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When you’re starting out online, there are so many different business models, strategies and tactics, it can be too much to take in. Many people (myself included) suffer from “information overload” when they’re trying to start their online business – you become overwhelmed with all the different information out there, you just don’t know where to start or what to focus on. Does that sound familiar?

In my experience, when you start focusing on one solid (proven) business model or strategy, and follow it through, you will be more successful.

It’s too easy to lose focus and become distracted by the “next best thing” when really you are more likely to be damaging your chances of success by trying to do too many different things.

I wanted to share a few alternative business models to Information Marketing (some of which I have as part of my overall business) that you can explore. I recommend that if you are just getting started, have a look over these business models and see which interests you most. Don’t try and do all of them – pick one and work at it.

Of course, I still recommend starting your own information product business, and you’ll find plenty of training available on this site if you want to follow that business model. I recommend starting with my free Info Business Accelerator video series which will give you the foundation you need to build your own information marketing business from scratch.

Quick Access Links:

Domain Flipping

Website Flipping

Affiliate Marketing

Selling Services Online

Domain Flipping

As the Internet continues to grow and become more mainstream, domain names are likely to become more valuable “real estate” on the web. Premium domain names will be sold for increasingly large sums, so now is a great time to get involved in the domain name market.

I have to admit, I am fairly new to this business model, and it’s something I’m experimenting with at the moment alongside my main information product business. I should also point out that there is some overlap with this business model and website flipping, which is discussed later in this guide.

How It Works:

The basic idea of domain flipping is buying a great domain name and then selling it on for a profit. With domain flipping, you’ll usually be focusing on pre-owned domains, and I’ll go into more about finding these later. So what defines a great domain name?

• Keywords - You want to try and find domain names with the keyword for the market you are targetting in them. Particularly an exact match keyword domain as this is more valuable. e.g. “AutomotiveInsurance.com” would be the keyword domain for “Automotive Insurance”
• Page Rank – If the domain you have found has a Google page rank, this is often something which can increase the value
• Backlinks - You should try and find domains with existing backlinks as they will usually rank better in the search engines
• Domain Age – You want to try and find domains which have some “age”. Older is better

Where To Find Great Domains:

Great domains are continually becoming available – many people fail to renew old domains, and these eventually become available to the public again. You can use a tool like Domain Face to find expiring or expired domains and you can also register with services like Pool.com or Namejet.com if you’ve found a great domain that is due to expire soon – and these companies will attempt to obtain it for you (you only pay if you win the domain so it’s win-win really!)

You can also look on sites like sedo.com and flippa.com for domains which are being sold by other people. Domaining forums can also be a good place to buy domains – check out DNForum or NamePros

Selling Your Domain:

Sedo Domain Marketplace

Before you think about selling your domain, I want to give you a really important tip. Selling a domain name on it’s own is fine, and if it’s a good domain and there’s demand, you’ll probably sell it and make some money. But with a little work, you can almost always increase the amount you sell the domain for (this is where we touch on website flipping aspects).

I recommend that where possible, build a website on the domain you’ve purchased. You should always build something relevant on the domain. I recommend either building a simple affiliate site, a blog, a squeeze page or lead generation site, or you could even develop it into some kind of ecommerce site.

You should also try and build some backlinks to the site and try and get some traffic coming to the site as this is also going to show a potential buyer the value of the domain.

Finally – if you can show that your domain is making money, even just a small amount, this will dramatically change the amount you’ll sell for. So where possible, try and get the site to make money before you sell it as you’ll always be able to sell for more.

Where To Sell Your Domain:

There are a range of places you can sell your domain (or website if you’ve built a site on it). These include: Flippa.com, Sedo.com, Namejet.com, GoDaddy.com. You can also sell on forums like DNForum.com

WebSite Flipping

The method with website flipping is quite similar to domain flipping, although this time the focus is on the website. The domain may still play a part in the overall monetization of the website, but it is not the main focus (you should always try and go for a keyword rich domain when developing a website for sale as this will usually mean easier SEO and makes your site more appealing).

With website flipping, you may or may not start by buying an existing website property. This method can still work if you build a website from scratch. If you’re looking to buy an existing website, I recommend you check out flippa.com as they have many websites for sale. You might also consider offering to buy an existing website off another person if you think you can turn a profit on it. The best way to approach this is to find their contact details from who.is and contact them direct with your proposal (even better – phone them!)

What Kind of Sites To Flip:

There are a range of different sites you can build or buy to flip:

• Affiliate Sites – this is a site which promotes a product or service with an affiliate link. This could take the form of an affiliate blog, an affiliate review site, or an affiliate landing page with optin
• Membership Sites – this is a site with specific members area and members only content. This could be a free or paid membership site
• Authority Blogs – A blog focusing on a particular niche or topic. An authority blog would usually have high quality content and be monetized through advertising or affiliate links
• Ecommerce Sites – This is a site which is setup to sell physical goods.
• Information Product Sites – One of my favourites – this is where you sell a complete site including an information product. Typically you would have a sales letter and digital product included in a sale like this

Considerations When Flipping A Website:

There are a few important elements that can influence the profitability of a site-flip. You should consider each of these when you are developing or buying a website to flip:

• Monetization – how the site will be monetized. If you’re buying an existing site – see how they are monetizing it and work out if you can do better. Often site owners rely on one type of monetization such as Adsense, and have never tried alternatives like affiliate marketing
• Content - the content of the site is very important. If you’re developing a site you need to ensure you can either create some good content, or have some content created for you. If you’re buying a site, find out what content they have already on the site, and check for any duplicate content with a site like CopyScape
• Traffic - Does the site currently have any traffic going to it? If you’re building a site, can you generate traffic to the site through Pay-Per click or other methods of advertising? You can sometimes find good deals on sites which look good but the owner didnt know how to drive traffic – so if you can do better than the current owner they are worth considering.
• SEO - Check the website for rankings in the search engines. If buying a site, check the domain in Google with the search “site:domainname.com” to see if it is indexed. You should also look at factors like the domain name for target keywords – does the domain name have keywords in it?

You should always do your due dilligence when buying any website. Try and get proof of any traffic stats that are stated in the details, and if something doesn’t seem right to you, don’t go through with the deal.

If you’re building a website from scratch to flip, focus on hot and trending topics. Use Google Trends to see what is hot now, and always also remember to start with the end in mind – think about how you can monetize the site before you build it.

Selling Your Site

Flippa.com is still probably the best place to sell your site at the moment, although you can also try some private forums – just be careful about handing over any details of your site until funds have been transferred or are in escrow.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular business models for making money on the Internet. The concept of affiliate marketing is fairly simple; You find a niche market with demand for a solution and you supply that demand. With affiliate marketing, you promote products and as an affiliate you’re given a share of the money made from every sale you refer.

Although the methods used have changed over the last few years, the main steps of the process remain the same:

• Step 1: Find a market – You need to find a market with a hot demand. There are few places you can look for this: Amazon Bestsellers list, Ezine Articles and eBay Pulse. Don’t just go for topics at the top of the lists on these sites though, dig down so you find the popular topics but not those that everyone has already jumped on.
• Step 2: Find offers to promote to that market – There are many affiliate networks out there where you can signup and find offers to promote, but perhaps the easiest way to find offers is to use OfferVault - this should save you lots of time as this site scans many different affiliate networks
• Step 3: Find keywords to target - You need to find keywords that people are searching for related to your market or product. From your initial research of the market you’ll probably have a few keywords or product names. Plug these into the Google Keyword Tool or Market Samurai and start digging further into the keywords you find. Create a notepad document or text file with your list of keywords for this niche and also write down the number of searches each keyword has per month.
• Step 4: Market / Product Analysis – You need to now analyse the market to see if it is worth developing an affiliate promotion for. The first thing to do is look at your keywords, and focus on the keywords with 300-500 searches per month or more. Take these keywords and plug each one into google with the prefix of “allintitle:your keyword here” (no quotes needed). This will tell you how many sites are competing for that specific term. You can now also use SEO Quake to see the stats of the other sites in the top 10.
• Try and focus on keywords which don’t have any authority sites or sites more than 4 years old with high page ranks (5 or more). Don’t worry about web 2.0 sites as these can be outranked – focus on looking to see if there are established sites on their own domains – these are your main competition.
• Unlike building an information product business, when examining niches for affiliate promotions, it’s better to have less competition, although you do want to see some adverts (Adwords ads) or some promotions as this shows there is money to be made

So now you’ve established the niche you want to target and built up a list of keywords you want to target. The next step is to build a site that you can then drive traffic (visitors) to and hopefully convert them to buyers of the product you’re promoting.

Before you start building your site, you will need hosting. I recommend Hostgator as they have some of the most affordable packages and have great support if you have any problems.

Your Domain

You will need a domain for your affiliate website. I use Namecheap for registering all of my domains. Here are a few tips for choosing a good domain name:

• Tip 1: Ensure your main keyword is in the domain
• Tip 2: The domain should be as short as possible, keep it under 5 words if possible. The shorter the better for SEO purposes
• Tip 3: Do not include any misspelt words, and avoid brand names or abbreviations where possible
• Tip 4: Go for the .com domain first. If this is unavailable, try going for .org. If you’re focusing on a product for a local market (e.g. the UK) then go for the co.uk or .org.uk as these will often rank better on the Google site local to this market. This also applies to local domains for Australia and other parts of the world
• Tip 5: When naming your domain, you can add a suffix like word like tips, advice, secrets, report, guide, blueprint, expert, best, pro to make your domain unique

Your Affiliate Site

To build your affiliate site, I recommend you actually create a blog and use Wordpress (you can install wordpress from within your hosting control panel if you’re using hostgator).

Wordpress offers the best SEO benefits for the search engines, which means our content has more chance of being indexed and found by people searching – which means more visitors to our sites and more money in our pockets!

I recommend using a professional theme such as WooThemes or Thesis.

You will need to setup your blog with the right plugins and settings, and I recommend checking out my guide to building your first blog for more information on how to do this, as much of the same applies here.

Monetization

Obviously you need a way for your affiliate blog to make money. I recommend the following methods:

• Affiliate Links In Posts – You should post content to your blog which is keyword specific – i.e. write an article or blog post for each of your keywords (more if you can) and within this post you will link to the product you are promoting with your affiliate link (this will be given to you by the affiliate network you joined earlier).
• Build A List And Sell Later – Wherever possible, it’s also a good idea to start building a list from your affiliate blog. This gives you the opportunity to make repeated contacts with the prospect and increases the chances of making the sale. Follow my guide on how to build a list for more information on list building.

Driving Traffic

Although your blog posts will generate some natural traffic to your site over time, you need to start driving concentrated traffic to your site in order to start testing and tracking conversions. Here are a few of the methods I recommend:

Article Writing – Write (or get written) articles on your keywords, and post them to sites like Ezine Articles and Article Dashboard. Ensure you include a link back to your blog in the bio section of the article.

Video Traffic - Create some short videos on different topics for your niche, and post them to sites like Youtube. Again, ensure you are posting a link back to your site, and even have a link on the video or at the start and end. Use a site like TubeMogul to leverage each video you create

Twitter – Create a persona for your affiliate site on twitter and start interacting with people in your market. Use the search function or use a tool like TweetDeck to monitor for discussion on your keywords, and join in with conversions on your topic to find like minded people who will hopefully follow you back. You can also post links to your content where revelant, but I wouldn’t recommend linking direct to an offer on Twitter

Social Media – Leverage other social media sites to build a following for each of your affiliate sites, or use them to distribute more of your content to drive more traffic and backlinks.

Continue The Process

That gives you an overview of affiliate marketing, and remember that with affiliate marketing you need to continually test different offers and where possible test a few markets at a time. As you develop more affiliate sites you will become faster at the process, and when you start generating an income you can start to leverage your time by outsourcing some of the tasks to grow your business faster.

It’s also important to point out here that affiliate marketing forms an integral part of most information product businesses, and can also be a good way to start off an information product business. If you find a niche market which you would like to expand into further, developing your own information products for that market is one of the best ways to do this.

Selling Services Online/Freelancing

Selling services, or freelancing on the Internet can be a great way to get started making some money online. There are thousands of companies and individuals who require work on a daily basis and are willing to pay you for your time and skills.

One of the first ways I actually made any decent money online was through selling my services as a freelance designer, and later as a direct response expert. And I still consult with a few select clients now which is another revenue stream for my business.

Now I would point out that although it can be lucrative, the main downside with selling services is that its much harder to leverage your time, unless you are able to quickly build up enough work to recruit a reliable team who you can outsource some of the work to and still make a profit. But when you’re starting out, or need some extra cash, there’s nothing better than selling services.

Services You Can Offer

There are many different services you can offer online. Many of these require minimal skills or they can be learned quickly – and there’s no shortage of help available online – just use Google to help you if you’re struggling with a task. Now I don’t recommend you offer your services for something you know nothing about, but don’t be put off if you don’t think you have a service to offer as there is likely to be something you’re good at that other people have a demand for. Here are some ideas for services you can start offering today:

Article Writing/Marketing – One of the most simple services you can offer, but also one which is very much in demand. Writing and distributing articles is a great way for people to generate traffic to their websites, so there will always be demand for great article writers. If you can research and write unique content this could be for you.

Ghostwriting – A little more in-depth than article writing, but also paid better, ghostwriting requires you to write more lengthly content such as ebooks or reports on a specific topic. In-demand ghostwriters can be paid quite well for their work and will always be required by marketers who are launching new products regularly.

Graphics & Web Design – This covers a wide range of tasks and areas, but there will always be demand for good designers. Try and build up your portfolio as fast as possible (even if it means doing free work or your own mockup projects) as your porfolio is really what sells you as a designer.

Software Creation – Programming and software creation is a very hot area and can be well paid if you can deliver great working software. If you can, try and focus on a particular language or area that not as many people are good at, to have more demand for your services.

Tech Support – There are many people who struggle with the basics and having an on-demand person who can help them with their technical tasks can be very valuable. Generally these kind of jobs are smaller, but you can do volume work to build up your income.

Virtual Assistance – Virtual Assistants perform a range of tasks (including some of the above) depending on the requirements of their contract. Usually virtual assistants can have a number of clients if they are working from home, and will usually have to perform tasks like email management, taking phone calls, organising content, organising schedules and many other tasks.

Copywriting – Copywriting is one area where you can make a really great income if you can master the skill. Great copywriters can be paid 5-figures per project (sometimes much more), and also can be paid on results which means even bigger paydays if their work converts prospects into buyers.

Video Services – Video is hot on the web right now, and only increasing in popularity. Offering some sort of video related service is a great way to cash in on this. You could offer custom made screencasts (screen capture recordings) or you could offer to create professional video intros or video presetations if you have expertise in that area.

There are many variations on the services above that you can offer to people – I would advise looking in forums and places where business owners hang out, and see what sort of services people are asking for, and tailor what you’re offering to those requirements.

*Tip: Try and look at a way you can make your service more unique, or more specialist. If you can focus on a particular area of one of these categories, you can carve out more demand for your particular skills, and become the expert. For example I chose minisite design, which at the time was in demand but there weren’t many people doing it, so I became an expert quickly.

Build Your Client Getting Machine

You need to setup a website in order to help you find clients, or help clients find you. You’ll need hosting and a domain (give your company a name – Like I chose Minisite Studio) and I recommend setting up a blog. There are many portfolio/service provider themes available, and you can find some fantastic paid designs on ThemeForest.

Setup a services page which details the services you offer, and have a portfolio page if you have some work to display (this can be your own proects if you don’t have any client work).

On your homepage/front page you need to ensure you have a call to action which should be encouraging your visitor to contact you for a quote or to order. You can add a contact form to your blog using the “Contact Form 7″ plugin (for more information on setting you your blog see my guide).

Now you need to start getting traffic to your website and clients into your business…

Where To Get Clients

Forums – These are a goldmine, whatever service you are offering. You can look at niche forums (e.g. Gardening) as they sometimes have a section about services wanted, but a better idea is targetting marketing and business owner forums. You want to go where people who have businesses and need services hang out. Get involved in conversations in these forums, add your site link to your signature and respond to comments (never spam). Forums are also a great place to build up long-term relationships with clients, and if you do good work for someone you’ll get recommended to other forum members.

Craigslist – This can be a good place to look for people wanting work done or a place where you can post your services. Target larger cities in your country for better results, and link back to your blog and any work you have done for better responses.

Blog & Forum Competitions – This can be a great way to get exposure for yourself. It only applies really to design type services, but if you get involved in competitions on forums or popular blogs you can often get some great exposure and clients as a result.

High Profile Targeting – This is an interesting method that can generate great results if done right. Basically you find a few of the influencers in your marketplace. Perhaps those with high profile blogs or a large online presence. The idea is that you approach them and offer your services, and explain that you want to prove yourself and will work for free to start. Now this might sound strange, but in my experience if you pick the right people and do a great job, they will recommend you and you can tap into their network of other infleuncers and get an almost unlimited stream of new work.

Article Marketing (traffic) – This is specifically a traffic technique to get people back to your site. Write articles about your chosen service, perhaps the mistakes people make when choosing a service provider, or other issues, and link back to your site. This will earn you some credibility and also you should get some traffic back to your site (target the keywords in your anchor tags from the article sites to also get some SEO benefit).

Outsourcing Sites – I know many people go straight to the outsourcing sites like Elance and GetAFreelancer when they are looking for work, but I personally think these sites shouldn’t be the first place you look. They are now full of outsourcing agencies that outsource the work to workers around the world, and can be very hard to compete with.

Taking Things Further

If you build up your service business to have a regular stream of leads, you may want to consider building a team to leverage these leads and do less of the actual work yourself. This can be a great way to turn a service business into a passive income business, but you should be aware there will always be a certain amount of admin required to manage projects.

You could also consider offering your consulting services or coaching services as your experience grows, and provide this as a higher level service. Providing you can give value to your clients, people will pay you will for your expertise in your particular area.

Check out Internet Marketing Cash Services for more information on generating instant cash from selling services online.

Tags: affiliate marketing, alternative business models, domain flipping, offline consulting, selling services, selling services online, website flipping