Monthly Income, Growth & Traffic Report – April 2016

This is the 43rd income report as part of the zero backlink experiment.

Every month I will publish a post like this one that shows you how this blog is progressing and everything I have done across the month to get it there.

These reports will help me track my own progress while teaching you what to do and more importantly what not to do.

ATTENTION: Learn My Secrets With Instant Access To The Income Report Archive

What I Have Done In April

I’m glad to see the back end of April because I have spent the last month working away on what seems like an endless amount of back end tasks.

That has included everything from updating old posts to planning improvements to my email marketing strategy & a bunch of grinding boring tasks.

Unfortunately I still have a couple weeks more grinding ahead of me but all of this will add up to a much better reader experience across the blog.

So let’s take a closer look at what I have done in April.

Introduced A “Smart” Contact Form

One of the tasks that takes up most of my time is dealing with email.

There are already a number of things I have implemented to help reduce that but this month I have taken it a step further by introducing a smarter contact form that I built with GravityForms.

To do that, I went through all of the emails I had received from the contact form over the past couple of months and categorized them as follows-

• Hire me/consultation requests
• Interview requests
• Expert roundup features
• Event speaking
• Blog advertising
• Want me to feature their product/service
• Want me to share their article
• Write a guest post
• Problems with the site
• General IM/SEO questions

Then for each of those categories, I looked for common threads in the email trails.

For example, when someone wants to feature me in an expert roundup they tell me where it will be published, when it will be published along with the question I have to answer.

With that information to hand I was able to build a smarter contact form that helps me get all of the information I need upfront-

This changes dynamically based on what option people choose for their reason of contact.

For example I get tons of emails with people asking to write a guest post for the blog and the same thing happens every time.

People haven’t read the guidelines and then submit something awful which is a huge waste of my time and their time.

So I made the contact form ask people to read the guidelines-

Unless they answer yes, they cannot submit the form.

Equally after they say they have read them, other questions magically appear that reinforce the guidelines further-

The submit button only appears when all questions have been answered correctly.

All of this took a while to plan out but it offers a huge number of benefits-

• The form is much more challenging to fill out which will reduce tyre kickers
• When someone contacts me, I have all the information I need upfront without going back and forth in emails
• I can segment and tag people in my CRM
• I save huge amounts of time
• I know that if someone has gone to the effort to fill it out, they mean business

You can check it out for yourself right here and if you want to do the same then grab a copy of GravityForms because it’s super easy to setup!

Experimenting With A New Post Layout

This month I also took the opportunity to experiment with a new post layout.

For a while I have been considering ditching the sidebar and making all of my posts full width to help improve the user experience.

This helps to remove distraction and also increase readability because there is more screen real estate for me to work with.

So my updated Long Tail Pro review got some special treatment this month-

I made quite a few changes to the layout which I used Thrive Content Builder to create-

• I used the full width post template in my theme
• I changed the font and increased the size
• I added a new review summary box at the start and end of the post
• I added tabs to separate the video version and the text/image version of the review
• I increased the sizes of all of the images
• I added 2 content upgrades
• I created a new FAQ section

Only time & data will show if the changes make a positive impact or not but I am going to continue experimenting before making a decision on rolling it out to every post on the blog.

What do you think of the layout? Please let me know in the comments!

Get Your Copy Of My 6 Figure Blogging Authority Theme Now

One of the most common questions I get is people asking where they can get a copy of my theme.

So last month I ran a contest to giveaway 3 copies of my blog’s theme.

And this month I have made it available for public sale–

I soft launched it earlier in the month with an exclusive discount for anyone entered the giveaway, but now its available for anyone to buy at it’s full price.

You can learn more about all of the awesome features of the theme here.

Content Creation

I published a total of 6 posts this month which exactly the same amount as last month.

We kicked off the month with 20 Marketing Lessons I Learned in 20 Years of Digital Marketing which is invaluable regardless of your experience.

Then we looked at How To Make Money Online As A Teen Online in an over the shoulder type case study.

That was shortly followed by my updated Long Tail Pro review that talked about some very important changes.

Other than those we just had the regular income report roundup post and I didn’t find time to write the very best of internet marketing post this month.

Crunching The Numbers

So let’s get our hands dirty and take a look at what my lack of attention to the blog has done to the important metrics.

Visitor Statistics

Traffic showed steady growth again this month increasing from 52,439 (1,691/day) to a total of 54,826 (1,827/day).

That is a step closer to my current traffic goal of maintaining 60,000 people per month steadily and with the changes I have made recently, I expect to hit that goal in the coming months.

Most Popular Content

The most popular post this month is 465 ways to make money online which also stole the show last month.

My updated Long Tail Pro review jumped back into the top 10 this month in a close second place.

Weirdly, what I consider to be the most valuable post of the month only made it to spot number 8.

Top Traffic Sources

Not much has changed in the top traffic sources this month which are still dominated by organic search and social.

Search Engine Traffic

Search engine traffic dropped to 39,382 (1,270/day) last month but that has increased again gently this month to 39,562 (1,318/day).

YouTube Views

I lost all of my historical YouTube views because of changes I made to the branding – so I keep track of them separately.

YouTube views dropped this month from 23,847 to 21,572 which is strange because normally when I publish new videos those metrics increase.

This also meant that total minutes watched decreased from 113,433 to 100,006!

Social Shares

This month the total social shares across Facebook and Google+ increased from 49,161 to 51,551.

• Google+ – 18,193 (17,677 last month)
• Facebook – 33,358 (32,090 last month)

Subscribers

The most important metric on the entire blog – earning a subscription from someone is the ultimate form of commitment and conversion.

This month brought 2,338 new subscribers which is nice increase on last months 2,118 new subscribers.

There are now a total of 136,095 subscribers across all of the various channels!

• E-mail – 1,577 (1,352 last month) / Total: 74,588
• Twitter – 327 (358 last month) / Total: 11,913
• YouTube – 244 (244 last month) / Total: 10,970
• Facebook – 223 (365 last month) / Total: 20,291
• Google+ – -13 (1 last month) / Total: 17,853
• RSS – -20 (18 last month) / Total: 480

Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap

Income Report

Here are the numbers you really want to see-

Affiliate Earnings

• 48HoursLogo – $10.00
• 99CentArticles – $42.80
• Ahrefs – $405.01 (my case study)
• Aweber – $126.90
• Blog Advertising – $1,042.37
• Blue Chip Backlinks – $100.00
• BuyProxies – $46.00
• BuzzBundle – $179.10 (my tutorial)
• BuzzStream – $1.90
• CMS Commander – $9.61
• Drip Revolution – $144.22
• FCS Networker – $274.45
• FreshDrop – $45.33
• GetResponse – $9.64
• GSA Captcha Breaker – $649.95
• GSA Search Engine Ranker – $271.23 (my tutorial)
• HQ Biz In A Box – $21.90
• JustHost – $160.00 (start a blog tutorial)
• Kontent Machine – $506.80 (my tutorial)
• LeadPages – $86.10
• LinkEmperor – $239.20 (my tutorial)
• LongTailPro – $774.82
• Magic Submitter – $30.34
• Manage WP – $6.00
• Max CDN – $27.00
• MyThemeShop – $1,889.30
• Ninja Outreach – $82.50
• OIOPublisher – $23.50
• OneHourIndexing – $417.00 (my tutorial)
• OptinLinks – $17.73
• OptinMonster – $1.80
• PandaBot – $123.00
• PowerupHosting – $13.50
• PrivateInternetAccess – $42.00
• ProxyHub – $4.15
• Raven Tools – $0.17
• Revisitors – $8.21
• SEMRush – $87.96
• SENuke – $44.10
• SEO Content Machine – $23.63
• SEO Dominators Club – $97.46 (this post)
• SEO Powersuite – $418.91 (my tutorial)
• SERocket – $381.60
• SERP Book – $7.48
• SERPed – $1,736.57
• Social SEO Booster – $18.02
• Social Locker – $18.30
• SociSynd – $17.74
• SumoMe – $600.00
• TheBestSpinner – $248.50 (my tutorial)
• ThirstyAffiliates – $12.67
• ThriveThemes – $114.00
• Traffic Planet Hosting – $650.00
• Ultimate Demon – $294.74 (my tutorial series)
• URLProfiler – $80.11
• VideoMakerFX – $93.90
• WordAI – $57.94
• WP Robot – $24.19

ATTENTION: Learn My Secrets With Instant Access To The Income Report Archive

Expenses

• Traffic Planet Hosting – $49.99
• Gravity Forms – $39.00
• Facebook Advertising – $840.16

Consultation Earnings

I separate out the consultation earnings from the affiliate earnings. The blog drives affiliate sales directly and whilst it does generate consultation leads these are separate projects in their own right.

I didn’t take on any consultation work this month which resulted in a juicy zero dollars!

Other Income

I’m working on another project right now that is part of the blog but not something I’m ready to talk about publicly yet or maybe ever.

I will declare the income here though as it wouldn’t be possible without the blog and ‘technically’ it is affiliate income.

This month that income has dropped slightly from $10,413.07 last month to $9,290.41 this month.

Earnings Total

• Affiliate Income – $12,494.64
• Consultation Income – $00.00
• Other Income – $9,290.41
• Expenses – $929.15

Grand Total: $20,855.90 / £14,275.09 ($22,208.26 / £15,616.53 last month)

Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap

Signing Off

While spending all of my time making planning and making improvements to all of the back end operations, I haven’t had time to focus on growing traffic or income on the blog.

As I am writing this, I am around 3 weeks behind schedule with where I wanted to be so I’ve got a lot of making up to do this month.

All of that will pay off in the long run of course, but I am looking forward to the day that I can get back to driving the blog full force.

It’s time to up my game

Thank you to everyone that has helped me reach my goals – I couldn’t do it without you, the reader!

from Matthew Woodward http://ift.tt/1SE17BC

Income Report Roundup – April 2016

One of the most popular posts I publish are my income reports.

So I decided to round up as many income reports as possible and rank them based on earnings to see how I stack up against the rest.

If you publish an income report on your blog and would like it included in next month’s post then please let me know in the comments!

Here we go-

#1) MakingSenseOfCents.com – $69,396.00 (+$24,489.00)

Michelle is celebrating her best month for the fourth month in a row and reminds readers that income is not always dependent on pageviews, as hers were down 10% this month.

After feedback around how her income report is written she has changed how she displays it, to show how much she earned rather than what was paid out, to make it easier for readers to compare month to month.

She is continuing to work towards her long term goals but in the short term hopes to get a few months ahead with her blog posts so she can spend more time on promotion, networking and helping readers.

#2) AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com – $34,766.57 (+$5,866.91)

Jon has been pushing himself this month and is reporting record numbers and his best month for income so far!

This month also saw Amazon withholding $20k and closing his affiliate account after he accidentally violated their terms! While he is appealing, he’s trying not to dwell on it and learn from his mistakes.

He’s excited to be working on a new web app which should be available in less than a month and going forward plans to develop and learn new skills to compliment his business.

#3) JustAGirlAndHerBlog.com – $34,400.00 (+$3,108.00)

Abby and Donnie are celebrating record income numbers for the third month in a row and this month sees them launching a new course!

As part of their launch process they offered free webinar training which saw them encounter lots of challenges working with live video, something they plan to write about to share what they have learned.

After paying for an expensive webinar solution they were frustrated when an expired security certificate meant attendees couldn’t watch due to security warnings in their browsers!

They’ll be continuing with the service for the remainder of this launch but plan to move to an alternative solution in future.

#4) MatthewWoodward.co.uk – $22,208.26 (-$1,340.09)

It’s been a busy month for me as I’ve been making lots of changes to the blog. I had a painful process improving the navigation using tags because I did a terrible job planning my categories in the beginning!

I had a backlog of testimonial submissions so I went through all of those and published a bunch, and held a giveaway competition to win free copies of my 6 figure blogging theme.

My old car was also costing me too much time – the only thing we can’t buy more of, so I decided it was time to buy a new car!

Going forward I have a list of tasks that will improve user experience and set everything up nicely for the future, some of them are real grinders though so for now I have a lot of work to get on with!

Get all of my income reports & round-ups direct to your inbox!

#5) HumanProofDesigns.com – $14,852.00 (-$2,656.00)

This month saw Dom get married on a beach in Hawaii! He and his wife then honeymooned in Maui and spent a bit of time with one of his first IM mentors.

It wasn’t all fun and games though as he made some business decisions that will mean lots of hard work on top of an increasing backlog of projects.

He reflects on how the growth of sales did not necessarily mean growth of the business as they hadn’t increased capacity to meet demand and is planning to get things under control soon.

With a lower income figure due to focusing on fulfilment rather than sales this month he expects a further drop next month with things looking up for May onwards!

#6) Untemplater.com – $13,597.00 (+$2,495.00)

Sydney has been having fun this month with a nice balance of working hard and playing hard as she took some time off for two short holidays, one to a beach and another to the desert.

That said, she still stayed focused in between her travels and this month saw her reflecting that it’s a trying and tiring time at the moment, but that the rewards of hard work are worth it!

Going forward she is continuing to work towards her long term goals for 2016 which include investing at least $5,000 every month, growing her net worth and increasing her traffic.

#7) 7FigureDad.com – $10,094.58 (-$2,828.99)

New to the lineup this month is Jesse reporting a slight dip in income from last month.

This month he met his targets of launching his 7FigureDad wristbands, getting two guest posts on the blog and completing the beginning stages of a new intern project.

After a successful month with his coaching program he’s encouraged to see his affiliates making break throughs with their own projects and he also improved his autoresponder email sequence.

Going forward his targets include reaching 1,000 Facebook likes, starting a new t-shirt line and he also has an optimistic new income goal!

#8) TrueValhalla.com – $7,188.00 (+$5,970.00)

With income back on the up, this month saw Matt launch a new series of HD games and integrate a new responsive scaling system and improved theft-prevention and security.

He also reduced his game’s load time for mobiles by 62%! His main sources of income this month were from licensing his HTML5 games and making custom games for clients.

Going forward he has a hectic month scheduled with six games to produce and maintenance on his current portfolio of games. He’ll also be working on his major project which is due for public beta testing very soon!

#9) BrendanMace.com – $6,573.79 (-$1,247.17)

It’s been an unproductive month for Brendan as far as work goes, as he enjoyed another month of swapping business for pleasure!

He spent most of this month travelling South East Asia but says one of the benefits of building up a passive income and traffic source is that you can afford to travel and still make a profit!

This month saw him create two new videos on his YouTube channel and introduce Kindle to his business, with four new books created.

Going forward his travels are done for now and he’s ready to hustle hard, with numbers already set to double next month!

#10) MissBiziBee.com – $5,007.65 (+$491.37)

Kaitlin has had a very hectic month and is excited to report record earnings after a Facebook fan page sent her an avalanche of orders in one day!

She powered on through even though the orders caught her off guard and even had to turn off her shop to ensure everything was delivered on time.

Travis spent some time testing out Adsense and Amazon CPM ads on the blog and despite being over six months pregnant with a brand new puppy to look after as well, Kaitlin is continuing to work hard!

Going forward she’ll be focusing on posting new blog content on top of the demand from Etsy.

#11) OneHourProfessor.com – $2,709.91 (-$257.21)

Ron’s happy to be reporting another great month and anticipates that earnings will continue to climb over time.

He spent a lot of time on his new authority site this month and started an interesting new experiment based on ranking a site with images instead of the text.

This month also saw him record a podcast interview for Empire Flippers and he’s pleased to see some consistent income from diversified avenues now.

Going forward he’ll be working on a new Udemy email marketing course, his new site ranking experiment, getting his new authority site 70% complete and securing partnerships for his JFFHub site.

#12) IncomeBully.com – $2,239.77 (-$980.18)

New to the roundup this month is Nathan at IncomeBully reporting a drop in income from last month. This month saw him take on two people to trial the idea of one on one coaching.

After finding flaws in his plan to launch a hosting affiliate site at the beginning of the month he scrapped the idea and took it back to the drawing board.

He also started experimenting with new traffic sources like Quora and Instagram and took part in an expert round up.

Going forward he plans to produce a new traffic case study, launch his new hosting affiliate site, reach 2,000 Twitter followers and complete the first draft of his new product!

#13) OnlineMoneyz.com – $1,739.27 (+$1,775.51)

Another new addition to the lineup this month is Ilya reporting his best month so far with a huge increase compared to last month!

He spent a lot of time this month on his internship but also managed to achieve a video quality Udemy was happy with, add images and edit a huge post he has lined up and take on some local client work.

Going forward he plans to complete his internship, publish his first Udemy course, finally publish his huge post and add more evergreen content to his Amazon affiliate sites.

#14) LivingOffCloud.com – $744.52 (+$298.98)

Nadya is excited to report her best month so far this month as she celebrates her first income from LivingOffCloud and her investments begin to come to fruition.

After putting work on pause to focus on taxes she realised that the deadline in Canada is later than she thought, and she now has an accountant to sort all of that out for her!

Going forward she plans to continue her hard work growing the sites she has already invested in and is looking forward to her start up sites beginning to make money too.

#15) HuwsLab.com – $712.19 (-$2,825.09)

It’s been one of Huw’s lowest income months this month but he’s not worried because he’s invested a lot into learning new skills and knowledge for his new project.

In his journey to create an authority blog for a more passive source of income he will be learning about traffic, leads and sales and then teaching those three points.

After picking up a course on creating an authority site he says money will come in from his reviews in the meantime, while he builds his blog and tries to outrank me for some of my keywords, good luck!

#16) AliRaza.co – $427.98 (+$150.00)

Last month’s newcomer Ali is reporting his best month for income so far and just like last month he’s still testing things to improve user experience.

This month saw him post his first ever case study on the blog and change his email plugin to improve subscriptions. From now on he’ll also be answering one or two featured questions in the income report.

Going forward he is focusing on traffic with plans to write 6 posts in April, work on a new course for Udemy, write 25 forum posts, at least 30 blog comments and spend $50 on Facebook advertising.

#17) MyPathToPassiveIncome.com – $199.04 (+$41.59)

It’s been another tough month for Esteban but he’s still working hard and reporting a steady increase on last months income.

He published two posts this month and is now trying to decide whether to take a job to cover living expenses or move somewhere cheap and sunny to extend his trial of the digital nomad lifestlye.

He’s currently going through a course to maximise his outreach for the launch of his new eBook and next month plans to publish a couple of guest posts and have a guest blogger publish on his site.

While he continues to keep working towards his goals consistently, next month will reveal whether he gets a job to keep things going or books a flight to a cheap and sunny location!

Get all of my income reports & round-ups direct to your inbox!

In Summary

It’s another record month for all the blogs featured collectively this month up $16,522.78 from last month to $226,856.53!

This month has brought 3 newcomers to the lineup and 7 of the 17 blogs featured are reporting exciting developments and record income numbers while others are making strong foundations for the road ahead!

This month is packed with twists and turns in our blogger’s online journeys and there are some great lessons to be learned, it will be very interesting to see what grows from the seeds they have planted so far.

If you feel inspired to start your own blog then why don’t you start a blog now? It only takes a few minutes!

Performance Tracking

I only include the earnings history of the top 10 blogs each month to make the graphs easy to read.

I’m having a problem with the graph right now and will update the post when fixed

from Matthew Woodward http://ift.tt/24pe4mT

Podcast 105: A Quality Focused Backlink Strategy – Jake and Ryan Call 6

In this podcast episode, Jake and Ryan discuss their planned link building strategy.  This is simply the audio from their previously recorded and released coaching call.  To watch the full coaching call, you can do so here.

The post Podcast 105: A Quality Focused Backlink Strategy – Jake and Ryan Call 6 appeared first on Niche Pursuits.

from Niche Pursuits http://ift.tt/1pYn0Aj

10 Tools That You Need to Use Before You Start Your Next Business

Starting a new business takes a ton of work.

Even with your initial passion, it’s never an easy undertaking.

There are a great number of things that you need to research, plan out, get created, etc. before you “launch.”

And you’ll always be wondering, “Did I forget anything?”

What I’ve put together here is a list of great tools that you’ll want to know about, and possibly use, before you start your next business.

They cover the most important and common things you’ll need to address.

These tools will help you do them faster, cheaper, and/or better than you would be able to do otherwise.

Wherever possible, I’ve given you both a free and paid version to choose from. 

Market research tools

When you have a business idea, first you need to confirm that it’s a good idea.

Basically, you need to answer two questions:

• Is there a market for this type of product or service (if so, how big)?
• Will that market like my product or service?

Those are the most important questions to answer. Beyond that, it’s helpful to know how the market is distributed (by location or medium) and whether it will grow in the future.

These tools will help you gain insight into your market.

1. Google Shopping Insights: You’ve probably heard of Google Trends but maybe not the Shopping Insights tool.

They do similar things, but this tool is geared much more towards business in the US.

If part of your market is in the US, you’ll want to use this tool.

It’s simple to use. Just type in a specific product (e.g., a competitor’s product) or a general type of product:

As an example, I put in “microwave ovens,” which gave me these results:

There are two main things you get from these results.

The first is that you learn whether there are any places that are much more interested in your type of product than others. In this example, it’s clear the the states on the East Coast buy many more microwaves than on the West Coast (who knew?).

In addition, if you look at the graph on the bottom, you can see the popularity of searches related to buying microwaves.

You don’t get absolute numbers—this is a relative scale. But you can see whether your product type is trending up or down in popularity.

A graph like the one above, where searches have more than doubled in about 2 years, is perfect to see. It shows that your market is still likely growing.

2. QWILR’s Ad spend calculator: Getting traffic for your new business from the start is tough. There won’t be much organic traffic right away, and even content marketing takes a while to get going.

That leaves you with your standard public relations and paid advertising for the most part.

This ad spend calculator is great for two reasons:

• It makes a complicated topic simple
• Everything is based on real numbers

The tool guides you through a few questions where you input one or two numbers about your business to find what your target CPC (cost per click) should be.

To start with, you’re asked about your average revenue per month as well as your churn rate.

Obviously, you don’t have actual data to use, but you can make a good estimate on the revenue side.

You can also use industry standards for churn rate. I went with 5% as an example even though that’s not a good churn rate.

If you’re selling individual products and don’t have recurring income, just put 100% here.

That’s one big area down. Next up is your customer acquisition cost.

You need to answer how long you’re willing to wait until you recoup your initial cost. While patience is good, if you wait too long, you might run out of money.

The tool provides default values, which are good for most cases.

Finally, you’re asked to estimate a conversion rate of your traffic to the site.

This will allow the tool to calculate a CPC:

I left out one or two basic questions, but you get the point. In a quick example illustrated above, I found that my hypothetical business could pay up to $0.66 per click (visitor).

Use this tool to plan your initial advertising budget for the first few months.

3. SurveyMonkey: One thing that all good business launching guides will tell you to do is talk to your market.

The only feedback about your idea and product that you must listen to is from your potential customers.

If you know some of your potential customers in real life already, you might be able to interview them in person (or through Skype).

That’s the best option.

But when that’s not an option, consider using SurveyMonkey.

Originally, the tool was used to create surveys and collect answers, but now it can do much more.

Most importantly, you can pay a modest fee and get your survey sent to a panel of survey takers.

While you won’t get perfect targeting, it’ll be pretty accurate, and the results you get will help you design your product and know which features to focus on.

4. Buzzsumo: I’ve mentioned Buzzsumo in many previous lists but need to include it here for anyone who doesn’t know about it. I’ll keep it brief.

Buzzsumo allows you to search for a keyword and see the most popular articles that focus on it (based on social shares):

Immediately, you’ll be able to see which social network is most popular with your target audience.

On top of that, you can enter the URL of a competitor and find their most popular content.

Those results will help you plan your content marketing and learn about the main problems of your market (the more popular, the bigger the problem).

Putting together your first impression

The next area of a business launch is your product and website (which may be one and the same).

The tools in this section will help you with your branding and creating a favorable first impression.

5. NameMesh: Every business and website needs a name. You probably already know that it can be difficult to find a good one that’s actually available for registration (without paying thousands of dollars for it).

Even if you’re good at coming up with names, it might take you an hour or two to do so.

NameMesh is a free tool that may be able to help you with this.

To use it, type in 2-3 words that describe main features of your business.

For example, if I were starting a business that helped others bring their product ideas to life, I could enter:

• Product creation
• Product life
• Product idea creation

Think of as many combinations as you can to improve your chances of finding a good one.

The tool will automatically try hundreds of combinations and see whether the domains are available. You will get a final list of what you could register:

There are tons of other free tools like this. You can find them by searching for “domain name generator.”

6. Name Geniuses: Sometimes you can find a great name with those free generators, but most of the results aren’t very good. You get what you pay for.

Name Geniuses is not free; it’s a pay-what-you-want tool with a $20 minimum that allows you to crowdsource your domain name.

Basically, you pick the amount you want to pay. A large portion of this payment is offered as a prize to a few hundred users on the site.

These users come up with domain names (that are available) and submit them to you. Then, you pick a winner whenever you want.

The good part from your perspective is that only the winner gets paid. This incentivizes users to spend a lot of effort to come up with names that are much better than those created by a free generator.

To use the tool, answer a few questions about your business idea:

Then, your project goes on the job board once you pay for it.

Depending on what you pay, you’ll get anywhere from 50 suggestions to hundreds:

By all means, come up with your own name, but this can save you hours of time and potentially generate an even better name.

7. DesignMantic: After the name, comes the logo. While it’s sometimes optional, you’ll likely need some sort of logo.

DesignMantic is a free tool that is very quick and simple to use.

All you do is type in your company name and then choose what industry it’s in:

It will quickly generate several logos you can use, complete with your business name:

They’re obviously going to be generic, but they’re fairly attractive and will work as temporary logos.

8. 99Designs: At some point, you’ll need a unique, professional logo. No free tool will do that for you.

You can cheap out on a designer from Fiverr, but that will cost you more in the long run and won’t get you a much better result than what you’ll get from the free tools.

99Designs is another crowdsourcing site/tool I really like.

You buy a package and then get tons of designs (30+) from different designers.

Again, you pick the winner, and they get paid.

Just about all the designs are of great quality, so you can’t go wrong.

Payroll and accounting

The tools in this final group have varying levels of importance.

They will help you manage incoming and outgoing payments, which just about all businesses need to do.

If you’re starting really small, you can probably handle it manually, but I recommend using tools to simplify things (and keep them accurate) once you have a decent cash flow.

On top of that, if you have employees right off the bat, you need to make sure they’re paid on time and that their taxes are taken care of. Hire an accountant, or use these tools.

9. Freshbooks: If you have a service-based business that requires you to send out invoices on a regular basis, Freshbooks is a great tool to help you stay organized.

The time it’ll save you on generating invoices alone is probably worth the cost. On top of that, it will also let you send payments if you work with any freelancers or buy products for your business.

You can then generate reports of all your invoices, expenses, and payments, which will make doing your taxes much easier.

How much does it cost? Not much.

Depending on whether you’re going to allow any employees to use the tool as well (you could have them handle invoicing and expensing, etc.), you’re looking at $30-40 a month:

10. ZenPayroll: This is a great tool that helps you handle employees as you grow. You may not need it right away, but keep it in mind because you might in the future.

The main purpose of ZenPayroll, as the name suggests, is to make your payroll simple.

It automatically takes care of setting up taxes for new employees and paying contractors (and taking care of their tax needs), and it can even be set up to do automatic tax filings for you.

Keep in mind that this tool is made for the US. As far as I know, it won’t work as well in other countries.

As far as the pricing, it’s very simple: you pay a base fee and then an extra $6 for each person you add (all per month):

You can then configure it so that you just have to add new employees, and it will get all their tax and payment information set up without you having to do anything:

For small- to medium-sized companies, it’s more or less HR and accounting departments in one simple tool.

Conclusion

You have a long road in front of you.

By all means, expect to put in a lot of work. However, if you have a problem that can be solved by the tools I’ve given you, take advantage of them.

To end off, I’ve got to ask you whether I’ve left any tools off this list that you love. I know that I haven’t included every tool in the world here. Please share any of your favorites in a comment below.

from Quick Sprout http://ift.tt/1X4JcpA

Coaching Call #10 with Perrin & Colleen: Site Reveal!

Hey, this is Spencer…I wanted to provide a quick introduction to this post.  Besides the big news that Perrin and Colleen reveal the domain of their niche site today, there have been some big changes at Niche Pursuits as well!

As many of you know, Perrin has been an employee of mine for couple of years.  Well, I’m happy to announce that Perrin is now a full-time entrepreneur!  Perrin is no longer a full-time employee of mine and I’m thrilled to see that his niche site business is doing well enough to support him full-time. 

Perrin was able to help in lots of different areas in my business over the past couple of years.  Perrin will still complete the Niche Site Project 3, but other than that he won’t be working for me or be involved with any projects going on at NichePursuits.com.

It’s pretty exciting to see how far Perrin has gone from knowing almost nothing about niche sites at the start of Niche Site Project 2 a couple of years ago, to now supporting himself full-time from one of the niche sites that he built.  He’s been able to accomplish alot and is a huge success story for the process we teach here at NichePursuits.com.  Join me in wishing him the best of luck with his business ventures in the future!

And a note from me (Perrin)! Yep… it’s been an awesome ride, and I can’t thank everyone enough for this fun, life-changing experience–especially Spencer! But various aspects of my business have been growing for the last couple of years, so it’s a good time to take the plunge.

What will I be doing? My time’s going to be split, actually. I’ll be growing my site, offering some consulting, and blogging at Authority Hacker. I’m also considering offering a B2B service I’ve been kicking around for the last 6 months or so. Who knows! Anyway, it’s super exciting, and I’m having a lot of fun so far. 

But again, thank you, thank you, thank you for hanging out with me here the last couple of years. You guys rock!

Now on to the regular post…

Hey guys! Perrin here! Today is a pretty big day. We’ll finally be reviewing the site calling and I have been working on for the past couple of months.

Of course, I’m not going to do at the beginning. Where’s the fun in that!

In all seriousness though, was take a few minutes to talk about what Colleen’s been up to and to give you some insight into another link building tactic we’ve been having success with.

So what has Colleen been up to?

For the most part calling has been hard at work building links! And, guys, she’s been absolutely crushing it. She’s been mostly guest posting, and she’s been having a lot of success.

In total, Colleen has built a whopping 37 links in the past four weeks. That is a lot. Especially for a white hat campaign.

Why has she been building so many links? Mostly because our site’s strategy is very focused on link building. If you remember our previous calls, you’ll know that we only wrote 40 articles for the site, and after that, we have focused almost entirely on building links.

There are a lot of different philosophies in the SEO world, but I strongly believe a good link building campaign is essential to a site’s growth.

It hasn’t all been guest posting, though.

Here’s the new link building tactic we’ve been using…

Actually, it’s not that new; it’s been around pretty much forever. I’m talking about links and resources pages. Links and resources pages are basically exactly what they sound like: a list of good resources on another site.

Here’s an example: http://ift.tt/24iwIAn

By far the biggest benefit of these pages is that they are built specifically to link out to other sites. Generally, that makes it fairly easy sell when you reach out to these people and try to get a link.

We’re not going to share our exact email script, but honestly very simple: you find the page, email the webmaster, and ask for your site to be included. And that’s it!

It is a bit of a grind, though. Mostly, it’s difficult to find enough pages to email. For example, when we were trying to find these pages we found hundreds of targets. That is a lot of research.

Additionally, these types of pages typically don’t convert as well as other link building methods. When I reach out to these pages I usually convert at about 1.5%, and Colleen — who apparently writes absolutely killer outreach scripts — converts somewhere between 3% and 4%.

See you do the math. If you want a couple links, it’s going to take a whole a lot of emails.

So why are we even using this tactic at all?

Mostly because we want to mix up our link building strategies, and this particular type of link building has very different benefits than guest posting.

The thing I really like about guest posting — and what we found as we’ve been going through our link building campaigns — is that it converts much higher than almost any other link building tactic. Some of our guest posting campaigns have converted as high as 30%. If you’ve done any white hat outreach at all, you’ll know that that is a very, very strong conversion rate.

The downside of guest posting, of course, is that you have to produce a whole bunch of content. So if you secure five links you essentially have to write five articles. And that can really add up. It’s also just tiring to have to write that much. Plus, as Colleen mentions on our call today, it’s easy to feel like you are “wasting” content on somebody else’s site.

So, we wanted to find a link building tactic that didn’t require Colleen to write so much. Of course, there are hundreds of different link building tactics out there, but because Colleen is still somewhat new to SEO, we want to shoot for something simple. And links and resources pages link building is very simple.

That said, it certainly has different pros and cons. In fact, it has opposite pros and cons. Here’s what I mean.

Links and resources pages outreach does not convert nearly as well as guest posting. To get three or four or five links, instead of sending 20 emails you may have to send 100 or 150 emails. Obviously, that’s a bit of a grind.

However, the major and obvious upside is that you don’t have to create content. If you secure a link, it simply appears on somebody else’s site and starts boosting your rankings.

Are these the only tactics will be using?

Of course not. When executing a link billing campaign, you really do want to use at least a few solid link building tactics. So far, we’ve only used two. So will probably add some more, but right now these are working for us, and they are yielding very strong links. So we are happy.

Okay are you guys ready?

Here’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for…

I’d like to introduce you to… Coustii.com!

This is the site Colleen and I have been working on for the past few months, and were honestly very proud of it! For the budget on which it was created, it looks really good, and it seems to be showing some early signs of success.

We go over the site in detail in our coaching call, and I’m sure you guys are going to head over there and turn apart, but I do want to quickly know just a few things before two.

Also, a quick note on why we’re not linking to Coustii.com from NichePursuits. Nothing exciting, really. Mostly, our strategy is very link-building focused, so we just want to see how far we can get on our own.

1.The site has a strong authority angle.

Hopefully, this is one of the first things you notice. The site is built to grow. It is not just an Amazon site. It’s not just a social site. It’s not just a display ad site. It’s built with flexibility in mind, and eventually we hope that this site will have many different traffic and revenue streams.

I strongly, strongly believe that this is the way to go nowadays. We said this at the beginning, but we want the site to evolve into a small business that provides Colleen with a sustainable, passive income. You don’t do that with a small niche site.

2. It’s not all affiliate content.

If you look at the front page of our site, you probably won’t find any affiliate content. Why? Because affiliate content is not the focus of our site. Sure, it is part of our site. But it’s not the point.

The point of our site is to provide an actual, real, useful resource about guitars and ukuleles to people who want to learn about guitars and ukuleles. That’s the first and most important goal of Coustii.com. Do we hope to make money with affiliate revenue? Yes. Is affiliate content on the site? Yes.

But we’re only using that as a launch pad to create something much bigger and with much more diverse revenue.

So how’s it going?

So far, is going really well. If you want to see exactly how well, be sure to check out the video, where we run through all of the early data including traffic, keywords, and even our link building spreadsheets.

Overall, we’re super excited, and I’m very proud of Colleen. The early signs are good but we are just getting started. There is a lot of work to be done. It’s very important not to let off the gas now. So, instead of seeing the early signs of success in taking a break, Colleen is doubling down on her link building efforts. And hopefully, in another month, will be able to show you some even more exciting stuff (like real earnings).

But that’s it! Hope you guys enjoyed the video, and let us know what you think of the site! Like 25 minutes

Watch the Coaching Call Here

If you prefer to listen to the audio only, you can download it here.

The post Coaching Call #10 with Perrin & Colleen: Site Reveal! appeared first on Niche Pursuits.

from Niche Pursuits http://ift.tt/24iwGs8