This path has been great for learning about all the different ways to make money online. I can’t count the number of “research binges” I went on trying to learn different techniques for monetization. I read about Adsense for days (weeks even). I was obsessed with niche stores for over a year. It was the same with affiliate stores and affiliate marketing. If you look back through my archive of posts you’ll see all the things that I wrote about are an outline documenting this journey.

Because of the path I’ve taken, I’ve read a lot of blogs and reviewed tons of products. I’ve also answered thousands of comments and emails from clients, bloggers, and other online marketers. I’m realizing more and more that my blog is a hybrid. It brings me business (clients), income (products I recommend and review), AND it also brings me a lot of garbage. People looking for an online “get rich quick” scheme, people looking for shortcuts, people that actually believe that for $39 they can buy software to get to #1 in google and hit it big – or people that think that they can hire me for $200 to build them an auto-pilot web site that will make them thousands+.

Look, if it sounds too good to be true – it is. If I had software that made thousands – why would I sell it to anyone? If I could make you a web site that makes thousands+ for $200 – why wouldn’t I just make myself 100 of them and move to the Bahamas? P.T. Barnum said – “There’s a sucker born every minute…”, and it’s so true. But on the other hand, I have to ponder – WHY DO I attract people that ask these kinds of questions? I know a lot of online “GURUS” that would welcome this kind of traffic because they know they could profit from it. Then again, just because you have enough sales skill to be able to take two $20 bills out of the purse of a soccer mom who believe she can “blog her way to financial freedom” doesn’t make you a “GURU”. It makes you shady. No better than a snake oil salesman, slimy – and on the same level as a televangelist. The ability you have is the sales skill to extract money from someone based on emotion and an outcome they want to hear, rather than honest ethical talk about how hard it is to succeed online. You could have a mansion and 3 Ferrari’s from this kind of marketing – I’m sorry, you’re still scummy. Nothing better than an online con-man.

My goal is to do as much “sticky marketing” as I can in 2010. I am going to surround myself with successful people, and build a network of contacts that are the best in the business. I will learn from honest marketers that are banking on the success of their knowledge, and not profiting by selling products that are more “get rick quick” schemes than actual successful systems. If your 2010 is to be successful – you have to ask yourself the same questions, who are you surrounded by? Who’s in your network? What kind of marketing tactics are you using?

I have to say 2009 was GREAT for my consulting business, and I have attracted many great new networking relationships, partners, and clients because of the kind of blogger I’ve been. I think with some trial and error (and more sticky marketing), I can attract more quality content in the future. I’ll be blogging a lot more about this concept, and hopefully you’ve already subscribed to my RSS feed, so you don’t miss a thing.

link juice from blog comments

The greatest thing about blogs is that they’re interactive. You write posts, and people can leave comments and carry on a conversation right there on the same page. Blogs are like part web site, part forum. Sometimes the post comments are more interesting than the post itself! The first goal is to get comments in the first place, and I wrote a post about that long ago “Rock Star Comments in Wordpress in 12 Steps. The more traffic you get the more comments you receive, and a lot of people ask me, “when will I start getting traffic on my blog?”. Well, my rule of thumb is usually most blogs go from obscurity to a steady flow of traffic at about the 6 month / 100 post mark. This is enough time to be through a google update or two, and with 100 posts indexed in the search engines, you’ve got 100 shots at getting found in online search. I believe every post you write is like a little deposit in the search engine bank.

So back to the original topic – “How do you get the most Juice from Blog Comments?”. Well, comments aren’t like a blog post – you don’t just approve them and leave them site there on your blog. Like your own posts, pages, and content – you can re-use comments in many convenient ways you may not have previously thought about.

• Use a Widget: This is probably the simplest thing you can do, add a “recent comments” widget to your sidebar. It shows your blog is active and people are leaving comments. Simple, yet effective.
• Create a page Listing Most Commented Pages: This is one you don’t see very often. Create a page on your web site and list the most commented and active page, like my Active Discussions page. This is pretty simple to do with the Active Discussions Plugin.
• Use Comments in a ‘Testimonials’ page: Everyone gets comments like “Thanks, exactly what I was looking for!”. If you have a product or service on your site turn your comments into Testimonials! Create a testimonials page and copy them there, then link back to the original comments (building internal links in your site at the same time!). How? Download the WP-Testimonials Plugin, that’s how!
• Reply to Comments: This is pretty much a no brainer – reply to your comments! Tell people thanks, answer their questions, and reply to their comments. Comments get indexed in search engines too you know, and the comments you add in reply to your comments the more content the search engines have to index from your site. Also – people like to know that you are reading their comments, and furthering the discussion(s) makes them want to come back. THIS is a GREAT way to build loyal readers!
• Reward Commenters: Use plugins like Comment Luv, Top Commentators, and DoFollow. Commenters will come back more often when they know their link juice “counts”. In addition, you get listed on sites that list blogs that have these plugins (building backlinks for you!). I get a lot of traffic from being listed on this list of commentluv blogs.
• Email Commenters: If you see someone commenting on your site relentlessly for weeks and months – connect with them! Send them a simple email and say “thanks – I see you’ve been commenting a lot, and I really appreciate it”. If you owned a brick and mortar store you’d be smart to treat your regular customers this way – why wouldn’t you do the same on your own blog?
• Challenge Commenters: Run a contest of some kind and challenge your commenters to become part in it!
• Recruit Affiliates: If you come out with a product or service, recruit the people already commenting on your web site to be part of your new affiliate army! They already know you and your content, and probably wouldn’t mind making a little extra cash as an affiliate of your products.
• Hire Guest Posters: This is a no brainer. I’ll never understand why more web sites don’t recruit guest posters. Authors build great back links back to their web site, and you get great traffic and content in return! In addition most authors always link the article they wrote for you (instant backlinks) – and what better way to find quality guest posters than from active commenters you already have on your blog? It’s like the flowers recruiting the honeybees and saying “hey, since you’re here anyway…”!

Like I said in one of those points, your blog is like your “storefront”. If you actually owned a store, and customers can and visited 24 hours a day you would do everything you could to market to those people and increase your sales. Most stores use direct and indirect ways of marketing to customers that are already there. TV screens at the checkout and throughout the store, ads plastered on the floor, ads in carts, coupons on the back of receipts, checkout coupons. All of these methods are trying to “engage” the customer in yet another way to influence his or her buying decisions.

Think of your blog comments as your checkout clerk. It’s the last thing the customer does before he leaves the store – he “checks out”. Why do you think most stores ask the clerk to do certain things while ringing up your goods? They say things like “did you find everything you needed?”, “would you like to apply for our credit card and get 10% off this purchase?”, “would you like to signup for our free catalog?”. In some stores the checkout clerk is the only actualy person a customer interacts with before leaving with their purchase. Comments are the checkout for your blog, are you getting everything you can from them at the one point they are engaged and connected with you?

Are you using squeezing every bit of juice out of your blog comments?

For example, I have a recipe blog. When I think of new things to cook – I post them. I have a geeky tech site. When I get new gadgets, or looks at phones or computers – I post about them. I like jokes – I post them to my joke site. I blog a lot, and on this blog I write about blogging! Are you getting the picture?

Today I’m going to show you an actual real world example. I’m having some people over tonight for a party. I have some pro-sound equipment and we’re going to do some karaoke and listen to music, I guess I’ll be the “DJ”! So I gathered my song files onto an external hard drive only to find that I couldn’t really get a decent song list for people to choose from. Then I played some of the songs and some of the volume levels were way up or way down.

I figured out how to solve my problem pretty quickly – and I threw together a blog post about it entitled How to Fix MP3’s! I turned my problem INTO a blog post. Hopefully that problem will translate into traffic (and into cash)!

I’d said this a thousand times –

• Write about what you know about
• Use your own expertise
• Write in your own voice
• Help people solve problems
• Blog about your everyday life

If you follow these simple steps – you may never have to come up with content ever again AND you will make it much easier for you to write content (EVEN if you’re not much of a writer!).

This is part of our new series “Ways to Make Money Online” – this interview with Andrei Saoic you some insight into what it’s like to be a Premium Wordpress Theme designer!

I recently found a couple of premium Wordpress themes that do just that. Andrei Saioc owns Sitemile.com where he sells premium Wordpress themes that help you take your site or blog to the next level! He has two Wordpress themes, one that turns Wordpress into an auction site, and another that turns it into a classifieds site. There are some plugins available that do try to do both of these things, but his Wordpress themes really allow you take your site to that next level – without leaving Wordpress.

Let’s find out from Andrei himself how this came to be…

Andrei Saioc owner of Sitemile.com

Tell us a little about your background and who you are:

A: My background is quite simple. All started with the passion for computers back in primary school, at that time I was hacking DOS PC games, then started to learn DOS programming. After that when it was time to get to high-school, I choose a programming oriented high-school… this is how I met C/C++ programming. Then after high-school I went to university (Automatics and Computers from Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest). At that time I started to learn HTML and PHP, which I already had contacts with since high-school. But I needed to take it to the next level so I can earn enough money to pay for my studies. First I worked as a freelancer on lots of freelancer websites out there. The greatest was getafreelancer.com, where I found a permanent job for some guys in England. Kinda long background huh? :) Also I am working online for 4 years as a professional, but have more than 6 years since I had contact with programming.

Do you work independantly, or with others in your online business?:

A: I work independently for now, but I am always open to new offers.

Why did you decide to create premium Wordpress themes?:

A: Well, i decided that because WordPress is a very large open-source product and has a great market of users behind, so coming with such things brings you fast success.

Where did you get the idea for the classifieds and auction themes?:

A: The idea of classified theme i got it from some other sites that sell that stuff, but i made it better, more neat, more features, better support, more quality product. Thats the secret :)

I see you do the PHP coding, do you also do all the web design, SEO, and promotional work yourself?:

A: Yes PHP is my love! I do the coding, and all the designs and everything. I am good at everything.

Is it hard to “wear many hats” in an online business, or do you like being the guy that “does it all”?:

A: Yes is hard, but I think in first stages of a business is worth it, because there are risks, if you invest too much you risk to loose everything, and you can risk less in eventually of a loose you wont have that big damage on
your pocket.

Working online for yourself, do you find that you work more or less than the average person in a regular job?:

A: In the first stages of the business you work more and always need to come up with innovations and new ideas. But once you settle your business you will find that more relaxing than a regular job.

What’s the hardest thing about working online?:

A: The hardest thing is to find that niche or market, and to have that idea of the product that will sell. Coding the product is the easy part.

When you work for yourself online how do you plan for things like insurance, taxes, and retirement?:

A: Well you can work online and pay taxes and insurances. There are many private organizations that offer insurances and all that stuff. Important thing is to succeed in your business, then all the rest are details.

What’s the #1 goal you are striving for in the next year for your products?:

A: No1 goal is to have as many products as can be, so I can cover big areas of the market, so I can do more and more sales. The secondary goal is to buy a new car, a house, to quit my ordinary job and so on.

Will you create new additional products for release in the future?

A: Yes more product will come in the following months. I have a few ideas of wordpress themes and great things based on opensource scripts, because they offer a great market and usage behind.

What advice do you have for others wishing to work online or market and sell their own premium Wordpress themes?:

A: My advice is to create something very solid, very premium and very professional, also the packaging of a product is very important.

This is great insight into the life of a real world (and world class) Wordpress Premium theme designer. I highly suggest you read my post reviewing his “classifieds” Wordpress theme entitled “How to Build a Wordpress Craigslist!

The World of Online Garage Sales

In Today’s economy people are trying to find new ways to make money as fast as people are selling this to try and generate cash. It’s no suprise that both eBay and Craigslist are favorite spots to do both of these with millions of visitors each and every day. You can cash in on this by building your own niche based “Craigslist”, quickly and easily. Craigslist capitalizes on “community” by being a (mostly) free classifieds based service allowing you to list and find things where you live.

I remember when I was a kid, (you know – back in the days when there was no cable and no Internet) one of the highlights of the day was when the newspaper was delivered. This was mainly because of the “classified ads”. That’s where you found pets people wanted to give away, jobs, items for sale, houses for rent, rummage sales, and used cars for sale. The way we live has changed, but the things we need have not. Now most people aren’t willing to pay $25-50 for a newspaper ad if they know about craigslist.

Why build Craigslist in Wordpress?

Some of you might be reading this and saying “there’s already a Craigslist – why would I want to build my own?”.

Let me give you a few pointers:

• The economy is bad and people want great deals
• Millions of people search for things locally daily
• People like simple – not complicated
• Google favors “blogs”
• Google favors (and is now targeting) ‘local’ content
• Visitors posting to a classifieds site FREE CONTENT for you!
• Charging money for some (or all) ads PROFIT!

I wrote a post awhile back called Local Web Sites Produce Consistent Income. Read it if you need some ideas, but it should be pretty easy to come up with your own ideas for turning Wordpress into a “classified ad” type of web site. I’ll even give you a few to get your brain thinking…

Membership club (Eagles, Moose, Biker club, Church, youth group, intermural sports, college fraternity or sorority, school alumni, camera, bird watching, sportsman, collectibles, etc), music or musicians, art or artists, rentals, housing, real estate, audio/video, video games or gamers, personals or dating, industrial or skilled tradesman, divorce, child support, therapy, support groups, volunteer or self-help groups, charities, and the list goes on and on and on…

I personally would pick something that you think you could get 500-1,000+ people per day to visit, something you personally know a lot about, something people search for now, and something that helps people find something they’re looking for. The whole idea her is to focus on ONE particular topic in a niche and just DOMINATE the hell out it. You don’t want to beat Craigslist at their own game. That would be futile. You want to own a niche in your local area.

Example: Gun Club – start the “Lake County Gun Club” site and setup categories for buying, selling, trading, certification classes, and events. Make posting in all categories free except buying/selling and charge $1 for each ad post. You have instant traffic and instant profit once you tell all the members. You could even call the local sporting goods store and charge them $50-$100 for a monthly ad. More profit (recurring). See how easy this is?

The Sitemile Classifieds Wordpress Theme

Now that I’ve sold you on the idea of your very own Wordpress Classifieds site, let me show you how it’s done. You might have thought that the best way to do this would be with a custom plugin. It’s true, that would be one way to do it – but a Theme is even better!

Enter the Sitemile Classifieds Wordpress Theme! This is more advanced than any Wordpress theme you’ve ever seen in the past. Normally you rely on a Wordpress theme to change the look and feel of your site by using graphics and CSS. Some more advanced (and premium) themes come bundles with plugins that do special things. Sitemile has actually gone the “extra mile” and created a theme that doe sthings you’ve maybe never seen before – especially without the use of any extra plugins!

These are just some of the features the Classifieds Wordpress theme has built in (without plugins):

• Custom fields for any classified site type
• Custom currency support
• Auto-delete posts longer than x days old
• Custom Fees for any category, sub-category
• Extra charge for “fetured” ads
• Post articles with ads
• Google Maps integration
• Google Analytics integration
• Paypal integration
• Plug and Play, install, setup, and use

I’ll show the setup of the theme in a second, but if you’re in a hurry to see a working demo Wordpress classified site right now, just click the picture below now…

How to Setup a Wordpress Classfied Site

Please keep in mind that everything I’m about to show you is a Premium Wordpress theme. All the features and functions that I’m about to show you are available with simple installation of the Sitemile Classifieds Theme.

First of all – the Classifieds Theme costs $39, and that’s cheaper than a boatload of premium themes I’ve seen. AND – all those themes only change the look and feel of Wordpress, most have few functions like this.

Once you download the Classifieds theme, you just upload it to your /wp-content/themes folder and activate it. Next, you have to proceed immediantly to the google maps site to Signup for a free API key.

If you don’t do this, when you visit your site you’ll get an error. If you try to use an API from another site (like I mistakenly did) you’ll get an error as well. Both look like this popup:

Once the theme is uploaded and activated you need to setup the options in your Wordpress dashboard. Click on the link in the bottom left of your sidebar in WP Admin in Wordpress 2.7+ (like the image to the left here). Then you’ll see the general settings:

Here you get to choose from 5 languages for the theme, English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish. You also get to choose whether or not to allow ads to be deleted, and how long a posting should last before “auto-deletion”. You can set whether or not people have to register on your blog or not to be able to post ads, or just keep it wide open. You can have a “display this” button that users can click to report objectionable content. You also get to choose whether or not ads are “auto-published”, or must be a draft that is reviewed and approved by an admin. The next section are the “custom inputs”.

Custom inputs are how you control what the user can enter when they go to post an ad. Maybe this would make more sense if I showed you the default “post an ad” form a visitor sees by default:

This form is the default action of the theme. Users can enter a title, choose a category, enter a price, name, location, email, description, and image. In the “other info” section you see those custom fields. This is so you can add special fields you might need depending on the nature of your site. For a rental classifieds site you might add custom inputs such as ‘bedrooms’, ’square feet’, ‘lease’, etc. Now we move on to the payment options section.

In the payment options section you can choose your currency, from dollars to euros, canadian or australian dollars, to anything custom. You can choose to allow paypal (or not), disallowing it makes your ad posting free. I should mention that even if you make your add posting free, you can still charge for “premium” ads later on (give people the option to pay for the privelege of having their ad show first). Then you enter your paypal email, and whether to use paypal live or just test it in the sandbox while setting up your theme (by doing some test transactions). The next section is for Fee Options.

This is where you choose how much (if anything) to charge for your ads. Remember- even if your ads are free, you can still set an amount to charge for “featured ads” by entering an amount, and then choosing “yes” for the “allow free ads + pay for featured” field. As I said earlier, you can even charge different amounts for different categories (like craigslist does). This is a great way to get people to post (for free), while generating revenue for only a few categories. The next section for setup is Advertising space.

You enter your text in the box for any ads you wish to appear on the main page of your new Wordpress classifieds site. Like adsense, a banner ad, text links, etc. This my only complaint so far – this features needs more options. Like the ability make the ad available on specific (or all) category pages, or the ability to add different ads on different categories, etc. In any event, you can easily find an advertiser for your niche classifieds site. The next (and last) section is special settings.

This is the section that you add your google maps API key into, in addition to your google analytics code. You can enable or disable both the top nav bar for the theme and the sidebar widgets here as well. You can even turn HTML code on or off.

Now you might be wondering – we went through all the settings here and there were no options for categories. That’s because you use Wordpress’ normal category admin function to set these up. Just add the categories you need, and when visitors go to post a classified ad, the available categories in the drop down will be the ones you entered.

Managing Classified Ads

You’ve seen all the setup options for the Sitemile, now I’m going to show you how to actually manage the classified ads. I think you’re going to be surprised too, because usually the Classifieds theme doesn’t use the “custom fields” that so many themes and plugins do.

Check this out, once you install the theme your Wordpress powered site has two very prominent buttons in the upper right hand corner to make it very easy for people to use your site. But first, you have to know how to use them yourself.

There’s a few things you need to know. First, you post classifed ads from the home page using that button or link “post new classified”. If you create a “new post” from within the Wordpress dashboard what you are doing is creating an “article”. Don’t worry, wordpress “pages” still serve the same function.

Take a look at the “Manage Posts” screen:

The Classifieds theme actually changes the Wordpress “manage posts” screen to make things effortless for you. The picture above shows that some new fields and a few graphics are added. It makes it very apparent whether the post is “an article” or “an ad”. As a test, I created one classified ad from my the homepage of this test site, and then I created a brand new post. That’s why I have one article and one ad. Here’s how that affects the layout of your homepage…

The image above shows the “recent articles” block in the top right of your site layout. If you get 50 classifieds per day, your latest articles will still show in the top right sidebar. This is great for posting notices and things people need to know, but more importantly (as a site owner) it’s great for posting some occasional “original content”! I really like this layout of articles vs. “ads”.

The ads and articles are listed in the main content area as well as in the example images above. Articles pretty much look like a normal post would in any other theme, but the “ad pages” are structured quite a bit differently:

The actual ad post page (as seen in the image above) show the details of the classified ad in addition to the automatic google map. On the right the price is prominently highlighted along with the seller details. The original poster (or admin) can delete ads, and anyone can report them (if your settings are setup this way). If you click on “send seller email” the panel slides out in very cool ajax style to give you a form to contact the seller without reveling their email address like this:

Conclusion

Sitemile Classifieds Wordpress Theme is one of the most incredible Wordpress themes I’ve ever seen. It does one thing, turn a Wordpress web site into a completely fully functioning Classifieds Ad site, and it does it incredibly well. It requires no plugins at all to get the job done, and even your Grandmother could run a classified site with this them. It’s intuitive for both your visitors, and for you within the Wordpress Admin interface. I’ve never seen a $39 premium theme do so much – EVER!

I recommend the Classifieds theme, and I will be using it in one of my sites very soon. I think that you’ll find a TON of uses for it.

Click here to Visit the Classifieds Theme web site

Sitemile also sells an “Auctions” and “E-Commerce” themes you should check out, they are definitely of just as high quality as this one.

Be sure to also read my interview with Andrei Saioc – owner of Sitemile.com, where he talks candidly about writing Premium Wordpress themes for a living.

So, as part of our new series “Ways to Make Money Online” – this interview with Brad will give you some insight into what it’s like to be an independant Wordpress consultant!

Brad Spencer: Wordpress Consultant

Brad, tell us about your background?:

Well I want to start out by thanking you for the invitation to be part of your series. Your blog is a great read and it’s a pleasure to talk with you. On to the question at hand… My background is pretty varied. I grew up in Columbus, Ohio and then after graduating high school in 2003 I moved around the USA a lot and did some travels abroad. After about five years of nomadic living I settled in New York and got to working online. I’ve had dozens of jobs… Landscaping, Director of Marketing and Communications for a Pilot TV Program, Chef, House Flipper, Dining Hall Manager at a Meditation Retreat, Fine Dining Server, Snowboarder, Book Store Dude, Coffee Shop Barista, and the list goes on and on. I just like lots of different stuff.

How did you get started working online?:

Well that’s a fun question. When my girlfriend (at the time) and I returned from a trip to Chile, Argentina, and Costa Rica around 2005 or 2006 or something, my girlfriend was returning to college. The school (one of the East Coast ones with endowments that make Ron Jeremy blush) gave us a nice apartment and everything was paid for. This freed me to try some things that could produce money in the long term without having to make money to pay rent each month. At about the same time I got the last payment from flipping houses in Phoenix before the great Real Estate bust. So with a small nest egg and free rent I went about making a Hookah enthusiast website and quickly learning exactly how much I didn’t know. Which, coincidently, I’m still reminded of each day.

Tell us how you went from “creating web sites” to being a Wordpress consultant?:

My main hurdle to being a successful affiliate has always been that I don’t have much to say. Since blogs are mostly about saying something and the blog itself is simply a “frame” or “framework” for the content, not having something to say is a pretty big problem. It strikes me that some people just have more to say than others.

So I found myself working within the code and playing with how Wordpress works much more than actually writing content. This is the worst way to build a successful blog, by the way, but ended up being a good way to learn the innards of Wordpress.

A few years ago Wordpress was a lot less glossy and refined as it is now. To really use it you had to work with it’s underlying technologies a lot more. I’m lucky because I learned how to use Wordpress at that stage. So now when something doesn’t work in the glossy, user-friendly, wordpress 2.7 and beyond, it’s easy for me to figure out what went wrong.

How do you compare Wordpress to other open source tools like Joomla, Mambo, Drupal, etc.?:

I’ve tried a few others, namely Joomla, Expression Engine, and Drupal. None of them compare to Wordpress. And they never will. Wordpress won. They got the user base, and they will continue to outpace the others in terms of plugins available, updates, etc. If there was a market for Wordpress futures I’d drop some cash in it.

What’s your best method for obtaining clients?:

Being on the Official Wordpress Consultant list has been a real boon to my business. I also think that using the skill you sell to get clients makes the most sense. In my case I have a Search Engine Optimized Wordpress blog that gets a bunch of traffic. If someone arrives to my site, it means I know what I’m doing.

If you are going to be a professional twitterer, you should get your clients on twitter.

If you are going to be a copywriter, you should compel people with your copy.

That way you’ve already pre-sold your services. You can start negotiating with your clients without having to prove that you are competent.

How do you stay organized in your online business?:

It’s difficult. Basecamp is great for collaboration. I also have legal pads all over my desk with list after list of ToDo’s that somehow make sense. But I’ve tried to shy away from any computer-based todo system because I like to physically cross stuff off of my list. Haha.

Tell us about your daily work routine? How many hours, and what’s your schedule like?:

I like to wake up late and check email for an hour or so. Then I’ll do some errands and eat and grab a coffee for a few hours. Then in the evening I’ll do most of the work until the wee hours of the morning. I’ve always been a night-owl and get most of my creative ideas at night. If there is a big project due, then I’ll work during the day at a coffee shop too. Whatever it takes to get it done.

On this note: I think it’s crucial for Internet folks, like us, to take media fasts occasionally. That means no computer, no tv, no newspaper. Just chill outside and let your brain and nerves relax away from screens. I try to do some sort of computer fast every few weeks, if even only for a couple of days.

How has your business growth been from last year until now, and where do you see yourself in a year?:

Booming. It’s been exploding more each year. Keeping up with the workload requires new and inventive ways to provide more value in less time than I did last month.

Is being the “jack of all trades” guy overwhelming?:

Absolutely. But learning to say “No” has been very helpful. Telling a client that you are “Too Busy” may seem obnoxious in our capitalist society, but you have to stay sharp in this business. It is easy to beat a competitor who is overwhelmed, you know?

Have you ever had clients that want a swimming pool but want to pay for a bucket of water? How do you handle that?:

Well said. I’ve never had anyone get a quote and complain about the price. I think I tend to build swimming pools for the price of a bucket of water, and sometimes the low price makes people think they are going to get less than expected. I could likely raise my rates 50% and actually get more clients since the price would corroborate that they are buying a good product. But, alas, I like to make sure that people get a good deal.

I also try to work in verticals that stand to benefit most from SEO or getting new clients. A lawyer or doctor, for instance, can afford to pay 10k for a website overhaul and if they get a few clients out of it will still have a positive ROI. I shy away from industries that can’t make their money back quickly. Before I was a consultant, I was a hustler little entrepreneur and want to make sure that people come out ahead when they work with me. I’ve sent many potential clients away who have “vanity” projects or don’t have a chance of ranking because I never want anyone to even wonder if working with me was a good move on their part.

Will you create any “online products” in the future, or just stick to consulting?:

Great question. If you haven’t read Peter Drucker then start ASAP.

I’m trying to turn everything I do into a product. This includes consulting. People are more comfortable buying a product instead of a service. And if you can product-ize a service business, then you can also measure and improve the value, impact, and efficiency of that service.

So my consulting service has been turned into a One hour phone consultation for $99. That’s a product that you can buy on my site via paypal and get an expected result from. You take an ambiguous process and make it something you can touch and smell and buy. There is a reason why Walmart doesn’t sell insurance (or do they?).

What advice do you have for people that want to start working for themselves online?:

Model your business on something that works offline. Business is the same offline as online, but technical jargon can mask a poorly thought out business plan. You still have to sell something for more than it cost to make/buy it. That’s just business. I’m not saying you have to have a business plan, but just don’t expect something on the internet to make you rich simply because it’s the net.

And there is plenty of space to make huge stacks of money online. All the people who made lots of money online are rich now and not working on new projects. So look for the stuff on the horizon and get there before the mass does. I’d look at twitter right now.

Thanks Brad, for the great interview! You gave some great insight into your online job as a Wordpress consultant!

Be sure to read the rest of the interviews in our series: “Ways to Make Money Online”

This post is part of the Concept to Cash series.

Guidelines for Picking a Concept

Choose a concept that you know something about: When choosing a concept for a web site or blog it’s easier to turn that idea into cash if it’s something you are already knowledgeable about. It gives you experience to draw from when blogging, makes it easier to write articles, and easier to find and research keywords. It’s also easier to work for little or no money (in the beginning) because it’s something you’re passionate about already and interested in.

Choose something that gets enough traffic: You don’t want to go to all the trouble of setting up a web site or blog on a topic only to find out later that people only search for it 50 times per day. I think ideally to sell something each day, you need to try and get 1,000 visits per day or more.

Many people blindly setup web sites or blogs without doing any research at all to find out what the potential search volume for them will be. You can do basic research to figure this out, or spend a lot of time and money getting really in depth with the results. I recommend visiting compete.com’s Keyword Destination tool. You can find out which web sites get the most clicks from keywords. You get the first 4 results for free and further investigation requires a paid account. The top 5 results are enough for me to find out if my concept is good enough to get started.

For example, I have a domain that has been sitting for a very long time that will feature new and used laptops. I did researched the keywords “used laptop” at compete.com to see what kind of traffic that phrase gets and this is what came back:

Using the compete.com keyword query tool we see that my keywords seem to be pretty good with about 200 million people per month being referred on those search words to just the top 5 sites listed. I also got 4 domain name competitors to check out, but I got some other very telling stats as well. Check out the #1 results “usedlaptops.com”. They get 34,000 search referrals per month for the keyword phrase “used laptop”, but that’s only 2% of their total monthly traffic!! Do a little math and that means they’re getting a million and a half views per month! But now I’m very interested in finding out where the other 98% of their traffic comes from – what other keywords are they successfully using?

Choose keywords to get that traffic: Choosing a concept that gets a lot of searches is very important, but it’s even more important to know exactly what combinations of keywords to target to actually get a cut of those searches! Now that we know our keywords “used laptops” actually get traffic – we also found out the top 5 competing web sites. Using those domain names we can enter them in a web site called SEMRush to find out more about other keywords they’re using like this:

According to this report at SEMRush usedlaptops.com has a total of 1,190 keywords they rank for, and they’ll give you the top 10 for free. You not only get the keywords, but the position in google search pages in addition to monthly search volume. So in our original lookup at compete.com we found that “used laptop” sends 34,000 search referrals, but now at SEMRush we find “used laptops” sends 40,000 per month. We also see some keywords that might even be better such as “cheap laptops” which sends 74,000 searches per month.

It’s good to decide which keywords to target for your home page and domain name, but getting some additional keyword phrases to target in other sections of your site is also great ammunition you can use later.

Choose a domain name containing the keywords:

Now that you have your idea and some keyword phrases to target it’s time to find the right domain name. It’s kind of common knowledge now that getting a “keyword rich” domain name is best. This means that your main keyword phrase should be in the domain name. My keywords to target are “used laptops” for my main home page, and I already have the domain name used-new-laptops.info. It would have been ideal to get usedlaptops.com or .net (or .org), but of course they are all taken. I bought this domain name two years ago anyway and haven’t done a thing with it. I’m using for the purposes of this series, but if you’re buying a new domain name here are a few pointers:

• Use four or less words
• Don’t use unneccessary word (the, or, and, not, is, a)
• Try not to exceed 30-35 characters total
• Use dashes only if you have to
• Add a keyword if you have to
• Go for .com first, then .net, .org – try NEVER to use .info

Try and use common sense here, and please don’t register some godawful 58 character domain name. The shorter the better, use the best keywords you can, and in my case I wanted a domain “used laptops” but even with dashes couldn’t get it. I went with “used-new-laptops.info”, and even that (I now know) wasn’t very smart. I should have done something like “used laptops cheap”. For the purposes of this series I’ll use that domain as an example. The reason that you no longer want to use .info domains is because google deindexes them so quickly – especially if you have a BANS niche store. I register all my domains with goDaddy, it’s just my preference. I don’t have hosting there, but I like their domain manager and have all of them in one place to manage (even though I have 3 or 4 different hosting accounts).

In the next installment of the Concept to Cash series we’ll talk about setting up a web site or blog./

I may blog about hacking Wordpress and other web site tips, but for the most part people read this blog to learn how to be more successful making money on the Internet. I have to be honest, this is something that I’m struggling to get better at each and every day myself. I make money online, but not the kind of money I “want” to be making. More and more people are making money online “coaching” other people to be successful. I would prefer to teach myself to become more successful – and then blog about it, letting You learn from me.

This afternoon when I thought of the title for this series I had “defining moment”. It’s one of those ‘coulda had a V8′ times when you think – “what have I been doing all this time?” I checked the (snail) mail and got my latest issue of “Website Magazine” (it’s free, don’t be stupid – sign up for it). Sometimes I read it, sometimes I don’t, but this month the cover story was about “blogging” so I felt obliged to crack the cover.

I read a few good articles, one about article marketing, the cover story about blogging, and last a 6-step link building plan in ‘SEO Corner’. I also read an ad for a ‘Master Certificate’ in Online Marketing from San Francisco University. I have to admit I was enticed because it contained a course for SEM (Search Engine Marketing), and I thought that would help me a lot right now (being unemployed). Something about the combination of those articles and that ad got me thinking…I own about 20 blogs. What in the heck have I been doing? What is keeping me from making the kind of money I want to make? I initially had a good “concept” for all these web sites, and for one reason or another not a single one has really “cashed” in yet!?

I know how to do all the right “individual” things too, like linkbait, link building, SEO, write good content, setup Wordpress, etc. Why can’t I seem to put them all together in the right combination to be successful? This series will map out a concrete easy to follow stragegy to turn any concept into cash!

As something new, I decided to whip out my Webcam that I bought 6 months ago for $10 on woot.com (and never used) to try video blogging for the first time. I think one major key to being successful online is being honest, truthful, and real for people and that doesn’t always convey itself best in text. So for the very first time (and in poor quality video) here I am kicking off this series. Since YouTube now allows HD videos, next time I’ll try to up the quality (and tone down the sun a little). Please add me to your RSS reader if you haven’t already, we’re just getting started on this one…