The following is a guest post by Patrick Meninga of http://www.thefreedomblogger.com/. He recently sold his website for $200,000 dollars.
It is easy to become cynical when considering most work from home jobs. Nearly all of them promise a huge return on your time investment which is almost always a gross exaggeration of the truth.
But I recently sold my flagship website for six figures, and the site was making good money for years up to the point of the sale.
In fact, I compute my hourly “wage” while writing on that website to be approximately $900/hour. Because I publish at a rate of around 4,000 words per hour, and my website has about one million words, I put in about 300 hours over the last four years.
I admit, the numbers sound too good to be true.
So is this just another scam?
Can anyone follow my example and create a similar payoff?
I believe that the answer is “yes.”
However, there is some serious work involved.
Let me explain to you exactly what I did in order to build this successful business:
1) I chose a profitable topic and built a single website.
2) I focused on quality content and high volume.
3) I promoted the site with high quality guest posting.
4) I focused on income growth by increasing organic traffic.
I chose a profitable topic and built a single website
It is not enough to put up a personal website and talk about your cat and make money from this. Your website has to be focused on a topic in which:
- You have expert knowledge and can write about with real authority.
- There is real profit potential based on advertising.
How can you determine if a topic is profitable?
Look at the existing websites. Look at several of them and see what they are selling and if they have advertisements on them. What are they selling in those advertisements?
Now ask yourself: “What is the value of a new customer in this niche?”
For example, if the advertisers in a particular niche are selling insurance, credit, cars, homes, mortgages, or memberships, then those are high-dollar niches.
On the other hand, say that there are very few advertisers, or that they are selling inexpensive items. These are low dollar niches.
It is still possible to make a good income from low dollar items if you have enough volume, but this is not desirable as it is more difficult to achieve. It is easier to become profitable if it can be achieved at lower traffic volumes.
I would also advise that you put all of your effort into a single website. Many internet marketers would call this a mistake, arguing that you need to diversify and create several websites.
My experience proved to me that concentrating on a single website was much more important. Had I diversified, my website never would have earned so much money or sold for six figures.
I focused on quality content and high volume
You hear it over and over again in Internet marketing: “You have to have high quality content.”
A worn out concept, to be sure, but still very valid. The idea of “quality content” is not going away.
In fact, as the web matures and the search engines tighten up their fight against spam, the need for outstanding content becomes increasingly important.
The website that I sold for six figures had over 1,500 articles, and a good percentage of them were:
1) Lengthy and detailed, ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 words long.
2) Original and insightful, with ideas not found elsewhere on the web.
3) Genuinely helpful in attempting to solve the problems of the search engine visitor.
Much of my content was created in answer to the question: “How can I create an amazingly helpful resource for my readers?”
The trick is that I also produced high volumes of content. This is tough to do if your intention is to keep the quality high.
My rate of publishing averaged out to two new articles every day. With a lucrative topic, this was enough for me to sell out for six figures in as little as three years.
I promoted the site with high quality guest posting
Without promotion, all of that quality content that you create will just sit there, unappreciated.
Because I wanted to increase my search engine traffic, and thus my income, I focused on link building as my primary method of promotion.
After experimenting with some manufactured link building methods, I decided to spend the time and effort to create higher quality links via guest posting.
This takes a frustrating amount of time and effort, but is definitely the best method that you have for creating real authority for your website.
I only published a handful of guest posts for my website, but this was enough to carry the site to huge success.
I focused on income growth by increasing organic traffic
It is so easy to get distracted in the world of Internet marketing, and I quickly realized this as I sought to increase my monthly income.
Eventually I boiled down my marketing plans to only two activities:
1) Creating new content to publish on my website.
2) Creating new content to publish as a guest post.
If you block out all other distractions and focus on these two activities for a few hours each day, you will experience great success in your online journey.
Doing so is a real challenge, however, because there are so many distractions available at any given moment. Plus, creating quality content from scratch every day is by no means easy.
Realistically, this is the bar for success. This is a hype free approach and the numbers are real, but the work is not easy. If you want to earn $900/hour then you need to create amazing stuff, each and every day.
Simple plan but not easy
It is a simple plan, really. Create a website about a profitable topic and put all of your extra energy into it for several years. Focus on quality and daily publishing.
Sure, you can work from home and make hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The question is: “Are you willing to do the work?”
Nice,
I am been making money from blogging since 2007. But I have observed that working from Home makes people lazy and cut them off from their social circle.
Asif, Now that is a powerful observation because I have been working online since 2009 and I have noticed exact same thing.
Not sure what to believe anymore. While some brag about hundreds of thousands of dollars per month or year I see tons of people struggling to make their first $100. Maybe that’s the hardest to make. Anyway congrats on your success and maybe I’ll join you in the hall of fame someday. 🙂
Alec are you actually find out that the statistics are the only 5% of Internet marketer is actually make more than five dollars per month.
When I first read that I was quite shocked.
so I guess if you make more than five dollars online per month you’re in the top 5% of all Internet marketers in the world
Blogging, in my opinion, is a bit like acting; there’s a lot of starving artists out there, but once, you make it, you really do. With that mindset, I think everyone should throw their hat into the ring and try to write a blog; it only takes a few hours a day and, if it blows up like this, the rewards are amazing.
haha Mike I never really thought about blogging in the way you described but it is definitely true.
I think my blog is one of the up-and-coming New stars to hit the blogging circuit, or that’s what I keep telling myself anyway. LOL
If you just get that lucky break your blog will be a blockbuster overnight.
Your comment has definitely given me an idea for a blog post thanks
@ Asif – yes, it is hard to stay motivated working from home! Gotta have a daily quota….
@ Alec – agreed. Success is rare. It comes to the hard workers only, I believe.
@ Mike – agree with your thoughts as well. There is a “hump” to get past with making money online. Takes persistence.
@ Corrine – definitely some luck involved, I would agree, but if you are persistent enough the need for luck is minimized over time.
Awesome Andrew!
Some people will treat this as a scam especially if they haven’t at least tried once in making money online. But here you are, an another proof that people like you do exist.
That income is totally cool! I think my good friend James could relate to this.
Keep it up!
Cheers,
Andrea
@ Andrea – I think you are right, most people are skeptical that real money can be made online by ordinary people. The believe that there are secrets out there unlock online income, rather than hard work and providing real value. Thanks for your comment!
Hello Patrick(the guest Blogger),first of all Honestly I am little bit in tense situation for believing the 6 figure income for your website but when i read the entire post, i got to know yes, it’s possible. if we choose a niche(profitable niche) and produce the quality content with quality worth promotion, there is definite situation of earning lots of income. so congrats for your success and thanks for motivating us! i would love to hear your after feedback ie. How are you doing with your Money?
Andrew I’m wondering!! that Make Money With No Work. site only got pr1 how did the owner sold that for $200,000 ??
@ Abhiz – The site I sold for six figures is not the Make Money one. Google my full name and you can probably figure it out though. Thanks for your comment!
Did you make money along the way or just cashed out in the end?
Patrick
I applaud you for your focus. There are a million ways to do it and you found 2 and focused on them without distraction. I’m envious, as my ADD has, as of yet, kept me from the focus piece
Cheers
Mark
@ Tyler – Yup, I made money along the way, quite a bit. First push was to get to $100/month in AdSense income. Later it was stuck at $600/month for almost a year straight. Then it crossed $1,000/month and eventually it peaked at $2,250/month when I sold it. Thanks for your comment!
That’s really cool! Good for yo u Patrick! Wonder how long you have the site and is it worth the sale?
I’m loving the tip about focusing on creating content for your blog and focusing on creating content for guest posting..
The fact that you didn’t say Google… with the new panda updates, I think organic traffic will have a whole new meaning..
I have to pencil this into my schedule.. I think I make too much out of creating content… I make it harder than it really is.. especially guest posts..
Any advise?
Fantastic post.
Those are some incredible numbers. I’ve yet to monetize my blog but you’ve given me a lot to think about.
@ Dennis – start with the title. Make a great post title first and then try to write a great article to match up with it. I would focus on getting guest posts published if you do not have any yet. Good luck!
That’s incredible. Hopefully my website can even become a fraction of that successful. I’ll work my butt off til it is.
Thanks so much for this helpful post. I have been experimenting with a couple of websites for a while and trying to get serious about a particular niche now. I don’t think a baby niche is the most profitable but it’s what I am knowledgable in and I really want to help people too. I am getting very distracted with all the advice and tools out there, but this is very good advice to keep focusing on the content and the guest posts which is what will drive the traffic. I never know whether to spend my efforts trying to get backlinks or writing more content. Thank you.
Katherine
You have to do both!
There are some tools that build backlinks automatically as you publish posts.
See my latest post – click below.
Andrew
P.S. Love your domain name!
When I came across the interview Patrick did with Yaro Starak of Entrepreneurs-Journey.com, I downloaded it and listened to it a lot.
You could tell that the guy really worked hard – even if the results he got now looks (to people reading his story – like this post) like pure luck.
The focus part is really important as well to newbie and experienced bloggers alike.