This is a step-by-step method for creating a content-based system and earning money from advertising and affiliates. This requires very little start-up cost, but needs a lot of elbow grease. This is ideal for people who have more time than money. If you don’t see yourself writing at least thirty articles, don’t bother with this method. If you like to write, this is a risk-free way to get your feet wet and can be built into a solid business model that will last for years.
1. Research a niche that interests you. Go to WordTracker and see how many people are searching for your theme. Try several variations such as “fried chicken recipes”, “fried chicken sauce recipes”, or “boneless fried chicken recipes”.
Once you’ve decided that there are people actually searching for these keywords, search the ClickBank Marketplace for products you could sell. Try to trade in a trial copy of the products, or just buy them. Try to choose between 3-5 products and write honest reviews on all of them.
2. Get a domain name and web hosting with BlueHost.
3. Sign up for an autoresponder through Aweber.
4. Write five short articles offering tips about your niche (sample fried chicken recipes, cooking methods, etc.). At the end of each article, please provide a short review and recommend one of the products you signed up with on the ClickBank Marketplace. Make sure they are honest reviews.
5. Add those five articles to your website, each on its own page. We use Dreamweaver, but you can also download Nvu for free.
6. Sign up for Google AdSense and place your ads on each of those five pages.
7. Write five “teasers” for those web pages, which will be emailed to your prospects every four days or so. They should offer a brief introduction such as: “Hello, I just created a new method for cooking fried chicken. You can check it out at “.
You can include the course directly in the email, although I prefer to send prospects to our website, for two reasons. The first is that you can include advertising on your site, which will generate additional income. The second benefit is that your site will appear more valuable to search engines (more content is always a good thing) and you will eventually start to see some traffic from search results.
8. Create a landing page that offers a five-day crash course in your niche. Visitors can access the course by registering through Aweber. Now you have their email address and you can start following up with them.
9. Sign up for an account at EzineArticles. At first, you can only submit ten items at a time, and they can take over a week to get approved. Choose ten keywords that fit our search criteria and write an article for each one. Be sure to include the keyword in the title, several times in the article, and once in the conclusion. Also, in your bio box, include a link to your site (preferably with the keyword as the link). A good way to get people to click on the link is to offer them a free report.
10. Submit all ten as soon as you finish them (the faster the better). After those ten are accepted, you will be able to submit 25 or an unlimited number, depending on how well your articles have been written. Only after you’ve written thirty articles should you expect to see some money (not a lot, but some). This is how the user experience should play out:
has. They search for a keyword and click on your article in the search engine results.
b. They read your article and click the link to your site.
vs They enroll in the free course and start receiving emails with links to the course.
d. They read the teaser and click on the link.
me. On the web page, they click on an AdSense ad (which pays you a few cents) or buy an affiliate product (which pays you dollars). Even if they don’t do any of these activities (which most won’t), they’ll get another email a few days later and the process will start all over again.
11. Once you’ve got this set up, use WordTracker and find dozens, if not hundreds, of keywords with at least ten daily searches and fewer than 1,000 competing sites. Write a 300-500 article that is highly optimized for each keyword and publish it on your website. Add the AdSense code and the occasional affiliate link where applicable. Be sure to include a signup form on every page that offers your free course to capture leads and promote your products.
12. Create a sitemap using the Xml Sitemap Generator and submit it to Google Webmaster Tools.
13. Start building links to your website. This will help you rank faster in search engines. Outsource link building by posting an ad on Craigslist or Elance.
The beauty of this system is that there is no financial risk. All you pay for is the autoresponder and the domain/host. Professionals write hundreds of articles and generate huge amounts of traffic through this funnel, which can generate very good income.
Examples of profitable content-based website:
or www.Travel-smarts.com
or www.seat61.com