In my last post, I showed you how you could breathe new life into low-paying CPC keywords, but also had low search competition. In that post, I had suggested building an eBay store on a domain that you own. But there was something else that I wanted to show you that could help maximize your profits with such a store.

Let’s say you’re looking for men’s watches in Google’s Keyword Tool. The CPCs are pretty low, at least, they’re too low for me if I were thinking of creating a site for the sole purpose of generating Adsense income. But the search levels look pretty good (see image below; click to enlarge). You’ll notice the one I highlighted in yellow.

Now copy and paste that keyword phrase, “breitling mens watches”, into the search form on eBay and do it under “All Categories”. You get a lot of results, don’t you? Let’s narrow that down a bit.

You’ll need an eBay account to do the following (it’s free).

• Click the “Completed Listings” in the left sidebar.
• Next, click on one of the selections in the Location section of the left sidebar. For our purposes, click on “US Only”.

What exactly are we looking for?

Okay, that narrows it down a bit, but it’s still a lot to go through. Plus, and more importantly, it’s not showing us what we’re hunting for, which is the prices in green off to the right. Green means the product has been sold; red means it wasn’t. In short, the more green we see on the screen, the more green we get in our pocket when making a sale on our blog. Follow me so far? Good.

Just for grins, click on the “Luxury” link in the “Type” section of the left sidebar. As of this writing, it shows that there are 173 products within that subcategory.

Ahhh, that’s better! See those green price tags? And they’re quite hefty, wouldn’t you say? The bigger the final sale, the bigger our commission, so let’s scroll down some more to get a feel for things.

Okay, so there are definitely more items that have not sold (noted by the red), than ones that have (the green ones). But I wouldn’t get too discouraged by this because of the final sales figures. At those prices, you could make a decent commission on just a few sales per week.

As you go through the completed listings, take note of the titles of the products that have been sold. Are there any name brands that you can spot? Maybe you can tell which brands are selling more than others. Or perhaps there’s another descriptor there that you can detect pattern in. Those are the things you want to pick up on. Why? Because that’s how you’re going to refine the products you put on your eBay store.

I should make it clear that I’m NOT talking about creating a store on eBay. Instead, this is about you creating your very own eBay store on your very own domain name using the products I suggested in my previous post (BANS or phpBay Pro). These tools give you the ability to filter out products you don’t want and end up with a narrowly defined product line — the kind that sells! And how do we know they sell? Because we just narrowed our search on eBay as described above.

We’re not through doing our research though, so go back and filter on other subcategories. Instead of filtering on “Luxury”, try something else like “Quartz”. How does the green on the screen look for that one? Do you see any patterns that would indicate a profitable niche?

When you build your store

Regardless of which product you use to build your store, you’ll want to structure it in such a way to that makes it intuitive to the user. So just like we narrowed our search in the example above, build your categories from the top down — large to small.

So if you noted during your research that sales are high in the “luxury” subcategory, maybe go one step further and break that down by brand names or prices. Then start again with another subcategory and work your way down from there. Not all subcategories need to be broken down. Just use your common sense and think of how a user might shop.

The key is to make it easy for them to find what they want. Giving them the same information in more ways than one could help solve that.

When you’re researching keywords to build your niche site for the purposes of making money with Google Adsense, it’s important to find keywords with a high cost-per-click (CPC) and relatively low search volume (low competition). This is the low-hanging fruit that I’ve outlined recently.

But what if the CPC stinks, but the search volume looks ideal? Do you build the site anyway and hope for the best? Well, you could, but you might make more money with what I’m about to tell you. Before I get to that, here’s a disclaimer:

If you are pregnant, thinking of becoming pregnant, or know someone who is pregnant, then inform your spouse immediately. Success may result if this information is used properly. If you experience profit for more than four hours, then seek the counsel of a financial adviser and invest responsibly. Dizziness may occur if you spin in place really, really fast. Do not operate heavy machinery after taking this advice because, well, this information has nothing to do with educating you on that.

Okay, good. Got that out of the way.

There have been many times when I’ve found keywords that fit this scenario. I tend to avoid CPCs lower than, say, $1.75. Not all the time; it could be lower or higher, and that could be based on my overall feel of the niche I’m researching or if it’s late at night and I’m just too darn tired to care.

But in either case, my eye naturally gravitates to the upward end of the spectrum and your’s should, too. We need to find a way to maximize our profits while minimizing our efforts.

So what can you do to boost your profits with these keywords?

If the niche interests you, but Adsense doesn’t seem to be the way to go, then why not build an eBay store using something like BANS or phpBay Pro? The money you’d make would then come from commissions made off sales or new customer signups. It’s like giving all that information you’ve collected a second chance, which can be very rewarding.

But don’t setup shop just yet! There’s more you need to know that could help maximize your profits even more. Details for that will be in my next post.

In the meantime, I’d like to direct your attention to a buddy of mine, Mark Mason. He’s put together a video on Josh Spaudling’s amazingly popular report called the $5 Mini-Site Formula. Both the video and report are free, btw. The video will explain in detail the process I use when building niche sites and profiting from them.

It wasn’t too long ago that I opposed outsourcing. Not the idea of it, but I found it difficult to allow myself to hire somebody to do work that I could (should?) be doing myself.

I’ve changed since then.

I’ve outsourced several writing projects over the past couple of months. Some were at a fixed price. And more recently I had people bid on a project. Here are some things about each that I wanted to share with you in case you’re thinking about outsourcing.

You get what you pay for.
Boy, ain’t that the truth! A few months ago, a writing service (which will remain nameless) was running an anniversary special: 250-word articles for $1 a piece or something like that. I thought to myself, “Cool, now I can really make some headway here and get all those articles I want written.”

I have three words for you friends: I…got…crap!

What I saved in getting them written, I ended up spending the value of my time in rewriting them. It’s just not worth it. So basically, I paid for the opportunity to edit somebody else’s work.

Don’t always go for the cheapest bid.
It’s quite interesting to see how much people will charge for a project. It’s tempting to see bargain basement prices, but like I said above, you get what you pay for. I go for the upper-middle range if everything else looks good to me. And if the service you’re using is worth anything, they’ll have a rating system for their bidders. This is a must! It’s even better when they show reviews from previous buyers. Look at these closely before you decide on the winning bid.

You need how long to finish?
Just as the bids are varied, so, too, are the delivery times. I’ve seen some bidders estimate 10 days while others can do it in 3 days — this is for the same project, mind you. So even though it would be great to get what you’re asking for sooner, avoid rushing into choosing the shortest duration based on that alone. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t trust them, but do what I did and contact the bidder to ask them to confirm their duration. Give them a chance to rethink their situation and review your requirements just to be sure they made the right choice.

Go for as high a quality as you can afford.
If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking, “Well, I’ve seen their samples and they’re not too bad. I can edit things here and there.” That’s true, but it’s in your best interest to minimize the time you would do this.

In my case, I wanted articles to use for a niche site I was building and then submit the rest to article directories. So I wanted to get them out there as soon as possible and have my site make me money. The more time you take to edit things, the longer it will be before you start seeing money coming in with whatever monetization method you’ve chosen.

Ask for samples of their work
This is crucial. The bidder may sound great in their sales pitch, but if they don’t have what it takes “under the hood”, then move on to the next one.

Communicate!
Trust me, speaking as a project manager (which is what I do by day), the number one reason something fails is because of a lack of communication. So get in touch with your bidder as soon as the deal is accepted and let them know you’re there to make things work. Give them what they need, when they need it, and be clear that you expect nothing less from them.

There are probably several of tips that I could have listed. Feel free to drop me a comment to tell me some of yours.

I love the thrill of the hunt — hunting for money making niches, that is.

Finding that corner of the web that has the potential to make me money is pretty cool. There are no guarantees, of course, but if you’re following someone like Josh Spaulding, your chances have increased.

By utilizing the techniques he outlines in his very popular $5 Mini-Site Formula (that’s a free report, btw), he demonstrates how to locate the low-hanging fruit of the Internet and turning it into profit. I’ve done that here in the form of free downloadable research to get you started.

Profit in shipping containers

Below is a screenshot of some keywords I found using Google’s Keyword tool and Josh’s techniques:

I’ll explain what you’re seeing here in future posts, but until then I really want to encourage you to download Josh’s free report to understand the mechanics of what you’re seeing here. In short, this is definitely a market I’d tap into.

How would you profit from all this?

By creating a blog specifically for this niche, putting some Adsense ads on it, and promoting it through the use of article marketing, you can lay the groundwork for visitors to not only learn from your content, but to click on your ads and putting cash in your pocket!

Those numbers in the far right column tell you roughly how many times those keywords are being searched for on a monthly basis. The CPC column (second from the left) is not what you’ll earn per click. Rather, it’s what an advertiser would expect to pay if they were bidding on those terms. But that means you get a cut of it, of course. So the higher the CPC the more money you make when people click on a related ad.

Here’s some more work I’ve already done for you — available domain names that match the niche:

BUY-SHIPPING-CONTAINER.COM
CLEANING-CONTAINER.COM
CLEANINGCONTAINER.COM
CONTAINER-BOXES.COM
CONTAINER-PRICES.COM
SHIPPING-CONTAINER-SALES.COM
SHIPPING-CONTAINERS-OVERSEAS.COM
SHIPPINGCONTAINERSOVERSEAS.COM
SPECIMEN-CONTAINER.COM
SPECIMEN-TRANSPORT.COM
SPECIMENCONTAINER.COM
STEEL-SHIPPING-CONTAINER.COM
STEEL-SHIPPING-CONTAINERS.COM
STEEL-STORAGE-CONTAINER.COM
STEELSHIPPINGCONTAINER.COM
STORAGE-CONTAINERS-FOR-SALE.COM
TUBE-CONTAINER.COM
USED-SHIPPING-CONTAINER.COM
USED-SHIPPING-CONTAINERS-FOR-SALE.COM

Here are the keywords in a text file for you to download: keywords.

Why am I doing this?

A number of reasons. By showing you what works, I hope to remove some of the mystery and intimidation that some of you may have with creating your own niche site. Hey, I’ve been there, too, but honestly, it’s not as hard as you think.

Second, I want you to get to know Josh. He’s one of the very few people who has held my attention for a while now. I’ve mentioned here before that I drop Internet marketers/gurus like a hot potato if they lose my trust or annoy me. Josh has never done that and I look forward to his advice each and every time.

If you like this kind of post, please tell me by leaving me a comment below. I have other batches of even higher paying niches if you’re interested.

I’ve mentioned here before how powerful LinkedIn can be. It makes your world smaller when people you connect with put you in touch with a person you’re ultimately trying to contact.

But your network is only as good as the number (and quality) of those you connect with. You can do it the slow way, but truly getting to know someone first, then asking if they’d like to connect with you on LinkedIn (become your first degree). Nothing wrong with that, but it yields little results for the amount of effort you put into it.

Here are some ways that I have used to increase my number of first degree connections a lot faster.

1. Join groups
You’re more likely to connect with people who share the same interests as you do. There are tons of like-minded people out there waiting for you to join their group. Most people on LinkedIn configure their profiles to allow you to contact them and reference the association you have with the group you both belong to. So once you join a group, browse through the member list and determine who you would like to connect with. If need be, ask one of your first degree connections to help introduce you.

Groups worth joining: TopLinked, OpenNetworkers, LION500.

2. Post to discussions
Each group has discussions capabilities — like a forum. Be sure to check the rules of the group first, but chances are good that they’ll allow you to post to that forum asking for people to invite you. Conversely, look for people in that group who have already posted they’d be interested in connecting with other members.

3. Import your contacts
LinkedIn enables you to import your address book from Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and a couple of others. Easy-to-follow instructions are included in the process. Once you’ve uploaded your list of contacts, you can then choose to invite any or all of them to connect. It’s all up to you.

I mentioned earlier that TopLinked is a group worth joining. They offer members (free of charge) a list of member email addresses specifically for the purposes of sending invitations to. If you want to be included on that list (thus saving you a lot of time), there’s a small and reasonable fee to pay. You can see your number of connections rocket into the 100s in just a couple of days using this method.

As always, use discretion when you choose to connect with people on LinkedIn. Not everybody is open to connecting with just anyone. Here are some tips you can follow when inviting people to connect with you:

• Be courteous and professional
• Personalize the invitation instead of using the templates LinkedIn gives you. This includes pointing out something you see as having in common with the person you’re sending the invitation to. (e.g., a past employer, something you both have on your profile, association with a group on LinkedIn, etc.)
• Check and double check your spelling and grammar.
• Always close the message with thanking them for their time.

I have written written a free report that includes many other tips for using LinkedIn. It’s a quick download.

Photo source: shlomaster

Coming up with a name for a company or a product can be a bit challenging at times. On one hand it may be you have too many names to choose from. But I think the opposite is more often the case: not being able to come up with anything.

Ideas may pop up in our head days at a time, but because we’re not sitting down and trying to think of one, we draw a blank.

And, of course, there’s the problem of finding one you like, but discovering that it has already been registered as a name or domain name. I won’t focus on that here as that gets into legal matters, so I’m going to help you with the creation part of the process instead.

Make a list
Don’t get hung up on finding the perfect word when you first start out. Just contemplate words you like and jot them down. Is it a word that you’d like to include as part of the name? Or is it a word that evokes an image or emotion that you want to express? Consider other company/product names that you like as a benchmark.

Use a thesaurus
I know, it doesn’t sound “sexy”. Seriously though, this can be such an important step. When I came up with my online business name, StarFrost Media, I’d enter anything that would pop into my head and see if there was a better alternative and oftentimes, it would. I probably went off any a gazillion different directions, but that’s okay — my goal was to come up with some good brain food to help me narrow down to a decision. I don’t care what it is — on average, it’s a lot easier to make a decision on something that exists than it is to create something.

Use a name generator
Okay, you’ve racked your brain for ideas and you just don’t feel like you’re making progress. Maybe it’s time to use a name generator. There are all sorts of generators out there for names. Just like the thesaurus idea above, these can spark an idea you might not have considered otherwise. Again, it’s about exploration, finding what sounds and looks good. These may not find you the perfect name by themselves, but could definitely play a key role in getting you there. Here are a few sites to try: Random Business Name Generator, Web 2.0 Name Generator, SnapItNow.

Make a new spelling
This has to be done carefully because it could work against you right from the start, leaving visitors/consumers to move on without giving you a second thought. Being clever is fine, but in those critical moments when someone hear’s your company name, they can’t get hung up on “what does that mean?” Flickr, for example, by itself doesn’t conjure up a meaning, but when you visit their site it starts to make sense.

Make up a word or use one for a different purpose
Probably the hardest of them all, but it could really pay off. Some examples come to mind: Twitter (and all the derivatives we’ve seen), Google, Digg, etc. These meant something different back in the 20th century, but look at them now. Marketing plays a heavy hand in their success, so be prepared to promote hard.

What strategies work for you? Leave me a comment and share what it is you do to come up with names.

It’s well hidden, but worth the effort to find. For all you Gmail users out there you might want to take a gander at the settings interface and clicking on the “Labs” tab. Doing so will bring up a laundry list of some very cool features that can enhance your Gmail experience. To be clear, these are browser independent, so everyone gets the benefit.

Here are a few that I’m currently using.

Superstars
Up til now we’ve only had the yellow stars to add to messages. Well, this feature gives you a few more choices: blue star, red star, red bang, and green check mark. Now you can put a little more meaning behind these icons and make your inbox a little more productive.

Mouse Gestures
I don’t know if this conflicts with other mouse gesture plugins for Firefox (it may just depend on how you have them configured), but this is a very cool feature enabling you to move forward and backward when reading messages. Just right-click and hold and then drag left or right to go to previous or next, respectively. Drag up and you’re taken to the inbox. Very fast and easy to use.

Mark as Read Button
Tired of fumbling for the “mark as read” item in the dropdown menu? Yeah, me too. This nifty features gives you an easy-to-access button along with the others at the top so you can quickly mark your messages as read.

There are a total of 25 enhancements. Others that I haven’t tried, but show promise are: forgotten attachment detector, quote selected text, hide unread counts, and signature tweaks.

Check them out and let me know what you think.

If you’re old enough to remember being taught to type on an actual typewriter, you were probably taught to add two spaces after the end of a sentence. The reason for this was because typewriters had a fixed amount of space for each character.

Because of this, it was hard to distinguish where one sentence ended and the other began. Adding two spaces helped bring this separation out.

The Computer Is Not A Typewriter.

When computers came onto the scene, their ability to make more efficient use of the space for each character made this separation unnecessary. Yet, you’ll still find double spaces here and there (e.g., emails, websites).

Is it a cardinal sin to add two spaces? Nope, but why continue making your thumb do double-time when typing when it’s not really necessary? Just think how much time you’ll save typing.

[tags]tips,typewriting[/tags]

I’ve been meaning to branch out a little with my writing. When I found out about Problogger’s group writing contest, I saw this as an opportunity to do just that.

As I grow older, I continue to wonder how things have gotten so out of hand in our American society. I’m not talking about the war on terror or how the world has come to view this country. I’m talking about the absence of justice within its borders. Where are the values we once held so dear?

As children we had youth to blame for our ignorance. Even though we may have been vaguely aware of the issues of the day, we did so on the sidelines and left it to mom and dad to handle. Fast forward to today, some adults still hold tight to that ignorance and blame others for their shortcomings, and leave it to the courts to handle.

Many factors come into play that cause “ripples” to flow through our society. As they collide with one another, they compound the problem and turn into waves. I equate these waves to sympathies for the devil because if people weren’t so sympathetic to his wishes, the world would be a better place. Oh, they don’t see that they’re being sympathetic, but their actions have the same affect, nonetheless.

These are five things I think give him reason to look up to us and smile:

That’s illegal, not immigration in general.

You want to live in my country? Okay, just…do it…legally, thanks.

It’s the soft approach (if you can call it an approach at all) that the American government has taken with illegal immigration that has encouraged a feeling of security with said immigrants. Millions of illegals and their sympathizers are marching saying they’re not criminals, why they have rights too, how they’re so mistreated.

Stop, you’re making me cry.

You are criminals (you broke the law getting here), you have no rights in our country (save for the basic human rights everyone deserves), and you have definitely not been mistreated with all the freebies you’ve been leeching off of hard-working Americans who have to pay more still to get what you get for free.

Show a little respect for yourself, for your children, and just do the right thing by going to the back of the line.

And stop expecting to have everything translated. We speak English here.

A woman in Florida is facing two years in prison because she had her young child stand up to a bully in school. No one was harmed, but come on! Two years? A man steals a woman’s purse and gets a lengthy sentence, but another one sells drugs to kids and gets a lesser sentence. Good grief!

The justice system has been turned upside down. Outrageous sentences for minor offenses. Mild sentences for horrendous crimes. Make the punishment fit the crime. Why is that so difficult?

Another notch in the devil’s belt is this little gem. Everyone has gotten so wound up about offending others that not only are they willing to bend over backwards and then some to accommodate them, but people are willing to jump down someone’s throat if you so much as look at them cross-eyed.

Come on! No one has a right not to be offended. It will happen and while I agree it may be painful/embarrassing/difficult at times, I can assure you it will pass and you won’t need someone to sue to see you through to the next day. Get a little tougher, please.

When kids get hurt, they run to their mommies. When adults get hurt, they run to their lawyers. It doesn’t matter if the adult is the one to blame in the first place. They’ve been hurt, darnit, and by golly someone’s going to pay for that!

Why? Whatever happened to just standing up and saying, “I screwed up! I shouldn’t have been blow-drying my hair while taking a shower, I know, but I was running late to work and it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

The gene that’s responsible for making us feel responsible has somehow been given a shot of novacaine. Instead of taking responsibility, we’ve chosen to pay lawyers large sums of money to distract us from doing the right thing because hey: it’s all about winning, right? I take that back. It’s about winning and making sure others lose.

Did I miss a memo somewhere along my life? You know the one that everyone else seems to be referring to. I think it goes something like this:

I, [state your name] hereby promise to follow this code of conduct. I’m going to:

1. be the winner (and make sure you know you’re the loser)
2. be right (even though I’m not)
3. prove that you’re wrong (even though you may be right)
4. gloat (your pain is my gain)
5. ignore your needs (because if I don’t, then that means time away from me paying attention to my needs)
6. scream the loudest (because even though I may be wrong, the squeakiest wheel gets the grease)
7. make sure to pull you down with me (because taking blame is a heavy load to bear and I need your help carrying it)
8. call you names and make you look bad (which will somehow make me look good)
9. count my money and count/spend yours for you
10. I’m tired of waiting for what I want so I’ve decided I’m entitled to it, therefore you should give it to me because it now sounds more important

Seriously, does any of this sound familiar? Surely it must be obvious to even the most casual observer that something’s not right with the way things are today.

It has been said that “the devil is in the details.” Well, there are a lot of details he’s been in lately. And as long as people continue to give in to his interests, continue to take the easy way or runaway from responsibility instead of facing the challenge head-on, we’re only encouraging him and things won’t get any better.

I welcome your comments.

[tags]politics,illegal immigration,justice,injustice,entitlement,politically correct,selfishness,accountability[/tags]

I was browsing the Web — as I often do — and stumbled upon this great post over at Productivity501. In fact, the entire site is a great resource for time management tips, so much so that I’ve added it to my blogroll.

This particular post lists 17 things that you’re probably doing, but shouldn’t. The goal of this is to make better use of your time and become a little wiser for it.

Do you continue to deposit your checks at the bank instead of using direct deposit? Pay your bills by snail mail instead of elelctronically? How about backing up to CDs? Personally, I could relate to a few of these things and will endeavor to try to improve. How many things do you indulge in?

The author, Mark Shead, covers a wide range of topics: software tips, activity enhancements for business and personal experiences, and much more.

[tags]productivity,tips,advice[/tags]