Hidden Sources of Online Profit

In going over things during tax season and assessing my online businesses, two things jumped out at me. I thought maybe others would be interested, too. We all want to make more profit, don't we?

The first thing I noticed was that I had allowed my costs to go up higher than I would have liked. Is there a simpler way to increase profits than cutting costs? Not in my book, at least.

I set about trimming the fat. Right away, I found several programs to which I was still paying membership fees, even though I was no longer visiting the sites. Resigning from a few of those lopped a small, but still significant chunk off my monthly expense.

Then I really hit paydirt. I analyzed the income from a more expensive program, which also had a significant advertising cost, and decided it just wasn't paying, and the monthly increases in the commissions simply weren't enough to justify the cost. I resigned from that one, too.

The result? Nearly $3000 per year in expense reduction. This year, that will be an addition to my bottom line. Granted, it's not huge, but who couldn't use an extra two or three thousand a year? Most of us are struggling or just sputtering along, and aren't in the "six figures club", so that extra couple thousand means something.

Next, I focused on my Pay Per Click Advertising. I recently purchased two ebooks that have greatly helped me to fine-tune my PPC costs and revenue.

Perry Marshall's Definitive Guide to Google Adwords gave me some great insights and tips that I would never have figured out on my own. Implementing some of the strategies he recommends has cut my PPC ad cost by at least a third, maybe even in half. As best I can tell, my sales have nonetheless stayed about the same.

Google AdSense Secrets opened up a whole new world to me, and I began using AdSense on a number of my sites immediately. The results so far have been pleasantly surprising. The revenues I'm generating cover a significant percentage of my own PPC advertising cost.

Between reducing my PPC ad cost and finding a source of revenue nearly equal to my advertising cost, I have effectively drastically reduced my expense. This was one of my biggest expense categories last year, but this year my goal is to come as close as I can to having it be zero. Doing so will add several thousand more dollars to my bottom line.

Finally, I turned my attention to increasing the exposure for my most lucrative affiliate programs.

Going over my records indicated that I was getting a healthy chunk of revenue from affiliate commissions on MLM leads, and that this was my biggest single source of revenue for last year. I also noticed that I get quite a bit of income (and residual income, at that) from affiliate sales of web site hosting accounts.

I decided first to develop some additional doorway pages optimized for additional key words related to these affiliate programs. Then I went to the various traffic and start page exchanges that I use, and made sure I had several links going to all of the doorway pages related to promoting these programs.

The final step in my "spring cleaning" will be to see what I can do to improve the results from the affiliate programs that I promote with the least success. It may be that some of them are not worth promoting, while others simply need a few more doorway pages, or better fine-tuning of the existing sales and doorway pages to more accurately target my chosen key words and phrases for those products.

The moral of the story? A few hours work and some critical thinking allowed me to add several hundred dollars a month (more than that, actually) to my bottom line, simply by cutting the fat out of my expenses.

I suggest that you take a serious look at your own expenses. Good luck finding some "hidden sources of profit" in your business!

Favorite Internet Marketing Forum

I saw something the other day on the Warriors Forum that inspired me. Before I go into it, I should mention that the Warriors Forum is one of those hidden gems that I had heard about for a long time, but only recently joined.

If you've never heard of it, or have just been putting it off, you ought to think about joining the Warriors. What a great program, and a great group of people!

When you join, you gain access to all kinds of articles, ebooks, and other resources that will give you an education. You also get resale rights to a number of ebooks, and, of course, access to the forum.

The whole thing is the brainchild of Allen Says, who is well-known in internet marketing circles. The forum is a tremendous resource, and quite a few people whose names I have seen mentioned often are regular posters.

You'll meet people with all levels of skill and experience, get questions answered, get feedback on your ideas or your advertising copy, and can even look for Joint Venture partners.

Can you tell that I love the place? Forums are a great way to educate yourself, meet some of your internet marketing colleagues, and let yourself be known.

Anyway -- now for the great suggestions I saw posted.

The basic idea was to do TWO things every day that will in some way increase your earnings and productivity, and benefit your business. What a great idea!

1. Do something every day that will make you more money, or increase traffic and sales.

• do some link exchanges with relevant sites
• place an ezine ad or write and distribute an article
• look for profitable PPC words, and place some new ads
• increase your budget for successful PPC ad campaigns
• add a stream of revenue (i.e., affiliate product) to a content site
• review the last thing you read, and implement one suggested strategy

2. Do something every day that will reduce your expenses or make you more efficient

• automate some task or aspect of your business
• add to your FAQ, to cut down on email inquiries
• shut off your email client and chat software for the day
• unsubscribe from a newsletter you no longer find helpful
• abstain from surfing any websites for the day
• cancel recurring payments for memberships or services you don't use
• make a text file with your link text pre-formatted, so you can do "cut and paste" link exchanges
• add pages to your content site

The other thing the guy suggested was to do something nice every day. Be good to someone, help someone, whatever, but do it just for the sake of doing it.

The reward for you, of course, is that you'll like yourself better, which will actually make you more productive and successful over time.

I've paraphrased, but some of the above was in the original forum post, and some I came up with on my own, because that forum post got me to thinking.

In the past year, I've become a big fan of forums and blogs, because of their "information value". Seems like every time I visit one, I either learn something directly, or am prompted to think about something in a new way, and I end up learning from the forum indirectly.

My favorite forum to date, by far, is the Warriors Forum.

Check it out ... it's worth it!