Cash The Checks

I often get asked: “What type of site should I create?”

While I can’t tell you what topic, I can share my own personal experience that “build and forget” sites typically do better than sites requiring constant upkeep. (This applies to internet marketers on small to medium budgets)

In the long run, when considering the time/money ratio, you’re better off spending your time coming up with new ideas and promoting your sites rather than sticking to one site and updating it often. I’ve found that I make the same amount of money updating a site once a month compared to once a week.

- Edwin, CashTheChecks.com

When you see a business in trouble, do you see a mess you want to run away from or do you see endless possibilities? When I go to a business (fast food place, auto body shop, spa) I see all sorts of ways to improve their bottom line.

It can be anything, for example office-like formalities such as getting a signature here and authorization there and proper stamps on forms. I’m sure getting rid of office politics and ancient methods could improve the efficiency of the business.

I notice so many fast food joints who waste money needlessly. They let you get as many ketchup packets as you want, as many napkins as you want and unlimited refills. There’s plenty of abuse at these places. It’s best to keep those things behind the counter and give paying customers exactly what they want - but they have to ask for it first.

I see businesses all the time where the owner is slaving himself doing work that employees can do. If only he would devise a system/method, hire & train somebody, he could concentrate on another aspect of the business that’s being neglected.

- Edwin, CashTheChecks.com

Over the last week I sold off a few domains. These were sites that weren’t a great success. If I kept them I’m pretty sure they would have earned more than their registration fees every year if I just left them alone. But why would I keep a site that makes $15 a year and costs $10 a year to keep? It’s only $5 and it’s just noth worth it to keep checking stats every year and maintain the hosting and ads on the site.

So I decided to sell them - to thin the herd. I didn’t want to have a group of sites that did well, and another group that didn’t do well.Now, at least mentally, my network of sites are stronger because I’ve cut off the dying weeds growing on them and holding the rest back. It’s just a theory, but thinning the herd makes the remaining herd stronger.

- Edwin, CashTheChecks.com

Some people sit around and think of “million dollar ideas” left and right - but where are the millions of dollars? To make it big you not only have to be creative - but hard working. Don’t be a big talker, let your work do the talking.

- Edwin, CashTheChecks.com

At the start of a new site, it’s often times better to build value to the new site instead of trying to monetize from it immediately. A good example is YouTube. They’ve built quite the following and I’m sure at some point Google will start making big money off the site.

Here’s another example: As a programmer, it’s usually better to write your own scripts and sell them over and over again - instead of just doing custom script jobs for others.

A writer is better off writing for his own blog rather than writing guest posts for other peoples’ blogs.

In closing - building value and spending time on your own sites first is better in the long run than chasing the quick buck.

Edwin - CashTheChecks.com

One site that makes you $1,000 per day or 500 small sites making you an average of $2/day. Either way, not too shabby. But which is easier to do? For me, it’s 500 small sites. The reason is because you don’t really know which sites are going to take off and which ones aren’t, so you just keep building and building, some hit, some miss.

Some sites are flops because:
- I chose a topic that was too competitive.
- I had no pre-existing traffic in that niche.
- I’ve never really promoted the site much.
- Can’t find a sponsor to monetize the traffic.

Why some sites are a success:
- Because they’re blogs. (More marketing methods)
- Big spikes in search engine traffic.
- High converting/cost-per-click sponsor.

I’ve never liked the idea of having just 1 site you spend your whole time on. That’s putting all your eggs in one basket. What if your hosting goes down, what if your sponsor doesn’t pay out (on time or at all), what if you spent all this time and money only to realize your idea isn’t as profitable as you thought it was.

It’s risky to put all your efforts into one site, but if everything falls in place just right, it could make you the next internet entrepreneur millionaire.

Edwin - CashTheChecks.com

I’m considering creating a “How to Make Money Instruction Manual” or a “Step by Step Guide to Internet Riches”. I would charge a low monthly fee via PayPal for members to get access to this step-by-step training manual. I’ll update it once a month with a big article detailing the specific steps needed, one by one, explained thoroughly, to making money online. I’ve done this process hundreds of times the last 8 years and now it’s my time to share this knowledge.

Aside from the making money guide, I’ll give members my personal e-mail where I’ll respond to each question with specific information and instructions aimed for their particular need. All messages would be replied to within a couple of hours max. There’s many sites which offer eBooks, there might also be a few “how-to’s” out there, but they are often old and outdated. Mine will be updated and will be the first of its kind to offer personal training & tutoring of sorts.

Since I’ll only be charging a few bucks a month and I’ll be giving out industry secrets, what’s in it for me? First of all, there’s the joy involved in helping others, next there’s the monthly fees, but most importantly of all I’ll be earning referral revenue. If at some point in the lesson I give out a link to a particular sponsor which has performed well for me using my methods, members will join using my affiliate link. This is great because if I help them succeed and get rich, I’ll get paid more for referring them. Now it’s not only motivation for them to make money, but for me to help them make money.

I won’t get this project live until I have enough material and that will take some time. I won’t even think of setting a launch date right now because we’re most likely looking at this beginning sometime in 2008. So stay tuned.

Definitions

Cross Sells

Cross-sell is a marketing term for the practice of suggesting related products or services to a customer who is considering buying something. It’s like McDonalds saying “Would you like fries with that?”

Upsells

Up-sell is a marketing term for the practice of suggesting higher priced products or services to a customer. It’s like when McDonals used to ask “Would you like to Super Size that?”

Let’s give a practical example.. At the grocery store people come to buy bananas, apples, doritos, cheese, milk and meat. However, when you get to the aisle, all you see are water bottles, bubble gum packets, mints, chocolates, magazines & tv guides.

There’s a reason why those items are there. Because they’re small, only cost about a dollar, and are extremely enticing. Nobody goes to the grocery store to buy these items, however, while you’re waiting in line, you may pick these up and easily add it to your pile during checkout.

Here’s another example, lets say you have a small business where you sell school supplies (either online or at a retail store). You can easily sell non-competing products such as funny shirts, joke books and video games. It’s not only knowing about whether your audience will buy your product, but knowing your traffic well enough to know what else they would be itnerested in, without sacrificing the sales of your product.

1. Breathe. Take three breaths in and three breaths out.

2. Take a vacation. No, not a month-long vacation, but a 5 minute vacation. Just sit there and do nothing for 5 minutes. Don’t think about anything either. Take a break from the world.

3. Move slowly. Sometimes you’re rushed even though you have no reason to be. So slow down and do things slower.

4. Listen to music. This will free your brain up, because you’ll be humming your favorite tune instead of stressing your brain out.

5. Stretch out. Sitting in the same place or being in the same room can be stressful if you’ve been there for countless hours. Get out of the room or seat you’re in and stretch your neck and legs out, improve your blood circulation.

6. Put things into perspective. Whatever work-related stress issues aren’t life or death matters. So while they may be important at the time, it’s not the end of the world.

Later on I’ll post some of my favorite inspirational quotes, but they’re useful in business and here’s how you can incorporate them.

• You could have a flip-book type calender / day planner that comes with one inspirational quote per day.
• If you use google or yahoo as your home page, you can add inspirational quotes to your start page.
• You can write several inspirational quotes that mean a lot to you on post-it notes and leave them on your bulletin board or somewhere on your desk.

If you work from home, getting some office space is another expense that might not seem necessary, but it can lead you to earn more money. If you get an office space, here’s how it can benefit you.

• You’ll get more work done because there’s less distractions
• You’re in a work environment which will put you in the mood to work
• You realize you’re spending a few hundred dollars per month so you want to take advantage of it.

It’s an often discussed topic, in your internet marketing ventures, is it better to create 100 small websites, or devote all your time money and energy into forming 1 big monster site?

Here’s the benefits to creating just one site.

• You get to truly devote the time and work that a good site deserves.
• You can make this site real big so it competes with other leaders in the field.
• You can do daily updates and attract bookmarkers to your mega site.

Here’s the benefits to creating 100 small sites.

• If your one big site crashes or is a failure, you’re business is over.
• Some sites work, others don’t, you get to experiment to see what works.
• Diversification: There’s different sponsors, different hosts, different genres. You don’t keep all your eggs in one basket.

51% of College Humor.com has been reportedly sold for 20 million dollars. Just how big is College Humor? They sell ads to HBO, Comedy Central, they have their own clothing line, Busted Tees and there’s a movie in the making with Paramount Pictures. That’s what 6 million unique visits per month gets you, $20 mil for selling just half of the business and keeping operational control over it.

It’s not like “College Humor” is that good of a domain, it was only registered first in December of 1999. They just created a site with good content, updated daily, got loyal bookmark traffic, and branded their site wonderfully. If you’ve got a unique idea and are willing to put the time and effort into the project, you might end up like the folks over at College Humor or You Tube.

I’m seeing more and more movie companies using MySpace to promote their movie. Borat did this successfully. He did several MySpace video blog postings and had his MySpace updated often.. plus had a ton of people on his friends list.

I’m also seeing movies using a MySpace URL instead of their own domain name. The big movie companies are getting the hang of this viral marketing thing. It makes sense and it works, however they are giving MySpace free advertising. MySpace should offer a paid MySpace service where users pay to remove the ads from their profile, unlimited pictures and extra profile customization.

This brings up an idea, maybe you could register a bunch of MySpace URL’s (myspace.com/tvshow, myspace.com/movietitle, myspace.com/simplename, etc) and put up a For Sale sign on each. When somebody wants to register their name on MySpace to get a short easy MySpace URL, they’ll go to your page and perhaps want to buy it off of you.

MySpace URL’s are nowhere near as valuable as domain names, but to the right individual, it could be worth a pretty penny. Who knows maybe in a few years MySpace will get bigger and better than it already is. If I only had the ability to register domain names back in 1995 I’d be rich by now. Maybe in 10 years I’ll be saying: “If I only had registered a bunch of MySpace URL’s back in 2006 I’d be rich by now”.