homeschoolingincome.com » Website Creation

Selling Startup Websites

Audrey — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 03:20:01 +0000

One business model that has been very popular of late is building niche WordPress blogs, customising them so they look nice, and then adding good content. These blogs can have several methods of monetisation, including adsense income and affiliate products such as those from Clickbank or Amazon. They are then sold with no income or traffic, which gives the creator a quick chunk of cash. But does this still work?

The most popular site for buying and selling websites is Flippa and I have had some success selling websites here. One comment I read recently was that startup sites sell here for an average of $130. That’s not bad considering your costs are basically a domain name ($10), hosting ($5 for a month) and an investment of your time. However, things may be changing.

Whether it because people are less likely to part with their hard earned cash these days, or whether buyers are just more discerning, start up sites aren’t selling very well at the moment.

Here’s an example. I had a good friend visit for a day, and just to show her the basics of site creation, I built a WordPress blog. My niche was a popular one, and my keyword research was good. I used a free theme, spent $1 on a nice image for the header, and added quality content. It was monetised with adsense ads, affiliate products and I had purchased an ebook to sell directly from the site and I could keep all the profits from each sale.

Within a week of its creation, this site was sitting at number 5 on Google search results for its keyword, and had earned $2 in adsense income. So, although it was a start up site, it had real potential. The highest bid for this site was $35. I chose to keep the site.

If you are interested in building websites to sell, you are more likely to get a good return on your investment if you can hang onto it for a little while. Keep promoting it, until you can show some traffic stats and income from the site, and it should sell for a much fairer price.

Selling Websites For Profit – Does It Work?

Audrey — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:42:19 +0000

Wow! A long time between posts, eh? I’ve not been exploring many income generating opportunities of late, because I’ve been kept busy writing. As you well know, there are only so many hours in a day and the children take up a lot of them. I’ve picked up a few regular writing clients and I write articles for their websites. It brings in a few hundred dollars a month, and it’s not too time consuming.

One thing I’ve always wanted to try was building and selling a website. It’s supposed to be very profitable! I did some reading and research, and created my first blog to sell. I chose the pet niche because I know it well, and it’s always popular.

The costs were (in US$) firstly $8.81 for the domain (I register my domains with Namecheap and they always have a discount coupon). I don’t count much for the hosting because I have unlimited domain hosting and I just tacked it on to my existing hosting package. I had a nice custom header done for it, cost $20, but in future I’ll be having a go at using photoshop to create my own. And, my listing on Sitepoint marketplace was $10. So, total was around $40. I used a really nice WordPress theme that’s easy to customise, and I have the rights to sell sites created with it. I also researched keywords and wrote 10 blog posts, each one original. Not sure how I’d value the time spent on research and writing. It had Google adsense on it, as well as an Amazon shop, a clickbank product and another affiliate product – so it was well monetised.

It didn’t sell. I listed it at $97 which I thought was fair for a new blog with unique content written by a professional. So, I still have it, and I’ve been building traffic to it. It’s getting around 200 visitors a month now, not much in the way of income, but it’s growing. It’s in the number 1 position on Google for its keywords in quotes. I now have someone interested in it for $150, but we’ll see.

I think the thing to remember about selling websites is you can’t just toss one up and hope to make a profit. It needs to be a quality site to start with, it needs to have some traffic to it, and ideally it needs to be earning a little income. Otherwise, it’s not worth a whole lot. I’ll let you know if this sale follows through, but frankly if it doesn’t, I’m happy to hang onto it as a niche blog.

I’ve just finished reading an ebook on selling sites on eBay. That’s my next experiment. I bought a domain name with high search numbers and low competition, I have about 20 private label rights articles ( to save the time of writing them myself) and I have a list of high search keywords. I’ll make my own header, and the costs will be very low indeed. I think I can get this site set up in an evening, I can get traffic to it fairly easily, and we’ll give it a go. I’ll keep you informed.

Earning From Freelance Sites Such As Elance

Audrey — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:02:59 +0000

: Image by orangeacid via Flickr

It’s been a while since I added anything to this blog, I’ve been reading through some opportunities but none have really inspired me and convinced me that they’ll earn, so I haven’t written about them.

Since I’ve had a bit of success in the freelance writing sphere of late, I thought I’d chat a bit about how to get the most out of sites such as Elance.

Elance, Rentacoder and other such sites are very useful for linking people who need a job done, and people who can do the job for them. Webmasters post details of their job, and you have the opportunity to bid for the work. The webmaster then chooses the winning bidder.

Obviously most of the jobs are computer based/online tasks so they’re ideal for us as stay at home parents. We can do the jobs when the children are asleep, or when they’re doing some quiet reading.

There are plenty of types of jobs, from graphic design, to writing, website building and virtual assistant type tasks. It can look pretty overwhelming. Think about your skillset, and stick to exploring jobs you have the skills to do well. If you don’t feel you have any skills that would be useful on Elance, have a look at the writing jobs. We all can write.

You really have two ways of tackling these sites. Firstly, you can try and get the work by being the cheapest bidder. I’d not recommend this route for a few reasons. Firstly, there are very talented people in countries such as India and the Phillipines, who bid very low. Many are talented writers with an excellent command of the English language, and often bid around $3 per 500 word article. Secondly, do you really want to spend your limited free time working for a few dollars per hour? Even if you did, you’d soon feel resentful of the time you were spending on your work, and how little you’d be getting back for it.

The second way, and this is the way I’d recommend you approach it, is to bid what you feel you’re worth, and show the website owner exactly why you’re the best person for the job. I won a bid to ghostwrite an ebook on dogs and exercise. My bid was fairly high, but I got the job. I’m a vet, so I know about dog health. I run with my dog and have competed in agility, so I not only have the theoretical knowledge, but tons of practical experience.

So, my suggestions for successful bidding on freelance sites are:

Make sure you’re capable of doing the job. You need to have the skills, and you need to be able to fit the work into your schedule. Many of these jobs have a deadline and if you don’t follow through, either because you can’t do it or you run out of time, it leaves the webmaster short of time to get the job done. Your feedback score will reflect this.
Work out what you want to earn per hour, estimate how long the job will take you, and bid accordingly.
In your bid, you have the opportunity to share your skills, knowledge and experience, and what you can bring to the job. Sell yourself to the website owner, and show them exactly why they want you to do the job for them.

Yeah, it’s a bit like a job interview, isn’t it?

But, it works. Think about your skills and your life experiences. Maybe you’re a nurse and can write about health issues. Maybe you’re a naturopath and can write about natural therapies. You don’t have any useful career related skills? You’re a parent, and there will be sites needing articles written about parenting issues. With the increase in the number of families removing their children from school, you’ve got a lot of valuable experience to share. If you still think you haven’t got anything to offer, it’s not hard to research things online so theoretically, you can write on any niche.

If you don’t feel confident in your writing ability, and want to learn more about writing for the web, I can highly recommend The Content Chef, written by Courtney Ramirez. This is an ebook which tells you how to earn an income writing web content. It has a 30 day step by step plan on how to get started. Yep, it costs US$37. But, thanks to this ebook, I’ve just won an ongoing writing job - up to 8 articles a week, and my winning bid was US$20 per 400-600 word article. It has well and truly paid for itself. Check it out here.

How To Use Private Label Rights Material In Your Business

Audrey — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:25:38 +0000

If you look back to one of my earlier posts on writing web content for dollars HERE, you’ll notice I’ve mentioned you can write private label rights (or PLR) articles for payment.

In a nutshell, PLR articles, reports and ebooks are those which you have the legal right to modify and call your own. Rights do vary, so you need to check what rights come with each package. Generally speaking, you can usually use them as blog posts or website articles, or sell the ebooks and reports.

Why not look at it from the other side, and think about using PLR products yourself that others have written. PLR is very useful indeed when you’re building or maintaining an online business. It can save you doing all your own research and writing, and allow you more time to take care of your children’s needs.

There are plenty of places you can get free PLR, such as PLR Wholesaler. This type of site has a free membership option where you can pick up PLR for nothing. These sites make their income by offering a wider range of PLR if you upgrade to a paid membership, and by making you a special offer when you login . There’s no obligation to take advantage of either of these; I know that in the early days of your business, the budget is tight and there’s not a lot of room for such extras.

Another great place to check for good PLR is the Warrior Forum special offers. You can often pick up a great pack of well written PLR for under $10.

I would suggest that you don’t use any PLR as is, and you rewrite it to make it better fit your site. This doesn’t just mean that you rewrite and include your keywords, but that you write it such that it sounds like it comes from you.

So what can you do with PLR material?

Look at this example from the Warrior Forum:

One forum member picked up a great WordPress theme, 25 niche articles, an ebook with resell rights ( so he could offer it for sale and pocket the profits, or give it away to his readers) and a rough guide on how to use it all for $9. He then bought a suitable domain for $9. Because he already had a hosting package, he now had a brand new website for less than $20.

From there, he checked the Affiliate Directories for products that suit his niche. I’m thinking he’ll offer the ebook free in exchange for signing up to his newsletter. When he has a list of people interested in his niche, and he’s developed a relationship with them by providing them with good information, he can then start to market the affiliate products to them in the newsletter.

Newsletter marketing is a great way of earning ongoing income from your website visitors, and it too is a whole post topic on it’s own.

You can also rewrite PLR articles to compile into an ebook that you can give away or sell, use them as content on your niche blog, or add them to your own newsletter.

If you’re building a blog or website, and you’re pressed for time because you’re educating your children, see what PLR you can find in your niche. It’s a great timesaver!!

How Do You Squidoo?

Audrey — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:39:31 +0000

Squidoo is a great service which allows you to build a one page website for free – no technical skills required. While you can make money from your Squidoo lens, most people use their lens to direct traffic back to their main site, and to give them a high quality back link. This can really improve your search engine rankings.

It’s just as important to do your keyword research for a Squidoo lens as it is for your main website.

Use the Google keyword generator HERE to search for your key word phrase, and check for competition in Google. As we’ve already mentioned, over 500 searches a month and less than 200,000 competing sites in Google (when you search for your phrase in quotation marks) is a rough guide to choosing a good phrase. Make this phrase the name of your lens.

To get started, it’s a simple matter of signing up with Squidoo, and following the prompts to open your account and create your first lens. Then you can start adding modules. Click on the image below to see the modules you have available.

Your first module is an introduction – here you can share some details about yourself, and include your key word phrase several times. There’s the option to include an image in this module. You can use a picture of yourself, or your product, if you’re using your lens to market your own ebook or an affiliate product.

You can then include an ebay module or an amazon module if your aim is to make affiliate income from your lens.

Alternatively, include several text modules with more informative articles relating to your niche, and directing people to your main site or an affiliate product. The benefit of using several text modules rather than just one large one is that it breaks your content up into neat little “bites” and makes it easier for your visitor to read. It’s also a good idea to use images to improve the general appearance of your lens.

A guest book module will allow you to have interaction with your visitors. They can leave comments and feedback, which can in turn help you improve your lens.

There’s also the option to use tags to describe your lens. These tags are used by the search engines to decide what your lens is about, so it’s very important that you do use the tags. Go back to your keyword phrase, and run it through the keyword selector tool again to generate several other phrases that are closely related. These phrases can be used for tags.

Don’t forget to upgrade your lens frequently if you discover some new information about your niche.

This is just a brief guide to help you get started with Squidoo – there are lots of methods to improve your lens, and have it rate higher both in Squidoo and the search engines. We’ve given you enough information to get up and running – give it a go. It won’t cost you a thing.

No related posts.

Build A Membership Site For Ongoing Income

Audrey — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 08:16:01 +0000

One feature of earning an income from most websites is that when your customer has come along, made their purchase and and received their product, they may not feel the need to return.

One way of making repeat sales to the same customer is by building a membership site.

Basically, this is a subscription based site where people sign up and are charged a fee on a regular basis, commonly monthly. In exchange, they get access to information or products.

One common business model is a membership to an ebook or article site, where for a monthly fee, members get a certain number of articles to use on their websites, or ebooks to sell. However, you can create a membership site in just about any niche you can think of. I have a friend who has a child with food sensitivities, and has developed a huge library of hypoallergenic recipes. I think a busy mum would be happy to pay a nominal fee monthly for a tried and tested recipe once a week.

It’s an excellent business model because once you have sold your product to your customer, and you continue to provide good content and service, there’s no reason for anyone to cancel their membership. It allows you to leverage your time – you can create something once, and sell it over and over, with minimal ongoing effort.

What do you need to get started? Well, there are membership site programs which range in price from under $100 to over $1000, but it won’t surprise you by now to hear that you can in fact build a free membership site using WordPress.

You’ll need a domain, webhosting, and WordPress installed on your site. You can change the appearance of your site by uploading a new theme – there are lots of free themes you can find by searching on Google.

Once you have your theme, you can then install your choice of membership plugin – there are several to choose from.

The “Tech Guy Next Door”, my friend Sagar, has written a comprehensive and inexpensive report on how to set up a free membership site with WordPress. It starts with how to set up WordPress on your domain, and from there tells you exactly how to install the necessary plugins to have a fully functioning membership site in a couple of hours. He also spells out the really important part – how to set up the payment process. You can check out the details here: WordPress Membersite.

Once you have your site set up, and you have your content ready to go, you need to get traffic to your site. Yep, any internet business depends on traffic, and as we’ve already mentioned, there are lots of methods you can follow to do this.

Start thinking – what do you know, what are you good at, and how can you use it to earn ongoing income by turning it into a membership site. It’s not as hard as you think.

Build Your Website With WordPress

Audrey — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:49:46 +0000

Whatever area of business you’re interested in following, whether online or offline, you need a website. You may think that it’s expensive to have a website built and it’s tricky to maintain, but it needn’t be.

I’m not very good at technical stuff – I struggle to write a line of html – however it’s so easy to create a website like this one, get it looking the way I want it, and then update it on a regular basis. I can build a site, add pictures, put links in the sidebar, and add extra pages, all with very little skills, and in a matter of a couple of hours.

Want to know how?

WordPress.

WordPress is a free blogging platform. As mentioned in a previous post, there is the option to create a free blog on wordpress.com
but you can’t use this to make money. If you’ve taken the plunge and bought a domain name and web hosting, you can install WordPress on your hosting, and create any type of site you like.

WordPress is primarily designed to create a blog, but it can also be used to create a plain sales page, a membership site, or an online shop.

It’s not hard to get WordPress up and running on your web hosting. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I’ll direct you to my friend Sagar’s site, where you can download a totally free report on installing WordPress. Click on the image below to get there.

When you download the report, you’ll see there are two options for installing WordPress. One involves creating databases and naming them, which I’ve done (only once!) – it’s not all that hard if you follow the steps closely, but with most web hosting companies, you don’t need to do all that. Most companies offer fantastico, which is a one click method of installing many scripts, including WordPress. Sagar’s report shows you how to do that too, and if that option is available to you with your web host, that’s what I’d choose to do. Don’t make things any trickier than they need to be!

Apart from being easy to set up, it’s simple to get WordPress looking the way you want it. There are lots of free themes out there that you can upload, which will change the appearance of your webpage. There are plugins which will keep track of visitors to your site, add a photo gallery, add advertisements to your blog, and much much more. Lastly, you can add widgets, which are little sidebar accessories that will allow you to further personalise your blog without having to know anything about html or other types of coding.

When you’ve got WordPress installed on your web hosting, check out some free themes, have a look at some plugins and just have a good play. You’ll be amazed at how much you can do with WordPress, and not only that, you’ll impress yourself with what you can create. Have fun!

How To Choose A Website Host

Audrey — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:13:22 +0000

When you’re looking for a place for your family to live, you would make sure the place you chose was affordable and reliable. The same criteria are important when you choose where you’d like your websites to live.

There are website hosts that will allow you to create a site at no cost, and there are others that charge a monthly or yearly fee.

How do you decide which website host to choose?

You can choose to start with a free website host such as Geocities.com, however this comes with some disadvantages. Firstly, as we’ve already mentioned with Blogger, your domain name will be www.geocities.com/youryahooname – not very professional and it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. They are great for personal or hobby sites, but not ideal if you’re planning on building a business.

Secondly, these free website hosts often cover their costs by placing advertisements on your site, which may or may not be unobtrusive.

Lastly, if you start building a business with a free service, and later want to move it to your own paid hosting, you will lose all the backlinks to your site that are out there in cyberspace. These backlinks are important in increasing a site’s popularity in the search engines, and you don’t want to lose them.

So, I’d suggest if you’re interested in building a web business, you start as you mean to finish.

In my view, the first thing you should look for in a website host is reliability. There’s no point in creating a beautiful site if the host has regular downtime and nobody can access your site. I also look for great support. If I’m having trouble, it’s reassuring if there’s someone there to help me sort it out.

Price is obviously important, especially when you’re a stay at home mom. However, you often get what you pay for. There may be a reason a particular website host is a lot cheaper than its competitors.

Next, look at the amount of webspace you get for your dollar. There’s no point in having a family of five children in a one bedroom home – the same applies with your website. You can start off with a small amount of space, and upgrade as your site grows.

Next, your website host must have ftp access. What’s that? That is how you upload your files, images and downloadable products to your site. It’s not complicated, but without it, you’re severely limited.

The last thing you can look for is bandwidth – this is basically how many visitors can view your site – the more visitors, the higher bandwidth you’ll need. Again, you can start small and upgrade as you need to.

After all that, how do you choose a website host? My suggestion is to ask around. Ask in places like the Warrior Forum. If you have friends who are interested in website creation, they might have a suggestion. Word of mouth is very important.

I personally host all my sites with Dotable. Their pricing is competitive, they do everything I need and they are extremely reliable. One thing I do appreciate is that whenever I get stuck, Steve and Aussie Bob are very quick to answer my question, and no question is too basic. Have a look at their site and make your own decision.

Registering A Domain Name

Audrey — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:45:51 +0000

To start an online business, you don’t need to purchase a domain name and web hosting straight away. However, you should plan to do so as soon as you can, for several reasons.

The main reason is that you’ll then be building a website that you have total control over. If you use Blogger, for example, you may lose all your hard work if Blogger decides to pull the plug on your site. This can happen if you inadvertently breach their terms of use.

Secondly, you can choose a name that matches your niche. Use your keyword tools to select a name that ranks high in the search engines, or choose a fun catchy name that sticks in your mind. It’s a good idea to stick to .com or .net domains.

Thirdly, it looks much more professional to have www.yourbusiness.com than www.yourbusiness.blogspot.com

Let’s look at the where and how of registering a domain name.

Firstly, some terminology for those new to websites. A domain name is a term for a particular “address” on the internet, where you can find a particular website. This website is stored, or “hosted” on a large computer, where the website owner rents some space.

My personal preferencefor registering a domain name is Namecheap, although a Google search will reveal many other options. Their price is reasonable, and I’ve always found their service is good. If you search on Google for “namecheap coupon” you can find a coupon to get you another dollar or so off the price. You can spend some time on their home page searching for different options for your domain name. Once you have chosen, Namecheap will ask you to create an account and go through the checkout procedure.

When you have purchased your domain name, you need to link it up with your web hosting . To do this, you need to edit the domain name servers. I’ll show you how to do this with Namecheap, however the theory is the same with any other domain name registrar.

Log on to your admin area, then you can either click on “number of domains in your account” and from there select your domain, or further down, use the “quickly modify one of your domain” option. Then, in the “General” options on the left side of the page, choose “Domain Name Server Setup”.

Your web hosting company will give you (usually) two domain name servers and you need to copy these details into the top two spaces on this page. Click on “save changes” and it’s done! It can take up to 24 hours for your domain name to be directed to your web hosting, but when it’s done, you can start to build your website.

In tomorrow’s post, we’ll look at obtaining web hosting, and how you create an account on your hosting for a domain name.