51 Grand dot Com
Watch me make 51 grand on internet!

Making Money while travelling  the world! Isn`t this a dream of every online marketer? I know mine is. And I am gonna do it one day. You` l see!

Well Yaro Starak (very successful entrepreneur if you don`t know him) was on a 8 month trip and made over $200,000 in the meantime. I was watching a video how he made it on his website and decided to analyze some things.

First are his two own membership sites that he launched during his trip. First one made him $211,969 from August 2008  to February 2009 with only 500 members.

And the second made $13,936.46 first week, averaging $ 20,000.00 per month. He was using Clickbank to monetize it.

The key is a creating a strong, targeted list and market them what they need.

Yaro presents two case studies from his two students. I like this because I can check their websites and analyze them.

Case Study No. 1

Fran Kerr runs an acne treatment blog on www.highonhealth.org. As you can see it is monetized by direct ads and adsense but the key is an opt-in box that captures emails. You can see it below as an pop-up and on top right.

Another way Fran makes money is by using a special landing page and sends PPC traffic to it. It is a short little landing page with opt-in box.

Case Study No. 2

Jay Jay runs freemagiclive.com and also uses Yaro`s advice on creating a email list and then monetize it. He is video blogging and posting his videos on YouTube. His site is 3 months old and receiving 20-30 optins per day! Now this is nice.

This is the Opt-in Box he is using! He enhanced it with a small video, but the idea is the same as for the example above.

What do you think? Do you have any experience with email marketing and membership sites? I am going to put an Opt-in box on my blog for sure.

I have been so busy that I did`t post a week 7 plans. Thats why I am presenting summary of weeks 6 and 7 together:

Here is what I was doing from April 20-May 3rd:

• I discovered and joined Shoemoney Tools which is an excellent package of PPC and SEO Tools.
• I remembered how I need to Follow my Dreams.
• Bang! Read Google Adwords introduction to learn what I learned researching it.
• I needed a solution for serving ads on 51grand and found Google Ad Manager. It is free, easy to use and freaking powerful! Start using it!
• Running PPC campaigns is costly. I decided to build some web projects and earn money to invest money online.
• I wrote a post How to do Market Research Online?. I cover keyword research, audience research, competition research and industry trends. A bit longer, but worth reading.

I am also reading the book Being Happy by Andrew Matthews (check out the bottom of this page for book cover) and I like it a lot!

How are you doing?

Today I spent almost whole day browsing Internet, forums, analyzing SERPS, keywords and websites. I thought it would be useful to post my findings and even more important to tell you HOW to do proper research online.

Importance of Research

Yes its time consuming, yes it consists of repetitive tasks, BUT: without market research you are flying blind. You will lose money in your PPC campaigns.

With research you will learn who is your audience, what are they doing online, where are they gathering information, what keywords are they using, what are the industry trends, how your competitors are targeting your audience and so on.

Note: I assume you have already selected an industry and a niche to research. I will use hosting industry > Wordpress Hosting as an example.

There are 4 fields you need to Research:

• keywords
• target audience
• competition
• industry trends and environment

Keyword Research

You need to find keywords people are using and evaluate their search popularity, relevance, competition level and likelihood of conversion.

To get the base keywords I use “brainstorm” technique. I jot down all keywords that come to my mind. I also use seasonal variations, misspellings and slang. I produce a list of 10-20 keywords and then put them in Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Make sure you select “Show all” in Choose columns to display drop down and sort your keywords by search volume.

I now get an overview of potential keywords that need to be further explored. Now this tool is very handy because it shows estimated PPC, advertiser competition, search volume and trends in one place.

The work is not done yet. I check each keyword in google to find out more about it. If I decide keyword is suitable for my target audience I add it to my master keyword list.

Note: These are basics of keyword research. Once I learn more, I will tell you how to do it in-depth.

Audience Research

I use the “walk in their shoes” technique which is basically what it sounds. I go to google.com and pretend I am looking for a hosting provider for my wordpress blog. That is a need.

My goal here is not to gather keywords (yet), but to understand target audience. People usually start with broad keywords such as “web hosting” and narrow keywords as they learn along their search session.

Here is an imaginary search session:

web hosting > shared web hosting > blog hosting > wordpress hosting > wordpress hosting reviews > bluehost review > bluehost coupon

This is an example of a search session. You can see how each keyword narrows the searchers scope a bit. I write down all relevant websites, ideas, interesting keywords, concepts that help me understand my potential customers.

I then go to forums about web hosting (sitepoint.com, webhostingtalk.com) and see what questions are people asking there. Forums are a great place to learn about your customers. Dmoz.org is a great place to find forum directories. I also use Yahoo answers to find problems and solutions. Another place  is ask.com. Enter your keyword and go to Q and A tab.

Purpose of audience research is to find out:

• consumer habits,
• demographics (age, gender, location,…),
• acceptable way to communicate with them,
• WHAT problems they have?,
• WHY they need the product or service (The reason for a need)?
• HOW you can help them.

Competition Research

You are new kid on the block. So how do you think you are gonna become a big player? Figure out what your competition is doing!  Find keywords they are using, where are they advertising, what kind of landing pages they use, what kind of voice are they using and so on.

I evaluate my competitors on keyword level. This means each keyword has competition in SERPS. Not only organic, but also PPC.

What you need to know about your competition?

• what keywords are they using,
• what kind of landing pages are they using,
• check if they are running cross promotions with other sites or products.

I use google.com for competition research, but there are two handy tools I also use. First is called spyfu.com and the other is Semrush toolbar (FF extension).

Industry Trends and Environment

You need to know if your industry or niche is healthy of dying. Google Trends will show you statistical data based on region and city, date and language. Just enter your keyword and you will get a nice graph with your data.

As you can see demand for  “blog hosting” occurred in late 2003 and is steady till 2009. The term “wordpress hosting” first occurred in 2005 and is still growing. Top regions are Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines.

What you need to know about your industry or niche?

• in what stage is currently your niche,
• is there enough demand for your niche,
• what are the seasonal peaks,
• what regions and cities do people perform most searches.

You can use additional sources such as surveys, industry reports and statistical data to get better insight into your industry.

Summary

Your knowledge of customers, keywords, competition and industry will determine if you will succeed with your PPC or SEO campaign. To learn that you need to do proper market research. Use the tools as they will help you save time, but also use your brain to transform data to information. No tool can do that.

If you get stuck let me know. I may be able to help you.

Need to do some more research on this wordpress hosting niche. I plan to start a PPC campaign soon. Will let you know!

I have been very busy lately with developing my another website. I need money to invest into my Pay per click campaigns. So I decided to make some money offline and invest it in PPC. I know how to build websites, so I decided to make some money out of it.

Earn offline > Invest online

I figured my online work is far more lucrative than offline. Better ROI, faster turn around time and better tracking. But it takes time to learn how to do it properly. Fastest way to succeed online is to make money offline and invest it in online business.

You could do article marketing, forum marketing and other free types of promotion, but it will take you far more time.

Provide your services

Find your passion and offer your knowledge to those who need it. Make money, then invest it online. There are many places where you can provide your skills online. Check Elance for starters:  www.elance.com.

Oh, and if anyone needs a good looking Joomla or Wordpress website contact me. Will make you a good deal! Even if you need just an advice or have a question I will try to help you.

How are you doing?

Do you want to make money with internet marketing? Then start using Google Ad Manager.

What is Google Ad Manager?

Google Ad Manager is a free ad serving platform. Shoemoney uses it, Darren Rowse uses it and many other internet marketers. I have been using OpenAds (Now OpenX) on some projects, but it is now time to switch to Ad Manager. I am going to place some ads on my 51grand blog.

Ad Manager benefits for bloggers and marketers

Imagine you need to manage ads for several blogs, adsense sites and forums. It becomes freaking hard to align all the dates, ad spots and then manually upload ads, contact  advertisers, manage billing and so on. With Google Ad Manager you can do all this very easy and for free.

Why use Ad Manager?

• You can display, track and get reports for all your affiliate ads at one place,
• you can manage private ad sales (CPM, CPC, CPD models),
• complete AdSense integration,
• you can use it on multiple sites,
• free to use and hosted on Google.

This means no server costs, no maintainance, less work and a complete ad serving solution for all of your websites.

How to set up Google Ad Manager?

1. Create Ad Slots
2. Create Ad Placements
3. Associate Ad Slots with Ad Placements
4. Generete HTML code and insert it in your site.

Need a step by step guide?

Follow an excellent guide by Barry Schwartz and place your first ad today or check the official Ad Manager guide from Google.

Note1: You need an adsense account to sign up.
Note2: It takes 15 minutes for your ads to show up.

There are also official Google Videos and screencast tutorials for Ad Manager and their Help Pages.

You can see my ads on right sidebar under Sponsors.

Questions? Comments? Let me know.

Google AdWords is worlds biggest Advertising Network. It uses Pay Per Click price model.

I don`t even remember when was the first time I came across AdWords. Probably it was a few years ago. But the fact is I never took time to really understand it. I now decided to learn about AdWords from a beginners perspective and create my first campaign “by the book”.

How it Works?

Google really makes it look easy. You create your ads, your ads appear on Google, you attract customers.

In reality it is not so easy. Sure it`s easy to run ads, but we are affiliate marketers and we need to make money. This complicates things – a lot. You could be losing hundreds per day if you do not have enough knowledge and experience with Google Adwords.

Google Search vs. Content Network

Google AdWords enables you to target people on their search engine as well as people on their content network. You will notice that ads running on content network are cheaper, but have way lover CTR. This is normal, because visitors of content network have a different mindset than those who are performing search. This is very important.

Setting up an AdWords Account

Go to adwords.google.com and follow the instructions. Make sure you select Standard Edition and create a fake campaign to get into the system. You do not need a credit card to sign up with Google AdWords. It is free.

Important marketing Tools

Once inside, take a look around. There are many cool features and tools you can use for affiliate marketing.

Make sure you check the Tools section. Inside AdWords is a Keyword Tool which is the best and most accurate keyword tool available. It is completely free and all Internet marketers use it. I use this tool to find new keyword ideas.

Another great tool is called Traffic Estimator which tells you how much clicks you can expect for a selected keyword. I use this tool to estimate ppc price and click volume.

Creating a new Campaign

1. Name a campaign.
2. Name an Ad Group.
3. Target customers by location.
4. Write your ad.
5. Choose keywords.
6. Enter your budget and max CPC.

What effects ad price and ad position?

The most important thing to Google is quality of its results. Google wants to serve the best ads to their users. To do that they use a metric called Quality score to determine which ad is relevant and which is not.

Quality score consists of three components:

1. Click Through Rate (CTR),
2. Relevancy,
3. Landing Page Quality.

This is very important since your ad will not get a high ad position if you do not have a high quality score.

Bonus tips

• Turn off the content network until you understand it.
• Use different keyword match types and negative keywords.
• Try to be as relevant as possible. Relevant keywords > relevant ads > relevant landing page.
• Make sure you learn enough about AdWords before starting your campaign.

Resources

Google offers plenty of resources for Advertisers:

Google Business Channel on YouTube – you must check these videos.

AdWords Learning Center – they provide multimedia lessons and text lessons. Very good AdWords training that covers all of the features!

Official Google AdWords Blog – this is where they first announce new features and improvements.

It takes time to become successful. It takes time to become confident. And it takes hard work and lots of mistakes before you get it.

(*this does not apply to Chuck Norris who was born ready, but the rest of us need to learn all this)

I remember 8 months ago when I said no to my ex job. It was freaking hard.

On one side there was comfortable PM job with a decent salary and on the other there was 20 hour workday with no money guarantee.

But you know what? I was fed up with what I did at my regular job! I could have stayed in my comfortable zone but I didn`t. I packed my stuff and went directly to my boss.

It wasn`t easy because that company had big plans with me. But that just wasn`t myself. I was waiting all day to get home to start working on my own web projects but there never was enough time.

Now I can read my favourite blogs first thing in the morning. I can comment on Shoemoney`s and John Chow`s Blog every day if I want. I meet new people, read forums, learn things in Wealthy Affiliate and enjoy in what I do.

This is what joy means for me. To do what I want. Am I making any money? Not yet. But I have spared some money to get things rolling.

To all of you who feel you want to do other things in your life – DO IT! Just do it! There is money in everything you want to do! Pick any industry, pick any business -  you can make money out of it if you love what you do.

Learn, improve your skills, work hard, put ideas into practice and you will become really successful.

And if you get stuck let me know. I might be able to help you.

I wish you success!

I am receiving  Shoemoney`s newsletter and got a special promo price for Shoemoney Tools (only first 500 could subscribe).

Now Shoemoney Tools cost $100 per month which is quite a lot for marketing newbie. But I got in for $3.95 for 1 month trial. I signed up. I can cancel anytime.

It is very cool to see what tools is Jeremy using. Jeremy occasionally offers 1 month trials for a very low price. If you want I can mail you when new offer comes in (send me a message to info@51grand.com).

I am going to present what you can get inside. I hope this doesn`t violate any terms.

Main features

There are SEO Tools, PPC Tools, Guides and Forum inside Shoemoney Tools. Now these are not regular free tools you see on seo sites. These are unique tools Jeremy uses to earn his money and this says a lot. Documentation with video tutorials is provided for all of the tools so you are not left on your own.

SEO Tools

There are link analyzers, keyword and competition research tools and a special Domain marketplace that finds you unregistered domain names with powerful backlinks. See all SEO Tools.

PPC Tools

There are some tools that can save you hundreds of hours. For instance Ad Generator will create ads based on your keyword and landing page. It creates ad copy for you. I thought this would produce some crappy ads, but they were very relevant. There is an AdWords campaign builder, keyword grabber, keyword generator and many other tools that make your PPC work easier. See all PPC Tools.

Guides

There are several PDF Guides written by Jeremy that include mind-opening information. If you are reading his blog you know what I mean.

Forum

Is a members forum where we can talk about Tools, SEO and PPC. This is nothing special about it you will say. But what if Jeremy Schoemaker personally answered your questions? Jeremy is very active in this forum and if you have a question it will be answered. Do you know how much Worlds Top Marketing Consultants charge per hour? Value of  this is incredible.

An incredible value

After using Shoemoney Tools for only a few days I can tell you this is an amazing set of marketing tools. There just isn`t any website that offers this kind of Tools in one place.  Shoemoney Tools have a 30 day money-back guarantee so You have nothing to lose.

Watch Demo Video of Shoemoney Tools

My plans for week 6 (April 20-26) are:

• continue to learn Inside Wealthy Affiliate.
• explore Pay Per Click into details and sign up with Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing,
• get a Google Ad Manager account and learn how to use it, place ad spots on my blog,
• find some advertisers for my blog,
• read blog archives of my idols.