Thursday, November 24, 2011

How're We Going to Make Money?

Here are some more musings and Q&A taken from a recent email conversation with Kevin, please get involved in the exchange of ideas by adding your thoughts in the comments.

#Kevin we don't want to make money off of you - don't pay anything from your own pocket.

*It’s okay. The money that is coming out of my pocket is being matched by a client that I’m partners with. I may do this in the future with other clients. It’s a good way to let a client know you are “in it to win it, along with them!” Plus, I want to keep everyone encouraged until we can land the next big project.

I wanted to start monetizing the site, beginning with Amazon, but I’m having major difficulty doing this on WordPress. It was never a problem in Blogger. I have to keep at it. I plan to do Adsense as well, but we need to have a good amount of traffic before Adsense, otherwise click fraud can be a problem. I have a great reputation with Google, and I want to keep it. I've been making my days all about monetizing the site, and getting sales. It has taken a lot just to prepare to do this. I’ve only made a few contacts, but I've got a good list going, and will be reaching out a lot more in the weeks ahead.

#Can you get us the code for TBS banners so we can start promoting and posting those to make more money. I can make a Squidoo about TBS and even Bangari.

*I made those Banners myself, there is no HTML for it. Just link to the TBS “landing page” on Bangari. That will be great to get back links to our site. We can sell these robots even to those who don’t want to be part of Bangari. It could be good revenue, and the affiliate system worked without a hitch. so, let’s go for it!

#Have you thought through what happens when someone contacts us to buy, what the procedure will be?

*That’s about all I’ve been thinking about. Realistically, we will be contacting them at first. It might be a while before we get customers for content straight through SEO. Bangari needs to rank much higher first. We need more links, and more traffic, and lots more SEO work.

#The BCG has not got prominent "Contact us here to buy content" blurb on it and this is the most important thing. We need them to know exactly how to contact us, it should be in their faces when they look at the site.

*Exactly! This is part of posting. When sample content is posted, it needs to have the “this content is for sale” picture attached, preferably, top and bottom. That has to link back to the page where they can input their contact information.

We need to work on a “posting” system, including the time required along with step by step instructions. Then we have to value it like we did with word count.

#We've all been less in contact lately. How come I never hear from some of the other names on the BCG posting on this blog?

*I’m trying not to pester anyone to contribute, but it would be better if there was more chatter. I like that it’s a small group as we work out details, so I thought I would hold off on contacting the others with a pep talk until we get the posting system up and running. I’m going to be offering SEO services along with the content we produce, and posting is the biggest part of that work. So I thought a good occasion to get everyone psyched about getting involved would be when we get our first big project...soon I hope!

#I read the history of Google you once posted and it seems backlinks are really at the bottom of it all.

*Yes! Linkbuilding (and repairing, as you eloquently posted on Factoidz) is essential to building the popularity of Bangari. We have the advantage of being a multi-authored site. That’s huge! I know you worry about spreading a little work too thin. But until Bangari hits the radar, we won’t get a lot of work, and no passive revenue. The more people we bring in, the more robots we sell, the more “samples” we post, the more RSA files we have in stock in so many more categories...You see? But you are right to be concerned because it is a delicate balance. I’m still a little shy about actively recruiting and think I will be until we have our posting system down pat. Linkbuilding goes hand in hand with posting, SEO, and content production. We can’t sell our services promoting other sites until we have done a thorough job of promoting our own.

Many potential clients, if they are smart, will check our Alexa ranking before they deal with us. It should be in a respectable position, even if we are admittedly “new.” If we can get into the 100,000s in the US...great!

OK so I really want to see the others on the letterhead getting involved, showing interest, in the future these first few writers will hopefully profit the most so there should be some input from them at this point. Please everyone let your voices be heard!!

9 comments:

  1. Talking of backlinks, I have a blog with 5.7 million on Alexa but no Google PR (1 backlinks), any idea why?
    and the otehr one has 9 million Alexa but 3/10 PR(14 backlinks)?

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  2. I bet the one with a 3/10 Google PR is a much older site. Is that the case? Either way, linkbuilding is crucial. It has to happen (somewhat) naturally, or you could end up in the Google "Sandbox" ...That keeps all your links from "counting" for a long time, up to a year.

    You want to get between 0-8 links per day. Our sites should focus on building a good 500 links. I've been getting lists of great sites to get an incoming link from. I'll share that with everyone soon, and then, yes, let's all get involved in promoting each others sites! There is a three-way link strategy that Jon Leger came up with, that I think we should follow. It reduces reciprocal links.

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  3. For some reason, I have stopped receiving any notifications of activity going on with the blog or BCG, so I suspect that may be the case with the other writers! I just happened to come on here today to take a peek since I hadn't heard anything in a while (but I was also busy with the holiday and all).

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  4. Is that right? *sigh*...I was afraid of that. this has been a recurring problem since the start. I don't know what to do to fix that. It has to be done from the follower's end. Maybe we should just develop and work an email list. I'm just afraid of being spammy... What do you guys suggest? A weekly newsletter maybe? Daily for the founders? Let me know.

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  5. Could we do something with yahoogroups? I'm familiar with how that works, and have 2 groups I moderate. It's fairly easy to maintain, and people can sign up and you can add the link to do so on here without a problem.

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  6. Sure! Could you start a new thread here, talking about how it works, how we should participate, and how it will benefit us?

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  7. Related and not related to what you guys are discussing: Factoidz stopped the writers forum a while back and now Triond has as well, we could have a forum for writers generally - not just Bangari writers.

    To see up dates I google Google reader each time and then go in to it but it is also not convenient. I don't know anything about Yahoo groups so if you do start a thread please explain it. Does Google have a "groups"?

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  8. @Kevin, sure! If you can tell me how to post a thread on here! :-)

    @Petal - a writers' forum is a great idea to help expand our audience! Google has their own version of what yahoo does. I have used yahoo longer, but am part of a google group - just not as familiar with the settings. But no matter, I can start a google group to keep things consistent for us!

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  9. Google groups has been shut down recently. I think Yahoo is better. We need to post discussions as many places as possible. I tried to start a facebook page, but I struggle with this. We need a good Web designer for this stuff. I'm waiting to hear from your Uncle in AU, Natasha. I think it's good to have discussions here for now. We should wait till we are ready to recruit before we "put ourselves out there." But we can wade in slowly. Let's try the Yahoo groups.

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