Advice and Input Wanted for Achieving My Goal

[quantikev]

Hello Community!

In recent months, I have been persuing the Internet as a means to increase the quality of life for myself and others. While I have known it is a powerful source of information for some time, I was not aware until recently of its potential to impact a personal financial situation. I have attempted to learn about the various ways it can do this, and I feel I am definately further ahead than when I started.

However, it seems there is more to learn about this than many other topics before the knowledge becomes 'functional', and I would like to leverage the power of communication on these and other forums to advance myself and achieve my first goal.

Therefore, I would like to ask for your input to help me with establishing a consistent income stream of $500 dollars a month by September of this year. So far, the main paths I have been exploring to do this are affiliate marketing through content websites and PPC (Adwords) advertising. I am still having difficulty in these areas though mainly with market discovery and content creation.

I have been told on other forums that this is a very achievable mark, and there are numerous ways it can be accomplished. I am specifically looking to learn about new ways I have not previously encountered for monotization online, and I would learn more about specifically what to do to make these options work. For example, I am currently running Adwords, but still am having trouble finding lower competition niche markets to persue due to limited knowledge about discovering keywords.

If you think you can help or have anything to add, I would greatly appreciate it. The more I can find out, the more likely I will be able to succeed.

Thanks for the excellent community resources which make this possible;
Kevin

[karynsolo]

I think you could greatly benefit with webceo just grab up the free trial and you can learn a lot there.

[quantikev]

Thanks for helping karynsolo!

I checked for webceo, and I found an application at this link: http://www.webyield.net/webceo.html

Is this the program you are referring to? It appears to be good software for promoting a website and tracking incoming traffic. I wonder if there is anything else you can tell me about it in relation to market research and content?

I will be downloading the free edition asap to have a look, thanks again!

[Lynn Terry]

Hi Kevin,

$500/month by September (in 90 days) IS a very achievable goal! In fact, this is just the type of challenge that we help members achieve with the portal, so I'd be happy to work alongside you on this and help you in any way that I can. I'm sure many others will have great advice & resources to contribute as well - the members here are super-friendly and eager to assist

Affiliate Marketing through content-based websites and pay-per-click are both great options for generating revenue. Keep in mind that content sites do take awhile to get "established" in the major search engines... and that pay-per-click campaigns require quite a bit of "tracking & tweaking" to become 'automated' profit streams.

Are you currently using direct affiliate links in your PPC campaigns?

Keep in mind, too, that you can promote your content sites via PPC until they begin to rank well in the search engines!

Also, if you arent already using a directory on your content sites, it is a great way to establish quality inbound links. You can download a free program to set up an automated directory (called Link Management Assistant) at www.OnlineMarketingToday.com

[quantikev]

Lynn, Thanks for responding.

I'm glad to see more confirmation that this is achievable, as so far I have found it difficult!

From what I gather about content sites, it seems you need 100 plus pages of quality content to convert enough traffic for a reasonable income. If this is true, I would think that much content would be very difficult to create? Perhaps this varies depending on whether the site uses Adense type programs or affiliates for monetization..

I am currently using direct affiliate links in my adwords campaigns. They direct right to a landing page created by the program manager. I actually just stopped my campaign, it was based on Origami. It seems to me this market may have too much free information available.

Thanks again, you have already helped me significantly through recent postings. I am essentially trying to find the best way to go about this, with limited time and budget.

[Lynn Terry]

One thing that I found with those types of goals... is that you will likely reach that goal (and often surpass it) in the very last month or so

From there it is all smooth sailing, because once you figure out a "system" that works for you - - it's easy to double or triple the results!

RE: Content - You can earn the same amount of money with a one page sales letter that you can with a 100 page website. It's really not about the number of pages... it's about your particular project, and your overall marketing strategy (+ dedication & consistency). There are as many ways to make money online as you can possibly think of!

The best advice I can offer is push forward... and then continue building on it from there!

[Hock Ng]

Kevin,

Have you considered building a content site and monetizing it with Adsense? While in the beginning you'll not get much traffic from natural search listings, you can drive traffic with Google Adwords. Play it right and you will make a nice profit by finding low cost keywords in Adwords in high-paying Adsense markets. Read that last sentence again and give it some thought.

Hock

[quantikev]

Thanks for the help Hock!

I have very recently become aware of supplementing adsense sites with adwords, perhaps even adsense/affiliate sites. I previously started work on a content sight regarding a form of indoor botany, so I can apply this when I finish. I have temporarily suspended work on my site while learning affiliate marketing through Adwords, but I think I will resume soon.

I am becoming desperate to positively impact my current living conditions, so I am attempting to discover all the available avenues available online.

So far I am having difficulty accomplishing this, as it is such a vast field I do not know where to focus my efforts!

I do know in my past experience when learning new subjects it was always like this in the beginning, and as I found more information the overall concept become more clear. I do believe it is the same with this, its just taking much longer .

Thanks again, and I really appreciate the responses, as it seems to me forums really expedite the learning process for anything!

Kevin

[Lynn Terry]

[sugarrae]

500 a month is extremely doable. I know people making this a day (and I'm not plugging anything to buy, so there is nothing to gain from saying this). I've made a full time living off of affiliate marketing for several years now.

500 dollars a month is about 18 dollars a day. You can do that with any number of products, sites or ideas.

Learn HTML, learn SEO and learn PPC -

I took an online course to learn HTML years ago from http://www.ed2go.com

For SEO, you'll get great advice here and also learn a lot at http://www.webmasterworld.com

For PPC, that perry marshall ebook explains adwords pretty well and gives you a good feel if you are a novice or below. I'll let Lynn post her affiliate link to the book . You can also ffind a lot of PPC advice as well over at webmasterworld.com as well as these forums.

[quantikev]

Thanks again for the responses, interaction is always very helpful for me.

Rae, I wonder if you might be able to tell me what types of things you do to earn your income. It seems the technical aspects of things (in this case html, seo theory, ect) were never really that difficult for me, but rather those tasks which could be described as imprecise or 'less defined' such as market research to determine if a topic is (still) profitable, content generation or acquisition, ect.

Thanks for reading;
Kevin