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 entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.