Hi. The question below is typical of one that I get asked quite a lot, so I figured it would make a nice topic for an Ebook Times Q & A.
If you have comments, questions or suggestions of your own, don’t hesitate to use the comment box at the bottom of the page. (If nothing else, at least you’ll get a nice backlink to your website.)
Okay, here we go…
Q. I have a domain name lying idle. Any idea what I should do to make some income from it?
A. My first suggestion for your domain name is to just go ahead and set it up with something — anything. Just get it moving so that the search engines pick up on it and start paying occasional visits.
As long as it lays idle, it’s not benefiting you at all. (The longer a site is online — and evolving — the better the search engines like it.)
Of course there are a thousand different things you could do with your domain name.
Here are a few suggestions…
You could use some of that PLR content your have on your PC to create a themed website — and use it generate income through Adsense, affiliate programs etc.
You could do this in the form of a blog or you could create a standard website — either manually (using WYSIWYG software like Microsoft’s FrontPage or the one available for free here) or by using one of the many content site software programs available. (One such program is Fast Content Producer which you’re welcome to download by clicking here.)
Another approach might be to set up a blog and use it to point to individual products you’re selling. Then, start setting up sales pages for some of the ebooks you already have on your PC. Put a new blog entry pointing to the sales page once you’ve set it up. At least that way, you’ll have links that will point your visitors AND the search engines to your product sales pages.
Of course you could add other content to your blog as well — whether using articles of your own or PLR articles. (If you need PLR content, you’ll get plenty of it for free at PLR Wholesaler.)
Again, you could also integrate Adsense, affiliate programs etc. to your blog.
If you’re not sure how to set up a blog, please download Blogging Made Easy With Wordpress (video tutorials) with my compliments.
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If you’re not sure how to go about setting your resale rights ebooks up for sale/delivery, this blog entry might help:
http://ebooktimes.com/blog/?p=37
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Another option would be to set up a store (with a shopping cart system) containing a range of your (resale rights) products. I don’t know of a particular script you could use to run the store, but if you search for something like ‘paypal shopping cart script’ then you should find what you need.
This would enable you to begin selling multiple products in one go.
Having said that, in my experience this type of approach is less effective that the mini-site approach which is where you focus on selling one particular product (or collection of products).
I’m certain, for example that sites like my own TotalResale.com or Private-Label-Content.net wouldn’t be nearly as effective if I were selling multiple products — rather than focusing on selling ONE product (even if it contains multiple items).
There are no shortage of resale rights products and product collections that you could use. You could even look through the products you currently have on your PC and compile them into a collection of your own.
—– SIDNOTE —–
You could consider taking it a step further by using a ‘Butterfly Marketing’ type script. You can find out more about this here:
http://ebooktimes.com/blog/?p=66
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Another option would be to use the domain as a way of building your subscriber list. Create a ’squeeze’ page offering one or more free ebooks in exchange for people subscribing to your list. You can then promote other products and ebooks to your subscribers and begin building a real income that will serve you in the long term.
During the sign-up process, you can introduce your new subscribers to a special One-Time-offer (OTO) private page so you can make some sales at the same time as building your list. If you’re not sure what a OTO is, you’ll find more details here:
http://ebooktimes.com/blog/?p=82
—– SIDNOTE —–
For a complete introduction to starting and building your list, please download List Building Video Tutorials for Newbies with my compliments. (Be warned, that’s a 94Mb file).
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Yet another approach might be to try a ready-to-go website like the ClickBank Store-in-a-Box. This wouldn’t result in direct sales to you, but might bring in some commissions. At the very least, it would be some content to get things moving. (Again, you can introduce Adsense, affiliate links, list building and so on to a site like this to get additional benefit from it.)
Okay, those are some ideas to give you food for thought.
As I said at the beginning, the important thing is to do SOMETHING with the site in order to get the ball rolling. Later, as you increase your understanding of how your chosen approach is working, you can tweak it (or change it altogether).
If you have specific questions about any of the topics mentioned above, just leave a comment below. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll probably know someone who does — or I’ll be able to give you an ebook that covers the subject well. (By the way, whether your website is brand new or not, you can include your URL with your comment and you’ll have Google round to visit in no time.)
One final thing… don’t forget to watch out for my email on Friday. It’s gonna be a BIGGIE!
Talk to you then.
Michael
