Jon

Lightning round will start at 4pm EST (10 mins from now).

Get those questions ready boys and girls.. This weekend is a big money making one!



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Xrproto

When researching a Niche, what do you look for to determine if it's worth pursuing, process?

katoved

How do you operate your business in terms of legal structure, accounting, taxes, etc....? EIN numbers and # of AdSense accounts?

Jon

First I do market research on the particular niche. Things I look for is offline mostly.
Will it be profitable?
Did it hit it's peak yet?
Are people bidding high on the engines for it ($3+ per click)?
How many competitors are there?
How much work is potentially involved?

There are tons of questions to ask yourself, and it also depends on how you plan to make money from it. Is it going to be affiliate marketing? Arbitrage? CPM? Content site? Forum? etc..

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Jon

That is one tough question..

But I have a simple answer. Hire an accountant, and let him/her handle those headaches for you. When you sign up to any ad network to get paid, always use your company's EIN and name. Open a business account, and the accountant will keep track of everything for you, so you can do what you know, which is make money.

Note: Watch Family Guy's "Wish Upon A Wienstein".

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kyleirwin

if you only had 3-4 hours a day to focus in one area of making money online, where would it be?

ppc arbiturage, site flipping, traditional affiliate marketing, mfa content sites, etc.?

katoved

When using Adwords and Overture, how do u successfully do arbitrage? It seems that the profit margin is so slim, or non-existent, that it rarely is effective.

KSRothwell

When doing market research off line, what do you use? Periodicals? Magazines? Something else?

juniodude

Is PPC arbitrage going to be a hard place for newbies to start? Should they first venture around in other places before fiddling with PPC arbitrage? When making an arbitrage site, does it need to have a lot of pages, or is better to throw up fewer pages?

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If you go parachuting, and your parachute doesn't open,and your friends are all watching you fall, I think a funny gag would be to pretend you were swimming.

jacob

when creating content for niche markets, and taking into account that any of the content written is relevant, keyword rich, etc., are you better to have X number of lonnnng articles or xxx number of shorter articles? the lonnnng articles could have links to anchors on the page.

i'm not sure if i should just whip out a bunch of 250-500 word articles or write bigger ones that might be more useful.

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Xrproto

Not sure if that was a thinking question or one for me to answer. It will be content the one I'm really looking into.

I will have to check back on Monday. Thanks.

Jon

Hands down, PPC Arbitrage. You can have everything setup in an hour or less. The best part about it is that it follows that guy "Ronco"'s famous line "Set it and forget it". Because all you need to do is setup the keyword niche on the engines, put cash into the account, set it and forget it. And just repeat over and over until you are tired of doing it or feel satisfied in the cash flow.

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Jon

I don't use either of those for arbitrage.

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katoved

Wow, what search engines are u using for arbitrage? It seems that everything else out there is of such low quality and such insignificant numbers.

Jon

Typically business magazine or best yet is WSJ (Wall Street Journal). I look at industries, how they are doing and how they have done up until now. I also search around for information on what the experts are saying about them. If you can't find an answer, there are hundreds of message boards for this and you can just ask investment guys there what they think. Generally speaking, you'll get a lot of positive responses for the industry because people think you are going to be buying stock.

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Jon

You need to re-read my blog. I listed everything there.

www.aojon.com

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katoved

What was your most successful black hat operation that no longer works?

Jon

The best way for a newbie to get started, is to start small. A typical newbie is short on time, cash, and knowledge. You don't want to blow your entire campaign on just a guess. Trial and error is your best bet. Make 2-3 pages for one niche, and make a campaign targeting each one seperately. Spend maybe $10 a day on each campaign and just fine tune the ads so that you are getting a great CTR and most importantly a high ROI.

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KSRothwell

Wow Jon. That's golden information there. Thank you.

Jon

The porn network I had. Stayed on Google for 2 years, had over 250 domains, with hundreds of thousands of pages. I dominated that entire porn niche for those entire two years too. Made a ton of cash, and after that I too a year off to quit adult and get into mainstream.

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NoFatChicks

what came first, the chicken, the egg, or the website selling eggs to chickens?

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ChrisS

Lets say, hypothetically speaking of course, that you just had like the best domain name ever dumped in your lap.

What would you do to monetize it? Adsense? Selling Ad Space? Affiliate Programs? A crafty combination of all three? What, in your opinion, makes the most money for a domain like that.

This has absolutely nothing to do with this thread

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“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” – John Cage

juniodude

wow..this is so fun, making my heart beat fast. i'm constantly pushing refresh! ah, ok stop wasting your time...

umm. as for PPC arbitrage again, niche selecting is obviously very very important. Is there any set niches that you recommend us stay away from if we do venture into arbitrage,...maybe even better, what niches to venture into? have you ever lost money from arbitrage?

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If you go parachuting, and your parachute doesn't open,and your friends are all watching you fall, I think a funny gag would be to pretend you were swimming.

Jon

I would stick with 250-350 word articles about one specific keyword or topic. You want to be able to give as much information as possible surrounding that one topic so that you can ultimately rank well for it. Be sure to focus on header tags, title tags, and overall keyword placement within the article. Don't overdo it either, because you never know how the algo's will change in the long run. Also toss in a few links pointing to that page from VERY relevant articles, sites or best of all, blogs. Maybe do a free press release on it. Although it may never get read, it will be indexed and will count when major updates are done.

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Jon

My foot in your ass came first!


I'll pick anything that has to do with websites.

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katoved

What are your top 5 stocks (that trade on the US markets) to purchase right now and why?

Jon

Market research is your best friend and by far your first priority. Your questions are far too general, and I'm not going to other threads now.

To monetize any site, you first need to see what everyone else is doing to get a good idea on how things are working for them. Then you need to pinpoint the top 10 big wigs on the engines who are really making bank and incorporate all of their tactics (after much research of course) and create your own method for success. This may take a while, but if your domain is so great and brandable (easy to remember) then you will do very well in just a few months time.

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DruSam

For niche sites with 250-300 word articles, where is the best place to put contextual ads for the highest CTR?

Jon

Yes, stay away from the stupid mesothelioma crap. It's a red flag on Adsense now, because there was a huge surger of bullshit clicks and traffic for a fairly small industry. The only reason they payout so large per click is because every potential lawsuit and settlement is worth millions to them.

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Payton

Do you do any PPC arbitrage straight to supplied landing pages? Or do you always put up your own site and have ads?

Mainly in reference to lead based offers like free offers that just require an email address.

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Brad101

Here's my cheeky question, how much did you make with the porn network during the two year period? (I ask because I intend to dominate a fairly new niche using hundreds of blogs and cloaking similar to your porn network.)

Jon

This is not a stock forum. I don't invest by myself. I invested in a few hedge funds a few months ago and I let those guys do the work for me.

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Jon

There is no answer for that, it totally depends on the layout of your site and content, and niche too sometimes. I would do a borderless 4 ad unit leaderboard smack in the middle of the content. Toss up some pictures on top and let it go. Make sure the pixels have a 1 pixel border around them so they don't look like the ads (google's guidelines), aside from that, welcome to high CTR country.

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Jon

I have my own pages custom made. You can do the affiliate link stuff if you really want. From what I've seen it does just as well.

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juniodude

Maybe this isn't the right time and place to be asking this, but how and when did you start making money online?

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If you go parachuting, and your parachute doesn't open,and your friends are all watching you fall, I think a funny gag would be to pretend you were swimming.

Jon

Millions upon millions of Yen.

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Jon

The answer to that is on the about me section of my blog -- www.aojon.com

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juniodude

So for PPC arbitrage you will always stick with your theory of buying low and selling high? You will generally stay away from Google adwords?

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If you go parachuting, and your parachute doesn't open,and your friends are all watching you fall, I think a funny gag would be to pretend you were swimming.

Jon

Why the hell are you guys slowing down.. Cmon you Guest lurkers, join and ask away!!

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juniodude

Hehe, i'm trying to think of questions! my brain is going crazy, i know i have a lot of PPC arbitrage questions!

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If you go parachuting, and your parachute doesn't open,and your friends are all watching you fall, I think a funny gag would be to pretend you were swimming.

Jon

Yes, because that lowers profit margins like crazy. Why settle for 2:1 when you can be doing 6:1-8:1 on avg with cheaper traffic?

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juniodude

Do you use any "formula" to calculate what will be a good niche for PPC arbitrage?

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If you go parachuting, and your parachute doesn't open,and your friends are all watching you fall, I think a funny gag would be to pretend you were swimming.

Jon

That was sorta answered already with that how to pick a niche question on the first page of this thread I believe.


The only "formula" I can think of... if it's an expensive keyword, then it's worth doing.

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ChrisS

I'm too busy doing research on the big domain sites to see how they make money. ;P I don't know if I should advise the person I'm working with to turn www.domains.org into a registrar or make it an informational resource and sell advertising. I'm leaning toward the latter.

Thanks for these lightening rounds. I always learn something great.

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“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” – John Cage

juniodude

yeah jon, you are amazing..ill let others ask questions now...and just sit and watch

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If you go parachuting, and your parachute doesn't open,and your friends are all watching you fall, I think a funny gag would be to pretend you were swimming.

Jon

Is that a question? Doesn't look like one!

Anyhow, thanks for the compliments. Although I think future lightning rounds will be for members only, instead of all these lurkers. Sorry lurker kids, but either you join and contribute, or you keep wasting money on worthless ebooks and become part of the 95% of webmasters who can't make more than $100 a day.

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Jon

Thanks. And thanks for contributing to the cause! Tell your friends!!

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Jon

15 minutes to go.. let's see some new questions you pansies!

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DruSam

hahaha, my goes BLANK whenever there is a lightning round. I just panic because of the time constraints.

sknydave

You wrote about internet real estate here: http://www.aojon.com/internet-real-estate/

Do you think it is more important to purchase a site with a proven revenue history or a proven traffic history?