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My Monthly Report – April 2011

Pat — Mon, 02 May 2011 21:26:58 +0000

It’s the first Monday of the month, which means it’s time for another income report!

Each month I write a detailed report about my online income – how much I’ve made, where it comes from, and most importantly what I did and what I’ve learned along the way. I do this not only to help me keep track of how my multiple online businesses are progressing, but also to teach, inspire and show the world that a regular person like myself, with some hard work and smart planning, can do some wonderful things online – and so can you.

These monthly reports have grown to become the most popular and most visited posts on the blog, so as long as you still feel they are useful, I will definitely continue to publish them. And as always – thank you for your support!

Let’s get started.

Important Going-Ons in April

Something a little different than usual – I was paid for some social media consultation and web design work that I’ve been doing for the past couple of months for a client who actually found me through my podcast on iTunes.

I typically don’t agree to do that much consultation work, but I was in full support of what my client is aiming to achieve and was happy to provide my services.

A lot of the work included designing and programming a new website, which I handed off to my programmer who did an awesome job. In that sense, it was indeed an extra form of passive income. In total, I would say I spent about 10 hours of actual work on this project myself, which isn’t very much time at all.

My Security Guard Training Niche Site

My security guard training niche site, which was born from the Niche Site Duel, saw record earnings again in April. Still sitting at the #1 position in Google, I had a couple of $60.00 days which is awesome.

I did not add any new content or do any backlinking, so my time invested here in April was next to nothing.

I did, however, spend about a half an hour posting a new job on Elance to help complete the site. Let me explain…

You see, every state in the U.S. has different security guard training requirements – different hours, different courses, different procedures, etc. Currently, my site only provides specific information for 11 of the 50 states. Although they are the most popular states in the industry, I stopped adding new content when the site hit #1 in Google as I began to focus on creating new niche sites.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier, but I hired a person on Elance to complete the information for the remaining 39 states. It makes sense now that I have a steady flow of income that I can reinvest in the site.

I’m hoping that after information about all 50 states are published on the site, it will:

Look much more complete and official as an authority resource for security guard training.
Help rank for keywords that relate to security guard training in the other 39 states.
Increase traffic to the site because of keyword rankings and word of mouth.
And as a result increase revenue from Adsense and advertising.

Plus, if I ever plan on selling the site, it will be worth much more since it’ll will be complete.

The person I hired is an American-based writer who has a fantastic reputation on Elance with a ton of great feedback and a number of repeat customers. After a quick interview, I hired her with confidence knowing she could get the job done. She even agreed to make phone calls to companies in each of the remaining states to make sure the information was 100% correct.

I’ll keep you updated on the progress, but because I know you’re interested, the fixed price for this job with this particular provider on Elance came out to be $875.00, which is about a month’s worth of income for the site. I suspect that the cost will be easily made up after all of the new information is published on the site.

Good times!

My Getting Started Page

As many of you know, I finally completed my first version of a Getting Started Page here on The Smart Passive Income Blog. The purpose of this page is to give new visitors one place where they can get all of the information they need to get started on the blog – either as a newbie who wants to know where to begin, or someone experienced who wants links to my best content.

I talk more about the purpose of this page on The Hole on Most Blogs (Including Mine) That Needs to Be Filled.

I think the page I created does an excellent job of organizing and condensing the 400+ pages of information that exist on SPI for anyone new, however when I announced that the page was live last week, it was met with mixed reviews.

A number of people told me the page has way too much information on it and is overwhelming. Others, including some first timers to the blog, tell me it’s perfect and exactly what they wanted to see.

I think compared to what the blog was like before this page existed, it’s a home run – especially considering how overwhelming the blog was to a new visitor beforehand. But, I also agree that the page does have a lot of information on it. I may try to break the information up into 2 or 3 different pages and see how people respond to that.

Overall, it’s a major success and already I’m tracking a number of affiliate sales coming from the “domain and hosting” portion of the page, so it is being read and it is being used.

Lastly, I’ll be attempting to “double index” SPI for the term “passive income” on Google with this page. Double indexing is when you have your website show up twice, right next to each other, on the search engine results page. Here’s an example from CopyBlogger for the term “copywriting”:

Similarly, SPI ranks #2 in Google for “passive income”, outranked only by Wikipedia. If I can do this, it will drastically increase the traffic coming to my site since I’ll have the #2 and #3 spots in Google (or better yet, the #1 and #2 spots…if I can outrank Wikipedia).

There are various strategies to achieve the “double index”, but I’ll save that for a later post.

Ok – I think it’s time to get into the numbers for April

Income Breakdown

Disclosure: many of the links below are affiliate links that will earn me a commission if you purchase through them. If you do, I absolutely appreciate it and if you have any questions about any of the products or services please let me know!

Also, please note that these are figures from reports from each individual company for the previous month. It does not necessarily reflect the actual payment which, for some of the companies listed below, come 30 to 60 days later because of potential refunds.

GreenExamAcademy.com Product Sales:
- Total: $3,626.05 (includes affiliate products)
  - Last Month: $4,534.87
  - Difference:-$908.82

SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com:
- Adsense: $774.30
- Job Board: $3.04
- Total: $777.34
  - Last Month: $660.70
  - Difference: +$116.64

Other Google Adsense
- Total: $244.47
  - Last Month: $330.54
  - Difference: -$86.07

eHow Earnings:Total: $259.51
- Articles Written: 139
- Last Month: $393.69
- Difference: -$134.18

InfoBarrel Earnings:Total: $3.92
- Articles Written: 3
- Last Month: $6.98
- Difference: -$3.06

Affiliate Earnings:
- Market Samurai: $3,430.56
- Instant Article Factory: $243.00
- The Best Spinner: $1,427.00
- Blog Blueprint: $1,476.97
- Unique Article Wizard: $1,957.74
- Bluehost.com: $5,320.00
- iPhone Apps w/o Experience eBook: $468.50
- Chris Guthrie’s Amazon Niche Profit Course: $149.69
- Internet Business Mastery Academy: $145.50
- Affiliate Marketing for Beginners by Corbett Barr: $197.88
- PopUp Domination: $38.22
- Joseph Archibald’s 40 Day Challenge: $484.11
- Other Niche Sites: $167.21
- Aweber: $324.36
- Amazon Associates: $197.77
- WooThemes: $28.00
- Elance.com: $40.00
- Odesk.com: $50.00
- WP-Wishlist: $116.40
- EasyPLR: $150.58
- 99Designs.com: $50.00
- Virtual Staff Finder by Chris Ducker: $75.00
- Total: $16,538.49
  - Last Month:$16,574.47
  - Difference: -$35.98

Consultation & Web Design
- Total: $5000.00

Niche Site Coaching 2.0
- Total: $11,186.00

iPhone Applications:
- Paid Apps: $2,344.00
- Free Apps: $1,654.46
- Total: $3,998.46
  - Last Month: $6,928.68
  - Difference: -$2,930.22

Gross Total in April: $41,634.24
- Last Month: $29,429.93
- Difference: +$12,204.31

This is definitely my highest grossing month ever, although the figures are a bit skewed because I don’t usually have the large sums from consultation and coaching like you see in this month’s report. Even without those, my income still remains fairly steady around the mid 20k mark, and although it’s true that a large percentage of that does come from this blog and “making money online” tools and resources (thanks to those of you who have used my affiliate links!), I hope it doesn’t take away from the fact that I am still earning a decent income from businesses outside of this niche, which was really what I wanted to showcase on this blog when I created it back in 2008.

My large affiliate earnings are starting to classify me as one who only makes money by teaching others how to make money online – and I do not want to be put into that category, but – I guess it’s almost inevitable because of the numbers and how popular this blog is growing. It sort of overshadows that I still earn between $7k and $12k a month outside of this niche, which is an amount I would be completely happy with if that was all I earned. Don’t get me wrong though, I am extremely happy about the affiliate earnings and especially my non-aggressive, “this is how I do it and these are the tools that I use myself” approach to it.

Things I Learned in April

One important thing I learned in April is that you cannot please everybody, and you shouldn’t try to! When I went live with my Getting Started Page, I thought it was perfect and that it was everything people were looking for, but as I mentioned before, it was met with mixed reviews. It can be really easy to get caught up in the comments and suggestions, to make immediate changes and then more changes when more comments come in, but it’s best to let things settle down first and wait until the new-ness factor of whatever it is goes away.

Do you remember how many people hated Facebook’s “like” button when it first came out? It replaced the “Become a Fan” button and everyone went crazy for about a week, but now that the change isn’t new anymore and people are getting used to it – the “like” button can be seen as a major success that has changed the way we interact and share things on the web. I’m glad Facebook didn’t give in to what a lot of people wished for, because now the “like” button and Facebook are the #1 traffic source for SPI.

I’ll sit on the current design for now, and maybe make a few tweaks here and there as time goes by, but I know it’s a good page, and I’m going to stick with it.

Another thing I learned in April was that you should make it a daily routine to check your stats – or at least a couple times a week. With passive income, it can be easy to just let things ride without checking, but the problem with that is that if something happens, you’ll never know until you either get a notification, or you check and find out on your own, at which point it could be too late.

The reason I bring this up is because – if you noticed, my iPhone application earnings took a bit of a hit in April. The reason was because our “paid application contract” expired, and we were not sent any notifcations about it. Two weeks went by and all of our paid applications were taken out of iTunes, and as a result we lost about $80-$150 a day.

Not cool.

When I finally checked my stats for this income report, I saw that the later half of April produced no income from paid apps, so I logged into our account with Apple and of course, there was a notification that said we had some paperwork to take care of.

Now, I could blame Apple for not sending an email – and they totally should have, but it’s a two way street and as a business owner it’s my responsibility to keep tabs on how the business is progressing at all times…not just once a month for an income report, but at least twice a week (preferably every day – it only takes a minute) to make sure all systems are go.

To streamline this, it would be smart of me to allocate maybe 10 minutes a day to check the stats of all of my businesses and websites, just to make sure everything is healthy. I could maybe have a “quick open” tab or shortcut that opens them all up at the same time. That said, I have to be sure to not get too engulfed in the numbers and what they mean, which I tend to do when I’m looking at stats. That should be reserved for another time during the week or month.

It’s a learning process!

Thanks for all of your support, and here’s to a profitable and healthy May!

Cheers!

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If you would like to leave a comment on this post, please click the link below:

My Monthly Report – April 2011
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My New Getting Started Page is Live!

Pat — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 18:51:46 +0000

Woohoo!

I’m excited to announce that my Getting Started with Smart Passive Income page is now live!

A month ago, I wrote about how there seems to be a missing element on most blogs online, including my own: a proper starting point, both for brand new visitors and people who just want to get the most important information – all in one spot. I finally got around to completing this task, and I’m really happy with the results.

Since this particular page may become the first page that people use to really get to know me and the SPI brand online, I decided to go the extra mile with it. I shot a couple of new videos and spent a lot of time making sure it keeps readers engaged and takes them through a journey, rather than just piling a ton of random information on them.

As with anything, I’m sure there is room for improvement, but so far the reaction (especially to the welcome video) has been nothing but positive.

There are a couple of things I still need to do with this page:

First, I’ll need to test where the best place on the homepage is to link to the getting started page. I actually have Mike, my programmer, working on one iteration right now which should be live on the homepage within 24 hours. I’ll be split testing this against other placements to eventually find the optimal spot. I’ll keep you updated, for sure.

Secondly, I’d like to integrate Facebook Comments on this particular page so people can leave comments and ask questions while at the same time spreading the word about the getting started page on Facebook almost automatically. Here’s a link on Facebook that shares what this looks like and how it works.

I’ve seen a few sites integrate this already and it’s looks pretty slick. It could possibly encourage more comments since people are used to typing stuff in Facebook, and because a comment is posted on the commenter’s wall on Facebook, word about the page could spread like wildfire.

To be honest, I spent about 2 hours this morning trying to figure it out, to no avail. There are even wordpress plugins available to help with integration, and they were’t working either. I guess Mike will have a new task on his list of things to do.

Other than that, the page is ready and I invite you to check it out. Please start by watching the one-minute welcome video, which utilizes the new green screen setup I have in my home office.

I’d love to hear what you think! Just let me know in the comment section below. Thanks, and all the best to you!

Cheers!

Click Here to View the Getting Started with Smart Passive Income Page

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My New Getting Started Page is Live!
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SPI 019 : Everything You Need to Know About YouTube for Blogging and Online Business

Pat — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 09:53:26 +0000

In this session of the Smart Passive Income Podcast, I explore the world of video and start from scratch with YouTube to show you exactly how I make sure I give myself the best chance to get the most views and have the most impact for my business and blog.

As I mentioned in a previous article, Are YouTube and Podcasting Worth the Effort?, YouTube has been huge for me not only for traffic, but for engaging my existing audience and reaching brand new ones. I still get emails every day from people who say they have found me through YouTube, and it’s no wonder because 2 billion videos are viewed on YouTube every single day.

Whether you’re on YouTube already, or have yet to create your first video, make sure you listen to this session to get the most out of your efforts.

In this session, I discuss:

How 30 videos of mine have been viewed nearly half a million times.
How I overcame the fear I had when I first started uploading videos.
Why the first video I uploaded to YouTube still embarrasses me, yet continues to earn money.
The one question you should ask yourself if you ever get scared of doing anything.
How to piggy back the success of already highly viewed videos on YouTube.
How I record my “blackboard” instructional YouTube videos.
A recommended free piece of screen recording / capturing software.
The “sweet spot” time limit for videos.
Example calls to action to include with your videos.
What your Title, Description and Tag should really be.
How to Make Money on YouTube

Right click here to download the MP3

Items Mentioned in this Session:

Please subscribe below to the podcast to get automatic updates:

Thank you so much for your support, and if you have yet to leave a rating or review, please leave me an honest one on iTunes by clicking here. It will help the show and its ranking in iTunes immensely! I appreciate it!

Enjoy the show!

Cheers!

Transcript:

Click Here to Download the Transcript (PDF)

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SPI 019 : Everything You Need to Know About YouTube for Blogging and Online Business
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I’m Going Insane!

Pat — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 21:18:03 +0000

In mid-2010, I committed to a 90 day extreme home fitness program called P90X and it literally changed me. Physically, I was in the best shape of my life, and mentally I was more energized and pumped than ever before – which had a direct impact on how I executed my businesses and how I lived my day to day life.

I shared my P90x results with you on the blog, complete with before and after pics and detailed stats (Warning: I am shirtless in those pics!) and since then I’ve apparently inspired several others to follow suit and achieve similar results. Being able to inspire and help others through my blog is why I do what I do, and to realize I could help people not only with their businesses, but with their health and fitness too, is such an amazing feeling.

Health, fitness and diet are so important because without our health, we cannot enjoy life to the fullest.

After finishing up P90X, I decided to go through the program again. I started round 2 in December, but after a few weeks I found myself getting bored and stopped my day to day regiment. My diet slowly started to include food on the “do not eat” list (the Holidays did not help!) and although my physical appearance did not change, my stamina and mental endurance did.

I caught myself slacking and started over again, only to go through the exact same pattern: start off strong, but lose energy over time.

What was happening to me?

Why was I failing over and over again with a program that I knew I could finish because I’ve done it once before?

It was then that I began to think about not why I was failing, but why I was so successful the first time around, and here’s the list that I came up with:

It was my first time going through the program, so it was always new and exciting to me.
I had clear goals that I was working towards, like specific body fat and weight loss, as well as numbers that I wanted to reach for particular exercises (e.g. 20 pull-ups).
I was writing down everything and tracking my progress every single day, which is recommended in the program.
I had a lot of people holding me accountable, since I mentioned it on the blog and to a number of my friends. I did not want to fail those who were watching me.

When I think about it, these exact 4 reasons are exactly what helped me achieve many successful things I’ve done online, from Green Exam Academy, to the niche site duel, iPhone applications and even the Smart Passive Income blog itself.

When I tried to go through P90x a second and third time, I failed because I did not have any of these things working in my favor.

Now I know what to do, so please consider the following paragraphs my #4 from the list above, because I’m not going to let you down.

I will be going through a new fitness program called Insanity, which was recommended to me by forums members on BeachBody.com and a few of my friends who have seen amazing results with it too. It’s by the same company who created P90X (BeachBody), but this program is very different. It’s only 60 days, no equipment is necessary, and it really pushes you to your limits with a lot of hardcore cardio and resistance workouts. I know, because I’m already at day 12 and it’s nothing like I’ve ever done before. It really makes P90X look like a walk in a park.

As far as diet, I’m following Tim Ferriss’ Slow Carb Diet from his new book, The 4-Hour Body, which basically means no bread, pasta, rice (brown or white), grains, potatoes, breaded fried food or dairy. Proteins and vegetables are regulars on the menu, as well as legumes such as black beans and lentils to fill in the calories. These guidelines are used for 6 days, and on the 7th day of the week, I can eat whatever I want. It’s a “cheat day”, which I wasn’t so sure about at first, but it really works. I won’t go over the science why (I’m sure a few SPI readers can vouch for the slow carb diet plan), but it really helps me when I have a craving during the week because I can simply say to myself, “I’ll save that for cheat day”, and I either forget about it by then, or am really satisfied when I finally reward myself at the end of the week.

So far so good, and I think I have an advantage that I didn’t have before when I was going through P90X that will almost guarantee that I will not fail:

My wife and I are doing this together.

She’s my best friend, but now she’s also an at-home fitness partner and when it comes to meeting goals, she’s always laser focused so I know we will help each other succeed (and yell at each other when we’re being lazy!). Plus, it’s great bonding time after the little one goes to bed.

I’ll share the results and picturess with you like I did last time after it’s over, but I’m hoping to finish up with 14% body fat (on my at home scale), 155 lbs (which is virtually the same weight I am now, which means I’d be gaining muscle since I’d be losing fat), and my goal is to be able to run a 6 minute mile.

Oh, and of course, a killer 6 pack, hehe.

It’s on.

Wish us luck, and have a wonderful weekend! Cheers!

p.s. If you’d like to give Insanity a shot, I would love it you purchased the program through my affiliate link below. If you’d rather not, no worries! Thank you!

Click Here to Purchase Insanity through Pat’s Affiliate Link

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I’m Going Insane!
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Help! How Can I Succeed Online if English is Not My Primary Language?

Pat — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 18:07:46 +0000

Last week, an SPI reader named Anne emailed me the following question:

Greetings Pat. I am a reader of your Smart Passive Income blog and want to say thank you. I want to do like you and start a blog and start writing but this is a problem because I am no good at writing and with my english. English is not my native language and it is because of this I give up before. I want to try again but I ask you for help. Please what can I do because my english is not even perfect?

Instead of replying directly to Anne’s question, I thought it would be more beneficial to share her email publicly on the blog (with her permission, of course), because I know there are a lot of other people who are in a similar situation, and also because the awesome and active SPI community here would be more than happy to offer some advice and encouragement.

I know for a fact that a good percentage of my readers are from outside the US and English is not their primary language, yet several of them have successful blogs and online businesses of their own too.

My first piece of advice would be to get rid of the idea that you have to have perfect English.

You don’t. Not even close.

Good and proper writing will help, obviously, but as long as readers can understand what you’re trying to say, you can make progress and do well online.

Take Anne’s email, for instance. Her English was not perfect, but I totally understood what she meant and was able to respond and react to her message accordingly.

You don’t need perfect English to get people to take action.

My second piece of advice is for everybody – not just those who aren’t native English speakers: whenever you write something to publish online, make sure it’s something unique. If you regurgitate material that has already been talked about before, you’re not going to stand out of the crowd, and if your writing is a little off because of the language barrier, it’s going to be even harder to make a difference.

If what you write about is unique, innovative, novel and interesting – whether it’s the actual topic you’re writing about, or the unique angle you take with something that has been talked about before, it doesn’t matter how good your English is – great content will attract people’s attention.

My third piece of advice is to try to include things other than words to convey your message.

What do I mean?

I mean things like images, pictures, info-graphics, charts and numbers, which are universally understood regardless of background and native tongue.

For those who don’t primarily speak English, these things can make it a lot easier for you to get your idea across, and at the same time it makes it a lot easier for your audience to understand you in a very memorable way.

And lastly, my fourth piece of advice is to practice, practice, practice. No matter what you want to do, and what skills you want to learn, you will never just wake up one day and suddenly become an expert. Keep learning by doing, and never give up.

Publish those blog posts, write emails, participate in forum discussions and leave comments on other blogs, and over time you’ll eventually see that your writing skills will improve.

If English is your second language, I give you major props. I’m from the U.S. myself and even I have a hard time figuring out this crazy language, and the fact that you are learning English, of all languages, on top of your own illustrates exactly how much you can do and what you can achieve.

So now I hand this off to the SPI community.

Please, if you have anything to add to this discussion, anything to say to help Anne and everyone else out there who is struggling with the language barrier online, please leave a comment.

Even if you do primarily speak English, what are your thoughts on this topic?

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Help! How Can I Succeed Online if English is Not My Primary Language?
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The Power of the Written Word for Podcasts and Videos

Pat — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:41:30 +0000

Blogs are for those who like to read,

Audio is for those who like to listen,

And video is for those who like to watch (and listen too, for the most part).

When building a BIG personal brand online, it’s smart to expand onto other mediums to deliver content because it’s true – people enjoy consuming content in different ways, and at the same time you’ll expand your reach on other platforms as well. I’ve spoken about this many times before, especially after I learned how expanding my blog onto iTunes and YouTube drastically increased my traffic and subscribership.

However, there’s one thing that a lot of people miss when creating audio and video, and that’s the opportunity to include a transcript.

A transcript is important for many reasons:

It allows those who cannot listen to or watch your content, still be able to consume it. This not only includes the hearing impaired (who really really appreciate it when a transcript is available to read), but also those who do not have audio capabilities on their computers, or those who must keep the sound off – like those who may be at work.
It allows you to create a written document that has clickable links! Audio and video are great, but having a transcript with clickable links (whether in a PDF or on a website) will always ensure you have an easy and convenient way to visit any website you mention on your video or podcast.
Some people like to have the text in front of their eyes while listening or watching, because it reinforces the content – which can only help you even more.
Others prefer reading over listening or watching, because they can get the information much, much faster.
It looks professional, and shows you’re serious about your content while making it readily available to people in whatever format they want.
It makes your content far more easily searchable. If someone remembered part of what you mentioned in a video or podcast episode and wanted to get the whole thing in context, it’s much easier to search for certain pieces of text within a transcript, than it is to scan through an audio or video file to find a certain snippet.
For search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. Again, audio and video are fantastic, but without any written text, the specific content you talk about will not get picked up and indexed by search engines. The title, tags and description of the audio or video will help, but as far as I know, search engines do not yet include the actual spoken word from audio or videos in their indexes and algorithms – unless an accompanying transcript is provided. Also, you could use some of the text in articles and other parts of your SEO and backlinking strategies too!

In addition, YouTube now has the ability to add captions and subtitles to your videos. You actually upload a txt file, and somehow it automatically puts in the captions on top of the video with the right timing. This is fairly new to YouTube, and apparently it helps a lot with SEO as well (for both Google search and YouTube search), since the text of the video is directly connected with the video itself.

I have yet to utilize this feature on my videos, but it’s next on my list of things to do to optimize and get the most out of the videos I upload to my YouTube Channel.

I’ve included transcripts for my podcast sessions ever since the beginning, and I’ve had a really great response to them – from the hearing impaired, to those who read my material in the workplace – I get a few emails each week thanking me for including them. I actually received 5 over the weekend, which prompted me to write this post.

Transcript Delivery Methods

There are a few ways to include a transcript with an audio or video on your blog. Here’s what I do, which combines a few different methods:

Step 1: I paste the transcript text into the blog post itself. This way, those who listen to on the page itself can follow along.

Step 2: I use a plugin called wpSpoiler to wrap/hide the transcript pasted in step 1, so that the page is not miles long for those who don’t need it. Some of the podcasts are 6000+ words in length, so this plugin really comes in handy. It’s actually designed to hide movie spoilers for those who don’t want to ruin the surprise, and it works quite nicely for transcipts.

If you’re reading this on the blog (you won’t see it in an RSS feed), you can see how it works by clicking on the link below:

Click Here to Read the Transcript

Step 3: I also include a .pdf file of the transcript for people to download (with clickable links, of course). I don’t include this inside the “spoiler” plugin, because I want to make sure it can be downloaded via an RSS feed. Also, when you link to the .pdf file for people to download, make sure it opens in a new window so that people listening or watching don’t get cut off when they open it.

Before you can do any of this, of course you’ll first need that transcript.

How to Get a Transcript for Your Audio or Video

Creating a transcript can be very tedious work, especially if what you are writing a transcript for has any length to it. You can do it on your own, but it’s definitely a mindless task that can take up loads of time. Because of this, I definitely recommend outsourcing this work.

Fiverr.com

The cheapest place to get a transcript is on Fiverr.com. My only warning here is that you get what you pay for, and since it’s only $5.00 to hire someone to do a transcript job for you, sometimes they don’t do such a wonderful job.

Out of the 5 times I’ve attempted to get a transcript done on Fiverr.com, 3 times the person backed out of the job, 1 time the quality was terrible, and the other time was actually decent (unfortunately, that person is no longer available on Fiverr. She must have realized her time was worth more than $5.00, hehe).

You run these risks when you go through a marketplace like Fiverr, but it’s definitely cheap enough to try. To save the headaches, at least try to find a person who has some good feedback from others already.

Odesk

I’ve had the most success with hired help found on Odesk. I created a job for a transcriber and immediately had about 30 people bid on it. I interviewed and found a person to do it for me for about $4.20 an hour (that’s per hour of work, not per hour of audio).

This works out to about $10 to $15 per 30-45 minute podcast episode.

I’ve found some of the transcribers on Odesk to be very professional and experienced with their transcription work. The guy I found (who I’ve been working with to create transcripts for the podcast ever since), uses special software to get it done fast and clean.

I send him the audio files ahead of time (via Dropbox), and in a day or two he sends me a .doc file that includes all of the text, and he even highlights any words that he couldn’t understand so I can go in the document and fix it before I create a PDF and post it on the blog.

Well worth it, especially for the quality work that he does.

Elance will work here too, but I’m guessing it may be a little bit more expensive, especially if you have recurring episodes or shows.

Software

There is also software available that you can use to make it easier for yourself to create transcripts on your own, if that’s your only option. The only one I am familiar with and can recommend is one that is used for captioning videos, called Movie Captioner by Synchrimedia. I’m sure there are plenty more available out there if you do some quick Google searches.

If any of you have any recommended pieces of software for captioning, please share with the readers here in the comments.

Are Transcripts a Waste of Time?

As you can tell, I’m definitely in favor of creating transcripts, however many people still find them to be a complete waste of time, so they don’t include them.

What do you think? Are they useful, or pointless? Why?

Have you read any of my transcripts, and if so, have they been helpful?

Cheers, and here’s to a productive week!

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5 Steps to Creating Your Ideal Lifestyle through Smart Passive Income Goals

Pat — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:49:15 +0000

This is a guest post by Christina Crowe.

It’s late at night and you’re still tapping away at your keyboard, writing up a post for your blog. The clock is ticking and you know that time is running out.

How am I going to pay the rent this month? You wonder, as you can feel the precious minutes tick away, slowly draining and never to return.

You pick up the pace.

You can feel minutes turn into hours as you continue to write long into the night, this time working on an eBook to sell to your readers.

You recently got laid off from work. Unable to find a job, you decided to try your luck as an entrepreneur. However, it hasn’t been going well. It has only been 3 months since you got laid off, and you’ve already gone through all of your savings. To top it all off, you’re barely making any money at all with your business.

Somehow, you have to make this work.

After a while, you finally decide to turn off your computer and call it a night. You pull the covers up over your body and try to sleep, only managing to toss and turn throughout the remaining hours of the night as countless worries flood your head. Before you know it, the alarm goes off and it’s back to work again.

Does this sound familiar?

Long sleepless nights of writing, only to seemingly not make any progress, and all the while wanting a better lifestyle for yourself is something many new entrepreneurs struggle with.

I sure did.

My Journey

A year ago, I came to realization that I wanted to make writing a part of my life, so I became an entrepreneur and got to work. However, the transition from working a 9 to 5 job to living the entrepreneur life isn’t an easy one, especially if you have bills to pay and mouths to feed. In reality, it can be a downright challenge.

Every day was a struggle, and I had the constant fear that, after all the work I put into creating a successful business, I just wasn’t going to make it.

But I loved to write, and I used this love to guide me and give me the confidence I needed to continue making progress so that I could one day live out the lifestyle of my dreams.

I’ve made mistakes along the way that I’m not too proud of. But I’ve also accomplished way more than I thought was possible and soon will be able to add an eBook to my list of accomplishments, something that fills me with excitement and pride.

Along the journey, there have been moments where I was literally jumping out of my seat in excitement and times when I could do nothing more than relinquish my fears into a box of tissues. But, by re-envisioning my future, setting a plan, working to achieve my goals, and celebrating my accomplishments, I was able to create a clearer road map to my future and make new milestones.

I still sometimes live those sleepless nights – the constant agony of not knowing where my blogging career would take me or if my business would flourish or fall flat. However, I’ve learned not to wallow in my fears and instead embrace my challenges, for it’s the only way I’ll be able to improve and shape my future.

So can you.

You’ve come a long way from working a 9 to 5 job to starting a business so that you can work at your own pace. Even if you aren’t living the above scenario exactly, you know the feeling. You want to get far in life and make progress, but something keeps pulling you down. Your struggle to progress has proved fruitless. It seems as though you aren’t getting anywhere. Months pass you by and you still feel as the day you first got started.

You can’t make progress doing what you’re doing, with nothing to look forward to and without a clear direction ahead. In order to enjoy your life, you need to have a plan.

Imagine Your New Lifestyle

Are you really satisfied with how you’re living now, or can you make it better?

Once you’ve decided that there’s still room for improvement, envision how your ideal lifestyle would look like. Better yet, put a time limit on it. What are you doing 5 years from now? Are you married with children? Are you traveling the world? Get as detailed and specific as you can. Do you have a house near the beach, with a large spacious office in which to work? Are you only working 4 hours a day and spending the rest of your time with family?

How would you truly enjoy your life if you could live it however you wanted? Write it down. Print the description if you want to, and put one copy in your bedroom and the other in your office. Look at it as soon as you rise each morning and the moment you walk into your office.

Set Passive Income Goals

Make a plan as to how you’re going to acquire your ideal lifestyle. What tasks will bring you closer to the life that you want? Start with yearly goals. What do you need to accomplish this year in order to achieve your ideal lifestyle?

Work your way down.

Once you have your yearly goals set, set goals that you’ll accomplish in 6 months. You should list no more than 3 to 5 major goals. Each goal that you set should bring you closer to the life that you want to live. If you want to travel the world, you’ll need to figure out where you’ll go and how you’ll finance the trip.

List your goals for the next 3 months. All of the goals that you list should interlink and compliment with your yearly goals. By breaking down your goals in this manner, you’ll have a clearer understanding of what needs to be done.

Finally, what are you going to achieve this month? Write it down, but this time be more specific. Start planning out your day to day routine. What are you going to do today? How about tomorrow?

Take advantage of planners. The planners over at Productive Flourishing have especially helped me organize my day, and I feel as though I’m also more productive as a result. Make use of planners and you’ll be surprised with how much you can accomplish.

Take Action

Don’t just plan everything out and hope for the best. Complete the tasks that you have planned for the day.

Every time you complete a task, cross it out or put a checkmark next to it. At the end of each week, look over the tasks you’ve completed and see how many you were able to get done. Some days you might not be able to get to them all, so don’t be discouraged if you didn’t complete as many tasks as you had hoped you would. Just get them done tomorrow.

If you find that completing so many tasks has made each day more stressful, try tweaking your plan. As you progress, you’ll have a greater grasp of what you can accomplish when.

Keep at it and don’t give up. Look at your lifestyle description if you get stuck. Above all, remember why you’re working and don’t lose sight of your dreams.

Analyze How Much You’ve Progressed

As you complete tasks, you get closer to achieving the lifestyle you envisioned. After every week or after your first month, take a look at your progress. Are you progressing? If you’re not, rethink your plan.

If you are making progress, try recording it into a graph that you can look at while you work. A good way to do this is to make a graph for each goal you intend to accomplish. So, if you plan to make $5,000 a month in passive income, fill in the graph as you make that income. Not only will this help you to analyze whether or not your tasks are effective, but it will motivate you to keep working as well.

Keep progressing and tweaking your plan as you go along.

Celebrate New Milestones

When you reach a specific milestone, like earning that $5,000 for the month, reward yourself. Don’t just keep working. Give yourself something special, like a day off from work, a new computer or a fancy dinner. Rewarding yourself will inspire you to work harder to achieve your ideal lifestyle, and you’ll get there much quicker.

You should also stop to think about how you can do better next month. Pat does this nicely in his monthly income reports. There’s always room for improvement, so think of ways in which you can improve and achieve even more.

If you’re worried about the slow journey ahead, you’ll be amazed with how time flies when you’re being productive and getting work done. Before you know it, you’ll be living the lifestyle of your dreams. Best of all, you’ll have so many accomplishments to be proud of.

Stick with it. Success comes when you least expect it.

Christina Crowe is a freelance writer who spends most of her time writing for the Web, reading fiction and striving for her ideal lifestyle. Check her out on her freelance writing blog Cash Campfire.

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March Traffic Report and Real Time Analytics

Pat — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 19:28:41 +0000

As much as I enjoy writing and sharing my income reports, I also occasionally write a traffic report because as we all know, traffic is the lifeblood of a website. It’s important to understand how people come to our sites and what people are doing when they get there, so we can analyze and make improvements or adjustments if necessary.

In the past, I’ve been using Google Analytics to keep track of my stats. Lately, however, I’ve been using a new tool called Clicky Web Analytics – and it’s amazing.

The most noteworthy feature of Clicky (which is free for your 1st website) is that it can show us stats in real time.

With Google Analytics, you have to wait until the day is over before that day’s statistics are reported, and although there are other familiar tools that do show stats in real time (the WordPress.com Stats plugin), they are are missing a ton of features. Clicky is like Google Analytics, but in real time.

For example, as I write this post, I can tell that there are currently 34 people who are on my site, and I’ve had 1,677 visitors today who have taken 3,848 actions (pageviews, clicks, downloads, etc.).

So what’s the big deal? Why is it important and advantageous to look at stats in real time?

Firstly, you’ll be able to tell when something unnatural is going on with your site, and then immediately take the appropriate action. On one end, if I noticed that for some reason I had no visitors for a long period of time, I could quickly check on the server status or try and figure out what was going on. On the other end, if I noticed a HUGE influx of traffic I could see where it was coming from, and possibly address those specific visitors to maximize conversions or subscribership while it’s all happening, instead of being surprised the next day and missing the opportunity.

Secondly, I can keep track of what pages individual visitors are reading and what actions they are taking. It might not seem like the real time factor is a big deal for this, but when you publish a new post it is helpful to see what actions people are taking while reading it. Are they clicking on the links you want them to click on, or are they just simply exiting? You could change and update your post accordingly if people aren’t taking the actions you want them to take, and you wouldn’t waste a day to figure it all out.

To show you how cool this is, below is the “Spy” page on Clicky where I can see who is on my page at any given moment, what they are reading and any actions they are taking. I’ve burred out the ip addresses for privacy reasons, and actually if a particular ip address has left a comment on your site before, it actually shows that person’s name instead. Kinda cool…

When I click on the person who has taken 4 actions at the bottom, I can see exactly what he or she has done on the site:

So as you can see, in about a minute and a half this person landed on my homepage and eventually ended up on an external page where some type of conversion could happen. Of course, conversions on sales pages is a totally different ball game, which I’ll save for a later post.

Cool beans.

Anyways, check out Clicky if you get a chance, it’s awesome.

Traffic Report for Smart Passive Income

I continue to see record numbers on this blog, thanks to you of course!

All of the “999%” stuff is because Clicky compares stats with the previous month, and this was the first full month I used the tool – so it’s all out of whack. Besides that, I’m extremely pleased with all of the numbers, especially the 25% Bounce Rate, and the average time per visit, which is nearly 7 minutes.

Incoming links:

As I mentioned in my March Income Report, Facebook continues to be my number one referring source, by a longshot, as plainly shown in the chart above.

How?

A combination of the “Like” button, which I have in my sharebar plugin and at the bottom of my posts, and a Facebook Landing Page.

I’ve been an advocate for Facebook for blog promotion since the beginning, and now I hope you can see why.

Facebook has been helping me indirectly in another way as well. My How to Create a Landing Page (HTML / iFrames Edition) post is ranked #5 in Google for the keyword “facebook landing page”, and the video I created to go along with it drives in a lot of direct traffic as well.

Although Facebook keeps making changes, the work required to stay updated and create great content that goes along with it is well worth the effort.

Most Viewed Content

Nothing unusual here. My Facebook tutorial, which has spread around the web and ranks high in Google, had a lot of views this past month. Also, the income reports are always what most people are interested in, and the success of the niche site duel definitely increases viewership for the Niche Site Duel Hub as well as the successful Backlinking Strategy that Works.

Search Terms

Most searches come from people typing in my brand, which is a good sign of word of mouth marketing. Also, my target keyword, passive income, still ranks #2 and is bringing in a decent amount of traffic as well. I just can’t seem to outrank wikipedia at #1 – not yet at least.

Passive income ideas and passive income streams I have specifically targeted here on the blog, so it’s nice to see a trickle of traffic coming from those keywords as well.

It’s not a significant amount of traffic, but I’m happy to report that 12 people found my site by typing in the keyword don’t give up.

I love it!

Thank you!

Like I said before, the rapid growth and success of this blog (and its 5300 Alexa ranking) is all because of you. Without you, this blog would be nothing and my motivation to continue writing excellent content for you would be next to nil.

For those of you interested in the traffic going to my security guard training niche site (which is doing extremely well – averaging about $30 per day in the first half of April), I will be posting a Niche Site Duel update about that very soon.

Keep working hard and keep giving others opportunities to find you through what you publish and the relationships you build with others online.

Cheers!

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The Ultimate Guide to Finding and Using Images On Your Blog

Pat — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 01:27:37 +0000

A blog or website that does not use images is like a restaurant absent of decor – uninteresting and uninviting. And as much as good food can keep people coming back to a restaurant regardless of what it may look like inside, we all know that people choose where to eat for the atmosphere and environment, as much as the actual food that will be consumed there.

The same goes for our sites.

It’s important to use images and graphics on our websites for several reasons:

To add something interesting and relevant that breaks up the sea of text in our posts.
To attract attention and pique interest even before any text is read.
To hold people’s attention while reading through our posts.
To strengthen or enhance a point, argument, fact, opinion or statement.
To help keep our posts memorable and easily distinguishable from one another.

And now, more than ever, it’s important because of things like Facebook updates and new-age RSS readers (e.g. Flipboard for the iPad) that utilize the images within our posts. Now we’re talking about actually driving traffic to our sites because of the images within our posts.

See below:

So Why Write The Ultimate Guide to Finding and Using Images?

It’s important to understand how to obtain images and properly use them because you can’t just grab any image from the Internet and place it on your blog. You could run into legal issues and intellectual property infringement, so it’s important to understand exactly what you can and cannot do.

Below you’ll find several methods to obtain images online and what you can and can’t do with them. This will be a forever evolving resource that I will update as new laws and restrictions come into place, but I am not a lawyer or intellectual property expert (here comes the disclaimer…) and you should always seek the advice of an expert or conduct further research before making any decisions online. I’ll do my best to keep this updated, but again it may be wrong, misleading or inaccurate and should only be used as a starting point for your research.

Your Own Images

An easy way to obtain images for your site is to create them yourself. Maybe you’re a photographer who takes excellent and artistic photos, or maybe you’re a graphic designer with mad Illustrator skills. Either way, publishing your own work can add a touch of personality and uniqueness to your site that you can’t get anywhere else.

But, there are still some things you have to worry about, especially if you’re a photographer.

For example, there are certain things you must do in order to legally publish pictures with other people in them, or pictures of certain events and venues. I’m not going to go over all of the legal aspects of taking photos and using them, but just keep that in mind before you take pictures of random people and post them up on the web (you’ll need forms for that). I did find a good, free resource about photography law which you can learn more about here.

I’ve added a few of my own photographs in blog posts before here on SPI:

Also, don’t forget about infographics – which can be charts, diagrams and similar images that you create yourself to prove a point or explain something further. I’ve had great success with infographics used on the following blog posts:

Google Image Search

The easiest place to find images on the web is through a Google Image Search, but the results should be used for viewing purposes only.

DO NOT take images from a Google Image Search and publish them anywhere because they could be (and are most likely to be) copyrighted material.

As Google explains on their help page:

“The images displayed in a Google Image Search may be protected by copyright, so we can’t grant you the right to use them for any purpose other than viewing them on the web. If you’d like to use images from our image search, we suggest contacting the site’s webmaster to obtain permission.”

I know it’s tempting because it’s simple, it’s fast, and it’s one the largest image databases around – but it’s not worth the potential legal trouble.

Next.

Flickr

Flickr is a fantastic resource with billions of different images and photos that you can use freely on your website. Many highly respected bloggers, such as Corbett Barr from ThinkTraffic.net , use Flickr images to enhance their posts without any unfavorable outcomes.

That said, not all Flickr images are created equal and not all of them can be published on other sites, and some come with certain restrictions. Below is a breakdown that will hopefully help you figure out what you can and can’t do.

How to Use Images Found on Flickr

Flickr images are broken down into two categories: Copyrighted or under the Creative Commons License.

Plain and simple: you cannot use a copyrighted image.

You can tell if an image on Flickr is copyrighted by the symbol underneath “License” in the sidebar. If it’s the “C” symbol with a circle around it (the copyright symbol), then the image is copyrighted and you cannot use it.

If you really were attached to a photo that you found that you want to use and it is copyrighted, you can test your luck and contact the photographer directly, however just remember that these photographers have a choice and they chose to copyright their photos for a reason.

Creative Commons License

The Creative Commons License is pretty cool because – to put it in plain English, it allows us to use other people’s stuff, but with some rules in place. It’s like saying “Some Rights Reserved“, instead of “All Rights Reserved“.

From the Creative Commons License website itself, they explain:

“Our tools give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to keep their copyright while allowing certain uses of their work — a “some rights reserved” approach to copyright — which makes their creative, educational, and scientific content instantly more compatible with the full potential of the internet. The combination of our tools and our users is a vast and growing digital commons, a pool of content that can be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of copyright law. We’ve worked with copyright experts around the world to make sure our licenses are legally solid, globally applicable, and responsive to our users’ needs.”

On Flickr, the images under the creative commons license are broken down into different types of licenses that have different rules for how you can use them. They are as follows:

The Attribution License allows you to copy, distribute, tweak and publish a piece of work, even commercially, as long as you give credit for it.

There are over 25 million images to choose from that use this particular license by itself (with no other restrictions, which we’ll get to in a sec), so you have substantial database to search through.

So the question becomes, how do you give credit for an image you use?

As stated on the Creative Commons website: “For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page.”

So, all you have to do is link back to the site where the image came from.

Some people choose to include the link for credit next to the image itself, and others choose to place it at the end of a post. It’s up to you.

The Attribution – No Derivs License (Attribution, but with no derivatives) is basically the same as the last one, except that you cannot alter, change or tweak the original image. When you publish the image, it must be in its orginal form.

This one can also be used commercially, and credit should always be given to the creator.

If you don’t plan to crop, enhance, add text to or Photoshop any of the images you find (resizing is okay), then you can use both this license and the Attribution License together without any worry.

Now we get into the realm of commercial vs. non-commercial.

For the Attribution – Non Commercial License, you may only use the photos as you wish for non-commercial purposes only.

So what does that mean exactly?

Well, from the Creative Commons website, it says:

“…shall not be considered to be intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.”

There are gray lines that you could argue against, but I wouldn’t even try. There are over 50 million images to choose from that allow you to use the images commercially, so if you’re making money at all from your website in any way, shape or form – directly or indirectly – I’d go with a more flexible, commercial license.

If you’ve made it this far, then you should know that this particular license means that you can use these images, however they must remain in their original form and cannot be used commercially.

Interestingly enough, this category has the largest number of photos to choose from out of the Flickr Creative Common licenses, at over 53 million.

Makes sense though when you think about it.

The Share Alike License means that the images can be used in any manner – even tweaked, cropped, enhanced – whatever, but it is understood that after you create those new images, they will be under the same license and someone else can freely use your new image if they wanted to the same way you did.

This is the same license that Wikipedia uses, which means you can grab any piece of content you want from it and use it however you wish, but you must still give credit for it. Then, anyone else can use your content and use it, although they must give credit back to you.

Pretty cool.

For blogging purposes, unless you tweak the images and do not want anyone else to use them – this is pretty much open for your unlimited use (again, with proper credit given, of course).

This is the same as above, except the images must be used for non-commercial purposes only.

So there you have it – that’s how to properly use images from Flickr, which I highly recommend especially if you’re on a budget.

Search through all of the creative commons Flickr images by clicking here.

A Quick Tip When Using Flickr

1. Search Engine Optimization

To maximize your on-site search engine optimization with Flickr images, download the image to your computer. Then, rename the file to match your target keyword for your post.

(You are targeting keywords in your post, right?)

When you embed the photo the file name will include the keyword, and also to make sure the alt text is the keyword as well:

Google Advanced Image Search

I know I told you to stay away from Google Image Search, however there is an option to do an advanced search for photos that you can reuse.

To do this, click on Advanced Search on the Google Image Search Page, and select the usage right that is appropriate for you:

There are a few issues here, which is why I recommend avoiding Google’s Image Search all together when trying to locate images:

Even though results may show up for the various usage rights, there is no way to know that those images are truly under that license. To really know you’d have to go to the site owner, who may or may not require a link back.
In general, there are far less search results than on Flickr. For example, I did a search for a term in Google that yielded only 3,450 results, while the same term on Flickr produced about 1.2 million results.

I just wanted to share this because it is another free option.

Stock Images

Stock images are professional photographs and graphic designs that are purchased and sold on a royalty-free basis and can be used and reused for commercial design purposes.

There are, however, certain restrictions depending on the use of the image.

For us bloggers and website owners, the only thing we have to know is that in general (some stock image sites will have different rules), we can use the images on our websites and in any electronic publications (eBooks, membership sites, etc.) as we wish as long as the images are no larger than 800 x 600 pixels in size (which is HUGE…and random).

I use stock photos and illustrations here on SPI and on some of my niche sites too.

Although it does require a small payment, I find that it’s worth it because the images add a bit of professionalism and cleanliness to my sites.

iStockPhoto

iStockPhoto is the only stock photo site that I use. From what I’ve learned, it has the largest database of images, it’s the most economical for bloggers and website owners and the images just look really really good.

There are a number of other sites out there (many with the same photos, since stock photographers syndicate their images to multiple sites for maximum exposure and potential income), but most of them are more expensive or have weird pricing plans.

For the extra small images on iStockPhoto.com (about 300 up to 600 pixels in size), the images cost about $1 to $3.

Tip: when purchasing credits on iStockPhoto.com, do a Google Search for “iStockPhoto Coupon Code”. There are usually some live coupon codes you can easily find that can save you a good amount of moolah.

If you know of any good stock photo sites for bloggers, please share (with reasons why you like it).

Free Stock Images

There are a number of stock image type websites where you can actually get some decent images for free. I won’t name them all (here’s a post that lists 25 of them), but the one that most people seem to like best is called Stock Xchng.

Here, you can use their database of nearly 400,000 images for free, but you may need to ask for permission from the photographer first.

You may not necessarily need to link to the image or the photographer, but the photographers on this site seem to like to know what their images are being used for. Most of them are just curious, and as a photographer I would want to know the same thing, so it’s not much just to leave a comment about how you’re going to use the image.

Don’t Overdo It

Images are a great way to enhance a website and compliment the awesome content that you’re already publishing on it.

At the same time, you should always make sure you don’t overdo it. There is such a thing as adding too many images, and always make sure the images are relevant and enhance the content you produce – not take away from it.

I hope this guide has helped you in one way or another – if not now, maybe sometime in the near future.

Thanks for your support, and if you have a second please let me know you like this post by clicking on the LIKE button below.

Cheers!

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Niche Site Coaching 2.0 is Now Accepting New Applications

Pat — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 19:59:35 +0000

Thanks for all of the recent get well messages – I’m still sick but I should hopefully be back to normal by Monday.

In the meantime, I’m happy to announce that Tyrone and I are publicly accepting applications once again for our Niche Site Coaching Program.

Our first round of training, which ran from January 2011 to mid-March, was a major success – both for our students and for ourselves. We were thinking about using our recorded information to create a digital product, but we had such a great time interacting with our students, keeping them on their toes and watching them succeed that we just had to do it all over again for another group of students.

It was one of the most fulfilling things I’ve done online thus far, and although coaching is a totally un-passive way to generate an income, I’d gladly trade some of my time to work with students this closely and help them succeed and begin their online empires.

This time around, we’ll be accepting 30 applicants into the 10 week training program. Like before, we’ll meet together each week in a 2-hour classroom style webinar where we will teach you a lesson, answer any questions you may have, and then give you a detailed homework assignment and action guide checklist to complete before the next meeting. Each lesson builds on the previous and by the end of week 10 you’ll have a high-quality, content rich niche site that will rank high in Google and potentially earn you money.

Here is the course outline:

1 – How to Select The Right Niche: Market Research and Profitability
2 – How to Build a Niche Site and On-Site Search Engine Optimization
3 – Content Creation, Getting Indexed and Rank Tracking
4 – Building Backlinks
5 – Advanced Content Creation and Advanced Backlinking Strategies
6 – Monetization Strategies
7 – Niche Site Checkups and Analysis &Optimization and Testing
8 – Show & Tell, Wrap Up and Where To Go From Here

(note: some of these topics take 2 to 3 weeks to cover)

I know there are some questions that are probably on your mind, so let me try to address them here:

1. How Much Does The Training Program Cost?

Our training program costs $799. This is obviously not cheap, but we feel this is a very generous price for the value of information and training you will receive. This is a 10-week intensive training program that will teach you everything you need to know and hold you accountable for building a successful niche site with us, and even more successful niche sites in the future.

I alone charge between $400-$500 an hour for a 1-hr consultation call. Here, you’re meeting with both Tyrone and me for at least 20 hours during the webinars, and that doesn’t include time spent in the forums with us and the rest of the group, and 1 on 1 communication via email and/or Skype if necessary.

Plus, if you’re accepted into the program you will get a FREE Full Version Licensed Copy of Market Samurai (a $97 value) that you can keep forever, even after you graduate.

2. Does The Training Program Work?

Yes.

Tyrone and I are teaching the same exact strategies that we used to climb both of our own niche sites from the Niche Site Duel to #1 in Google. After teaching the same strategies to our first round of students, they are also seeing similar results, in a shorter period of time.

Here is a screenshot of my rank tracker in Market Samurai, which I used to closely keep track of how the students were progressing. I’ve hidden their keywords and urls for privacy purposes:

When we started the training, Tyrone and I made it very clear that it typically takes at least 3 to 5 months to get to the first page of Google. Our training program is a little over 2 months, so to see a few of our students get there already within 2 months (and several other students extremely close) was very very encouraging. Everyone who is putting in the work should be on the first page, and potentially in the top slots of Google very very soon.

As far as monetization, several of our students have told us that they are already seeing an income from their niche sites, which is awesome!

Here is some informal feedback we received about the training in our student forum:

3. What if I Miss a Class or Cannot Make a Scheduled Webinar?

All of our webinars are recorded live and are readily available within a day for viewing and download.

How to Apply

There is an application process that requires you to answer a few questions for us. We do this mainly to make sure we select students who are serious about the course and are able to dedicate the time required to complete it.

To begin the quick application process, head on over to our Niche Site Coaching homepage and enter your name and email in the box at the bottom. You’ll immediately get an email from us with the questions you will need to answer.

Early applicants get special consideration, and last time we had over 100 people apply (for only 20 spots), so definitely get your answers to us as soon as you can.

The deadline to apply will be April 17th, 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time

We will announce the 30 students via email on April 20th, 2011, and our very first class about Market Research and Profitability will take place on Tuesday, April 26th, 2011 (4/26/11) at 9pm Eastern Standard Time.

Click Here to Apply Now (Only 30 Spots Available)

I understand that this course isn’t for everyone, but if you’re interested in working closely with me and Tyrone, I’ll be very excited to work with you.

Thanks everyone, and enjoy your weekend! Cheers!

p.s. The video at NicheSiteCoaching.com is pretty cool. I used my new green screen to create a nice clean look and Tyrone did some nice editing to go along with it. Good times!

p.p.s. If you have any specific questions about the Niche Site Coaching program, feel free to email me using the contact form here on SPI.

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