Category: Making money online

How to get rich online in 2023

A motivational article about personal finances, multiple sources of income, investing and digital nomad lifestyle. Contains quotes, examples, thought-provoking questions and stories from people who are living the dream life.

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Affiliate Marketing for Beginners: A BrandBuilders Guide

We often come across the term “affiliate marketing,” but only a few understand what it really means, and only a handful of marketers can tap into the potential it has to offer. People often see this as a passive source of easy money. However, this is where they go wrong. 

Many marketers lack the know-how and the skills to effectively set up and manage a successful affiliate marketing business. Here’s where experienced professionals like BrandBuilders come in handy. They provide a one-stop solution to all of your affiliate marketing needs. From designing websites to managing content and generating links, they have you covered.

In this article, we’ll help you understand what affiliate marketing means and how beginners can start this journey. Stick around to see how BrandBuilders’ services will make your affiliate marketing journey smooth and hassle-free.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing has become the new face of referral marketing in the millennial business environment. It can be viewed as a more advanced and organized way of referral marketing. It involves selling third-party products on your online platforms, such as blogs, websites, or even YouTube. 

To get started, you’ll need to first sign up with an affiliate program. There are tons of these programs available, all operating in different niches with varied commission rates and cookie periods. Selecting one will heavily depend on your line of interests. 

After registering into a program, you’ll be provided with affiliate links to the product you want to sell. All you have to do is place these links at relevant places so they attract more visitors. As people click these links and buy the product, you’ll earn a commission. Therefore, affiliate marketing is just a modified form of sales promotion.

What Is Traffic and Why Is It Important?

Regardless of the commission rates, your website traffic will determine the amount of money you generate. Traffic refers to the number of people visiting your website in a given time frame. 

As more people visit your website and click on the affiliate links, the chances of making affiliate sales increase. So, how can you attract more traffic?

• Publish SEO-optimized content on your website that ranks high on search engines, so that when people search those topics on a browser, your article shows up first.

• Generate backlinks. Backlinks are described as inbound links when a third party provides links to your website content on their platforms. This is a way of promoting your own content through someone else.

Link building is perhaps one of the most effective ways of attracting traffic. However, it can be challenging for beginners with little know-how. You can always hire experts like BrandBuilders for all your optimization needs. 

Professionals, like those on the BrandBuilders team, ensure linking to only high-quality and authority websites. Moreover, you can choose the anchor text you want your content to be linked to.

The Importance of Conversion Rates

Conversion rates can be defined as the percentage of visitors who actually purchase the product after clicking on the affiliate link. A 2-3% conversion rate is considered decent for the average webspace. Conversion rates usually depend on the affiliate product itself. 

• An expensive product will have lower conversion rates, as people will put more thought into the item before buying.
• A product from a reputed and well-known brand will have higher conversion rates and greater trust from consumers.

It’s a good idea to choose the affiliate program and the products you promote based on the amount of traffic you expect to see every month on your site. If you can generate decent traffic, you could choose a high-end product that would earn high commissions, even with low conversion rates.

How to Choose an Affiliate Program

Choosing an affiliate program can be quite a task due to the sheer number of programs available, each with its own features. However, here are a few parameters that you should take into consideration.

Commission Rates

You should always go for an affiliate program with high commission rates. Some platforms such as Hubspot offer a flat commission on products, whereas platforms like Amazon, Target, and CJ Affiliates offer a rate ranging from 2-10%, depending on the type of product.

Cookie Duration

This is the period during which a sale can be completed by the visitor after their first click on the affiliate link. You should always look for platforms offering a longer cookie period to give the consumer more time to purchase – and yourself more time to earn.

Niche

Consider what niche your site falls under, and choose an affiliate program with suitable products for your specific niche. Look for affiliate programs with good commission rates on the desired products.

Challenges for Beginners

If you perceive affiliate marketing as an effortless source of minting money, you could be highly mistaken. If you’re a beginner, there are certain aspects that you should pay attention to:

Building a Website

This is the first and most fundamental step of affiliate marketing. You need to build a website that could earn a sizable income for you. This involves complex tasks such as:

• Choosing a theme
• Niche and keyword research
• Adding plugins
• Design and implementation
• Putting up SEO-optimized content
• Improve the on-page SEO

Beginners cannot be expected to have all the technical knowledge to crack the code, and here is where professionals like BrandBuilders come to their rescue. 

BrandBuilders provides fully functional pre-made affiliate websites for you. As unreal as this may sound, it will save you from the hassle of building a platform from scratch and provide you with a head start to your affiliate marketing journey.

Advantages of Purchasing a Website From BrandBuilders

• You would get access to an easy-to-rank affiliate website within 24 hours. Considering that it can take months (or even years) to build a quality website from scratch, this can be a major starting point for beginner affiliate marketers.

• Purchasing a website is more economical when compared to building one. You could spend thousands of dollars on your own before you start attracting bare minimum traffic. However, Brandbuiders’ pre-designed websites are more feasible when you zero in all of the costs that you’d incur otherwise.

• You can choose from multiple niches. Each niche is ranked on a scale of 1 to 10 based on their difficulty, with 10 being the most difficult niche to earn money from. The rankings help you choose a more profitable niche.

• You can compare parameters such as commission rates, product prices, number of keyword searches, and estimated profit margins of different websites available for sale.

However, if the idea of a pre-designed website doesn’t sit well with you and you wish to exercise a certain degree of control over your website designing, BrandBuilders also provides custom website designing.

This includes services such as:

• Market Analysis
• Keyword Research
• Content Development
• Web Design
• Search Engine Optimization

Apart from this, BrandBuilders also provides complete guidance to beginners, which helps them scale their business. This includes strategies to attract more traffic and post-sale training. You can choose between different plans depending on your requirements. 

Quality Content

After you’ve built a website for your affiliate business, the next most important thing is to generate quality content. It’s rightly said that in modern marketing, content is king, and unless you have a strong king, your kingdom won’t flourish. It’s imperative to post quality SEO-optimized content to attract higher traffic. 

It goes without saying that not all website owners are born writers. Plus, it can be both time-consuming and expensive to invest in premium content apps like Hemmingway or RankMath. This is another area where professionals like BrandBuilders come into the picture. 

They can save you from the trouble of having to write and manage and edit articles for your website.

Benefits of BrandBuilders’ Premium Content Service

• Includes extensive keyword research to find the right words to rank your site higher on a search engine.

• The articles are written by a team of professional writers and are optimized as per SEO norms.

• An article passes through at least three people before it takes its final form. After being written, it’s proofread and edited by duly-hired professionals.

• BrandBuilders provides creative meta descriptions and even uploads the content on your website.

The only task that you’d have to execute is to place an order and select a niche. Everything from writing the article to uploading it would be done by BrandBuilders. You can even request unlimited changes and edits so that the final product is exactly what you desired in the first place. You can choose among different plans depending on your word requirement.

Site Management

Consistency is key. Once you’ve established a website with premium content, you’ll need to maintain the webspace to stay on top. The idea is not to “rank and bank.” 

Rather, you must adopt a more long-term approach when it comes to affiliate marketing. People often view affiliate marketing as an add-on to their existing profession or business, neglecting to take the time to grow their websites.

BrandBuilders provides professional site management services tailored to your goals. They have different plans for different long-term goals: Starter, Growth, or Surge. This includes everything from finding new affiliate programs to producing and updating content and generating backlinks.

Final Thoughts

Affiliate marketing demands time and effort. While many have a keen desire to ace the game of affiliate marketing, they may lack the skill or not be able to spare enough time. BrandBuilders provides you with the perfect take-off by pointing your business in the right direction. 

With the combined experience of professionals in the field, you can be assured of a smooth sailing affiliate marketing business. Contact BrandBuilders now!

My journey to $100,000

I am writing this post in order to better visualize and plan my goal, but also to make it more real. Announcing a plan like this to the World raises accountability. Besides these selfish reasons, I hope that once I successfully complete the task, the trail I leave behind will help at least one soul aiming for the same achievement.

Also worth noting, I saw other experts in my industry do this kind of journal, and why not emulating the best?

How I got here

When I first started out, I brainstormed 10 ways how I can get $100,000. One of the options was selling equity in a company, which is something I’ve done in the past. But, it’s been a few years since I’ve done that, and I think I come up with a better plan this time.

For full transparency, here are some of my ideas. Have in mind this is raw brainstorm material, so it may sound silly.

1. Sell a website that’s making $2500 per month with 40x multiple
2. Sell someone else’s website for $1,000,000 and take 10%
3. Get 10 clients paying $10,000 per month for API access (3×10,000 for 3 months)
4. Build a project (Design, coding, marketing) for someone and profit $100,000
5. Sell more equity in the parent company
6. Sell 10,000 copies of $10 product, or 1,000 copies of a $100 product (book, software, bundle, graphics)
7. Combination of several outlined ideas
8. 1 huge API license deal, $1,666 per month, paid 5 years in advance
9. Form a new company, and sell equity in that new company
10. Sell a bundle of products for $20 (spend $10 on marketing per CAC), in return give $2,000 worth of discounts

Out of all the projects I am currently running, I had an epiphany with one of the projects, and saw a clear path how to get to the goal.

Here are the steps

1. Sell equity in a project (this is optional, but if I am able to find a strong partner, I will go for it)
2. Sell a bundle (book, course, software) with profit up to $2500 per month
3. Sell the project with a strong 40x multiple on monthly profits.

Here are two scenarios outlined. One is with a partner / investor, one is without.

Scenario with an investor.

1. Raise $20000 from an investor
2. Grow at the rate of 30% MOM, in 12 months get to $4,275 per month profit. Maintain for 6 months at $4.275 per month
3. During 6 months make $25,650
4. Sell the project for $170,985
5. Give the investor $100,000, a handsome 5X return
6. I take home $20,000 from investor, $12.825 during 6 months of profit accumulation (the other half goes to investor), $70,985 from the sale
7. Make a total of $103,810

Scenario without an investor.

1. Grow at the rate of 20% MOM, in 12 months get to $2.294 per month profit. Maintain for 6 months at $2.294 per month
2. During 6 months make $13.764
3. Sell the project for $91,764
4. Take home $13,764 during 6 months of profit accumulation, $91,764 from the sale
5. Make a total of $105.528

Why take on an investor? Why make a plan without an investor? Well, fundraising is not easy. But, if you find an investor that can help you grow the company and the two of you make 1 + 1 = 3, then it makes sense.

I will attempt to reach out to a few industry experts, and potential partners in the project. But if that fails, I will go with the scenario without an investor. I won’t settle for dumb money, because I think I can do this project without the money. And also, I need help growing the company, not money.

Why not find a partner, not an investor?

Several reasons I will not settle with a partner. For one, I have already invested a sizeable amount of money, time, and effort into the project. I will not give equity to anyone unless seriously commited.

I believe that serious commitment is not possible without putting your money where your mouth is. Either way, this step is the least important of all, but it’s either / or, and it’s the first step.

The basic outline of the steps

1. Brainstorm ideas
2. Select several best ideas, and start executing
3. Work hard and smart
4. Track and publish progress
5. Successful exit

Growing the project

For the sake of simplicity, I’ll plan without an investor, because I’ll reach out to investors in parallel. So even if I don’t get an investor, I’ll still have to grow the project.

The product I am selling will cost $199 per year, and it will consist of the following:

1. Software
2. Course
3. Booklet / manual
4. Bundle of discounts, coupons

There will also be a “demo” option at $19 per month.

The elephant in the room

In the past I had successful fundraising events (even wrote a book about it) and I had 1 successful exit, and helped brokered a coupled exits (I may write a book about it), but it’s always been a struggle for me to grow a company.

As always, the hardest part will be to achieve the numbers in the table above. I think it’s the same for anyone else. It may not sound much, but getting 7 people in a month to pay $199 is a hard task. So I set myself with an idea.

I want to provide as much as $19,999 in value, for anyone who buys the $199 product I am offering. I am setting out to give a 100x return!

Tools, course, manual, plan, contacts to make $20,000

That’s my goal. I want my clients to feel as if they got $20,000 worth of value, when they subscribe for that $199 plan. It’s going to be a lot of work for me, but I am ready and willing. I already have a few ideas, and started executing on some of them.

The goal ahead of me is pretty straightforward. I need around 100 clients that will pay me about $2,305 per month. Then I can sell the project for around $92,200.

Some flexibility in the plan, and potential opportunities

I don’t necessarily need 98 clients paying for access to the package I am describing above. Maybe I will get a client paying $500 per month for various services (advertising, affiliate commissions), and that will cut my execution time.

In the end, maybe the projects start making money more than planed (let’s say $10,000 per month), and I just decide to keep the project for 10 months in order to make the $100,000.

Which begs the question…

Why $100,000 in the first place?

In the past I wrote how most of the dreams that the majority of people have would be fulfilled with about $17,857 per month. It may sound like a lot of money to everyday folks, but it is possible in this day and age. There are opportunities everywhere!

Reason #1: Can I do it

It may sound like an ego thing, but it’s not. I want to challenge myself. I challenge myself all the time, so I am doing it like this as well.

Reason #2: To show it’s possible

I enjoy motivating and inspiring people. This time, it will also be educational in case someone wants to replicate my success.

Reason #3: To help my family

The money will be used to buy a house for my family. A part of this income will be donated, as will all my incomes. I often donate to animal shelters, worthy projects like international Police association educating children of potential dangers, and other.

You probably won’t believe this, but if you ask my grandma, she will confirm it. When I was something like five years old, I promised my grandma a house with a big truck of wood. To this day, she reminds me of that promise.

Just to be clear, I will not give the house to my family. I will still own the house, but it will be built with intensions to invite family from around the country to spend a few days together every year. This will be for events like Christmas, and other celebrations. Right now we don’t have a location that can support this. Also, I would love to host some of my dear friends as well!

Reason #4: It’s a round number

I believe in clear and lofty goals. $100.000 will get my attention, compared to $10,000 or $80,000. Also, it’s six figures, which is somewhat of a benchmark.

Reason #5: That’s how much I need

The house I mentioned, minus taxes, donations, minor miscellaneous expenses, $100,000 is what I need. Think of it as some people starting a crowdfunding event.

Reason #6: I think I can do it

Yep, here’s the kicker. I actually think I can pull this off. I think this is one of those things I will achieve in my life. Besides, this would be a great story to tell anyone. And I love sharing a great story!

Reason #7: The journey I will go on because of it

Jim Rohn said that we should “Beware of what we become, in the pursuit of what we want.”. I will definitely abide by my moral, and ethical standards, and won’t jeopardize my health. With that, I think I will learn a lot and become a better individual if I deliver services worth $100,000. That’s my real goal.

In closing

I don’t need this house. My plan is to “give” services, in order to “give” the house to my family, and donate a portion of the proceeds. I live in a beautiful apartment, on an island near a gorgeous beach. I have more than most can wish. Again, just to be clear, I will own the house, but it will be built specifically to host gatherings and accommodate multiple families.

Anyway, that’s what I set out to do. Some want 100,000 subscribers on Youtube, some want to make $100,000 from website properties. With this, I am wrapping up. I’ll post my results at the end of March. I will publish all my financials as well as other metrics, and we will take it from there.

1st month; March

Here’s my first update, as I am warming up to this idea. March financials are as follows:

Expenses: $58

Web hosting expenses: Digital Ocean $10
Protonmail: $48

Revenue: $38

Subscriptions: 2 subscriptions at $19 / month each

Articles published: 7 (total of 16411 words)

Traffic: 1098 users, 2146 pageviews

Humble beginnings, no doubt, but we’ve barely started. This “Journey to a $100,000” was announced on the 21st of March (10 days ago). But, I was working a little bit starting in March. I just didn’t know it was going to escalate to this anounement. Most of March I spent writing articles and doing keyword research. I was creating content for keywords that already received some traffic. I got those keywords in Google Search Console.

I also updated a few old articles, added some internal links, updated wordpress and plugins and created a Protonmail account for emails

Other than that, I was in touch over email and Skype with a couple of heavy-weights in my industry and trying to strike up affiliate deals, partnerships and maybe even investment. Some of these individuals are potential buyers of the entire project, as I described this is my plan in the end.

I’ll provide more details as we progress.

Domain expiration monitoring is a must

Our DomainWatch tool debuted on Product Hunt back in March 23, 2018. It’s almost 3 years exact to the date, so I thought it might be a good time to write about domain expiration monitoring.

As you know, monitoring when a domain name will expire, or become available for registration, is a key feature of DomainWatch.

How can I check my domain expiry date?

Just add a domain name to DomainWatch, and the system will fetch some information about the domain name.

• Registration date
• Expiration date
• Registrar name (where the domain name is registered)
• Hoster (nameservers)
• Status code

Status code? What’s that? In an attempt to avoid a lot of industry jargon, let’s just say, this is explaining the status of this domain name. In most cases Status code will say “clientTransferProhibited”. I deliberately wrote “this domain name” instead of “your domain name”. Here’s why. Unlike watching your domain names in your registrar account (like GoDaddy, or Uniregistry), with DomainWatch you can watch almost any domain name.

Why this is interesting, you can read later in this post, but for now let’s keep going.

How long do domains take to expire?

Don’t domains expire on the date you see in whois? Well, yes and no. On the expiry date, you can no longer use the domain, and point it to your web hosting. But you can still renew it! That’s how all those companies that forgot to renew their domain didn’t lose it!

It usually takes as many as 45 days for the domain to be returned to the pool, after which the owner can no longer renew it. What do I mean by “return to the pool”? Well, it gets tricky here. Sometimes, the registrar “keeps” the domain name, because they are the first to renew it. You can read the contract you signed with your registrar if they do this.

Or, the domain goes to an auction. If it is a valuable domain name (just like when tema.com expired) it will go to auction and attract multiple bids. And in most cases when a domain is of low value, it will be released back for general public registration. How often does this happen? Well, around 60,000 domain names expire every day.

How do I reserve a domain name that is expiring?

If you want to register a domain name that is about to expire, you have 2 options.

1. Backorder the domain with a domain backorder provider
2. Wait for the domain to become available, and register it for $8.03 if it is a .com, more if it is a different TLD (domain extension)

Our DomainWatch can help with the 2nd option. We can email you exactly on the day when this domain becomes available for registration. If it becomes available! Remember, there are no guarantees, because the owner can still renew it after the expiration date passes. And, you never know if there are multiple bidders on this domain name, or if someone has ordered a backorder on this domain name.

With DomainWatch you can track other domains, not just the ones you own

When you track other domains, this allows you to see if a good domain name becomes available for registration. Or, if your old domain (the one you let go), becomes available for registration after all those years.

If I can track someone else’s domain name, does this mean that someone else can track and register my domains after they expire? Well, yes.

What happens when my domain expires?

As you can see in the video above that I shot a few years ago someone else can register the domain name you let expire, and then post any content they want.

The video is a few years old, but now it’s even more relevant since more businesses, but also criminals, are buying expired domain names!

Domain expiration notice

In the past, only domain registrars would send you a domain expiration notice. You would then log in to your account, and renew your domain name. Unless you had an auto-renew option, and the domain registrar would renew your domain name automatically.

When webmaster.ninja sends you a domain expiration notice, it is just a secondary reminder. You can’t renew your domain name with us. Unfortunately, there are some criminals that would ask you for a payment to renew your domain name, when in fact they are not working with your registrar or domain name name.

Let’s come back to the light side, and end this blog post in a positive tone. In case you would like to protect your private domain names, or the domain names of your company, you can set up a free domain expiration monitoring, and receive emails when that faithfull date is approaching.

Then just log in with your registrar, and check that the payment details are in order, and that the renewal will be on time.

Free domain expiration monitoring

With DomainWatch, on webmaster.ninja, you can set up a free domain monitoring for up to 10 domain names. In case you own more domains, and you are looking for great domains that expire, you will need to upgrade to a paid account.

But, paid accounts are not so bad, as they have several tools and monitoring options that every webmaster will love them.

Applying kaizen to your website portfolio

Kaizen is a Japanese word that describes constant and never-ending improvement. You can apply it to your business, life, relationship, and website portfolio, among other things. It consists of two words Kai, meaning change, and zen meaning good. Goodchange, or as we would say improvement.

However, when Japanese say kaizen, they don’t exactly mean improvement. When we improve something, it is then fixed in this new and improved position. For Japanese, kaizen is a way of life, where you constantly return to this place and keep improving it.

I am an amateur of kaizen, so bear with me with this short article. I think that you will appreciate it if you apply this philosophy to your website portfolio.

Website portfolio, a portfolio of revenue-generating websites

There are websites that display your portfolio (photos, past clients, etc), and on the other hand, there is a portfolio of websites that make money online. I am writing about the latter. There are website investors that buy, manage and sell websites that generate revenue over time. Some own several revenue-generating websites.

When you own 5 or 6 websites, it is considered a portfolio, and more often than not, investors want to grow their portfolio. In our case, a portfolio of websites or a website portfolio. So, how do we grow it?

Lean methodology

What is often paired with kaizen is lean methodology. For all of you book readers out there, The Toyota Way, Lean Startup, 2 Second Lean are the few I read on the subject and can definitely recommend. Why are kaizen and lean often mentioned together? Well, as far as I know, as soon as you start to apply kaizen, you start removing waste, and you get lean.

Let’s say you are overweight, which is the opposite of lean. If you apply kaizen to your body, which means you keep improving your diet, workout, and other life habits, you essentially keep removing waste and you begin to lose weight. In the end, you get lean.

If you have a messy office and a desk, and apply kaizen… Sooner or later, you will remove all the clutter, and have an organized and, drumroll please, clean desk. Ok, that’s not lean, it’s clean, but you get it.

Is kaizen about removing whatever is blocking your progress?

I suppose you could say that making improvements and kaizen in your life, business or website portfolio would be to keep removing whatever is blocking your progress. This could also mean, that you keep optimizing your procedures, keep optimizing your website, increase the security of your website or keep improving the website load speed.

At webmaster.ninja we are passionate about helping you to kaizen your website portfolio. So we tell you if your website is loading slower than it should, or if the website’s security is lower than it should be, and so on.

We believe that if you applied kaizen to your websites, you will get a better return eventually.

What exactly can you do?

To apply kaizen to your website portfolio, it would mean that every day, month and year you do the following:

• Add more content
• Add more backlinks
• Improve website loading time
• Enhance your website security
• Improve the website’s UX and UI
• Monitor your portfolio more efficiently
• Monitor your finances more efficiently
• Set better priorities
• Spend less time working in the business, and more time on the business

Ok, that’s enough for an overview. Now let me show you the next step. Let’s take one item from that list. Like website security. Now, you can drill down, and find kaizen (constant improvements forever) there.

When it comes to improving the security of your website you can;

• Install SSL certificates on all your websites
• Create an onsite and offsite backup
• Build a code repository
• Whitelist a handful of IP addresses that can log in to your system
• Improve the way you store your passwords
• Monitor your website for any phishing, mallware or SQL injections
• Monitor your email for blacklists

And then you can dive even deeper. Let’s take the first of the list “installing an SSL certificate on all your websites”.

Improve the way you install SSL certificates.

Maybe you installed free SSL certificates mannualy, and your sys-admin could do it for you. Or maybe there is a web hosting company that has a one-click solution that allows a non-techy to install the free SSL certificate with a click of a button. On the other hand, maybe your website is an online store, and you actually need a EV SSL certificate? What is an EV SSL certificate, and what are the benefits of installing one, you can read here.

Improve the way you monitor SSL certificate expiration

Once you install SSL certificates on all your websites, you will have to monitor their expiration dates. Just like you would monitor domain name expiration dates. Some web hosting companies have the free SSL certificates renew automatically, some don’t (at least that’s the case at the moment).

Also, paid SSL certificates have to be renewed every year, or longer depending on the contract. Either way, you have to make sure that the SSL certificate is renewed on time, or your visitors will get an error message instead of the website.

Improve your procedures around SSL certificates

In case you are thinking, I am making the matter more complex than it really is, the Japanese would disagree with you. The way you handle your SSL certificates, is the way you handle your website portfolio, is the way you handle your business, is the way you handle your life. Kaizen is not a one-click and I am done thing. It is a way of life.

So, there are always ways you can keep improving this. Maybe your website is now slower because you installed an SSL certificate and you need to change providers, or tweak something. Maybe you are paying $2000 per year for your EV SSL certificate, and you could be fine with $200 per year, or maybe even a free SSL certificate? Who knows these things? Well, ninja webmasters know them.

Dig deep into your SSL certificates

I bet you there is something you can improve about your SSL certificates. But here’s the kicker, your future success of your website portfolio doesn’t revolve around SSL Certificates. It’s not about the SSL certificates. I mean, it is, and it isn’t. I spent all this time writing about SSL certificates, and then I finish it by saying, it’s not about the SSL certificates. Way to go Goran.

Bringing it back home

We drilled super deep, so let’s get back to the surface, and let me explain what I mean by it’s about SSL certificates, and it’s not about SSL certificates.

Earlier I wrote how you handle your SSL certificates, is how you handle everything. So in a sense, it is about SSL certificates, but only to a degree that you need to handle every aspect of your website portfolio, the way you handle your SSL certificates. That’s just the way things are.

On the list earlier, you have a small sample of what you could do to improve, to kaizen, your website portfolio. Improve website security was one of them.

You could do this with every aspect of your website portfolio. Let’s try another one from that list. How about “improve website loading time”. Google confirmed that “Speed is now a landing page factor for Google Search and Ads“. So let’s use that.

In case you are beginning to understand what this is all about, and I hope you do. You are probably wondering where to start. Do you really have to start with website security, or website speed?

Well, good thing I put “Set better priorities” on the list, and so can you.

What do we want? Kaizen!
When do we want it? Now!

A week from now, a month from now, or even a year from now, will your website portfolio be better or worse if you start to apply daily improvements to it? Not sure? Tell me this.

If you did 100 pushups every day, for 365 days, would your body be more masculine, or less masculine? Considering everything else remained the same. If you keep applying kaizen, you will see productivity improvements, guaranteed.

Compounding revenue, theory

In one of my earlier posts “How to get rich online“, I showed an example where theoretically you could get earn $300,000 in profits in 5 years.

You buy a website that’s making $1,000 per month. Current market conditions show that you should be able to get one for $24,000 (approximately). After 6 months you should recoup your $6,000, and you buy another website for $24,000, and this one is also making $1,000 per month. You repeat the process 5 times, until you have 5 websites making a total of $5,000 per month. In 36 months you should recoup all your website investments, and after that, sky is the limit. With the $5,000 per month in 5 years (60 months) you should be $300,000 in the plus.

Now, remember, this is theory. Market conditions, among other things, change. In the past, perhaps you could find a website that’s making $1000 and buy it for $24,000 every 6 months. Now, that could be every 12 months. Or, you buy it for $30,000, or, you have to work harder and smarter (kaizen) so that it grows to $2000 per month revenue.

But the theoretical logic remains. You buy a website, and you keep doing it, until you have 5 websites, or maybe even 10 good websites that satisfy your appetite. Also, with the example above, at one point you are $60,000 in the red. Not many people have the stomach or the finances to go through that. So here’s an updated theory.

With this plan, you are buying websites that are making $333.33 per month, for $10,000. That’s a 30X multiple and that will change over time, but you can always find deals above or below the 30X multiple. I can’t write about multiples here, because I would get off-topic. Besides, multiples are complex and can’t be explained in a paragraph.

With this table, you can play, and enter whatever numbers work best for you. In case you want to work as a private equity company, and up the ante, then you can buy websites for $100,000 and make $3,333 every month. It’s a different process altogether, but in theory, this is how it would look like.

The most important thing to understand is that these numbers are not fixed in stone. On the 5 websites you buy, one could go bust, one could triple in value, and 3 could go ok. How do I know?

I once bought a website for $6375, and proceeded to invest $3800 into various marketing activities. This website is now making $10 per month! OUCH! I also bought a website for $2159, spent $600 on marketing and got a return of $9.458 in 2.5 years. I also bought a website for $4400, spent $3600 in marketing and got $10.039 from September 2018 to February 2021.

Are multiples going up?

My personal examples show that these numbers in the tables above are possible. However, the thing that’s going to change is the multiples. In the past few years, they have gone up and up. I know I wrote that I won’t go into multiples, so I’ll just mention that the market still hasn’t figured out how to value websites properly.

You have 1 year old websites being sold for 40x multiples based on last 3 months profits. I would never buy into that, but who knows how it will go over time. Perhaps it makes more sense to build a website for scratch, grow it to $333.33 in monthly profits, and then sell it for $10,000?

Enough about website multiples, what about kaizen?

Multiples are an interesting topic, but I would rather return to the topic of kaizen. Why? That’s what will enable us to fight the high multiples. If you spot the right opportunity and have the ability to take action, it doesn’t matter what the multiple is, you will get great returns!

If you bought a website at an insane valuation at 50X multiple, this won’t matter if you doubled the revenue in 6 months. Increasing productivity will always help you get better returns. Making better decisions, and doing what you can, with what you have.

3 steps to doubling your business

If you want to double the revenue of your portfolio of websites this year, there are certain areas where you can focus your attention.

1. Number of clients
2. Product price
3. Frequency of purchase

If you have 100 clients, and they buy 1 product worth $100, you made $10,000.

If you increase these 3 numbers by only 26% you double your business.

This is the essence of kaizen. You have 3 key areas that you need to improve. Getting more clients. By providing more value, you can charge them more. Increase the number of repeat sales.

Let’s use the kaizen approach I already showed you.

Increase the number of clients

• Create a newsletter
• Advertise on Google
• Advertise on social media
• Create more content
• Call or email potential clients

Increase product value

• Build a new feature
• Remove any bugs
• Add a bonus
• Improve your packaging
• Build a second product

Increase repeat buyers (frequency of purchase)

• Send automated emails to past buyers
• Upsell, cross-sell
• Get referrals (if it is impossible to make your clients to make a second purchase)
• Create a promotion that entices multiple purchases (buy 4 get 5)
• Create a loyalty program that encourages clients to make repeat purchases

In conclusion, I am sure that you can do a much better job than me in this short time span. After all, I am writing an article, and you are on your way to doubling your business. I hope I got you off the couch.

With that, I leave you for today. I’ve given you more work than some can handle in a month or a year, but I put my faith in you. I believe you can do what you read here.

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