How to Improve Your Alexa Ranking in 30 Days or Less

Numbers don’t lie.

When it comes to the popularity and overall value of your business, it’s important to have a solid Alexa Ranking.

Why? It’s a common metric that potential business partners, investors, etc. will use to determine the state of your business.

They’ll use it to gauge your business’s health and whether it’s trending up or down.

The lower your Alexa Rank, the better, and vice versa.

This is why so many business owners agonize over their Alexa Rank and work tirelessly to improve it.

In this post, I’d like to discuss two key things.

First, I’d like to talk about the factors that Alexa assesses when determining rankings.

Second, I’d like to offer a tangible strategy you can use to improve your Alexa Ranking in 30 days or less.

Let’s hit it.

What’s an Alexa Rank?

Just to be sure we’re on the same page, allow me to formally define an Alexa Rank.

According to Avangate,

“It’s a ranking system set by alexa.com (a subsidiary of amazon.com) that audits and makes public the frequency of visits on various web sites.

Alexa’s support section clarifies matters even more by explaining how its traffic rankings are determined:

“Alexa’s traffic estimates and ranks are based on the browsing behavior of people in our global data panel which is a sample of all Internet users. Alexa’s Traffic Ranks are based on the traffic data provided by users in Alexa’s global data panel over a rolling 3 month period.”

Here’s what Google’s Alexa Rank looks like at number one:

And here’s what Quick Sprout looks like at the moment:

Not nearly as good as Google but solid nonetheless, considering the fact that the lowest ranked website is somewhere around 30 million.

Which factors does Alexa analyze?

Before we can formulate a game plan, it’s important to understand what Alexa is looking at when assigning a ranking to websites.

Fortunately, Alexa is very upfront about how its data is calculated.

According to the Alexa Blog, “Every day, Alexa estimates the average daily visitors and pageviews to every site over the past 3 months. The site with the highest combination of visitors and pageviews over the past 3 months is ranked #1.”

“The site with the least is ranked somewhere around 30 million. If no one in our measurement panel visited a site over the past 3 months there is no rank at all for that site.”

They also provide a couple of graphs to illustrate this:

Of course, Google receives more traffic than any other site on the Internet.

It gets more daily visitors and pageviews, so it sits at the top of the mountain.

Alexa also points out the fact that the closer you get to the top of the plot, the harder it gets to move up a rank.

While it may be fairly easy for a site ranking 24,500,132 to move up to, say, 20 million, it’s significantly more difficult to climb from 50 to 40.

The main takeaway is that it’s all about two key factors: (1) average daily visitors and (2) pageviews over the last three months.

That being said, here’s what you need to do in order to improve your Alexa Ranking quickly.

Certify your site metrics

If you don’t mind making a small investment, it’s a good idea to use Alexa’s Certified Site Metrics.

This will give you an Alexa Certified Code, which will directly measure your site’s traffic.

It offers several advantages:

• You get a more accurate Alexa Rank
• You have access to more in-depth analytics reports (there’s a private dashboard)
• You can closely monitor your site’s performance
• You also have the option of displaying unique visitors, pageviews, and ranks publicly

Here are the different pricing options:

It’s also important to note that you get a free monthly SEO audit with the “Insight” plan and a full site audit with the “Advanced” plan every two weeks.

This is just something to keep in mind when choosing a plan.

Here’s a screenshot from Alexa support, explaining how to get your site certified:

The bottom line is that certifying your site metrics gives you an advantage over other websites.

You can gain a clearer perspective on the health of your site and are equipped with tools to improve your ranking.

Produce epic content

Sorry if I sound like a broken record with the whole “epic content” thing.

But when you break it all down, it’s an essential component of online marketing on many levels.

I’m not going to bore you with all the gory details, but it’s extremely important to create A+ content that genuinely satisfies your audience.

Check out this guide I wrote on Neil Patel for pretty much everything you need to know on the subject.

This will be a necessity for boosting your Alexa Ranking.

Get quality backlinks

What are two critical factors that Google takes into account when assigning a ranking to your website?

Trust and authority. In fact, “Domain trust/authority represents 23.87% of Google’s ranking algorithm.”

One of the most straightforward ways to increase your site’s trust/authority is to obtain quality inbound links.

You know the drill. They need to be from reputable, relevant websites.

I realize this is obviously easier said than done.

I wish it was as easy as putting out a few decent blog posts and having multiple big name publications chomping at the bit to link to you.

Of course, it’s a fairly arduous process.

But at the end of the day, it all goes back to creating great content.

In fact, I like to adhere to the 90/10 rule of link building, where “90% of your effort should go into creating great content, and 10% into link building.”

And when it comes to the process of link building, there’s one technique that outshines all the rest: guest-posting.

Now, I’m not going to rehash what I’ve already written about this topic here. But you can learn the essentials from this guide on Quick Sprout.

If you can get even a few guest posts published on reputable websites, this should result in an improved Alexa Ranking within a month.

Analyze your competitors’ keywords

Here’s a question for you.

What’s your motivation behind wanting to improve your Alexa Ranking?

I bet it’s to have a better ranking than your primary competitors. Right?

Of course, you’ll want to outperform the competition. But how do you go about it?

One of the best ways to gain an edge with your Alexa Rank, and with SEO in general, is to analyze your competitors’ keywords.

You’ll want to know which keywords are bringing them the most traffic, generating backlinks, and so on.

Once you know which keywords are driving the bulk of traffic to their websites, you can optimize your site for those keywords and build momentum.

It’s like killing two birds with one stone. Not only will your Alexa Rank improve, your overall SEO rankings should improve as well.

But how can you analyze their keywords?

I recommend using Google’s Keyword Planner.

There are a lot of tools out there, but this is perhaps the most universal. Besides, Google is usually the go-to source for Internet data.

Here’s what you do.

Go to your Keyword Planner dashboard.

Click on “Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category.”

Under “Your landing page,” type in the URL of a competitor.

I’ll just use quicksprout.com as an example:

Click on “Get Ideas” at the bottom, and your screen will be populated with a list of competitor keywords.

Here are just a handful that popped up from my search:

The great thing about using the Keyword Planner is that you can instantly determine the volume of monthly searches and the level of competition for each keyword.

Creating better content that outperforms your competitors is a great way to gradually boost your SEO and at the same time improve your Alexa Rank.

But in order to see a significant improvement within 30 days, I would suggest first going after the “low hanging fruit,” meaning keywords with minimal competition and a lot of searches.

Focus on those initially for a surge in your ranking.

Conclusion

In many ways, your Alexa Rank directly affects the health and progress of your business.

It’s something that key stakeholders will often look at when determining whether or not your company is worth doing business with.

Therefore, achieving a favorable ranking (at least in the top 100,000) should be a priority.

If you follow this formula, I can pretty much guarantee that you will see at least a reasonable improvement fairly quickly.

However, if your site ranks really poorly, it may take awhile to get to the point where your business is attractive to stakeholders.

And because your Alexa Rank is such an important metric, I recommend making your efforts at improving it ongoing.

How big of a factor has your Alexa Ranking been in terms of business partnerships and opportunities?

from Quick Sprout http://ift.tt/2l1ogna

6 Ways to Make Money on Craigslist in 2017

Craigslist has been around since 1995 and survived the tenuous online landscape. From the dot-com bubble to the social media craze, America’s favorite online classified ads is still alive and running.

People learning how to make money on Craigslist is now a real thing as it helps sellers make money through their products, services, and even properties. The platform connects them to buyers online within the same locale for hassle-free transactions.

Moreover, unlike eBay and Amazon, Craigslist charges you nothing for posting a classified ad on their site. With its free barrier to entry, making money on Craigslist as a seller is easier and cost-effective.

Throughout the years, there have been arguably better Craigslist alternatives that people can choose from. OfferUp and LetGo build on Craigslist’s success to provide users with a more intuitive way to shop. Also, despite the provisions set by the site to help you identify and avoid transacting with scammers, finding genuine buyers can still be tricky especially for newbies.

Nevertheless, these did not stop 60 million users post an average of 80 million classified ads a month (both stats as of November 29, 2016) on Craiglist.

Given the volume of users and activity on the site, you only need to determine how you can tap the right people to your classified ads.

In this post, I will discuss with you tips and advice on how to make money on Craigslist featuring products you need to sell and methods you need to follow.

1. Find leads for your business

Aside from buyers and sellers, Craigslist is a place where you can search for job opportunities. If you are more interested in making money by working for it, then you should take a cue from Claire, who is one of Ramit Sethi’s Earn1K students.

Through Ramit’s course, Claire was able to earn $8,000 from Craigslist on top of her current graphic design job.

Claire was already making $50,000 a year as a designer but wanted to supplement her earnings with a side hustle. Given the fragile economy, Claire was only looking out for yourself if in the chance that she might lose her job.

One of the things she learned from the Earn1K course is the Craigslist Effect. Ramit describes this as the process of identifying situations where everyone is horrible to them, that by being semi-decent, you can dominate the market and take the lion’s share of the profit.

The image above is an example of the Craigslist Effect at play. Ramit applies the concept of saving money by being frugal. He then creates a quadrant that allows him to identify actions and classify each based on their difficulty and scope.

From the image, saving money and tracking your expenses is placed under hard-small wins, which makes sense. Instead, why not do things that are easier and have a massive impact on your costs?

For Claire, it’s about writing better emails for part-time job applications, asking for a raise from your current employer, and other easy and big wins tasks.

Key Takeaways

Working multiple jobs may not be the most efficient way to make money on Craigslist. However, it is a viable option if you have nothing to sell and no capital to use. Below are basic things you need to follow to build your profile in Craigslist’s job market.

• Identify the weaknesses of your competitors – The competitiveness in the job market will require you to build skills that your contemporaries don’t possess. If you are on the same level with other professionals, developing your skills they don’t possess positions yourself as a frontrunner.
• Take action on easy/big wins – Dedicate your efforts on doing tasks that will make a big difference in your job search. For example, if you want to save money, don’t think of cutting down on expenses. Instead, find the easiest ways to boost your income, so you don’t have to compromise your lifestyle.

2. Flip items

The concept of flipping items is not new. It deals with buying an item on the cheap, refinishing to make it look better, and selling it at a higher price.

In some cases, you don’t even have to improve the item you purchase and sell to make money.

This excellent post at Punch Debt in the Face details the multiple items that the author bought and sold on Craigslist where he made a fortune.

For example, he bought a Lane Rhythm credenza (above) for $250 that he sanded and stained to make it shine. After 24 hours of posting an ad on the site, he was able to sell it for $650.

Key Takeaways

Given the number of case studies he featured in the post, he followed a set of rules allowing him to take advantage of the seller’s mistakes. He detailed all of them in the post, but I’ll mention the most important ones below.

• Look for terrible ads –  Normally, ads with the least images or text scare away buyers. However, this is also an indicator that the seller just wants to get rid of the item by not putting an effort on making the ad look great. Also, by posting a haphazard classified ad, the seller doesn’t care if he or she gets the rightful amount of money for the item. Which leads us to the next point…
• Always bargain – There’s no harm in asking if you could buy the item on Craigslist at a lowered price. Half of the time, they will accept your offer. The chances increase if you can target the crappy ads.
• Use hi-res images of the items when posting on your ad – You want your item to sell, so let the item speak for itself. At the same time, you need to apply photography techniques to make your items stand out. Blur the background to put the emphasis on the item and increase the contrast and sharpness on your hi-res camera, to name a few tricks.

3. Flip some more!

In the case study above, he details how he purchases items from Craigslist and resells them to make money. In this post at The Flipping Ninja, A.J. Hakimi buys discounted items from thrift stores and sells them for more than the original price. His process, which is similar to retail arbitrage on Amazon, helps him earn $2,700/month or more than $40k a year.

In the post, the author shares how he bought The Mystery Chair from Flexsteel (the mystery of which is the hidden recliner) for $10. After taking beautiful photos of the chair and marketing it as such in its classified ad, he was able to sell it for $200.

Most of the case studies in the post feature couches, sofas, and dressers, which goes to show that there’s money to be made in these types of items. However, he also made money by selling art and television, so there’s no limit to what you can sell on Craigslist.

Key Takeaways

While the process of flipping items on Craigslist looks easy, there is a certain art that you need to apply making selling them on the site. Below are practices that you need to hone and develop to make the all-important sale.

• Make your items look like a million bucks – While you may have gotten a steal with the item you bought, you shouldn’t make it look like it. Instead, present your items with a certain pizzazz and flair on your classified ad, so potential buyers will be more than willing to spend for you.
• Learn how to negotiate –  The art of negotiation is the deciding factor on whether or not you can purchase the discounted items at a lower price. At the same time, how you can strike a deal with buyers will determine how much you will sell it. The most important thing to keep in mind during the negotiation process is never to be emotional. There will be a risk of offending sellers and buyers with your offer, but you should always make a decision that will benefit you. Of course, you need to approach the situation carefully not completely to drive them away.
• Set up alerts using the keyword of your product – If you’re looking to buy items on Craigslist to sell them again, you can set up email alerts using their respective keywords. The site will immediately notify you if there are items that match your keywords. Doing this allows you to be one of the first people to view the ad and make a proposal to buy.

4. Sell your phone

Smartphones and mobile devices sell like hotcakes. Since every manufacturer pumps out a different model every so often, consumers will ditch their “old” phone they purchased months ago to get their hands on the latest version.

Given the trends of electronics, you can take advantage of the high turnover rate of mobile devices by selling them on Craigslist.

This post by Stephen at Cell Solo details the exact process that he did to sell his phone on the site. He was able to get a buyer for his 3-year old iPhone 4s 32G for $160.

Key Takeaways

Selling your mobile phone can be tricky, given that you need to tweak your phone with the help of your service provider. Below are tips that you should keep in mind before making a sale on Craigslist with your phone.

• Unlock your phone – Call your service provider and ask them to unlock your phone. This service is usually free, and the process shouldn’t take you long. Also, this is the most crucial aspect of your phone that buyers look for. Typically, they prefer an unlocked phone so that they can put their SIM card from a different wireless network.
• Find out the right value of your phone – Use a tool like Movaluate to see the reasonable asking price for your phone on sale. This allows you to come up with a price point for your unit that will attract buyers.
• Develop your description – Since the biggest differentiators of mobile phones are their respective specs, you need to detail them in your classified ad. Also, mention other information like condition and the actual images of the phone and its content to attract more interested buyers.

5. Offer multiple gigs

In light of the gig economy, it has become convenient for people to commit to different side hustles instead of just one big job. The beauty of having different jobs is that you are not dependent on a single source of income. By diversifying your income streams, you become resistant to the changing economic landscape that’s putting some people out of business.

If you need someone to help inspire you to a career in side hustling, then Jeffro of JasonCouponKing.com is your guy. His post on Budgets are Sexy documents his Craigslist experiment in which he posted different ads offering various services.

Jeffro decided to undertake one-off projects that did not require any long-term commitment. He offered an average of $18 for menial jobs like pulling weeds, tearing down art displays, and working as a chauffeur. By the end of the month, he was able to add $655 on top of his usual income.

Key takeaways

Ultimately, Jeffro’s experiment was a mixed bag. He claims that some of the jobs he offered like moving services and paper routing paid so low that it’s not worth repeating them. Nonetheless, there are lessons to be learned from his experiences, some of which are detailed below.

• Specialize on easy jobs – He specifically notes chauffeuring as the most exciting job out of the jobs he took because of how easy it is. Therefore, if you want to make the most of Craigslist’s various job offers, focus on a gig that allows you to produce maximum output with minimum effort.
• Be presentable and well-spoken – While these job types don’t require you to have a degree of some sort, you still need to keep up a good appearance and be on your best behavior. You need to appear pleasant enough and be able to express yourself in a clear manner to leave a good impression to your client. In fact, if you did good work, you can even ask for a tip on top of your fee.
• Keep your clients satisfied – Since you will be working directly with customers, you need to learn how to appease them. If you must make small talk with them for the purpose of providing a good experience, then do so by all means. The idea here is to make clients happy with your service so you can get repeat customers.

6. Sell appliances

Ryan of ReCraigslist considers appliances as the second most valuable item to buy and sell on the site. He even dedicates a full-blown post about selling appliances on his website and even launched a training course on how to sell appliances on Craigslist at ApplianceSchool.com.

From his post, he explains how appliances are high demand, high supply item. Similar to how people replace their mobile phones, lots of households dispose of their perfectly working machine in place for a newer model. At the same time, appliances straight on the market cost thousands of dollars, so it is only logical for people to browse sites like Craiglist for the same model at a lower price.

Ryan has turned selling appliances on Craigslist into a lucrative business. For every machine he sells, he earns a profit between $75-200.

Key Takeaways

When it comes to reselling products on Craigslist in general, you need to offer them extra value to purchase your products. The same applies to appliances. Assuming that the machines you are selling are pre-loved, you need to make sure that the units still works and operates at an efficient level.

Below are ways how you can add value to your appliances so you can sell them easier.

• Be quick – Whether it’s buying the machines for sales and delivering them to customers, you need to be fast and swift. Delaying your decision on buying the machines will give an opening for someone else to buy it from you. At the same time, delivering the appliances and installing them in the household of buyers allows you to get the money from them fast.
• Clean the machines first – Appliances work best when they are cleaned regularly. Assuming that you purchased a machine, you need to inspect and clean the appliance in the right places using the right tools. Also, you may need to clean the ducting on the outside of the buyer’s house to ensure that the machine is in tip-top shape.
• Offer adjacent services – Aside from cleaning the pipes for an additional fee, you can also provide reinstallation of their old appliances to make way for the ones they purchased. By providing related jobs to complement your primary service, which is selling appliances, you can make more money in the long run!

Conclusion

While time may have caught up with Craigslist, there is still no denying that you can still make good money off the platform. By using the case studies above as inspiration for your Craigslist journey, you too can make earn a fortune that you can add as one of your many income streams.

Thanks for reading this post! If you have questions about the article or have experience in making money on Craigslist that you want to share, feel free to comment below with your thoughts.

The post 6 Ways to Make Money on Craigslist in 2017 appeared first on Niche Pursuits.

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7 Tools for Generating Infinite Content Ideas for Your Blog

Blogging sucks.

Okay that’s a bit extreme. In fact, there’s a lot that I enjoy about blogging—mainly connecting with you guys.

But what does suck is having to constantly come up with new ideas for blog posts.

It’s a grind that can be quite exhausting, especially if you’re simply coming up with ideas off the top of your head.

Research from The Content Marketing Institute found that “57% of B2B marketers say that producing content consistently is their biggest struggle.”

And the struggle is real.

If you’re like me and writing up to eight posts per week while juggling multiple businesses, it can be seriously draining.

So out of pure necessity, I’ve experimented with a plethora of different tools to aid me in the process of generating new content ideas.

Some have been home runs and some have been strikeouts.

But there are seven in particular I really like and want to share with you.

Using one or more of these tools will allow you to generate an infinite number of content ideas for your blog—without having to do any heavy lifting.

1. HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator

This is one of my favorites for generating a handful of ideas quickly. Five to be exact.

I love it because it’s incredibly easy to use.

Literally within seconds, you’ll have five legitimate blog post titles at your fingertips.

All you have to do is enter up to three nouns in the search boxes:

In this case, let’s try “content marketing.” Here’s what happens:

Voila! I instantly get five viable blog topics.

If you want more, click “Try Again,” and it will take you back to the home screen.

From there, you can perform another search using the same keywords, or you can experiment with different keyword options.

I will say that HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator isn’t ideal if you need to come up with dozens of ideas right out of the gate.

But it’s a great starting point.

2. BuzzSumo

You may have heard me mention BuzzSumo before.

I love this tool and have been using it to guide my content marketing efforts for a few years now.

It’s awesome because it does more than just provide you with content ideas. Much more!

It also does the following:

• tells you the number of shares and social engagements content receives
• identifies key sharers
• displays backlinks
• shows you top trending content

In other words, you can quickly tell how well content is performing and what’s resonating the most with readers.

This information is helpful because it lets you know which angles to take with your blog and makes it easier to strike while the iron is hot when topics are peaking.

Here’s what happens when I search for “content marketing” on BuzzSumo:

Notice that it provides me with an in-depth glimpse of the content that’s crushing it at the moment.

More specifically, I can see the number of:

• Facebook engagements
• LinkedIn shares
• Twitter shares
• Pinterest shares
• Google+ shares
• Links
• Total shares

If you look to the right of this info, you’ll notice two more features: “View backlinks” and “View sharers.”

Both add a whole new dimension to the content prospecting process.

But let me give you a heads up.

The free version is fairly limited and won’t necessarily show you the big picture. You also can’t take advantage of all the features.

That’s why I recommend using the Pro version if you’ve got the budget.

As of early 2017, it costs $79 per month.

I know this may seem steep to some marketers, but it’s a worthwhile investment in my opinion.

3. Alltop

This is basically a news aggregator that lets you know what’s happening online.

Alltop runs the gamut in terms of topics and covers everything from science and religion to photography and fashion. It’s all there.

Here’s what you see when you first land on the Alltop homepage:

It’s basically a hodgepodge of different content.

Skimming through the homepage may help you generate some ideas, depending on your niche.

But what I recommend is searching for a specific topic in the search box.

Here’s just a fraction of what I get when I search for “content marketing:”

Alltop displays five posts from relevant blogs, and you can simply browse through the list for ideas.

Or you can take it one step further and click on a specific blog and scan it individually.

I’ve found this to be helpful, and you can potentially find some epic new resources you haven’t been aware of before.

The bottom line is that you can usually come up with a ton of ideas in a short period of time.

You can also get a feel for overarching trends to gauge what’s popular at the moment.

4. UberSuggest

Using this tool is simple.

Enter a keyword, and UberSuggest will supply you with dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of phrases that include your keyword.

Here’s a screenshot of what popped up when I used “content marketing” as a keyword:

It’s kind of like the Google Keyword Planner but more streamlined.

UberSuggest won’t provide you with info such as search volume, competition, etc., but it’s perfect for coming up with content ideas for your blog quickly.

Another cool feature is “Expand this keyword,” which you’ll see after clicking on a particular keyword.

Here’s what happens when I expand “content marketing strategy.”

Notice that it’s a more comprehensive list of keyword phrases based on “content marketing strategy.”

Pretty cool.

In theory, you can use one simple keyword to generate thousands of content ideas with UberSuggest.

5. Google Trends

I’m sure you’re at least somewhat familiar with Google Trends.

I use it for several marketing purposes, mainly to perform market research and determine interest in a particular topic.

But did you know that Google Trends can be used for generating content ideas as well?

It’s true.

Now let me say that this isn’t nearly as comprehensive as the previous tools I listed, but it definitely serves a purpose. Three to be exact.

Again, let’s use “content marketing” as an example.

First, you can browse through “Related topics” to see what’s popular.

This can help you identify other influential resources you may want to check out, which can potentially give you additional ideas.

Second, you can scan through “Related queries” to see which search queries are most popular on Google at the moment:

Third, you can use Google Trends to determine whether a topic is trending up or down.

Here’s what the interest in content marketing looks like at the moment:

When you put it all together, Google Trends can be quite handy for generating ideas.

6. Portent’s Content Idea Generator

If you’re looking for a super quick way to come up with a click-worthy blog title, look no further than this tool.

While it’s by no means as robust as, say, BuzzSumo, it works great for generating a title that your audience will eat up.

Here’s an example:

For more ideas, click the refresh button.

I like Portent’s Content Idea Generator because it’s an easy way to come up with cool and catchy titles.

It’s particularly good if you’re looking for a dash of humor.

7. Content Row’s Link Bait Title Generator

So here’s the deal with link bait.

It can potentially be detrimental to your marketing campaign.

I mean it may drive some initial traffic to your blog, but you’re likely to have a high bounce rate and a minimal number of return visitors if your content doesn’t actually measure up.

For that reason, I don’t recommend using titles purely intended for link bait without actually having high quality content.

That being said, Content Row’s Link Bait Title Generator is still a pretty awesome little tool to have.

The concept is simple. You enter a subject, and a handful of relevant link bait title ideas will appear.

Here’s what pops up when I enter “content marketing.”

Not too shabby.

This isn’t to say you’ll want to use every single idea this tool suggests, but you can definitely use it to streamline your brainstorming.

Most of the time, you can come up with some pretty catchy titles that will bring in considerable traffic.

Just make sure your content hits its mark.

Conclusion

I think we can all agree that coming up with fresh content ideas is a pain at times.

If you’ve been blogging for over a year, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

But fortunately, you don’t have to sit around brainstorming on your own, trying to come up with new ideas from scratch.

There are numerous tools available (many of which are free) that will assist you with this process and enable you to come up with pretty darn good ideas.

In fact, it’s tools like these that have enabled me to make continual progress and establish the audience that I have.

If you’re a serious blogger, I suggest at least checking out each of these seven tools and doing a little experimenting.

This should make it much easier to populate your blog with killer content without driving yourself crazy in the process.

Can you suggest any other tools for generating content ideas?

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Podcast 114: Jake and Spencer Review Amazon FBA, Niche Sites, and Other Success and Goals in Business

Today, I’m excited to FINALLY be releasing another episode of the Niche Pursuits Podcast!

If you have been paying attention, you will know that it’s been several months since a new episode has come out.  And most of the episodes in 2016 were all coaching calls for Niche Site Project 3.

So, today is the first original podcast episode that is not a coaching call since June 2016…8 months!  And the good news (for those of you that enjoy the podcast) is that I’ve already recorded another 4 episodes, with several more scheduled to be recorded in the next couple of weeks.

Spencer is back!

In today’s episode, Jake and I discuss how our overall business is going.  We focus on what has changed since selling Long Tail Pro, Amazon FBA, Niche Sites, and some big goals that I have.

We cover quite a bit in this podcast, including some personal goals and more.  If you would rather read, I’ve included the full transcript of the episode below.  Enjoy!

If you enjoy the podcast, please take a minute and leave a review so that I know people are getting value from it: http://ift.tt/ZD14gI

Full Transcript:

Spencer:          Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Niche Pursuits Podcast. I am Spencer Haws, of course from nichepursuits.com. It’s been a little while since I’ve recorded a podcast but I’m happy to jump back into it. I’ve got a lot of things happening in my business and so we’re going to jump right into it. Before we do, I’m going to bring on Jake Cane who is going to act as my co-host for this episode. Jake, welcome to the show.

Jake:                Thanks, man. It’s good to be on the podcast. This is a sort of a rarity for me. I’m excited to be on with you.

Spencer:          It is. I’m excited to have you. People probably are familiar with your voice, at least if they’ve listened to the podcast. You did one official sort of podcast with Karen and I, I believe, and I don’t even remember what episode that is. I don’t know that you do either.

Jake:                Probably the most popular one.

Spencer:          You’re right. If I just looked at the download numbers, that’s the one.

Jake:                Sort by the moment the most listened, yeah, that’s it.

Spencer:          It was several months ago, maybe even a year ago that we did that one and the other episodes that you’ve been on were coaching calls between Ryan and you. Those are really the only episodes that you were on but I did want to give just a quick, at least background from how you’re working with me if people aren’t familiar, some people know who you are. Jake has been working with me in my business now for two plus years.

Jake:                Yup.

Spencer:          Jake was brought on to help with Long Tail Pro, to grow that business, and did a phenomenal job there. Of course I sold that business about a year ago and I decided to keep Jake on to run the other parts of my business.

Jake has been with me for a little over two years and working in various aspects of my business and that’s why Jake is here with me on the podcast. He’s been working with me behind that scenes at all sorts of websites, products, Long Tail Pro of course but now is actively doing more Amazon FBA stuff and other things. That brings, hopefully, people up to date, Jake, on how you’re involved with my business and we’ll dive into that a little bit more here in this podcast.

Before we talk about what’s the latest and greatest in the business, I did want to share what’s new with me. Personally, I’ve been working on a big goal of mine this year is to improve my marathon time. I’ve got a marathon in April that I’m training for. It’s the Mt. Charleston Marathon in Las Vegas Nevada, if anybody wants to check that one out.

I really want to qualify for Boston this year. I’ve done about seven marathons already but I really want to hit the training hard and have been for several months now to try and qualify for Boston. That qualifying time for me is 3 hours and 15 minutes. My fastest marathon time up to date is about 3:24, just slightly under that. That’s what I got. I need to drop a solid nine minutes off my time which is a lot but I think I can do it. My plan is of course is to train a little bit harder, step one. Step two is to lose weight. I actually plan on coming in about, believe it or not, close to 15 lbs lighter then when I ran my previous marathons. They say for every pounds you lose, you run about two seconds per mile faster, just losing 15 lbs should make me about 30 seconds per mile faster.

Jake:                Nice.

Spencer:          The third thing, hand in hand goes with eating healthier. The last thing is picking a faster course. If people look at the Mt. Charleston Marathon, it’s all downhill, it should be faster. That’s what’s going on with me. Jake?

Jake:                So you start at the top of the mountain and run down, is that how it works?

Spencer:          Exactly.

Jake:                Mt. Charleston. It’s like cheating.

Spencer:          It’s a little bit of cheating but I’m going to do it. It’s certified Boston qualifier, so it counts.

Jake:                If you’re an odds maker right now, what’s your odds of getting that time you need, the 3:15. What do you think?

Spencer:          I still got long ways to go. It’s still 16 weeks away but training is going good but I don’t know, man. I still feel like it’s 50-50 at this time. It all depends on how the training and if I actually lose the weight goes, I think.

Jake, what’s new with you? What’s something interesting happening?

Jake:                Biggest thing this year, Spencer knows, I’m checking a bucket list item, if you will. 2017, I’m going to take the month of June off. I’ve got three little kids at home and they’ll be off, of course, for the summer and we’re going to take a big cross country road trip. We’re in the mid-west and Cincinnati, Ohio, we’re going to head out West and go through a lot of the national parks and do some camping and drive down through California and a bunch of places that we’ve never been and have always wanted to go. We’re really excited to do that with my wife and kids. Taking a full four weeks there and going to stop and see some friends along the way from college that live across the country and stay with them. We’re super pumped up about it. Any free time, I’m planning that out a little bit.

Spencer:          That’s awesome. You must have a really nice boss to be able to do something like that.

Jake:                The best, yeah.

Spencer:          Absolutely. I love it, man. Being able to have a flexible schedule like that, that’s what I enjoy and so you being able to do that for a month, that makes me happy too, so that’s awesome.

Jake:                Yup, exciting stuff.

Spencer:          Let’s dive into the latest and greatest to catch people up and hopefully some of things that we talk about will be things that people can apply into their own business. I don’t just want to talk about our business. I really do want to make it actionable. Hopefully, some of this review will be actionable for people. I did want to catch people up how my business has changed from 2016-2017, the biggest thing of note of course is that I did sell Long Tail Pro which was the biggest piece of my business up until early 2016. I do still own 20% of the company, but I’m no longer actively involved in the day to day operations of that business. I still do enjoy some of the income from that which is able to support me in a way so that I can invest a little bit more in other business ventures.

Once Long Tail Pro was sold, we’ve started focusing more and more on Amazon FBA. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that, Jake, because you’ve really been the engine behind that growth. That’s primarily where you been spending your time. Maybe just talk a little bit about what we’ve done there in the past year.

Jake:                Yes. We try to get pretty aggressive with launching new products and Spencer is pretty all forward as far as whatever ideas and that was what I was doing throughout this Spring was coming up with the ideas and trying to go get samples and get products launched. We did a variety of things, we did some unique products that were just things that we dreamed up, just brainstorming. We did some things that were more typical private label, kind of a Me Too product where we thought we could get a little bit of a presence there especially back in what is the past now, where you could do some giveaways and get reviews and things like that. We tried some of that and just kind of a mixture of things to figure out what was working.

I think definitely our bigger successes came with those products that had something unique about them and something a little bit different to offer than everything  else you find on Amazon because it’s really competitive out there. Frankly we had some flops, we’ve had some things that we hope we could get some traction with, we just never did and I think fortunately the good has outweighed the bad but I think we’ve learned a lot about the type of product we want to try to launch as we go forward for 2017 and the future.

Spencer:          Right. I think there’s a lot of different ways to tackle this type of business. I don’t really want to provide a blueprint but this is just what’s worked well for us. We tried doing, like you said, very generic products, even going to AliExpress and not even doing unique packaging or labeling or anything, right? Just whatever AliExpress had, we tried to launch some of these products with varying degrees of success there. One or two of those quick launch AliExpress products allowed to think of how we could be unique to test a market and go okay then maybe a market here, how can we make a better product now? But really what has worked well is just having a unique angle for us on our product. That’s really where all our big winners were and so we’re focusing a lot more on that with new products. How can we make this different? How can we can package this different? That what’s worked well.

Throughout the year of 2016, we launched about 23 products, total new products, and that allowed us to grow by about 400% from when I compare 2015 to 2016 which was huge but there’s a couple of caveats there. One is that we didn’t have a full year of selling on Amazon in 2015, I started in about March of 2015 and so it takes some time, it’s not really a perfect comparison because we only have a partial year there but we’re seeing a lot more success now with our unique products in 2016. I’m very excited for 2017, the growth that I hope and expect will happen there.

Jake:                Yup. For sure.

Spencer:          Anything you want to add there for what we’re looking to do in 2017?

Jake:                I would just say a piece of advice for somebody hearing this, when we say unique product, I found that a lot of people, just friends and emails and whatever that I’ve talked to get a little bit intimidated by that. Your mind jumps to I got to invent something and it’s not necessarily that. I don’t think we’ve done anything that’s like ground breaking that we will call an invention. It’s more of a modification of an existing product. We try to prove that hey this general product sells whatever that is. Let’s just say it was a pair of shoes. We know that pair of shoes that they sell on Amazon, how can we make them better? How can we make them a unique pair of shoes?

That’s how we approach it, I just want to throw that out there. That’s what we mean when we talk about how we do unique products. It’s been nice because when you go to manufactures, you have a reference point to say hey, you guys make something like this or here’s an example, something like this, but we want to change A, B and C and that’s how we start the sample process.

Spencer:          Right. Exactly. An example, something that just popped into my head, this isn’t what we sell but somebody else does is little hotdog slices for kids, it’s just a little kitchen gadget, you put a hotdog in there and it chops it up and do a bunch of pieces real quick and easy. It’s a unique product but there’s a lot of people doing that.

One company, they have same mechanism –hotdog slicer but it shapes like an actual weiner dog. You put your hotdog in the weiner dog and chop it up, right? That’s their unique angle. It’s the exact same tool but it’s packaged to look like a dog.

Jake:                A tool everybody needs, obviously.

Spencer:          I don’t know why we haven’t ever looked into the one. But that’s to give people an idea, you’re exactly right. We’re not doing anything that we patented or anything like that but we’re trying to look at unique angles.

The other thing that we’ve been doing in 2016, as I look back, things that went well is five or six niche sites that Jake and I have been working on. They’ve seen some good growth there. A couple of those are related to products that we sell on Amazon, so we have a couple of brands that we built Niche websites out and we’ve attracted a lot of traffic, good traffic growth and we’re sending a lot of that traffic either to Amazon or selling our products directly on our website. Why have we seen some growth? A couple of reasons, I want to hear your thoughts Jake. Why do you think some of our Niche Sites have done so well? What’s been our strategy?

Jake:                It’s going to sound trite but keyword research is a big part of it. You’ve sort of been hitting that drum for about two decades now. Cocktail keywords, right? But that’s really been a big part of it. We came into one that’s doing really well with a site that you had for a while but it was kind of dormant, not really doing much. When we just went back in and reinvigorated that with new content and based it on Long Tail Keywords and like you said, we developed products around it. It’s sort of the same story everywhere else, I think that’s the biggest thing at the core of it, that’s where we spend most of our time, it’s just the strategy content side of it and getting the content done and it’s been working.

Spencer:          Exactly. That’s my thoughts too. We primarily focus on low competition keywords, producing great content, and a lot of people always ask me about link building but to be honest, we don’t do much. It’s just not really been a focus, in fact a couple of our sites we’ve done none. There has been no effort to do link building and we’ve still seen growth. But I don’t want to get people the wrong idea as well that everything we try works. It’s not the case.

Maybe we should spend a couple of minutes talking about thing that didn’t go quite as well. I can think of certainly some products. We launched 23 products. I don’t know that I have a number but off the top of my head, certainly at least seven or eight of those, we’ll never reorder, right? Once we’re out of stock, they were losers. Maybe we’ll break even but certainly several will lose a little bit of money but they’re not making enough that we’ll ever reorder.

Several of the Amazon physical products that we launched, I don’t know if you have a better idea, maybe it’s as high as a 10 or 11 of those, you know that we’re not going to reorder, right?

Jake:                Right. I would say that’s a fair estimate, I’d say at least half. But it’s the ones at the top have more than paid off for that, the risk. When we try to limit the risk upfront, just to be honest, if we have what we think is a wild idea, we found that everything’s negotiable when you’re working with the manufactures so we try to keep that initial cost as low as possible. If we get it, we find out people are going to love this and then nobody buys it. We’re not in the hook for tens of thousands of dollars or something crazy. We’ve got to keep that pretty low.

Spencer:          Exactly. Several of the products we’re able to launch for less than $1000 invested. Some is more than that but even let’s say I invest $5000 into a product, even if it’s a loser, eventually the product sells and I get fairly close to breaking even. Even worst case scenario, I’m out maybe $1000 but I tried a whole new avenue, and the winners like you said, the ones that do really well, they might be netting $3000 or $4000 or $5000 a month or more. We do have a couple of products that certainly do more on that net profit every month.

Jake:                I think that’s how we are more and more out and talking about it for people listening as far as margin is concerned and I know you’ve probably heard that before if you’re just getting into this but just knowing your numbers to know that I’m buying it for whatever, I think I can retail it for this, but know that break even number, use that Amazon FBA calculator and just figure out. I think I can sell for $20 but I’m almost certain that I can unload it at $10. You know what I mean? I’m going to be low price to enough to where even if people don’t love it, I’m going to be able to sell through it and I’m not going to get foreclosed on my house. I’m going to get my money back. Just knowing that number up front like I think we’re both optimists and we see how big this could be and stuff but when it doesn’t work out, you want to know that at the bare minimum, I can do this and have this number in mind before you buy anything.

Spencer:          We’re going through that with a couple of our products. I was super optimistic and ordered thousands of units, I’m thinking of one product in particular that you’re aware of and it’s been sitting now, it didn’t sell as well as I hoped. It’s been sitting around for about a year and I’m now about to incur long term storage fees that are pretty hefty that Amazon charges if I don’t unload those really quick. I’ve been dropping the price and I’m even losing a little bit of money on each of these. It’ll be less money than if I were to pay this huge thousands of dollars in long term storage fees from Amazon.

I just wanted to be clear with people that we’ve definitely had some losers, not everything we try is a success and same goes for the sites that we built. Can you think of any losers there? Or things that didn’t go quite as well as planned?

Jake:                Maybe. I still consider those not yet.

Spencer:          Works in progress.

Jake:                Works in progress. That’s right. Just taking along some of our new one we purchased or in the process of trying to resurrect that site. It was a site that used to have a decent following and was neglected for years. We purchased that as a chance to try to add some new content. Some of those things I think we’re still working on but haven’t turned around as quickly as we’d hope, for sure.

Spencer:          Right. That’s the thing is that with our sites, we found a formula, if you will, that works pretty well as long as you’re willing to play the long game. I’m willing to spend a year just producing great content and not focusing on all kinds of other crazy marketing ideas to just let it grow organically. For the most part, they’ve done pretty well, you’re right. But the one you brought up, it may take just a little longer than we have expected.

Jake:                The other, I guess, maybe lesson learned, that we’re changing as we go into 2017 that we probably won’t do again, as far as launching products are concerned. We do have a couple of web properties that are doing pretty well, we’re building a nice list and we get a lot of traffic and all these things and so we’ve seen a lot of success doing products in that niche and so we can push our own traffic to our own products, that sort of thing has worked really well.

I think just moving forward, we’re trying to narrow our focus of instead of last year we did products that were just all over the map, had no real connection with one another, totally different brands and all kinds of stuff. Now we’re trying to think about it, what products can we launch that we could promote to this audience because it just helps you launch faster, you’ve got people that you can immediately promote to. You get free traffic you can drive to your own Amazon listing, I just think that’s more important than ever, especially with the crackdown they did with the incentivized reviews and all that stuff, I think being able to push your own traffic to your own products is huge. That’s where we’re trying to limit ourselves a little bit and go with these places where we’ve already got audience built in.

Spencer:          Yeah, absolutely. That’s really I believe how we are going to take the business to the next level. We do like to dream up new products but we’re starting to focus more on very specific niches that we already have an established website or following at least at this point.

Another thing that I wanted to share with the Niche Pursuits audience here on the podcast is a big focus that has been mine in my business since the beginning of the year. Like everybody, I sat down, reflected on 2016 and was thinking about goals and what I want to focus on in my business going forward. One thing that I feel like I want to focus on and be something that I can give back in a way is I really want to focus on helping individuals become entrepreneurs on their own and be able to work on their own schedule.

As I looked at my life, I’ve now been a full time entrepreneur for almost six years, believe it or not. In March it will be six years that I quit my job. I still remember vividly what it was like to work in the corporate world, I was a business banker at Wells Fargo. Sitting in my cubicle and having a boss and just having that fixed schedule and somebody else’s goals, somebody else’s ideas that I had to do the grunt work on. It just wasn’t the most exciting position for me. It was a good job, it was a steady paycheck, but I just know that there are so many people out there in the same situation that are dreaming of being able to work on their own.

When I look back at what I’ve been able to do, and the schedule that I’ve been able to have. I work from home and I’m sitting here in my own home office right now, my wife and son are in the other room. I get to see them all day, every day, I take my kids to school in the morning, when they get home from school in the afternoon I’m here and get to see them. If I want to take a two hour break to go train for a marathon, for example, in the middle of the day, I can do that. I love it.

Certainly through this podcast and through my blog, I want to inspire and teach people how to become entrepreneurs. I’ve done that a little bit but really I want that to be more of a focus to be able to allow people to eventually quit their job and work their own schedule and have that flexibility. On the other part of that that we’re going to dive into here a little bit as well is being able to hire individuals and allowing them to work that flexible schedule even though maybe they’re not their own boss officially, to be able to give them that freedom away from the corporate world.

Hopefully something that I’ve been able to do for you Jake, right? You can tell people what I’ve given you as your schedule, right? I essentially say work your own hours, I don’t care, as long as the work gets done. Let’s make it happen. I try to allow you to be an entrepreneur in this position, to give you a lot of flexibility and freedom. Maybe you can speak to that. What is it like, not just working for me but be able to work in a position where you have that flexibility.

Jake:                You want me to just talk for a couple minutes about how amazing you are, right? One big clear on that question.

Spencer:          No.

Jake:                No, I’m kidding. It’s been excellent, it was a big switch. I was in the corporate world, worked a technology job before I worked for Spencer and it was a big leap of faith working for somebody that I never met, who I’ve been reading his blog for a few years. It’s kind of weird and I got some odd looks and weird questions from family about that but it turned out to be a great thing and Spencer’s been super supportive, the schedule. I have a lot of the same benefits now, just working from home and seeing my kids grow up, that stuff is priceless.

I decided at the time if I can make enough where we can survive, I’m going to do this just because that was the vision. My life goals were more about who I want to be, not necessarily what I want to do as far as professionally is just sort of my mindset. Spencer’s allowed me to do things as far as launching other stuff and being an entrepreneur for yourself. I’ve come a long way there in the last couple of years and launched some of my own brands and some of the sites that I’ve started and grown in a way better spot that I was a couple of years ago and frankly things that I couldn’t have done without Spencer and his insight and seed money to get started. We have done some partnership, tight deals just things frankly just would never have done. I didn’t have the opportunity to do. To say it’s life changing would be an understatement for me.

Spencer:          Yeah, that’s awesome. I want to share this on the podcast simply because this sort of guiding principle of helping others become entrepreneurs and work that flexible schedule is sort of a guiding principle now for everything I do. I’m trying to think of that even when I’m making business decisions, believe it or not. In two ways, like I said, I’m going to be doing that, of course. Hopefully inspiring and teaching others to my blog and podcast. And then secondly, by hiring others to work that flexible schedule, like I mentioned. I’ve got Jake.

That moves us directly into this next portion of the podcast I want to talk about is how do I manage so many different businesses and products that I have? The reality is now, since I cleared that hey, I want to even hire people to give them an opportunity to eventually become entrepreneurs. That freed up the way I’m thinking about things instead of just trying to hoard all of my revenues, right? I’m thinking, you know what, it makes sense to bring other people on to help me manage all these different pieces of my business and that allows them to see the inner workings of what I do and hopefully teaches them how to become entrepreneurs and grows my business, yes, but eventually I would love it if they go out on their own and become entrepreneurs and enjoy some measure of success as they do that as well.

These thoughts became more clear to me as I was thinking at the end of last year, I was actually at a conference and it seems like whenever I go to a conference. It’s just I’m away from home, I’m around a lot of smart people, I think more strategically about my business because I’m sort of separated from the day to day.

These thoughts became clear in my head that this is what I wanted to do and I sat down and I looked at the different pieces of my business and I said, you know what, really I’ve got four to five separate businesses that I’m all running, Jake and I are all running and it’s kind of crazy. We bounce around all the time, there’s not a lot of focus in it. It works great, I love it, I have a lot of fun. That’s just the sort of the way I am. I liked to have my hands involved in a lot of things but I thought, you know what, some of these businesses can now afford to hire their own brand managers.

That’s what I’ve decided to do is hire a couple of brand managers to run these individual websites or products or brands. The way that I’m looking at it now is what Jake and I are calling this incubator model. Jake and I have these ideas, we put them into this incubator. We launched these products on Amazon or we start these new Niche websites, sort of in incubator phase and Jake for the most part is really the manager of the incubator.

Jake goes in there and starts things from scratch, tries to get them to a point where they’re profitable and making money with the plan that once they’re making enough money where they can hire at least a part time manager, let’s say, $2000 a month they are bringing in, that I can go out and hire a part time US-based brand manager or maybe a full time VA type, virtual assistant Filipino type manager, whatever that is, right? It can support itself to bring in a brand manager that can then work on it full time or at least part time but that’s their sole focus to grow that brand and that takes something off of my plate, takes something off of Jake’s plate so that you can focus on the incubator in growing the other brands. Did I describe that well, do you have any thoughts on that?

Jake:                Yeah, I think that you described it pretty well. In one case, one of the hires that we made was a business that you purchase that we thought we could grow ourselves, it sort of stayed the same. I think what we found was it’s something that requires a level of expertise and sort of a niche that you’re not intimately familiar with, it’s not really our tribe. We tried to bring on somebody that’s part of that community, that understands it better, just the lingo, and I think that’s what that brand needs. That’s not always the case…

Spencer:          To give people an identity; it’s in the music space for a particular instrument, Jake and I don’t play this instrument. We don’t really fully understand the musicians in the space, so we brought in a musician that also just happens to have some experience in growing businesses as well.

Once I made that decision at the end of last year, this year, in the first month of the year, I’ve hired two brand managers which is pretty big for me. The last hire I made was you, Jake, over two years ago. I’ve sort of gotten more aggressive. I decided I need some help, I need people that can grow these individual brands and I believe that’s how we can take this to the next level. I’ve hired two US-based brand managers that are part time at this point, but they’re focusing on one specific brand with the idea being that once these brands become big enough to support them full time, I’m going to hire them full time. Once the brands continue to grow from there, we may do some other things with them, whether that’s sell them off as a complete company on their own or just think of other ways to grow and sort of separate those out even more fully from the incubator mess, if you will, that we have with all these products and businesses that we’re working on.

To give people an overall big picture of the structure of the business, as I look at it, Jake is sort of the general manager over the incubator, all these individual brands and products that we have, then of course we’re now hiring out, separating out these other brands with their own brand managers. I, myself, am the brand manager, if you will, of Niche Pursuits, the podcast, the blog, any other products that I might release down the road if I do another software product, I would be the brand manager of that. That’s where my focus is in addition to being the entrepreneur, making a lot of the strategic decisions for everything else that’s going on in the business.

Anything else to add to that, Jake?

Jake:                No, I don’t think so. I think you covered it.

Spencer:          Okay. This is something that is discussed in the book eMyth Revisited by Michael Gerber in a way. That is a great book if you have not read that, or if it’s been a long time since you’ve read it. I encourage people to pick it up and read it once again. This was reminded to me, I was having a conversation with John Heaver, he’s an authority website income. I was asking him how he manages his business because he has even more moving pieces I think than I do, he’s got dozens and dozens of writers that he manages, all sorts of other things that are going on. He sort of talked about this model; there’s three different positions, this is what’s discussed in eMyth Revisited.

There’s the entrepreneur, the manager, and there’s the technician. When you first start your business, you’re wearing all three of these hats; you do everything. You make the strategic decisions that the entrepreneur makes, you’re the manager that manages all the moving parts and pieces of the business, and then you’re also the technician, you’re the person that actually does the day to day labor in the business.

But as your business grows, this is where a lot of businesses fail, they don’t see all these individual hats and individual positions, they keep doing everything. That’s what I’m trying to separate, have some sort of separation in my business. I’m the entrepreneur at the top making the strategic decisions, and then there would be a manager like Jake that’s sort of managing a lot of the individual moving pieces, and managing the individual employees. I think about some of the websites that we have, we have writers that we hired that Jake is managing, that’s what he’s spending time doing, managing the content flow, what content is produced, and then physically managing the writers, if you will, and making sure that they produce the content that we plan to do.

And then the technicians would be the actual writers themselves. They’re the ones actually producing the content and that sort of thing. It’s just a big picture way for people to think about their business, eMyth Revisited is a great book. As your business grows, be thinking about the individual hats that you’re wearing, whether you’re spending too much time as a technician or a manager or an entrepreneur and figuring out what’s appropriate for you in your business.

Jake:                Just curious, how long does it take you to make the leap, kind of figure out I shouldn’t be doing all this myself, because you were pretty much a lone wolf for a long time.

Spencer:          Yeah, absolutely. It’s kind of a recurring theme I think for me. Certainly before I ever quit my job, I was still doing everything myself building out niche websites. It took me a while even then to hire writers.

Then what I finally decided after a couple years, man, I should just have somebody write articles for me. That was a big step. Then, once I quit my job certainly and had enough income coming in to where I should go beyond hiring writers to hiring somebody to help me manage everything, I brought Karen in who helped me manage websites and then finally I brought you in. It’s a recurring theme. For every business that I start, it takes me a little while to get to the point where you know what, I should just hire somebody to do this. Certainly, it took me at least a couple of years.

Jake:                I’m just asking your opinion here, I would imagine most people listening to this who are still on here to the very end of this podcast are probably part timers, side hustlers, people building sites, maybe working on products, things like that. Let’s assume that you were back in that position, you’re working full time at Wells Fargo and maybe you’ve got a site that’s making $500 a month of $500 to $1000 a month. Do you think somebody in that position should be looking at bringing on a writer or should they continue being a one man show until they get to a different level? Like if you were to do it again, what would you do if that was the position you were in now?

Spencer:          If I was focused on growth and getting to the point where I can quit my job as quickly as possible, I would absolutely hire a writer or hire somebody to help me grow. I would focus on growth rather than bottom line for as long as possible because once you get to a certain point, let’s say you are able to grow it up to $4,000 a month or something, you’re able to quit your job. At that point, you can quit your job and maybe fire your writers for a little while and start writing on your own. You’re still doing a lot in your business but you now are living off of your website.

I would focus on growth, I really would. But having said that, everybody’s situation is different. If $500 a month means a lot to your family that you need that money to pay expenses, that’s a different situation. Go ahead and take that money, make sure your family is taken care of. All things being taken care of, I would focus on growth, I would hire and get to the point where I can quit my job as soon as possible.

Jake:                I agree at this point. Just some of the stuff that I’ve done, I wish I would’ve done some of that sooner as well. When you first start making that money, that’s really hard. You’re like, oh, this is sweet, man. I got an extra $300. Even if it’s just blowing it on, hey, let’s go out and treat ourselves to a nice dinner or whatever. It’s not fun to just drop that money right back paying for whatever it is, stuff to grow a little bit, that’s not fun to do that for a year, however long that takes. It’s tempting just to spend that money, but yeah, thinking long term.

Spencer:          Absolutely. I think that’s what I would do. That’s what I’m doing now. Certainly, it’s at a different point but I am more focused on reinvesting the revenue of the business back into hiring people and growing the individual brand. My long term play is to be able to hire people to do that, but to be able to grow these individual brands where they truly are individual businesses that could be sold on their own. A couple of years down the road, I hope that I have some brands that I can sell and have a nice exit and of course take that money and reinvest in other ideas, probably.

Jake:                Yup. I would say if I could just real quick, take that to the physical product side. I think for us, that’s reinvesting in product lines like we were talking about where you find a product that works in a niche and then doing a related product and trying to build that out further. Taking what technically is profit from that first winner and now we’re buying inventory for two products. Just building that up, it’s not a lot of fun to take all that money and sink it right back into inventory, but when we sell through the inventory for two products and then three products, it’s just a way to grow.

Spencer:          Absolutely.

Jake:                That’s really where we’re headed.

Spencer:          Yup, absolutely. I think that gives people a great overview of where we’re at, what our plans are going forward, and just how we are viewing our overall business and some of the plans. Hopefully, people have found that useful. I do want to remind everybody that first of all, I appreciate your listening to the podcast if you made it through this far. I want to remind you that one of the best ways that I can know you’re listening and enjoying the podcast is if you leave a rating or review. If you could head over to http://ift.tt/2kPOPeN and leave that review, that’s a great way for me to know that you’re listening.

Going forward, I do plan on starting to record more podcasts, there will be some more interviews, hopefully some interesting angles on interviews that I’ll reveal once that is actually released, but then of course Jake and I will check in from time to time and sort of review what’s working in my business and share those tactics so that you can apply those in your own business.

Once again, I just want to say thank you for listening to the podcast and have a great day.

The post Podcast 114: Jake and Spencer Review Amazon FBA, Niche Sites, and Other Success and Goals in Business appeared first on Niche Pursuits.

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The Art on How to Make Money on Etsy

Being an artist is often associated with being broke, as seen from the trope “Starving Artist.” While this stereotype is an unfair assessment about artists in general, it only means that they are focused on the final product. The quality of their creation is of highest priority. Anything else, including monetary value placed on it, are secondary.

At the same time, our reality requires us to be practical and find a way to make a living. Whether or not artists will resist this idea, the fact remains that they need to survive and pay the bills if they want to make more art.

Balancing money and art has always been a tenuous exercise at best when it comes to artists. However, with a platform like Etsy, artists and others can now make a living out of their artistic expression.

Etsy is an online marketplace where artists in different media can sell their work locally and globally. The platform empowers artists and creators to continue doing what they love without compromising their value and make a good fortune.

What to sell on Etsy

Whether you are creating jewelry, painting, and other handcrafted products and services, you have a place to sell on Etsy.

Ideally, you should sell arts and crafts you are passionate in creating. Make sure that they are set to high standards and are unique enough to make buyers notice them.

If you specialize in services like carpentry and pottery services, your concern is your inability to create products off your skills. Fortunately, Etsy allows you to sell patterns and tutorials that will help aspiring artists to improve their craft.

If you’re still unsure what product to sell, you need to consider these factors:

• Lightweight – Lighter products cost less to store and ship to the buyer, which means more profit for you.
• “Niche” product – Have a specific product to sell in mind. If you want to sell jewelry, think of a particular type like rings, brooches, or anklets. Once you have decided on a type, you can narrow it down to an even much more specific design. For rings, you can choose from silver thumb rings or custom name rings, to name a few.
• Competitive pricing – Do a quick search on Etsy and look for products similar to what plan on selling. Check the prices of each and see if you can come up with a similarly priced product with a high-profit margin.
• Evergreen – Avoid selling seasonal products like Halloween costumes and Christmas decors. To maximize your earnings, you need to sell a product that people will buy regardless of the month and year.

LeiLei Secor changed her Etsy product from macramé bracelets to wire-wrap jewelry because the former didn’t sell. By determining her product, she was able to make $100,000 on Etsy, which she used to pay for her college tuition.

How about selling private label products on Etsy?

Etsy prides itself in providing artists a platform to showcase their handmade arts and craft for sale. However, the idea of selling premade products and branding them your own is a much profitable venture. Instead of meticulously crafting the items with love, you can buy wholesale items from a cheaper manufacturer and mark up the prices.

This process is standard on Amazon through Fulfillment by Amazon. I have discussed this topic in depth in an article I wrote that you could read by clicking here.

However, private label selling is a red flag on Etsy.

Three Bird Nest did exactly this to reach the million dollar mark a year on the platform. Stay at home mom and Three Bird Nest owner Alicia Shaffer purchased wholesale products from Alibaba.com and resold them on Etsy at a higher price. While her tactic was pure savvy marketing, she drew the ire of Etsy sellers who think that her practice violated Etsy’s philosophy, which is about selling handcrafted boutique.

Third Bird Nest left Etsy in 2015 because Alicia claims that the platform is no longer supportive of their cause. Ultimately, Etsy sided with artists and hobbyists who focused on turning their efforts into profit.

For those thinking of selling wholesale products from Alibaba.com and passing them off as “handmade,” think again. Etsy states that this practice is a clear violation of their policy and they will suspend your account if they find out about you.

How to sell on Etsy

You must create an account to set up your online shop at Etsy. You will need to fill out your store information with images and description to provide users details about what you are selling.

Unfortunately, it comes at a cost – $0.2 listing fee to be exact. You also need to part with 3.5% of every sale you make on the platform. In addition to that, you need to shoulder the expenses if you accept credit card payments, as well as PayPal and conversion fees.

Given the cost you will incur in registering and making a sale on the site, it seems like building your site is much more feasible from a financial perspective.

However, you are not directly paying to set up a shop on Etsy. You are paying for the thousands of proven buyers who have shopped multiple times on the platform. Getting your products listed down on Etsy will help make your products more visible to your target audience.

Also, customers tend to buy from platforms that they can trust. If you plan on building a site from scratch, then you have zero leverage in your market. To develop a relationship with your audience, you need to market and promote your site like mad to gain the recognition you deserve. This process may take months, or longer, to accomplish.

With Etsy, the hard work is already done for you. Etsy is a proven brand that drives lots of traffic (it currently ranks at 188 on Alexa Global). People who want to buy handcrafted arts and craft head on to Etsy. Using these facts to your advantage, you can potentially make a killing selling your products on the platform!

Having two separate shops

Nonetheless, it is possible for you to run an Etsy shop and have a website like Urban Wood Goods does. Owner Erin True started her Etsy shop in 2014 that she used as a springboard to launch her furniture company that is independent of the platform. Her sales exceeded $1 million in the same year, a quarter of which came from her Etsy shop.

An argument can be made that having a site separate from Etsy is potentially more profitable. However, setting up an Etsy shop was important for her as she used the platform as leverage to promote her company. Without Etsy, who knows if her company would have existed by now.

Therefore, it is highly advised that you still sign up for an Etsy shop to get hold of your captive market before transitioning to building a brand outside Etsy.

How to create a good listing on Etsy

Just like how businesses constantly work their way up on Google Search, you must find a way to appear on top of Etsy search results. Appearing on the top, if not at the top, should yield your shop more clicks and visitors, which could give way to more buyers.

The process of getting listed on Etsy follows the same basic formula as with most search-driven platform. Below are some of the practices you need to consider using to boost your Etsy list ranking.

Keyword research

The keyword you plan on optimizing for your Etsy list will make or break your earnings potential on the site.

Unlike Google and Amazon in which you have multiple tools for keyword and competitive research to choose from, Etsy only has Marmalead for all your research needs.

The tool makes research easier for you. Upon entering a keyword, you will see the engagement, competition, and category page levels to help you decide if you need to optimize the keyword on your listing. You can also see keyword suggestions, trending tags, and word cloud to help you come up with keyword ideas.

For a better explanation on how this tool works, read this article by Tara L. Jacobson about increasing her Etsy shop ranking from #376 to #39 within 24 hours.

Competitor research

Once you have chosen your keyword, you can use it to show your competitors ranking high for it. Marmalead will show you the shop grades and details on how to increase the score for each shop. As a shop owner yourself, you need to take the common denominators for all shops.

For additional help with competitor research, use the Listing in Search feature on Etsy Gadgets. Find at least three shops on Etsy that you feel are direct competitors for your keyword. Get their store names and enter them one by one on Listing in Search with your keyword. The tool will show all the tags that the shop uses and the items that appear on top of search results for the keyword.

Use the information to populate your shop with the ones competitors are using so you can take a piece of their traffic.

Listing optimization

While it’s great to have potential buyers click on your shop high on the search result, you need to close the deal with them by making your listing look attractive to them.

Etsy provides a basic overview on how to optimize your shops for search, but below are additional advice that you need to consider:

• Do not obsess on image optimization – Just make sure that the images are hi-res and do not exceed 100kb before uploading them. You do not have to name them using your target keyword. Etsy will change the filename using their naming convention which is in numbers.
• Keep listing fresh – Keep shuffling your listing by promoting your most popular products consistently. Etsy prioritizes shops that are updated on a regular basis, so you need to take advantage of that.
• Keep up with the updates – Just like Google, Etsy improves its algorithm over time. What was once working on its search feature may no longer work in the future. Therefore, you need to be on your toes when it comes to observing the best Etsy SEO practices.

Optimize on Google

Etsy shops also appear in Google search results, so you get the extra traffic from the world’s biggest search engine.

When optimizing your Etsy shop on Google, you need to worry about your shop’s meta tags, in particular, your title and description.

Both will appear in search results as your rich snippets. Therefore, aside from mentioning your keywords, you need to make them as descriptive as possible to make people click on them.

Limit your product page title to 55 characters and your description to 120 characters. For your description, provide a detailed explanation of the product.

To increase your ranking on search results, you may need to do some link building. Etsy even mentions it as one of SEO’s most important practices you need to do for your shop. However, building links is a time-consuming takes time. Unless you have a stable relationship with website owners, it would be difficult to get a link from their sites.

Therefore, it’s important to network with site owners, especially influencers, and build organic relationships with them. This Quicksprout post should give you a better understanding of how getting to know influencers on a personal level correlates with building links to your Etsy shop.

It is important to note that the purpose of building relationships is not just purely for link building. In fact, getting a backlink from them should only be a byproduct of your efforts in developing a symbiotic partnership. They can easily tell if you are only after getting backlinks to their site.

Wrapping it up

Etsy is a good starting place to sell your handiwork. It focuses on supporting craftspeople and hobbyists by giving them a platform to showcase their work and make a living. However, the competition is fierce, and it will be difficult to make money on Etsy if you are not aware of the best practices on how to get your shop found by your target market.

With the tips and advice mentioned above on how to make money on Etsy, you should come prepared once you decide on selling your products on the sites. It’s high time that you monetize your passion so you can earn money from the blood, sweat, and tears poured from creating your masterpiece.

Thanks for reading this article! If you have questions or comments about the post, please feel free to leave a note below!

The post The Art on How to Make Money on Etsy appeared first on Niche Pursuits.

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