Step 4: The “How To” Answer… The C T P M Process

Building our Websites, and making money from them, is exciting, creative and, above all, very do-able. 

You don’t need loads of technical knowledge. You don’t need to be an Internet whizz, understand html, be great at design, or have a higher degree. If you do already have some knowledge, you can put it to good use. But it’s by no means essential.

All you do need is the willingness to work at it, and the ability to follow a clearly set-out process, at your own speed. Do that, and your site can join many others, in the top 1% of over 100 million sites on the Internet, as measured by Alexa.com, the leading traffic-measurement company on the Internet. (Alexa is owned by Amazon.com and powered by Microsoft.)

 
Will it be easy? We say, not exactly easy – there’s no such thing as get-rich-quick – but very possible.

How do we do it?

We follow this step-by-step process that you can easily learn, too:

CONTENT

TRAFFIC

PRESELL

MONETIZE

 
Hmmm, you may be thinking. What does that mean?

 
Let us talk you through it.

STEP 1) Build CONTENT by loading your site with fascinating, valuable information and solutions that people are searching for on the Internet.

STEP 2) Your carefully focused content means your site is well-ranked by search engines, which direct streams of visitors – TRAFFIC – to your site.

STEP 3) Overdeliver top-value information to your visitors without pitching to them – that is, PRESELL. You do this through the way you write the content on your site. (We’ll tell you more later on.) Content written to PREsell puts your visitors into a positive mindset, so that they like your site and feel as though you are a trusted friend.

STEP 4) At that point, because you’ve established your credibility, you can get your visitors to generate income. In other words, you MONETIZE. We explain the numerous ways you can do this later in the chapter. In time, you’ll use a mix of methods, to build a thriving, diversified business.

CONTENT

TRAFFIC

PRESELL

MONETIZE 

That’s all there is to it.

Now that you’ve seen the underlying concept, let us tell you a little more about each stage. Because we know you’re pressed for time, our aim here is to give you the big picture.

Content: The Crucial Element 

Why is content so important?

Do you know anyone who’s thrown up a Website, sat back and waited for the money to roll in, then been disappointed and disillusioned when it hasn’t?

Maybe you’ve done that yourself. It’s an easy mistake to make – we know. But a Website won’t succeed unless it has visitors. And it’s content that attracts motivated visitors.

After all, a Website doesn’t have a shop window, or a prime site in the local shopping mall. In the mall, it’s easy for stores to pull in customers. You take your kids in there and before you know it, you’re dragged into a toy store, a sweet shop, a computer games store…

On the Web, you can’t press your nose to the shop window, or handle the goods. There’s no such thing as passer-by traffic.

Understand what people want on the Web 

Successful Websites use high-value information and advice to pull in their customers.

Think about it. When you surf the net, you search for information, for solutions to whatever was on your mind at that moment.

You want cloth nappies, a new stroller, an online kids’ game? You’re looking to book a vacation, bake a cake, sort out your house once and for all? For each need or wish, you search the Internet for the answer, for the information you want.

And information is what our sites provide. We build them around tightly focused themes, and then we pack them with in-demand CONTENT.

 
You can learn to do this, too, and do it in a way that search engines such as Google, Yahoo! Search, Live Search, and Ask so they give you a higher search ranking, and make your theme-based site easier to find.

That way, when any one of the millions of surfers out there taps a few words in to a search box… presto! Up comes your site.
 
For example, many pages from case study Michelle’s site,

http://case-studies.sitesell.com/

have high-ranking positions on Google!…

And here is her home page…

We, the authors of this course, can’t tell you how delighted we are when our pages start to score well, and we can see that they are getting lots of visitors. It makes all our hours of patient work, fitted in around everything else we do, totally worthwhile.

Choose a topic for your site 

So far, so good. But of course, before you can start building content, you have to choose a topic for your site.
  
How do you do that?

Ask yourself: What do I know about?

And please, don’t say “Nothing”. It simply isn’t true! We truly sympathise, because we used to feel that way too.

If you’re in the midst of child-rearing, or have been out of the employment market for a while, it can feel like you don’t know about anything, except how to lull a baby to sleep, or handle toddler meltdown. But stick with us. You know more than you think you do.

Naturally, as a mom you know an enormous amount about kids. So you could build a site around any one of hundreds of parenting or child-orientated topics, and find a big audience on the Internet.

But don’t worry – you don’t have to be “Mom” on your Website – unless you want to. There are many, many other possibilities.

List the options 

Grab a pen and paper. It’s list-time!
 
What do you like to talk about? To read about? To do, in any precious spare time you have? What was it you loved to do, before you had kids, and would be thrilled to rediscover? What are your hobbies?

 What do you do when you want to relax, or have fun, or stretch yourself, or have fun with the family? Write those things down.

What do you do, every day, that other people might like to know about? We’ve talked about childcare, but maybe there are other things. Do you have a great recipe collection? An enviable garden? A family of lovable wolf-hounds?

Do you have a skill – hairdressing, book-keeping, jewelry-making? Maybe you already have a small business you’d like to take on-line? What’s your passion – vintage dresses, tropical fish, chocolate cakes?

Are there any areas, anywhere in your life, where you have gathered knowledge, maybe without even noticing, that other people would like to share? When we brainstormed, we realised we had lots of hard-won knowledge, that others would value. And, you know what? So do you.

Is your list getting longer? Write down everything for now. Don’t discard any idea.

Look for a niche that works

You’ll use this list as the basis for choosing your site topic. Now, it may be that you know at once that there’s only one subject you’d want to build your site around.

If that’s you, then your next step will be to identify a niche within that topic, where your site can succeed.

Or it may be that you’ll research several of the subjects on your list – and then choose something totally different! It’s a gradual and exciting process.

The main thing is, to end up with a topic you really love. That way, working on your site will never be a chore.

Once you have a list of topics, it’ll be time to do some research to identify a niche within one of your topics, where you could build a successful Website.

It’s all about demand and supply. Your site must focus on information that enough people are looking for. If no one’s interested in your topic, you won’t get enough traffic.

And no traffic means no income. So, your topic must have good demand.

The other consideration is the amount of competition around your topic on the Web, or the supply. You need to know how many other sites are showing up in search engine results for your topic.

A topic that will work needs to have a high demand, and a low supply.
How do you find out?

A variety of tools are available on the Internet to help you do this research, but they all make it rather laborious. You’re a WAHM, and WAHMs don’t have time for all that! We use the tools that come as part of the Site Build It! (SBI!) package, and provide us with everything we need to work out which is the best concept to use for our sites.

Don’t worry. It’s not as hard as it sounds. You can do it at your own pace, and if you get stuck, there’s plenty of help. You won’t be on your own. SBI! even provides a free writing guide for you. Just click on the link below to access it…

http://mycps.sitesell.com 

Excited? You should be! It is exciting – we are still thrilled by every little bit of progress we make on our sites.

So now, let’s move on to the all-important topic of TRAFFIC. 

Traffic: The Lifeblood of Your Site

We’ve established that content, written on a tightly-focused niche topic, is the key element to a successful Website.

But content alone isn’t enough. What your site really needs is traffic… and not just any type of traffic.

You need targeted traffic.

Targeted visitors are interested specifically in the theme that you’ve built your site around. So when they reach your site and find masses of great information about the exact topic that interests them, they’re delighted.

Here’s how one WAHM’s site attracted a valuable targeted visitor:

 
What’s the secret of attracting targeted traffic?

We'll use another one of our sites as an example. Jennifer launched her site, www.favorite-puppy-names.com, because she’s keen on canines!

She chose a dog-related niche by following the:

CONTENT

TRAFFIC

PRESELL

MONETIZE

 
process, and discovered that thousands and thousands of people each month look for the phrase “dog names” in search engines.

Like Jennifer, one of your first tasks will be identifying the search terms people use to find information about your topic on the Web.

These terms are known as keywords and you’ll build a list of them to use on your site’s pages. Rest easy, it’s a straightforward process.

Search engines love giving their users the results they want. So, if you build your site using lots of sought-after keywords, wrapped around with plenty of original content, in return they’ll send you visitors.

Jennifer built her site around the “dog names” concept, and provides her visitors with the free information they want; thousands of ideas on what to name their puppy. Because every single page on her site is built around a high-demand keyword from her list, she gives the search engines loads of opportunities to find her. And they do.

The traffic that arrives at her site is made up of people who went looking for all sorts of concepts to do with the naming of puppies, like “favorite puppy name”, or “German puppy names”. Each time, they find exactly what they were looking for at Jennifer’s site.
 
 
The more carefully targeted pages she builds, the more her traffic grows.
Her traffic stats confirm this trend…

There are other ways to grow your traffic. You can pay for it. There are plenty of sites out there who are more than happy to accept your advertising dollars to send visitors your way.

But because we’re budget-conscious moms, we prefer free traffic, and you can get plenty of that. As well as using search engine queries, visitors can find you through:

 
• reading an article you wrote about your subject for another Website

• discovering a helpful message you've posted on a forum

• links from other relevant Websites

• following a referral on a message board

Don’t panic! We know there’s a lot to take in here, but you don’t have to learn and understand it all at once.

Take your time. Simply build your site and your traffic one step at a time. It’s like raising a child. You don’t move from the newborn stage to adolescence in one step.

Day by day, you see your child’s growth and maturation blossoming before your eyes.

Your site and business will do the same.

Don’t know anything about how to build a site? That’s okay. We all started out with next-to-no knowledge about Website-building. We all have good-looking and performing sites, built with our own fair hands!

As long as you’re willing to learn and to follow a step-by-step process, you’ll be fine, even if you are a total newbie. You’ll have all the tools you need to make the process do-able.

Attracting a steady, growing stream of traffic is great. But once again, it’s just one part of the process. The next trick is to excite those visitors with the amazing goodies you have to share – and that’s what we call PRESELLING.

PRESELL: Make Your Visitors Happy 

We know you want to make income from your site. But we’re sure you’ll be glad to hear that the best way to do that is NOT through heavy selling.

When you sell, you go all out to get the sale. Your visitor is in no doubt what’s going on, and most likely, she resists your efforts. Who likes a pushy salesperson, or trusts overblown hype?

So we do it differently, by PREselling our visitors.

The idea of PREselling is to create a positive mindset in your visitor, warm her up to an idea, product or service and leave her with the choice of whether to explore further and possibly make a purchase.

It’s a natural extension of what you already do, without even thinking about it. As a mom, you make recommendations to your friends every day.

A new bargain kids’ clothes store, a home organizer who’s transformed your life, a brilliant movie – things you’ve checked out and liked.

It’s natural to tell other people about them. You have nothing to gain. You just want to share a good thing.

So now, you do the same thing on your site. You write your site in an open, friendly way, so that your visitor “hears” your voice addressing her concerns, offering her the ideas, solutions and information she wants.

Pretty soon, she starts to feel that you’re a new and trusted friend. And a visitor who feels like that is far more likely to buy than one who gets the hard-sell.

PREselling simply means creating that positive, willing-to-buy mindset in your visitors. And this is how you do it…

Write a site that PREsells

Every single time we write for our sites, we put our target readers in the spotlight.

For Jennifer, they’re people who’ve just brought home a cute little puppy.

For Elizabeth, they’re moms who are short on time, and want to feed their families fresh, healthy food.

For Cate, they’re folks who want to learn how to manage their money properly, and for Erin, they’re busy moms who will benefit from organizing and simplifying their home.

By making it top priority to meet our readers’ needs, we know that when they land on our sites they’ll be bowled over by what we have to offer.

 
Because not only do we give our readers what they want - we overdeliver. We earn their respect.

Offline, overdelivering is when your package arrives two days earlier than promised, or the waitress brings crackers for your hungry kids to munch on, without being asked.

Online, you can overdeliver by offering masses of really valuable information. And you can go further. For instance, you could give your visitors:

• Links to useful online resources

• Free printable downloads

• Product reviews

• Regular e-zine

• Discussion forum

• Invitations on your site for your visitors to share their ideas and stories

• Blog updates

Whatever you decide to put on your site, do it with your own personal touch. Write as if you’re talking one-on-one with your visitor. (You don’t have to impress your English teacher.)

Have a friendly conversation from the heart. Be yourself. Your sincerity and personality will shine through.

Let your visitor know you truly want to help her. Share your knowledge and experiences. Be honest when it comes to your reviews and recommendations.

Build relationships, not sales pages. You’ll reap the rewards.

Think of it this way. As a work-at-home mom, your desire to earn income always comes second to your drive to do the best possible for your children.

Now apply the same principle to your site. First give your visitors everything they want and need. Then think about the money.

It feels good to have a site that centers on its visitors. And know what? It makes your income potential soar!

Let us show you how…

Monetization: Earn Money From Your Site

We suspect you’re still wondering... “Just how can I make money doing this?” 

It’s the question that puzzled us when we were starting out – until we grasped the amazing monetization potential of a content-rich Website.

There are many, many ways to earn money from your Website.

Let us explain. 

You might have a product or service to sell. If so, a content-led Website can help you reach a far wider audience of potential customers.

But, more likely, you don’t have a product or service. No problem. You can set yourself up as an “infopreneur,” providing highly sought-after information that caters to surfers who are seeking specific solutions.

For us moms, setting up a site based on information is an excellent choice because it’s low maintenance and easy. And we like the sound of that!

How do we make money from providing information? Simple.

We don’t sell the information – the content on our sites is given freely. Instead, once we have a solid flow of presold traffic, we use two very popular methods of earning revenue: “contextual advertising” and “affiliate marketing.” 

These are the perfect fit for content-rich Websites.

We’ll discuss these two monetization models in a moment. We know you have another question: “How much can you make?” 

That figure varies enormously, depending on the niche you choose, the amount of time you have to spend on your site, how long your site has been “live”, and other factors.

Debs, from above, has limited time to devote to her site and yet her income generation continues. In our Case Studies section, other WAHMs tell their stories, and give you an idea of how they’re following different monetization models.

But first, let’s take a more detailed look at some of the most popular ways to earn money from your content-rich Website.

Contextual Advertising

Programs like Google AdSense have revolutionized the Internet business world. Take a peek at any of our sites and you’ll see Google AdSense in action. When visitors click on an ad, we earn a referral commission.

Here is an AdSense example…

 
You’ve probably seen these types of little ads on sites as you’ve been surfing. Every day, hundreds of thousands of people click on ads like these.

And every time they do, the owner of the site where the ads are displayed earns a referral commission. And that owner could be you!

 

Contextual advertising programs are free to join, if your site’s content is good enough. (Yours will be, of course!) You simply place the ad code on your site and, through the miracle of Internet technology, your visitors will view advertisements directly related to your Website... and their interests.

These programs work by analysing your keyword-rich content, so they can deliver highly relevant ads to your site.

Let’s say your site is about cats. You’ll carry ads about pet supplies and cat care products. If your site’s about food, you’ll display ads about recipes or cooking equipment.

That’s why it works. You build a site to attract targeted visitors, who by definition are also interested in related advertising. And so, visitors click… and you earn.

Once in place, the ads require little maintenance, another reason why, as time-poor moms, we love them. Yet, they make us money, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It really can’t get much better than that!

 
Affiliate Marketing 

Affiliate programs offer another excellent way to make money from your information-rich site. You don’t have to think about product storage, credit card transactions, customer support or shipping. The company that you are representing looks after all of that!

Imagine an online company selling toys. If you build a site about children’s games, you could become an affiliate to that company, which means that you would carry a link to them on your site.

When people click through from your site and make a purchase, you earn a commission.

We’ve learned that a great way to make this work is to PREsell, by recommending or reviewing the affiliate products we have on our sites. Of course, we act as affiliates only for companies whose items or services we feel totally happy to endorse.

When visitors click on a product-link in a review and then make a purchase, we earn a commission.

Affiliate marketing is a great monetization choice for you to consider, because it’s also low-maintenance. Yes, it does take time to find good items to represent, but once they’re in place on your site, most of your work is done.

Diversification is the name of the game…

You may start out with the above two monetization models and then integrate additional ones as your presold traffic grows. Or…

You may begin your business with one of the following income streams and diversify later on when you are ready…

Creating / Selling Hard Goods 

This one is for you if you have a product to sell. It could be something you make yourself, like handmade greetings cards, or an item you’ve sourced from elsewhere such as children’s toys.

Either way, the secret of successful sales lies in building a theme-based site, which focuses on a niche related to your products. You’ll attract targeted traffic – people who are interested in your niche and want the information you offer. You PREsell, by offering lots of information that interests them, and then you offer them the chance to buy from you.

Selling like this means you avoid offline marketing costs, you don’t need a store and you reach a broader audience world-wide.

Creating / Selling E-goods

 
Take your knowledge, and package it into an e-good, like a downloadable book or course, which you can sell from your site. Make this product an extension of the information you’re already providing on your site.

So, if your site is about baking, you could create an e-book out of your chocolate cake recipe collection. If your passion is walking for fitness, offer your own e-program of exercise plans, and so on.

 
 Selling Your Services, Locally and Globally

Perhaps you already have a skill that people would gladly pay for. Are you an accountant, a translator, an editor, a gardener? There are people out there who need your services!

If your skill is one that requires on-the-spot input from you, like gardening, you can raise your profile in your local community through your Website.

And if your skills can be utilized over the Internet, you can build a global client base.
Erin combines both these opportunities with her Website, www.homeorganizeit.com.

Offline, Erin owns a residential organizing service. Now she’s taken her business online, offering tons of helpful organizing advice (her “content”) targeted toward busy moms.

Mothers from around the world visit her site for information. While they’re there, they might buy her products, or click on contextual ads or affiliate links, thus generating online income.

At the same time, local moms who find the site may decide to hire Erin. She’s received more local business from her Web presence than she ever did from her Yellow Pages ad!

What’s more, she’s discovered an interesting new sideline. As moms have discovered her site, and seen how well she’s doing with it, they’ve hired her to help them start building sites of their own.

 
 Finders / Referrers 

Do you live in a town that attracts tourists? Know of an undiscovered haven that could make a wonderful holiday destination?

You can use your site to promote offline businesses who don’t know how to use the Internet to their advantage, or who would be happy to receive new clients via your site.

Build a site about your touristy hometown, or a place you know well. As traffic grows, you can start to send contacts to local restaurants, hotels and real estate agents, and charge a commission on the leads and sales you send them.

Build a Range of Monetization Options

No matter what kind of Website you build, it’s smart to spread your monetization choices around. Start with the easiest option, and gradually add others. By diversifying your revenue opportunities, you’re insuring that if one income stream isn’t performing well, you have plenty of others to pick up the slack.

With all these options, remember that your first step is to build traffic, by creating carefully targeted PREselling content. Only then do you introduce monetization to your site.

If you’re first and foremost an infopreneur, start with contextual advertising.

Gradually add a few well-chosen affiliate programs. You might then create an e-product, or sell hard goods related to your niche.

If you already use eBay auction selling in a way that’s related to your niche, you could consider adding this to your monetization plan as well, and cross-promote your auction activities with other monetizing opportunities on your site.

Likewise, if you are primarily selling services or goods, you can add contextual ads and affiliate programs to the mix.

It all takes time to build, but will pay great dividends in the long term. And where’s the hurry? Here’s one mom’s take on it, that we think makes good sense:

Truly, the only limit to finding ways to generate an income from your Website is your imagination.

Conclusion

We hope the process is starting to make sense to you:

CONTENT

TRAFFIC

PRESELL

MONETIZE

Take a topic that excites you. Seize the opportunity to share your passions, hobbies and talents with a world-wide audience.

Create a Website with lots of carefully focused, keyword-rich content about something you know and love. You’ll be building a solid foundation for your WAHM business.

Soon, the search engines will notice you, and your traffic will begin to grow. That’s when the fun begins! Write more content, remembering all the time to PREsell, by sharing your enthusiasm for your topic in the words you write. Be warm, be straight, be “you” – and you won’t go wrong.

Finally, the part we all look forward to… “Show me the money!” We hope you can see from the range of monetization options we’ve described, that making an income from your site is perfectly feasible.

 
It is all very do-able. And you can work at it when you like, at the speed that suits you, and still put the all-important needs of your family first.

But don’t just take our word for it. Let us introduce you to some other work-at-home moms who are building sites successfully, right now…

Work at Home Mom Case Studies