There is no denying that the Internet Marketing world is becoming more competitive. It’s getting increasingly difficult for the individuals to compete with others who have more experience and resources than you do.
Wouldn’t you like to see what your competitors are doing?
Occasionaly I surf the internet looking at other people’s websites to see how they are making money from them. I picture myself in their shoes and identify how their sites get traffic, where it comes from and how they make money from their visitors.
After understanding their system, I think of ways that I could use to improve profitability and apply it in different and untapped niches.
This costs me absolutely nothing to do, except for a little of my time, but it could add more money to my bank. After all, why would someone be using a system for a long period of time if it didn’t work?
Last week, I was looking through some sites and found a site which had the “common footprints” of a niche marketer (i.e autoresponder and familiar marketing phrases). Intrigued, I signed up for their newsletter to see exactly what they were doing from the “inside”.
My analytical journey began and it wasn’t before long until I identified how this person was making money:
At first glance, it looks fairly simple and I couldn’t see how this guy was making money. He ran PPC ads on Google, so he had to be making more than his advertising cost to keep everything running.
Let’s look at how visitors arrive at his page (it was just an effective page with a good headline and an opt-in box.):
PPC: He advertises using Google Adwords and sends the traffic straight to his opt-in page. He’s probably paying about $0.05 per click.
Organic: He gets free traffic from listings in the search engine that go to his blog and opt-in page. He probably gets around 20-30% of his traffic organically
Referral: This is pretty clever. In his autoresponder emails he tells people to recommend his site to friends. I’m sure he generates some more free traffic to his opt-in page using this method too.
After his visitors sign up, they are taken straight to a blog with articles on the niche topic he is promoting. The blog is hosted on blogger and has an opt-in box on the right hand side.
The blog is monetised by Adsense (which probably offsets most of his PPC advertising costs). Ad placments are good and colours are good.The blog itself will generate free traffic from technorati and other blog networks.
After day one, the autoresponder kicks in. I’m getting good quality articles and links telling me to go his blog to check out new content. I’m guessing a lot of people would go back to his blog, read the new content and maybe click on adsense.
However, on the fifth day I receive something else in my inbox.
Yep, it was an email promoting a Clickbank eBook with a review of the product. Very clever. I continue to get a stream of emails daily about the niche topic and then I recieve another affiliate product link. I’m guessing this is where the “big money” is made.
I checked out the affiiate payout for the product he was promoting and he gets $15 per sale. His cost per visitor was only around $0.05 so thats a pretty good return if his conversion rates are good. He would only need to get 1 sale in 300 visitors to break even which is more than achievable.
This system would work wonderfully for non IM related niches. It uses the power of creating an email list to seamlessly direct visitors to adsense pages and affiliate products on demand.
It also has a system built-in where you get free traffic from people in your list (i.e. recommending others)
This is a great little system that anyone can get started with even if you have limited funds. I can’t wait to try it out in the niches that I’m currently involved in!
[…] Competitors are great. And learning from competitors is even better. But what about the competitors you can’t see? […]
Left by My Adsense Guide » Blog Archive » Who Are You Competing Against? on December 8th, 2006