Ask me about IM

[JoshK]

Might as well try this.

I've not been in the game long but I do believe I know quite a bit and can help.

A few things I'd like to not discuss.

1. I will not give examples of my work. IE: sites, products etc.
2. Income figures etc..

I'd like this to be more about learning less about bragging. If you have a question about how do you do this that, or looking for suggestions would be great.

Lets try it.

Cheers,

Josh

[scotty M]

Josh, I'll bite.

I'd like some info on doing keyword research to find a good niche.

What's a good 3rd party tool to build a squeeze page and a mailing list?

Commission Junction: Do you use it? How does it compare to clickbank and other similar affiliate programs?

You say you prefer affiliate marketing to adsense. Do you use Adwords to promote your site? What about 7search? Any others that you recommend?

That's all for now, I've got plenty more questions if you have the time.

Thanks,

-Scott

[JoshK]

Josh, I'll bite.

I'd like some info on doing keyword research to find a good niche.

Unfortunetly keyword research is just pure work. Some people love it some people hate it. I don't mind it so much it depends on what kind of research I'm doing. (site keyword research, or low competition article marketing type research) Overture, and google suggestion are great feebie tools. One thing you can do is go to competitor sites and open up their source and see what they're putting in their meta tags. I personally use Keyword Elite to do my research. A lot of very experienced marketers use wordtracker. What they'll do is develop a long list of things they're going to research. Purchase a one day membership to wordtracker and just pound out thousands of keywords. I've never used wordtracker myself.

What's a good 3rd party tool to build a squeeze page and a mailing list?

Building a squeeze page is pretty simple. You could find a template or just use frontpage. An example of a squeeze page that is using adwords and seo to develop traffic is betta-fish-expert.com This is not my site it's from a guy who's doing an example type project for something I'm a member of. This site was built with frontpage.

About autoresponders I think the two used most are Aweber and Getresponse. I personally have only used aweber and very happy with it. One tip for when you get into autoresponders. First use a company's and pay a membership. That way they deal will all spam complaints. Next get a po box and sign up with that. Because of the Cann Spam Act (correct?) You have to have your address in the email, I'd rather not give out a personal address :P

Commission Junction: Do you use it? How does it compare to clickbank and other similar affiliate programs?

I've not done much with commission Junction. Clickbank is purely digital downloads. CJ is something more like big companies use. An example is Sirius. Also you'll deal with many shipped products, like mattresses, furniture, exercise equipment etc..

You say you prefer affiliate marketing to adsense. Do you use Adwords to promote your site? What about 7search? Any others that you recommend?

I prefer affiliate marketing to adsense. Affiliate marketing I believe is much easier to be successfull making good money. IMO if you want to make money off adsense you have to do 1 of 2 things.

1. Develop a big adsense empire. IE: Many many many sites.

2. Or one huge gigantic site (think about.com)

Both take a lot of work and I'm not willing to do it on my own. It's great if you outsource all the work.

I do use adwords it's the best way to develop immediate traffic. I've never used 7search. I keep meaning to transfer my successful adwords campaigns over to overture (now yahoo) and msn but I'm lazy.

That's all for now, I've got plenty more questions if you have the time.

Thanks,

-Scott

Thank you scott. Also if you guys have questions just ask them here no sense in pm'ing. Also another note I wouldn't call myself very experienced. This stuff is just mainly all my opinion.

[zoobird]

Strangely enough, this morning I was thinking of asking you (since you seem to be very knowledgeable about this stuff) how much you make from IM. Since it sounds like you don't want to answer that, how about 'how much are you making for your single most successful site?'.

[lgas]

Josh,

Do you believe Internet Marketing is a good way to create passive income? Or is it more like a job, like any other, where the harder you work, the more successful you are, and if you stop working you stop making (real) money?

Are there different types of IM that are better at producing passive income than others?

For example, it seems to me that all the people going the "create a blog, plaster it with ads and then promote it" route are just giving themselves a work-from-home job. If they stop updating frequently their income will trail off into nothingness. Same goes for some niche sites -- for example there was a blog post about a guy that created a niche site for a video game (red something or other?) -- that should have a burst of traffic/money coming in, but over time it's going to trail off into nothingness too.

Do you feel you've been able to create anything that will provide truely passive income, akin to perhaps a dividend paying stock? Or, at least similar to something like buying a house and renting it out and bringing in enough to pay your mortgage and then some? (There is a lot more work involved in owning/renting a house than in owning a dividend paying stock, but considerably less work is required (vs. amount of income) than say, monetizing a blog, so I would still consider it to be primarily passive income).

[Bucnutz19]

Josh,

I have just got my site up and running and would just like to get a critique from you. The site is www.techspeck.com and I was also wondering if you think this could have potential to make any money whether it be from adsense or other? The other question I have is what other types of options are there for making money online? One thing I have considered doing is going to the e-book route. Is that something you think has more potential to be profitable? Thanks in advance!

[KidLifeCrisis]

Josh,

I first want to say thanks for your participation in the boards here. Your input has been very useful, and I've gained some very good insight and added a lot of bookmarks to say the least. (If you have useful post on other forums or have a blog or anything, it'd be great to know where.)

With that said, here's my question. I'm mainly curious about time investment. How much time you invest into your sites? What is the breakdown of how much of that time goes into internet marketing vs. other focal areas? I'm sure this is greatly dependent upon the number of sites you have, how big or small each is, and whether or not any of them earn passive income.

Thanks for sharing your time and knowledge!

[inspectagadget]

I did a little investigative work and I wanted to ask you about this.

1) On your Insomnia website you tell people to click on your Google Ads. That is against TOS. Why are you doing this? http://www.usfreeads.com/657584-cls.html You can find it at the bottom of the page.

[JoshK]

[ QUOTE ]
Strangely enough, this morning I was thinking of asking you (since you seem to be very knowledgeable about this stuff) how much you make from IM. Since it sounds like you don't want to answer that, how about 'how much are you making for your single most successful site?'.

[/ QUOTE ]

I make more off adwords than any of my websites.

[JoshK]

[ QUOTE ]
Josh,

Do you believe Internet Marketing is a good way to create passive income? Or is it more like a job, like any other, where the harder you work, the more successful you are, and if you stop working you stop making (real) money?

Are there different types of IM that are better at producing passive income than others?

For example, it seems to me that all the people going the "create a blog, plaster it with ads and then promote it" route are just giving themselves a work-from-home job. If they stop updating frequently their income will trail off into nothingness. Same goes for some niche sites -- for example there was a blog post about a guy that created a niche site for a video game (red something or other?) -- that should have a burst of traffic/money coming in, but over time it's going to trail off into nothingness too.

Do you feel you've been able to create anything that will provide truely passive income, akin to perhaps a dividend paying stock? Or, at least similar to something like buying a house and renting it out and bringing in enough to pay your mortgage and then some? (There is a lot more work involved in owning/renting a house than in owning a dividend paying stock, but considerably less work is required (vs. amount of income) than say, monetizing a blog, so I would still consider it to be primarily passive income).

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a pretty long nice post but asking a pretty simple question. The income is fairly passive. At least the methods i'm using atm. There is always going to be some upkeep necessary. So yeah it's kind of like a job, but your job works while you sleep, and works while you eat. It just works harder when you're at the computer [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].