Alternative To R/E----Virtual Real Estate

[Deleted]

For those who do not have the stomach to pull the trigger on a R/E deal, you might consider an alternative. And that is the idea of "Virtual Real Estate".

It's just internet marketing, so basically owning websites. You build content around a topic, you monetize the traffic through things like Google Adsense, and you get paid when people click on your ads. I'm simplifying it quite a bit, but if you learn the fundamentals then it actually is pretty simple.

Personally, it was the best decision I ever made. I started in 2005 building my own sites. Now 5 years later, most of my sites are in the "passive income" status. When I build new sites, I outsource most of the work through sites like elance.com and the like. So I'm basically acting like a general contractor and pulling in everything I'd need to get a site off the ground and ranking in the search engines.

Most of the products that teach this stuff are garbage (and probably scammers) so you definitely need to error on the side of not parting with your money.

Just an idea for people out there. If you learn the fundementals of Internet Marketing, I think it gives you an incredibly valuable tool. With that you can either build your own sites from scratch, buy/improve existing sites, or offer your services to local business.

Just a thought

[debtheaven]

I think there are two other posters here who get significant revenue from this. PalmBeachPaul (formerly WindyCityPaul) and somebody else (sorry can't remember who! Maybe something with Here2?)

I have always been intrigued by this but frankly rather put off by the fact that I think it is the internet equivalent of spam, getting people to click on ads. I truly mean no offense. Lord knows I spend enough time on the internet, it would be great to make some money from it LOL.

Don't you have to keep adding content though? I'm guessing it's not something that you just "set and forget". Are you talking about blogs? I know blogs where the bloggers make good income, but they work VERY hard constantly adding quality content. Do you write your own content?

I'd be interested in hearing more, if you'd be willing to share, or to be directed towards a more detailed explanation somewhere. Plus DH is a graphic designer so we wouldn't even have to pay for the websites. But it feels a bit "yucky" to me, and frankly I couldn't even explain why. What do the websites actually DO? Inform people? Teach them something? Entertain them?

If you don't mind my asking, is this an additional revenue stream, or do you make enough money to live from this? Both other posters use it as an additional stream, but they both have other "jobs".

ETA: I put "jobs" in quotation marks as a pre-emptive strike against the fact that Paul doesn't consider what he does to earn money to be a job. Or something like that.

[8 Bit WWBG]

I can't remember the second poster's nick (was it Trying?), but I've asked for advice at length about this. The method is simple enough, but the one detail that the supposed "experts" are always sketchy on is advice on finding valid referrals or partners who pay these alleged big fees.

IMO, if you want to make the most money in the shortest time, your site will have to contain racy material. Browsers' appetites for thong shots and cleavage is insatiable.

[debtheaven]

Gowron thanks! Could it be Trying2Hard or something like that?

If the method is so simple, can you please explain it to me? LOL

Is the idea to get the site up high enough on a google search that people will click on it? DH knows how to do that. But that doesn't necessarily mean that people will click on the ads once they get to that site.

I guess that's the part I don't understand. Or do most people click on the ads?

That's my best guess given what you said.

[debtheaven]

If it involved what you say I would never do that. I have to admit I can't see Paul doing that though. I think his sites are about RE.

ETA: I don't think you necessarily have to have partners, I think the idea is to make money from the google ads. But, I'm pretty sure you have to initially generate enough traffic to interest Google AdSense in the first place. I have no clue as to how high or low their "threshold" is.

[8 Bit WWBG]

...:::"I don't think you necessarily have to have partners, I think the idea is to make money from the google ads. But, I'm pretty sure you have to initially generate enough traffic to interest Google AdSense in the first place. I have no clue as to how high or low their "threshold" is. ":::...

You make the most money from referrals. Both Paul and trying said that they do well when someone signs up for someone else's <credit card, seminar, program...> via an ad on their sites. Paul has talked about selling seats at "stop smoking" seminars where he got 50% of the cut. Trying said something about credit card signups working the same way. Same with book sales, or whatever.

Paul once boasted his site made $800 during the time it took him to go pick up a pizza. But try and get him to tell you who was paying him that, and you get nothing. I asked for advice on finding legit reliable referrals, not for his contact list. There are a LOT of scammers out there. But they were both tight lipped on the subject. They told me to google it. Geez...

I had a site with google adsense. They just check to make sure its a "real" site and not something setup by a bot somewhere. Put it up, write content, give it 2-4 weeks then apply and you'll probably be fine. I never made it to the $100 you need to get a payout. My mistake was trying to provide useful information.

By contrast, photoblogs like "peopleofwalmart" make hundreds of dollars a day from photos that users send in. User driven content is the way to go if you can.

I'd imagine once you get a few of them set up, setting up more is easy. The overhead goes down as you spread a hosting account over multiple sites. Domains are cheap, and content management software is freeware. If you have people writing your content for you for free, you are golden.

[debtheaven]

Wow Gowron thanks so much for that explanation. This is not the sort of thing I would want to do. It really is like clickable spam.

You say: My mistake was trying to provide useful information. Somehow that does not surprise me LOL.

DH created a website for me that I've never done anything with, this conversation has inspired me to start doing something with that.

Again many thanks!

[Deleted]

Trying2befrugal....that was me. I just switched my names.

I think most people picture people making money online as shady, spammy, or long salesletters. My sites are none of the above. One of my most successful sites is basically a hobby site where I sell products to people in that hobby. I started it back in 2006. The fundementals of selling are the same. You build a site that people feel comfortable shopping at, you stock the products that people want, and then you drive traffic to the site. Over time, can improve the results by starting an email list and by making shoppers feel more comfortable (return policies, free 2-day shipping, etc).

Here's an example of how to start a site like that:

1) Brainstorm---Come up with ideas that interest you. Let's say "Quilting"

2) Go to freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ and type that keyword in. That will give you the approximate volume that people are searching for that per day.

3) Let's say that based on what you see, you think that the quilting market seems pretty lucrative. There's a lot of volume for the "shopping keywords" e.g. "Quilting Supplies" and decent volume for content keywords e.g. "Quilting Patterns"

4) Quilting is a big enough market where there will be trade shows and such. So if you look for those, you'll find distributors for those products.

5) Here's one distributor. checkerdist.com who sells to that market. Get a price list, compare the prices to what your competition is charging, and then maybe it'll work.

6) Look at your competitions website and try to create a better website. I can GUARANTEE you, that it's not hard or expensive to do that. I use a service that designs websites for Yahoo stores that costs me $1200 and they look like a Fortune 500 website.

That's just an example.

[Deleted]

I just wanted to separate these posts out. MOST people don't want to create a site where they sell things. So the next line down is creating a content site. That hobby site that I have has affiliates. Affiliates get paid for referring sales to me....Amazon.com actually has the largest affiliate program in the world. I give affiliates a special link and if someone comes to my site and buys, then they get paid a commission.

There is a website that is an affiliate for me. Keep in mind, this is a niche market and I'm making really good market. But I pay this guy about $250-$350/month for the sales he refers me. And all he did is stick an image ad in the right corner of his website. That's ontop of the revenue he gets from Adsense and other affiliate programs he does. AND, he COULD MAKE EVEN MORE. I keep telling the guy that if he did some more active promotion he could probably make 5x the amount. But he's kinda lazy. ha.

But here is a great example of a guy that built a site that has a lot of great examples.

www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d40.htm

1) He provides great content about a topic he cares about.
2) He has affiliate ads along the side. And he tells you that he provides this info for free and asks you to buy through his links.
3) He accepts donations, which surprisingly if you provide really good info people will just send you donations.
4) He promotes his workshops, seminars, etc.

There are other things he could do that would improve his site. Namely just add an email list to collect email addresses. A good tactic to get more email addresses is to give somebody something valuable for signing up. Something like "Beginners Guide to Maximizing DLSR camera". Then when new products come out, you can contact your list and email to them.

I have a rather large customer list just from doing something like that. I email my list before big days (Christmas) and offer specials. I've generated over $15k in sales in a couple days by doing this. And it's a way to instantly get customers who visited your site BACK to your site.

[8 Bit WWBG]

Going to trade shows to find affiliates sounds more promising than some of the previous "just google it" advice.

I firmly believe that if some of the WIRs like frugalsuz monetized their blog, they could make a lot of money. They already have the traffic necessary to support big adsense gains. But not everyone clicks adsense ads. Hell, I am running Ad Blocker Pro, so most of the time I don't even SEE ads.

[Sum Dum Gai]

But not everyone clicks adsense ads. Hell, I am running Ad Blocker Pro, so most of the time I don't even SEE ads.

And there's the rub. Some browsers block these ads by default now. Even on the ones that don't, the rate of click through and eventual purchase is vanishingly small. Think about it. If you're reading this right now there's an ad on the top and bottom of this page. Are you going to click on it? I don't even look at the stupid things, even though I'm here daily. If I did look at it, I can guarantee you I'm not buying anything it's advertising. I can't stand internet spam. I purposefully avoid spending money at any site that feels the need to cover fraking everything online with their obnoxious glaring billboards.

[Deleted]

And there's the rub. Some browsers block these ads by default now. Even on the ones that don't, the rate of click through and eventual purchase is vanishingly small. Think about it. If you're reading this right now there's an ad on the top and bottom of this page. Are you going to click on it? I don't even look at the stupid things, even though I'm here daily. If I did look at it, I can guarantee you I'm not buying anything it's advertising. I can't stand internet spam. I purposefully avoid spending money at any site that feels the need to cover fraking everything online with their obnoxious glaring billboards.

Well there is a difference in advertising. A general flashing banner won't get most people to click on it, BUT that's reflected in the cost as well. Some CPA (cost per action) offers are just looking to gather ZIP codes (no clue why). They payout $1-$2 per zip code submit. If you can get the advertising for cheap, then you can get horribly low response and still have it worth it. Plus, a lot of times it's about casting a wide net, identifying the sites that convert higher than others, and then zero-ing in on those places.

But adsense ads ARE targeted. I'll rarely click on ads, but I do click on adsense ads. And on my sites where I run adsense, I average around 10% Click through rates. So 10% of the people do find the ads compelling enough to click.

Advertising is also getting smarter as networks gather data about you. Jillian Michaels (biggest loser) site is a good example of this. If you visit her site, leave, and then start surfing the web. You might notice that her ads are all over. In reality, what's happening is that her ads are only being shown to you because you've expressed an interest (by visiting her site).

So the advertising will continue to get smarter. Privacy laws are not going to stop it. Because if you don't want to give them access to certain data, you're not going to get the stuff you're used to for free.