Post: #51

I have a niche tennis website. My user list is small but very engaged. They want to buy tennis-related stuff.

Does anyone have advice or a direction to point me for vendors?

I am going to contact FYB (one of the largest online tennis course providers) and Tennis Warehouse (American equipment giant), but I operate in Eastern Canada so was hoping to find at least one vendor closer to home first.

Post: #52

(05-17-2017 04:29 PM)TooFineAPoint Wrote:  I have a niche tennis website. My user list is small but very engaged. They want to buy tennis-related stuff.

Does anyone have advice or a direction to point me for vendors?

I am going to contact FYB (one of the largest online tennis course providers) and Tennis Warehouse (American equipment giant), but I operate in Eastern Canada so was hoping to find at least one vendor closer to home first.

Try ShareaSale or Commission Junction, they deal in physical products and should have tennis related vendors.

Post: #53

(05-12-2017 11:48 PM)stefpdt Wrote:  Clean websites with sustainable cash flow are usually valued at 25x. So yes, a website doing $2k per month can definitely sell for $50k.

But, I think most buyers want to see at least 12 months of earnings if not more.

Is that really the case 25x, personally I would be hesitant to buy many types of online only businesses for even 5x valuation. With online businesses there's no real estate, oftentimes little to no inventory, and traffic which we all depend on is finicky and subject to Google changes.

At 25x that's quite a while before you recoup your money and a lot can happen within a short amount of time online.

One of my businesses is in a "high risk" industry think vape, weed, paraphanalia, etc. We do about 3 Million a year in sales, last offer I had to buy was 250K and I actually really considered taking it. I'm glad I didn't as fast forward 3 years later were still in business but at the time I had lost Paypal, lost credit card processing which it took me about another 3-4 months to find, got kicked off eBay and AMazon, etc. Eventually I managed to get processing all be it paying 8%.

Granted my business is unique but 25 times multiple seems insane to me.

Post: #54

(05-17-2017 04:29 PM)TooFineAPoint Wrote:  I have a niche tennis website. My user list is small but very engaged. They want to buy tennis-related stuff.

Does anyone have advice or a direction to point me for vendors?

I am going to contact FYB (one of the largest online tennis course providers) and Tennis Warehouse (American equipment giant), but I operate in Eastern Canada so was hoping to find at least one vendor closer to home first.

What's your aim to get product to sell yourself or to find advertisers or affiliate programs?

Post: #55

(05-18-2017 03:26 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  

(05-17-2017 04:29 PM)TooFineAPoint Wrote:  I have a niche tennis website. My user list is small but very engaged. They want to buy tennis-related stuff.

Does anyone have advice or a direction to point me for vendors?

I am going to contact FYB (one of the largest online tennis course providers) and Tennis Warehouse (American equipment giant), but I operate in Eastern Canada so was hoping to find at least one vendor closer to home first.

What's your aim to get product to sell yourself or to find advertisers or affiliate programs?

I'd prefer advertisers and affiliates (as long as they are quality and I would use them myself).

But I may have to consider moving my own product because the local tennis stores are completely lazy and uninterested in doing any promotions.

Next step is to contact some Ebay sellers in the region. I assume they will have more of a hustler mentality.

Demandred gave me some great links as well, and I will go through those as well.

Post: #56

Don't ask me how, but I built a database with more than 3 millions emails and other contact information such as address or telephone number, most of them valid. Is there a way to monetize this bunch of emails?
TIA

Post: #57

(05-20-2017 04:46 AM)lestatt Wrote:  Don't ask me how, but I built a database with more than 3 millions emails and other contact information such as address or telephone number, most of them valid. Is there a way to monetize this bunch of emails?
TIA

In my humble opinion, no. The best you could do is sell it to a sucker who doesn't know what he is doing.

But it would be very, very difficult to use such a large list to generate sales. First, it would be VERY expensive to maintain in an autoresponder. They generally charge by the number of emails. Second, a TON are going to get bounced the first time you mail to the list. Autoresponders hate that, so your account might even get suspended. Third, it is not a targeted list, so you will get a VERY low response rate.

It might be valuable if you could break it up by source, demographics, etc. Then you could have a much smaller, targeted list that might have fewer bounces and more responses. You might be able to sell to such a list, or sell the list itself to someone in that niche.

This is setting aside whether emailing to such a list would violate CAN-SPAM. You'd have to look into that yourself.

Post: #58

(05-18-2017 03:24 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  

(05-12-2017 11:48 PM)stefpdt Wrote:  Clean websites with sustainable cash flow are usually valued at 25x. So yes, a website doing $2k per month can definitely sell for $50k.

But, I think most buyers want to see at least 12 months of earnings if not more.

Is that really the case 25x, personally I would be hesitant to buy many types of online only businesses for even 5x valuation. With online businesses there's no real estate, oftentimes little to no inventory, and traffic which we all depend on is finicky and subject to Google changes.

At 25x that's quite a while before you recoup your money and a lot can happen within a short amount of time online.

One of my businesses is in a "high risk" industry think vape, weed, paraphanalia, etc. We do about 3 Million a year in sales, last offer I had to buy was 250K and I actually really considered taking it. I'm glad I didn't as fast forward 3 years later were still in business but at the time I had lost Paypal, lost credit card processing which it took me about another 3-4 months to find, got kicked off eBay and AMazon, etc. Eventually I managed to get processing all be it paying 8%.

Granted my business is unique but 25 times multiple seems insane to me.

Yeah if you check out the marketplace on Empire Flippers you'll actually see valuations that are in the 28x range or even more.

I agree that buying a site seems risky. I'd much rather be on the sell side!

That's awesome that you're doing a few million in sales. I probably would've been tempted to accept the $250K too. That would be a nice liquidation event.

Post: #59

(05-20-2017 11:01 AM)Nom_De_Guerre Wrote:  

(05-20-2017 04:46 AM)lestatt Wrote:  Don't ask me how, but I built a database with more than 3 millions emails and other contact information such as address or telephone number, most of them valid. Is there a way to monetize this bunch of emails?
TIA

In my humble opinion, no. The best you could do is sell it to a sucker who doesn't know what he is doing.

But it would be very, very difficult to use such a large list to generate sales. First, it would be VERY expensive to maintain in an autoresponder. They generally charge by the number of emails. Second, a TON are going to get bounced the first time you mail to the list. Autoresponders hate that, so your account might even get suspended. Third, it is not a targeted list, so you will get a VERY low response rate.

It might be valuable if you could break it up by source, demographics, etc. Then you could have a much smaller, targeted list that might have fewer bounces and more responses. You might be able to sell to such a list, or sell the list itself to someone in that niche.

This is setting aside whether emailing to such a list would violate CAN-SPAM. You'd have to look into that yourself.

Hi and thank you for your reply, for most of this email I can say also sex, age and location (even if they're all from Italy). My intention is not to use all of them, but I'm wondering how I can use part of them to gain money.
TIA

Post: #60

If you have a product to sell, send out a re-engage email to see who's interested.

Break your list into smaller segments, based on the demographic you think this product would be most helpful for. Start with 5 sets of 2000. Start 5 free Mailchimp accounts (2000 list members are free in Chimp).

Make the email really simple, like an opt in. Think of it like a cold call over the phone. Really brief -- are they interested in hearing about this thing that might help them. Segment any of the positive replies in Mailchimp, so you can easily identify and sell to them in the near future.

Make the email just simple text, and make sure the subject line is not spammy at all and looks like a personal email from a friend.

After an initial run of 10000, you will see if your list can be re-engaged and sold to. If you can generate a little profit from that run, it is worth paying for a serious email program to run through the rest of the list.

This method I described might take you a few weekends, if you have a product ready to go, and it's all free.

If you are new to this, check out the book Boron Letters by Gary Halbert. You could easily read that in a few hours.

It's true what the others are saying, that it's better to have a properly vetted and engaged list, but you could be sitting on some money here, or at least a great self-study course to teach yourself email marketing.

Post: #61

(05-22-2017 10:33 AM)TooFineAPoint Wrote:  If you have a product to sell, send out a re-engage email to see who's interested.

Break your list into smaller segments, based on the demographic you think this product would be most helpful for. Start with 5 sets of 2000. Start 5 free Mailchimp accounts (2000 list members are free in Chimp).

Make the email really simple, like an opt in. Think of it like a cold call over the phone. Really brief -- are they interested in hearing about this thing that might help them. Segment any of the positive replies in Mailchimp, so you can easily identify and sell to them in the near future.

Make the email just simple text, and make sure the subject line is not spammy at all and looks like a personal email from a friend.

After an initial run of 10000, you will see if your list can be re-engaged and sold to. If you can generate a little profit from that run, it is worth paying for a serious email program to run through the rest of the list.

This method I described might take you a few weekends, if you have a product ready to go, and it's all free.

If you are new to this, check out the book Boron Letters by Gary Halbert. You could easily read that in a few hours.

It's true what the others are saying, that it's better to have a properly vetted and engaged list, but you could be sitting on some money here, or at least a great self-study course to teach yourself email marketing.

Hi, thank you for your advice, I'll take a look to the book you suggested to me and I'll try to follow your advices.

Post: #62

(05-17-2017 02:18 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  

(05-14-2017 07:37 PM)Gas Wrote:  Have any of you outsourced your SEO/link-building? There are a lot of (well-reviewed) SEO 'experts' and 'linkbuilders' on Upwork but I'm curious as to where they get the links and if it actually works.

Maybe I just don't know which ones to buy but any Fiverr type SEO or linkbuilding gig is pure bullshit and will do more harm than good for you. I used to utilize these guys and had to hire someone to do a bunch of disavowing and cleanup a bunch of garbage links.

I've also hired SEO firms from small Craigslist guys to big Indian companies that do SEO for a lot of these boutique agencies and honestly I can't say they do much. Plus unless you know a fair bit about SEO yourself you really have no way of knowing if they are actually doing anything for you or just blowing smoke about all the link building and articles they submitted for you.

For SEO I've basically decided I'm done trying to do link building, PBN's and anything that's trying to game the system. I create a shit load of content, I target longtail keywords and commonly write articles that are basically questions or answers and I leave it at that and I"m doing better ranking than I've ever done hiring a company.

So you just write a lot of articles targeting long tail, submit to search engines and just wait for your rankings to go up? I didn't realize that worked I always thought you needed some kind of link profile.

How many articles do you publish before you start to see search engine traffic?

Post: #63

(05-23-2017 09:40 AM)Gas Wrote:  

(05-17-2017 02:18 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  

(05-14-2017 07:37 PM)Gas Wrote:  Have any of you outsourced your SEO/link-building? There are a lot of (well-reviewed) SEO 'experts' and 'linkbuilders' on Upwork but I'm curious as to where they get the links and if it actually works.

Maybe I just don't know which ones to buy but any Fiverr type SEO or linkbuilding gig is pure bullshit and will do more harm than good for you. I used to utilize these guys and had to hire someone to do a bunch of disavowing and cleanup a bunch of garbage links.

I've also hired SEO firms from small Craigslist guys to big Indian companies that do SEO for a lot of these boutique agencies and honestly I can't say they do much. Plus unless you know a fair bit about SEO yourself you really have no way of knowing if they are actually doing anything for you or just blowing smoke about all the link building and articles they submitted for you.

For SEO I've basically decided I'm done trying to do link building, PBN's and anything that's trying to game the system. I create a shit load of content, I target longtail keywords and commonly write articles that are basically questions or answers and I leave it at that and I"m doing better ranking than I've ever done hiring a company.

So you just write a lot of articles targeting long tail, submit to search engines and just wait for your rankings to go up? I didn't realize that worked I always thought you needed some kind of link profile.

How many articles do you publish before you start to see search engine traffic?

Affiliate Marketing is a long term game, there's no tricks or hacks and if there are they are short term things you just gotta milk before everyone else catches on and they get shut down.

Not every article I write or video I make is a hit huge traffic driver, but enough are. Just for example, I made a how to video involving a popular fad and do date the video has over 3 million views. I've probably made a few grand off of adsense alone from people watching the video plus it's driven countless affiliate sales as well as sales of my own products.

Google doesn't want you or I to know the search algorithm because we'll just game it, so I've basically come to the conclusion PBN, link building, etc isn't really that effectve anymore. To me content is the best SEO there is. Create a crapload of content and you will make money with whatever it is your doing be it affiliate marketing or driving traffic to an ecommerce store.

Post: #64

(05-23-2017 01:31 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  Affiliate Marketing is a long term game, there's no tricks or hacks and if there are they are short term things you just gotta milk before everyone else catches on and they get shut down.

Not every article I write or video I make is a hit huge traffic driver, but enough are. Just for example, I made a how to video involving a popular fad and do date the video has over 3 million views. I've probably made a few grand off of adsense alone from people watching the video plus it's driven countless affiliate sales as well as sales of my own products.

Google doesn't want you or I to know the search algorithm because we'll just game it, so I've basically come to the conclusion PBN, link building, etc isn't really that effectve anymore. To me content is the best SEO there is. Create a crapload of content and you will make money with whatever it is your doing be it affiliate marketing or driving traffic to an ecommerce store.

This is also what I think whenever I start to build links. I always say to myself "This can't be how to really build a business". Although it's cool to hear you don't build any links at all and had success.

Post: #65

(02-26-2017 12:37 PM)colblionel Wrote:  

(02-26-2017 12:06 PM)SnowHugger Wrote:  It took a year for mine to take off to around $250/month.



Though it can definitely be done much quicker seeing how I was on/off about it.

My biggest advice is to write about something you actually care about.

Here's an idea for you.

Now that you're getting consistent sales, just sell the product yourself instead of doing it for someone else.

Contact the manufactures buy the product whole sale and put it on amazon.

Link them to your amazon page and keep all the profits.

It took me a while to decide to do this, though I'm going to explore my options.
My best selling articles are literally titled "best products xyz".
All I gotta do is get a private label from alibaba and put mine up there.

This shit doesn't seem easy. I'll report back.

Post: #66

(05-23-2017 07:16 PM)Gas Wrote:  

(05-23-2017 01:31 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  Affiliate Marketing is a long term game, there's no tricks or hacks and if there are they are short term things you just gotta milk before everyone else catches on and they get shut down.

Not every article I write or video I make is a hit huge traffic driver, but enough are. Just for example, I made a how to video involving a popular fad and do date the video has over 3 million views. I've probably made a few grand off of adsense alone from people watching the video plus it's driven countless affiliate sales as well as sales of my own products.

Google doesn't want you or I to know the search algorithm because we'll just game it, so I've basically come to the conclusion PBN, link building, etc isn't really that effectve anymore. To me content is the best SEO there is. Create a crapload of content and you will make money with whatever it is your doing be it affiliate marketing or driving traffic to an ecommerce store.

This is also what I think whenever I start to build links. I always say to myself "This can't be how to really build a business". Although it's cool to hear you don't build any links at all and had success.

You can buy links. Do I recommend it? No. I've done it last year and those links are long gone. Everything else was manual outreach and hiring writers to post on other blogs.

I've tried going the route of "making epic content", but god damn, it's pretty difficult to do unless you have $200 to get some art done, take photos of the product, make a video, and have a solid 2000-3000 word article.

Post: #67

Anyone interested in promoting a dating product (ebook)?

Commission 50%.

Good sales page with good VSL that I expect will convert at 5%.

Of course I'm listing on CB, but it'll take time to build gravity.