Archive for the ‘Creating Wealth’ Category
How to be the king of your domain (and others) and make a killing - National
Written by Brandon on March 31, 2008 – 3:56 am -Anyone interested in trying their hand might find inspiration from Australian domain entrepreneur, Michael Gilmour. I have to admit, I’ve bought a few domains in my time and I’ve tried similar techniques of parking advertising on the sites, and it there is a real art and science to domain parking that is beyond my comprehension. STill, according to this article:
The practice of buying up unused names, known as "domain parking", is estimated to be worth more than $1 billion worldwide — and Australia is seen as a growing market for those with an eye for a dollar.
How to be the king of your domain (and others) and make a killing - National
Posted in Arbitrage, Creating Wealth, Experimental Techniques | No Comments »Invesp Consulting’s Landing Page Optimization Service Is The Perfect Additon To Your Adwords Campaign
Written by Brandon on February 6, 2008 – 6:13 am -I’ve been experimenting with Google Adwords for some time now, and as many of us know it’s easy to have Google Adwords bring people to your site. Of course, once these people are at your site it can be much more difficult to convert these people from faintly interested into paying customer. If you are going to pay for tons of eyeballs for your site then you are going to want to wow them when they arrive. There are a number of techniques which you can employ to have these people stay at your site and even buy such as: well placed newsletter sign ups, enticing copy, or free offers.
However, if you have a bit of a budget and not a lot of time to optimize your landing page, then you are much better off hiring a company such as Invesp Consulting who specialize in optimizing your landing pages. What’s so beautiful about having the experts do landing page optimization is they’ve already done all the experimentation for you to find landing page techniques that work. Of course, if you’re like a mad scientist and want to spend hundreds of hours tweaking your landing pages, go for it. But consider that those tweaks might bring you to exactly what Invesp could deliver all along.
Posted in Creating Wealth, Experimental Techniques, Google Adwords | No Comments »Starting a For-Profit Blog Part 1: Research Your Niche
Written by Brandon on December 14, 2007 – 3:52 pm -As I mentioned in a previous article, there are a number of online businesses that you can build your wealth from. I’ve listed the businesses from least risky to most risky, and today I’m starting with the least risky which I will call the media company. Media Companies would be composed of such businesses as blogs, podcasts, video blogs, news agregators, and even things like how-to sites and fan sites. Their primary money making opportunities include:
- Advertising
- E-book Sales
- Premium Content
- Fan Sales
- Affiliate Sales
Let’s take the most common business as the very beginning starting point: the blog. How do you start a business? I will give you broad steps at first, and then cover specifics in later articles.
Phase One: research your niche topic
Before even starting the blog you should choose a handful of niche topics that you are interested in. Let’s say you’ve chosen bicycling. Now, you will want to start to search for bicycling in Google’s Blog Search or at Technorati to find out what bicycle blogs are popular. Next, you will want to write down a number of blogs on your topic.
I then like to go to Alexa and compare blogs in my niche to blogs in very popular niches to see how they stack up. So, for instance, here is a link to two very popular design blogs and Engadget which is arguably the most popular blog in the world. What this might start telling you after doing a bunch of searches is that tech gadgets are more popular or that Engadget has some features that could be better done in your niche. There is a lot to infer which I can help with in future posts.
Also, I highly suggest using Google Trends to start to see if your niche is a heavily searched topic compared to other topics. A simple starting point is to check the trend on “cycling” versus a random topic like maybe “jewelry” and a topic you know must be popular like “ipod”. What you find is that iPod is, in-fact, a much more popular search term, and surprisingly, jewelry is much more popular than cycling. This might give you more insight as to what topic you want to blog about based on its overall popularity. Maybe jewelry is better than cycling. This might also clue you in on topics that people often search for, but no good media outlet has developed for that topic.
Regardless of what your searches begin to tell you, do something you like. Again, this is just scratching the surface of how you might prepare for your blog, but I will cover more in the near future. AT least this gives you a simple base for how you might choose your topic.
Tags: blogging, Blogs, business, entrepreneurshipPosted in Blogs, Creating Wealth, Fundamentals, Starting a Business | No Comments »
The Big Picture: 10 Questions for Creating Your Wealth Online
Written by Brandon on December 10, 2007 – 1:47 am -
Creating your wealth online is a difficult journey that should not be attempted alone. My goal with YourWealth.org is to supply that help you need to stay focused and excited, give you fresh ideas, and let you know of the latest trends in online business models. But first, I think it’s important that I start with the big picture and work into the details of creating wealth online as time progresses.
And to gain a big picture of your wealth strategy, you should answer several difficult questions that will affect your life before choosing a direction for building online wealth. Here are what I consider to be the top ten most important big picture questions:
- What are you really interested in? This can be a very difficult question, but I suggest that you focus on an interest that you have and look for an extremely novel approach to whatever you like. Let’s say you like bicycles, for instance. After a bit of quick research, I discovered that there are very few resources on bicycle maintenance and repair and no online resources that give you step by step instructions on repair. If you love bicycles, then this may be an approach to take. And if you are unsure what a novel angle might be on your topic, then brainstorm with friends and family or write a comment to me and I’ll help you out.
- What is your tolerance for risk? This is possibly the most important question simply because a lot of people start an online business thinking that they can start with very little or no capital when, in fact, sometimes a lot of capital is needed and you may want to quit your job, thus cutting your money supply. My suggestion to you is know your risk tolerance way ahead of time. If you hate risk, have to support a family, or just like a challenge, you may start a modest how-to business, affiliate business, or niche blog that only takes some of your free time. If you are unafraid of risk, then you may feel compelled to spend every bit of time and money on an e-commerce business or online application. I warn you, if your start down a risky road you do not want to turn back or cut your risks because your product will likely suffer or die. In the future, I hope to teach you how to start with low risk and steadily increase your risk as you reinvest your income into the business.
- Would you like to supplement your income or create all of your wealth online? This question is tied to the risk question. If you want to make what I call “hobby money”, then it will cost very little and take little free time, but you won’t see any real financial returns for years. If you want big returns then you will need complete focus and commitment.
- What is your personality like? Are you a people person or are you a quiet worker who does not socialize. Determining your personality early on is extremely important because there are certain personalities that make a business successful and if you don’t fit in that mold then you will need to hire someone who does. It’s a hard fact to face that you can’t always do everything, but it’s true.
- How long can you wait to create your wealth? Do you want to create wealth slowly or quickly? If you can wait then the risk is lower and the topics you can choose are broad. If you want to get rich quick you need an extremely novel idea and the funds to build and promote it. Quick wealth is a pipe dream, but it is attainable.
- How good are your computer skills? Your computer skills do not necessarily need to be good, but you do need to understand what the latest technologies are and how to use them to create your wealth online. Try to assess your skills from one to ten. One being you know nothing about computers ten means you can program in PHP and Javascript efficiently. 5 means you know what these things are, and you know how programs work, but you don’t necessarily know how to use PHP. If you are a five, then you are good to go. If you are lower than a five, then I suggest reading blogs such as DoshDosh and Problogger.net to become familiar with the layman’s technical jargon. You will need this skill to some extent even if someone else is creating the infrastructure for you.
- How good are your writing skills? Writing skills are key to success when developing an online wealth vehicle. I will certainly talk about this more in multiple posts, but a quick introduction to skills you will need is the ability to write clearly and concisely, the ability to back up your thesis with simple to understand examples, and the ability to influence with either your humor, strength of tone, or wealth of knowledge. If you don’t have this strength, consider hiring people who do.
- Will your family and friends help you to create your wealth? This is important to know quickly for a number of reasons. If you are depending on your circle of associates to help you out then test them quickly on their devotion to the project. I have wrongly discovered that some of my previous attempts at wealth building would be made easier by employing my friends and family to help me out. The truth is they are not as passionate as you are about your topic. Go out and seek a community of like-minded zealots and recruit them all.
- Who do you look up to? This is not a question I think most people ask themselves, but an important one. Why is it important? Because this will give you a tangible model to follow or look up to. For instance, I work in architecture and I look up to my boss. He’s successful and charismatic, and he is a great designer. Now that I’ve identified my boss as someone I look up to, I can ask him questions about his success and observe how he has become successful. Having this tangible model allows you to see what works for you and what doesn’t.
- Where do you want to be in ten years? This is a loaded question. You probably want to be successfu, but when you ask this question you can sort of plan where you want to be and then work backwards. Working backwards from the future is a great way to be able to map out the plan, year by year, that will help you achieve your success in incremental, real, tangible steps.
These are a few basic and extremely broad questions, but you will need to answer these questions to start a broad plan to create your wealth. From here, you can start to hone in on the specifics which I hope to address, piece by piece, on this blog over the next few years.
Posted in Analysis, Creating Wealth, Fundamentals | No Comments »
