How to make $1000 a month online from scratch – Part 4 of 8
One of my friends is a consulting project manager. I hadn’t seen him for a while so asked him what he’d been up to.

He told me how he was contracted as the head project manager for a large train building project. When I asked him how it was going he responded, “Well, it’s a little stressful.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Well, for every day the project runs late, it costs the company over $100,000. It’s a 12 month, multi-million dollar project and I’m the one responsible for making it come in on time,” he casually responded.

I was shocked. I was intrigued to find out how he managed to control a massive project like this to make it come in on time. It seemed overwhelming to me, but didn’t seem to faze him much.

I was especially interested in understanding how he managed to run a project like this without feeling out of control and risking running weeks or months over time costing the company millions of dollars. So I asked him.

He went on to explain two nuggets of truth that I’ve held close to me ever since. The first insight he shared with me was this.

“Every huge project will always contain sub-projects. All sub-projects will always contain tasks. So to tackle any huge project just keep breaking it down until you have actionable tasks. Figure out how long each task takes, organize them, then do them.”

In other words, for any project you face, no matter how big it is, just break it down into bite sized manageable tasks. Then do them!

This is powerful stuff that can cure any overwhelming feelings you have for anything you face. Keep that in mind as we move forward in this series. If you’ve never done anything like this before it can be a daunting position to be in. We’ll be breaking everything down piece by piece, so you can relax.

The other gold nugget he shared was a simple proverb that he lives by, and I now try to as well.

It is “Measure twice, cut once.”

Part 4 in our series is all about the measuring twice. We’re going to be planning the sub-projects we need to work on to get our goal of $1000 a month off the ground.

This can be a tricky stage for some people. Some folks simply jump in boots and all and get overwhelmed and confused.

Others get stuck here. They keep looking and researching but never actually do anything to move forward.

Series of Action Steps

I’ve purposefully put together a set of action steps to take to propel you forward in this project. Hopefully, it will help you not get overwhelmed, or stuck in the research rut.

It’s worth noting that before writing this, I spent two days exploring all the options. I had researched them a few years ago, but wanted to make sure that there wasn’t anything new that I was missing out on. So you can trust that this is up to date advice.

True to my friend’s insight, I’ve broken this down into 5 sub-projects. They are:

1) Finalize your site idea.
2) Choose a business name (and domain name).
3) Plan your basic site content.
4) Plan your digital product.
5) Set up your website.

I strongly suggest that you do each of these steps in that order. So don’t do step 3 without doing step 1 and 2 first.

There are two reasons for this.

First, it’s going to be easier to do these steps with a clear mind without technology getting in the way. When you throw a technology learning curve into the middle of this, it can easily become a muddle and more complex than it needs to be.

The second reason is that you should be ready to go when you sign up for your publishing platform. This saves you money because once you sign up, you’ve got a path to follow immediately.

It also helps make the learning curve easier. When you read through the publishing platform instructions you’ve got a working set of ideas in your head rather than simply hypotheticals. In other words, you’ve got a clear direction to follow once the rubber meets the road.

Let’s look at each of these sub-projects individually.

Finalize Your Site Idea

By now you should have already gone through the detailed instructions I outlined for choosing your niche. If you haven’t done that, you must complete this. You should be able to feel confident in your decision if you use the methodology I outlined.

Once you’ve decided, don’t look back.

Choose a Domain Name

Choosing a domain name is a really fun part of this planning process. No matter how many names get registered online, I’m still constantly surprised at how many good ones are still left.

Now I want to make it clear at this point, we’re just picking a domain name. We won’t be buying it yet. This comes bundled (free) with our publishing platform so we don’t have to pay for it separately.

There are a few guidelines I try to use when selecting a domain name. I think it’s important to try to strike a balance between professional, memorable and easy to share via word of mouth.

Keeping this in mind, here are a few rules I would recommend trying to keep when selecting your domain name. Remember that your domain name is usually the name of your site as well.

Domain Name Should NOT contain:

Hyphens – Domain names containing hyphens are difficult to share via word of mouth and don’t look as professional. They used to be popular for SEO reasons, but are no longer necessary.

Numbers – This rule can be broken for some domains but as a general rule it’s best not to have numbers in your domain name. They make the domain name difficult to share via word of mouth. People ask, “Is it numeric or alphabetic?”

Anything other than a .com – The dot com domain names are seen as the most professional and are often the default in people’s minds. Unless you have a very good reason to have another domain name (like country specific information, or a bona fide organization) I would try to keep to a dot com.

More than 25 characters (before the dot com) – Anything longer than 25 characters becomes problematic for a number of reasons. One in particular is if you ever want to advertise via PPC search engines.

Clever misspellings – Again, they create problems if anyone wants to spread the word about your site to others. They can also detract from your ranking power in the search engines. They may look clever, but will negatively impact your traffic. If someone can’t be told the domain name and write it phonetically, then you have a problem.

Domain Name SHOULD contain:

You main keyword phrase – Having your main keyword phrase in your domain name will help with your search rankings. For me, it’s ideal if someone can read your domain name and at a glance “get” what your site is all about.

Positional statement – In the same way, a positional adjective can help people understand what they are getting before they visit your site. For example words like help, advice, tips, etc.

In line with this, imagine your site is ranking well in the search engines. How appealing is it going to be to the web surfer when he sees your listing in the results?

If one site is called WhiteBallGuy.com and another is called GolfPuttingGuru.com, which one do you think will be more attractive to the web surfer who’s looking for golf putting tips?

Here’s a free and useful site to expand your mind on possible domain alternatives.

http://www.nametumbler.com

In a matter of minutes I found several great, available (at the time of writing) domain names.

GolfPuttingGuru.com
GolfPuttingHero.com
GolfPuttingMadeEasy.com
MakeGolfPuttingEasy.com
BetterGolfPutting.com
GolfPuttingAdvice.com

Also consider using Google’s keyword research tool from last week to find out specific keywords that people are using to find the sorts of information you are providing.

Just remember to keep the domain name general enough so you can be flexible with the content you are providing. For example, GolfPuttingGuru.com is better than GolfPuttingAdvice.com because some day you may wish to sell physical golf putters from the site itself. At that point, the domain name would be less relevant to the theme of the site if you called it GolfPuttingAdvice.com.

Plan Your Site Content

It’s worth while at this point planning the framework of your site. If you plan your site structure now, you’ll be less likely to fall into the trap of creating a site around the articles you’ve already written, rather than writing articles that fit within the ideal site structure.

This is a pretty simple process. Just write down all the topics you wish to cover in your site and then move them around so they make the most sense. Sometimes, it might be a case of having some sub-categories within larger, more general topics.

For example you might have sections on putting tips, putter reviews, putting practice machine etc.

If you’re a visual person, it’s sometimes useful to draw a flowchart. You could even use a free flow charting service like the one at gliffy.com

Plan Your Digital Product

While you’re in planning mode, you should consider starting to plan your digital product. It’s useful to start this planning now because it will also help shape the content for the articles on the site.

You can save yourself a lot of work by reusing some of the material that will be going into your digital product within your articles. Then the articles become a useful teaser for people to buy the full product itself. You give them a bit, but if they want it all then they need to buy your product.

This will be all explained in a later chapter, so don’t stress about it now.

For now, do some research on the kinds of questions that people are commonly asking on your particular subject. Begin to collate these and frame them into interview questions.

Again, revisit boardreader.com, Google Answers and Yahoo! Answers to see the kinds of questions that people are asking. Also, it doesn’t hurt to try to think back to the sorts of questions you have had in the past about your chosen subject matter.

At the end of this exercise, you should have lots of common questions that will provide the basis for both your digital product and your site content.

Set Up Your Site

Once you’ve completed the first four steps, it’s time for the more difficult task of setting up your website. As I said last week, up until now everything I’ve given you has been using free tools. Eventually, you have to get serious and put your money where your mouth is.

As I mentioned earlier, I researched again to see who the market leaders were. I even signed up to several different paid services to check them out for you as well.

The main criteria I was looking for was a unified solution that provided all the tools you needed in one place – one that would allow you to get your site up and running easily without technical distractions.

A solution that does a lot of hand holding, taking people through the step by step best processes that represent the best practice. But also one that has a strong supportive community of peers who know what you’re going through and can assist and motivate you towards success.

My two days of research ended up taking me back to my starting point in recommending Site Build It! for your publishing platform.

It’s still the only truly all in one solution available that includes hosting, domain name, site building tools, keyword research tools, traffic building tools, SEO feedback tools, newsletter publishing and traffic tracking tools. They handle all the technical updates and site security issues as well. If you’ve ever had a site hacked, you’ll know how important this can be.

However, it could be said that the real value isn’t even in these “features.” I believe that the real value is in the accompanying training, community forums and support. Once you’re part of the SBI clan, you have everything you need in one location.

Now I’m not saying SBI! is perfect. The site-building tools are pretty clunky and old fashioned. The site templates are basic and don’t allow much freedom for creativity. (SBI is compatible with Dreamweaver and other advanced site-building tools, but I’m assuming you don’t want to get that technical.)

You could possibly get someone to create a WordPress blog for you and download one of the free templates and you’ll have a nicer looking site.

But what do you care more about? If the site looks above average, or if the site makes you money? I’d take the latter any day of the week.

If you’re already an SBI! owner, then fantastic. You’re already all set. You’ll be able to apply the principles in following weeks. If the niche you’ve chosen doesn’t stack up against our niche selection criteria from last week then you may wish to even start a new site that does!

If you’re not already an SBI! owner, I recommend that you become one. I believe it’s going to give you your best shot at success for a very reasonable price.

In saying that, it’s one thing for me to recommend you to sign up for it (especially as we’re using an affiliate link), but it’s important that you feel confident in the system yourself. After all, this is the biggest investment you’ll make for the $1000 a month project.

I suggest that you look through the site and make up your own mind. If you’ve made the decision, you’re going have more faith and confidence in the system and will be more willing to work with it instead of wasting time looking around for greener grass.

In particular, check out the certified proof, the comparison and the case studies pages.

I hope you’re as convinced as I am that this is the best platform to propel you towards your goal of earning $1000 a month online.

Once you’re satisfied, sign up and spend some time going over the training materials. It’s worth while just spending some time getting familiar with the system. You don’t have to actually build any of the site yet, just get familiar with the system.

Next week we’ll be covering “The Action” where we’ll be moving forward setting up the foundations for your site and your new digital product. Come along next week prepared for some major forward progress!

If you have any questions you can either post a comment below, or else ask an actual SBI! owner here.

Article Series

This article is part of a series. Other published articles in this series so far are shown below:
1. How To Make $1000 A Month Online From Scratch
2. The Required Mindset For Online Success
3. Choosing A Niche For Your Online Business

Albert

Social sites have become a popular, affordable way for internet affiliate marketers to draw guaranteed website traffic. Creating a Squidoo lens to promote your affiliate programs can help you reach your target market and magnify your client base without breaking your budget.

When you participate in a free social site such as Squidoo, it is a budget-conscious way to boost your sales without spending money to buy targeted traffic. By using Squidoo, you can create a profitable interaction between your articles, your blog and your Squidoo lens.

Here are the suggested steps to take in order:

1. The whole process begins by choosing a popular keyword to represent your affiliate marketing endeavor.

2. Create your own Squidoo lens based on this keyword and also create a blog focused around the same keyword.

3. Submit both your Squidoo lens and your blog to multiple search engines and blog directories.

4. Write an article featuring your chosen keyword and submit it to popular article directories such as EzineArticles. Before you submit your article to directories, however, make sure to include a bio box that links to your blog and Squidoo lens.

5. Link your blog and your Squidoo lens to your article.

6. Set up an RSS feed for your blog within your Squidoo lens.

7. Post to your blog regularly with posts centered around your chosen keyword.

8. Ping the blog directories for your lens and your blog every time you post a new entry.

Because Squidoo has modules with RSS reader capability, it is simple to add RSS feeds to your lens and this way your lens is automatically updated whenever you add content to your blog. For example, when you post a new blog entry, your Squidoo lens is automatically updated.

By following these steps, your Squidoo lens, blog and article all work together to draw in a growing flow of traffic and significantly boost your search engine ranking.

Bonus Tip: If you have a mailing list, you can send a link to your latest blog entry in an email – and some email programs do this automatically for you. This is particularly useful if you are reviewing a new product and want to drive traffic to your offering to make sales.

By creating one simple article, a Squidoo lens and a blog, you can give your search engine ranking a major boost for significant affiliate marketing profits.

Albert

Even though you see online ads every day that say internet marketing is your effortless passageway to prosperity, it is not as easy as it sounds.

Fortunately, there are effective ways to promote your marketing business online, which are completely free. The benefits of using free traffic sources should be obvious to a marketer on a limited budget.

The best free traffic sources are article directories, blogs, and forums. Other sources include free classified sites, safe lists, and traffic exchanges. You can use article marketing to market a product, service or to create a database of potential customers.

Have you advertise your opportunity or products on online-classified sites. Online-classified sites are a poor source of free traffic. Unfortunately, most ads on free classified sites go unread, thus are not receiving any traffic.

If you do not have the money to spend on a reasonable pay-per-click marketing campaign, free traffic exchanges are a way to get the traffic you need if you are willing to put in some work.

Traffic Exchanges are an easy way to get traffic to your website or landing page. Traffic exchanges are time consuming, and you need to remember that the people using the traffic exchanges are using them for the same reasons you are. Still, traffic exchanges are useful as a means to test new landing pages or build a list of marketers looking to generate free traffic.

Normally you will not make direct sales from a traffic exchange, so it is wise to try to build a list of traffic hungry marketers, then through repeated contact attempt to satisfy their need.

The monetization potential of traffic exchanges is in these repeated contacts through your list building efforts. If you are trying to use a traffic exchanges as a direct selling vehicle, unless you are an extremely talented copy write then it is more than likely a waste of your time.

As a list-building medium, the traffic generated can be endless! Thousands of marketers use the more popular traffic tools. Traffic exchanges are particularly popular among people who promote home business ideas and network marketing opportunities.

Below is a little video showing you how to surf multiple traffic exchanges in multiple tabs.

In conclusion:

Article marketing, posing on forums and blogging are some of the best ways to
build free-targeted traffic. Traffic exchanges are particularly popular among
people who promote home business ideas. A free traffic exchange is an excellent
way of developing leads, using a squeeze pa

Flash has gained immense web popularity because it provides a convenient way to let web sites include interactive and animated movies, which could not have been possible otherwise. In the beginning, Flash made its mark because it provides advantages in two sectors; animated banner ads and Flash intros. Web designers considered Flash to be the latest, and that having Flash projected them as better designers.

Even though Flash movies as ad banners continues because of a high click thru rate as compared to static gifts, there is a marked and continuing decline in their usage. There are several reasons for this, and are all connected to the relative advantages and disadvantages of using animated Flash movies as web-site intros.

One of the reasons for the decreasing popularity of Flash intros is because it fails to fulfill any useful purpose. It is simply an animated visual presentation of appearing /disappearing images and text messages from various parts of the screen with all the animation and interactivity actually serving no particular purpose, in many cases not ever succeeding in attracting the visitor’s attention.

Another disadvantage is that your homepage takes much more time to load when you use Flash intros. When you create a Flash intro, it surely has raster graphics, which increase the file size of the .swf file leading to a greater overall time to fully load your homepage. Now it would be too much to expect your time conscious visitor to keep waiting while your Flash intro gets loaded and then again go on to read your animated sales pitches. You know very well that had you been in the shoes of your visitor you would have just clicked out instead of waiting.

Embedding music and sound files in Flash intro movies increases their file sizes again leading to greater download time. Moreover, not every visitor is a music lover and even if he is, he may not like music forced upon him instead of being able to listen to what he prefers.

However, the biggest disadvantage of using a Flash intro is difficulty in being picked up by search engines, which cannot index text embedded in movies. It is also wrong to suppose that placing keywords in Meta tags or within HTML comment tags is going to overcome this problem as even an advanced search engine like Google faces problems indexing text and following links created in Flash movies.

All this is not to deny the advantages of Flash intros. If you use animation and interactive features properly, it certainly makes Flash catchy. Flash intros are a great way to thrill your visitors in case they have a lot of time on their hands. Another advantage with Flash intros is that if visitors are at a higher bandwidth or if they have time to let your intros to load you have a great opportunity to showcase your corporate objectives through a Flash intro as compared to a static page. It is also possible to build good interactive menus in a Flash intro. These menus tend to serve as excellent navigation guides for the site’s human visitors.

Albert