$1000 Passive Income Site Walkthrough

Meet Becky Turner, a successful affiliate.

At May 1012 she made $7000 from her affiliate business that includes several sites. Most of her income comes from her site that sells her own eBook, Lucid Dreaming Fast Track. But I am more interested in her site called Improve Vision Naturally that earns her $1000-1500 per month. That is the income range I am targeting now. At the time Allan interviewed Becky that site had 13.000 unique visitors per month. 

When I first saw her page my first impression was - I could do that too! I know a product that changed my life too. At that time her site was looking much different than today though. It had just a fraction of the content that it has today. What it tells me? Start small, test the concept, make it larger later.

As Becky started with SBI! this is a perfect learning opportunity for me. Becky is well into her business, so I will not hurt her by analyzing her site. Can I spot what is really important?

Timeline

When evaluating things in the web it is well worth checking how old the information is. In this case, I want to know when Becky started and how long it took her to build up the site.

Becky's domain was registered 2008 and the site of the product she advertises, Rebuild Your Vision, was registered 2002. Ten years and still going strong. As we can see here, good info-products can have a long life!

What Problem Becky Solves?

Her site is an honest review of a course that helps people to improve their vision with eye exercises. A lots of people are searching for help on this issue, but many of them go for laser surgeries. Becky wants to help people who want to try natural remedies first.

Market Research - Is The Problem Worth Solving? 

I expected to work hard to find out Becky's keywords, but I just needed to open the html and it gives me the following keyword list:

"eye exercises, improve vision naturally, better vision naturally, improve vision, nearsightedness, vision exercises, Rebuild Your Vision"

Let's see how Google ranks Becky's site for those searches. Here are all the searches that show Becky's site on the first 2 pages of results:

Improve vision naturally - 9900 searches per month - Becky's site is 6th in the results
Better vision naturally    - 4400 searches per month - Becky's site is 7th in the results
Rebuild your vision        - 2400 searches per month - Becky's YouTube video is 2nd in the results

She has keywords listed that have 50.000-90.000 searches per month, but those above are the keywords that actually show her site. Of course, as she works to put more content to her site, she may eventually be able to tap to those larger searches too.

I don't think that these searches are able to get her all of that 13.000 people per month. That would mean almost everybody searching for those keywords would go to Becky's site. I'm guessing she has some other means to drive traffic to her site that I just cannot see now.

I am quite surprised that a successful passive income site can be built on a topic that has this little searches. What a great inspiration!

I did a full market research for these keywords using method Vic describes in his Getting Rich With eBooks course that I am on now. All the results don't fit here and I will not bore you with them, but I do want to mention one thing. It does not really matter if you get a lot of visitors, if they are not in a buying mindset. Only visitors that are going to buy matter. Becky has succeeded in picking keywords that bring in people who want to buy something.

How To Monetize It - The Affiliate Program

The affiliate program that Becky uses is here: http://www.rebuildyourvision.com/affiliates/. She gets $25 per sale. For $1500 per month that means 60 sales. 60 out of 13.000 is 0,5%

If you have been using large scale affiliate programs, like Amazon Affiliates, the provision may look high to you. But in ebooks they just often are that high. 

You also may have thought that more people would buy. Well, as I said that depends on the audience and I think 0,5% is well done. So on a topic like this that is what I can expect to have myself. Or maybe a bit less. Becky is a writer by profession and I assume English is her native language.

Next Step - Just Do It

This is how far my current skills get me. Of course I could also analyze the structure of her web page or the content on it, but I'll leave that to later. I'll do it when I am writing my own site.

Some time ago I would have just started writing it right away. And yes, I did the market research for my topic already. But this time I am going to let other people help me. That will dramatically increase my chance for success. I don't want to take any more rounds of trying and making stupid little mistakes that crash my project.

So instead of tackling this myself, I'm going to go to the SBI! order page and join the course. No more waiting, I'm doing it right now.

Week 8 - Finally Some Action!

This week I did the keyword research for my eBook ideas and picked the best idea for my book. Doing the research was a must - I would have picked a different idea without it. It took me some time to get started, but the next time keyword research session will be fast and easy for me. Vic's method and templates were really useful. We also planned some of the book content as the course homework.

I started to collect my ideas to a little notebook. That way I can put them aside without forgetting them. I no longer want to process my ideas before I have the keyword research results to back them up. Also, I am becoming more innovative as days pass by and I have ideas almost every day. They are also getting better - at least I think so!

I recently registered to Freckle, a time management tool that I told you about in my previous blog post. I just finished logging my first full week so I sat down and looked at my project pulse. I got in 13 hours. I should be working full time on my passive income project and this is what I get in? Where did the time go?

Well, this week I have been busy with the web app I am doing with WebServerGuru. So busy that I even dropped my fun hobby day. I think that is fine, but I cannot continue like this. Doing that work is important, but in order to reach my goal I need to get in more hours. So, in order to not slip into just fulfilling other people's dreams I made a schedule for the next week. A schedule that includes my fun day and a bit more work for the passive income project too.

I also noticed Steve's comment on Google+ about how people should not get overly excited about their goals. Why? Because you should be living your dream, and if you did, you would not be overly excited about it. It would just be your life.

I reflected that idea on myself. Fortunately I am already living my life as I want it to be in the future. I have great fun. But I still admit being overly excited about my passive income project. That is just how I am with new shiny things and projects. Give me one month more and the excitement will start to wear off as routine sets in. Give me 3 months and all this is just my daily work. That's how it goes, I know. Good for me, I don't need to show the results now. So even if this enthusiasm would have negative effect, it has time to wear off.

I am learning to accept the abundance in my life and I am showing it by supporting others who are in the same path. This week I bought a Bootstrapping Design eBook. It has a good sales speech and it is done by another startup bootstrapper. I want to support that!

Goals for the next week

• Monday: Hobby programming
• Tuesday & Thursday: Programming/learning web apps
• Wednesday & Friday: Make a study of an affiliate site, then join SBI!
• Watch the next lesson of Getting Rich With eBooks

Tip of the week

Log your time for a week. At the end of the week, take a look at what you did for your passive income project. How many hours did you put in? Did you do something that will take your passive income project forward? Will you reach your goal with your current input?

Sharpen Your Focus With Freckle

I want to build a SaaS(Software as a Service) application as a part of my passive income project. While I am learning the technologies, I am also checking out what others have done on that area. Whenever I stumble upon tools that are useful in my passive income project, I'll let you know so you can benefit from them too. The first lovable application I want to introduce you is Freckle. They offer free accounts that lets one person work on one project. Freckle is a perfect tool for a project like mine.

Why I Fell In Love With Freckle

Before:
It is a a nice day and I start working on my passive income project. At some point I notice a popup of a new mail arriving. I go to check my email... and then I find myself on Twitter. I follow an interesting link that I find in a tweet. And before I know it, I've used several hours just surfing on the web. I have wasted massive amount of my prime time without noticing it.

Now:
Whenever I open my PC with an intention to work on my passive income project, I'll open the Freckle timer first. There is a button in my browser toolbar for that. I start the timer immediately and get to work.

When a new mail arrives I am not so tempted to just "quickly check it out", because I would need to pause my timer. If the mail popup looks important, I may pause the timer. But pausing my timer makes me conscious that I am switching into doing something that does not take my project forward. I stay focused - I'll just read the mail and come back working. I'm eager to get my timer back on running!

If I end up getting distracted by the web, I don't log those hours. Yes, I used at least part of them for my project, but I want to keep my pulse clean.

Where Is Your Pulse - Is Your Project Alive?

Well, Freckle shows me the pulse of my passive income project. Here is the view where I can input my hours without timer. The green dots below the turquoise bar shows my pulse. If I want to keep my project going, I'd better keep the pulse throbbing.

In addition to seeing my weekly pulse, I can click the "PULSE" on the right and it nicely shows me the pulse of my project for the whole month. If I had a Freelance account that costs $12 per month, I could put all my projects here and the pulse would have colorful pie charts. If I would need to make invoices, I'd probably buy Freelance account right away.

You Can Only Manage What You Can Measure

We are set for success here, right? You know I am. And when I'll look back a year after, I want to know what I did so that I can repeat it. Maybe I want to know how many hours I used for something so I can calculate what ended up being my hourly pay. That way I'll know what type of projects get me most money per hour (not to say that it is the most important thing). And what do you know, Freckle gives me excellent reports on the hours that I log in. Here is the report on my eBook work between 1st and 6th of July.

As you can see, I can now easily see how much time I have used on different activities while working on my eBook. Again, if I had the Freelancer account the hours breakdown would show me nice pie chart.

OK, I'm ready with this blog post. Let's log my hours.

Click, click and click, I'm done.

Don't wait any longer.
Register your free Freckle account and gain more focus in your project too!

DISCLAIMER

The links in this page are affiliate links. If you end up buying Freckle, I'll get some pennies too! But I am not recommending Freckle because of that. I am recommending it because it is so lovable. Life just cannot get any better than this.

Week 7 - June 2012 Status Report

Passive Income In June 2012: 
 $4 

The income is coming from AdFly and AdSense. This was the first full month when I had also affiliate links online and they had some clicks too, but no buys yet. I removed some of the AdSense ads to make room for affiliate links. Unless I do something different/new on next month the passive income is probably not getting up. In other words, I gotta get to the business!

Costs in June 2012: 
 $97 

The costs are from Getting Rich With eBooks course. When I get through the materials of this month, I'll write a new review.
I did buy some books also, including my first Kindle book. As they are not directly related to passive income I'm not including them here.

Theme of the June 2012

Vacation and skill building.

I created my first video tutorial this month - that was huge learning opportunity.
I also read a whopping amount of books - mostly on web programming, but also some books on marketing and successful thinking. I have been waiting for ages to have time to read some of those books. The marketing book was recommended to me by the WebServerGuru.

Overall, I think I've learned this month more than I have learned in all previous 12 months! I have updated my 15-year old skills on HTML and learned CSS and JavaScript.

I feel good about last month and I am ready for some action now.