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Seven Steps to a Money Making Website
by Suzanne Morrison
Have you been considering setting up your own website to make money on the internet? Perhaps
you already have a business or a business idea and want your own presence on the web. Or
maybe you just know that you want to make money on the internet but have no idea what is involved.
To give you an idea of what is involved I will outline the seven steps you need to take to set
up your own money making website. This will give you the basics of what is involved and allow
you to do further research and make progress in each of these seven areas.
Step 1 – Your business idea
If you already have a business or a business idea, you can skip this step. If not, then spend
some time writing a list of all the things that interest you. The chances of succeeding in your
new business are far greater if you are doing something that you are passionate about. This way
it won’t feel like you are doing a job when you start spending time on this. Don’t worry too much
about a product at this point, just think about the things you like to do – perhaps you like
cooking, or playing football, or foreign travel. Try to write down at least five things that you enjoy.
Step 2 – Research your Market and Analyse the Competition
Once you have completed step 1, you need to find out if there is a market in the areas that you
are interested in. At the same time you may want to avoid entering a market that is highly
competitive. From my experience the best way to analyse this is by using a tool called Wordtracker.
Note that the trial version is a cut down version of the much more powerful full version and only
includes statistics from one search engine rather than multiple engines.
Use this software as a brainstorming tool and type in your interests that you came up with in
step 1 (or your original business idea). Wordtracker will return related keywords, which you can
then select and add to your "basket". At this stage it is best to keep an open mind and fill your
basket with around 1000 keyword phrases. Finally you can do a "competitive analysis" on the
keywords that you have chosen. This will allow you to see how many searches a day are done on
a per search engine basis for each keyword phrase.
In addition to this you will also see the number of competing websites and a value called a
"KEI" which is a "Keyword Effectiveness Index". You have a better chance of succeeding if you
choose keywords that have a KEI above 100. If the KEI is above 400, then you have an excellent
chance of success.
Ensure that you spend sufficient time in this planning phase, repeating the above process
again and again until you have a good set of related keywords with good KEIs. Once you have
chosen your keywords you should check out your competition by typing the keywords into Google
and looking at top websites for each keyword phrase that you have selected. The Google and Alexa
toolbars can help you with your analysis of competing websites.
Step 3 – Choose a Product
If you don’t already have a product in mind, the next step is to decide on your product or
group of products. Before you do this, try to do some research and find out exactly what your
potential customers are looking for. What sort of questions are they asking? Google Groups
are an excellent place for doing this sort of research.
One solution is to join some affiliate programs (related to your chosen keywords of course).
Affiliate programs are usually free to join and pay you a commission for directing customers
from your site via a special affiliate link. You can find a lot of information about affiliate
programs by searching for "Affiliate Programs" on Google.
Another alternative is to sell your own product. This could be something that you have made
yourself such as a craft item or an informative e-book, or a product that you dispatch using
a drop shipping service. It is also possible to buy resell rights to e-books and software
written by other people.
Before you make a final decision, work out what your profit margin will be and do a rough
calculation of how much money you will make based on the estimated traffic from Wordtracker.
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