When people are trying to make money online the most important thing is making something or providing a service that people will take out their credit cards and pay for. You can't just make something and sell it unless there is an actual demand in the market for it.
I've had a bit of success lately selling Adsense Niche sites online and I've been looking to diversify my income. Spencer at Niche Pursuits created his Long Tail Pro keyword research tool. The Adsense Flippers are in the process of creating a new theme that will directly compete with the CTR Theme which I use on all my websites. Chris Guthrie has released multiple products lately including the Welcome Splash which I use on this site and a recent tool that helps find blogs to guest post on.
These guys are doing a fantastic job over leveraging their niche site audience and really making a name for themselves in the IM world. I congratulate them and I think we should all learn from their examples. That's why last week I sent out an email asking my list subscribers if they could share with me at least ONE product or service in Internet marketing which doesn't exist that you'd be willing to pull out your credit card for". I got a great response and I've shared some of them below. I'd love for you all to comment on their ideas in the comments below to help them see if any of their ideas are viable or not. So here we go:
Mike,
The biggest leverage comes from uncertainty about making the jump outside of the US and into a "location-independent" lifestyle. Looking at the buzz from internships like the one at TropicalMBA, there is almost liability on the side of the site owner to sponsor some kind of internship overseas, in return for work.What do people really want? Most people I talk to would be happy just getting started, regardless of whether or not they're making money at the outset. But if people don't have some kind of project or goal to work toward, then their lack of faith in their own ability to make money is too much of a limiting factor.What I would build (and I'm working on), is some kind of mastermind program that actually incorporates the thing that people want: location-independence. The initial travel costs could be hedged by a contract agreement, a pay-it-forward business model, or some creative content idea.Travel-work is such a sought-after thing. How many millions of 20-something Americans volunteer abroad every year just for the travel opportunity? I remember a posting for a year-long 6 figure job to document the deterioration of the great barrier reef.. I don't know if it was even real or not but the buzz attracted millions of people to the site."Location-independent" entrepreneurs have so much power to pull the lever on this travel-work idea but few do. Again, the product would be something that makes it worthwhile to hire a travelling intern from the perspective of the successful entrepreneur.I'm excited to see others' ideas.-Danny purepassive.com
Mike
Here's something I wanted to do for a while but kinda failed into putting it into practice…
You would have a default set of keywords .. competitive keywords like lose weight fast, viagra, acai berry .. etc
The software will monitor the first 5 pages of results and will record the changes in the serps and identify opportunities for both "parasite" sites you can exploit for posting backlinks on .. or use to post content and rank due to the domain authority.
I'm not sure if the whole idea got trough .. and identifying link opportunities might be a tough job to pull .. but would be pretty useful ..
Gabriel
Hi Mike,
I don't think we (niche site builders) need and more small tools. We have awesome tools just a lot of them.One tool thats missing is a database system to track keyword research done already and domains etc bought.How many times have you ended up evaling the same keyword again..
Hi Mike,
A solo marketing list and swipe files for Non IM niches.
Most courses or information focus on how to build a list within the IM niche. To build a list in another niche is somewhat more difficult.
I know you build niche sites and mostly make your income from onsite traffic, but the next step in my mind is to build a list. One step would be to buy a solo advert from a person who already own a list in my niche.
How would you pursue list building for your niche sites or is that not part of your business model?
Noline http://panicawayreviewer.org
Hi Mike,
I'm not sure if this request is to far fetched but it would be a major help to me because I'm new at building niche sites. I'd love to have a tool that can scan my site and tell me if it is weak in some area. Like say my site is not properly SEO'd (not sure if real word) right, the tool could let me know I need more keywords in my article. Or lets say my title isn't best optimized for what the article is about. Or my page doesn't have enough links to rank in the field I'm trying to compete in. Or H tags not used, or used correctly for what I'm trying to rank for. Or my adsense placements could be in a better place. Or the color of my adsense ads need to be changed to blend in better with website.I'm not sure if any of this is possible but for a neebie like me these type of answers would make life a lot easier to know why I'm not ranking. Sort of like a tool that can do a preventive maintenance on niche sites and give feedback for what to try.Thanks,
Mike,
A plugin that guides you for ideal on page optimization would be great, something that goes beyond H1, H2 and H3 titles and keyword density.
Brent Bradford
Mike,What I would like to see is a hybrid article directory/article repository. A place where we IM'ers can post original content with links, creative commons pics, embedded YouTube videos into a repository. From there other IM'ers can look for new articles for our sites and offer to post them (like the article gallery at myblogguest.com). If no offers come or none are acceptable after a set period of time (3 days, 1 week, etc., set by the subscriber), the articles would be posted on an appropriate niche web site. Important, these niche sites should have aged domains with some PR, and only post articles in the appropriate niche – travel, real estate (buying), real estate (selling), fitness, dating, home improvement, etc. It would be good too if these domains were hosted on different hosts, had no relationship with each other, and linking building (UAW, AMR, SENukeX, etc.) to these niche posts were done automatically (over time) as part of the subscription.DarrylMy link (I don't have an up and going blog right now) – http://www.squidoo.com/Suitcase_Packing_Tips
Hey Mike,
I needed to respond to your email because I have always wanted to outsource my "google sniper site" creation. I bought a course from George Brown that shows me exactly how to make a website, rank it in google page #1 and monetize it via clickbank or offers. I haven't really had the time and money to implement it even though its relatively inexpensive to make a website. So I would love to be offered a service that makes me these "google sniper sites" to make money promoting something from clickbank I would happily save up to buy an "empire" of these sites. If you can respond to this email please do so as I would like to hear your thoughts on this.
Felipe Marquez
If any of these ideas interest you please let us (me and my readers) know in comments below.
To those persons using WordPress who are looking for a SEO-quickscan: it already exists. You can download the Yoast SEO plugin which gives you a page analysis per post/page for optimizing your SEO.
Good luck!
Michiel
Thanks, Michiel. Nice input.
Hi Mike
for nick SEOmoz has some of the best tools to do on page eval work. Also SERPIQhas an on page analyser that does a great job. you can sign up for a free trial account to get that info.
Yoast is also great as he's simplified it a lot.
Be warey of an SEO plugins that help optimise on page to much. you dont want perfect results now in post penquin. Yoast dialed down the requirements to get a green signal to avoid this.
regards and thanks for sharing my idea 🙂
I’ve heard great things about SerpIQ.
Thanks Steve for participating.
Most of those products either exist or are bad ideas.
"One tool thats missing is a database system to track keyword research done already and domains etc bought."
This ideas is actually pretty good. A way to collect all of your domains and the keywords associated with them so they can be easier to manage. Although there probably isn't a huge market for this. There are only so many people with hundreds of sites to their name.
Tyler,
There are probably more people than you would think with large amounts of domains in their portfolio. There are also companies that manage their customers’ domains.
Thanks for your input!
I'm on board with the domain portfolio database idea! Right now I use an Excel spreadsheet and it's less than ideal.
Perhaps you could create it.
A really great idea for a post Mike! Keep up the awesome blog and keep us up on where your at in the world.
Nick,
I’m glad you liked it. I like to reach out to my readers once in a while for ideas.
I think that would be a fun project, but would hate to steal anyone's idea! I guess even if I created it for myself it would be useful. I think I would want to it be web-based and not like a locally installed program though. I have a few different devices/computers (Dell laptop, iMac, iphone, and ipad) that I use regularly and would want to be able to access the info from any device.
Perhaps you can partner up and do it together. There’s a link to their website in the post.
Thanks, Mike. Great post idea by the way!
Hello Mike, I love this post, and I really thank you for including my response to you! 😀
Felipe,
I’m glad you liked it. Thanks for taking part!