You know I have been in the Internet Business since the Wild West days of the early 90’s. One thing has remained the same. SUMMERS SUCK. I can watch my sales drop with school letting out. The kids take over the computers and nobody buys anything.

I have also noticed that when a large section of the country has rain sales do go up.

Of course the best days are in the winter when the snow is flying and its dark by 5 pm in the Northern sections of the country and hurricanes are threatening the South. LOL Ahh the wish for bad weather.

Anyway this article is to help you prepare for that fall onslaught of business that will happen when summer is over. Now is the time to get things ready.

Now you have time to tweek your site without too much worry of pissing someone off when it is down for a couple seconds. So fix those old bad links, get the main pages optimized for the search engines, set up those RSS feeds you have been thinking about. Put up your newsletter signup database and forms and set up your auto responders.

Start adding that new content you haven’t had time to move on over the winter and just in general get ready for the fall.

Remember what you do today doesn’t effect your sales tomorrow. A change that helps you in the search engines will take a minimum of 2 major Google Indexes (read that 2 months) and usually 3 to completely shake out. So if you change something on June 1st you will not receive the full benefit of it until September… FALL.

So don’t procrastinate and get to work now so that you are ready for the increased traffic when the kids are back in school and mom and dad are in control of the computers again.

Send me a message if you need some help on the SEO side. I am always glad to help out.

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Within a month you are making so much you are thinking about dumping the old wife and getting yourself a hot 25 year old Russian wife, even though you know she will only stay with you long enough to get her green card. You think oh well… it will be time to trade her in for a new one anyway.

Six months later as you are flying to London in your private jet to see the latest Eagles Final Tour you are watching your stats from using your satellite phone connected to your lap top and thinking I need to build more sites because I really want to buy that island off the coast of Costa Rico.

Ahhh that’s the fantasy. Too bad it doesn’t happen like that anymore. If you were around in the early 90s things like that did happen. That was the real wild west. Unfortunately most of the people involved in the Internet then pissed their money away and wound up struggling to pay their electric bill after the dot com bust.

There is still money to be made, and big money. The formula is just different. You can no longer go to the local strip club and take some pictures of the girls or guys, get a model release signed then post them on a website and make hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Now you need something unique and new. Fresh content. Interesting content and content that can’t really be found anywhere else. Most all the standard fetish niches are taken. Almost anything you try and do has huge players competing against you. So how do you compete?

First come up with something that is indeed fresh and as unique as possible. Make sure it is something you are personally interested in. Something you could be considered an expert at.

Build your website around that. Make sure that your content is at least 50% provided by your users. Make it so interactive people can’t help but come back once they find the site.

When people see your site they need to say… OH MY GOD….. for whatever reason. Be it the site is just great.. or they see their next door neighbor doing the 2 women from across the street or because it answers some question that has plagued them for years… Without repeat visits you will never make money.

Then you need to decide what format your revenue stream is going to come from. Is this a free site supported by advertising? Is it a membership site? Is this a lead in site to push the traffic to a membership site?

Come up with your plan and then build the site around both the interactivity of the users. Your expertise and unique content and the revenue model you choose.

Ok you now have the site up.. what do you do….

Well you need the search engines to like you. So optimize the site, put up the obligatory blogs and forums… even though they are a pain in the butt to manage. Get your mailing list software in place so you can email the shit out of the members to get repeat business and open your doors. I have found that no matter what your revenue stream is suppose to look like running the site free the first 6 months to a year will help a lot in getting a user base established.

So then we open the doors for a “soft” opening… what happens now? All the bugs come out of your site software. Once you have them worked out and things are running smoothly again it is time to start spending some money.

Now you will also want to test your email software and link exchange software and all that. Once you know that’s in place and working if you are a membership site get your affiliate program up and running. This can be as simple as a single tier model that gives away a free membership to anyone who places a link to you on their main page or runs one of your banners or a complex 4 tier system that is administered by your billing company and is more complex then an Amway Commission Structure.

Next you need to buy some traffic. Get those initial visits to get the people to know your site exists. Do not just count on your SEO, Link Trades and Affiliates to get you traffic. There are a lot of ways to buy traffic and clicks. The simplest is Google Adwords although I am always a bit leery of dealing with the internets “Big Brother”. There are also companies out there like Market Leverage, Click Booth and Commission Junction that have programs to get you traffic.

Once the traffic starts to hit you need to analyze it to see what your view to hit ratios are. The hits to buy or hits to click ratios and then calculate the value of a hit to your site. You really should track all these numbers based on where the traffic is coming from but that is a huge job and most people just don’t take the time to do it.

That us unfortunate because different traffic sources have different results. A click coming from the results of an organic search where someone is actively looking for what you have to offer is usually a lot more valuable then someone who accidentally gets redirected to your site on an exit panel of an affiliate.

Without knowing the value of traffic from a specific source you are spending your advertising dollars in the same manner that a hunter shoots his shotgun into the sky without looking and hopes a duck falls to earth near his feet.

Ok now you have all your numbers together, your affiliates are cranking out the traffic and you are buying traffic at a rate you can make a profit from all your sources… it is time to get back to the private jet and see the Eagles right?

Well maybe not. Now that things are going along fine you still need to on a daily basis:

1. Look at your numbers from each traffic source and make adjustments to your key words and prices.
2. Look over all your affiliates and see who is sending you good traffic and who isn’t. Send the good ones an email from time to time asking what they are doing and how so you can get a handle on why things are working for them.
3. Email the people NOT sending good traffic and see why not. Maybe there is a problem you are not aware of.
4. Update your content. Post something to your blog or forum. Post some picture answer any questions from affiliates, members and/or visitors.
5. Monitor your user generated content to make sure nothing that will get you into trouble has been posted.

If you keep your affiliate webmasters happy and your members interested you will make some money. Probably serious money.

Just don’t get too bogged down in creating new sites one after the other. One of the biggest problem facing most webmasters seems to be that there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything that needs done. Remember that roofing job your girlfriend keeps bugging you about will still be there if you decide the Internet is just too much for you.

Please feel free to re-post this article or use it on your website. Be courteous and place a link back to us at http://www.linksareblue.com

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