passive income strategy or follow me on twitter
Come back soon! :-)
Looking into an online email list manager, which allowed me to upload an existing email list, I think my chosen service will be “Constant Contact”
The unpublished price list above 25,000 email addresses goes like this:
25,001 to 50,000 at an additional $100 per 25,000 records
25,000 increments to 150,000 and then 50,000 email address increments beyond 150,001 at $200 per 50,000 records.
If you are importing lists in excess of 25,000 email addresses (this is me) there is a standard one time $300 setup fee. This is sold as a “value added” service… I couldn’t make sense of the value, other than all the other things I could do with $300
So to circumvent the setup fee, just upload the first 20,000 records and then upload your remaining data. $300 saved!
If you follow this link http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp?cc=dssnelson you get a 60 day trial and the very nice sales lady “Sarah” gets a signup to her name. I liked her, and since I just stiffed her for $300, she deserves it.
Posted 1 week, 1 day ago at 9:06 am. Add a comment
Following on from my post Positively Ignorant, today I write another post regarding positivity, however this time I’m talking about the positive use of negativity.
I worked for a while within a business that had a heavily positive culture. The business was all about “Harmony” and “bigging each other up” etc. Now this was all well and good for perceived (and somewhat false) happiness, (until things went wrong,) but in terms of doing good business this proved to be a detrimental plan.
If you are too heavily into positivity and harmony you don’t leave yourself the room to “tell it how it is” – In business the problems then don’t get pointed out, hence they never get resolved. The dead wood never gets a chance to drift down stream and is instead tied to the boat with happy words and other such ego wanking.
In my personal experience even criticising the dead wood resulted in a shunning for disrupting the “vibe” – In my personal experience things didn’t turn out so well…
I now coin a phrase…
Positivity Blindness: “The desperate act of blindly ignoring all negatives”
These days I don’t have the same problem. If person “x” just isn’t doing a good job, something gets said. If there is a problem brewing within the business, something gets said. If I have a problem with a partner or colleague, it gets talked about and resolved. These days I feel unfathomably more relaxed because I KNOW WHERE I STAND.
This false “Harmony” also lead to a whole bunch of back stabbing. I personally found it incredibly stressful to never know exactly what was going on.
I believe relationships grow more during the bad times than during the good. It’s through passionate confrontation that we really learn to understand each other. If you have never fought with your life partner, how do you ever expect to get through any serious problems? Business partnerships are very similar to personal relationships with very similar opportunities for growth.
Don’t be afraid of negativity. If you can’t deal with it, then you shouldn’t really be feeling positive to begin with.
Vince
p.s. I’m now sitting in Schiphol airport feeling positively ill after my first MaccyD’s in five years… I now remember why I haven’t endured this horrible crap for such a long time. (That’s some positive negativity for you)
Posted 1 week, 3 days ago at 12:28 pm. 1 comment
Every speaker at every seminar, be it for entrepreneurs, internet marketers, business people or for those interested in the effect of rotten leaves on modern society, is pushing this positivity stuff.
“The Secret” is a DVD which seems to be mentioned at every single event, as well as on every second blog. It talks about positive thinking and the law of attraction. I’ll get back to this…
I love positivity, and I love realistic forms of the law of attraction (from here on, just TLOA) – I believe strongly that positive people attract other positive people. I also know that if you truly believe you will achieve a certain goal, you will subconsciously gear your life around attaining that goal. Many decisions will be made with that goal subconsciously (or consciously) in mind, and you are therefore a LOT more likely to achieve said goal.
But here’s the problem…
“The Secret” discredited itself by hyping the theory. It was simply taken too far. Positive thinking ALONE will not cure your cancer. It has been scientifically proven that positive thinking can greatly increase your chances of surviving any medical hurdle, but positive thinking alone will just get you dead.
All this TLOA stuff is almost a new form of religion. An excuse to ignorantly believe in something which makes you feel better about your life and living. Now I hear you say “But ‘The Secret’ is true because of quantum physics”…
Whoopla what a buzz word (or words) – Quantum Physics… This sounds super cutting edge and scientific, it must be true…
Unless you’ve chosen the enlightened path and actually looked into quantum physics. I think this is where I went a little wrong when it comes to TLOA, I chose not to be ignorant.
By observing particles, you alter them. True – this does not therefore mean that if you think your cancer away, it will go away. The study of quantum physics is still far too primitive to make any assertation that positive thinking can alter particle states to the extent that you can wish your malignant tumour away. And if this were the case, could you not also be accidentally wishing for the creation of more cancers?
You can’t chance particle states to what you want them to be by observing them, you simply change them. I mean, I really want you to be a nice thin 5’ 3” blond girl with blue eyes and C cup breasts, but that’s (very unfortunately) just never going to happen.
And here’s the thing – if your positive thinking can alter the particles within your own body, then also within anybody else’s body. A new form of prayer will be born, and all of my dreams will come true. Can you imagine all those poor fat old men that suddenly have to deal with bra shopping and tampons… Life becomes a Lego set and people live forever.
I can hear myself now saying “Lay off my gender, I liked it the way it was!” or even “Hey! I needed that bit!”
So like religion, taking this positive thinking and TLOA stuff to the extreme, there is a great unknown which leaves us ignorant. For instance… who/what created god?
I know of a few people who actively persued TLOA and positive thinking to cure cancer… More to the point, I KNEW a few people… you get my drift.
And what about the name of this thing…
The LAW of Attraction – It’s a LAW! It must be true… Of course “The Theory Of Attraction” or “The Hypothesis Of
The Law Of Attraction” doesn’t have the same ring to it, and as a marketer I can respect the placement of a very authoritive word within the name of a speculation. Personally I would have gone with “The Law of Quantum Physical Attraction” – Argue with that one! Clever, but still bullshit.
Positive thinking and being a positive person WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE – this is absolutely and completely true - Trusting the extreme claims of these “laws” ignorantly… well… good luck with that but you’ve just lost my respect.
Regards,
Vince
p.s. I’m sitting on a train to Amsterdam. The railway line is lower than the water level on the parallel canal. Its very cool, if somewhat disconcerting.
Posted 1 week, 6 days ago at 6:43 am. 1 comment
I once cycled as fast as I could… into a brick wall…
I must have been about 15, and “as fast as I could” was pretty bloody fast…
Especially since I was also cycling down hill…
And no - it wasn’t a mistake. I cycled directly towards the brick wall on purpose…
The mistake was attempting to repair the brakes on the bike myself… And then trying to do a huge burn-out…
What? Were you expecting a moral to the story? The friend that was watching found it all very funny “You went splat, and slid down the wall like in a cartoon” - I only remember having a very sore body, and having to repair a lot more than the brakes.
Ok Ok, a moral…
Brick walls are hard, and they hurt…
Posted 2 weeks, 5 days ago at 9:05 am. 1 comment
Are you monetizing your traffic at its full potential?
There are two main forms of monetization. You’ve got your sites, which are selling products and services. Some examples of which include e-stores and info product sites, and then you have sites designed to generate leads.
Examples of Products/Services websites:
-The Amazon website for instance, sells books and other products.
-The Godaddy website sells services.
Examples of Lead Generation websites
-Loans.com (Bank of America) is trying to acquire new clients looking for loans via phone or online application.
-DirectLine.com is giving people the opportunity to obtain a quote estimate online in exchange for contact details. The purpose is obviously to obtain qualified leads.
Traffic is the hard part however depending on your particular niche, as few as 20 visitors per day is more than sufficient for a very sweet income.
In the products/services website model the worst form of monetization is Adsense/CPC and CPM ads. Even if you get a very respectable 5% CTR you would have to be extremely lucky to get more than $10 per 100 visitors.
This is then followed by cheap products and affiliate products. Things such as your own info products, Amazon affiliate products and clickbank products. For every 100 visitors you should hope to be earning $50-100.
When you move over to drop shipping real world physical products, your conversion rates sky rocket and item values can be a lot higher, hence you can earn a lot more. This also becomes a lot more difficult and you will have to do a lot more work, but you can earn very decent amounts drop shipping. For 100 visitors you can hit $100-$500 profits reasonably easily.
The highest tier is to actually provide your own products and services, keeping all the commission for your self. This could include manufacturing and stocking your own products, offering consultancy services, membership sites etc. When you get to this level you are really in the money and 100 visitors could be worth as much as $10,000, however a more likely average figure is more like $500-$1500
If you’ve gone down the lead generation route you can still monetize your site with those nasty Adsense/CPC and CPM ads. Earnings potential per 100 visitors is still at a maximum of about $10
Next you can move on to CPA offers. It can depend very heavily on your niche, but 100 visitors probably has a minimum value of around $50, and an upper end more towards the $1000 mark if your conversion rates are nice and high in expensive markets.
If you go to a little bit of extra effort you can make a larger margin actively selling leads you generate yourself. This allows you to optimise conversion rates and strike personal deals with businesses able to take your leads on. You can either sell your leads for a fixed price, or work on a commission basis. The fixed price option provides a more steady source of income, but commission based leads are easier to sell and you can earn higher margins. I would be disappointed with less than $100 per 100 visitors, with an upper end limit nearer $2500.
The absolute top end and most difficult to pull off, is monetizing leads yourself. Instead of taking fixed price or commission, you process the leads and take the entire cut. But… the amount of work involved balloons. You have to get on the phone, you have to sort out the deals, you have to bill the clients, you will have to make sure you comply with any legislation and laws in regards to your niche. But this is where your little website turns into a real business. If you are in real estate/property market for instance, you could be churning out as much as $20,000 per 100 visitors. It’s very difficult to put a finger on a more exact estimate of the potential earnings without knowing a lot about your niche etc.
The purpose of this post is twofold:
Hopefully you will aim higher and look for the real money.
And…
The more effort you make, the greater the reward.
Posted 3 weeks, 3 days ago at 4:35 am. 2 comments
Hello Hello SWBN listeners.
(And for non-listeners, check out the interview here at the secret womens business network)
Here is a list of links to things we talked about
Inlinks Passive Income Strategy
InLinks Passive Income Strategy
Top 5 Inlinks Categories
InLinks Passive Income Strategy Q&A
Other Stuff
Twitter and Spam - The Oxymoron
Ask Vince Anything
The Real Guide To Online Income (a work in progress)
Random Stuff
Custom Shoes
Posted 1 month ago at 4:06 am. Add a comment
Twitter spam is a bit of an oxymoron, since it’s just not possible.
Spam being unsolicited communication, there is no situation on twitter where this can occur.
The twitter service is designed so that people can follow you without you needing to follow them. Before anybody is able to send you any messages directly (@ messages are simply references to somebody whereas direct messages are the only form of direct communication) you need to follow them, thereby soliciting further communications.
Funnily enough, the only time when you directly request an action from somebody, is when you try to follow somebody with a locked profile.
The follow-unfollow strategy, which I plan to explain in detail in a future post, is simply not spamming. It is annoying, it is destroying twitter, but it is completely acceptable legally and morally.
- By following you I don’t implicitly request a follow back, I am simply following you.
- By un-following you, I simply am no longer interested in what you have to say.
- By following me in return, you are SOLICITING my communications.
And this is why twitter, as it stands and matures, is a failing model.
Trawling twitter for traffic (lets call it twitter trawling, rather than twitter spamming) is highly profitable. It is also extremely simple. Anybody with a computer can trawl 2500 twitter users and ferry the haul to any website, every single day.
To sure up the twitter model against impending implosion, first up the maximum limits need to be decreased savagely. Allowing me to follow 1000 people every single day, is blatantly stupid. Allowing me to follow 2000 people, is blatantly stupid.
Bring a page rank model to twitter – allow peoples maximums to scale depending on their influence within twitter.
As it stands, the current twitter culture leaves twitter in a position where it is more vulnerable to “noise” than email was in the days before spam filters.
Posted 1 month, 1 week ago at 6:32 am. Add a comment
A little bit overdue - I’ve finally had a chance to sit down and hammer out answers to all the questions that were asked about the inLinks passive income strategy. If you have further questions, please check out the Ask Vince page.
Graham Asks: How many sites does this need to be done on to make up the numbers you give as examples?
Vince Answers: The screenshot provided is of a network of 15 domain names, with 27 sub-domains per domain name. That’s 405 wordpress installations in total, hence the need for the automation scripts ☺ with which it took about 12 hours to set up.
Brad Asks: What’s a simple way to check that our site is cooked enough to submit to inlinks - is it based on our backlinks stats or PR etc.?
Vince Answers: Basically there is no definitive way to be sure – if you let the sites cook for 2-3 weeks you should be ok. If your alexa rank is below 4,000,000 and you have a few backlinks registering in yahoo, you should be fine. If you add sites before they have cooked, you will have to wait 3 months before they are re-reviewed
Brad Asks: Can you please give us some tips on the godaddy domain auctions, that seems like a really good idea! Also when you say cheap, are you talking the <$100 domains? I’m using yahoo site explorer to check them but so far haven’t come accross any cheap ones with loads of backlinks etc.
Vince Answers: There are a bunch of tools around for buying expiring domain names with existing page rank and backlinks. We are talking about domains which cost $5-10 at auction, plus a registration fee which follows. You can pick up a decent PR domain name for $10, sometimes less, and these domains will sell a lot more links. So much so that you don’t need to bothered with the subdomains.
Charlie Asks: Is it best to generate some links to the site.
Vince Answers: They will generate backlinks themselves. Just watch, a single domain with 27 subdomains posting 25 articles to each subdomain per day, will generate about 300 backlinks within 2 months… generally more.
Charlie Asks: What is the algorithm they use to dictate your income; is it on the PR and that dictates the cost they ppl pay or is it the same cost no matter what site you are on ?
Vince Answers: The algorithm hasn’t been published, but in my experience Page Rank is the most important, followed by alexa rank and backlinks evenly weighted. Also if the keyword which is being purchased appears in the URL you get much pricier links. At the moment the vast majority of links are $10 each, and you shouldn’t expect to sell any expensive links with this strategy. You will sell a bunch of links as part of a links package, and hence earn even less (sometimes as low as $1.60 per link)
Graham Says: I have had one site accepted by inlinks and the other rejected and told to come back when it has more content. Hopefully the links will start up soon.
Vince Says: Jumping the gun ☺ This is why its important to leave them to cook. Now you will have to wait 3 months before the rejected domain is reassessed for approval. Unfortunately you can’t just re-submit the site in 3 weeks since inLinks will tell you that the site has already been added. Their system is far from perfect.
Karen Kramer Asks: What settings do you use in AMA? Do you Auto accept articles?
Vince Answers: I auto accept articles, but I also auto-reject articles which are less than 30% re-written. I also generally ask for 25 articles per day per blog.
Karen Kramer Asks: What’s the advantage to setting blogs on subdomains as apposed to just adding AMA content to categories on the main blog?
Vince Answers: You want maximum exposure in the inLinks network. In my experience inLinks will only display one post from your website to publishers. If you add 27 subdomains, you have 2700% the exposure ☺
Karen Kramer Asks: Do I need to wait until the sites are ranked and indexed with Google before adding InLinks?
Vince Answers: At this stage google has absolutely nothing todo with the process. This may change in the future as inLinks improves their system.
Karen Kramer Asks: Does Inlinks rely solely on Alexa ranking for link value?
Vince Answers: No – inLinks takes a number of things into account, such as page rank, number of backlinks, alexa rank and also some keywords info. It may sound inconsistent with the answer above since being indexed doesn’t matter to this strategy – the point here is that even a site without page rank can be added to inlinks.
Bill Thomson Asks: Vince you mention letting a site cook for 2 to 3 weeks before submitting to InLinks - Is the waiting period based on waiting for a certain level of content before InLinks is happy or are we trying to spread the posts over time to avoid problems with Google?
Vince Answers: Nothing todo with google, this is just to give your site time to meet the inLinks minimum standards, whatever they may be.
Bill Thomson Asks: You mentioned not sticking too many domains in the same AMA/Godaddy/Inlinks accounts if you want to onsell the sites - how many would you bundle?
Vince Answers: I like to have about 10-15 domain names (each with 27 subdomains) per set of accounts. This leaves me with nice small networks of sites which are quite liquid if I want to sell them
Bill Thomson Asks: Would it be best just to repeat & rinse with just the 5 top InLinks categories in bundles?
Vince Answers: You could do, but with the automation scripts you may as well take care of all the categories.
Karen Kramer Asks: Does it matter if you use subcategories from AMA instead of the top level? I.E. setting up individual blogs for each sub-category in the Insurance group instead of setting up more general blogs for just your top five …top level categories?
Vince Answers: You could do this, but I don’t think you would receive enough content from AMA for this to be worth your while.
Karen Kramer Asks (again… 
): When you look for auction domains on GoDaddy..what do you search for and how? i.e. do you look for domains with websites? do you use SEO firefox to check out domains? Is there an easier way to do this?
Vince Answers: Primarily I’m looking for domains with real Page Rank – check out http://www.freshdrop.net/ for finding these. Be careful of fakes, check every domain you buy in google, with seo for firefox installed, and check the website itself, etc etc etc. Its easy to get burnt when buying dropped domain names.
Karen Kramer Asks: What’s the best why to determine if an auction domain has backlinks?
Vince Answers: Use freshdrop to find the domains, then check them in yahoo. (SEO for firefox tool will check this for you)
Karen Kramer Asks: Are you too busy partying on a Sat nite to answer all these stupid questions?
Vince Answers: Yes, which is why I’m writing all these answers on a Thursday night, before a sing star party tomorrow and going to a gay bar for a birthday party on Saturday. Straight women in gay bars are easy pickings 
Posted 1 month, 1 week ago at 4:35 am. 1 comment
I’ve been bombarded with questions following the passive income strategy I posted a few days ago. I’ve since done a post on the top 5 inLinks categories but still, the questions flow.
So if you have a question, post it as a comment on this post and I’ll reply to as many as I can.
Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago at 2:07 pm. 10 comments
Following on from the passive income strategy, I promised to post up the most profitable niches for inLinks sales.
Here are the top 5
1. Loans/Lending
2. Internet/Internet Marketing
3. Business
4. Property/Real Estate
5. Health and Sports
I also thought I would post up a screen capture of my favorite thing to wake up to… link sales!!! I’ve set up a label in gmail which gives them this very nice red glow…
Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago at 2:10 pm. 1 comment