Tag Archive - Online Business

Why Build an Online Business with no Business Model?

July 25, 2011 in Business with 0 Comments

Recently a friend asked me for some advice about building an online business. Essentially, he has invested some time building contacts in a particular field and has developed some unique content. He is looking to find a way to build a business based on what he currently has. There is already one website out there that is similar to what he is thinking of building although he would not be using the same business model. One thing he wanted to know was how much it might cost to build something similar.

To give him a ballpark figure is not hard. But at this point I think it’s the wrong question to ask.

He is struggling to identify how he will make money. He has a family and little free time. He wants to make sure he is investing in something that has a good chance of making money.

Reading books on business doesn’t make me any more of a businessman than reading books on surgery would make me a surgeon. Still, I have a little experience when it comes to online business so I felt comfortable sharing my thoughts. We had a few discussions and then I wrote him this email: Continue Reading…

Notes on Marketing and Promotion

June 17, 2011 in Business with 2 Comments

I made these notes during last night’s HYPE event: Entrepreneur Roundtable – Marketing & Promotion. The speakers were Caitlin Thayer of Barefoot Media
and Andrew Wood of Mintz & Hoke Communications Group. Caitlin and Andrew discussed brand, marketing, social media and small business success. These notes aren’t their words verbatim so if anything sounds wrong, the blame is mine. Continue Reading…

Steps to Build a Profitable Theme-Based Content Site

November 4, 2010 in Business with 0 Comments

Let’s say you’re interested in building a site like I wrote about in How I Make Money Online. You’re probably wondering what steps you will take to create a site like that. Here is what you’d typically do: Continue Reading…

How I Make Money Online

November 2, 2010 in Business with 3 Comments

When people find out that I make money online, they want to understand how it all works.

I’ve tried several different ways over the years to make money online. I failed with all but one. I’ve also been involved in several small online startups and seen only a few of them succeed. I have some specific thoughts on why one thing fails and another one succeeds but we’ll have to save it for another today. I want to focus on that one thing I did that became a good source of online income. Continue Reading…

A Non-Technical Primer on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

October 25, 2010 in Business with 0 Comments

I often get questions on building web traffic. One of my sites has some decent traffic (70k+ uniques per month plus). I attribute this result to basic skills and a little luck.

My Experience

I picked a topic for a site years before there was a high demand for it, bought a domain with a good keyword and got a few links. Then I let the site sit out there and ripen for a long time. (How I chose the topic or niche and built that site is a story for another day.)

The demand for content on that topic grew over the course of three years and several of my pages floated towards the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) and have stayed there ever since. Even though I didn’t get a ton of links, or even really the strongest links, I bought a great domain name, picked great keywords and got several solid links. Those are all things you can do with basic skills. The rising tide of demand was the luck part.

Knowing What Before Knowing How

I have a solid understanding of how to build web traffic. When people ask me how to do it, I usually refer them to a few resources where they can find the best expert knowledge. Each time I’ve done this I thought that I was helping people out. I can see now that, except for a few cases, I really wasn’t. That’s because people often lacked the foundation to understand the resources I sent them to.

You want traffic to come to your website from search engines. How do you do it? The body of knowledge that provides answers to that question is known as search engine optimization, or SEO. But before you can understand the answers to the question of how, you need to understand the what behind it all.

What it is that search engines do? What is it that brings strong traffic to your web pages?

I wrote this article to answer those questions and give you a foundation. Once you have a good grasp of what, how will become simple to understand. Continue Reading…

Quick Clarification

August 5, 2010 in Announcements with 0 Comments

I was reviewing some of the stuff I wrote on this blog over the past few weeks and it almost seemed to me like the writing was trying to make a pitch. That’s not what I wanted to convey at all. Hopefully this post will clear that up. Continue Reading…

Using Google Analytics to Improve Site Stickiness

July 19, 2010 in Business with 0 Comments

Way back I read Perry Marshall’s e-book on Google AdWords. One thing he pointed out was that it was important to use the same keywords people were searching with in the title of your ad.

Why? Continue Reading…

Three Resources for Building Successful Websites

July 14, 2010 in Business with 0 Comments

Last week I bookmarked a forum thread called Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone. This is a good basic primer on the process for building a site that gets traffic. However it doesn’t address two critical areas:

Continue Reading…

Anyone Can Build a Simple Online Business

July 13, 2010 in Business with 0 Comments

If you’ve been keeping up with Tomaz from Freedom Ideas, you’ll see that he makes over $9,000USD per month from his websites as of 2007. It only took him two years after starting to get to that figure. I know of people out there making a lot more than that building the same kind of sites Tomaz and I build. And what kind of sites are those? Continue Reading…

How to Build a Profitable Website

July 9, 2010 in Business with 0 Comments

Good blog post on the SiteSell blog about building a profitable website. This is probably the most succinct overview I’ve seen.

Does it work? Continue Reading…

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