After a few years of working online I think it is only prudent to have an exit strategy, well it is for me seeing as I want to retire early, or at least have the option to retire when I wish instead of when I have to.

So far I have managed to make money online for which I am grateful and working from home is a blast especially with the summer coming up, can’t complain at all. I have managed to think outside the box and offer products and services and pretty much along the way I have had a basic strategy or plan but nothing that would be classed as a business plan, I think many of us have floated along trying to make the best of what we can with limited means and knowledge, after all how can you have experience of something that has just been invented!

For the most part my plan if it could be called one was along the lines of

1/ Get good rankings
2/ Therefore get lots of traffic
3/ Monetise that traffic through various income streams
4/ Then constantly worry about stability and losing traffic and income!

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It can be unproductive and often boring sending out email after email to try and lease out some of my sites, so many companies seem to be making contacting them by email nigh on impossible! Spam has played it’s part in that I am sure.

Still, I often get the feeling my emails never get in front of the right people, customer services would likely be the wrong people who could just as easily dismiss my email as marketing spam so I have been trying to reach for the top and although nothing concrete as yet, it seems to be paying off.

I have emailed companies like overstock.com in the past but no response, this time I googled for the CEO’s name of the company I was contacting, which is usually easy enough to find out from press releases etc, I would then send 3 emails and check for them bouncing in the form of:

johnsmith@company.com
j.smith@company.com
jsmith@company.com

These seem to be the most frequent used formats used and it’s been very successful with 2 emails usually bouncing and one getting to the right person, so instead of responses like this from customer services;

We’re always looking at ways to make xxxxxxxx.com even better and your comments are a big help to us. I’ll make sure to share them with the right team.

Thanks for getting in touch with us. I hope you’ll visit us again soon.

Best regards,

I have been getting responses like this from the CEO:

Hi Scott,
 
Thanks. xxxxx and xxxxxx will be in touch.
 
Regards
xxxxxxxxx

(Names have been xxxxx’d out)

This is much more encouraging, I would also guess that my email being passed down the way from the CEO to someone in charge of their marketing would be looked at closer than an email going through customer services and being sent upwards. I have now spoken to 3 companies regarding a lease this week which at the very least makes me feel I’m making some headway and being a bit more productive

I love website ideas that let users create content and interact with each other, all the while they create free content and improve your site in a fashion that lets you stay hands off. Starting a site like this is slow and painful but once they get natural momentum they can really take off, you don’t even have to have an in depth knowledge of the subject.

That’s the thing, I don’t have any tattoos, I only speak one language and I can’t draw but I have 2500 tattoo designs, thousands of user submitted images and do online sales of translations in many languages. You can make plenty from utilising other people’s talents and connecting people together (more…)

I was speaking to an old friend this morning who has had nothing but trouble with his hosting/webmaster and was asking for advice as he is treading water, at present he pays a monthly fee to cover small website changes and the hosting but anytime he needs something done it is never carried out.

So a possible opportunity lies there for anyone in the UK reading this that wanted to run his sites and work on them a bit SEO wise.

Steve does all sorts of custom gifts, mugs, keyrings, clocks, aprons, coasters, mousemats and many more with text/images as per the customers wishes, always done well with clubs and national events. Two main sites, one for retail and one for the trade. (more…)

Surely you can’t make tens of thousands if not 6 figures with only a limited budget of say $1k?

Well I firmly believe that you can, each and every person reading this post has the potential to do it within the next few years, no question, if you have $1000 and time it can be achieved and it is exactly what I will be doing myself, if that sounds incredible then the fact that I am also about to tell you how to do it should also seem pretty incredible!

When I sold ledlightbulbs for £10k that was a good domain sale, I didn’t sell ledbulbs.co.uk for £30k as that domain has so much value being ranked at the top of a market that has yet to peak, so rightly or wrongly, I will wait. (more…)

If timing is everything which I posted about the other week then you can understand why Al is raking in so much cash just now, it isn’t luck as Al has actually been talking about the upcoming Xmas sales and revenue opportunity for quite some time and made moves to capitalise on it.

As with any success there will be the naysayers who will put it down to luck or scorn the ability of anyone else to replicate that success. One of the difficult things that soon comes to light when making money online through organic rankings or indeed domaining is that you need patience, lots of work, research, action and then more patience. We cannot control Google organic rankings overnight or the weather or seasons and that discourages a lot of people. (more…)

OK today I’ll jot down very quickly what I have been doing with some success as regards looking for domains, finding one’s that may be suitable and backing that up with data.

We can all look at a generic domain and agree that it has value and may be brandable but I am not really on the market for them at present, I want domains that are product based, domains that if ranked someone would search for which means I can generate traffic, income and possibly look to lease the domain at some point.

With that in mind it is still hard looking for inspiration and that is what I’ll cover today. (more…)

Making money online certainly isn’t as easy as some would like to make out, in fact at times it can be pretty damn tough going but there are opportunities online for most kinds of people and having a closer look at those main 4 groups of current earners shows new opportunities ripe for stepping into by a new breed.

The idea’s person
It has historically been the ‘ideas person’ that strikes big money and separates his/her self from the rest by striding forward with innovative ideas and new thinking, if you couldn’t come up with ideas and new concepts you were generally a foot soldier in the offline world and the early online days. Being able to create and conceive a great product or service is not something you can teach yourself. Ultimately an ideas person cannot succeed by themselves though, they need……….

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First I have to quantify this post by saying I don’t know anything about domaining so these are my thoughts on the subject but that doesn’t mean anyone should take it as advice or the like

Domain names, well certainly the good one’s, brandable one’s and generic one’s are all snapped up, more and more people come to the internet each day looking to make money, build websites and start businesses. It seems to me that perhaps it is early days now but the domain market will mature at some point.

Good domains should rise in value, I think most people would agree with that, I also think there should be a lease market that will develop at some point. Think about the high street in any major city that you know of, how many for sale signs do you see up in the main shops? Very rare. People/businesses that own shops know that rather than sell a shop in a prime location for a quick buck they can lease their shops to generate an income, all the time owning an asset that can continue to rise in value.

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How did you start out?
What sites do you build?
Do you just build lots and see what sticks?

Personally I took a different approach when choosing my first genre, many years ago I subscribed to Wordtracker who offer a free email service whereby they email me the top searched terms, I still get this today. This would be more a reflective approach to look at what is already out there and what is already profitable and then to try and jump on the bandwagon by looking to obtain a piece of the action.

In this email you get

1/ The top 300 surge report
These are the top 300 queries from the last 48 hours, which represents the complete queries from the largest Metacrawlers on the web (Metacrawler/Dogpile etc..) for the last 48 hours.

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