Nota Bene Consulting

Don’t panic, I am still alive!

I know a few of you have been wondering what has happened to me, but I assure you all is well. All apart from my trusty laptop, that is! Yes, the unthinkable has happened and my mothership has been destroyed. Note to self - Laptops and Lemonade do not mix!

Luckily I earned enough from the Blog Flipping last month that it has paid for a new one!

What have I been doing?

Well, I am not going to write ambiguous post about how ‘busy’ I have been, but rather I intend to folow this up with a ‘proof is in the pudding’ post. That being said, I have been working hard and what I will say is that, very shortly, Nota Bene Consulting Blog will be moving! The truth of the matter is that I have taken on so much work since starting this site, that I am about to merge my online activities with another very well known figure! Want to know more?…questions in the comments

On another note, I want to give a special mention to Phil Howlett, who (with my guidance) sold his very first blog on sitepoint for $299. Well done, Phil. I look forward to posting your testimonial over the coming days.

What’s Happening In The Bloggerhood!

Getting back into the swing of things after clearing some workload has been very difficult. A lot has happened since my last post, so here is a rundown on some of the best bits:

• A New President - Well done to Barack Obama! I’m quite sure he will make a great President, but who gets your vote for the President Of The Blogosphere? Go cast your vote now!
• A New Revolution - We all know and love the Revolution themes, but are you ready for Revolution Two? How about a Revolution - SuiteJ Style!
• Rocky VI - Well not quite, who needs Balboa when you can get some Freddie Taylor. Thought is a possibility - first in the mind, then in reality!
• Joe Has Learnt To Read - Normal Joe has been living in the library, reading books and everything! It’s an obvious next step for him to learn how to write and you can see the results! Awesome Stuff.
• Wordvixen Fails - To sponsor a competition, not to win it. Get your entries in soon!
• The Pineapple Goes Quiet - Where is Jeni? Maybe because I am still refusing to play with Twitter I am missing out on the Pineapple adventures…who knows?
• Adam Gets Creadiv - A new project that could prove quite popular!
• Is Ben Patton Too Big? - Big Ben Gets Banned!!!!! My workplace has denied me access to Big Ben Pattons Blog!

On A Final Note!

I’m sure you know this already, but I just wanted to Congratulate Bryan Clark on his most recent sale. Blog Flipping Blueprint, along with SiteFlipU, was recently sold for $32,500! Good luck to the new owner. This will continue to be a very useful resource for a great number of bloggers, myself included!

Damn, it feels good to be a blogger

How To Monetize Your Blog

Most people who start a blog are looking to make money from it. Some are looking to make just enough to cover hosting costs while others are dreaming of making thousands of dollars a month which in turn lets them work for themselves.

So, where exactly do you start at when you decide to finally monetize your blog or site?

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is referring people to a product that somebody else is selling and you get paid for it.

There are 2 ways that you can get paid, Cost Per Action/Lead or Cost Per Sale.

Cost Per Action is the process when a visitor that you send to another site fills out a form. Usually this can consist of simply their email address or it could go all the way into asking for credit card information. The more that is required from the individual the higher the payout almost all of the time. You can typically expect to make anywhere from 50c to around $25 on the very high end. The more traffic you can drive that converts into qualified leads the more you can make.

Cost Per Sale is when you refer a visitor to a site but you only get paid when they actually buy something. So the visitor may go to the site and fill out a form requesting more information but you don’t get paid for it unless later on down the line they end up buying something. Obviously you have a lot less chance at making money this way because people have to actually spend money, but the payouts are a lot higher as well. Depending upon the cost of the product and the percentage of commission that the owner is willing to pay you could make anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars.

There are many affiliate networks out there, but here is a handful to get you started:
MarketLeverage, PepperJam Network, Azoogle Ads, Shareasale, NeverBlue Ads, LinkShare, ClickBank and Commission Junction.

While some offers are shared by multiple networks, I do recommend you sign up for more than one and look out for those exclusive deals.

Contextual Advertising

Probably the easiest way to start making money is by adding Google AdSense onto your site or blog. Once you place this on your blog Google will try to relate the ads to best match your page’s content. Yahoo also has a similar program but Google is the king because of their massive inventory of advertisers. You can also choose to use services such as Kontera and Chitika. These programs will find words inside of your content and turn them into links. Usually they will place a popup window on your site when a visitor mouses over the link and more information will be displayed. If a visitor clicks through you get paid a certain amount of money which is determined by how competitive the word is.

Private Ad Sales

Once you start driving some traffic to your site you may end up receiving emails from companies wanting to advertise their services and products on your site. Private ad sales are one of the best ways of making money because you are pretty much guaranteed to make money and you know what you are going to make up front.

The advertising can work two ways; CPM or CPC.

CPM stands for ‘Cost Per Thousand Impressions’, which means each time the banner or ad is viewed 1000 times the advertiser pays you a set amount.

CPC stands for ‘Cost Per Click’ and works exactly like contextual advertising. The advertiser only pays you a set amount of money when a visitor clicks the ad. CPM is great because you don’t have to worry about people clicking but you usually have to be driving a good amount of traffic in order to make it worth the advertiser’s time and money.

Selling Your Services

Now this method isn’t for everybody but there are people out there making some good money from it. Depending upon what your site or blog is about will determine if you can setup something like this. If your site has something to do with web design you could obviously sell web design services to your readers. Typically this can only work with something online but it is possible that you could set something up to work locally if your site is targeted for it.

Email Marketing

This is a big one and it is how people who make a lot of money actually go about things. You can give away something to get your visitors to sign up to an email list. Once you have them signed up, you can send them emails about related products that they might be interested in. Somewhat the same as affiliate marketing as you are most likely going to be referring your email subscribers to products but the thing with email marketing is that your subscribers already show an interest in the product. This makes it a whole lot easier for you because you have to do that much less convincing.

Pay Per Click

There is of course PPC, or ‘Pay Per Click’ advertising, but that is best covered in a post of it’s own.

Which One Is Best?

Choosing which one is right for you can only be decided by you. You may end up figuring out that email marketing isn’t your thing but that you can easily make money with contextual advertising (which is actually probably the easiest way). Private ad sales will most always make the most money but it is also the hardest to get started. You really have to prove to somebody that it is worth their money to pay you to advertise their product for them.

Finding A Profitable Niche

Now before I get too far ahead into this article, I wanted to go over something real quick. No matter what you do or how hard you try, you may end up picking a niche that just does not do well when it comes to making money. This isn’t to say that every niche won’t make money because in fact a lot of them do make money. But there is also a chance that it will make very little money because there could be too much competition or it could just not be something that people are interested in buying.

With that out of the way, let’s get into finding a possible niche.

When it comes to finding a niche, you can go about it 2 ways. One way is to write about something that interests you and the other is to find a niche that has a chance to make money. I, along with most people, will tell you to go after something that you are interested in. Why exactly do you want to do this?

1. It will be far easier for you to write about something that you already know about
2. You will be a lot more motivated to write about it
3. You won’t perceive it as “work” but instead something that you enjoy
4. You already know the terms and any possible slang words within the niche

As you can see, there are some really great points as to why you should pick something that you are interested in. Essentially you want to make this as easy as possible because the more you work at it the more you will make. But, it just may so be that your interests are already in a crowded and oversaturated niche. Of course you can make money in anything, it will just require a lot more work to achieve the same results.

But before you go ahead and start writing already, we need to do some keyword research to make sure that the niche is worth getting into. There are many tools online that you can use to aid you in finding keywords. Some of them are paid while others are free.

Keyword Research Tools

Micro Niche Finder - This is one that I personally use and recommend. It uses Google’s data for it’s numbers so you don’t have to worry if it is grabbing data from lesser used search engines. Considering Google holds about 60% of the search engine traffic, using data from Google is your best bet. One of the features that I like most about Micro Niche Finder is the Brainstorm button. If you are having a hard time trying to think of a keyword, all you have to do is hit the button and it will generate a list of 25 random keywords for you. From here you can dig further in and find out a profitable niche. I have found quite a few niches using this method and it is one of the core reasons why I continue to use Micro Niche Finder.

WordTracker - WordTracker is an extremely popular keyword research tool used by thousands of people. Full use of their program and features requires a monthly subscription but they do provide a free keyword tool that anybody can use. I typically will find a keyword using Micro Niche Finder to find a keyword and then plug it into the WordTracker tool to gather further statistics. WordTracker also offers users a free 7-day fully functioning trial of their software. This allows you to use every feature that regular subscribers use for 7 days. Once the 7 days is up you can then decide to purchase the monthly subscription or continue using the free keyword tool.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool - Completely 100% free and come straight from the horse’s mouth. Google’s Keyword Tool was recently upgraded a few months back to show the estimated number of searches for the previous month along with the average number of searches for that keyword each month over the past 12 months. You can also view the estimated CPC (cost per click) that advertisers are paying for that keyword. If you plan to use Google Adsense as a monetization method, this can give you a general idea on how much money you could possibly make. After entering your keyword into the input box, Google will give you a huge list of related keywords along with thier data.

While the keyword tool is only an estimate of the number of searches per month, I always use it as the data is coming directly from the search engine I am trying to capitalize on. There are other online keyword research tools that people use, however these are the ones that I personally use when researching and I would recommend them to anybody.

Judging The Competition

In order to find out whether or not a niche is worth getting into we need to take a look into who you are going to be competing against. Micro Niche Finder and WordTracker both provide algorithms that try to determine the level of competition for a certain keyword. Both of them provide pretty accurate comparisons and can generally be trusted. How do they judge how competitive a keyword is?

They first look at the number of searches done for that keyword per month or per day. Typically you want to find a keyword that has more then 100 searches per day or about 3000 searches per month. While you can certainly make money with a lower searched keyword, 100 searches per day should give you a good indication of it’s overall money making potential. Secondly, the tools look at how many results are provided for the exact phrase match of the keyword. The exact phrase match means your keyword placed within quotes when you search for it. When you search for the exact phrase match, only results that have those exact words in that exact order on the page or in the title of the page will show up. This along with the number of searches is used to determine the possible potential of a keyword.

It can be debated on the numbers with what you should be judging upon. As an example I personally look at the number of searches per month and times that by 3. If the results that show up using the exact phrase match are close to 3 times the amount of searches per month or less then I proceed further with that keyword. But we also have to look a bit further into the results listed by Google. 2 things that you are going to want to look into within the top 10 results are the PageRank of the pages listed and the number of incoming links.

There have been many debates on the effectiveness of PageRank but I believe that it does have an influence on position. You will typically see higher ranked pages dominating the first page results, but this isn’t to say that a page with no PageRank at all can’t beat them out. That is the beauty of niches, even a page with no PageRank whatsoever can still beat out a higher ranked page. What is most important is the back links that are pointing to your page and the anchor text used in the links.

Notice I mentioned the anchor text used within the links. Unless you can grab a domain with your exact keyword that you are targeting you are going to need people to link to your site using your keyword. As an example if you have www.pizzapielovers.com and your main keyword is pizza pie lovers, there is a pretty good chance that a few people will link using your domain name. However, if the keyword you are targeting is pepperoni pizza lovers on one of your pages, a domain back link isn’t going to be as relevant. To bring out the keywords full potential and have a better chance at ranking higher, you would want a link pointed to your pepperoni pizza lovers page using pepperoni pizza lovers as the anchor text.

What is the anchor text?

Simply put it is the words that you see that you can click on that point to another page or website. You want these kind of links pointing to your pages instead of random click here or visit this page links. Those type of links explain nothing what the page is about and Google will not credit your page as relevant when those links are used. This is why it is important to get have you keyword used in the anchor text within a link. Google will see the anchor text, will proceed to your page and see that it is relevant and will give it a boost in authority.

When researching your competitors you are going to want to find the number of keyworded links that are pointing back to their page. Get more links pointing back to your page that use your keyword then they have and you have a good chance at ranking higher than them. Of course, on page search engine optimization and other factors help, but back links are considered to be the biggest determining factor in how well you will rank.

Don’t forget to always be trying to get more links back to your site and pages. While you may find that you rank extremely well after only a few links, search engines are constantly improving and refining their algorithms. The more links you have pointing back to you, the better chance you have at remaining in a higher position unless a drastic change is made in which you have to rethink your entire linking strategy.

As part of my extra curricular activity, I have been learning all about the finer points of internet marketing. One such guru I have been following for a while now is ‘Viral Video Genius’, Kevin Nalts.

I see video blogging as the way forward and, while I have not yet experiemented myself, I think it is unavoidable that you will see me in a video soon. For now though, I will continue to learn how to harness the power of the viral video and you can expect to see some in the not too distant future.

This is Nalts’ latest video, on why he became a marketer!

For more from Kevin, you can find him on his youtube channel…just search ‘Nalts’.

Now get out there and vlog!

PR Update - September 2008

I have just had some great news regarding page rank, and am please to announce that my hard work behind the scenes has paid off; we are less than a week into the site going live and have just been given a PR2. The news gets even better, as some of the sites I have been preparing to flip have also gained page rank!

If you have been readying some sites for sale it might now be a good time to check your page rank. I know how excited people get around this time so I will make it easy for you.

Check Your Page Rank Here

Did you have any luck? Let me know below…

Entrecard Is For Sale!

Thats right, Entrecard is for sale! Personally I have not used Entrecard for sometime now but I am sure that each and every one of you knows what it is. The work of young internet entrepreneur, Graham Langdon, is now being listed for auction and I want this to be an example to you all. Here is a guy that had a great idea and really put thought, time, effort and no doubt blood, sweat and tears into his site. Going the extra mile and driving for levels of success unimaginable to the average joe blogs site flipper or mmo blogger of today.

Putting aside the fact that Entrecard is - or is not - a good website to purchase, I want to draw your attention to the sales page for this site. Graham proves himself, to me, as a young lad with great ambition and has proven himself down to the very last. The level of detail in this sales page is far and above anything I have seen on sitepoint recently and, were it not for the asking price, I would buy it myself based on that alone.

Can you see the difference it makes to go that extra mile?

I wish Graham every success in both the sale of Entrecard and whatever his next venture may be. I only wish that more of you out there would strive for such levels of excellence and success. Take some pride in your work, don’t cut corners and start looking for more than your next quick buck!

My Question To You…

Do you have what it takes? Are you passionate about blogging, site flipping or whatever it is you are doing to try and turn a profit online? I often wonder about the owners of a lot of blogs I read and question whether it is a hobby that they hope might pay, or a business being built; do they have the vision and drive to take it to the levels required to actually quit that day job, or are they just another pipe dreamer that the mmo world is so full of?

I know which one Graham Langdon is….which one are you?

With a reported 80,000 new blogs starting everyday, and a number of well known bloggers earning substantial amounts of cash every month, you are no doubt wanting a piece of the action for yourselves?! But where do you start?

The good news is that starting your own self-hosted wordpress blog has been made both cheap and very easy to do; there is also untold amounts of information on this subject available online.

What we aim to do here is give you a simple, step by step instruction to get your wordpress blog up and running. In doing so, I also want to cover a few pointers that, as a new starter, you will be forgiven for not knowing.

Don’t Rush Into Anything At This Stage!

The first point I would like to make you aware of is not to rush into anything at this stage. By putting some effort into the intial stages of the process, you will eliminate problems further down the line. Contrary to poular belief, the first step is not to buy your domain name!

Step One To Starting A New Blog - Research

What you need to do before buying anything is to DO YOUR RESEARCH!

Of the 80,000 or so blogs that are starting everyday, amongst other things, a great majority of them fail through lack of planning! You need to do some ground work, and by that I mean that you will need to have a good idea as to why you are blogging and what you are going to blog about.

Starting A New Blog - Things to consider!

1. What are you intentions? - Is this going to be a personal blog, a  make money online blog or a blog focussed on a specific niche?
2. Have you done your research? - Is there a big enough market and is it already saturated by millions of other bloggers? Is there enough interest in your subject matter?
3. What competition will you be facing? - Too much competion will lead to you starting on the back foot, giving you LOTS of extra work to do in order to be successful.

Do some initial brainstorming and then try doing some research on your proposed ideas using the wordtracker keyword tool - you can find this in our free resources. This will give you a rough idea as to how many people are searching for your subject matter; be creative and try a number of related words and phrases! As you progress, you will come to learn that keyword research is an essential part of being successful online and, while most overlook it, I find it quite addicitive.

In doing thorough research you will have already put yourself ahead of about 90% of new bloggers who have simly chosen to jump right into things. So, moving onto the next step, it is time to get your new site.

Step Two To Starting A New Blog - Buying Your Domain Name

Now that you have a good idea as to what you are going to blog about, the next thing you need to do is secure your own domain name.  A common mistake to make here would be to do a random google search for cheap domains and buy from the one you thing offers the best deal- this will again lead to problems further down the line if you are not getting the service you require.

When I first got started I bought domains willy nilly and, as my online presence grew, I ended up with domains registered here, there and everywhere. I have since tried and tested a number of different companies and settled on one as my favourite by far. I spent a lot of money transferring all my domains to this firm and now have complete control of all my domain names under one reliable account.

Buying Your Domain

1. Go to Go Daddy.com and search to see if your domain is available. You may find it is already taken and will therefore have to try alternatives.
2. Find the domain you want and purchase it - you will be required to complete your details and set up an account.
3. You will be asked if you want additional extras but at this stage you do not have to add anything else, though I do recomend you pay a little extra for domain privacy.
4. Look out for your confirmation email containing your login details - you will need these later.

Congratulations, you now own your very own domain name!

Step Three To Starting A New Blog - Website Hosting

So, you have secured your brand spanking new domain name and are now ready to share it with the world wide web. The next step is to actually host your account!

This is quite a talking point amongst those of us already online and I for one have had to learn by way of making my own mistakes. Having jumped into a hosting offer in my rushed attempt to get blogging, I suffered a whole host of problems with one company and was plunged ever closer to despair by an apparent lack of customer service and technical support. These are problems that you just don’t need!

Having spent a lot of money testing a number of hosting companies, I have again found one that I can whole heartedly recommend. It is cheap, reliable and thanks to a superb support team you will not suffer as I did.

Get Hosting

1. Go to Hostagator.com and order the hosting package to suit your requirements. We recommend the ‘Baby’ Package for new starters. This will give you ample server space and, with their unlimited domain hosting, room for growth.
2. On clicking ‘order now’ you will be asked if you want to register a new domain. You DO NOT want to, as we have already secured our domain name; instead select ‘I will use my existing domain’.
3. Enter your domain name and continue.
4. Select your biling cycle and then proceed to enter your billing details.
5. When you have checked out you will receive an email with your login and server details.

Step Four To Starting A New Blog - Hosting Your Domain

If you are anything like me, you will be impatiently waiting to get your site up and running at this point, and I assure you we are getting close. You have you domain name and you have your hosting account so the all we need to do is put them together.

For this next step you will need the information that you have been sent from both GoDaddy and Hostgator.

Setting Your Domain Name Servers

1. Go back to your GoDaddy Account and Login.
2. Once logged in, hover your cursor over the ‘domains’ option (top left on the green menu bar and select ‘my domains’.
3. Check the box next to you domain name (which you should now see in your control panel) and you will see a list of options becoming active on the menu bar just above.
4. Click on the option ‘Nameservers’ and then check the option ‘Custom Nameservers’.
5. Using the Domain Name Server information you received from Hostgator, enter the details into the first two nameserver boxes and click ‘ok’.

Your GoDaddy domain name will now be hosted on your Hostgator server space. Do allow up to 24hrs for the domain to propagate to your new server, though it is usually done much quicker. Your patience will be rewarded and, while you are waiting, I recommend you download an FTP program, which you will need soon. We use FileZilla which is available for free.

Do bookmark this page as a reference guide if you want to come back and follow this step by step. If you have reached this point already then you are ready to get started with installing wordpress on your site.

Nota Bene Consulting Is Going Live…..Sort Of!

I have had a tough month working behind the scenes to get this site ready, and while we are not 100% finished, public demand has driven me to ‘go live’ a little earlier than I had intended. So here we go!

The aim of this post is to give you a little taster of what is to come, a chance to familiarise yourself with the new site and also to gather your opinions and suggestions! It is important for us to know that our readers are happy and that they are getting what they want, but that being said, please do bear in mind the fact that the site is not entirely finished. Your suggestions will be noted and implemented wherever possible to fit with our own ideas.

Please also take the time to sign up for our RSS feed as we will shortly be posting our featured articles and case studies….I assure you, you do not want to miss them!

Subscribe to the Nota Bene Consulting Blog

Nota Bene…What’s that all about?

I’ve already had numerous comments about this, so I’ll address that for you now. Nota Bene is latin for ‘Note Well’, or a more fitting interpretation ’Take Note’. With that in mind we aim to give you information with which you should do exactly that.

I have been out of action on the blogging front for some time now and am really looking forward to getting back into the swing of things. For those of you who know me already,  I am all settled into the new apartment and life is returning to normal again. I am now ready to grow this site and help all you budding Internet Entrepreneurs along the way.

What’s The Plan?

This site was created with the good intentions of assisting Internet Entrepreneurs of all levels. After a good assessment of the current market I was somewhat perturbed by the fact that there are so very many blogs (especially in the ‘make money online’ sector) that were nothing more than copycat blogs, re-hashing the same information over and over in the same fashion.

After reading some great information on how 80% of traffic normally goes to 20% of your posts, I wanted to present all the really useful feature articles separately, saving you time in fishing through the blog to find what you want. In doing so, I hope to open the blog up as a communication channel which will cover a whole lot more than just ‘MMO’.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments section!

Thank You.

Nota Bene Consulting welc0mes you!

We are currently in the process of preparing the site for launch and will endeavour to keep you updated with any news from behind the scenes.

I will not give too much away at this stage but with Nota Bene Consulting, we are hoping to unleash an all encompassing internet consultancy service to benefit both the small ‘one woman, one blog’ and also the growing businesses of the online entrepreneur.

We will be here to improve the performance of you blog or website and hope to work with our clients to achieve better search engine rankings, traffic and income.

Please be patient while we get things together for you.