Ryan Moran

Step Six: Scaling

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been detailing my six-step process to dominate a niche, and it was way more popular than I ever imagined. People posted links to the posts on Twitter, the articles were featured in internet marketing newsletters, and as much as fifty comments were left on a single post.

While I covered a lot of ground in these posts, it was impossible for me to get to every question that arose from them. For that reason, I’m going to be holding a very special webinar with two of my smartest friends, Matt Davis and PotPieGirl on THURSDAY, JULY 30th at 8 PM EST.

With as popular as these posts have been, and with PotPieGirl and Matt Davis having some of the most popular products online right now, this webinar could fill up fast.

Head here and claim your spot:  http://www.IM-Webinars.com

(PS, there’s no pitch planned at this webinar. We’ll be taking questions, working with people one-on-one, and giving some much needed TOUGH LOVE to cap off this series.)

Now, for step six…

I believe that you can turn just about any niche of buyers into a six-figure a year business. After you have tested a niche with PPC and have traffic funneling from articles that you have written, you have enough traffic to be able to tell if the niche has buyers.

This does not necessarily mean that you are cranking out $500/days. At this stage, revenue is more important than profit, because revenue will tell you if the niche is hungry. If you have $500/day in revenue, but your Google adspend is $300/day, and your hosting, outsourcing and other fees run $200/day, it may feel like you are doing a lot of work for nothing, but in reality, that is an awesome beginning.

That is because the real money comes when you start to scale your business with SEO, list building, your own products, and joint ventures/metworking. Of course, you can make plenty with just PPC and the traffic that comes from the articles that you write, and it’s nice to focus on the cash that comes quickly with those methods, but real sustainable profit comes when you scale your business.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but my favorite way to scale is through search engine optimization. I’ll shy away from diving into how I optimize for the search engines for now, but it comes down to on-page friendliness and link building (lots and lots of link building).

The reason I put so much value into search engine optimization is because my traffic is tested with pay-per-click. If my website is profitable with PPC, then similar traffic from organic rankings are going to be just as effective, if not more so, and they will be free. Therefore, once I know what terms are going to turn into sales, then I aim to get those pages to the top of Google. Doing these two things alone (PPC and scaling with SEO) has made me a top three affiliate for several million dollar companies.

At the same time, I begin to build a list. It’s okay to start building a list before this step, but I like to know that the niche is going to be profitable before I start to invest my time into making follow-up sequences and building rapport with my list. Usually, I use my index page as a sales-type letter in order to get the opt-in, and I use my sub pages as reviews, comparisons, articles and content.

On my sub-pages, I put an opt-in in the top right corner of every page, as this seems to bring in the maximum eyes to the opt-in. I don’t hard-sell the opt-in on every page, but it’s available everywhere.

Here’s something to consider: when giving something away in exchange for an opt-in, it’s much better to give a video or short ebook than a minicourse over several days. I discovered this by accident, as I realized that many of my readers got frustrated that they had to wait three to ten days before they got all of their content. From now on, I’ll always offer things up front on my niche sites.

Having traffic from SEO will build your list, so the two go hand in hand very well. Having a large list will also serve as your launching pad to promote a new product or launch your own…

Which leads me to my next point…

If you want to take a niche to the ultimate level, and I only do this for your MOST profitable niches, then create your own products. You can simply switch out your autoresponder messages to promote your own site, and you put your own product as the top rated program on your review sites.

If you understand the niche well at this point, and you know what the other products offer, then it will be easy for you to create something that is more attractive to the market. Sometimes, making a video series instead of an ebook is enough to do it. Sometimes, it’s just giving better information.

But the most important part of this process is getting the product to CONVERT. The easiest way to track this is to use Google’s own tool. Put a piece of code on your site, and you’ll see what your conversion rate is, as well as where the sales come from. Because you’ll have articles, reviews, autoresponders and pay-per-click campaigns ready to send traffic to your site, it will be easy to test the site. As traffic starts to come in, change the header, the videos, and other pieces of the sales letter to see what converts the best.

I’m starting to head down a rabbit hole here, because it would be very easy for me to now dive into getting affiliates, holding product launches, and using upsells on your own products, but that is for another lesson… or series of lessons.

What I want you to take away from this post is that the real money is in building a sustainable business instead of chasing quick cash. You can make plenty from just PPC and writing articles, but you can take your business to the next level and beyond when you begin to scale the pages that are already making you money, building autoresponders, and creating your own products.

Today, I want you to find your most profitable website and find which terms are bringing in the sales. When you do that, decide that you are going to be in the #1 position for that search term on Google, and then get to it.

Then, add an autoresponder to the site and begin a follow-up sequence that bonds with your list. You can sell stuff in the emails, but focus more on bonding than anything else.

Once you’ve done that, grab your spot for Thursday’s webinar, and bring your questions.

This series has been a blast for me, and I’m very excited by the feedback that I’ve received. Based on the questions that are asked at Thursday’s webinar, I’ll prepare the next one.

Thank you for the inspiration, the comments, and the support.

GET BUSY TIME!

This summer, Parma Heights Baptist Church spent a week in Hardin, KY at Jonathan Creek. Although we experienced broken down buses, ten-hour travel delays, Harry McLegsy sightings, and the craziest camp pastor the world has ever seen, we soaked up every minute as a time of fun and fellowship.

Below is the video (filmed, created, and edited by yours truly) documenting our experiences:

(For those who frequent this as an internet marketing blog, feel free to comment on the video, but please refrain from negative comments about my kids.)

Step Five: Write Articles

For some people, it’s the first step that they take, but for me, I use article marketing as a way to scale my campaign once it’s shown to be profitable.

Before we dive into step five, here are the others to catch you up to speed:

Before You Start: Elbow Grease
Step One: Get To Know Your Niche
Step Two: Finding Affiliate Products
Step Three: Build A Basic Website
Step Four: Test the Market w/ PPC

With article marketing, I get a two-fer, and I rarely go through the process with only half of the benefit in mind. By correctly implementing this article marketing formula, you not only funnel insane amounts of traffic back to your websites, but you also dominate the search engines by building links back to your pages.

I’ve become known as a bit of an SEO authority over the years, and it has come not by my own claims, but from other people noticing that I can dominate almost any term that I target. To be honest with you, though, I don’t know much more of the “technical” side of search engines than the average person. My real expertise comes from generating a ton of links… and the majority of my links come from this article marketing strategy.

I call it the Affiliate Funnel, and here’s how it works:

1) Find 25 terms that I can easily dominate (I usually use Micro Niche Finder).
2) Write or outsource articles to be written about each key term.
3) Post the articles on EzineArticles.com and HubPages.com
4) Link the articles to one another.
5) Ping them at PingOat.com
6) Submit them to RSS feeds at FeedSubmitter.com
7) Bookmark them at SocialMarker.com
Submit them to Article Marketer and link back to the source.
9) Put them through Unique Article Wizard and link back to the source.

Basically, I follow Travis’s Bum Marketing Method, but I do it very aggressively, because I build a bunch of backlinks to each article. In fact, if you followed only up through step seven, you’d still be able to dominate most bum marketing terms that you target.

The reason that I go through this entire process is two-fold: first, it gets my articles onto the front page of Google for its key terms, and second, it elevates the quality of the backlink to my site.

In reality, I don’t really care if I dominate the front page of Google unless those pages have links back to my website, because my ultimate goal is to drive traffic to my website and have it be in the top three listings of Google for my “money” terms. And because I’ve already tested the market with PPC, I know which terms are going to be profitable.

Following this method, I build a pyramid of links: my RSS feeds and pings draw attention to the articles, and the Article Marketer submissions build links back to the original source. The bookmarks build high PR links back to the article, and the article links to my money page.

This is best outlined in this image that I totally ripped off from Todd at LongTailTreasure.com:

Following this method (and mixing in pings, bookmarks, and submissions to other directories), it is easy to achieve front page listing on Google for a long tail keyword.

I then “funnel” that traffic back to my money page and use a keyword-rich link to guide them there. In this way, I get on the front page for my 25 terms and “funnel” the traffic back to my money site.

And of course, I get my two-fer in the fact that all 25 articles link back to my original site, helping it climb the ranks of the search engines.

After one round of article promotions, you can rank all over the place for your selected terms, brings tons of traffic back to your web pages and affiliate links, and start making sales. I usually see a jump in sales after completing this process, but I don’t stop until my web page is at the top of the search engines.

I caught word this week that I’m the #1 affiliate for a very popular Clickbank product. You wanna know how I did it?

A month ago, I was seeing a big drop in sales and decided that I had to get my web page to the top of Google. I ran the Article Funnel strategy on it THREE times, and I’m now at the top of Google for my terms. This month, my sales are up almost 50% for this product, my advertising costs are down, and I’m their #1 affiliate.

This month, I’m also seeing a 50% jump in my best selling, most profitable affiliate promotion. You know why? I ran the Article Funnel on this campaign, bringing lots of traffic to my articles, and my web page now has a double listing on the front page of Google.

I could go on and on about the benefits of using article marketing, but all you really need to know is that it will get you traffic to your web pages, and linking back to your sites will increase its Google ranking.

But it simply isn’t enough to write ONE article and wait. Please don’t do that. Do not agonize over a campaign and then stop and hope for the best. No, you need to write and write and write and build and build and build. Once you’ve tested a market with PPC and have found key terms that convert, you need to build that sucker until he’s on the front page of Google. You need to write articles on long-tail keywords so that you can capture those visitors and turn them into sales.

Bottom line: article marketing is a super-fast way to get your content in front of the market and take advantage of search traffic. You can funnel all of your article readers back to your websites, which contain your affiliate links. And over time, building links back to your site will increase your Google ranking, which will skyrocket your profits.

This stuff takes time, and it isn’t mindless work. You need to HUSTLE. You need to hustle your articles to the top of Google, and you need to hustle to get a lot of them out there for their link juice.

People want to know where you can get free traffic… well, this is how. Put your stuff out in front of the market by writing on topics that they care about. How do you know what they care about? Find what they’re searching for. Don’t know what to write about? Hire somebody to do it, or pick a different niche that you CAN write about.

Put something valuable in front of the market, and they’ll come back to your site and get connected… whether that be with a product, with your character, or your email list… but that is for next week…