Ever think about going in buisness for yourself? I think about it. Check out Phil Wiley and his business plan with minisites. Here is the concept below, something truly worth thinking about.

Meanwhile, Kalisa here's an answer to a question I'm always getting asked.

How I come up with ideas for sites....


A couple of weeks back I read an ezine from the always entertaining
Damon Zahariades, and I thought that this one surpassed his always
brilliant, and engaging, standards.

Damon (author of The Special Report Bible
http://www.ozemedia.com/specialreport.htm ) talked about how he
spent 11 hours doing research with Wordtracker and finding he'd
done it wrong.

He wrote it for laughs, but he must have been pretty miserable at
the time.

Anyway, I'm mentioning it now because yesterday I spent about 6
hours using Wordtracker doing tons of research for new sites I'm
about to build.

http://www.ozemedia.com/wordtracker

Unlike Damon I've always been too dumb to learn how to use
spreadsheets so I've got 57 word documents open on my desktop all
full of keywords I've pulled from various niches.

What I'm getting around to saying is that I've been meaning to
write about exactly how I decide what to build sites on.
As you know I build a lot - I registered 61 new domains in 2003 -
and most of them are already up and running. Many, but not all, are
mini sites of just a few pages. http://www.minisiteprofits.com Some
others are sites built with Traffic Equalizer
http://www.ozemedia.com/trafficeq

OK here's how I do it:

# 1. I buy and read LOTS of magazines on all sorts of subjects, and
I hardly ever throw them away. So I just grab hold of one and look
at the teasers on the cover. Right, I've got a copy of Business 2.0
here. Let's take a look: "Forget Wi-Fi. The real revolution in
wireless is cellular".

Ok, there's three possibilities for sites in that one phrase. One
on wi-fi, one on wireless internet, and one on cellular phones.

Here's another: "Time for Tivo?"

"How Acrobat Saved Adobe" How about a site comparing all the
various .pdf creators?

And I'm still on the cover here. There are another 130 pages to go.
There's probably at least one possible site topic on each page -
though, of course, not all of the ideas you jot down will turn out
to have life in them. There's more to do than just coming up with a
topic before deciding to build a site.



Here's another way to spring ideas:

# 2. Go to Wordtracker (I've got an annual account, but you can
join by the day if you wish) and type in a broad word like
technology, and see what comes up. Scrolling down the list you'll
usually see something which interests you, or sparks off an idea.
Yesterday, for instance, I saw "tivo" and seeing it's also on the
magazine cover we'll stick with it.

# 3. next open Ad Word Analzyer
http://www.ozemedia.com/adwords-tool.htm if you own it, or do it
manually if you don't, and see how many people are buying ads on
Google and Overture to promote the subject, and whether they're
affiliate ads or direct ads by the merchant. Looking to see how
many people are buying ads serves two purposes.

A) if a whole bunch of people are buying Adwords or overture to
promote tivo (or anything else) you know there's money to be made
promoting it, because at least some of them are most likely making
sales.

B) using Ad Words Analyzer you might spot openings. For example the
term "hdtv tivo" gets 2354 searches, just 3 people are buying
Adwords on it, and there are 10 overture campaigns. So that's a
possibility. The book Googlecash by Chris Carpenter explains how to
do it. http://www.ozemedia.com/googlecash.htm

For more on using adword analyzer and googlecash together read this
webpage I put together http://www.ozemedia.com/google-adwords.htm

3. Ok, but there's got to be a suitable affiliate program, of
course. In this case there are a few. One I looked at was from
Satellitestore.com, but the program is run through the
clixgalore.com directory. It pays $100 a sale, which is nice.

How did I find it? Just searched in Google for "tivo affiliate
program"

Another way, and one I usually try first to see if there's anything
suitable, is to look at the listings in Commission Junction at
cj.com. I like cj because it ranks the programs according to how
much affiliates are making by promoting them. So you can see at a
glance how the program performs.

Well that's about it really. Nice and simple.

So what do you do with those ideas? Build a mini site around them.

Step 1. find a topic.

Step 2. research it to find out if plenty of people are searching
for it, plus there's a suitable affiliate program.

Step 3. check out your competition and make sure you can compete
against them.

Step 4. grab a cheap domain name and hosting.

Step 5. put together a site.

Step 6. promote it.

Step 7. Do it all over again with your next idea.

So why doesn't everyone succeed doing this kind of thing?

Because they don't do it. Most people start out well, but don't
keep it up. They don't put the work in.

So if you want to be one of the winners this year, and have a great
online business year you need to stop wasting whole evenings
watching TV, and work hard and long hours on your computer.

Set yourself a goal, and work towards it by breaking it down into
lots of tiny steps. Think one small site at a time. Get it up and
running before moving onto the next one.

Work hard, continue to educate yourself by keeping up to date with
what's happening online in the world of affiliate programs, or
whatever you're promoting.

Just work, work, work

That's about it really.

Oh, and be enthusiastic, and positive. It helps :)

Phil