a specific demographic (and a very lucrative one!).

Startups - Concentrate Your Resources!

I was watching a documentary about the "101st Airborne" - a tough paratroops division - on the Military History channel today, and it suddenly struck me that a startup usually has to act like shock troops rather than a regular army. By definition, a startup has a small amount of resources. The reason shock troops succeed is by applying a large amount of force targeted at a point or a small area so that they can overwhelm a much larger enemy at that point and break through. This is the principle of concentrated resources.

Sticking To It - 1

The good news is that the overall target/business plan hasn't changed much in about three months. It's still about enabling targeted customer contact in various forms and with specialized features.

The target domain has been narrowed down to Ecommerce and the specific value to be provided starts with web and iPhone Marketing specials (coupons).

This is very different from where I started at the end of 2000, where the goal - after reading the signature Rich Dad book - was to simply "have a business, rather than a job". I've tried many different directions since then, but couldn't stick to anything long enough - this is the farthest I've gotten. The "golden handcuffs" of a well-paying job reduce the urgency. The only two things I've tried for long periods (~2 years) are options trading and blogging, both of which are ongoing.

Also, the biggest change in perspective has been to focus on the Sales and Marketing perspective, rather than on the product or service provided.

Creating web site pages

One of the early tasks is to put up a web site for the new company. I started in on it two days ago, and put together the basic PHP site in a few hours, much to my surprise (I thought it would take a week or two). So now I have the company name and web pages.

The next step is to get the domain, host the pages, create a blog, point the sub-domain "blog" to the blog itself, and set up email addresses - which will create the cohesive whole. The other part is to write some interesting blog articles.

Additional steps: (a) write the basic FAQs, and (b) define core ideas for services, E-books and blog posts.