You may remember a short time back I ran a poll on what kind of digital assets you would like us to create. The clear winner was on creating a mini membership site. But, almost everyone asked us to create a mini membership site about iPhone apps. So the first thing I need to do is to create an actual app and start selling it. I can’t teach what I haven’t done myself.

So this is it. I’m going to create my first iPhone app. I will be releasing a series of posts to detail exactly what I’m doing and the stage I’m at. Once I’ve completed the project, then I’ll also show how to turn it into a mini membership, as originally voted on.

I’m going to share each step with you so you can see how I go about it.

I’ve broken it down into five different strategies.

My 5 strategies for creating an iPhone app

Strategy #1: I expect to lose money

What? That’s right, I expect to lose money. Why? Because it’s smart business to plan to fail. I’ve never done this before, so there’s going to be a learning curve. Failing is part of learning. I don’t have a problem with that. However, you don’t want to fall too hard that you can’t get back up. Naturally I want to succeed with my first iPhone app, but I’ll except to fail on my first attempt. I won’t risk too much money on my first project and will use the experience as my learning ground. I’ll share those experiences and also earnings on this blog.

Strategy #2: Keep it simple

Once again, I haven’t created an iPhone app before, so I’ll pick something simple and low cost to create. I want to fail fast, so I can really get going and have some successes. To fail fast I need to get a great product in the market place. To make sure it’s great, I’ll keep it simple but professional.

Strategy #3: Which apps are selling?

I follow the same pattern with all of my products – what’s selling? I’ll let the market dictate what I sell. Naturally I’ll have to be interested in that area, so that I can become a part of the market.

Strategy #4: Assemble my team

Building the right team can mean success or failure in your business. Even if you’re not good at something, the right team member can fill the gap. I have no idea how to program or code a game. I’ll bring in someone who has done something similar to the iPhone app I want to create. Elance.com is my place of choice.

Strategy #5: Selling and monetizing my iPhone app

I’m sure my strategies will change as I learn, but my first step will be to get some reviews on app blogs (both paid and free). I’ll also use some services that feature your app with guaranteed downloads.

Monetizing – I’m going to test two different models. One, just selling the app for 99 cents. Two, selling ads on the app. I’ll report back on each of these options and let you know which one I’m finding most profitable.

I’m sure it will be a matter of test, fail, test, fail, then….. success!

Where I’m at right now?

Here’s where I’m at right now with these strategies.

1. I allocated myself a budget and purchased a bunch of apps. I looked at the top apps and also the top apps in the “categories” area.

2. I downloaded the ones I liked and started using them or playing the games. I also checked to see which games my 8 year old daughter liked playing.

3. We had a “round-table” meeting in our war room (which is the outside patio at our dedicated house office). The team (5 of us) brainstormed ideas, while eating low carb pizza and soda. It was a lot of fun. I enjoy this kind of creative process. We created a project doc in Google docs, so that we could all add and review the ideas.

4. We had a second meeting where we selected the apps we were most excited about and then we selected the one we felt would be the easiest to create (based on what our programmer advised us on).

5. Now that we have our game/iPhone app selected we’ve started drawing out the game play. Nothing fancy here. I’m talking stick men drawnings on plain photocopy paper. That’s it.

In my an upcoming blog post I’ll detail what our next steps are and where we’re at. Hopefully I’ll also have some screenshots coming up soon (just the stick men I’ve spent hours drawing).

Stay tuned. Exciting stuff about to happen!

A lot of people have asked how we created the animated sales video (“doodle video”) for our software package called IMPRESSION. Doodle videos are an entertaining and powerful way to sell. It’s also a new way of selling on video.

It’s a great option if you don’t like being on video.

My latest blog post shows how to create them, even if you can’t draw a stick man. I’ll show you how I cheated. I’m no artist.

In fact, Internetretailer.com reported… “that customers who view product videos are 85% more likely to buy than people who don’t view videos.” That’s an impressive stat. So I have to ask, are you using video on your site? And are you making the right kind of videos?

For years now we been using online video marketing on our blog and on our product sales pages and have found that video does two major things:

1. It brings in a lot of traffic from viewer referrals and from sites like YouTube
2. It does a great job converting visitors into paying customers

What more could you want?

Just like writing content, video ideas aren’t always easy to come up with on a consistent basis, and that’s where these video template ideas will come in handy.

We pretty much follow one of these templates whenever we make a video.

7 video template idea generators for online video marketing

#1: Behind-the-scenes video: Viewers and visitors always like to see what’s going on behind the scenes. Bring people in on the inside. The more of these kinds of videos you do, the more trust you’ll gain from your visitors and followers. Not only can it be used as a soft sell, it adds a lot of credibility to any product you’re promoting, and a lot of credibility to you as the expert.

We used this template when we launched our landing page software for WordPress. We simply created a video showing inside our office as we built our new application. Not only did the video bring in orders, it also continues to bring in traffic from Youtube.

#2: Your personal life or lifestyle video: Most likely your goal is to become a mini celebrity in your specific market. People want to know what’s going on in your life. If you’re someone they follow, or plan to follow, they want to know you. What better way to know someone then to get inside their personal life, just a little bit. Not only does it engage your readers, it can build instant credibility with your fans.

One of my most read/watched blog posts was when I went traveling around the US for 3 months and wrote an article about it. If it had been a video I think it would have generated even more traffic!

#3: The good old case study: Just like a good story people want case studies. Not only case studies, but video case studies showing evidence of something working. Video is the perfect format for this kind of proof. Some things just can’t be described in text the same way as actually seeing it!

#4: Recommended tools, software, and product reviews: People like to know what you’re using to run your business or whatever it is that you are finding successfully. You can save people a lot of time by providing the research that they haven’t done yet. These kind of videos can be very entertaining and can also provide great online marketing opportunities for you to use keywords for popular products in the title of the video.

For example: Some time back I created a short video about going on vacation and using my iPod to run my business.  “iPod” was the keyword I wanted to use. So I based my video around this and used it in my title.

It was a lot of fun to make. Not only did it boost sales (without any kind of offer in the video), but it still brings in traffic from youtube. It boosted sales because people got to know me better and wanted to do what I was doing. I didn’t have to sell anything. That’s the way I like it. That’s online video marketing!

#5: Questions and answers: Once again this is another great way to engage your market. Your followers will always have questions. Ask them to post questions on your blog and keep a list of these questions for your next video. This is probably the fastest way to make a video and fans love it. We’re going to be doing a lot more of these videos on our won blog.

#6: Debunk myths: Regardless of the market you’re in there will always be myths. People love myths and controversy. Creative videos debunking some of the popular myths that are circulating in your marketplace and watch your traffic increase. The great thing is, there are always going to be new myths in your market place. Use the myth as a keyword in your Youtube title and watch the views come in!

#7: Instructional video: We couldn’t leave this one out! We do a lot of these videos. All you have to do is teach. To gather a plethora of ideas in this area just read comments on blog posts, forums and other videos in your market place. Make videos on the common questions you see people asking. Then place them on your blogs, websites and Youtube.

It’s a great way to source continual ideas that are hot in your market place. People want answers. Give them what they want.

Well, those are the main templates that we have used for years and continue to use. Now you’ll never be short of ideas for your upcoming videos. Start using video and watch your traffic and sales increase. Remember people love to share videos and people love to consume videos! That’s the secret behind successful online video marketing!

Last week we invited you to submit questions to kick off our new “Mail Box” segment on the blog. Thank you to everyone who posted comments and emailed us questions. We weren’t able to answer all of them, but we will keep them for the next Mail Box video.

An emailed question that stood out to me, was one asked by Greg. Greg said he had a product but was confused which format he should use to package the product and sell it. Should he go with a membership site, ebook, published book, etc?

I answer this question and others on our first SDA Mail Box video. The answer to the question lies in something called “derivatives”. In other words – creating additional products or licenses from one flagship product.

I explain how to create derivatives from your current products and how it can dramatically increase your entire income.

1. Justin, could you tell us a little bit about your background (work, studies, etc)?

We’re not your typical Internet Marketers. My business partner (Joe Magnotti) and I, run an outsourcing company from Davao City, Philippines. We ended up losing a fairly major client and were scrambling for a way to keep these well-trained agents on staff and we decided to create some niche websites with AdSense monetization to see if we could simply cover their salaries until we could get them re-hired through another outsourcing contract.

We spent hundreds of hours and made $33.00 our first month, but stuck with it and in less than ten months we were able to bring in over $20,000 in just one month. (December 2010 until September 2011)

2. Can you tell us what AdsenseFlippers.com is all about?

We began documenting our process of creating these niche sites to assist with training and helping new agents as we continued to grow and scale the process. Along the way, we decided to break from our more “traditional” model of keeping everything secret. We decided to put that same information out there for others to learn from and follow and intentionally decided to keep it all free.

Our thought was that making this information free and openly explaining our successes and failures would pay off in the long run by building trust and authority for those looking to purchase our sites and open us up to other opportunities along the way. It’s paid off in spades in that we now have around 15K visitors a month and have been able to build up an email readership of over 2,500 in only 12 months.

3. From what I understand your income is made up from your blog and of course from flipping adsense sites. Can you give us an example of the cash flow that you have been able to generate by flipping sites?

Joe and I had a bit of a disagreement about the direction of the project in March 2011. I thought we had a winner on our hands and wanted to scale the process heavily, even if it meant coming out of pocket as we continued to grow the project beyond its original intention. Joe was less enthusiastic about coming out of pocket and so we decided to see if we’d be able to sell some of our niches site so that we could realize potential earnings NOW and use that surge of income to expand our team. Our first few website sales were through Flippa and we noticed a huge market for our types of sites.

We decided to continue this as we added more people to the process and started to create even more of these niche sites, keeping us profitable each month and giving us the cash flow to continue to expand.

4. Do you specialize in just flipping adsense sites, or have you also flipped other sites? What are the advantages of flipping only adsense sites?

We’ve dabbled with some affiliate monetization via Amazon, Clickbank, etc. but we didn’t find quick success and stuck with AdSense. We’re well aware that AdSense is considered one of the “worst” forms of monetization which, I think, is why so many people like to buy our sites. If they’re more familiar with alternative monetization they can purchase our sites and quickly switch them around and it cuts down on the number of months they have to wait to “break even”.

A real benefit to selling AdSense sites is that it’s so well known and understood. There are so many people out there that have AdSense on their websites that we have a much larger pool of potential buyers than if we were going with some unknown affiliate company.

5. Can you give us an example site that you have flipped and how much you were able to flip it for?

We typically package our websites together in bunches. We’ve found that, for us, a good package of sites is earning $90.00 – $150.00 per month and will usually sell for between $2,000 and $3,500 on Flippa. You can take a look at our previous Flippa auctions here: https://flippa.com/buy/search?q=TryBPO&status=ended

6. How do you select a topic or your keywords for an adsense site?

We have agents that use keyword research tools like LongTailPro. They will enter a “seed keyword” which can literally be just about anything. (We’ve found success by focusing on seed keywords that are related to blue collar products or products targeted to women and generally avoid those that are tech focused as the readers tend to be more ad blind)

We have those agents find exact match domains that are available for keywords that meet specific parameters and have them enter those potential keywords into a spreadsheet. The one thing we haven’t outsourced is checking the first page competition on Google. Joe and I still do this as it’s a subjective process and important enough to not outsource or give to a VA (virtual assistant). We go through all of the potential keywords and sites and rank them from 1-5, 1 being the least likely for us to rank and 5 being the most likely. We then purchase keywords and URL’s that are either 4′s or 5′s based on our criteria.

7. Once you have a topic/keywords, how do you go about building the sites?

We purchase the URL’s and then enter them into our Google Doc spreadsheet and our team goes to work…that’s the extent of our personal involvement. Our team uses WordPress and some particular themes that we use on a regular basis. We include at least 5 pages of content, 1 “primary” or well-written article and 4 “secondary” or cheaper articles. Our primary article is focused on the primary keyword…the one we’ve targeted as an Exact Match Domain and the secondary articles are targeting related keywords or long tail keywords. We then go through a fairly limited linkbuilding process and the site is up and live. It usually takes 2 – 3 months to get the site ranked and earning well.

8. The big question is traffic. How do you go about generating traffic for your website and how much  traffic do you usually require before you generate cash flow from a site?

As it usually takes 2-3 months to get the site up, ranked, and earning we have to wait another 2-3 months to sell the site so that we have enough earnings history to prove stability. The traffic will vary wildly, but much of the traffic comes from the primary keyword we targeted with a bit more coming from long tail or image traffic. All of the images we use on the site are targeted and optimized for search traffic as well and we get a surprising amount of traffic from them…definitely worth including on the sites.

9. Do you run any kind of paid advertising to get the sites started or is it all from organic search engine traffic?

All of our traffic is natural/organic. As a general rule, you don’t want to buy AdSense sites that are using any kind of traffic share programs or get most of their traffic from social media. Time and time again we’ve seen that these types of traffic are unsustainable and (quite often) the people sending this traffic, are doing shady things to get it,  that can then put your AdSense account at risk. An exception would be traffic that comes through links from article marketing,  although that’s pretty limited for us.

10. What kind of track record, as far as cash flow, do you like sites to have,  before you list them for sale?

Our “average” site will make around $10 per month. The 80/20 rule definitely applies here as our top 20% of sites are bringing in 80% of the revenue. In general, we like to get 20x (20 times monthly revenue) for a site sale. Our sites typically cost around $50 each to build and will go for $200 on average. We won’t generally sell a site in a package if it’s making less than $5.00 per month as the multiple is too low. We’ll hang onto that site until it earns more.

11. When you build a site how do you decide if you’re  going to keep it all flip it? If you are going to flip it, how do you calculate how much you want for the adsense site?

Almost all of the sites we create will, ultimately, be available for sale. (Some notable exceptions would be those that we have some kind of personal attachment to, those we’re testing alternative monetizations with or expanding to authority sites, etc.) All of our Flippa auctions start at $1.00 with No Reserve, meaning they’ll go for whatever the bidding gets up to. This means that it’s important we get as many eyeballs viewing our listings as possible and so we will email our list, post the auction link on forums we’re active on, etc…all in an effort to get more views and bids.

Unlike our Flippa auctions, we sell sites on our website and do not release all the information associated. (Analytics, niche, AdSense screenshots, etc.) Some of our buyers have requested that we keep this information private and it’s just a different way to approach website sales. Many of our readers initially found us through our Flippa auctions and we now have a large enough readership to where we can sell the sites directly.

All of our sites for sale on AdSenseFlippers.com sell for 20x monthly revenue.

12. If I was to purchase one of your adsense sites, what would be my next steps to increase its cash flow?

If you purchase one of our Flippa auction “packages” of sites we usually include additional content to the sites to get them earning more in the future, depending on various price thresholds. If you purchase from us directly we recommend adding 5-10 pages of content over the next 3 months and slowly continuing to build out links.

All of our buyers get our best tips in an email on how to earn more with the sites and we freely give all of that information away on our blog.

13. Could you give us a quick breakdown on how you get the sites to rank high? Maybe some of your backlinking strategies or the main formula you use to rank high.

Most importantly, we target fairly low-end keywords that we know we can get to rank without too much difficulty. We put in more time on the front-end so that we’re not stuck building a ton of links or waiting a very long time to get the sites to rank. In general, we look for the Top 10 results that don’t have the exact keyword we’re targeting in the title, do not have many root domains on the first page, etc. We make sure that our sites are tightly focused around the primary and secondary keywords so that they have the best chance to rank.

We do a little article marketing, bookmarking, and use BuildMyRank to add a few links, but our best tip would be to carefully choose the keywords you’re going to target so that you’re not stuck spending a ton of time trying to get the sites enough backlinks to rank well.

14. Once a person has created a profitable adsense site where’s the best place to list it?

Without a doubt, Flippa is the best marketplace for websites that are earning as they simply have the most amount of buyers. If you’re selling websites that are earning with AdSense you’ll confidently get 12-15x if you’re a new seller and 15x or more if you’re an established seller. Make sure to build up a strong reputation on Flippa and you’ll continue to pull in more with your auctions.

Definitely start building an email list or reader base so that you can continue to sell to them with or without your Flippa auctions after a few months.

15. What would be the most important thing you could say to a new person getting started?

You’re definitely going to make mistakes in the beginning, but the worst thing you can do is not get started. So many people spend their time reading about how to do things like this and never actually get started building anything. If you do plan to outsource this process, make sure you’ve done it yourself FIRST…it makes training your VA’s infinitely easier as you know some of the pitfalls and challenges you’ll face. Hiring a team of VA’s on oDesk (oursourcing service), and just asking them to build you some sites without understanding the process or giving direction will doom the process to failure.

——————

Thanks Justin, for taking the time to answer our questions on how to flip AdSense sites.

For more details and techniques on flipping adsense sites check out Justin’s blog at AdsenseFlippers.com
You can also view his adsense sites for sale by going to: http://adsenseflippers.com/buy-our-sites

Soon we’ll be flying south for 2 weeks of holidays with more family and friends.

Normally when I travel, I take my notebook computer. But, I’m a minimalist (especially when travelling), and even a notebook seems too bulky for me. Unfortunately mobile devices aren’t the fastest to type on, so I reluctantly resort to taking my notebook when I travel. However, I’ve decided to try something new this holiday season.

Mobile Pro Blogging

If you have followed my blog for any length of time, you’ll know I’m all about being mobile. I like the feeling of freedom. After all, pro blogging and running an online business is all about the lifestyle.

Knowing my quest for being mobile and a minimalist, my wife purchased a new Android phone for me, as a Christmas gift (I usually use Apple devices). The phone came with a built in “voice to text” app, so I decided to give it a shot.

I was impressed!

So impressed actually, that I decided to dictate this entire blog post (well, 96% of it).

In fact, I’ve started doing all of my emails and text messaging by voice.

I’ve also added a new voice to text app to my phone, that’s even more accurate and over time learns my speech patterns for better performance.

This got me thinking. Technology is moving at such a fast pace that it really gives us small business owners a big advantage. For example, if you publish membership sites or any online content (and all of us should be producing online content), then anything that speeds up the product creation process is invaluable. Not only will it give us more time, (and we all know that time is our most valuable asset), but it can also speed up our cash flow.

Voice to text apps speed up typing by at least 5 times. This means you can create books, articles, blog posts a lot faster. Faster production times means faster to launch, more content and more virtual real estate.

So for this trip all I’m taking is my Android phone to run my business and do some mobile blogging.

It’s all about work flow and systems

I’m a big fan of setting up correct work flows and systems to run your business.

It allows you to make your business scaleable and outsourceable.

Voice to text is now becoming a part of my work flow. Not only that, but studies have found that you think better and clearer when moving around. A lot more of my posts will be done while walking around, away from my computer (it’s good exercise too… .

My voice to text work flow

So here’s my process.

1. Short bursts of information: Instead of trying to do long sections at a time I use short paragraphs and sentiences at a time. This allows me to think, because speaking is faster than typing – and I need time to gather my thoughts in-between.

2. I don’t worry about mistakes: My goal is to get the information downing quickly. I don’t want to break the creation process. I don’t worry about correcting mistakes, I just keep going. Tweaking and correcting is left for the next step. Research has shown that when you get content down quickly the creation process is even more effective. Even if you start off saying just about anything. It’s like warming up the engines and it gets the creative juices flowing.

3. Clean it up: Once I’ve dictated all of my ideas I then go back and tweak all of the content on the keyboard. I’ll restructure a few things, add formatting and correct any punctuation.

That’s it in a nutshell.

I remember years ago when I wrote one of my books and I used a similar method. I recorded my voice and interviews and then had an outsourcer transcribe it for me. The results were outstanding. The entire book was written within 2 weeks and became a top seller.

Tools

The app I use is called: FlexT9

It’s from the same developers who created the desktop dictation software called “Dragon Naturally Speaking.”

I dictated part of this post directly into WordPress and the rest of it was done into an email and then pasted here.

My next post will be on the road as I travel around. It will be another voice dictated blog post

All I can say is this sure beats typing.

I’d like to wish all of you a happy and exciting new year!

I’ve generated income from…

• adsense sites
• affiliate sites
• membership sites
• mini membership sites
• ebooks
• software

What do you think is the easiest way to monetize a website? Leave your answers in the comments below…

Last month we ran a poll – where we let you decide which digital asset we should create and document.

The goal: To show you how we go about creating successful digital assets.

iPhone apps and mini membership sites were neck & neck, but the mini membership site asset emerged as the clear winner.

We now move to the next stage – coming up with the membership site idea.

Post your comments below for ideas on the membership topic or market we should focus on…

Naturally we like to teach by example (including successes and failures). In this 5 part series we’re going to create a digital asset and launch it to a selected market and document the entire process (a condensed version).

This series will only be available on this blog. It will include videos and articles (there will also be some extra behind the scenes content for our VIP members).

We’re going to cover 3 main sections:

1. Product idea generation

2. Product development

3. Launch and marketing of finished product

Why are we doing this?

Because we want to show you how it’s done in the real world – without hype, without trying to sell you something. Just a real-world “almost live”, community style case study. We want to keep it real.

You can be a fly on our office wall as we go through the process. You might even get to join in on one of our boardroom meetings with my personal team, via webinar to help make product and marketing decisions. Even if you just listen in, you’ll get to see first hand how we operate. I’ve been doing this full-time for over 9 years and we’ve got our systems down.

In fact, you can make your first executive decision right now!

Vote on which digital asset we should create and document.