|pros • per • ly|

When I talk to small business owners it always amazes me how they all pretty much have the same story. They worked for another small business, saw that the company was making a ton of money and realized that they could do just as good if not a much better job. So they left the company they worked for and started their own business.

The reason I bring this up is because these successful business owners saw an opportunity and let it be the source of revenue for their business. So what does this have to do with internet marketing?

If you are like me you have new make money on the internet ideas all the time. It is unrealistic to pursue all of them even when they all seem legitimate. You poor your heart and soul into building up a web business and even start making money. Emotionally you are completely attached to the business.

You need to be flexible. What if an opportunity presented itself to you that you weren’t expecting, and maybe had no interest in but you could make way more money than your business is making. Should you break the emotional attachment from your other business and pursue this more lucrative opportunity? The Answer Is YES.

Don’t forget that your ultimate goal is to make money on the internet. To replace your 9-5 job with a full time income online. So your going to make that money in a way you didn’t expect, who cares. Take the money and be happy for the blessings.

The original idea I had for an internet business has been by far the least lucrative. I learned a lot while working on it and it has made good money, but if I would have pushed away the other opportunities that came to me over the next several years I would have been a lot less successful.

My friend Mark Butler who runs the Keyword Academy keeps telling me about all of these members he has that are making anywhere from $1000-$5000 a month just from Adsense. I asked him to show me what exactly they were doing and so he walked me through their methodology and I have to admit that I was really impressed. So impressed in fact that I decided to try it out for myself.

I know that I have talked about how Adsense should be used as a supplementary income stream on a website and not a main income source but if I can make $1k-$5k a month from one website with just Adsense, I am willing to rethink my position on the matter.

The great thing about Adsense is that you don’t have to count on a conversion to make money. In other words, all you have to do is get the traffic to your site and have them click on the ads on your site and your part is done. With other affiliate programs you have to get someone to actually buy something before you will get paid. You can potentially make more money with affiliate programs but there is a lot less friction to get some to make a click than to make a purchase.

From a buying websites perspective, Adsense sites are for sale everywhere, and they are really cheap. It will probably  be much easier to find a good Adsense site candidate for a reasonable price thus creating a quick turnaround.

I really like Mark’s traffic generating strategy and I will continue to keep you updated as the site I started gets older and starts getting traffic and click$. Who knows, Prosperly may become Prospersense when all is said and done.

Since we have posted on the internet scam “Posting links on Google” and other money making schemes like Clickety Split many of you have asked about other similar services. One that was recently brought to my attention was iNetGlobal. They are an internet company that claims they will help you get a “piece of the internet pie”.

Based on the information on their website it looks like you download their software and then you have to visit certain websites for at least 20 seconds or so in order to earn credits. They then allow website owners to pay to have their website put into the software so other members have to look at the website in the rotation.

The major problem with this model is that people that are using this software only care about one thing, earning credits for visiting the required sites. They are not going to engage with the websites they are required to view (1) because it is a complete shot in the dark if it is relevant to something they want to see and (2) because that would eat into the time they can visit more sites and earn more credits.

This is a model that has been circulating around the internet for many years. If people like looking at sites that they have no interest in then more power to them. I just don’t think this is the answer to the question how do I make money online?

My big question is, why is this company using an MLM model? If they have the know how to teach people how to make money online, why don’t they just do that? I have to admit that they do a fantastic job getting people excited about these “opportunities” but in reality your time is much better spent building your own internet empire.

Here is what you need to understand: If you want to make money online, you need to start your own internet business. Don’t join an MLM and try to make money that way. All you will do is make money for the people who started the MLM. A common marketing tactic for companies like iNetGlobal is to show you the founders of Google, or Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) in order to try to get you excited about the prospect of making millions online. The point they don’t make is that the thing all of these people have in common is they started their own internet business, they didn’t join an MLM.

Decide what you are good at, think about what the internet world needs and start looking into internet businesses you can start from there.

About six months ago we decided we’d build out another site in the same niche where we had (have) our most profitable site.  We just figured, “Heck, let’s have two sites doing this instead of just one.”

Instead of going the traditional route of looking for domains/sites for sale, we followed our own advice on buying a website:

Do a Google search for one of your top key phrases. Go through all the websites on page 2 or 3 of the search results. Those should be your top candidates. They have done all of the preliminary work for you but are probably not making much money because they can’t get to page one in their rankings.

We found one that wasn’t ranking well, had some content, and had a bit of domain age, so we low-balled (not low enough to offend) an offer to the website owner, he countered with something much lower than we would have actually paid, and we took it.  The site (content and domain) cost us $500.  To date it’s one of the cheapest sites we’ve acquired.

So far this month the site is averaging $197 per day.  Within two weeks of its purchase we had earned back what we paid for it.  This is not just a site that fits the Prosperly Way — it was also truly a gold nugget among the scrap.

This site was actually our first acquisition of consequence, and I think its success tainted us a bit.  We’ve purchased several more sites since then and none have yet to match the ROI or daily revenue of this one (granted, some of our later acquisitions are in much more competitive areas, so the time required to get to profits of significance is obviously higher).  Is it because we were lucky?  Partially I’m sure.  I think it has more to do with the work that is required.

For every golden site you acquire, you’re bound to either purchase, or at least evaluate several that are garbage.  As you become more experienced, you’ll get better at this, and you probably won’t actually purchase too many junk sites.  Hopefully you’ll do your homework and won’t purchase a single one.

But you WILL evaluate a bunch of junk.

Just like I mentioned my Realtor friend that was doing so many house flips — he didn’t evaluate 180 houses to purchase and flip those 180 houses.  He evaluated several thousand each year.  He was playing the numbers game, and you’ll need to do the same.

Adam has figured out that he adds a lot of value to our portfolio by doing these evaluations, so that’s where he spends a large majority of his time.  He’s hardly wringing his hands if we don’t find a candidate every day.  Heck, we go weeks without purchasing a site sometimes, but that doesn’t mean he stops evaluating.  You’ll need to be like the best real estate investors, who canvas neighborhoods, cold-call, network, etc. and generate enough leads that they can find those gems among the junk.

Back toward the end of the real estate boom I was working on a project with a guy that was an absolute master when it came to buying and flipping real estate. He had perfected an evaluation system that basically made it easy enough for almost the layman to go to a house, fill out the spreadsheet, and have it pump out a thumbs-up/thumbs-down on the house.

He bought and sold 90 houses (clearing about $7k on each) in 2004, 120 houses in 2005, and 185 houses in 2006 (also, in 2006 he was clearing about $12k per house — mainly because he could be pickier).

He spent the vast majority of his time evaluating potential deals. He was always evaluating deals. He had a special phone he carried with him that he affectionately called the bat phone. Since they were paying for leads, and leads came on a round-robin system to him as a franchisee through that phone, he ALWAYS had it with him.

Now the question that you need to ask yourself is, what’s your bat phone? And are you spending the majority of your time on tasks that only YOU can do, that are adding value to your internet business?

We spend the vast majority of our time evaluating websites for sale, potential industries to get into (and then related websites for sale), and contacting websites that aren’t even listed for sale (more on that later). Also, when you can focus on one simple success metric, it makes it that much easier to have that laser-like focus.