I wanted to highlight some of their services.

First, I was very happy with the process of logo design through them. I’ve tried some of the cut-rate logo design people on the various forums, and found that generally what you get is stock shapes and fancy text. If that’s what you want for your logo, then you’re set. But the Logo Design Team folks designed several possible original logos based on my input, and then made changes based on my (sometimes very picky) feedback.

The logo I ended up with was exactly what I wanted, and a cut above the cut-rate folks. Well worth the investment for me.

Some of the services they’ve added since I worked with them are worth a mention.

Logo Repair

Their Logo Repair service is an alternative to having a logo designed from scratch. You have to have a logo first, but if you do they can tweak it to make it more modern, adapt it to changing circumstances, etc.

This is also useful if you have a JPG of your logo, but nothing more. They can take the JPG and produce higher quality source files that can be used for print, letter heads, etc.

Holiday Logo Design

Their Holiday Logo Design service is a great idea that I wish I could afford to take advantage of. They’ll take your existing logo, and adapt it to a specific holiday. For example, for my logo they might add a Santa hat to the world, or show a sleigh circling it, for Christmas.

If you’re in business for the long-term, investing in some holiday logos will add to your site’s attractiveness. Look at how well Google does changing its logo for special occasions.

Logo Reseller Opportunity

Their Logo Reseller Opportunity is an opportunity for you to create your own logo design business, using the Logo Design Team folks as your designer. You work with your customers, charging them what you’d like. Logo Design Team does the work and you earn the difference between what they charge you and what you charged your customer.

This is certainly not something for everyone, but if you’ve been looking for a business to run, this might be a good fit.

I’ve only tried the logo design, but like I said above was very happy with it. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the Logo Design Team.

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The bounce rate for a web site is the percentage of web visitors that land on a page on your site, and don’t look at anything else. They don’t read other articles on your site…and if you’re writing a blog, this should probably concern you.

What does your site’s bounce rate tell you?

Landing Page Targeting

First, you should be able to see the bounce rate for various search terms people have used to find your site. If you cannot, switch to something like Google Analytics, which gives you this info.

If some of those search terms have higher bounce rates than others, that tells you that the landing pages for those terms are not highly targeted. People are coming to your site looking for specific information, and not finding it.

This is a terrific opportunity! Look at the search terms that have higher than average bounce rates, and write landing pages for them that are highly targeted. Link to the highly targeted page from the one that the search engines are sending traffic.

Eventually the search engines will send traffic directly to the new pages, but for now visitors should see the links and be able to get to the targeted pages. By giving your visitors what they’re looking for, you can increase your site’s value to them.

For example, Online Opportunity gets some hits for the search phrase “diy tracking affiliate links”. Those hits go to my post about DIY Link Cloaking. Traffic for that search phrase has a 100% bounce rate, because they’re looking for tracking links, not link cloaking.

I could write a post about tracking affiliate links, and my keyword research has already been done for me by Google Analytics. I know there’s a (small) demand, I know what keyword to use, and I feel that I know what the visitors are looking to find.

You don’t often get guaranteed targeted traffic handed to you, unless you pay attention to high bounce rates on your site.

What’s A Good Bounce Rate?

That’s impossible to say. That’s why I suggested you look for bounce rates that are higher than average for your site.

Bounce rates vary widely based on:

o) Your niche
o) The type of your site (e.g. store, blog, info site, MFA site, etc)
o) Your style of writing
o) The quality of your writing
o) Your use of graphics

and more.

When Is A High Bounce Rate Good?

There are times when a high bounce rate is good. Primarily, if you’re running an MFA (Made For Adsense) site, you don’t care about keeping visitors on your site. You want them to click through to ad links that earn you money. So a high bounce rate isn’t really an issue for you.

Overall, though, you want to keep bounce rates low, so that people see more than one page on your site. That gives you more than one opportunity to take search engine traffic and convert them into regular readers.

What sorts of bounce rates do you typically see?

2 Comments

• At January 9, 2010, Niche Marketing Breakthroughs wrote:

  This is a very interesting thought!

  However, some caution may be needed before going out and doing all this work. You may have bounce rates for search terms that have no marketing value for affiliate work (not buying keywords). So the only hope for income is through google or yahoo ads, etc.

  Best then to leave it alone.

  Or, on the other hand, you will find people appreciate that you have answers to their issues (non-buying keywords) and remember where they got the answer. They come back, or refer you (backlinks), when they help others. So go ahead and write a short, informative article.

• At January 9, 2010, Jay wrote:

  Obviously, if you're selling things, keyword research is always important, regardless of where your keyword ideas come from.

  On the other hand, if you're monetizing traffic via ads, nearly any keywords that get traffic are good ones.

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Some quick background…I stumbled across this technique early in my days of investigating Internet Marketing techniques. I created a web site around a specific keyword, and put in some affiliate links and Adsense. It wasn’t a good web site, but it was a cut above a Made For Adsense site (if only just). I used that site as a target when I was testing Directory Maximizer.

Nothing happened with the site, and I forgot about it for several months. I continued looking at other Internet Marketing techniques, and as part of those was checking my Adsense income regularly.

Much to my surprise, I found that site actually making some money. Investigating more, I found that it was on page 3 for its keyword in Google. Over time, the ranking grew, despite me doing nothing more to the site. Today, that original site is #1 in Google for its keyword, with no additional content added to it since creating the site.

Eventually I got around to writing up the technique, and duplicating it. In the ebook I’m giving away in this post, I walk you through the complete process of creating sites like this, using one of my sites as an example (not the original site, but one of the ones I’ve created since).

I earn an average of $50 a month from each site. Obviously, some perform far better, some far worse. Your earnings potential depends entirely on picking a good niche and keyword basis for the site, so it’s a bit hit or miss. But the sites are easy enough to put together that duplication is the key, so you can average out the misses with the hits.

If I were doing this by the book, you’d need to opt-in to a list to get the ebook, and then I’d try to sell you various things in the sequence of messages that followed. But I’m busy enough in my teaching job right now with some pretty exciting projects that I’ll just let you download the ebook with no hoops.

You can ask questions as comments here, or you can use the contact form on the blog to ask questions. I’ll answer questions as I can, and update the ebook as needed.

You can download the ebook through this link: Neglected Niche Sites Ebook

Update: I’d be very interested in hearing your results with the techniques presented in the ebook. Niche selection is probably the most important step, and can largely be trial and error. My best performing site is still the first I created, and it just happens to be a niche that does well during recessions. So don’t worry if some of your sites don’t earn well at first, you never know what might happen. Leave them up and create more.

2 Comments

• At November 30, 2009, Jim wrote:

  I've heard of sites like this earning money OK I'll down load the e-book.

• At November 30, 2009, Jay wrote:

  Keep in mind that if you have the time to invest, creating a quality niche site is always better. But for those doing this part time, a neglected niche site is a nice way to generate some level of income to reinvest into better tools, etc.

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Now, I understand why they’re doing this. People have trouble committing $299 to hosting and tools to create a website, even when the tools are top-notch. That isn’t a problem with SBI, but with the general attitude of most Internet Marketers. The “gurus”, the ones who make their money off the rest of us, create an image of instant success, so most people aren’t willing to invest for the long-term.

So, a monthly payment for SBI seems like a good deal to those people. They can try out the tools and system month to month, and get out if they decide it won’t work.

The problem is that building an online site that will earn money regularly takes time. My neglected niche sites (ebook to come, promise!) typically take six months to start generating income. Sites that are actively developed take less time, but we’re still talking months.

In my opinion, anyone not willing to invest a year into an online project is dooming themselves to failure. Going month to month just means that the people looking for quick results will probably quit after a couple of months. But the person who paid for a year will keep going, and see that success happen.

So, if you’ve been wanting to try SBI but have been put off by the yearly fee, you can certainly try the monthly option. But if you’re going to make a success out of it, you’ll spend less by just going for the yearly fee to start.

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I’m now officially ending the Adsense experiment, and will report the results. I’m limited in what I can report by the Adsense TOC, but here are some general results.

Click Through Rate

The Internet Marketing crowd is very ad resistant, at least when it comes to Adsense ads. Click through rate (CTR) was very poor, well under what I’d consider to be worthwhile. As a comparison, my best performing Neglected Niche Site (instructions for creating those will be in my upcoming free ebook) had a CTR 10 times that of this blog.

Earnings

The earnings per ad for Internet Marketing related ads isn’t bad, but the poor CTR makes it not really worth the real estate on the blog to show the ads. Total earnings over the same time frame put this blog at about half of what my best performing Neglected Niche Site earned.

Total earnings certainly more than paid for the effort of adding Adsense to the blog, but wasn’t really enough to justify keeping it, in my opinion.

Other Options

Better options for advertising on an IM related blog would be specific IM products. For me, though, I would only do that for products I’ve tried and could honestly recommend…and frankly, there really aren’t all that many of them that I consider to be worthwhile.

So, if you’re looking to create a blog to make money, I’ll repeat my usual advice: don’t create a blog about making money. Create a blog on another topic you enjoy, and you’ll see much better CTR on your ads, and probably better affiliate sales, too.

4 Comments

• At November 24, 2009, Ev Miles- Online Business Cookbook wrote:

  Adsense is nowhere near what you can make compared to offering your own product. On our first website our product ended up being 16 times more profitable than the ads. It's allot more overall though.

• At December 2, 2009, Tom Lindstrom wrote:

  [quote comment=""]Adsense is nowhere near what you can make compared to offering your own product. On our first website our product ended up being 16 times more profitable than the ads. It's allot more overall though.[/quote]

  There is a lot more to Adsense than just placing an ad on the blog.You need to choose the right ad block size, the right colors, and know exactly where to out the ad.A lot of testing is required.Here is more information:

  http://ask.joelcomm.com/selecting_the_right_adsense_bl.shtml

• At December 21, 2009, Ian wrote:

  I agree that it's much more important to focus on your own products than on ads. For me it's much more profitable.

• At March 3, 2010, Make Money Online wrote:

  I agree that it’s much more important to focus on your own products than on ads. For me it’s much more profitable.

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Unfortunately, I had so many spam comments that I just deleted them all. My apologies to the legitimate comments in the past year that got deleted, too. With the new version of Wordpress I should be able to keep up with moderating comments now.

If you find links not working, do let me know. It’s hard to tell what plugins might not be working, and it’ll be slow going for me to double check each.

In other news, the ebook that I’d written long ago and intended to sell, will shortly be given away for free. I’ll post it here when I do, as a reward for the people who keep checking back here even after so long a time of inactivity.

On an SEO note, the search engine traffic to the blog has not dropped off due to my lack of updating the site. So while new sites do need regular updating to keep their rankings, established sites (mine had about a year and a half of regular posting) apparently do not. Something to keep in mind.

2 Comments

• At November 23, 2009, Josh wrote:

  Jay, I am glad to see you get back into the groove of things. It's been nearly a year since your last post but who cares! Maybe just set a goal to post once a week or maybe even once a month. Either way, welcome back! :-)

• At November 23, 2009, Jay wrote:

  Thanks Josh! I'm not sure how often the updates will be, but I'll put something up now and then.

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They’ve recently started marketing SBI as a complete online business course. It’s about time, too, since their Action Guide really is a complete course. It’s a very specific course, designed to allow you to create content sites that compete on high profile keywords.

The secret of SBI is that anything that can be automated has been automated. You don’t worry about search engine optimization, you just pick keywords according to the guidelines in the action guide, and put them in the places you’re told to do so. Everything else just happens. There are tons of other features like that that make it worth the yearly fee.

Your only responsibility to your SBI site is to create content consistently. That might mean one page a day, it might mean one page a week, or one page a month. Just keep creating content at whatever rate you can, and your site will keep creeping up in the search engine results.

SBI is not for people who want to create a site and forget about it. My upcoming ebook is for that audience, but SBI sites require tender loving care on a regular basis. Think of them as high maintenance friends. Give the sites what they need, and they’ll start earning for you.

To take advantage of the 2-for-1 Christmas special, click on that link and click on the Order link at the bottom of the page.

2 Comments

• At February 3, 2009, Ruby wrote:

  I didn't realize that your last post was so long ago. What are you up to lately?

• At November 23, 2009, Jay wrote:

  Hi Ruby, I've been pretty busy with some exciting non-IM projects in my teaching job. I'll try to give some attention to the blog now and then, though, rather than let it go. Thanks to everyone who has poked me asking about my absence!

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My general philosophy on upsell packages is that they should be unique content that makes using the original product much easier for the customer. So those customers that are willing to pay for the upsell package get an easier experience than those who don’t. For my ebook, video tutorials made a lot of sense.

Unfortunately, the freely available products for creating video tutorials fall just a bit short of being as convenient as they could be. My biggest problem is that I’m often demonstrating using a variety of applications, which require dynamically zooming in to show detail. The paid products will do that, but the free ones don’t, at least not so that I can work with them.

Another problem is me…I’m a perfectionist, and it’s nearly impossible to get through even a short video segment without making some sort of mistake. I know that I need to move on and get over it, but I keep wanting to redo the video to fix the mistake (and of course I’ll make a different mistake).

Obviously my talents don’t run to creating videos! I’ll keep at it, though, and get them done.

9 Comments

• At November 18, 2008, On Stage Lighting wrote:

  Hey Jay,

  All of us looking for new conent channels eventually look to creating video content. This brings new promotional channels, like YouTube, and the possibility of improved personal connection with your audience.

  However, making videos (even screen dump tutorials) is harder than it looks. Even A listers like Aaron Wall at SEObook don't always get it right (Aaron has made a few "talking head" videos which IMO could knock his percieved value as he is not a presenter).

  I am also putting the video content on the back burner until I can spend time improving my skills or justify paying someone else to do it for me.

• At November 18, 2008, Jay wrote:

  I think I'd do better at a talking head video (since teaching is what I do in my day job) than at the video-demonstrations of software and procedures.

  Paying someone to do it for me is getting more and more attractive, but as you say, hard to justify. We'll see if the frustration level reaches a point where it becomes easier to justify!

• At November 19, 2008, Caroline's Debit card loans wrote:

  Sometimes you just have to pay to get the tools you need.:)

  Being a perfectionist is a problem, you find you change some things so many times they end up worse than they were when you started. The trick is to know when to stop.

  One way I do this is if I feel I am getting a bit picky about something I leave it and do something else then come back to it the next day with a fresh perspective.

• At November 20, 2008, Graham Cox wrote:

  I think Internet marketing through videos is definitely on the rising and no longer a new method to reach out the audience. Some of the sites like Youtube have thousands of videos just being put to promote their website or some sort of things.

• At November 27, 2008, Connie wrote:

  I'm working on learning to make better videos too. I have to learn the art of editing which to me is very difficult. I end up laughing because I make so many mistakes in my videos. Maybe I should just leave them in and do a blooper edition.

• At December 9, 2008, Leslie wrote:

  This is exactly what I'm trying to get into actually. I just started a program that teaches you how to add video to your blog professionally and it convinced me to get into it. There is soooo much that can be done where that is concerned. I decided to run out and buy equipment, lighting and so on and build a Home Video Studio in my basement, lol.

  I hear what you are saying about being a perfectionist. I have that same problem. However, then I look around the net at people who are doing very well with videos on their blogs and realize that they have a bunch of mistakes, but it doesn't necessarily take away from their blogs. My recommendation would be the following:

  1. Plan out a simple outline of your videos. For this I am using a free program called Free Mind. You can google it and find it.

  2. Write out your script. If you are a perfectionist, this will really help.

  3. Get teleprompter software and install it on your computer. You can google that too.

  4. I went out and bought some construction lights and bounce them off the ceiling. It makes a world of difference in the quality of the video.

  If you're a teacher, then the presentation will be the easy part. Just keep it simple and you should be fine. I'm also a teacher (highschool science and math) so the presentation is the "easy" part.

  Best of luck. Don't give up on video. It's a great thing!

• At December 12, 2008, Jay wrote:

  Hi Leslie, thanks so much for the tip about telepromter software! I never even considered that, but it makes so much sense. I think that tip alone will help my efforts considerably, along with writing out the script. I'd been approaching this like a classroom setting (where I ad lib a lot) rather than a speech, but I think the speech model (write it out and practice it first) is a better one.

• At December 12, 2008, Leslie wrote:

  Not a Problem. Actually, I think it's best to look at it as a combination of a classroom setting and a speech. If you are trying to provide people with information, teaching is the way to do it. But the script really does help even though you are teaching. I just did my first video and it was not the best, lol. However, I didn't follow my own advice. I just wanted to test out my webcam and I put something together really quick. It ended up seeming like I was just rambling, lol. I'll be writing scripts from now on.

• At January 13, 2009, Galin Terry wrote:

  I think video is one of the great tools that help to connect with your audience. Sometimes a professional, well-done video may replace a long story in written form. By the way, for me it is more interesting to watch either to read.

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Every time I start working on the upsell package (a video tutorial series, plus some Wordpress goodies), it’s ever so tempting to just come over here and write a blog post instead.

Blogging is easy, and that’s part of what makes it attractive. Who wouldn’t want to make a living writing about what you had for dinner the night before, or what you watched on TV? Writing blog posts is just about the ideal job for anyone who is literate. You don’t have to put too much thought into them, you don’t have to think too far ahead, and you don’t have to spend the entire day at it.

By contrast, Internet Marketing is more time consuming, and harder to put together. The possible returns are greater, but putting the effort into getting there is tough, when the ease of blogging beckons.

Average blogging income is pretty limited, though, which will keep me working on my IM projects. My tests with Adsense on this blog, which gets about 100 unique visitors a day, is that it’ll earn $0.50 a day. Granted, the IM audience isn’t crazy about clicking on ads, but that’s still pretty low.

So, the work continues…

6 Comments

• At November 10, 2008, On Stage Lighting wrote:

  Hi Jay,

  I'm sure you are right about the IM community and low ad income. But I would like to shout out for niche blogging for a decent revenue. Even Adsense, without other aff programs, can be a good blog earner.

  It's just a question of subject matter, advertisers and, heaven knows, traffic.

  Best wishes

  Rob

• At November 10, 2008, Jay wrote:

  Hi Rob, thanks for the comment! I have seen much higher income with other niches, on the order of twice the income for a tenth of the traffic. Finding an audience who aren't click-shy is critical there.

  I'm not really down on blogging as an income earner, even though the post probably sounds like it. It's more that blogging is a seductive time consumer; it'd be easy to continue doing posts, rather than pushing my skills in other areas.

• At November 11, 2008, Ruby wrote:

  Blogging is great as a past time activity but will end up being stressing once taking as a career. Yes there are a few that has achieved great as professional bloggers like ShoeMoney, John Chow, etc. But it's only for the chosen few I think.

  A blog can be your supplementary income but not what you only relying on.

• At November 13, 2008, Armen Shirvanian wrote:

  It sure is true that writing in a fashion that requires very little thinking is an easy alternative to putting effort out to connect ideas and present them in an inventive fashion. Although writing about one's daily activities for the public to see might not be too useful, it can have a positive effect on certain individuals that will then be able to see what they do in longer terms. This could lead to alteration of one's routine in a beneficial way.

• At November 20, 2008, Graham Cox wrote:

  Sounds interesting. I think many people now a days are into this blogging for making money online either part time or full time, while there are many other ways of doing so. I would like to appreciate your views as a blogger.

• At November 28, 2008, Matt Hayden wrote:

  It's true that blogging is much easier and more fun than promoting a website. If you just keep posting, the traffic seems to build automatically!

  But then it's a great profile raiser to help with other ventures. And you can always use your blog posts as the raw material for longer articles that bring targeted traffic to your website.

  And there's always the potential to use these for a book after a while, too. That's another great profile raiser, and potential earner.

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I figured I’d get a case study out of it, promoting a simple low cost program to see how it did in various advertising venues. I’d hit safelists, traffic exchanges, the usual places. It’d give me something to write about while I’m still working through all the details on my next ebook (the ebook itself has been done for quite a while, but getting the site set up and figuring out how to make money from it is harder going).

So, what is Work For 3 Dollars?

List Builder

This is one of those sites that says it’ll build your list for you. It’s a bit like a safelist, except that you can only email the people who are in your referral tree. The tree goes 15 levels deep, though, so that could be quite a lot of people. You can email them once a week.

Since they’ve paid $3 to be part of the program, they’re prequalified as far as being willing to spend a little money for a larger return. This isn’t the audience to send a mailing about a high ticket item like Perry Marshall’s Bobsled Run. But low priced ebooks and other one-time payment programs might do well.

Digital Products

The member’s area has digital products you get with your membership. Right now there are four ebooks there, but I’m sure that’ll grow with time. The four that are there now are: Million Dollar Emails and Autoresponder Magic by Yanik Silver, 1001 Newbie-Friendly Tips by Bob McElwain, and Working with ClickBank by Tom Hua. Each comes with resale rights.

The books are a nice bonus, and worth the $3 one-time fee.

Income Opportunity

You earn $0.50 for every referral you bring in, regardless of where they end up in your referral tree. You also earn $1.00 for every person on your first level, and $0.12 for every person on any other level, down to 15. The matrix is 3 wide.

So, if you recruit two people directly, you have your $3 back. If your upline recruits three people into your first level, you have your $3 back. It’s a pretty easy program to get into profit. From there it depends on whether the people you’re recruiting are active themselves, or if they’re just waiting on spillover. With an active downline, your total potential is pretty good.

Conclusions

While this isn’t the sort of program you get into to make a ton of money in, it is a good value for your $3 one-time fee. You get some quality ebooks as well as the opportunity to refer others for income.

If you’re just starting out, or (like me) want something low cost to test different advertising methods, Work For 3 Dollars is a good deal.

3 Comments

• At November 11, 2008, Ruby wrote:

  Great stuff to get involved in there. They do require a lot of time though I think but all worth it in the end.

  Digital products are supposed to bring in the most money from the three.

• At January 11, 2010, Harry wrote:

  I am always interested in joing paid to review program. Until now im stil;l learning on how to be a paid reviewer by reading articles from internet. Could you elaborate further for me about how to join the paid to review program?

  Thanks

• At January 11, 2010, Jay wrote:

  Hi Harry, WF3D isn't a paid review program. It's a referral based system, where you earn if you recruit others to the program.

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