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Econosaurus posted:How did you find your foreign workers? Did you have a process for ensuring they were good? I lack PMs also. Do you have an email address?
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# ? Aug 11, 2013 23:12 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 08:07 |
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Did you find your niche right away or have you tried and abandoned other niche ideas? If so, can you give some examples and why they were no good? It seems to me that finding a niche is the hardest part of this thing, well, other than calling folks. But I've spent days running through niches in my head. I've tossed and turned in bed, not able to stop my brain from going down a list. I even resorted to carrying a notebook to jot down pretty much every single thing I think of in a day. Then you go online and everything is saturated and dominated. It's annoying.
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# ? Aug 11, 2013 23:18 |
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Thanks for this thread. This has been very helpful and I'm seriously looking into this as a plan. I must say this has also opened my eyes to how many companies operate this way - https://www.whitebox.co.uk for example, 10 seconds on the site told me it's exactly the same setup. The Customer Care Manager's address is a flat above a Subway.. Thanks very much! PMed for the book.
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# ? Aug 11, 2013 23:41 |
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Econosaurus posted:How did you find your foreign workers? Did you have a process for ensuring they were good? I asked the same question, then realized I skipped over a few links in the OP that he posted as to where to find them.
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# ? Aug 11, 2013 23:45 |
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Kung Fu Jesus posted:Did you find your niche right away or have you tried and abandoned other niche ideas? If so, can you give some examples and why they were no good? I've started looking through Flippa for ideas and quickly decided that I want nothing to do with electronics or online *. It's got to be something in an area where the average person knows nothing about the Internet at all. What do 90 year olds buy that costs $200 besides drugs and Medicare scooters?
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# ? Aug 11, 2013 23:48 |
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Adar posted:What do 90 year olds buy that costs $200 besides drugs and Medicare scooters? Plastic furniture covers. I want to say rugs or similar accessories, but those are heavy and bulky.
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 02:45 |
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Well this is a little bit addictive. I've got two shops set up for testing. I shelled out a little bit of money just to get things done more professionally - mainly paid for domains via shopify (I know I wouldn't trust a site that didn't have its own domain), and signed up for $30 worth of AdWords for each site (since the $100 from shopify doesn't kick in until you spend $25 in advertising). Now I guess it's time to wait and check the analytics to see if these sites are worth contacting some manufacturers about. Super fascinating stuff. Thanks for the info OP and fingers crossed!
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 03:56 |
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lx2036 posted:Thanks man. It's something I've grown really passionate about and it loving destroys me when I try to share it with my friends who just don't care about changing their stars. It really, really makes me happy to be able to have a conversation about it. Even more so to help others. I managed to walk away from a $120,000/year cushy job to travel the world based on this information and I would absolutely loving love to meet others that have done the same. Even more so if I was able to have a part in their change. I don't have PM but I'd like a book: jdluna at gmail.com Thanks!
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 04:09 |
jonnies posted:Well this is a little bit addictive. I've got two shops set up for testing. I shelled out a little bit of money just to get things done more professionally - mainly paid for domains via shopify (I know I wouldn't trust a site that didn't have its own domain), and signed up for $30 worth of AdWords for each site (since the $100 from shopify doesn't kick in until you spend $25 in advertising). Now I guess it's time to wait and check the analytics to see if these sites are worth contacting some manufacturers about. Super fascinating stuff. Thanks for the info OP and fingers crossed! Did you already know how to make websites? I haven't done any web site creation at all, I assume I'll probably learn the basics when I do the challenge when it comes back up in September.
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 04:28 |
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Stefan Prodan posted:Did you already know how to make websites? I haven't done any web site creation at all, I assume I'll probably learn the basics when I do the challenge when it comes back up in September. I have a fair amount of experience creating websites, but never an ecommerce store. Shopify makes it ridiculously easy so far however.
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 05:24 |
Ah yeah, I don't even really know where to start making web sites. OP, did you use like a template or program or learn from scratch with books/tutorials/etc?
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 05:26 |
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Stefan Prodan posted:Ah yeah, I don't even really know where to start making web sites. OP, did you use like a template or program or learn from scratch with books/tutorials/etc? http://www.shopify.com/website/templates
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 05:28 |
Oh, no, I hadn't actually looked at the shopify site yet, I've been pretty busy working the past couple of days. I didn't realize that was part of the thing, that's awesome.
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 05:34 |
Juanito posted:Did you look at Shopify? They make it very easy with free templates. I was going to post pretty much what Stefan Prodan did but boy that just takes the cake, template-based sites have come a million miles since I last looked at them I guess.
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 05:55 |
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Adar posted:I've started looking through Flippa for ideas and quickly decided that I want nothing to do with electronics or online *. It's got to be something in an area where the average person knows nothing about the Internet at all. I don't think you need to be that specific. I'd say you have to find that gap between the crap anyone can find at Walmart/Home Depot/Best Buy and the highly specialized stuff that is either very expensive or has brand recognition. That's why you don't see Apple or Playstation drop shipping sites. Its gotta be something that you don't go to Walmart for and has no specific brand loyalty tied to it. Stefan Prodan posted:Ah yeah, I don't even really know where to start making web sites. OP, did you use like a template or program or learn from scratch with books/tutorials/etc? I'd say Shopify, Big Commerce, and Magenta are the popular ones. The only one I've really looked at is Shopify and it seems easy even if you are barely literate with web site creation. Wordpress has Woo Commerce I think its called but I've heard its got security issues.
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 06:05 |
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Econosaurus posted:How did you find your foreign workers? Did you have a process for ensuring they were good? I bout a course called 'replace myself'. All and all, it was kind of lovely, but taught me enough to hire someone. So, on that, there are two parts. 1. I first tried craigslist, which was loving horrible. Then, after buying that program, I learned that there are websites that philipinos go to specifically to work online. There were a few, but I used http://www.onlinejobs.ph (the guy who sold the guide also made the website, but it works well enough) 2. The next issue is hiring a quality person. This is no different anywhere. You filter down to people who meed whatever job they'll fill, read through all the resumes, email a poo poo-ton, then go back and forth until you find one you like. If you're not 100% comfortable with them, find someone else. You can hire unskilled peeps for as low as $150/month. I started my guy at $250 because he was unskilled, but very egear to learn, and have since bumped him up to $500/month (he's ballin now) You can hire PhDs at around $800/month. My adwords guy gets $600. I had a writer ($500) and SEO expert ($600) but fired them in favor of a SEO company (cheaper, and I don't have to worry about turnover or employee management). 3. (yea, I know I said 2) The two biggest factors are 1. They speak good english. This is an absolute must. And 2. They are bright. You know when you first meet someone whether they have that spark of intelligence of if they're a drone. Find someone with that spark and you can teach them anything. All that being said, I have limited experience, considering I've only ever hired 5 employees. Goons with more experience should chime in and help us all learn.
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 09:37 |
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Kung Fu Jesus posted:Did you find your niche right away or have you tried and abandoned other niche ideas? If so, can you give some examples and why they were no good? So, you're on the right track. Write down everything. Browse amazon. Go to a bookstore and peruse magazines. Look through catalogs. Write down everything. THENNNNNNNNNNNNN go plug that poo poo into market samurai. Yes, odds are that whatever you put in will be saturated, but you're looking for the stuff that people search for, but businesses have no reason to make a business around. That, or a genuine niche. Take 'cat houses' for example. poo poo's flooded. And if you're a business selling cat houses, that's just what you sell. However, a lot of people search for 'kitty houses' instead. So, you can easily rank organically for kitty houses because no business would make a kitty house website when they are selling cat houses. The same thing applied to my business. My niche is 'whiskey still'. It's the same god damned thing as a moonshine still, but there was too much competition for that keyword phrase and enough people searched for whiskey still, so boom, done. So, the idea is this: you punch in your idea (it will suck) but you will be returned with 799 other related results with traffic and competition numbers. If you see anything interesting, click the key to make a new tab and drill into that niche, then repeat. When you find something promising, pull the top ten results and see what the competition looks like. take 'auto rotisserie' for example. These guys have no clue how to sell online. Easy pickings. Most niches are like this. Here are some of my list: like I said, most will probably suck balls, but could lead to some great niches. Feel free to take any fish cooker crossbow Copper core pots Hoolahoops Pet shampoo Ballestic gelatin Pallet dispenser treestand Folding bike deer blind home automatic faucet spinning wheel electric smoker UFO kite solar still Fire escape ladders fruit press hand mill underwater lights fishing crossbow snow blower smoke detector Home automatic faucet camping kayak chess computer pop-up deer blind Vehicle rotessire Polyethylene, pipe tool for plumbing Hydraulic chainsaw Water heater Rock tumbler Sportsman sauna Portable spa MrHeater Field rest/benchbag/leadsled Field hauler/carrier Marsh sled Mud seat Marsh dog stand Emergency standby generator (generac – manufacturer) astrolabe Catskirts Camo purses Flat chess board Plug link Double watch watch margarita machine Oh, and to answer your question about starting and failing. First off, you never fail if done properly. Moreover, failure is a misnomer, I prefer to call it 'learning'. Now to the point: I've started one, kitty houses, but stopped because I was making enough money to do whatever I wanted. So, I simply had no motivation to do anything with it beyond setting up a webpage. I still have the domain if anyone wants to try their hand at it (kittyhouseco.com) I think, however, I am going to try again. I'm finding this thread very motivating.
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 10:05 |
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Sutureself posted:Plastic furniture covers. I want to say rugs or similar accessories, but those are heavy and bulky. hahaha oh, maybe adult diapers?!?!!!
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 10:08 |
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jonnies posted:Well this is a little bit addictive. I've got two shops set up for testing. I shelled out a little bit of money just to get things done more professionally - mainly paid for domains via shopify (I know I wouldn't trust a site that didn't have its own domain), and signed up for $30 worth of AdWords for each site (since the $100 from shopify doesn't kick in until you spend $25 in advertising). Now I guess it's time to wait and check the analytics to see if these sites are worth contacting some manufacturers about. Super fascinating stuff. Thanks for the info OP and fingers crossed! So, there are cheaper places to buy domains than the premium shopify charges. Also, sorry about the $25 spending before the free ads cash rolls in. It's been a hot minute since I've hosed with it. If your test proves to be successful it it EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to try to find an aged domain with your keyword phrase. This will save you poo poo-tons of seo work and will get you ranked #1 in no-time.
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 10:13 |
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Kung Fu Jesus posted:I don't think you need to be that specific. I'd say you have to find that gap between the crap anyone can find at Walmart/Home Depot/Best Buy and the highly specialized stuff that is either very expensive or has brand recognition. This. Also Volusion and Yahoo are other options. Now, I'm a shopify fanboy because it's what I started on and what I now know, but if I had to do it over again I'd go with volusion or big commerce. The reason being is that they've been around longer and are therefore more likely to integrate with all of your other businessy stuff like quickbooks and fulfillment centers. loving with bugs costs money, for instance, if my website has a problem where I cant take orders for a day, I just lost 3 grand. Keep that in mind. moreover, and I can't stress this enough so I'm going to spam the gently caress out of it: ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 10:27 |
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lx2036 posted:So, there are cheaper places to buy domains than the premium shopify charges. Also, sorry about the $25 spending before the free ads cash rolls in. It's been a hot minute since I've hosed with it. If your test proves to be successful it it EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to try to find an aged domain with your keyword phrase. This will save you poo poo-tons of seo work and will get you ranked #1 in no-time. Couple of questions for you: 1. I keep hearing/reading that domain names that include your keyword phrase are no longer getting any SEO value from Google. Have you heard this too and does it seem to affect your site at all? 2. Would you mind sharing what SEO company you use and how much you like them? I've been through 3 of them now for one of my sites and none of them seem to have any affect. Thanks for the thread.
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 16:11 |
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smilingmike posted:Couple of questions for you: 1. That's like the rumors that backlinks no longer have value. They do, they just try to curb abuse. I suspect the same deal with domains. But really, out of the millions of websites out there, there are a very limited number of domains that can be had, therefore, it's a great indicator of the website being relevant-which is what the engines want. However, an aged domain has preference over keyword phrase in the domain. 2. I just started using audiencebloom. they talked a good game in the interview process, but you seem to know SEO and that poo poo is shaky and largely quantifiable due to the nature of the shifting algorithms and the seemingly intangible work the SEO guys do. Ask me again in a few months
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 17:13 |
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Thanks for the thread! I've been doing some niche searching, and it looks really interesting. Short version: In your opinion, what sort of up front cash outlay should people expect for something like this? Long version: So far I'm seeing: register business in the state, initial ad words outlay, possible purchase of MS, domain/shopify purchase, 800 number/business address, and initial outlay for the first order of the product. What am I missing? Also, you've been recently talking about purchasing an aged domain. Is this necessary? How big of an advantage are we talking here? Obviously, I'm still earlier in the process than this, but for planning purposes I've been thinking about it. I can spend the money if needed, but right now I feel like I'm still learning how this works. I can spend the above money on a test run and not feel too bad about it, but making a mistake worth a few grand is well into regret territory if it doesn't work out. Basically, if you don't mind, I'd be interested in hearing you talk about start up expenses.
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 17:17 |
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Ugh. I can't stop thinking about this. So I'm starting now. Looking for keywords trying to find a good idea. I want to run a test site by this weekend. Just need more product ideas. (Searching a few of yours)
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 17:40 |
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Very interesting read, I have a few questions. Logistically how does customer service work since your guy is in the Philippines? Always goes to voicemail and he emails them back? Also what sort of power does he have, or perhaps a better question, what sort of things require your approval? Are you still in charge of when your order more from the manufacturer to the fulfillment center? What has been the biggest customer SNAFU you've encountered and how much time did it take? Most importantly, do you see this being viable for the long term, e.g. 3, 5, 10 years down the line? Maybe I am just naive but I imagine either 1) everyone who wants a whiskey still will have bought one and demand tapers off or 2) if there is sustaining demand, there will be increased competition.
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 18:16 |
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Just wanted to say lx2036 you're an alright bro, thanks for the thread. I was following your other thread about selling your company and was interested about how you managed to grow your business like that, really inspiring stuff. Over the past year I've had sort of an epiphany about how much time I'm wasting on things like video games, television watching and other non-useful/non-productive crap, much like your buddies and their LoL play. Since I've given up most of those time wasters tons of great changes have started to take hold in my life! So maybe a project like this will be a good way to redirect even more of those wasted hours to a financially beneficial business, thanks again man. Hopefully I'll see you on that Island you were talking about and buying the first round!
Texibus fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Aug 12, 2013 |
# ? Aug 12, 2013 18:58 |
Does google adwords have some lag time in updating or what? If I go to the billing tab I can see how many clicks I've gotten and how much I've been charged, but when I look at the campaigns tab all my campaigns and keywords still show 0 clicks so I have no clue which ones are being clicked on.
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 19:13 |
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It can be a few minutes to a few hours.. sometimes longer if there are issues in the system.
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 19:23 |
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Great info, especially the niche list! My problem has always been finding a niche, but after glancing at this list I think I've been looking too broadly. Going to take another crack at it this week. For others, this is another read that helped wrap my head around eCommerce: http://ecommerce.shopify.com/guides/dropshipping Also, I've read that Market Samurai lost a lot of it's value after Google clamped down on third-party API usage and isn't the tool it once was. If I'm pretty decent with Google Keyword tool and have a moz.com account, do you think there's still value to purchasing it? aslewofmice fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Aug 12, 2013 |
# ? Aug 12, 2013 20:14 |
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Time for getting drunk and watching game of thrones. I will answer all of the posts in the morning. Additionally, all of this talk is really having a great effect on me. As y'all know, this thread was spawned from me wanting to sell my business. Today I spend a large amount of time improving it, and I'm thinking I will continue to do so. Moreover, in helping some of you through PMs and poking through niches, I think I am going to start another business. I'll post along here with the progress and details of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. Every niche is different, but I think it'll get the general idea across. Also, if I commit to you guys/gals, it'll go a long way to motivate me. Additionally, with me leading the way, it should go a long way to motivating you. Sound like a plan, Stan?
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 20:37 |
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I'm interested in how these niche sites and ranking them relates to locality - most of what I've read is by Americans for Americans and their sites generally only service Americans. In my region most of the niche search results spit up American pages (for instance in your niche moonshine still, whiskey still & reflux still gives results that only ship to America). There are a few keen guys working on pages here (found one good one that has that sweet old lady shopping trolley niche COVERED) but I'm wondering if, in addition to finding unique niches, directly copying other successful import/distribute businesses to my local market, with a local region extension (.com.au/.co.nz) is a viable option. Would local searches prefer them over dominant sites? I reckon on a group exercise would be cool, I easily have the funding & very soon I'll have plenty of time to move it forward. Chadzok fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Aug 12, 2013 |
# ? Aug 12, 2013 21:55 |
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I work for a marketing agency doing web-development and in the past week I decided to explore a niche of sorts. I deal with bullshit every day at work and it's starting to grind on me. Marketing is so fake. Not that it's ineffective, it's just so sales-y all the time. I'd like to boil my gripes about the marketing side of websites into a utilitarian guide to building your own website for cheap. We are constantly trying to up-sell and cross promote social media and SEO and it just confuses our clients. Most of them just want the yellow-pages version of a website, and they want it quick. We go back and forth on content and look, and they just don't need it at all. With so many hosting/cms/e-commerce solutions there is no reason a novice business couldn't make a decent website in 3 hours for under $50 total. I'd like to create a gripe blog but make it guide focused and hopefully implement some affiliate marketing opportunities. I'd also like to offer my own services for people who are interested by ultimately too time/technically constrained. It was born of the desire to brand myself as a freelancer, but not fall into all the bullshit I hate about my day job. I see that some of you are looking to make some websites and have no experience, so if you'd be interested I'd love to buddy up and do a bit of case-studying. I can help you ID some goals, and make you a tutorial guide. You can then try to implement it and give me some feedback on the guide quality. I'd be there to help along the way if the guide sucks. Seems like a win win if someone would like to try it out. PM me if interested. Thanks for this guide too by the way! Very informative! root of all eval fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Aug 12, 2013 |
# ? Aug 12, 2013 22:05 |
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BossRighteous posted:With so many hosting/cms/e-commerce solutions there is no reason a novice business couldn't make a decent website in 3 hours for under $50 total. I'd like to create a gripe blog but make it guide focused and hopefully implement some affiliate marketing opportunities. I'd also like to offer my own services for people who are interested by ultimately too time/technically constrained. It was born of the desire to brand myself as a freelancer, but not fall into all the bullshit I hate about my day job. As to your affiliate marketing idea: check out the Bluehost affiliate program. It pays somewhere between $50-$75 per sign up depending on where you get you aff link from. If you read financial blogs, just about every one of them has a "how to start a blog!" post, and they all use the bluehost aff link. Furthermore, the smartpassiveincome.com dude has an entire business model of cajoling people into building affiliate niche sites while he's making about 3x more on his bluehost link alone (which he tells all of his aspiring students to use) than he makes on his niche sites.
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# ? Aug 12, 2013 23:47 |
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Thanks for the tip. Unlike the theme of the thread with calculated dollars and promotion, I really just want to make a passion blog and see where it ends up. Keeping some end game in mind seems appropriate though. In the theme of the thread my fiancee and I have been kicking around an e-commerce model for wedding decorations that relies on a really generalized but novel user interface. Reading through this has inspired me to explore a more drilled down version of that concept and just put something out there. Creating a new type of shopping cart centered around certain types of events became a monstrous project. Huge flow charts and more UI questions than answers. Creating an intermediate step could help us solve some problems and generate revenue pending the higher-level UI planning.
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# ? Aug 13, 2013 00:39 |
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Chadzok posted:I'm interested in how these niche sites and ranking them relates to locality - most of what I've read is by Americans for Americans and their sites generally only service Americans. In my region most of the niche search results spit up American pages (for instance in your niche moonshine still, whiskey still & reflux still gives results that only ship to America). There are a few keen guys working on pages here (found one good one that has that sweet old lady shopping trolley niche COVERED) but I'm wondering if, in addition to finding unique niches, directly copying other successful import/distribute businesses to my local market, with a local region extension (.com.au/.co.nz) is a viable option. Would local searches prefer them over dominant sites? I'm in Japan and I'm interested in joining this experiment as well. Apart from the standard niches described earlier in the thread I think there are also some good opportunities for parallel imports here, i.e. imports that don't go through a company's existing distributor network in the country. It's perfectly legal provided the products are purchased legally, you pay any necessary taxes, and they're authentic (i.e. not Chinese knock-offs). No idea if that's legal in AUS/NZ. Protein supplements for example are like 3x as expensive here for some reason, to the extent that it's drastically cheaper for me to just order from the US and pay international shipping vs. buying locally. Then again that's just for personal use so maybe on a larger scale it's more expensive? Worth looking into I suppose. I would hope that anyone shipping international would allow drop shipping, but it gets complicated if you have to pay duties. For that matter there are A LOT of business models that can just be transplanted, especially in the space where internet meets real world. Techcrunch constantly features startups which could be viable in your area as well -- the only reason they're not there already is nobody has done it yet and the startups are too small to think about international expansion yet. Then again I think that's really getting away from the scope of this particular thread, since we're mostly talking about doing as little work as possible to make enough to live comfortably and not have to worry about a job. As a side note if anyone wants help with AdSense (not AdWords) let me know -- back in college I made $2-3k/month from a gaming fansite, a portion of which came from AdSense revenue. However this is definitely NOT a passive income, I spent a shitload of hours on building the site, managing it, and creating content. Sold it for $40k before graduating. zmcnulty fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Aug 13, 2013 |
# ? Aug 13, 2013 01:31 |
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Ugh, I've been kicking around niche ideas all day today... Nothing is sticking. I have one I'm running through MS right now, hoping its a good one. Finally thought of something I had a hard time purchasing and I'm hoping it works. I plan on spending some time tonight trying to figure some out. I also need to play with calculating some of these out as well...
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# ? Aug 13, 2013 01:46 |
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MasterColin posted:Ugh, I've been kicking around niche ideas all day today... Nothing is sticking. I think that is the major stumbling block for me as well. Putting some time into a couple of ideas yielded low returns. I will keep on plugging away til I find that magic item.
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# ? Aug 13, 2013 01:54 |
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zmcnulty posted:As a side note if anyone wants help with AdSense (not AdWords) let me know -- back in college I made $2-3k/month from a gaming fansite, a portion of which came from AdSense revenue. However this is definitely NOT a passive income, I spent a shitload of hours on building the site, managing it, and creating content. Sold it for $40k before graduating. I'd like to know more about getting adsense working better on my site. My email is savvybackpacker at gmail.com (I don't have PMs).
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# ? Aug 13, 2013 02:25 |
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I'm definitely still in the "find a niche" phase as well. I simply want to be able to find something I can potentially be passionate about beyond thinking that I'll make a decent amount of money from it. Sounds like we've definitely got a small group growing over here! I wanted to add... Is anyone else in Canada? I know there'll be a ton of differences here in terms of taxes, business registration and legal affairs so it'd be nice to have someone else to bounce ideas with.
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# ? Aug 13, 2013 02:46 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 08:07 |
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I'm poking around myself trying to find a niche,I haven't found one yet. Hopefully one will come to me.
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# ? Aug 13, 2013 03:45 |