My Online Business Journey

Free Niche Research: Ireland

I’ve had the great opportunity to visit Ireland this spring, and while I managed (it was an organized trip traveling with a school choir), there were many things I wish I knew ahead of time. So, today, I’ll do some research for this excellent niche: I’ll be looking for key phrases related to traveling to Ireland. As you’ll see, if you get in some sub-niches, AdSense is HUGE!

Top 10 Highest Paying Keywords (from the Google keyword tool)
car rentals in Ireland $7.48

car hire in Ireland $7.28

Ireland car rental $7.06

wireless broadband Ireland $6.65

travel insurance Ireland $4.97

Ireland ferry $4.97

hotels in Ireland $3.62

vacation in Ireland $3.42

rent a car in Ireland $3.34

hotels Dublin Ireland $3.32

Top 10 Most Searched Keywords (all phrases are exact matches in Google)

Ireland weather 8,100

Ireland vacations 6,600

Ireland tours 4,400

Ireland travel 3,600

flights to Ireland 3,600

Ireland vacation packages 2,900

pictures of Ireland 2,900

Ireland currency 2,400

cheap flights to Ireland 1,900

castles in Ireland 1,900

Resources

The best resource is someone who’s been there. Or, you go on a trip, have some fun and research everything. You can also do some research by talking to travel agents, reading some books, etc.

Possible Affiliate Programs

You can promote books and DVDs from Amazon, vacation packages, place tickets, hotel stays, etc. There are several affiliate programs for these in CJ.

Monetization Suggestions

AdSense pays really well for many of the keywords: create an info site and you’ll do really well.

But, don’t stop with information: review some of the available vacation packages and link to your merchants with an affiliate link.

Here are some .com domains available for this niche now:

irelandvacationspackages.com

Here are some .org domains available:

picturesofIreland.org

factsaboutireland.org

irelandculture.org

And some .net ones:

factsaboutireland.net

historyofireland.net

irelandculture.net

thingstodoinireland.net

tripstoireland.net

P.S. Check out these guides to learn how to create lots of traffic for your new site/s:

Article Marketing 365

Non Stop Viral Traffic

Quick Site Indexer (free)

Free and Cheap Traffic

Traffic and Leverage

FREE Quality Traffic

04/04/2011 by Adriana | Comments Off

Work at Home

How to Keep Your Online Business Secure?

Consumers and businesses agree that security remains a primary concern in the development of e-commerce. Identity theft, stolen credit card information, credit card fraud, hackers are among the most common threats. The dangers are real. As your online business matures, you have to make a real effort to secure your web presence.

Failure to secure your web presence can result in a variety of complications such as financial loss, loss of customers, damage to your credibility, and data loss. Worst of all, it can potentially cost you your business. You have many options to build a secure online business. In the past few years, the number of security related services have grown exponentially. Arming your business with hardware and software is less expensive than you think. The challenge is to stay one step ahead of the bad guys.

Hackers, frauds, and other criminals are constantly searching for the weakest link. Keep in mind that you are not only protecting your business, but your customers. It is common for customers to arrive to websites with their computers already compromised. Your job is to ensure that the shopping experience is safe.

Fortune 500 corporations are frequently reporting security breaches. While it is alarming to read about security violations, many security breaches are never reported. The larger your business the more someone has to gain from breaking into your system. Small companies are just as vulnerable to break in, denial of service attacks, social engineering, and more.

As a business owner you should concentrate on preventative measures as opposed to reactive measures. It may take you days or months to realize your system has been compromised. The resulting damage could have devastating effects on you and your customers. Damaging, sharing, selling user information is a real security threat.

Equally important to providing a secure shopping experience is communicating it to your customers. If your customers don’t trust your site, all the security in the world won’t close the sale for you. Explain it loud and clear throughout your website the measures you took to create a secure environment. Explain what industry standards you use to help keep their information secure.

And make sure you keep your site away form hackers. For a short time, you can get WP Lockdown for only $17.

04/03/2011 by Adriana | 1 Comment

Challenges

April Mixed Bag Challenge

WOW! I haven’t done a public challenge in over 8 months, and it’s definitely time for one. I want to accomplish a lot of things, so this challenge will be a mixture of working towards getting traffic and increasing revenues for 2 sites: this one, and a niche site whose best traffic months are the spring and summer months.

In February 2010 I challenged myself to increase traffic for this site by 75% and fell short by just a little bit. But, for the second part of last year I was majorly distracted, and was very inconsistent with adding content, stopped guest posting, and even got sloppy with one of the main attractions to my blog: the free niche research.

So, in April I am planning to increase traffic by 25%. Here is a screen-shot of the the traffic as of today, March 31, 2011:

So, in April I need to come up with 948 more unique visitors, for a total of 4740. Now, in order to achieve this, I’ll do the following:

– go back to weekly free niche research

– guest post at least twice, and find at least 2 people to guest post for me

-create 2 how-to articles (these seem to attract traffic). Do you have suggestions? I’m all ears: please post below in the comments and I’ll either write it myself, or find someone qualified to we rite it for me.

Now the other site in this challenge is a niche site I challenged myself on last year as well (it was actually my April challenge for last year).

Here is a screen shot of my stats from that post last year:

April starts for niche site

And here is a screen shot from the first 3 months this year:

Big difference, right? My plan is to double traffic to this site in April, as well as double income (which is pitiful right now, at $122.60 for this month). It’s an ambitious plan, but I think I can do it. Here is what I am planning to do for this site:

– add content every day for the month of April (luckily, I already have all the content needed, so I just need to take a few hours to add images, links, etc., and upload them to the site

– guest post at least once (last year I wasn’t able to find a place to guest post, but this year I’ll try harder)

– build some links. Not exactly sure which route I’ll take for this. I may submit a couple of articles to article directories, send a press release, tweet, bookmark, etc.

– I’ll create and distribute at least 2 videos. I’ve tried creating videos myself in the past, but I am not cut out for it, so this will be outsourced.

– I’ll create a FaceBook page for this site (probably I’ll outsource this as well)

– create a list for the site, so I don’t have to always rely on just the search engines to bring in traffic. I already have my give-away for it (had it for more than a year and never took the time to create a list: shame on me!)

– pick 2 products, create detailed reviews, and work on ranking those 2 pages: shooting for top 5, but will be content if I reach page 1 🙂

– monetize the site better: I am using AdSense and Amazon for now, but I need to tweak it for better performance.

What are YOUR plans for the month of April? Wouldn’t you love some more traffic? Please join me in this challenge to increase traffic: just comment below.

03/31/2011 by Adriana | Comments Off

Website Traffic

Link Building Strategies That Work

Getting links back to your site is the number one most important factor to getting ranked well in the search engines. What are some link-building strategies that really work?

Twitter and Facebook!

Though many of these links are no-follow links, the exposure will often get you in front of other people who will create permanent links to your site.

Have a Facebook group or fan page. Also make sure the like button and the retweet button are both on all the pages that you want people to link to.

Link Bait

Create content designed to spread virally on sites like Reddit and Digg. What tends to do well on these sites?

* Infographics tend to get a lot of attention. Put a bunch of little-known statistics into one infographic.

* Slightly sarcastic content.

* Funny content.

* Content relevant to a news topic that these groups support. They tend to be more liberal than conservative and also more technologically oriented.

Guest Articles

There are many sites in your industry that depend on outside articles for their success.

Do a Google search for terms like:

* Keyword + “Submit an Article”
* Keyword + “Guest writer”
* Keyword + “Guest article”

And so on. Try to find websites that regularly host other people and try to get an article on their sites.

Directories

Directories are one easy way to build a bunch of backlinks quickly. You can submit them by hand or hire out the process very affordably in internet marketing forums.

Submit Press Releases

Send press releases to news services like PRWeb, PR Newswire and PR Leap. Some offer free press release services, though typically you’ll have to pay a small amount of money.

These releases will almost definitely generate a handful of backlinks to your website. If your story is especially good, you may even get picked up by news media or a prominent blogger and get a high profile link.

Chamber of Commerce

One easy, high quality link is to get a link from your chamber of commerce.

All you need to do is show up at your local chamber and register as a business. They’ll then put a link to your website from their high authority, high PR site back to your site.

Forums & Blog Comments

Forums and blogs are two easy places to get links. The most important thing to keep in mind with these link sources it that every post you make should be a high quality post, not a junk post designed just to get a link back.

Write high quality responses in forums and blogs and include a link back to your website. You’ll build both your backlinks and your credibility in the field as you get more well know.

There are many link-building techniques out there. While some work more than others, they all work to some degree. The most important thing is that you get out there, take action and start building links today.

03/18/2011 by Adriana | 2 Comments

Google Adwords

Google PPC versus Bing PPC

step-by-step affiliate marketing with AdWords

Google AdWords wasn’t the first search engine to come out with the PPC model, but they certainly are the biggest and most well known today. Does that mean you should ignore other engines like Bing?

No! In fact, there are many marketers who are making a full-time living on search engines like Bing without spending any money on Google at all.

What are the differences between AdWords and Bing and why might you choose one over the other? Here are the differences.

Conversion Rates

Out of AdWords, Yahoo and Bing, Bing traffic tends to convert the best. That means that out of 1,000 visitors, you’ll tend to get more sales from Bing than AdWords or Yahoo traffic.

There are many theories about why that is. One common theory is that people using Google tend to be more computer savvy users and more discerning about where they spend their money.

Bing users on the other hand tend to be people who just left their browsers on their default search engines. They’re less discerning with their money and their internet habits.

Volume

This is where Google AdWords wins hands down. For any given keyword, you can expect to get 10% or less with Bing than what you’d get if you bid on the same keyword in AdWords.

Does that mean you can’t make significant money on Bing? No, it just means your strategy needs to be different.

Bidding Strategy

Generally, with AdWords you don’t want to go for high-profile, high-competition keywords with high volume. The bid prices are just too high.

With Bing however, it’s different. Bing’s PPC bids tend to be a little bit cheaper than AdWords. There also tends to be less competition.

That means that on AdWords a keyword like “Lose lower belly fat” may be far too competitive and expensive. On the other hand, on Bing there will be competition but you may have a good shot at making money with the keyword.

Basically, on Bing you’ll need to take advantage of the lower competition to bid on broader keywords. This will help you offset the lower search volume: You increase your total traffic by bidding on higher traffic keywords.

AdWords versus Bing

There are many similarities in strategies between AdWords and Bing. The principles of writing great ads and split testing carefully apply to both systems equally. Choosing the right keywords is as important in one as it is the other.

On the flip side, these two systems require very different strategies to master. AdWords often requires drilling down to very precise keywords in order to create profitable campaigns.

On Bing, your main challenge is often getting enough volume rather than getting your traffic to convert.

Each search engine is different and need different approaches. There’s a lot of money to be made in both.

03/14/2011 by Adriana | Comments Off

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