Creating A Ringtone Web Site That Reached #1 In Google And Made Me Money While I Slept - Full Tutorial
Part #1 - How I Got Started
Part #2 - The Gameplan
Part #3 - How To Make iPhone Ringtones
Part #4 - Getting iPhone Ringtones Up Online and Ready for Auditioning / Download
Part #5 - Optimizing The Site
Part #6 - Link building
Part #7 - Selling A Web Site
Part #8 (The Best Bit - read this if nothing else!) - What Did I Learn From All This?
* * * * * * *
Greetings all,
The following article is a full tutorial that tells EXACTLY how I built a ringtone web site that got to no. 1 in Google for a phrase that gets 40,000 "exact match" queries a month - and then sold the site to a major ringtone company.
This is a hefty tutorial but I make no apologies for that. It's packed with info and should be really useful to internet marketers of all kinds - as I believe it gives some insight not only into the ringtone niche, but into many aspects of internet marketing and some of the realities behind making money while you sleep. This tutorial covers all kinds of useful points - from SEO strategies, monetization, through to audio mastering and conducting a web site sale - and should give you some short cuts through things that were headaches for me at the time. If you're just looking for the marketing info, feel free to skip through the audio tech sections in the middle - but be sure to look at the summary, which I think is the best bit!
I sold the site a few months ago and I'm gutted that I did. By the time I sold it, it had reached around #5 in Google and was getting me some traffic and auto-pilot money... and then a major ringtone company contacted me and offered to buy the site for $x,xxx! I decided to cash out. Within a few months, the company had made a few minor modifications to the site, done some link building, and combined with the momentum I had already generated, this was enough to take it to no. 1.
I wish I still had the site but there you go. It's a lesson in asset management - if an asset is making you money and has the potential to go higher, hold on to it.
It's also a lesson in content management for the writer, artist or publisher. Your body of work, or catalogue, is your bread and butter. It is the thing you invest all the labour of learning and creation for, and the thing that you, the artist, are investing in while others do their jobs and get their 401k. It is the primary asset of the intellectual property creator - and if you're serious about the creative arts, it may be good to think about creating content that may still have value and make you money in years to come. When you have created good intellectual property, hang onto control of the asset if you possibly can.
I hope you enjoy the tutorial and get some benefit from it. -- Alex Newman
First of all, there's something of a preable to this. I didn't just wake up one day and decide "I'm going to make a ringtone website and rule the universe." I already had a background as a music producer and synth / keyboard player with my own studio; and I had the advantage of having a vault of audio files at my disposal - with all kinds of bits and pieces of tracks and sounds I had already constructed. I owned the copyright on these files and you should own the copyright on any material that you are planning to make into ringtones. I also had some experience of mastering my own audio and knowledge about how to create audio that might sound good on a mobile phone. I'll give some tips on this further down.
Next, I had a background in web design and had good HTML, CSS, Photoshop - and the tiniest amount of Javascript: enough to embed an existing Javascript player in a web page and make a couple of elementary tweaks.
Third, I had some experience of SEO. I understood enough of link building, on-page optimization and keyword research to set up a campaign with a decent chance of success.
Fourth, I had done much internet marketing study - and had an understanding of the marketing model that I was going to use. I was going to employ a "give away a lot of free content and then monetize with advertising" model in order to make the site profitable. Much of the information you need to learn internet marketing is available online. The rest, you can only learn by experience and by being on the field. I had done a good deal of marketing research online before I decided to make a free ringtone site. Much of this was learned by my experiments with other web sites in different niches, and by investigating blogs, articles, eBooks and video presentations of internet marketers.
The reason why I am listing these skills first, is that if you do not have the skills in the above departments, you will run into obstacles creating an effective ringtone web site. None of them are obstacles that cannot be overcome - but there's some work and a certain level of accomplishment required before you can begin to undertake a project like this. The first real obstacle I arrived at was that I didn't really understand how ringtone files worked. However, by being prepared to face this obstacle instead of running away from it, I actually overcame it quite quickly. If you are going to succeed in anything, I think you will almost certainly be faced with things you cannot do. The winners are the ones who commit to figuring it out and overcoming the obstacle, whereas if you are in the habit of avoiding all obstacles I think you will just bounce from one thing to another and not get results until this changes.
Now in a certain regard, I got lucky with my ringtone site. I got lucky because I stumbled across a blog post where someone mentioned that the iPhone ringtone niche had a lot of potential. However, in a sense you really do create your own luck and certainly did so in this case. I only stumbled across the info that tipped me off as to the niche's potential, because I put a lot of energy into study. I scoured blogs and forums about internet marketing. By studying hard, you put yourself in the position to recognize and act upon the really good opportunities when they come along.
Also fortunately, I created a detailed diary as I constructed the site, with a view to creating a tutorial. I'm really glad I did this as it now forms a large chunk of this article.
The last thing to note in this introduction is that I proved that you don't need to worry about having a "perfect match" keyword as your domain name. From the point of view of SEO, you could in theory acquire the domain name "bananafishringtones.com" and have as much success as I did. However, it is good to create a name that is a memorable brand.
Here is the original gameplan I created. It's interesting to note that this was written in the form of a personal business plan - before the site acquired any traffic. It should give you an insight into the mindset I had at the time - and into how it led to success.
I am going to construct (at least) ten sites, mostly in different niches and with different content types - in order to see which ones would bring in the income and multiply revenue (and also to “eliminate single points of failure”).
My niche choices were not entirely random. One such was the ringtones niche. I found a few threads with examples of people making money in this niche - and although some people are claiming it is past its heyday, other people seem to be nailing it: Here’s someone claiming to be making $1000 per day in this niche monetizing with azoogle and sending traffic with adwords.
Some say that this niche is oversaturated - however there are strong counterarguments to this - which essentially state that if a niche is saturated, it is because it has the strongest potential: You just have to rise above the pack somehow.
One advantage I do have is that I have steadily been building up a catalogue of my own electronic music compositions of the last several years - and so have an enormous amount of content that can be turned into ringtones. Having actual unique free content of my own to give away is a distinct advantage; also I can use this to cross-promote my music site.
I also have some ideas for creating viral traffic to the site in other ways: I could create youtube videos featuring the ringtones; and possibly free onsite tutorial content. As this recent post by Mark Barrera (Apr 2008) suggests - there is room for SERP ranking within the ringtone niche when targeting specific phone models. I am an iphone user and I know how to create an iphone ringtone - so I will start there. Looking at google SERP results, there is definite demand here - and there are all kinds of possible permutations of “long-tail” search terms for this which would pull in traffic - such as “how to create an iphone ringtone” ; “how to make a ringtone for my iphone” - “where can I get free iphone ringtones” - so some onsite tutorial content targeting these search phrases will be almost certain to pull some traffic. Two notes on this: 1 - as a general rule, the longer the search phrase that someone types into a search engine, the more specific and strong their interest in the results. Note 2 - I’m crafting my content to include several of these long tail phrases in a web page and still have it appear as totally natural, uncompromised content from the reader’s point of view.
Another lil’ advantage to my ringtone site is that I will feature flash rollover buttons to instant audition the ringtones. This uses a free tool available from Beathive - this cool tool generates an embeddable code. Any enhancements to the user experience add to the chance of the site going viral - i.e. getting linked / talked about by others through enthusiasm - and creating a snowball effect.
A possible challenge that I may need to address is that there have recently been highly publicized investigations into possible malpractice in the ringtones niche. It seem that certain companies advertising free ringtones might not actually be legit. This obviously affects the niche and damages the credibility of all - but I also want to make sure that any ads I place on my ringtone site are legit. I’ll need to do some investigation.
That’s it for the preamble and the market research; on to the business of creating the actual ringtone site and the ringtones themselves.
Creating a Ringtone Website part #3 - How To Make iPhone Ringtones - Full Tutorial
Here is a full tutorial on how to make ringtones for the iphone!
Note that this tutorial has been tested by me in OSX 10.4.11 but I am not much of a PC guy and so can’t tell you whether it will work on PC, sorry about that.
There’s actually a fair amount of tech involved in successfully constructing ringtones for the iphone - more than I originally expected even though I am an audio producer. For example, I discovered the hard way that there’s another whole layer of work involved with getting the iphone ringtones to the right loudness. More on this below.
First, here’s the breakdown on actually making an iphone ringtone.
Step 1: Creating / preparing the audio segment that you are going to use.
I am going to assume that you have already created / acquired the overall audio file, song, mp3 or recording you are going to turn into a ring tone. In my case, as I have been a music producer for years, I made ringtones from either sections of electronic dance tracks I had laying around, or I took audio files of synth sounds and instrumental parts I had composed and recorded. In your own case; I presume either you will take an existing composition, license a track from an artist or record company, or you will make a recording using instruments, the sheer unbridled creativity that is bursting out of you, and recording software such as Cubase, Pro Tools, Logic or Digital Performer. (I use Cubase). Please DO NOT put up ringtones made from files you do not own the copyright to. I do not endorse or recommend that in any way shape or form.
Next thing you need to know is that there is a maximum length that your iphone ringtones can be: and not everyone is in agreement on this figure! It is often said that the maximum length is 30 seconds; however I have created successful iphone ringtones that are 32 seconds. I’d recommend sticking to a max length of 30 seconds though, just to be sure. Also, I have read somewhere online of someone who hacked their iphone and ftp’ed the ringtones to their phone - who was able to get much longer ring tones. This clever soul also did an audio edit on the ringtones and put in a long “fade-in” - and set them to be alarm clock tones which woke them up gently. Note - I am not sure but I believe that hacking your iphone will void the warranty - anyway I feel obliged to state officially that I do not recommend that you hack your iphone! Anyway, in order to edit your audio file and cut out a 30-second (or less) segment, you’ll need to use an audio editor software. Some good examples include Wavelab (PC), Peak (OSX), Cubase (Both), Digital Performer, Pro Tools, Logic Pro (OSX)… all of these softwares are awesome, pricey, and can be complex - but there is some free stuff out there. In a pinch you could check out Audacity for a free audio editor for OSX - but I have to confess, I have been spoiled by the glorious, full-featured and expensive Cubase and I found Audacity lacking...
Specific instructions for how to cut out and export your audio segment will vary from editor to editor, but essentially the process involves cutting the audio to size, setting left and right “markers” if necessary (i.e. in Cubase), putting in any desired fade-ins / fade-outs, and then “bouncing”, exporting or simply saving (i.e. in Peak) your audio file. In Audacity this is accomplished via File > Export as AIFF. Ideally, export your file either as an .aif (AIFF) file if you are on OSX or as a .wav (WAV) file if you are on PC. I recommend putting the file on your desktop in order to make it easy to locate as we move along. You should easily be able (OSX) to audition your new audio file by highlighting it, hitting Command-I and pressing the play button that appears in the info window.
Step 2: Converting your audio to an iphone ringtone file. [ Note - this step worked for iTunes 7.6.2. I've greyed it out because you need to do something slightly different now: In iTunes 9.0.2 preferences the "Import Settings" tab has moved - you can find an up to date tutorial for the following step here ]
The next task is converting audio segment into an m4r file (this is the format that apple uses for iphone ringtones).
First, open itunes and go to the iTunes > Preferences menu. Select “Advanced” from the options and then “Importing”. Select “Import Using: AAC Encoder”. You may wish to adjust the “Quality” setting but in general I’d advise using the “Higher Quality (256kbps)” setting - you want the ringtones to sound as good as possible!
Once you have adjusted these preferences, hit “OK”.
Next, drag the audio segment which will become the ringtone into the main itunes window. Highlight it, and then go to Advanced > Convert Selection to AAC.
Then, locate the file you have converted. If you are in OSX this should appear in Users > *Yourname* > Music > iTunes > iTunes music - possibly in a subfolder. It will have the same title as your original audio segment but with the file extension “m4a”. Note that it will NOT be in the “ringtones” folder… typically it will be either Unknown Artist > Unknown Album or will be in a folder with the title of the artist / album if your audio file had the relevant iTunes tags.
(Note - you could also locate the converted file using the itunes search. After entering the track title, you will see two versions of the file - one being the unconverted audio, the other being the converted file ; select the one with the most recent date and time on it and hit Command-R. If you just try to reveal the file using Cmd-R on the previously selected and converted audio, you will reveal the original audio, not the converted section.)
Next step - this is important - *copy* your new m4a file to your desktop. I have found that getting the ringtone back into itunes and onto your iphone doesn’t work properly if you try to do it with the file in situ: It seems to be that because the file is already in itunes as a song, it won’t let you re-import it as a ringtone.
Next, change the extension of the file ON THE DESKTOP from “.m4a” to “.m4r”. OSX will ask you if you are sure that you want to choose m4r, hit “Use .m4r”.
Congratulations! You have created an iphone ringtone.
Be sure to test / audition this ringtone on your iphone. Drop the ringtone into your itunes Library > Ringtones folder, connect the iPhone, and Sync (if this does not happen automatically) - it should upload. Be sure that the "sync ringtones" button is checked. Next, to audition the ringtone in the iPhone, go to Settings > Sounds > Ringtone. You should be able to select your ringtone and listen to it. Make sure it sounds good when the phone volume is turned up loud.
Step 3: Advanced - mastering your iphone ringtones for best sound quality.
When I created my first iphone ringtones, they were sometimes either too quiet (when the phone rang I didn’t always hear it going off) or too loud (distorted and nasty sounding when the iphone was at full volume.)
I quickly realized that I would have to experiment with “mastering techniques” in order to get the ringtones right. This step is a technical - and it’ll be greatly advantageous to have audio production skills here. However, this can make quite a difference to the quality of your end results and so it’s quite an important step in order to put the cherry on top of the cake, so to speak. Especially if you are either giving away or selling your ringtones at the end of the day - you’ll want them to be top notch.
I’ll break it down as simply I possibly can and provide links to as many free resources as I can in order to get you on your way. Audio mastering is actually a highly advanced art and science - with top mastering studios charging mucho money for their services - and for good reason: mastering can make a huge difference to the sound quality of a piece of music when it is either heard on the radio or played back on your stereo or a club sound system.
Essentially, mastering involves fixing any digital errors, getting the EQ (amount of bass, treble and midrange) right, and getting the loudness and energy of the recording right so that it sounds great. There are all kinds of techniques and expensive equipment that mastering studios use in order to give tracks that big sound….
However, we’re not going to go ballistic. Our mission here is simply to get the tracks sounding good on the iphone - which basically means getting them so they are loud enough that you can hear when your phone is ringing, but not too loud so that they are distorted and messed up. This is actually a bit of a trick when the ringtone needs to be reproduced through the iphone’s tiny speaker… but the good news is that if you have an iPhone, you can audition your results and make sure you get them right.
In order to do this properly, I essentially experimented with creating several versions of audio files, all with different amounts of EQ, normalization, etc. - and played the resulting files back on the iphone to find out which ones sounded the best. I needed to get to the core of the matter; find out what were the causes of distortion, and find out if there were settings I could always rely on for great results when creating iphone ringtones. I’ve summarized the results of my experiments below.
There are certain types of sound which are prone to distortion on the iphone. The most challenging I found to be piano sounds. This was a surprise - I half expected low bass sounds to distort most, but for the most part I found bass to be reproduced cleanly - although obviously with virtually nothing in the way of real trouser-flapping low-end through the tiny iPhone speaker. This is good news; I found that I didn’t really need to do any EQing to get the best from my ringtones: sounds in the most audible part of the spectrum (i.e. the midrange) will usually break up before the bass does.
Here’s the simplest summary I could make, of what to do when creating a ringtone in order to get the best sound quality. If you are serious about this I totally recommend making several versions of a ringtone - each with different mastering settings - and testing them all, keeping the one which works best. So it will be important to keep all your audio files organized and LABEL THEM so that you know which one is which. It’s also good to make notes on your settings and what you did to the file; so that you can repeat the process in future if need be.
To make ringtone louder:
First, make sure that your file is “normalized”. If you are still constructing your song, you can do this simply by adjusting the master output so that the audio level of the track peaks just below zero dB.
However if all you have is a finished track or mp3 file, you’ll need to perform a normalization function. Don’t worry, it’s just a technical term for volume adjustment and has nothing to do with making your ringtone sound just like all the other ringtones… Normalization is a built in function of audio editing softwares such as Peak or Wavelab. To perform the normalization process, an audio editor software will find the highest “peak” and turn the volume of the whole track up so that this peak reaches full volume. It’s the loudest the file can be without digital overload or without changing the sonic characteristics of the audio file. Just to confuse you, the technical term for full volume of a digital audio track is “zero dB”.
As an alternative to Normalization - say for example in Cubase, you could import your audio segment into an empty audio document and play it back, watching the output meters and adjusting the volume so that the final output peaks just below zero dB; then “export” your audio section to create a new file which will peak at full volume.
However, normalization is often not enough: I sometimes found that even when I had normalized an audio file to zero dB, it was too quiet. So if you still want the ringtone louder; which you often will, you can do one of two things: Either EQ out some of the low bass (i.e. using a shelving EQ hard or a high pass filter to remove everything below, say, 80 Hz) and then re-normalize, or add compression or limiting to the file - and this needs to be performed from within an audio editor software using a plug-in.
There are a myriad of mastering plugins available and some are bundled with audio editor software - however one I totally recommend for this process is George Yohng’s Limiter which is totally free, sounds awesome and is available as a VST Plugin for Cubase on both PC and Mac, and as an AudioUnit plugin.
Try the following settings for George Yohng’s Limiter:
Apply the Limiter as an insert effect on the master output channel and set the master output channel’s fader to “zero dB” (i.e. about 80% of the way up).
Threshold -2.5dB
Ceiling -0.1dB
Release 50ms
Adjusting the Threshold setting will adjust the final output level of the audio - with lower Threshold settings leading to a louder file. To make a ringtone quieter:
If the ringtone is distorting when you have uploaded it to the iphone, you’ll need to chill it out a little. The simplest way to do this is to normalize it (as above) - only select an output setting of perhaps -3 or -6 dB either for your normalization function or for the master output fader. The best solution here would be to create a few files at different volumes; and test them out by playing them back on the iphone to see which one sounds best. If you are applying limiting to a file, try raising the threshold a little (say to -2.0dB) and then turning down the master fader on the output.
Summary
Well, you’ll need to know a lot more than this if you intend to become a mastering engineer - but hopefully that’s got you on your way towards creating and using some top-notch iphone ringtones. I hope it wasn’t hideously technical and confusing - let me know! The next tutorial in this series on designing a ringtone web site will cover how to set up the ringtones for auditioning and downloading from the ringtone web site itself….
Part #4 - Getting iPhone Ringtones Up Online and Ready for Auditioning / Download
Now we come to the point where we have created several m4r ringtone files - and now we’re ready to upload the iphone ringtones to the website and make them available for auditioning and download.
This part actually ended up being more complex than I was expecting - so if you are planning on making a ringtone web site for iphone ringtones, I hope that reading this blog may well save you some of the tribulation and frustration that I experienced! On my iphone ringtone site, I made the ringtone files available both for instant preview, and for download as m4r files. We’ll deal with auditioning and download separately, as they both involve quite different processes.
I used an html table system in order to organize the ringtone download area and keep it tidy. Some say that you shouldn't use tables in html but the truth is that they should still be used for data tables - just don't use them for major aspects of layout.
Step 1 - uploading m4r files and making sure they download correctly.
Now I at first thought that it would be a simple matter to upload the m4r files to a designated folder on my web host, and then link to them so that anyone could just download them - in the same manner as you might do if you were making mp3s available for download etc. However, when I tested this method out at first (in OSX), there was a problem. When the files were downloaded from the site back to my desktop, instead of downloading as “.m4r” files , they downloaded as “.m4r.txt” files - which were full of plain text gibberish. When I edited the file extension suffix back to .m4r everything worked fine - but I wanted my ringtones to download cleanly and immediately be ready for action. I didn’t have the faintest idea how to make the files download properly.
I posted my query on a couple of online forums and received a rapid answer! Techie types love the opportunity to display their knowledge, and if you post your question in such a way that they are going to look really smart and cool if they answer, they usually take the bait really fast ;)
In short, my web host needed to configure the server to recognize the “mime type” for m4r files.
I opened a support ticket with the ever-awesome Hostgator and within a couple of hours they had sorted it all out by modifying my .htaccess file. The response I received from them was as follows:
Hello,
I added to your .htaccess file this line:
AddType application/octet-stream m4r
This will cause browsers to download the file by default. Let us know if you have any issues with it.
If there is anything else we can help you with do not hesitate to ask.
( Here’s my affiliate link to Hostgator just in case you should feel sufficiently inspired to want to sign up for web hosting with them and earn me a little commission!)
It’s quite likely that many other servers will not have configured the mime type for m4r - so you may well need to go through the same process as I did with your web host.
Step 2 - creating audio previewing for your ringtones.
Now a simple way to do this would be to create separate mp3 files of your ringtones - and put them up alongside the m4r files on the site, so that users can listen / download.
However, I wanted to do something a bit more fancy than this - and fortunately I knew exactly how to do it. My dear friends over at Beathive have created a really cool free tool for audio previewing - the Beathive Playbutton! [note - this is no longer available. There are however many Javascript audio players freely available that you should be able to find with a few searches. ]
This part wasn't too difficult. I pretty much followed the rules for "on-page optimization" laid out by Google themselves and by Brad Callen. If you follow these, I can't see how you would go wrong.
As for advertising, I used Widgetbucks and Kontera. I'd say to use Adsense if you can - and a leaderboard under the headline is known to be one of the most effective placements.
One of the best things about this site, from the link building point of view, was that I had something really good I was giving away for free. That made link building a snap - because I could post links in the right places without it seeming like I was taking anything from anyone. I wasn't, I was there to give away free stuff and people are happy about someone with gifts knocking on their door than they are a salesman. Beat this in mind in marketing - it's always good to make the deal as sweet as you possibly can.
Here are the link building strategies I used:
1) I did google searches to find the people already looking for free ringtones. "Where can I get free ringtones" - and variations on this. I simply posted the link as an answer where appropriate. I also trawled the top 100 for several keywords related to my site and sought to acquire links from some of the these sites. Not only are they high ranking sites with powerful "link juice", but they also get traffic that's highly targeted to my site and my links will get some of that. Those are the sites I want my link to be on!
2) Blog posts about ringtones, lists of free stuff available online.
3) SEOChat's Pagerank search. I put in the phrase "ringtone blog" and looked for places that were appropriate for my links.
4) Youtube. I made little 30-second "videos" (they were just simple iMovie vids - audio files with placeholder graphics and captions) featuring the ringtones, keyword optimized, with a link to my site. I then posted the youtube videos as responses to other relevant videos to get more traffic. At the time, however, I did not know as much as I know now - and I must confess, I hardly got any traffic from Youtube, and only a piffling number of views to the ringtone "videos".
I completely missed the BIG SECRET of youtube - to build links to the Youtube vids themselves. This is what enables some vids to float to the surface and others stay at really low play counts. Take a look for yourself - pick some youtube vids and dump their URL into Yahoo Site Explorer. You'll see that there's a correspondence between the number of pageviews and the number of links to the videos. This also helps the videos get ranked in search engines - and Youtube pages tend to do nicely in Google - probably also because the internal linking structure of youtube supports high SERP placement. After all, they are a Google company, they ought to be able to build pages that rank in G!!
Now that the site is gone - it's still easy to look at the linking strategies that have been used to send it higher - and see what they did to take it over the top. You can do this with any site - and it's a great link building strategy. Simply analyze the link profiles of your competitors, and see if you can get those links for yourself.
That's pretty much it. I did this as gradually as I could over the first few months of the site being live. After this point, the site sat there making me a little money every day until I was offered money for it and sold it.
Here comes another shameless plug: For more link building tactics, check out my Link Building Black Book.
This part is actually rather complex - and for those of you who haven't done it before, there are a number of possible pitfalls you want to avoid. The company I sold to, wanted to purchase the hosting account too, with a view to retaining the Google positioning of the site - and this was tricky because I had the site hosted as an add-on domain. I had to pull the hosting on my other sites that were hosted on the same account, and set the add-on site to become the primary domain. All issues of domain and hosting transfer were handled by the support departments of Godaddy and Hostgator respectively, and hats off to them. I can't emphasise enough how important it is to have domain and host services with good support, because if something technical comes along as it often does in IM, you'll need them.
The transaction was handled safely through escrow.com and I definitely recommend escrow. There are a few hoops to jump through, but it is worth it from the point of view of safety and trust.
Additionally, there was contract paperwork - a "Sale of Assets" document and also a non-exclusive licensing agreement; as I wanted to maintain control of my copyright while allowing the buyer to continue to use the audio content on the site. This part I can imagine being very tricky for a novice - and the only thing I can suggest is that you might need legal advice. For myself, in the music business I have dealt wth so many non-exclusive licenses and record company contracts etc, that I was able to take this in my stride. You may be able to find some standard templates online.
Beyond this, the best advice I can give is - communicate well! I feel as though I must have exchanged a couple of hundred emails with the buyer, a stranger on the other side of the world, during the transaction process. It took a lot of work, patience and mutual goodwill to perform the sale. There were a lot of details and absolute clarity is an ideal that you should do your very best to strive for.
Part #8 (The Best Bit) - What Did I Learn From All This?
It is now Dec 2009 - 18 months since I built the site and 7 since I sold it. My ringtone site is now at no.1 in Google for my main keyphrase. I should never have sold it. If I had just been patient and done some more link building, it would certainly be making me $xx while I sleep every night, without me having to do very much at all.
The new company did some nice link building, and rearranged the page so that the previews were not on the main page (this was causing slow page loading) - and instead there's a "download" link which opens another page with the preview and m4r files. They've also expanded the site a little to include phone wallpapers - but in essence it's the same site. They did the smart thing and employed an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" approach to the on-page text. It was doing well in Google so they didn't mess with it! Smart.
I learned some significant and powerful lessons about business, marketing, and web sites.
1) Once again, I have PROVED that it really is absolutely and entirely possible to make money while you sleep. It is not a hoax. Don't give up your day job, because it often takes a chunk of work, and despite what some salesmen might tell you, it is not an easy transition. It takes work and sacrifices and it is not the right path for everyone. But I have tasted the "money made while I sleep" - and let me tell you, it tastes REALLY sweet when you make money while you sleep in a way that also creates benefits for others. It tastes way better - to me - than "go to work, get paid, go back to work again" type money. It is the true taste of success and if you are talented and creative, there may be an empire out there waiting for you to build it. This is the point where I make a shameless plug for my book - go buy it now and allow me to fill you up with a mountain of ideas and tips for how you too might actually be able to make money while you sleep.
2) Although it's not always the case, you can see from the above that it often takes a big chunk of work to get a good set-up rolling - but after a while, the amount of money you can make starts to overtake the amount you would have made if you just worked that many hours at your job. An empire cannot be bult in a day. My little one page ringtone site made me money while I slept every single night for almost a year - until I sold it - and if I had not sold it, it would still be making me money every day, completely on auto-pilot.
3) This kind of setup is only possible on the back of some study, knowledge and experimentation. As the famous saying goes, "In order to have marketshare you need mindshare." Most people in internet marketing or in many other fields, don't get it right first time - and the top internet marketers usually cut their teeth for a few years before they really hit it. There's a learning curve but you only get it by doing it. The first few runs are usually how you get your education - so be prepared to study HARD and be prepared to be in there for a little longer than you first imagined.
The good news about this is that educating yourself is a tremendous investment and time spent becoming more knowledgeable is time very well spent. In fact, I would pretty much go so far as to say that if you place the highest priority on study and learning - and set out to become as knowledgeable as possible on a handful of related topics, within the context of a little knowledge of a broad number of topics, you will be in a strong position.
4) Don't sell your profitable assets! A fair company sale price often touted is 3 x EBITDA plus inventory - but a web site is different. If it has a type of content that is "evergreen" - or even, which is going to become more popular in a few years, if it will continue to make you money on autopilot without you having to do much, and if the potential reward for further development is high - I would say that it might be worth more than 3x EBITDA. Don't cash in assets that generate actual passive income unless you really, really have to - or unless you can switch them for something that generates greater passive income. It's the goose that lays the golden egg. I'm bummed I sold my ringtone site - but glad I got my education.
5) A web site, in order to achieve the kind of over-the-top success we dream of, has to beat out the competition in critical areas. It has to be better than what's out there. More interesting, more stuff for free, more useful, more elegant to use. Have something that is slightly rare, but in high demand. Have something for free that all the others are reluctant to give away.
6) Seek "profound simplicity". Can you explain what your web site is or does in one short sentence? People need to be able to "hang their hat" on the concept easily. And your navigation should be incredibly simple and obvious.
7) Do your research first, and be prepared to brainstorm a number of ideas before picking the winner. If you are looking for SEO traffic - do your keywords actually get a lot of "exact match" searches? How many? No point in building a site to make money from, if no-one is really interested. Do you know what percentage of the Google traffic goes, on average, to each of the top 10 places for your chosen search term(s)? Do you know what kind of eCPM you are likely to get from this traffic? Do you know what sort of eCPM you should be striving for from your advertising? It takes building a few sites before you get the hang of crunching the numbers and learning how much traffic you need to reach your targets. The good news is that new content can always be added to existing sites; and then you can link-build to it and funnel in more traffic. If you're going for search engine traffic, first class link building skills are of prime importance.
But get the balance right. If you try to optimize for a really massive keyword - like "ringtones" - you'd better have the resources to get the site up to the level of the competition, or you will not get a look in. How many links are there to each of the top 10 sites for your chosen keyword phrase? Not only do you need to know this information, but you need a concrete gameplan for how you are actually going to get that many *quality* links. (It's easy to get crappy links but these are not really worth anything like as much as a good one). If you have no experience in the reality behind building the kinds of numbers of links you will need to make the kind of money you are after, might be best to aim for an easier 2 or 3 word phrase first. Get to the top for this, then you can funnel some of that juice to another site, helping it get up there.
8) A winner has that certain feel to it. It appeals to your sense of logic, not just your emotions. You find yourself thinking "This has to succeed" - and you can explain why if you put your mind to it. Yet also, it glows for you in a certain way that is beyond logic. Another thing - ignore the initial excitement. You get that every time you have an idea. The difference between a good idea and a bad one, is that with a good one, the excitement is still there when the "love at first sight" for the idea has worn off. Are you, deep down, really excited about your ideas? Be really honest with yourself here. People often hold on to ideas that deep down, they know are not all that good. They do this because they may already have put a lot of work into something and don't want to let it go. They don't want to admit to themselves that they would be better off wiping the slate clean. But if an idea really isn't all that great, or has some kind of hole in it, the sooner you can let it go, the sooner you can get on with the business of thinking up something really fabulous.
9) The best internet businesses are "empires". They may consist of one site, but sometimes they are made from several sites - each with its own specific purpose in the pyramid. The empire is like a mini-city that has to have a lot of VALUE for people. Like when they want to go out, they say "I'm going into the CITY tonight." They want to go where the action is - so you need to be that action.
10) Put a lot of work into the site to make it over-the-top. I don't just mean in the amount of content - but have a clear and concise idea of how your site really is going to be the best thing out there, and then actually deliver the goods. Don't just be "another xxx". There's no point. xxx already did it. You have to have something. Also, your site needs to appeal to the emotions of the USER, not just to you. The user doesn't give a flying crap about you. Get used to it. They are in it for what they can get out of it. So, one of the critical ways in which many fall down is that they are unable to "get over themselves" and over the idealistic world they would like to live in. Don't bother creating a site out of idealism if you want it to make money. If you want it to make money, it needs to deliver VALUE to the consumer. It's important to understand this. I don't at all mean that you should forget your ideals. I just mean that if your ideals are out of sync with the marketplace, you will get clobbered. I have a friend who built an amazing web site in the music niche - but it had a fatal flaw: It was built, really, around his ideals concerning how the world "ought to" treat musicians. He had the motive that "artists should get paid" which is fine and noble - but it failed to see that the old model by which artists were getting paid, was getting destroyed - and that such nobility would do little for real customer acquisition. It was sad, but the site floundered. His idealism would never be able to change the way of the world.
Instead, harness the power of the way things are going. There is a huge amount of movement and energy just waiting to be tapped - and billions of people in the world who are mad hungry for something better than what's out there. Look at the iPhone - fastest selling handset in history! Also - one of the good things about web sites is that often, all they need is some changes and they can take off. Don't throw away any "failed" web sites as the work that was done can still be valuable.
11) Success is skewed. The one who comes in first will get most of the attention, whereas the second-placer, despite the fact that they worked almost as hard, will get almost none of the limelight. Be the winner - but when you win, watch out, because someone is going to be very jealous.
12) Once again - the best money while you sleep methods are the ones that provide the biggest benefits to others. You don't need to be greedy to get rich! Go out there and figure out how you can make people's lives more pleasant. Go out there and figure out how you can thrill them, blow them away, make them happy. Make this the entirety of your thought. It's a really weird paradox but trust me, it works.
Forget about yourself for a minute. ( I don't mean that you should give away your belongings. You will not be in much of a position to help people if you yourself are starving. The more assets you have, the more you are able to help others. ) What I mean is, think about systems you can create that benefit people. Think "What is the very best thing I can possibly create, or be a part of, that people will go absolutely bonkers for."
This is the right focus - you are thinking about the customer, and that is the thing that will bring you success. It is a beautiful paradox. Get over the idea that you are "giving away the farm" by focusing on them - you are not. It flies in the face of what most people are taught about wealth. They are taught that wealth is "either you have it or I have it". That's the way money and numbers work - but it is not the way wealth works. Providing ultimate value generates leverage and leverage is power. Wealth enables structure, expansion, the manifestation of ideas - and these things enable others to be more successful too. Now go out there and make it happen!
* * * * * * *
Well there it is folks! I hope this mega-tutorial was of benefit to you. Let me know. And if you liked this, I think you'll love my latest book Secrets Of The Rich.
-- Alex Newman
© Alex Newman 2009
