Image via CrunchBase

If you are in the business of  websites development, one of the easiest ways to make money by doing what you know is to flip them. In fact, you don’t necessarily need to know about the coding. If you are able to pick a theme and create a couple of good articles you could be flipping blogs without problem.

What’s a blog flipping?

Have you created a blog just to sell it? Well, that’s a flip. The price of a blog vary depending the quality of its theme and also, if the blog is established – with a couple of months, with loyal readers -  or not.

Things you need to consider

• Theme: you can either create your own theme, which will take you more effort, or you can pick a free/premium one. The second option will take you almost zero effort, but it has a difference: by taking a premium theme you could sell your site more expensive.
• Content: like the first point, you have two tracks here. If you are selling an established blog, I guess your content is original and unique. But if you are selling a non-established site – which means it is brand new, without loyal readers -  you could use re-purposed content that has been or may be reused on other sites. The kind of content also determines the price of the blog.
• Revenue: depending how much the blog you are selling makes a month, the price can be higher or lower.
• Traffic: this is kind of obvious but there’s people who ask how a blog can be sold for $60k. The higher the traffic a blog has, the higher the price. If your blog is not an established one, you cannot expect to receive thousands for it.

Try selecting a niche that converts when you are going to sell a blog. If you do not know how to recognize a good niche, so I invite you to check out this post and also, to stop by flippa’s marketplace so you can see what’s selling and what’s not.

If you think flipping sites is much trouble to you, so hire someone who makes the hard part. For example, you could hire an affordable copywriter to create 5 original articles at good forums such as DigitalPoint or Warrior. Also, you could hire someone to get an original logo.

Remember, the more is developed/customized a blog, the more you can ask for it. So you could hire someone to customize a theme so you could sell it for more. In fact, you could hire someone to make the whole work and then sell it for a higher amount so you can get a profit practically for free.

So, have you flipped websites? I’ve done it through Flippa and SiteDeal!

Lastly I noted that many people who started following me on twitter is an affiliate, many of them has a customized background with the product they promote and when I started following them back they sent me a message (automatically with TweetLater for example) inviting me to check out their website.

After checking a couple of them, I noted that some of them were using static pages whilst others were using dynamic pages to promote a product, what do you thing is best?

Static Pages

Static pages are those that ends with .html, .htm (and similar) and they need to be designed from scratch (at least you want to buy a template). This kind of pages tends to load pretty fast due to their simplicity in the design.

This kind of pages work very well because you can practically create one of them very fast, much more than if you want to set a page with wordpress for example. The bad thing is when you want to update the content because you don’t have an admin panel or something similar than a CMS can provide.

Dynamic Pages

Being the opposite of static pages, this ones end on .php or similar and they use to be generated by content management systems like WordPress or Joomla. They could be as pretty, complex and interactive as you want but they need dedication to be done.

The Analysis

No matter what kind of pages are you using to promote a product, the only thing you want to do is to sell. The thing is that Google prefers static over dynamic pages, so if you want to get a high rank on search engines you better build static pages.

Nevertheless many of these affiliates use PPC campaigns to get their potential buyers, so what’s the matter with using static or dynamic pages? If you are one of those who are using PPC campaigns go for whatever you want, but remember if you use dynamic pages it doesn’t mean that you won’t get a good rank, it is all about SEO.

To conclude, I would like to know if you have a kind of preference on this. Personally I have done either static or dynamic pages to sell products and honestly, it’s not so different.

The University of Texas and Dell are looking for college students worldwide with ingenious ideas to tackle pressing social issues for the chance to win $50,000 in seed funding. Students from any 4-year university are invited to create change at home, or anywhere in the world, with an idea that brings new resources in the form or technology, knowledge, people or action to an old problem for amazing results.

The goal of this competition is to engage the most number of students to start using the skills they are learning in college to find solutions to world problems. They put no limits on the imagination of contestants and they hope to give students a pathway to make their dreams of a better world a reality.

How to Enter

The deadline to enter is fast approaching on March 2. The entry form is a quick overview of your idea and takes about 30 minutes to complete. There is still plenty of time to enter. If you are in college or know someone in college – encourage them to enter!

If not, you can show your support by voting and commenting on the ideas at each round of competition!

There are 3 rounds of competition. A group of 100 students will be selected as semifinalists from the initial entry form and asked to write a venture plan detailing their idea. From the venture plan entries, judges and the public select the top three teams and they come to Austin, TX to compete live. One winner walks away with $50,000 to start their venture.

My Idea

Administralo.com – A Social Development Platform by means of Financial Improvement for Low Income Consumers in Developing Countries

Administralo.com is a social development platform for low income individuals and families in developing countries located in South America. The platform performs as an educational tool to improve people’s lives by means of helping users to have a better financial awareness and practice through their daily life.

Personal Finance is confusing and very hard to learn, there’s no easy-to-understand information available in spanish and everyone needs it, specially low income individuals from developing countries which always turns out to be broken. Here comes Administralo.com as a portal for online Money Management, Financial Education and Life Improvement. The platform consists of an automated system that will guide users through a highly developed user-friendly experience to achieve their financial goals and life improvement stages step by step. The user interface is made in accordance with recently web 2.0 applications and resources, as well as content and graphics to make the user experience as rewarding as possible.

The system will allow users to experience the benefits of a well managed Personal Finance. The learning process includes lots of information, the use of several tools for money and time management, online forums, blogs and coaching, among other benefits. The service will be completely free and users won’t have to reveal their banking accounts or their identity, they will be only requested to have an username and submit a valid email address.

Research made on the subject reveals a strong willing from people to improve their personal finance, and a big social improvement can be achieved.

So I invite you to take part of this venture by voting for my idea and leaving a comment if you want it. All the best for those who are participating and thanks for supporting me!

PS: You need to register to be able to vote or comment, which will take you about 20 seconds

There are many business strategies you can use to promote your affiliate products, and a very interesting way to do it is with Article Marketing.

Article Marketing is nothing more than a type of advertising in which businesses write short articles related to their respective industry. These articles are made available for distribution and publication in the marketplace. Each article contains a bio box and byline that include references and contact information for the author’s business. Well-written content articles released for free distribution have the potential of increasing the authoring business’ credibility within its market as well as attracting new clients.

Source: Wikipedia

So what’s the strategy? How can I boost my sales by writing articles?

The strategy is not so hard to do, but actually it is if you have difficulties to be consistent, but we are going to see how to deal with that.

What do you do when you want to buy something? I bet you search on google everything you can: videos, reviews, scam alerts, comparison articles etc etc. That’s why you need to write articles of the products you sale!

People used to investigate before taking actions and you need to take advantage of this situation by promoting your marketing products with articles. Articles of every type, but specially you need to write articles that review the product, articles that talk about the pro/cons of the product and things like that.

By writing many articles and using the proper keywords you could rank high in most search engines, or at least Google. Is not so hard, you just need to find keywords that sell.

The basic strategy is to redirect the people who read your articles to your landing page or another website where they can buy the product. This way you will get a commission per sale.

NOTE: You cannot use hyperlinks in affiliate marketing, so how do you redirect them? Using the little bio box at the end of the article, where you can place hyperlinks.

How to write articles that sell

Write from experience: When you write from experience your articles will be much convincing, and that’s what you want. This relates the thing I was talking the other day about choosing products that you are interested in. If you are not interested in a product how could you write “from experience”? It’s kinda impossible… Also, many times you won’t need to pay just for getting the product and then write a review about it. In most cases you can contact the advertiser and explain it the situation, asking for a free copy of the product in order to test it and promote it.

It’s kinda usual to get free copies of what you want to promote.

Be precise: Don’t write things neither too long or too short, just be precise. Hit the nail and that’s it, don’t waste lines talking and talking about nothing. Give the information you want to bring to your potential customers and that’s it!

Write what they want to read: This may sound unfair or non-ethic but this is how marketing works. Study the people you are targeting, their likes, their ages etc etc… So then, when you really know the people you will target, write the articles based on that statistics and give them what they expect to read when they search for a product on Google. Of course you will need to write several articles in order to cover a wider espectrum of possibilities. FYI, you can try QuanCast to know demographic stats of people specificing a page.

Use outside sources to validate your article: This is a fact, people like to read “as seen on CNN” and things like that. When possible, use outside sources that help you to validate the things you are talking about in the article. Try to find a special article from a magazine, news channel or something where users can read and makes them believe in you.

Hopefully if you follow these guidelines, you will boost your sales promotions in a targeted market.

Where to write these Articles?

Great question, I was talking about article marketing and I didn’t tell you where you can publish them. The following is a list of websites where you can do it, most of them could be well known by you:

• EzineArticles
• BestEzines
• AssociatedContent
• WebSource
• Freesticky
• Amazines
• IdeaMarketers

Those are the main websites, but you can find more by looking into the tag called Articles of my Delicious account.

Your Ideas About Article Marketing

Well in other posts I will talk more about other promotional marketing methods beside this one. For now I’m done, but I would love to read your thoughts or experiences in this matter in order to learn more from you, I don’t know everything!

Many Internet Marketing gurus say it’s easy to succeed at this business, or at least they make us think it. I think everything is easy when you already learned how to do it, for example to walk. We learned to walk when we were childs, but for a just born baby it could be an impossible thing aka nightmare.

The other day I talk about The Secrets Behing Finding Niche Markets where I gave you details about finding niche markets. Today I’m going to give you some tips to help to take part in this business. Many people when join to affiliate networks think they could start promoting the first thing they see, or may be the hottest thing. Well, that’s not so easy because if it were, everybody should be sucessful and rich.

Recommendations for Choosing an Affiliate Product

Be familiar with the product: The reason why I’m giving you this advice at first instance is because this is the key to suceed. You should look for a product you are familiar with, a product which you know and will enjoy promoting it. This way, you won’t need to research before promoting it because you have the knowledge to talk about it.

Also, it’s not good to promote something you don’t believe in. This is like blogging, if you blog just because of the money you can earn, you will end failing. So to resume this first advice, pick a product you know and you think it worth.

Be interested in the product: You can be familiar with the product because everyday you hear about it, but if you are not interested in it you will lose your time. At the beginning you can do it fine, but then when you need to work hardly writing many articles about the product and submit it in article directories, it will be a pain in the ass!.

Almost every week I see people promoting Herbalife products in my community, but for any reason I would promote them.

Check its landing page: When you think you got a good product, check its landing page, email creative or whatever is supposed to convince people for buying the product. The landing page needs to be easy to navigate, and it should call to action.

When you see the html email or visit the landing page, think as you were a costumer near from buying the product. If YOU are persuaded, it means your costumers will too. In the other hand, if you don’t feel motivated or persuaded, probably you should look for another product with a better catching interface.

Check if it converts: Talk with your affiliate manager and ask him about the conversion rates of the product you want. In other words, the conversion rate tell you if the product makes sells or not, 3 or more sales per day is ok. Conversion rate is the ratio of visitors who convert casual content views or website visits into desired actions based on subtle or direct requests from marketers, advertisers, and content creators.

I talked with my manager of NeverblueAds and he told me some good conversion rates related with different offers:

• Email submit = about 25 – 35%
• Free trial offer = about 2% – 3%
• Dating offer (short for submit) = about 10%
• True sale offer = about 2 – 5%

Those numbers are relative, so talk with your manager to assure.

Stay with the winners: What I want to mean with this, is to promote those things that are working. Promote popular/hot products, promote that things you know other people are making money with. Why, won’t be harder because of the competition? If you try to promote those products that are not converting well, you will lose money and time promoting it.

What you need to do is to effort promoting it, that’s it. I will talk more about promoting your affiliate products in other article, as well as how to find keywords and how to find these products that are making the people richer, using Affiliate Espionage.

Money back guarantee: This is not always available but if so, it would be better for you. Money back guarantee programs inspire peace and trust, your consumers will feel safe of blackhat tricks or scammy programs.

As I said, this is a plus. The good thing is most of the U.S. and Canadian offers have this policy, but if you find a great product without it don’t worry!.

Which are your tactics?

The other day I read something that recommends the opposite of me about the popular products. I read it is better to get an unsaturated market, this way you could sell “better” than if you take a saturated one, such as making money online for example…

What do you think about it? What about the wasted money until you discover the trick of the product?

If you are promoting a product I would love to know how did you choose it, teach me!

Nowadays you can see more and more young people recognizing opportunities and innovating with new  kind of businesses,  introducing new products or services to internet. This young entrepreneurs, like Mark Zuckerberg creator of Facebook, are innovating with their ideas and making loads of money online.

As you may know, is very difficult to find entrepreneurs in your community. An entrepreneur is a person who has the skills and initiative to establish its own business, who assumes the financial risk of the initiation, operation, and management of its business. That is exactly the definition of Michael Dunlop – a young and talented entrepreneur founder of Retireat21.com, a leading showcase for other young entrepreneurs to show their talents and share their stories.

Many of us have heard about millionaire entrepreneurs, like the founders of Youtube or Facebook, but who are they? How they reached their goal? That’s the reason number 1 why I visit Retireat21, because is a great place to meet the stories behind successful young entrepreneurs, to know how they succeed!.

Because of that, I highly recommend you to take a tour for the Interviews’ Section, a place where you can find loads of good advices from interviews of many entrepreneurs like Matthew Mullenweg (founder of WordPress), Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos) or Aaron Wall (founder of SEOBook.com).

So as you can see, Retireat21 is a great website where entrepreneurs can be met, but how to interact with them? Don’t you think it would be great to share thoughts with them? The answer to both questions is YES!.

By participating on the Young Entrepreneur Forums you can exchange ideas and meet the strategies of many successful people with common interests in Internet Businesses, Blogging, Website Promotion Techniques or either topic related with entrepreneurship. These forums are a great opportunity where you can take advantage from, this way you can learn about the mistakes they committed before achieving their goals, avoiding them and going directly to your success!.

What if you disagree with the experiences and information of the forums? You can still learning at Retireat21′s Blog, where many tips focused on entrepreneurship are shared. SEO, viral marketing, social networking or making money online, are some of the topics dealt on the blog.

To conclude…

Retireat21.com is a great website where you can learn about entrepreneurship, learning techniques that will help you to succeed and make money online. Its interviews and forums are excellent resources of priceless tips, so you won’t want to miss them! And that’s not all,  if you are under 22 and you make money online I invite you to sign up for the top young bloggers list.

To Your Success