Those of you that have been around a while will know that I rarely ever do affiliate pitches.  I’m not into promoting products that I don’t stand behind 100%, but I thought that this would make a great addition to my blog flipping methods, so I gave it a try.

I’m uber impressed!

First of all, you can sign up for free and get 60 free posts a month.  I went that way for about a day, and then signed up for the $50 package the very next day.  The free version was cool, but it wasn’t nearly as functional as the paid version.  In the paid area, I controlled keywords, styling, images, and tons more.  I was able to use 5 different RSS feeds to automatically deliver content to my site, and the best part was that it auto-updated 8 times per day!  It’s really amazing to consider how so little money will keep the content flowing freely.

Here’s the deal.  I know a bunch of you are wondering about the duplicate content penalty, and I know I was too.  Well, you get to skirt the issue completely because you aren’t STEALING content… you are quoting it.  Blog Overdrive doesn’t pull the full post unless you tell it to.  I generally have it pull about 100-150 words, and then leave a link at the bottom to the original source.  This gets me content, and I avoid any penalties, because Google clearly states that you can use content from other sources, with an attribution link pointing to the original article.  Which I did… but I added nofollow!  So, now when I pull from Yahoo news, I’m getting great content, linking back to them, but I’m not passing any juice.

Well, it took me all of 3 days to get to the 100 unique visitors a day point.  Which is phenomenal, but I have some more experiments up my sleeve for this software which I’ll fill you in on as I get to implement them.

For a blog flipper, automated content is a huge selling point.  You can promote the fact that this blog never needs updated, and all they have to do is sign up for the free account at Blog Overdrive (which they’ll probably end up upgrading).

But blog flipping aside, let’s look at another great option, which I’m implementing now.  These sites obviously aren’t built in order to obtain a huge following.  They are organic traffic machines that are set up to generate you Adsense or affiliate cash, nothing more.  I removed my comment field, took away navigational links, and I added Adsense to every post.  The idea here was to give visitors as few options as possible, read the snippets, click the Adsense ads… that’s about it.  The desgin was nice to look at, but it wasn’t something that would draw attention away from what I wanted them to do… CLICK! After 3 days, and about 410 visitors, I had made $5 on Adsense, and had done absolutely nothing!  Now, I know it’s only 3 days, and $5 isn’t a lot of money… but imagine if I had kept it 30 days.  That’s $50.  Ok, now while we’re imagining, let’s imagine that I had 100 of these.  That’s $5,000 of completely passive income.

Now I know some of you are thinking… what about 1,000?  Well, 100 is good, remember, you have to pay monthly to use this service.  The thing is, as your domains grow older, you’ll start to rank better automatically… so if you are getting organic traffic after 3 days, it stands to reason that in 6 months you’ll get even more… right?  So as traffic goes up, so do your clicks.

It’s really an exciting possibility, and I wanted to share it with you guys.  Let me know if any of you have tried blog overdrive, and if you haven’t… make sure to sign up through the banner at the top, I’m in love with the service!

Oh, and did I mention that you don’t have to install anything?  That’s a huge selling point, because I’m an absolute joke when it comes to this kind of stuff.  It’s so easy Bryan can use it… that should be their new slogan!

Enjoy the video, and if you noticed, I’ve added random Red Cross banners on the blog.  The Red Cross was the organization that was leading the relief efforts in New Orleans during Katrina, so they’ll most likely be on the front lines of the Gustav effort.  If you can find it in your heart to give, please do so.

PB Formerly Of The Piss Biscuit - Hurricane Gustav from bryan clark on Vimeo.

For those of you that know me well, I’m always coming up with new ideas that can get you guys involved and help to teach you this highly profitable craft.  Well, I’ve got a doozie for you here!  I’m calling this one my Blog Flipping Gone Wild contest, and it’s going to be highly profitable, fun, and extremely educational for all those involved.

Blog Flipping Gone Wild details

Here’s what I propose.  With all the buzz and excitement going on about blog flipping lately, let’s get a friendly (and profitable) contest going.  Here’s what I have up my sleeve.

• Bloggers can get a team of their own readers together, or join someone else’s team.
• Each team has 45 days to flip a blog.
• This must be a communal project, meaning everyone on your team must contribute.
• The captain of the team has the final say in what happens for your team.
• Each team is composed of 5 people.  The captain and 4 others.
• Each team posts a $25 entry fee.  The captain can pony up the cash, or you can split it amongst your team at a reasonable $5 per person.  The only other fees will be a brand new domain, registered not before the contest begins, and hosting.  You can split this cost too if you’d like.
• The entry fee for all teams goes into a pot for the winner, minus Paypal fees.
• The highest purchase price wins the contest, but not until you prove that every member of your team got an equal amount.  This keeps people from faking bids, because they’d actually have to pay out the cash to their team.

So what’s the winner get?  Well, besides the respect of everyone around him for successfully running the best team, COLD HARD CASH!!! The losers will have to fork over 10% of the total purchase price of their sale, meaning they get to keep 90% of the purchase price to split amongst themselves.  The winner will take home 10% of everyone’s sale price, AND all of the entry fee’s that the other teams paid to enter.  PLUS, the profit of their successful flip!

Who’s in?  I need to know who will be starting their own team, and which of you want to take part on Team Clark?  Remember, I can only select 5 of you, so I’ll probably select my team randomly.

Deadline for entry is in 5 days, so obviouisly you must be able to get a blog post up on your own blog asking your readers who will take part.  Also, I’d prefer if you linked back to this post so that the rules don’t get lost in translation, and that we don’t all get smacked with duplicate content.  When linking, remember, my preferred anchor text is “Blog Flipping”!!!!

In 5 days, we’ll tally up the entries, collect the entry money, and then move on to figure out when we’ll actually get started.  Anyone out there that feels like challenging themselves, making some money, and learning about how to make a profit while flipping blogs; needs to join!  Remember, even if you lose, you are making 90% of the total of your blog flip!  So EVERYONE will make a profit on this one!  Let’s do it big guys, and see which blogger has the best blog flipping readers!

Let me know what your plans are in the comment field here.  You gonna enter a team?  Join someone else’s?  Try to join mine?

If you have no clue as to the meaning of my headline, please refer to my post about my blog flipping challenge.  Well my friends, the challenge has been accepted, and here’s how it’s going to play out.

I don’t have any free time until Friday to do this, due to prior commitments and the fact that I need 24 hours straight of work time.  So here’s the deal.  I’ll build 5 sites using Wordpress, and then attempt to sell them for as close to $1,000 as humanly possible.  I think I’ll actually go a bit over $1,000, but I did carefully word my proposition by saying that if I don’t make 1k, I’ll get pretty close.  So, for arguments sake, let’s just say I have to make $1,000 in 24 hours.  Impossible?  Maybe, but I’m pretty confident that I can do it.  It’ll be impressive no matter what happens, because the blogger that accepted the challenge doesn’t think that these will go for any more than $20 each.

So the requirements for the challenge are pretty basic, I have to use 5 domains that were registered no earlier than 24 hours before they go to auction.  So basically, I’ll be building 5 sites, from scratch and then listing them for auction within 24 hours.  Crazy?  To say the least!

I’ve never actually attempted something like this, but I have had some success with sites that were less than 24 hours old, so we’ll see how it goes.  5 sites in 24 hours though?  That’s nuts.  I have to write content, install plugins and a theme, and get them listed in such a short time, that it’s a bit more than crazy.  The sites don’t have to sell in 24 hours, that’s up to the buyers… but they do have to be listed within 24 hours. I woud go for the whole shabang and say they have to sell in 24 hours, but I’m not turning down more money by selling to the highest bidder after 24 hours, when it’s possible that I’d be leaving money on the table.  After all, this is going to be a pain in the ass, so I want as much as I can get for these sites.

What’s at stake?

• 1 125×125 Ad in the losers sidebar for a period of no less than 3 months
• 1 Guest post by the loser, on the winners blog.  This post should explain why they lost the bet, and if possible, offer suggestions on how they could have improved the effort.
• Loser must write a post on their own blog admitting defeat, and explaining that they were wrong in their opinion.

Not a big loss either way right?  Yeah, just more of a fun challenge.  It’ll be fun for The Net Fool to watch, but it’s going to be a pain in the ass for me to try and work for 24 hours straight, or as long as it takes me to get 5 blogs up and running.  Wish me luck, and we’ll see you Friday.

I’ll start Friday afternoon sometime, and if you want to know the exact details of when I get started, check me out at Twitter.  I’ll post a message there moments before I start.  It’ll probably be sometime in the mid-late afternoon, as that’s when I wake up…Follow me at http://twitter.com/bryanclark.  I’ll try to hop on Twitter and keep everyone updated on my progress, assuming I’m making good time.  If I’m not, then you’ll just have to wait ’till it’s over to see the results.

The make money online niche is notoriously hard to monetize.  Why?  Well, for one, your target audience is bloggers, which are trying to do exactly what you are… make money online.  Why would they buy your product when they can sign up for an affiliate program, and buy the same product under their own affiliate banner and get 1/2 off?  The industry is cuthroat, and it’s not going to get any easier as time passes.  Over 80k new blogs are created daily, and about 1/4 of them attempt some form of monetization.  The problem?  They don’t know anything about it.  So they’ll run off to Problogger or John Chow and see these huge success stories that have them thinking that making money online must not be that difficult.  HAH!!!  So these bloggers start to research monetization options, and generally, spend a lot of time on make money online blogs.  A lot of you can atest to this, because several of you don’t even have blogs in this niche, yet you’re still here.

So what happens?  They start to experience monetization from all angles.  CPC programs such as Adsense are the most popular, but even Affiliate Banners are largely the same from one make money online blog to the next.  Bloggers start to become conditioned to the advertising around them, and they almost cease to notice that it exists at all.  Why?  Most of us have the same banners and promote the same programs.  After seeing the same banners over and over, you almost forget that they exist when you go to a blog.

The Solution

Create your own products.  It can be an ebook, a Wordpress plugin, a software.. the sky is the limit here.  To give you a recent example, I just made about $200 on the front end of a blog flip, and then sold it for an additional profit of $1,500 via a BIN bid at auction.  That’s an extra $200 in profit that may have been lost had I not found a simple ebook, which I was able to purchase master resale rights for.  I sold this ebook for $5, and had over 30 sales during the month which I promoted it.  Had I relied on Adsense I would have cleared about $20 in additional profit for that month on top of the selling price.  This money adds up guys… if you aren’t taking it, then it’s slipping off into oblivion and becoming a moot point later.

I realize that the thought of creatiing a product scares most people.  It’s unwarranted fear.  I can create an ebook in just a few days, and I’m sure you could too.  Don’t want to create anything?  Buy it… start looking for products with master resale rights, or even PLR (private label rights) products.  Anything you can do to start squeezing a few extra dollars out of your flips, or even your flagship blog.

You can also create a software.  I, like most of you, have absolutely no idea how to create software.  But there are freelance forums all around the internet like; Guru, Rent-A-Coder, and Scriptlance that can help meet your needs.  It’s not as expensive as you might think either.  As an example, I had a simple script programmed for $130 that I could have resold for $50-$100 all day long.  I used it just for me, but it COULD have been resold.  It’s a moot point now, because it doesn’t work with Wordpress 2.5+, but it was an option.  The script allowed me to trade links with others, and notified me if the person I traded with had removed my link, so that I could do the same.  Simple, but effective.  With 100’s if not 1,000’s of programmers on these sites, the price is rock bottom due to the competitive nature of the industry, and the fact that you have the ability to select the lowest bidder on the project.

Guys, give this a try.  Start thinking outside the box a bit when trying to monetize the “unomonetizable”.  You’ll see more success this way.

I had some time to kill on the flight, so I thought I’d get an update in before I started indulging in Rum and seafood and forget that I even own a blog. So, I wanted to point out a quick tip that I use that’s a “long haul” strategy, using a short term method.

If you aren’t familiar with internet marketing then run off to Shoemoney, or any number of countless blogs that teach the subject. However, I’ll drive home the basic idea that make marketers rich… “the money is in the list”. If you aren’t building lists for your many different niche topics, you are missing out on some serious revenue later on. You might even be missing out on a significant chunk of change right now!

List building isn’t a new technique. There hasn’t been anything revolutionary about it for at least 100 years before the invention of digital list management, and companies like Aweber. It started out as a method to send advertisements, coupons, and free periodicals door-to-door. It’s obviously advanced with the beginning of the internet age, but it’s still somewhat of a “secret” that’s only found by those that are internet savvy. If you asked your relatives, neighbors and friends what “the money is in the list” means… I’m willing to wager they’d have no clue what you are talking about.

The money truly is in the list though. It’s not a secret that a lot of people that WANT to buy, can’t buy RIGHT NOW. Whether it’s for financial reasons, or they just aren’t in a buying mood, people will not buy from you 100% of the time, even if they want to. And trust me, a lot of them want to. So here is where the list becomes important, and if I’ve lost anyone already, I’m referring to an email list, or capturing email addresses. The list becomes important because it’s statistically proven that if you pitch the same product in different ways, people will eventually buy. So, if you have captured their email, you can subtly pitch products to your list, and a lot of the time… they have no clue you are even pitching them. I’m not saying to go out and find junk to sell to your list… build trust, make the products relevant, and eventually they MAY buy from you. But don’t force the issue!

So here is where my brilliance kicks in. I came up with the idea about 3 months ago that I would start building lists in the many different niches that I sell blogs in. I’d put up an email submission box, not unlike the one you see in the top of the sidebar, and I’d start capturing email addresses for future use. This way, I could sell the blog, but I’d keep a portion of the traffic. That’s right, I make short term cash, while building a long-term asset at the same time. And the portion that I’d be keeping is the best kind… BUYING TRAFFIC! It’s been shown many times over that people are more likely to buy from an email list than they are to purchase the exact same product on your blog. So, it stands to reason that if I can capture the GOOD traffic, that I am actually making the blog disposable.

Here’s how it works. I put up an email submission box on my flipper blogs. I keep these blogs anywhere from 30 days to 6 months, and the entire time I’m building the blog, I’m capturing email addresses in various niches. I don’t discriminate when it comes to buying blogs to flip, so I’ve got lists in everything from bonsai trees, to womens fashion, and how to pick up women. Now, as of right now, each of these lists is pretty small, minus my big one which is the list for my Make Money Online stuff. However, as I flip more and more of these blogs, I am building each list bigger. So next time I buy a blog about bonsai trees, I make sure to collect email addresses for the list that I already have on that subject. Can you see the genius in this? I’m building a dynamic portfolio of websites, without ever KEEPING a website. Each time that I start a new blog, or purchase on on that topic, I email the list that I think might be interested… INSTANT TRAFFIC!

People wonder how I build traffic to these flipper blogs so fast, that it allows me to sell them in 30 days or less with a boatload more traffic than it came with. This is my BIG SECRET! I already have an audience… I built them from another blog on a similar topic, and I’m just pointing out something that they may enjoy and is on-topic. I’m doing them a service, and at the same time they are rewarding me with traffic to the new site, almost overnight.

But, that’s not the exciting part. Although, I must say that traffic is exciting! The exciting part is that in 10 years, I could potentially have hundreds of lists on niche topics, with THOUSANDS of names on each list. Then it just becomes a rotation process of which list I’m going to email at that particular time. And remember, “the money is in the list”. A person with a list of 10,000 people, and a blog that has 10,000 readers, is much more likely to make serious cash with the email list. Why? People forget about your blog over time, even if they enjoy it. They can’t forget about your email list, it’s in their face everytime you push the “send” button.

Now, that said, don’t spam your list. Build trust and offer lots of value to them over time, and not only will they stay subscribed, they’ll begin to buy. I currently have lists in 37 topics, and I try to send out emails no more than once per week. Some of the smaller lists only get one email per month. You don’t want to send out too many, and you don’t want to just send out “pitch emails”. As I said, you have to give them a reason to stay subscribed, otherwise all of your effort was for nothing. Give readers value when you send an email. Mention a product, don’t pitch it. Just drop it in casually with your valuable post that you’ve just sent out. Now that it’s a one click unsubscribe, you want to make sure that people are happy to be on your list, and haven’t just forgotten to unsubscribe from it.

So in closing, as you can see, building lists from flipper blogs not only gives me instant traffic and revenue to a new blog that I create in the same niche, it also makes the blog expendable. The list is essentially your hard drive, and the blog is your computer. Your computer is expendable as long as you have all of your data backed up on the hard drive, and the blog is no different. I sell the blog, keep the traffic… I win! And if you don’t have an Aweber account already… go get one! It’s all of $20 a month, and it allows you to build and manage UNLIMITED lists at the same time. Get it!

The goal is to register a domain, or to buy a pre-existing website that is undervalued. Undervalued is the word of the day, so say it with me… U N D E R V A L U E D! Good, now we can move on. Blogs sell for a ballpark figure of 10-15x monthly income, although there are often exceptions to the rule. Such as John Cow, who is asking the ridiculously high price of 50k, and he might just get it. I don’t blame the Cow, as you can’t get a Buy-It-Now (BIN) price of 50k, without asking for it… so kudos to my favorite bovine.

So part one of the equation is to buy an undervalued blog. And it doesn’t get much more undervalued than a new domain, which has it’s benefits, and it’s drawbacks, which we’ll discuss in a later post. So essentially, you can buy a $10 domain name, slap it onto a $4 hosting account, and cash out for thousands in 30-90 days. But it’s the steps in between that are going to lose some people. Anybody can handle the beginning (finding a domain, or site) and the end (selling it), but the ones that master the middle of this process are going to be those that make the most money.

The middle steps in this process are the ones that are going to make or break your sale. These steps revolve around creating a visually appealing blog that a buyer will deem worthy of spending their money on. When I say visually appealing, I know most of you instantly thought of fancy themes, and great header graphics, but I was actually referring to statistics. Statistics sell blogs… it’s that simple. If you can’t increase the statistics of an undervalued blog, then you are going to end up selling it for zero profit, or even worse… a loss.

I’m going to be teaching you several ways to make money flipping websites over the next few months, and here are just a few of the methods that you’ll be making money with in no time flat!

• Buying Domains and/or Pre-existing Websites
• Building traffic and increasing statistics
• Increasing revenue numbers
• Writing killer sales copy that will sell your site fast
• Closing the deal

Those 5 simple things are all it’s gonna take for you to start making money flipping blogs and websites. Now, let’s roll up our sleeves, and start mastering these methods to make money flipping websites.