One thing about SpeedPPC is that it can build for you a super campaign that is easy and hassle-free.  This is how it works:

• Import your keyword list of main search terms, short list or long list whichever you decide. Instantly you will get a massive search term ban for both short and long tail searches.
• Choose your phrase matching types and enter your keyword bids for each type. Your budget is built into your campaign and ready to export to your search engine account.
• Now that you have the base for your high volume campaign you can choose how you would like to structure the ad groups so you can optimally focus your ad, create and measure your performance.
• Time to create your ads! You will have standard or advanced set-ups to create ad’s that are relevant and targeted to your search audience.

This is only a quick overview but I assure you that this is a fantastic program that you will not regret obtaining.

Don’t take my word for it though. Just click on SpeedPPC and see for yourself you will  not regret this I assure you.

Cheers and the best of luck to you.

There are a lot of places to sell a website, but some are definitely better than others. While my biggest sales was through an ad on Craigslist, that was for a “business” that had been profitable for over 6 months, rather than a site built specifically for flipping. For flipping, I find flippa.com to be the best venue; Digital Point is also very good. While the sheer volume of site flipping on Ebay is very high, it is not the place to get your best offers.

It’s been said that writing a listing for your site is similar to writing a sales letter in IM, however there are other considerations to keep in mind. Professional site buyers aren’t sold on a traditional “features & benefits” pitch. Generally speaking, this type of approach suggests the seller is an amateur, sale isis my venue of choice, and many of them will simply skip over sales-heavy listings.

With so many sites being listed, your listing headline is extremely important. Statements like “Huge opportunity!” or “Huge potential” are counter-productive. A serious buyer will most likely skip right over this kind of hyperbole. Serious buyers are looking for revenue, traffic, and unique content. This is what you want to get across in your headline. Don’t exaggerate, but give buyers a reason to read your listing. Listings such as “Profitable Niche Membership Site” or “Niche Site Selling Unique Product” will get a lot of clicks.

Once a buyer is reading your listing, you want to be brief and to the point. It’s imperative to provide traffic and revenue screenshots. Be sure to spell out everything, including any negatives. Buyers will find out anyway, and skirting negatives will hurt your credibility. If your sales or traffic were the result of PPC advertising, be sure to list how much was spent.

leaving out important details forces a buyer to move on, or post a question and maybe not return.

Pricing your site too high will is a common mistake. It is natural to think your site is worth more than it actually is, so it’s important to use some basic guidelines. The most common way to price a site is by using a multiple of earnings. The ‘usual’ formula is 10-12 times monthly earnings, but of course there are mitigating factors.

New sites and, those with very short histories, generally won’t command the same multiple as a site with a longer track record, however a newer site has the benefit of showing a much sharper trend upwards.

A good rule-of-thumb for sites newer than 90 days old is 6 times monthly earnings. In an auction format such as Flippa you can list a ‘buy it now’ price, but you are better off simply setting a ‘reserve’. Your particular site or niche may be just what a particular buyer happens to be looking for, and this will help you avoid leaving money on the table.

To summarize: Website flipping can be extremely lucrative. Create a site, generate some sales & traffic, and you have a valuable asset you can sell. Create your site with a buyer in mind. Build it on it’s own domain. Install Google Analytic’s immediately. Write down all your expenses.  Make the site as “independent” as you can. Revenue, traffic, and unique content are what sells; focus on at least two of these. Avoid hyperbole in your sale listing, include all pertinent information including negatives, but be brief and to the point. Include ‘proof’ of traffic and sales.

What makes an ad stand out? In a word, “deviance”. Anything that deviates from plain, ‘unadorned’ text will stand out. This can be “size & shape”, symbols, extra space, and high-impact words.

Seriously… let me qualify that for you:

You probably already heard me talk about Intellimon before? They specialize in helping people create successful web sites that just ‘work’ and to that end they retail two high quality products:

1) The award-winning XSitePro software – used by tens of thousands of users; small business-owners, home-users and Internet marketers alike.

It’s the ‘Rolls Royce’ of website design software and retails
for $197…

…but forget that price for a moment

2) The Complete Guide To Website Building – everything you could need to know, soup-to-nuts, about planning, building and publishing your web site using the XSitePro software above.

This 30-hour on-line course includes a wealth of information on the ‘Why’ as well as the ‘How’ – perfect for people starting out. At $197 also, it’s the best value for money website design training course money can buy….

…but again, forget that price just now!

These two products individually represent the best-of-breed, but TOGETHER they are even better still – they not only teach you everything you need to know in order to create great looking websites, you also get the perfect tool to complement your learning, and to take action right from the start.

Well, the guys at Intellimon have just emailed to let me know about a very special offer they’re putting together…

Normally, these two products together would cost $394 (which is an amazing price compared to other products on the market) but for a very limited period of time you can get BOTH these products bundled together, for the *incredible* price of only $294 – that’s $100 off.

This offer is a one-time opportunity to get two of the best products on the market for getting yourself on-line – together they give you a wonderful opportunity to pursue your Internet ambitions in a way you never thought possible.

This offer is good through to the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve – that’s just a matter of days from now.

So if you’d like to get your discount copy of the powerful XSitePro software along with the unmatched Complete Guide To Website Building training course, then click the link below…

Click Here

This Christmas offer can’t happen again any time soon (as the name suggests!) so please do act right away if you’re planning on getting yourself on-line in the foreseeable future! Wishing you a happy Christmas and prosperous New Year!

Keith

P.S. Don’t miss out! Here’s that link again:

Click Here

SpeedPPC

$495 Reg. price
$395 EXCLUSIVE Discount!

SpeedPPC is simply the most powerful PPC Affiliate Marketing System ever released. If you are doing PPC, your cost, return, and ultimate success is dependent on creating ads triggered by the right keywords, and paying the least possible CPC for those keywords. The primary factor determining what you will pay for clicks is your Quality Score. For PPC ads, your Quality Score is determined by the relevancy and relationship between your keyword, ad, domain, and landing page. SpeedPPC is the first and only system that creates a perfectly optimized coupling between all these elements, giving you the lowest possible CPC.

In and of itself, this justifies the purchase price. But SpeedPPC goes an extraordinary step beyond “just” giving you the best possible CPC’s. SpeedPPC allows you to create campaigns combining your keywords with “expansion lists” – producing individual customized adgroups automatically, on any scale.

Promoting an ad with the keyword “Dating”? With SpeedPPC, you can combine your ad with a city expansion list, for instance, to instantly create hundreds or thousands of perfectly QS-optimized ads such as “Chicago’s Hottest Dates”, “Orlando’s Hottest Dates”, etc.

Further, these ‘expansion lists’ can be merchant datafeeds! How about an ad series combining printer cartridges with a list of printer models:

“Sale on HP-1100 Cartridges”
“Sale on HP-2200 Cartridges”
“Sale on HP-3300 Cartridges”
etc….

At $495, SpeedPPC is possibly the most valuable revenue-generating application you can buy. HOWEVER, it just so happens that I moderate the SpeedPPC Members Forum – and so I can make available a Limited, Private discount of $100 off the price that everyone else must pay!

Click Here for your Special SpeedPPC price of just $395!

Here’s a quick way to help determine the “profitability” of your keywords.

One of the ‘tried & true’ methods for testing keyword profitability is to ‘spy’ on PPC ads. The rational is that anyone advertising on a given keyword consistently is probably making money. After all, no one is going to pay indefinitely for PPC ads on a keyword that isn’t making them money, right?

While this technique is quite effective, it is extremely time-consuming. In order for your data to be meaningful, you have to track ads over time, usually at least 2 weeks to a month.

Here’s another method that can help you determine profitability immediately using Spyfu (www.spyfu.com):

Step 1: Go to SpyFu

Step 2: Type any keyword and hit the “Search” button

Step 3: Look at the 2nd table with the title “Ads”

You see, Spyfu is showing you ads from 30 days ago! (You can check this yourself by looking at the 1st table and clicking on “View Cached Page”)

Step 4: Go to Google and type in the same keywords.

Step 5: Now cross-check the ads that appear on Spyfu.com against those on Google. Then ask yourself, “Do the majority of the ads on Spyfu.com and Google appear similar or different?” (To make things easier, you only want to check the 1st page of Google) If they are largely similarly, then there’s good chance the keyword IS profitable!

And for those of you who want to go deeper, KeywordSpy has a FREE function giving you up to 10 results, as well as a trial version: KeywordSpy.com!

Niche research is one of the most important skills you can master as an Internet marketer. Whether you’re creating your own products, marketing as as affiliate, or simply creating content sites for ad revenue, narrow, targeted niches are your best bet.

Would you rather be a small fish in a giant lake, or a big fish in a small pond? While your personal philosophy might argue otherwise, when it comes to Internet marketing, you want to be the latter – unless you have an unlimited advertising and product development budget!

Below are a list of must have niche market research sites that will give you a slew of ideas on niches you might want enter.

About

http://azlist.about.com/num.htm

http://azlist.about.com

You’ll discover hundreds of regularly updated guides written by experts with a real passion for their subject.

Alexa

http://www.alexa.com/browse

Browse thousands of sub-categories and discover markets you might never have even considered. Micro-niching has never been easier.

Amazon New Releases

http://amazon.com/gp/new-releases

Want to know about up coming products. This site lists the big new product launches before they happen. It will save you hours of research finding out what the latest consumer trends are going to be.

AOL Hot Searches
http://hotsearches.aol.com

As they say themselves: “Check out what’s hot on AOL Search. Find the hottest searches on celebrity news, breaking news and more.”

Associates Directory

http://www.associateprograms.com/directory

I’m a big fan of conducting my market research by finding products first, instead of conducting keyword research. If there are products for sale in a specific niche, that’s a good indicator that money is being spent and therefore the niche might be worth exploring.

Bella Online

http://www.bellaonline.com/misc/sitemap.asp

A women’s site that will give you a good insight into the female niche mindset. Let’s face it, guys and gals are different and have different desires, wants and needs.

Best Online Research Apps/Sites You’ve Never Heard Of

http://oedb.org/library/features/best-online-research-sites

Excellent list of resources for the serious researcher.

Big Boards
http://rankings.big-boards.com/?p=all

Lists the top discussion forums by rank

CB Engine

http://www.cbengine.com

A veritable treasure trove of information for scouting out hidden gems in the Clickbank Marketplace. If you want to sell CB products, this is an essential resource. Grab a PRO membership, it’s worth the measly price tab!

CNet Buzz

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-12578_7-6527356-1.html

Reviews and comments on the latest tech products.

Del.icio.us

http://del.icio.us/popular

See in real time just what folk are digging about. One of the most popular social bookmarking sites around.

Depth Reporting

http://depthreporting.googlepages.com/websites.htm

Classed as “the most useful web sites for reporters”. Nuff said dudes and dudettes.

Do It Yourself
http://www.doityourself.com

A monster site of home improvement information.

DMOZ

http://dmoz.org

People seem to forget about the humble human-edited open directory project. But in it be fields of diamonds my lovelies that might just push you into actually getting off your butt and doing something with your online business.

Dummies Guides
http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesTitleAll/index.html
The famous Dummies guides as listed by tiltes.

Ebay Categories

http://listings.ebay.com

http://hub.ebay.com/buy

http://pulse.ebay.com

http://www.mpire.com/ebayPop.ivk

You will die and think you’ve gone to heaven after taking a peak at just what is being sold over at Ebay. Don’t anyone ever tell me that they can’t find a niche to get stuck in.

Ehow

http://www.ehow.com

As the site says “how to do just about everything”.

Ezine Articles

http://www.ezinearticles.com/

Articles on thousands of niches. Hint: Take a look at the bottom of each article to discover a plethora of product ideas.

Furl

http://www.furl.net/furledPopular.jsp

When it comes to niche market research I like riding the coat-tails of others. After all why reinvent the wheel when thousands of other kind folk have gone before you.

Gizmodo

http://www.gizmodo.com

This is a blog dedicated to gadgets, gadgets and more gadgets. You’ll be first in line to know about those “must-have, I’m gonna kill you to get it” sale scrums.

Google Catalogs
http://catalogs.google.com

Browse through over 4500 mail order catalogs.

Google Products

http://www.google.com/products

Yup believe it or not some folk are actually making money selling stuff online. And not just downloadable information products! Hard goods sell real well. Heck I should know, I just sold $13,000 worth of one electronic product in less than 72 hours. Remember Rob’s maxim: Find a product, then the market.

Google Hot Trends

http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends

Daily trend watching to see what people are searching for on this little know about engine.

Google Video

http://video.google.com/videoranking

The Top 100 most viewed videos on Google.

Hobbies List
http://www.hobbieslist.com

A site listing a ton of hobbies. Well what else did you think the name suggested!

How To Do Things

http://www.howtodothings.com/browse-all-categories

People always want to learn how to do stuff. This site will make you head explode with ideas. Is there a way you could create a paid for product using what’s here?

Internet Movie Database

http://www.imdb.com

If you’re mad about films (movies) and want to sell to this addicted niche, this is one place you must visit.

Intute

http://www.intute.ac.uk

Provides some of the best resources for education and research. All the sites are listed and reviewed by qualified researchers. Serious stuff here.

iVillage
http://www.ivillage.com/archive/a2z/
A great list of subjects related to women’s issues.

Magazines

http://www.magazines.com

It costs tens of thousands of pounds/dollars/euros to start a magazine, so you can pretty much deduce that if there’s one in print and it’s popular that there’s a market or sub-niche somewhere hidden in it. You can’t go too far wrong scouting out what’s available on this site.

Men’s Health
http://www.menshealth.com

A ton of information related, not surprisingly, to men’s health!

Metacafe

http://www.metacafe.com/most_popular

Videos hot, and it’s only going to get hotter as broadband proliferates around the world and speeds just keep on increasing. Which is why it’s important you stay abreast of what’s getting attention in the videosphere.

Movie Box Office Charts

http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/boxoffice

Films are big money earners, and with each release comes a plethora of associated products that people suck up. Will you be ready?

Nextmark

http://lists.nextmark.com

You can search more than 60,000 mailing lists, email lists, and telephone lists from hundreds of vendors – virtually every list available!

Popurls

http://www.furl.net/furledPopular.jsp

“Popular URLs to the latest buzz”.

Pricerunner

http://www.pricerunner.com

I won’t say it again… Find the product then the market! Millions of products can be found on this quaint little old site.

Technorati

http://www.technorati.com

Yet another must visit social bookmarking site. Now let’s be clear here, just because someone bookmarks a subject doesn’t necessarily mean there’s money in it. There might or there might not be, which is why I bang on about finding products that sell first, then explore the market.

ThisNext
http://www.thisnext.com/activity/map/

This one is way cool and seriously addictive. You can actually watch what people are looking for on the ThisNext shopping portal. Plus you get to see where they are in the world. Kinda like Google Earth with Market Research data!

Top TV Shows

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/nielsens-charts.htm

What are all those couch potatoes staring at for hours!

Yahoo Buzz

http://buzz.yahoo.com

Top movers and leaders as searched on Yahoo.

Yahoo Groups

http://groups.yahoo.com

If folk are interested in a hobby, subject or passion you’re going to find a group that hang out here. And if there isn’t one, maybe there aient much of a market. Why be a trailblazer when you can be a coat tail trailer.

Yahoo Shopping

http://shopping.yahoo.com

Another great shopping portal to explore.

Viral Video Chart

http://www.viralvideochart.com

Lists the top viral videos by multiple categories.

WikiHow

http://www.wikihow.com/Categories

Looking for how-to articles and information. This site is similar to Wikipedia but is just for how-to. Content created by the public.

Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_topics

Well if you don’t know of this site you must have been sitting in a cave. A huge resource. Tip: Use the external links at the bottom of each article to dig deeper into a subject.

YouTube

http://youtube.com/browse?s=mp

Here you’ll find the most viewed videos so you can see what folk are interested in. Ideas anyone?

There are 3 basic methods: creating something from scratch, modifying an existing product such as PLR (Private Label Rights) or public domain, or building on top of something, such as Open Source code.

Modifying an existing product or building on top of something is usually quicker than creating something from scratch. Through outsourcing, you can create your own products quickly and relatively inexpensively.

I did this with an Open Source program for creating Camtasia-like screen capture videos. I spent a few hundred dollars at Rentacoder to take the Open Source version, change the GUI or interface, add some features, and create a Website around it.

The result was my own custom software program that I was able to market – I sold nearly a thousand copies at $37 each., and then sold the entire ‘business’ for a nice 5-figure sum. My less-than-$1000 investment returned well over $50,000.

Here are some resources that you can peruse for ideas (be careful to read and follow all licensing agreements):

Open Source

The Free Software Foundation => http://directory.fsf.org/

Source Forge => http://sourceforge.net/

Open Source.org => http://www.opensource.org/

OS Alt => http://www.osalt.com/

Open Source Mac => http://www.opensourcemac.org/

Open Source Windows => http://www.opensourcewindows.org/

Apple Open Source => http://www.opensource.apple.com/

Open Source Living => http://osliving.com/index.php

Open Source Directory => http://osdir.com/

Gnu.org => http://www.gnu.org/

Freesoft => http://www.free-soft.org/

Scripts, freeware, shareware, etc.

Tucows => http://www.tucows.com/

Cnet Download.com => http://www.download.com/

Freeware Files => http://www.freewarefiles.com/

Free Utilities => http://www.software995.com/

Here’s a really simple, quick, and easy way to test: run a brief Adwords campaign.

Create just a single ad targeted to the niche you’re considering, mention a product, and INCLUDE A PRICE. If you get clicks on the ad, you’ve got a winner. No clicks? You just saved yourself a whole lot of time, money, and frustration.

You’re not trying to sell yet, and in fact anything past the click doesn’t matter – yet. You just want to see if there is QUALIFIED interest. If you display a price and people click, you know there is qualified interest.

All the rest is just testing & optimizing.

You don’t have to spend much, or get too deep or sophisticated with your PPC campaign. Simply get some primary keywords related to the product or niche, and write an ad that includes a price. The price itself is less important than just including something.

It doesn’t matter whether you are considering affiliate marketing or creating your own product. You can test for interest and willingness to buy almost instantly. In fact, you should NEVER enter a niche or create a product BEFORE you run a PPC campaign to test it.

Pay Per Click is the greatest research tool ever invented. Literally within minutes, and for next to nothing, you can learn whether a niche or product is worth pursing. Even in competitive niches where you already know people are buying, you should be testing your specific product, value proposition, etc.

Creating a good sales page can be difficult, tedious, even costly, and we’re usually all too eager to get it uploaded and working. But certainly we understand it’s importance. So you have your graphics done professionally, and eventually you’re happy with your sales copy.

Most Internet Marketers – myself included! – are guilty of leaving it there. After all, good is good, right?

All too often, we settle for “good”, then don’t understand why our businesses fail to really take off. If you plan to succeed in the Internet Marketing world, “good” isn’t enough. In fact, “Good” is the enemy of “Great”.

As part of an on-going series, we’ll look at how to go from “Good” to “Great!”. Often, it’s simply a matter of degrees and small steps.

Your Sales Letter

Once you have the ‘basics’ in place, consider these three tips to help your sales page start going from “good” to “Great!”:

1. “Readability” – It’s easy to get caught up in sophisticated messaging, overly-complex USP’s (“Unique Selling Proposition”), etc. Print out the text of your sales page, and read it out loud to yourself. If you can, have someone much older & much younger than you read it aloud as well. Take note of the parts that are stumble over, or don’t sound clear and easy to understand.

2. “Size” – What’s your message? Does it take six screens of text to get it across? If your visitor has to scroll and scroll and scroll… it’s probably too long. While “long form” sales pages have become rampant, most of them are far longer than they could – or should – be. In the off-line world of sales, we have the concept of the “elevator story”. If whatever you’re offer’s USP can’t be stated in the 30 seconds you have next to someone on an elevator ride, you’re in trouble. Of course you have more than 30 seconds on a sales page… or do you? The fact is, the longer your sales page, the more visitors will abandon it.

3. “Easy On The Eyes” – Be VERY careful with your use of fonts, colors, and formatting. Never use fully-saturated red, even for those main headlines. If you’re using red, use a slightly darker red. Avoid primary colors altogether. Don’t use a lot of colors in your text. If you want to differentiate, use different shades of your headline and body text colors. Limit your width, it’s a strain to try and read back and forth across the entire screen. Limit your emphasis so that they really emphasize something. Having to much bolded, underlined, italicized text is hard to read and dilutes their significance. Use “whitespace” liberally, but no so much that the sales page looks “chunky” from far away.

We’ll continue with more Sales Page Strategies next week.