But you can do keyword research without keyword tools.

I know that this might be a little bit against the grain, but hear me out.  You see, lately I have been working on creating some niche store websites.  Specifically, these are eBay affiliate websites and they will just be another income stream in my business operations.  Though I started out using keyword tools, I really haven’t been using them for these types of sites.  In fact, the following is the “keyword tool” that I have been using:

My wife.

Now that might seem a little silly, but sometimes it makes more sense to use a resource that is an expert in the field instead of relying on a computer.  In my case, my wife is an avid scrapbooker, and a Close to My Heart consultant, and has been scrapbooking for the past ten years and she does a very good job.  In that respect she is very close to the niche that I was targeting, and could provide me with the keywords and categories of products that I needed to make the site complete.

Sure, she couldn’t tell me the search volume or the competition (that is what keyword tools are for, right?), but she did have an intimate knowledge of the niche itself, and could provide me with information as to what a customer in the niche I chose was looking for.  And in some respects, this is more valuable than any keyword research tool out there.

So, the next time you are considering entering a niche that you are not familiar with, consider talking to someone that would be your potential customer.  They can point you in the right direction as to the products you should be selling and tell you exactly what your target customer will be looking for.  In some respects, that is more valuable than the information any keyword research tool can provide you.

But the one thing that I didn’t touch on were some good practices to follow when looking for small town investment properties.  Since most of us would be more familiar with city real estate, there are some things (and potential quirks) that you need to be aware of when investing outside of larger cities.

The first thing that should be on your mind is employment opportunities within the community that you are looking at as well as the employment opportunities in surrounding areas.  Ideally, the small town would be within driving distance of a city so that they have plenty of options when it comes to employment.  If you cannot find something in your price range close to a city, make sure there are employment opportunities within the community – the home buyer will need to make money somehow to pay their mortgage.

The age of the home also plays an important factor.  Unlike cities where it is common for older homes to be torn down for new construction, some smaller communities have a large amount of old housing stock.  A good example would be the village that I live in – we live in one of the “newer” homes and it was built in 1976.  Age can be a deciding factor as to the resale value and potential of a property because most people associate a younger home with a higher perceived value and better condition.

The construction of the home is also important.  What you will find in smaller communities is that there are a larger number of custom renovations which can include everything from an addition to the home, to other things such as plumbing or electrical.  Based on the fact that a large number of these jobs are not done by professionals, it is advisable that you get a home inspection prior to purchasing the property to ensure that there are no hidden problems.

Speaking of home inspection, when buying a property in a community outside of a city, it is even more important to spend the money and get a professional opinion on the property.  Quite often there are hidden problems, or other headaches (think of asbestos as being one of them) that can significantly affect your ability to make a profit on the investment and a home inspector should be able to find these problems for you.

Though in some cases, there might be a little more work involved when making your decision regarding a small town real estate investment, as long as you make sure to do your due diligence, there are plenty of opportunities to make a good return on your investment.  Just make sure to follow some of the guidelines that I have provided up above and you should have a good investing experience.

But at the same time, I hear a lot of grumbling from these same people that they really aren’t making any money online.  I know that this can be a challenge for some people, but in the case of these people that I have been talking to, they are all doing something wrong:  they aren’t monetizing their sites.

Now, I suppose that this would be common sense if you were to look in from the outside, but somehow during the time that these people have been building their sites and promoting them, they forgot that in order to make money from their sites, they need some sort of monetization strategy.

Some of the more common monetization strategies are as follows:

1. Contextual/Banner Ads:  The goal of this monetization strategy is to get people to click on your ads and then you make money.  Some examples of this include Google Adsense, Bidvertiser, Adbrite, etc.
2. Affiliate products:  By including a link or banner to an affiliate program, you make a commission each time someone buys something through your link.  Some examples of this would include Clickbank, Pepperjam, CJ, eBay Partner Network, and Amazon.
3. Your Own Product Sales:  If you have a product that you have created (whether physical or digital), you can sell it on your site and make a profit each time someone makes a purchase.  Some examples would be an ebook, course, or video series.

Even though that you need to monetize your site in some fashion to make it profitable, you should still hold the customer experience to be more important than the money making aspect.  What I mean by this statement is that you should make sure that your site still has value for the visitor and is not just a collection of ads with no content.  Even though you want to make money off of each visitor, it makes sense to try and get them to be a repeat visitor so that you will have opportunities to make money from them in the future.

In conclusion, you can’t expect to build websites and automatically make money from them.  You need to remember to monetize your sites through such things as advertising, affiliate products and even your own products to make them a profitable part of your online portfolio.

But the truth of the matter is that bigger isn’t always better especially when you don’t have systems in place to deal with the magnitude of your organization.  This can be problematic in both real world and online businesses when the business outgrows the original scope that was intended with it.  It is at this stage that one of two things happen:  either new systems are put in place to manage the larger organization or existing systems are used and the organization suffers.

An Example…

Now in my case, it happens to be that I continued to add (and acquire) new websites at a ridiculous pace without considering the implications of doing so.  At the time, I did have an income target that I was shooting for, so I figured if I had multiple sites each earning an average amount of net income per day that I would hit my monthly income target.  It is something that most of us would come up with and in most respects seems pretty logical, right?

Well, at first it worked well.  I was adding websites, marketing them, and seeing results.  For the first ten sites or so, things went really well, with the sites surpassing my targets I had for the income that I was expecting from them.

After that, everything went down hill…

Lack of a Marketing Plan

As the number of sites that I had grew, I didn’t have a good way to market them effectively.  If you have ever tried to market more than a couple of sites on your own, you know that it can be difficult to market them on a daily basis without facing burn out.

So, as it turned out, my marketing went from being good to very poor, and most of my new sites didn’t meet the income goals that I had set.  In fact, though most of them did turn a profit, if you factored in my time, most of them were a big waste of time.

It was at that point that I realized that something was wrong, and I needed to step back, and figure out what was going wrong.  After a lot of testing, I have finally come up with a system that works well for me and my online business, but it took some time to get there.

Does this happen in Real-World businesses too?

You bet – this happens all the time.  Some good examples would be when a company has a really good year and has extra money to invest in other business ventures.  I had a friend that had that “problem” after having the best year on record for his appliance repair business and he found himself as the owner of some apartments and a golf course all hundreds of kilometers from where he lived (that will be a subject of another blog post).

How do you manage your business growth?

The biggest thing that you can do to manage your business growth irrespective of the size of your organization is to do some sensible planning.  This involves every aspect of your business (from manufacturing to sales) including the systems that you have in place to run the business.

It is also very important that you make sure to review how the business is doing on a regular basis and be proactive about addressing any problems.  By taking an active role in managing your business and its growth, you should experience more successes and less headaches.

It seems that with my increase in use of Twitter and Skype, I spend an inordinate amount of time using these two applications.  I have been known to interrupt whatever I am doing at the time to see what has just been tweeted, or posted in a Skype room.  Now I know that some of you will say that it is good to keep up on current events and participate in discussions, but what happens to your business because of these activities?

It suffers.

I am a good example of this, as my online business has pretty much been stagnant for the past couple of months – sure it is profitable, but the growth leaves something to be desired.  In the end, I only have myself to blame, and I am pointing all ten fingers at myself.

But I can change, right?

At least I think I can, or should be able to.  I know that it will be tough, but it needs to be done.  In order to accomplish this change, I have a computer now solely for work with no messaging clients or email software installed.  I know that some of you might feel a little bit disconnected if you were in this state, but if it means that I am more productive, it is well worth it.

I am also going to institute a more rigid work ethic for myself and work for 50 minutes out of every hour that I am sitting at the computer.  It may sound tough, but that was the routine that I was using just one year ago, and I used to get a lot done.

If I can stay with the new work system, I figure that I can increase my productivity by three to four times what it is currently, and get back into double digit growth.  I will report back here on my results over the next week – it will be interesting to see if I can be disciplined enough to make it happen.

Just remember:  Focus on What Counts and Ignore the Distractions and your productivity will be maximized.

In fact, from time to time, I would say that my mind just gets too exhausted to get anything done.  I am sure that you have felt that time to time too, and the effects of an exhausted mind (and spirit) can wreak havoc on your business.

But thankfully, you can refresh your mind and get back into the groove if you take a break.  Now, I don’t necessarily mean that you need to just shut your wonderful mind off, and not think of your business for this time (though sometimes I wish that I could do that, but it is not something that I can let go of), but rather give your mind some new stimulus to work on.

This new stimulus could be as simple as going out to a different coffee shop, sitting there with your coffee and just observing the world around you.  Or it could be as extravagant as taking a holiday to an exotic locale – just pick something that is appropriate for you.

The point is that this time away from being in the thick of your business gives your mind the time to recharge and be ready for the next challenge.  Though most of us are workaholics, truth be told, we can’t work all the time.

So, when you are feeling tired or things are just not going so well in your business, give you mind a little break – you will be amazed at what your rested mind can accomplish.

Excuse the darkness of the video (filmed using candlelight – not exactly the best lighting conditions), but rather listen to the content – there are some good nuggets in there.  Enjoy!

Tell me what you think of the video content by commenting below – I am considering doing more videos (with better lighting ;)  )

But, I would like to talk about an overlooked real estate market: small towns.

Now, I want to mention right here that I consider small town real estate investing to be concerned with investing in centers that are within a reasonable distance from a larger city.  This distance will depend on the part of the world that you live in, but pick something reasonable – for example, out here on the Canadian prairies, an hour drive would be about as far as I would go – so about 100kms.

The reason that I would take my dollars out of town (so to speak) is that there is a good chance that I can make a good return on my investment by flipping a property in a smaller town.  There are many people that would like to live close to a big city, but enjoy the safety and friendliness that a smaller center can offer, and that is where you step in.

Just like any other flipping project, you buy low, sell high and pocket the profit.  You can benefit from the fact that a lot of investors don’t consider looking outside of cities, and quite often you can negotiate a good purchase price and terms that are more accommodating to your flipping needs.

When it comes to selling your property, you want to highlight the short commute to the nearest city, the quiet, crime free atmosphere of the neighborhood (where applicable) and the more reasonable price that they can get by buying out of town.

Usually, you want to set your price under the assumption that they are going to make an offer under the asking price, but that would allow you to achieve a good ROI on your investment.  Just bear in mind that sometimes properties that are out of town take longer to sell than similar properties in a city, so ensure that you have enough finances to carry the property until it is sold.

Though this is by no means a complete guide, it is something that you should consider when flipping properties – with low competition, favorable terms and good ROI, they can be an effective cash-generating method.  In a later article, we will take a deeper look at risks and considerations when investing in small town real estate.

Now to clarify what a proxy website is, it is a site that offers a service to your visitors that allows them to stay anonymous online.  This means that they can access sensitive sites (such as their banking site, email, etc.) without worry that someone could come along and get their personal information.  This is especially important when you are using public computers, and you can read some great information about it here.

I just want to make a quick note too that proxy sites have a shady reputation too.  While they are useful in protecting privacy, they can also be abused in places like work or school where certain sites are blocked.  So, decide for yourself if this is a venture that you would be interested in pursuing – though their is money to be made, there are ethical considerations as well.

I personally like them because they are quick to setup, and with a little marketing, you can make your money back on the domain name purchase usually in the first week.  This can provide some good ROI, and with the speed that you get your investment back, you can easily re-invest it and create another one.

What you need to create a Proxy Site:

1. Domain Name:  Pick something memorable.  Ask your friends and co-workers for ideas and take the best from them.  Usually picking a name that contains “proxy” isn’t a good idea as they tend to get blocked quicker.  Also, make sure that you spell the name correctly – funky spelling isn’t as easy to remember.
2. Proxy Script:  There are many proxy scripts on the market, but the one that I would recommend is Glype as it is constantly updated and works very well.  You can learn more about it at their site.
3. Hosting:  Proxies need better hosting than a typical website thanks to the fact that the site will be using more resources than a typical web site.  I would recommend either using hosting specifically designed for hosting sites, or use VPS (virtual private server) to start.  I found some good deals on them over at Host Hideout in their offers section.  Expect to pay more for hosting, but it shouldn’t be unreasonable (I pay between $30-$50US for the VPS plans I use for my proxy sites).
4. Marketing:  You need to market your new site in order to get traffic and make money.  Forums, Yahoo Answers, Google Groups, etc. need to make up the bulk of your marketing – you will either need to spend time doing it yourself, or pay someone to do it for you.

How to Monetize your Proxy Site:

1. Google Adsense:  Adsense is a contextual ad service provided by Google.  They serve ads related to your site with no work on your part – except for adding the code, Google is “smart” enough to pick out ads that should do well on your site.  Just make sure that you only put Adsense on the main page of your proxy as putting it on proxified pages (the pages that people are browsing through on your proxy) are against their terms of service.

2. Adbrite:  Is similar to Adsense, but you can use it on your proxified pages.  This way you can make money on both the visitors that visit your site and use your site.  You can check out their program here.

3. There are other advertising options for your site that can be found with simple searches online.  Just make sure that you read their terms of service and ensure that they allow proxy sites to display their ads.

What you can Expect to Earn:

Depending on your choice of advertising methods, many proxies that I have created earn $5-$20 per day consistently, day after day like clockwork.  The best part is that you only need to do some work (setting up the site and marketing) once, and for the most part, they continue to bring you money for years.  They are definitely a good online opportunity that you should be taking advantage of.

My reasoning for doing this is that when I started online, I really had no idea where to start.  It seems that everyone bombards you with their opportunity but doesn’t tell you the whole truth – and that is where most people either get ripped off, or lost.

So, I will try to lay things out, leave no stone unturned, and lay out a blueprint for you.  If I do miss something along the way, feel free to leave a comment and let me know – I am not perfect

We’ll start things off tomorrow and take it from there – we’ll see how things go.  Also, feel free to leave me comments about types of sites you would like to create – if I don’t know how, I’ll do my best to figure it out for you (where possible and time permitting).