The “Free” Business Model

You might have heard about people giving away products or services for free online and wondered how you make money from that business model.

It might go a couple of ways:

1. You could give away loads of information on your site – in the articles you write, for free. This is information you could charge money for – but, you don’t – you give it away for free.

2. You could offer some specific product or service for free that you could charge people for access to. (PDF, book, forum, video, training program, report)

Why would you want to give away something for free? Shouldn’t you always charge money for it? Not necessarily.

There are websites making a whole lot of money by giving away free information. Here’s why that is.

1. Free information is instantly available to whomever lands at your site. They don’t have to wait for it – or pay for it, it’s there and ready to consume.

2. You might be instantly cutting out your competitors that are all charging for the product/service. You may quickly become THE source everyone uses because everyone wants free instead of paying for it.

3. Free = Viral if the information is desired. People will pass free links to their online friends much more often and quicker than they would for something that will cost their friends money. Surfers love to help their friends and passing them links to a place they can get info for free – is a big help.

That’s the WHY of the Free Business Model. Now, what’s the “How”? As in, “How do I make money from it?”

Basically traffic comes first. Money comes later. If a website is able to amass traffic – a couple thousand people per day or more, then the website can make money from advertisements on the website. Their own or other companies advertisements work well when large amounts of visitors are arriving at their site.

The amount of money you can make from ads on your site depends on:

1. Numbers of people coming to your site.

2. The focus of your site. If your niche is tightly defined and there are advertisers that pay a lot per click you can do quite well off low level traffic.

Most businesses giving it all away for free are usually also selling something.

So, you can advertise on your site some products that you’ll charge money for. Or you can put Google Adsense, Textlink Ads, or charge other businesses to put their ads on your site because you have some decent traffic coming in every day – giving you a high pageview count.

One of the best things you can do when you have a free site is start an email list. You can start a list with Aweber.com – which is definitely one of the top two companies doing email lists online today.

Short and simply… You join Aweber. You create a form on their site – that you can add to your site – as a pop-up or as a small blurb that goes on your website somewhere people will see. Look at the checkbox on IncAnswsers – that’s my Aweber form section. I also have a popup that comes up sometimes – once per customer. If your IP address changes you’ll see it again.

You collect names and email addresses to go with the names. You create a newsletter or some other emails that you send out to those that join your list. If you focus on providing more free information and occasionally ask for friends on your list to buy something – some do. Over time your email list will become very important to your business.

Recently one guy I follow pretty closely, Jeremy Schoemaker, decided that instead of write a book and sell it he was going to create a 12 week course and just give all the information away for free instead. The way he’s monetizing this is that he gives away his affiliate link so I can link to his course… if you buy any of his products or services I’ll make a small commission off whatever it is. It’s a win-win-win. You win because you find his 12 week free course. I win because I get a commission. Jeremy wins because you’ve found his site and become an email list member if you decide to opt-in to the free 12 week course.

That’s what to do with a Free Business Model site to make money with it. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Of course I can’t cover everything in one article – so, ask questions to clarify if this is something you’re considering.

- Vern

Photo credit: Flickr.com member, The Consumerist

Is Google or FaceBook More Important to Your Business?

There is a war happening online that is invisible to you unless you go looking for it.

The war is over your eyeballs, your time online, your wallet.

The two primary competitors in this war I’m speaking about are: Google and FaceBook. Each is focused on different things, but ultimately want the same prize – your cash in their pockets.

Google is the search engine Big Dog. No doubt about that. Especially when you add YouTube to the mix – a Google owned property, that is the 2nd most used search engine – beating Yahoo and MSN Live.

FaceBook has more than 200 million members and is growing all the time as people across the world join in.

It shouldn’t surprise you that the membership model FaceBook has – even if free to join, is very powerful. It’s powerful because it’s a group. It’s a group that facilitates sharing information within the group and controlling how much the group can interact outside the group.

Would you rather search FaceBook and find what real people that you know are saying about some new electronic device you might buy or try Google and see information posted from anyone (sometimes anonymously) with an opinion? FaceBook is betting that you’re going to want to get information from friends first, strangers later.

I have to think they’re right. Search your friend’s name in Google and you’ll get a lot of outdated info – some current. Search your friend on FaceBook (and have them approve you as a friend and share their info with you) – and you’ll see a lot more relevant information about that friend including jobs they’ve had, have, hobbies, things they enjoy doing – recent photos and videos and more.

Google is good for finding information about anything. FaceBook is good for finding in-depth information from friends, family, and friends of friends.

When you purchase something – do you want to hear friends’ advice or strangers? Myself – I’d rather hear what friends have to say if they’re knowledgeable about the subject. Most times they aren’t. That’s the problem for me. I use Google a lot to try to get as many different perspectives on something I’m considering buying as I can.

I think most people don’t put the kind of research into buying something that I do. I don’t buy on impulse. I don’t buy based on emotion. Though I might like the idea of an iPhone I haven’t bought one because I already have a solution that fits what I need in a phone, but even better.

I think most people DO buy at least partly, based on emotion. Hearing a friend recommend something is all most people need as justification.

For “things” – products, something tangible that someone is considering buying I think most people might search using Google and then ask friends what products they use or recommend. Then they’d buy at a local store if they know of one that sells the product, or as a second choice – online.

What about for services? If you need someone to build you a website for instance. Would you go to your friends that have websites and ask them who created it and how much it cost? Sure you would. If a friend, or two friends recommended the same solution to you – would you be inclined to use it?

Definitely you would.

Now, if you search on Google for services you’ll find tens of millions of web developers. How do you choose? Go with whatever company Google ranks on the first page or two?

Most people do that. What does Google know of these people? Nothing. They trust the websites that make it to top 10 or 20 in the search engine results pages. That’s all. No recommendation. No past experience. Maybe not even real information at all. There are sites that are totally bogus that pop up in the top 10 results constantly. Can you trust Google to find you a place to spend your money for web development?

I think not. I would hope not.

Problem is, you might not know anyone that provides the service you need. Your friends might not know either – what then?

You could search Google to find some blogs that connect you more personally with a person that does web development. You could read some articles they have about it. You could see if there are any negative posts about them – also by searching Google. Eventually you’d come to a point where you trust what someone is saying about the service you need – and purchase from them.

So, which is more important – Google or FaceBook?

In my ideal world I’d know someone that was expert or high level at everything I need. I’d know people that could find me the best health insurance for the best price. I’d know someone that could fix my car or motorcycle for a fair price. I’d know someone that could bring me 100,000 new people to my website which I try to turn into customers. I’d know someone that could find me 40 coconuts a week and drop them off at my house.

Where would I most easily find these people? FaceBook. Google is great for finding some information about any subject you can think up. But ultimately I think the sales – the power of the group of friends, acquaintances… experts on so many things is found in FaceBook… (and Twitter!) but, more about Twitter in other posts…

So, which is more important to your business? Do you think people prefer to go with Google or would prefer to use friends they trust giving referrals and recommendations on products and services?

For myself – I have a decent Google presence for this IncAnswers blog and for my other personal development site: AimforAwesome.com. Eventually people start to realize I’m not out to sell them something they don’t need. I don’t hype anything. I don’t twist words or sell dreams without the reality.

For me – Google is working… but, I’m an expert at developing my sites for Google. If you aren’t – you’ll need to find someone that can do it. That’s expensive to do it right.

FaceBook is free (so far). It doesn’t cost anything to post a message, a link, or a product you’re selling on your feed.

I’m not currently using FaceBook as a business. I haven’t accepted mass numbers of friends – right now only real friends and a couple friends of friends are in my group. How much more powerful would it be to me for my business… for my income, for web development if I decided to open up the doors? Not sure… still thinking about that one.

Have you opened the doors yet? Are you using FaceBook as a business? Can it be used that way without making your friends feel like you’re trying to sell them something too often?

Interesting questions… and the future is wide open as to which of the two, Google or FaceBook will become the most important site to businesses in the future.

Any thoughts?

Best of Life!

Vern

Best Online Business to Start in 1-Day?

Today I was thinking about the best online business you could start today. In one day. Get up and running and selling something in one day.

What would that best online business be?

• It would have to be something you could setup in 1-day.
• It would have to be something that could actually make some amount of money right away. Regardless if it’s small money – some money.
• You’d have to sell someone else’s product as an affiliate since you probably don’t have a product handy to sell or you’d already be selling it.

Now realize, if you don’t know what to do to set the following up you’ll be a little lost. Think of it as a project. Learn about each step however you must and finish the project. I think anyone with a sincere desire to do this can finish everything in 1 day, and, if you know someone who needs this – or, can advertise on PPC (pay per click) effectively – you can make a sale today.

What business am I talking about?

Selling WordPress themes as an affiliate. It might sound complicated to you right now – but it isn’t, and it’s entry-level. This will get bigger over the next few months and years. This is not brain surgery, but you’ll need to learn a few things. If that scares you – internet business is probably not for you. You can do this!

Here’s what I would do – these steps, in this order…

1. Get a PayPal.com account. This will enable you to setup order buttons on your site for whatever you are selling – a product or service. If you link it with your credit card you should be able to get it done in a few minutes. If linking your bank account – a few days.

2. Go to Godaddy.com and click Hosting. Get the 12 month, Linux, Economy hosting package. Before you checkout choose “add a domain name to this order” from the upper right hand side of the order page.

3. Choose a domain with keywords about WordPress Themes. If you don’t know what they are – no matter. Choose something like wordpressthemestarter.com; wordpressthemeshelp.com. Etc. anything related to wordpress themes. Get the .com version – 1 year time. Add the domain to the order. Now you have hosting and domain name in your “cart”.

4. Go to Dealtaker.com and look up “Godaddy coupons”. Here’s the recent page, there may be a newer one – check expiration dates on the coupons before using.

http://www.dealtaker.com/GoDaddy-coupon-code-a528-c.html

Don’t click anything on that page – just write down the codes…

you need the code that resembles: cjcdeal63

In fact, try that code specifically because it gives you 20% off hosting.

5. Enter the coupon code into the Godaddy checkout system on the bottom of your order. More than one coupon may fit your order so try a few of the codes and see which gives you lowest price.

6. Go through entire ordering process. Ignore every upsell you get from Godaddy as you don’t need them.

7. Go to WordPress.org. Download latest version. Link is here:

http://wordpress.org/download/

8. Unzip that into a folder on your hard drive.

9. You should have Godaddy notices that came in your email saying Congrats… etc. Login to your Godaddy account. Choose Hosting / My hosting account.

10. Click the link to the right of the hosting account that says setup or manage account – I can’t remember which and all mine are setup already so even if I login I won’t know what you’ll see.

11. During the process it will ask you to assign a domain name with the hosting – you want to choose the domain name you just bought. It should be there as a default. You’ll also choose a hosting username and password – remember these. These are for stats and FTP’ing.

12. Once setup – and this might take 20 minutes, go back to Godaddy “my hosting account” list and click the left link over your hosting account (the name of your domain).

13. Find the link for Database. Create a new database. Remember descrip, name, password. WordPress operates using this database so you have to give WordPress the login info you create here.

14. While in the Godaddy control panel for your hosting – enable stats too – it’s the left-most icon under the stats section. Once you click that left-most icon the next screen lets you check a box to enable stats. In a day or so you can start getting stats by going to www.yourdomain.com/stats/ You’ll need to enter your hosting username/password name. The stats are lame – they include bounces, but better than nothing to start.

15. Go here and get instructions for how to setup WordPress on your hosting account (computer server that Godaddy is ‘renting you’).

http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress

16. You’ll need to modify the wp-config-sample.php file to add your database information. For the HOST part – you will need to enter it… If your database has been setup (takes an hour or so) you can go back to it in the control panel at Godaddy and click on the databases icon. There is a pencil icon – to edit the database. You can click that. It will show the host – or maybe you’re already looking at the host? It’s a url similar to this:

usaempire5572e21.db.4475283.hostedresource.com

17. When you save the wp-config-sample.php file be sure to rename it as “wp-config.php”.

18. Use your FTP program to upload all files and folders that you find in the folder you unzipped WordPress into. You will find a “wp” folder in your folder. Open that wp folder and find 3 folders inside with some files. All files and the 3 folders must be uploaded to the Godaddy hosting account by FTP.

I use Firefox 3 browser with the “FireFTP” plugin since it’s free and very simple to use/learn. I recommend it over paying $30 for some other FTP program that is more confusing to use.

If you don’t know how to FTP – you’ll need to learn here. Basically it means taking folders / files on your hard drive and moving them to another computer (a computer at Godaddy). It’s basically like drag and drop between folders. There must be a tutorial for FireFTP somewhere.

19. Follow all steps in the WordPress famous 5-minute installation guide I gave you the link for.

20. You should now have a WordPress blog platform. They emailed you your login and password  login: admin pw: they choose it.

21. It might take you 2-3 hours to figure out what you’re doing there with WP. Find some tutorials -there must be 1000 out there. Learn it for a couple hours. Primarily you want to learn how to post and how to create pages. You’ll also want to know how to get into the code behind the WYSIWYG editor because you’ll need to put PayPal button code there.

22. Click the yellow box below to get the Thesis theme. It’s $87. It will enable you to change the colors and layout of your theme without editing code – which is VERY helpful if you’re not a programmer.

Thesis is an entry-level way to get involved in WordPress. Thesis is a theme that can be manipulated – changed – many different ways. Some of the top experts on the planet use the theme because it simplifies changes and they can focus on creating content – not coding. Disclosure – I make a small commission off this sale. (which is exactly what you’ll be doing later… ) They accept PayPal payments.

23.  Unzip your thesis theme into a folder on your computer. You’ll then upload all files from that theme into your folder at your hosting account via FTP just like you uploaded the WP files to your server at Godaddy. The folder the themes go into is:

yourdomain.com/wp-content/themes/

You’ll see “default” and “classic” folders in that directory already. Leave them there and just add the thesis folder there also.

24. Login to WordPress and in left side column choose Appearance / Themes. Click on the Thesis theme. Choose “Activate” from upper right side preview window.

25. Get familiar with thesis and how it changes your website. Choose a clean site design.

26. Create About (about you) page, Contact page. Include a nice photo of you and your family if you have one all together.

27. Go to DIYthemes.com and register as an affiliate. You will be selling their Thesis theme – the one you just bought. Best to make sure your website has been setup and has a couple pages of information they can see.

28. Once approved to sell the Thesis theme you’ll login to the control panel at DIYThemes.com and go to Promotions / Banners & Links. Choose “get banner code” from one of the banners. Copy that code.

29. Paste that code into a page or post on your WordPress blog. When you hit Publish – that banner/box will show live on your site. It has the code that will identify your account as the one that sent the buyer to DIYThemes.com. You’ll get credit for it. They pay to your PayPal account when balance reaches $100.

30. Add a signature to your emails that includes links to your new website sales page for the Thesis theme. Ideally you’ll have a video on that page that describes what Thesis is and why someone would want to use it – and use WordPress. Basically it’s a very simple way to get into WordPress and use it – configure it, customize your website (blog) to look as you wish it to look.

Before this – one must have known code to change options – colors, fonts, etc. Now – no need. ANYONE can get in there and have a very nicely designed blog with Thesis.

31. Join Google’s Adsense or some other pay per click (PPC) program to send traffic to your site. You probably canNOT use “thesis” or “DIYthemes” as keywords in your pay per click campaigns as it would be a conflict of interest with the company – they probably want to reserve that for themselves. They’ll probably cancel your account if you try it. Stay above board.

Choose long-tail keywords like…

• how to start wordpress
• wordpress beginner
• wordpress novice
• easy wordpress
• simple wordpress site
• how to learn wordpress
• easiest wordpress theme
• changing options in wordpress

32. Send an email to everyone you know that doesn’t have a website and that might have an interest in starting one. Tell them you can help them get started with WordPress – and you’ll teach them how to do it all (after all, now you know). Now you have skills you can sell.

Right now there’s a large chasm between those that know what they’re doing online and those that wish they knew but don’t think they’re smart enough.

I’ve just given you a LOT of the steps you need to get through in order to learn how to help people get setup with their own WordPress blog. Now – market to everyone you can and try to set them up. You could charge maybe $99 to help them with this whole process. Charge them using Paypal buttons on your site where they can pay for different packages. The DIYthemes.com banner links can give you another $28 for each person that you set up on WP.

The two reasons this is the best business to start right now is because:

1. It’s fast. One day setup.
2. It’s timely… in the coming months and year you’ll see that a LOT more themes come out with configurable options like Thesis that make it easy for beginners to get involved in WordPress. You can sell MANY OTHER THEMES as they pop up. Smart developers always have affiliate programs you can join and make commission from.

Marketing your business is the hard part for most of us. Find out a LOT about marketing and get to work on this little niche. If you can sell a couple of these packages per day – that’s a business. If you live overseas in Asia like I do and sell one of these a day – you can survive easily.

Good luck!

If you have questions about the process or I’ve said something you don’t understand, let me know. Please don’t ask me to describe the process better for you! You know this took 90 minutes to write! lol…

Internet Marketing Guru Shoemoney Gives it Away?

Shoemoney, aka: Jeremy Schoemaker announced recently that instead of releasing a book, he will offer a 12-week free internet marketing program filled with great content that he’s learned over the years.

If you’re not familiar with Shoe, he has an amazing 12-year history of internet marketing projects and he’s had some phenomenal successes.

I joined the program because, even though I know a lot – nobody knows it all. There are so many areas of specialization one can move toward and master online. Shoe and I are in different areas completely. For myself, I’m great at starting small – micro sites, ramping them up – and selling them. Shoe did really well with the ringtone market – he was killing it for years. Recently I met a guy that had whole websites dedicated to MySpace backgrounds. He was crushing it too.

You should join Shoe’s free internet marketing program too, just to see if there’s something in it for you. I’m going to guess that Shoe’s target audience – his visitors to his site, are different from my core visitors here at Inc. Answers. Here at Inc. Answers I want to give you the jump-start into internet marketing – taking you from no knowledge to mastery of whatever niche you decide to play in.

I’m guessing Shoe’s program won’t be basic enough for many people, but, join anyway and save whatever information you get for use in the future after you’ve learned a lot more.

Let me know how things are going after you’re into the program. I’ll share my thoughts as I go through it as well.

Sign up here >

Oh, here’s an interesting podcast at Yaro Starak’s site. It’s an interview he did with Jeremy about how he got where he is today. It’s a very interesting story. The download is 106MB but even with relatively slow connection I have it was well worth the effort to grab it.

Online Business: 2-3 Year Plan

I was writing a friend about what I’m planning over the next few years with online business and I thought I should share with you why I’m thinking about 2+ years into the future and not today.

Domains – websites – are taking a couple of years to get going well and to build up the trust that Google needs to have in them to really start grabbing top search engine ranking. I’ve found consistently that domains I have over 2 years really start to jump in the rankings.

That doesn’t mean that all domains jump at 2 years. There needs to be a website in place. Your site needs to have quality pages with unique information about whatever niche you’re focused on. There needs to be some kind of progression over the years – additions of new content… maintenance… links from other sites gradually adding up over the 2 years. If you do these things then in two years your site will be able to start competing with websites that have been around for 10 years or more. There are these small Google trust levels that continue to build over the life of your site and that you’ll really see start to kick in at 1 yr., 2 yrs., 3 yrs. and so on.

So, it’s necessary to start thinking now about where you want your online business focus to be in 2 or 3 years. What space do you want to compete in? Is this a space that’s able to take advantage of all the social media changes  taking place? Recent changes like – social media tools becoming important to your website ranking. How often links to your site get passed around on Twitter or Facebook is becoming important.

What about multimedia? Will you be able to add substantial amounts of video to a site with your chosen focus? Can your site be viewed on a mobile phone? There are a lot of considerations when looking at a business for the future. The ideal business is one you can really capitalize on and that will take advantage of the changes that are coming.

For myself I know that I want to be very entrenched in the online business start-up space. I want people to know that I’m a no-hype mentor for helping entrepreneurs start their ebusiness and growing it to successful levels. I want to give people the skills they need to create a very successful ebusiness, with the realistic outlook of it being great within 2-3 years, not 2-3 months. I’m big on reality.

That said, there are things you can do to become wildly successful before that. It takes a huge amount of work and most people aren’t dedicated enough to make it happen. Most think they can – and so when they start their ebusiness they give it an all out effort for a couple months… 6 months… even a year. When they aren’t enjoying ridiculous levels of success they move onto something else – whatever the online marketing gurus are pushing at the time.

Where do you want to be in two or three years?

If you want to run your idea by me – you can leave a comment here or email me directly and I’ll give you my view on it.

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