The thought of starting an online business and turning it into a profitable company that
provides you with both financial freedom and independence is appealing to many. Some
want to be able to be their own boss, others want to be able to spend more time with their
family, and many want to be able to travel the world while they run their online business.
When I started out, I had no money to invest, so quickly had to learn how to make money
from nothing. This was one of the first methods that worked for me, and I’ve been using it
ever since as my various online businesses have grown. I started with around 100 bucks.
Here’s a screenshot of one of the websites I sold last year where this method had been used
in part to build it up to the stage where it was largely hands off at time of sale (disclaimer: this
was not an overnight success!)
A lot of people assume that they can’t make money online because they don’t know how to
build websites or rank websites. Well, if you have always wanted to test the online marketing
waters but didn’t know where to start, you are in luck. This is something that can be done by
someone with:
• Little to no technical knowledge (me when I started)
• No coding or SEO knowledge (me when I started)
• No experience with running a website before (me when I started)
• Around $100 in start up cash (you could invest more or less but this is what I recommend)
One of the most frequently asked questions when it comes to online entrepreneurship is
“how to make 6 figures a year.” Six figures are very attainable if you follow this method
consistently. It won’t happen overnight and it won’t be free (it will take time and there are
costs associated as you scale) but if you are willing to put the hours in, you will succeed. I
originally posted this method on a popular web-master forum and since then hundreds
(literally) of people have followed it and made money.
Often times the simplest ideas will produce the biggest returns, and this is a prime example
of how you can take a simple idea and grow it into a profitable online business. No tricks, just
hard work.
Introducing an Easy and Scalable Method
This is a proven method that involves finding consumers that are actively searching for
products or services that you are promoting and getting paid a referral fee or affiliate
commission every time a sale is made. While it does require work on your part, it can be
easily outsourced and scaled when your business grows, which allows for exponential
growth. Here is a brief overview of this method before I go into more depth:
• Pick an evergreen niche
• Create a review blog (website)
• Use Google search for prospecting
• Respond to all opportunities
• Build long-term traffic sources
• Repeat consistently
Now that you have an idea of what this method involves let’s break down each section
individually and dive into each component so you fully understand how to execute this plan
and start making money online.
- Identify a Niche
The first thing you need to do is identify a niche, and you want to take three things into
consideration when doing this. First, ask yourself if this is a niche that is very popular with a
large selection of products or services that will always have a high demand. You don’t want
to target a niche that has a small demand or is just a fad. Think long-term potential here.
Some examples of strong niches with endless opportunity include weight loss products and
dating offers. People are always going to want to lose weight and people are always going to
be interested in dating. There will never be a shortage of consumers actively seeking these
products and services online. Pick the wider niche and not something very specific that could
be short-term (e.g. such as the latest celebrity diet).
Second, you will need to make sure that your niche is one that has a lot of high paying offers.
You don’t want to go through all of this hard work to only make a few dollars per conversion.
There are two websites that you can use to help you prospect for niche ideas and also see
what offers are available, how popular they are, and finally, how much they pay.
ClickBank Affiliate Network
ClickBank is an online marketplace that features affiliate products for virtually any niche you
can imagine. Every offer pays you a percentage of each sale, and most offers pay between
50% and 75% of the sale price to you, the affiliate.
Simply visit ClickBank.com and click on “Marketplace” to begin searching for products to
promote. You can search the categories listed on the menu or you can search by keywords
related to the niches you are interested in. When you find a product that interests you make
sure to click on the title and visit the product’s sale page. Make sure it is high quality — you
don’t want to waste your time and effort on products that are promoted via low quality
websites.
Check the average dollar amount per sale for each product and make sure it has a nice
healthy payout (recurring products are a bonus). You will then want to look at the product’s
gravity rating, which is an indication of how popular it is with affiliates. A ClickBank product
with high gravity means that it has high competition which will also indicate that there is a lot
of competition and review sites already out there. A more reasonable approach to striking the
balance between high gravity and quality, is to pick a product with a gravity between 5 and 75.
Select a few products across that range and be sure to contact the vendor for a review
copy. You’ll be able to give some real feedback on the product as well as get an indication of
how responsive their support is. The best product I ever promoted had a gravity of 12 but
you’ll need to test to find the sweet spot for you and your niche.
Offer Vault
OfferVault.com is an affiliate marketing resource that lists all of the current offers that are
available across all of the major affiliate networks. You can easily enter in a search term and
find, as well as compare, offers. While ClickBank is a great resource to locate several
products to promote it is always a good idea to diversify across several affiliate networks,
plus you are going to want to keep adding products as you grow — so make sure your niche
has a seemingly endless supply of products to promote.
Finally, you will need to make sure your niche is something that interests you. Can you see
yourself spending several hours a day posting and writing about the niche? If not then you
need to find an alternative, because it helps to start with something you are already
comfortable with. Most people fail because they don’t like a niche and give up too early.
For even more help with this step make sure you read this blog post about choosing a niche.
It is packed with tips that will help you make the right decision.
- Build Your Website
Now it is time to build your website, which is going to be a review site that features all of the
affiliate products that you have identified in the first step. You are going to want to use
WordPress as a blogging platform and you should use a .com domain where possible (if you
have no money at all then you can start on a free domain/platform but it won’t be as
effective). I have a very in-depth definitive guide that shows you how to get your domain and
website hosting as well as how to install WordPress in 10 simple steps. You can read this
guide on how to make a website.
Theme Selection
Once you have WordPress installed on your hosting account you will want to select a theme
to use for your website. Instead of paying a web designer thousands of dollars to build a
custom site you can visit ThemeForest and search WordPress review themes. There are a
lot of very affordable and functional themes that will quickly allow you to create a professional
looking website to attract conversions with. If you’re short of cash, a free theme will also work
just fine until you can afford an upgrade.
Here are three sample review-style themes to give you an idea of what you want to look for
(there’s no “best” theme as it will always depend on your niche and content style so pick one
you like):
Magazine – News / Blog / Review Theme
Once you have selected your theme take some time to customize it — changing colors and
the layout to match the products or service you are going to be promoting will help. Also, it is
a good idea to get a custom logo made, but don’t worry about breaking the bank. There are
several great options on fiverr.com — you can’t beat a logo for just $5!
Create Review Posts
You will want to start off with between 3 and 5 products. I suggest that you start with
products that are popular and have high consumer interest and demand — you will see why
this is important when I move onto the next step below.
For the best results, you should either buy the product or request a review copy. You also
don’t want the review to sound like an advertisement. Write it from a first-person point of view
— review posts that have the “I” influence makes them appear genuine. For example, “After
using this product for two week I already noticed a change in my body, and according to my
scale I lost 5 pounds, so I was very impressed with the results” makes a much bigger impact
than, “This product does a great job and leads to weight loss.”
Put some effort into this part, because your reviews will be directly responsible for converting
your website traffic into sales. The more in-depth and convincing your reviews are, the more
sales you are going to make.
Insert Your Affiliate Links
Once your review posts are written you will need to place your affiliate links within the
content. You will want to link the actual product name and also link several phrases such as
“get more info here” or “get yours by clicking here” in order to push your traffic to the actual
sales pages where your visitors can make a purchase, resulting in you earning commission
for each sale generated through your affiliate links.
You will want to cloak your affiliate links (so they don’t look like affiliate links) and also make
sure that your clicks and conversions track properly before you start to drive traffic to your
website. For cloaking, I use PrettyLink (free version is okay to start), which is a simple plugin
that will allow you to easily make your affiliate links more user friendly (we use it on the FE
International blog, too).
- Promote Your Website
You are going to use two main tools to find places to promote your site, Google and
BuzzBundle. When used correctly they will both put you in front of consumers that are
actively looking for the products and services that you are promoting through your review
website.
Google Search Tools (100% Free)
When I first started this method I was using Google Alerts as a semi-automated (and free)
solution, but there is a more efficient method to utilize in 2023.
Here’s how to do this with Google search alone.
• Go to Google and search for your keyword. If your keyword is a phrase, put it in quotation
marks.
• Click on “Search Tools” under the search box.
• Change “Any Time” to “Past 24 Hours”
• Change “Sorted by relevance” to “Sorted by date” to get the most recent results first.
If you want to search Facebook posts, or any other site, you can also do this on Google by
entering the following and changing the time and sort as above:
Searching for: “your keyword” site:facebook.com
Pro Tip 1 – Commenting Strategy
Facebook
The Facebook commenting system allows “top commenters” to display links as hyperlinks
rather than text. Getting the top commenter status will therefore increase traffic considerably.
What criteria you need to meet to get this status in comments is variable but the more likes
your comment gets, the higher your chances.
Disqus
Websites that use the Disqus commenting system will ban users who constantly post the
same link even if you change the comment surrounding it. To get around this, consider using
proxy servers to change up your IP address and different accounts on a regular basis. Other
users of this method have started to see accounts banned within 10 posts, so for blog
commenting to be effective you need to be discrete.
Blogging
The key thing to remember when you are commenting on blogs is to always add value to the
post you are contributing to. Failing to do this is the quickest way to get your comment
deleted. It’s this consistent commenting and adding value that will create steadily increasing,
profitable traffic. Other things to note:
• Don’t constantly link back to the same page on your site. Keep a healthy domain by linking to
various inner pages too.
• On most blogs, inputting your website will change your name to a hyperlink. Vary up linking
from your name and from within the comment itself.
• Don’t assume high quality news sites will delete your link. Some don’t even check.
- Stay Consistent
Popular niches will generate a lot of Google results and a lot of activity through BuzzBundle.
A lot of your results are going to come from press releases, new blog posts and forum posts.
Keep track of all the URL’s on a daily basis — if you are not finding at least 50 targets a
day then you should consider adding some more products and searches. Whenever you
receive a new alert immediately visit the URL and leave a response. Act fast, because you
can potentially be the first individual to respond, which will attract more clicks.
Not all of your searches will present you with an opportunity to post, but the majority of blogs
and forums will have a window of opportunity for you to leave some feedback that directs
readers to your website. Now, when you are creating your posts don’t just say, “Hey, visit
wwwyoursite.com” because that will look like pure spam. Not only will you not receive any
clicks, but the website will probably delete your post quickly assuming it is spam.
Put some thought into each reply you make, and try to customize it to directly relate to the
post you are responding to. This not only helps you get a better response, but it allows you to
fly under the radar of website owners and moderators. So, if you were promoting a diet pill
product and responding to a question posted on a blog asking about quick ways to lose
weight your reply would want to be crafted this way:
“I was in the same boat as you about six months ago. I had no idea what to believe online
because everything seemed to be an advertisement. I actually read a personal review about
[your product] and it seemed like the person had great success using the product so I gave it
a try. I couldn’t have been more excited about the results, as I am now 50 pounds lighter
than when I first started using it. The article was very helpful to me — if you want to check it
out yourself you can read it here” [link to your review article].”
Remember, the more products you review, the more traffic you can generate. When you get
rolling this directly translates into more sales and profit for your business.
- Continue to Build Organic & Referral Traffic
Sources
The beauty of this method is that it doesn’t rely on SEO but just by setting up a website and
creating content, your review posts (and even forum threads/blog posts you’ve commented
on) will start to rank in Google and receive organic search traffic. Not only can you rank the
individual review posts, but you can also create additional posts based on long tail keywords
and then direct that traffic to the specific review page. Learning SEO is just one of
many ways to attract your first website visitors for free. Using Google and BuzzBundle is the
easiest way to start producing highly qualified traffic as well as sales. You can then scale up
by outsourcing that work and focusing on creating additional organic traffic sources through
search engine optimization later on.
Pro Tip 2 – Build an Email List
The traffic visiting your website will be highly targeted. You should capture these readers with
an opt-in box and create an email list and follow up sequence that pushes more related
review content to their inbox. This is an automated way to remarket to your readers.
Pro Tip 3 – Revisit old posts
Check your biggest refers in Google Analytics and revisit your old comments, posts and
responses. This is particularly important on forums where there may have been follow up
questions. Replying to these will keep the thread, and the link back to your site, active.
Pro Tip 4 – Reverse engineer your competitors
Use SEMRush and Ahrefs to find your competitor’s best links and acquire these links for
yourself. For more information on this technique read this.
- Sell Your Site
Growing a website to a point where it is generating $1,000+ per month is great, but what is
even better is that you are building an asset that can be sold. This means that if you get
bored of your current website and want to move into another niche your site doesn’t go to
waste. Matter of fact, you could sell your website for 20-30x average monthly profits. This
means if your site was making $1,000 per month in profit for the past 3-6 months then you
could sell it for $20K-$30K!
Once your site gets to a point where you would like to sell, feel free to go through us here at
FEI. We have done over 400 deals in the past 6 years and can help you get the best price
possible for your site. We will also make the selling process as simple and painless as
possible for you. If you are interested, head over to our free website valuation page and our
team will be in touch with you shortly.
Creating a website and scaling it to a six figure per year online business is a very achievable
task as long as you know the proper steps to take and don’t give up. This method allows you
to build a business that produces residual income and starts to produce revenue almost
instantly. You don’t have to wait months for expensive search engine optimization to kick in
— and you don’t have to worry about Google rankings and avoiding penalties and algorithm
changes. In fact, you don’t have to rely on ranking in Google at all to be successful with this
method!
Once you master this method you can rinse and repeat (and even sell your website),
duplicating the method across several different niches. Once you start to see a nice return
you can then outsource a lot of the little tasks, allowing you to focus on expanding your
niches and revenue.
I hope this guide has given you the inspiration and confidence to start your journey to a six
figure yearly online business.