USAHA BERSAMA: January 2015

15 Essential Metrics for Webmasters and Internet Marketers - DailyBlogTips

15 Essential Metrics for Webmasters and Internet Marketers

Posted: 30 Jan 2015 02:50 AM PST

I am a big fan of measuring and tracking things. Sure, I admit it’s a pain to collect the data and analyze it, but I know how important it is to my business, or pretty much to any of my endeavors (e.g., losing weight, getting better at a sport, and so on).

If you are not yet sold on the importance or tracking things, or if you would like to know what exactly you should be tracking as a blogger/webmaster or online entrepreneur, then check out this presentation I came across a week ago or so.

It’s called The 15 Most Critical Metrics for Internet Marketers. Right on the first slides you’ll come across a motto by Peter Drucker (a famous business/management consultant and author) which I like a lot: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”

Below you’ll find the whole presentation. Enjoy.

Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

ProBlogger: 9 Copywriting Rules To Create Hypnotic Posts Your Readers Will Love

9 Copywriting Rules To Create Hypnotic Posts Your Readers Will Love

Posted: 29 Jan 2015 06:00 AM PST

Image via Flickr user Daniel Lee

This is a guest contribution from Hassan Ud-deen.

Your blog posts have a purpose, right?

You want your readers to take a specific action after reading your post. It could be to: like, share, subscribe, comment or just think about something. Either way, you're aiming to elicit a response.

And It doesn't matter if you're writing a sale letter, a blog post, or an email.

If you aim to evoke any kind of response or action… you're writing copy.

Funnily enough, most of the content marketing style writing you read now, is heavily influenced by copywriting principles that marketers (who violently squeezed the power out of every word to make their copy super effective or go to bed hungry,) used to sell to complete strangers.

So let's revisit the raw "old school" copywriting roots of blogging/content marketing and discover the powerful principles used to make millions from the written word, and how they apply to writing popular posts today.

1 Put On Your "Blog Detective" Hat

In the marketing world, a hook is the one story, idea or feature that races out the screen and locks the reader's attention in its jaws.

Copywriters would dig through sales literature, interview previous customers, and brush up on the history of a product. All in search for the one undiscovered piece of information that made a reader's eyes jump out of their sockets.

Legendary copywriter John Carlton calls this putting on your "sales detective" hat and getting into a "Bogart-like" gumshoe frame of mind.

The same principle can be used to craft irresistible posts that spread like wildfire.

Jon Morrow is a perfect example of this. The only difference being that he wore a "blog detective" hat instead of a sales one.

Before his posts went viral on Copyblogger, he noted the number of comments on almost every post, analyzed the type of comments being made, and studied the social media statistics for years.

Jon's thorough detective work allowed him to develop a deep understanding of the heart-warming dreams, worrying problems and crippling fears of the Copyblogger audience, resulting in posts that exploded with comments and shares.

If you want to write posts that go viral, put on your blog detective hat and study popular posts, dig through comments, analyze them, and look out for patterns.

You'll find exactly what your audience wants to know, and be able to deliver hot content that they will love.

2 One Thing Successful Copy and Winning Posts Have in common

Highly converting copy and popular posts have one crucial element in common…

A magnetic, benefit-driven headline.

According to David Ogilvy: "On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents out of your dollar."

That means if you're headline isn't up to scratch, your product isn't going to sell, and you're going to be bleeding money.

If you're a blogger, your audience won't be sold on why they should click on your links and your your post aren't going to be read.

Take a look at the popular post section to the right here on ProBlogger.

My favourites are:

"The Ultimate Guide to Making Money with the Amazon Affiliate Program"

"7 Strategies for Growing Community on Your Blog"

"Can You REALLY Make Money Blogging? [7 Things I Know About Making Money from Blogging]"

Notice Something here?

They all promise an irresistible benefit to the reader.

We could spend hours discussing the anatomy of popular headlines, but there are two must- haves for injecting a hefty amount of stopping power into any headline.

Promising a mouth-watering benefit to the reader
Arousing the readers burning curiosity

If your headline does the two things above, that's a good sign.

Looking for more ways to power up your headlines? Jon Morrow's 52 Headline Hacks report is an indispensable guide

3 Strong Copy and Seductive Blog Posts Adhere To The Same Formula

Ever heard of the AIDA formula? It's a known formula for writing sales pages, but it can also be used to quickly create high-power blog posts.

A- Attention. This is your headline and your opening sentence, where you're looking to snag your prospects attention and quickly show that what you're selling is beneficial to them.

If you're a blogger, the only difference is that your readers aren't paying you with cash. They're paying you with their time and attention, and you're selling them on how reading your content will benefit them.

I-Interest. This is where you'll pique the interest of your prospects. Nudging them further down your copy by weaving a relatable story or describing a painful problem that your product solves.

In your posts, this is where you'd seduce readers further down the page by sharing a story or arousing their curiosity and emotions.

D-Desire. Here's where blogging and copywriting have a slight split.

In a sales page, this would be where you describe the benefits of your product and get your reader warm and runny over what you're selling.

In your posts, this is where you deliver your content.

A-Action. After being swept off their feet by all the amazing benefits of your product, this is where you invite your prospect to take some kind of action. Usually to make an order, cut out a coupon or fill in a form.

As a blogger, after your readers are charged up and inspired by the content you've delivered. This is where you invite them to take action by commenting, subscribing or clicking on a link.

Blog posts and sales pages both have the same goal: To get the reader to take action, and that's what the AIDA formula is designed to do.

So the next time you find yourself gazing at the ceiling with a blank page on your screen. Give the AIDA formula a try.

4 Long Post vs. Short Posts?

What's more effective, long posts or short posts, long copy or short copy?

Joseph Sugarman answers the question perfectly: "Copy is never too long if the readers takes the action that you request. Therefore, it can't be dull, it must be compelling, it must relate to the readers and, finally, it's got to be about something the reader is interested in."

This means that as long as you're providing value to your readers, keeping them engaged, and relating to them… the length of your post is almost irrelevant.

5 Adopt the Gun to The Head Writing Philosophy

When John Carlton started his copywriting career, he had no source of income, savings for only one more month's rent, and last a tank of gas in his battered car. (Not a nice place to be right?)

But instead of feeling panicked by his situation, he describes feeling eerily calm.

Why?

Because he had to create successful ads, or starve.

To do this, he treated each ad as if it was a life or death matter. Like their was a cold nozzle of a loaded gun pressed into to his head while he wrote.

So, how does one write when they have no choice but to create something that moves people to act?

You don't take risks.

You rely on proven methods that you know will work. In the world of copywriting this means using proven structures, headlines and devices. Relate this to blogging, and it means using proven headlines, blog post types and topics to create hard hitting posts.

You be as clear as possible.

If your reader loses interest, you lose the sale. Similarly, if your post is boring; you've just lost a reader. Use simple language and aim to be as clear as possible.

You always provide a juicy benefit to the reader

In a sales letter, you communicate the benefit your readers will gain from your product. In a blog post you communicate how your content will enrich their lives.

What can they expect to gain from your continuing to read your content? Be sure to let your reader know or risk losing him.

Give yourself no option but to write stellar content, and you will.

6 The Most Powerful Word in Your Writing Arsenal

Is the word "You."

Your readers doesn't care about what you want. What your interests are, or what you like. However they care, very deeply, about what they want, like and find interesting.

Constantly relate everything back to your readers by use the word "you" generously in your writing. It's about your reader, not about you.

7 Shock Your Readers Into Paying Attention

Another lesser-known copywriting trick used to craft hypnotic sales letters is to anticipate and answer objections before your reader can voice them.

Read any good sales letter, and you'll notice every time the reader can ask a question, it's answered immediately. This helps the copy flow and extinguishes any stress the reader may have.

You can do something equally powerful when writing your blog posts too.

In their book "Made to stick", Chip and Dan Heath discovered that we all have a little guessing machine running inside our heads. It's constantly trying to guess what's going to happen next.

And as long as everything goes according to plan, people stay a little bored and disinterested.

A powerful way to snap people out their guessing trance, is to break their guessing machine by knowing what they expect you to say, and deliberately going against it.

So instead of anticipating objections for a product, anticipate what your readers expect to hear and say the opposite (or something they're not used to hearing).

Take for example this post here by Carol Tice.

Carol predicts what the reader is thinking, and says the complete opposite. She simultaneously educates and shocks the reader. Instantly jolting their guessing machine and forcing them to pay attention.

If you want your posts to snap your readers into attention, attack their guessing machines with something unexpected. It could be unique advice, a controversial view or something that no-one else talks about.

8 Use Stories To Bond With Readers

Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic. They are ideally set up to understand stories- Roger C. Shank.

Stories stir feelings and charge you with emotion. Sometimes making you burst with excitement or flooding your world with sadness. Thanks to their extreme power, they are a popular tool amongst copywriters.

A recent experiment by journalist Rob Walker set out to test the power of stories and how they can add value to almost anything.

Rob hired a group of writers to create emotionally provocative stories about unwanted, cheap thrift store items.

He then placed the items on ebay with the story in the description.

The results?

They sold $128.74 worth of abandoned thrift items for over $3000 dollars. An overall value increase of over 2,700%.

By using stories in your blog posts, you arouse your readers emotions and create sympathy and make yourself more relatable. You'll also be able to cement ideas and information into readers brains with much more strength and clarity.

9 Electrocute Your Readers With Emotion

There's a reason why sales letters describe painful problems, amazing dreams, and heart breaking stories to readers before mentioning their products.

Emotion.

Copywriters rub salt into readers wounds and paint pleasing pictures to charge people with emotion. They know the only way to get anyone to act and to pay attention, is to get their hearts to beat a little faster. To raise their body temperature up a notch. To make them salivate with desire. To make them feel.

In a special report by Jonah Berger and Katy L. Milkman called "what makes online content go viral" one of the biggest revelations was that content that evokes powerful emotions is more viral than content that doesn't.

This makes sense. For people to take act, they have to feel.

So for people to actively share and promote your content, they have to be exploding with so much inspiration, ambition or hope that they can't help but spread your message.

While there are a ton of ways to inject more raw emotional power into your writing, the best way is to charge yourself up with the emotions you want readers to absorb.

Get flush with anger. Get extremely hyper. Get insanely happy. Then, discharge your energy into your writing.

One Final Thing

All the tips in this post can do wonders when it comes to creating popular posts.

But, if there’s one thing that could render all the above tips combined utterly useless.

It's value.

If what you're write doesn't bring value to your audiences lives in any way, no tip will ever help you create posts that readers bookmark and share.

How do you come up with killer content for your readers? Please tell me in the comments below!

Hassan Ud-deen is a freelance blogger and email copywriter who helps businesses use content to grow. You can find out more about him on his blog www.f-bombmarketing.com or if you need help with your blog posts or copy, shoot him an email or connect with him on Facebook.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

9 Copywriting Rules To Create Hypnotic Posts Your Readers Will Love

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

How I sold A website for 150k that I couldn’t for 25k

Posted: 28 Jan 2015 04:03 PM PST

This ShoeMoney Question was sent in by Mark from Gainesville, Florida. Because Mark’s question was chosen he will receive a ShoeMoney Shirt and a signed copy of my best selling book “Nothing’s Changed but my Change – The ShoeMoney Story”. To submit your question just email questions@shoemoney.com and if yours is chosen we will ship you out a shirt and book at our expense anywhere in the world.

Guide to buying and selling websites from my personal experiences.

In this guide I will walk you through my real life process, using real life examples.

Don’t expect every answer to be this long. I started writing and before I knew it I was 5,000 words in… so I put it together as a guide LOL.

To date I have purchased over 10 websites and sold 5 companies which were “web properties”. This post is based on my experience in doing so. Below I am going to take you through a deal that happened a couple months ago. The facts are real. The name of the property is not revealed.

While I am going to talk about my personal experience and real numbers keep in mind that the site is ONLY worth what the buyer(s) will pay.

Important legal protection notes – Please keep in mind I am not a lawyer, so any legal references I make should be taken with a grain of salt. With that said, I do have a lot more experience than most attorneys that I want to share because most know nothing about the internet and especially valuations. Please always consult an attorney. I recommend
Fraser Stryker. They have handled all of my legal dealings in buying and selling websites.

Seller: When selling a website NEVER reveal any internal details with the potential buyer without them signing a nondisclosure agreement and possibly a non compete form. This way you’re protected from the person revealing any of your data, but more importantly you know that they are not just inquiring so they can steal all your information as to how you do what you do. The standard length of the terms for these is 3 years but I have signed up to a 5 year agreement. Consult a lawyer for what is best for you but generally these are 3-5 year terms.

Buyer: The process of buying a website can take months to properly evaluate. The higher the dollar value, the more due diligence you are going to want to do on this to make sure your investment is protected. During this process you want to make sure your time is not wasted. While this process goes on you will exhaust a lot of resources. It isn’t just your time in doing all the due diligence that you’ll be paying with; the hard expense and time spent will be your lawyers. Once you have agreed on a price, then sorting out the contract to purchase has to go to the lawyers… They will go back and forth forever racking up a HUGE bill. Again, this depends on the price of the site and whether you feel it’s worth it or not. Again, this can really depends on the price for the site you’re considering.

For me – sites that are below $100k I have purchased with some basic agreements that I slightly altered from previous deals, or found on docstoc, and the transaction was done within a week. In a couple cases where the price was a few thousand the deal has closed in as little as a couple hours and I wired the money with zero agreement in place. But I am in that position where I am willing to risk that price without going through all the legal hassle. You might be in a different position. A lot of times when the seller is in talks with someone they will pursue other buyers and try to get a bidding war going for the site. This can all be protected by a LOI (letter of intent). This LOI will outline that you intend to purchase the website within X amount of days. During this period, the seller is not allowed to solicit other buyers. You can also spell out items like you will share 50/50 in the buyer’s legal expenses or whatever else you want to put in there. Again, consult a lawyer.

Side Note: When buying or selling if the site is over $500k I would consult a broker to handle the sale. Companies like RBC will handle all of this for you for a percentage of the sale. You shut up and let them handle everything. If the price is below $500k (broker’s evaluation) most brokers will not be interested. They are the go-to company in the industry for negotiations and will get you top dollar for your website. With that said, sometimes they will complicate the deal, refuse to sign a LOI or NDA, and be greedy. Plus, they will want you to sign an agreement with them that they are the exclusive representation for any sale of your site within X amount of time. This sucks cause if you get a offer on your site you can’t sell it without giving them their cut even if it’s a unreal deal.

Buying a website

Let’s just get started.

Whether people come to me who want to sell their site or I inquire about them, there are several questions I ask right off the bat:

Server operating system, core code language, caching method, database type ?
Unique visitors to the site per day, average per month, and per year over the last 3 years.
Main sources of traffic?
Gross topline revenue?
Profit per month averaged over the last 12 months.
Streams of revenue?
Number of Employees?
Is the existing team open to staying with the company?
Payroll expense broken down by position?
Server expense?
DMCA Takedown requests? If so, how many in the last year?
Any existing or past litigation issues?
Links to your privacy policy and terms of service to the site?
Do you collect email from current users? If so, how often do you email them?
Demographics of users if possible – geo location, age, sex, annual income, position in company, social profiles, social interests, whatever you have?
Any offers you have received in the past?
What sort of multiple are you looking to get (how many months revenue)?

Here were the response and my findings:

This site is 100% user contributed content.
It was doing on average 1.5 MILLION users per month.
The site’s standard profit was 99% of the gross revenue. Only expenses were server expenses.
The site was making 40k per month in profit.
The site was maintained by one person. The owner that was taking no salary.
The site was powered by 3 Linux servers. A main webserver running nginx and 2 mysql servers in round robin pulling data. The site was memcached out and super fast.
The site’s gross revenue streams came from banner ads, subscriptions, and other small misc stuff.
95% of the traffic was direct.
The guy selling the site gave me direct access to his Google Analytics so I was able to verify the sites growth, demographics, and everything else.
The guy said he had received no previous offers.
Over 50 take down requests today that had a backend that would not only remove the content but mail the person thanking them for reporting and letting them know it was removed. In seeing this backend I was surprised how easy it was and you could select all and it was done in less than a minute. If you manually reviewed them it would take less than 10 minutes but he said he just removed everything as it wasn’t worth the hassle.
He had not ever had any legal issues other than the take down requests. Nobody pushed them any further in the 10,000 plus.

His valuation and price to sell- $3,000,000.00 (3 million dollars)

My valuation process of the web property:

Here are things that hit me right off the bat.

The industry starting point for a web property is 1 year profit * 4 years.

His evaluation (asking price) was based on 6.25 years of profit at $3,000,000. My math – $40,000 per month * 12 months * 6.25 years = $3,000,000.00. That’s silly.

Here is what I really like about this site personally (which is a biggest part make or break for me):

It’s a site that I use EVERY day. It’s a great site with really cool features.
From a user perspective the interface is easy and simple.
From a development perspective it’s good to go. When I was given a read only login to the site I saw that all the code is VERY well written and commented properly. For my existing developers to jump in they would not have to research much on what did what.
Based on looking at his analytics the site has 85% organic traffic. This is a huge factor. The site is not going to live and die with SEO as is and is what I like to call “traffic stable”.
The site has ZERO seo optimization. The site is a PR8 and just doing the title tag and url properly it should kill it.
The site is doing NOTHING with emails. It is collecting over 15,000 emails per day, purely, organically, double opted in, and never emailing the users anything at all. Even if I just sent out a newsletter 2x a month that simply recaps the most visited pages and had cpm/cpc ads in the email that should rake in a decent amount of cash.
The site is doing NOTHING on mobile.

Here is what I like about this site from a financial growth aspect:

If I stuck with just the networks he is using now in talking with them they would pay me 10% more than he is earning right now.
He is not monetizing his site via affiliate links whatsoever.
Being the site has TONS of text content I think placing something like skimlinks or any inline text advertising would generate a lot of revenue.
The site is very geared to programmers. I believe I could strike direct deals with major brands like Intel, HP, and Oracle.
I think there is a possibility the site could do really well with a Job Board or classifieds being it’s SO focused on something that is VERY hard to reach for employment – good developers. I even envision doing this on a geotargeting level.

My crazy brain side note – He was asking a even number for the website. From a psychology perspective that round number and that he is a one person shop I assumed the following things:

He just came up with a random number.
He had not done any industry research for what similar sites have sold for.
He had a lack of confidence in himself to keep the site running and generating revenue.
He is just not experienced in selling a website.
He is ready to move on to the next project.

Of course there is no quantification for these… It might seem weird to you that I made all those assumptions based on the fact he threw out a round number. I still don’t know if they were correct but from previous dealings I have found them so. This can be good or bad depending on obviously which ones are actually true.

I currently maintain 3 major companies. This blog ShoeMoney, My annual conference, and my newest company the PAR Program.

These take 100% of my time and I have zero time to run a property like this.

Here are the expenses that I have to take into account should I decide to buy this site:

A CEO/COO/manager like full time person in charge of growing the site’s revenue and the day to day. This person would ideally work off of a yearly salary ($75k) plus a percentage of the growth of revenue of the site. Finding the right long term person to fill this role would take time.
A part time server admin. This would take away from our existing tech staff. It would not require a ton of time but I estimate $15k/yr for that position/time.
The server expenses would be significantly more. Our servers are all enterprise level and full managed with backups and everything. I would want to double the amount of servers in place ($1,500 a month) plus the expense of 2 load balancers for the front end which are $10k+ per (one for failover) to balance the front end web traffic. His servers were on the very cheap.
Even though I would like to be completely hands off, it is going to require some of my time. The majority of which is finding the right manager for this property. That is a major pain in the ass. But ongoing, my time would be required for monetization. I will go into this more in a bit but let’s just factor in a small dollar amount as $2k/month.

Baseline initial valuation:

My hard expenses based on above would be $126,000.00 annually rounded-up for misc crap that will no doubt come up – let’s just say $150,000.00 annually.
So here is where we are now based on a 4 year multiple.
His stated profit per year $480,000.00 * 4 = $1,920,000.00
Subtract my expenses at the same 4 year valuation for profit would be $1,320,000

Big Concerns after purchase going forward:

My biggest and really only concern is the legal risk. He was getting a lot of takedown requests per day and the site did not look, at first glance, that it could be making nearly the money it was. This could have kept people at bay from suing him with the content on the site. He tried to assure me that he is in full compliance with the DMCA and fair use acts so nobody could sue him. From my own experience I know that’s bullshit; anyone could sue for anything. Doesn’t matter right or wrong. If it’s a big enough company then it’s your ass, cause you will go broke just defending yourself.

Why this is a concern:

In 2007 I sold a company called AuctionAds. The sale amount I can’t disclose. Techcrunch said it was $15,000,000.00. I don’t know who wrote that or where they came up with that but I can tell you that was not the sale price.

But it doesn’t really matter does it? The company that bought the site is a 1.2 BILLION dollar company so people knew that it wasn’t chump change. The ridiculous amount of people that came at me and the company that bought it; it was crazy. I had a patent troll law firm who stated they had a patent on AFFILIATE MARKETING and since there was an affiliate component I owed them money. One guy said he had a patent on a digital advertising network and wanted money. People who were making money as users but not as much after I sold it contacted me saying I should give them money since I sold it.

So in my view, Auction Ads had VERY little legal risk. Now this site was getting over 50 legal letters per day. When the word gets out the site sold… and even if there is a non disclosure in place – people will find out or make their own estimation of the price and openly post about it. So I was really nervous with this site in that respect of companies realizing the company was now backed by a company with money.

My adjusted valuation and offer:

So after taking into account my crazy brain assumptions, my valuation after hard costs, and my vision for growing the site, the legal risk, and the standard starting negotiating point, I offered $1,232,483.00.

How did I come up with this offer?

The number I have in my head max I would pay is 2 million which is largely based on where I can take the site.
I knew immediately without even bringing in anyone just by moving his existing ad network over to my account I would make at least 10% more. Because of my position in the industry I get a lot of sweetheart deals.
Growth of the site was somewhat stagnant. It was close over the last 12 months plus or minus a few thousand a month. This really doesn’t factor much but I feel it’s important to mention because if the site was growing month after month I would have valued it significantly more based on the amount of growth.
Missed opportunities on monetization… geez…

Now you are probably asking yourself why the weird complicated number of $1,232,483.00.

Pro Tip – You never want to counter with a round number like 1.2 million or something like that. By having a complex number it shows off the bat that I really drilled down on everything. This is purely from my experience but I have found success with that.

The eye opening ‘come to jesus’ moment with the seller:

When you write your offer email it is VERY important to spell out why this site is worth nothing compared to what they are asking for. The seller needs to have a real “come to jesus moment” about the true value of the site. You need to EXPLICITLY spell out not only all your reasoning for your valuation but the PAIN you are going to have to go through. WAY OVERSTATE any negatives. I vastly expanded on my big concern of the legal risks and even included quotes from my lawyers who cited case law on why this was such a huge risk for me. Obviously really point out that you are hesitant and have other properties you are looking at but felt strongly that you would be a buyer for that amount. If you don’t have a LOI in place to prevent you from negotiating with other properties, you can say something like you have 2 other properties your investment group are looking at and they want to get in on one of these deals soon. For those who don’t recognize the psychology it’s a bit of social proof and scarcity. I don’t want to go into the psychology too much but those are always good.

Did the deal happen?

Now I would like to tell you this was a cinderella story and I got the site for a great deal and all that but this kid was hung up on 3 million. About half of my max I was willing to pay. He was pretty insulted by my email and responded pretty aggressively how I was clueless and it didn’t take a staff of people to run and all that. I responded simply by saying I completely understand, and respect his valuation of the site. I even went on to say that someone not in my position who has the skill-set to code php, manage mysql servers, experience with a site doing 1 million + unique visitors per day, and has nothing else to do but this full time and also has 3 million in cash would be his buyer. Ya good luck with that but whatever I wish him the best of luck. He responded more cordially and thanked me for taking the time to go through the process with him. He said he was going to fish around a bit and see if there were other people interested.

Side note – He recently disclosed to me he bought the site 4 years ago for ONLY $5,000. Good on him! Now before I get on to selling a site… I wanted to share my personal experience in selling nextpimp.com. At its peak the site made close to $2,000,000.00 in one year. I was in the exact same situation as this guy.. I had zero expenses – one man shop doing everything from coding, server stuff, monetization etc etc. I had people come to me with offers but I wanted 10 million dollars for the site. Nobody was interested. My ego got in the way and I was positive it was going to be the next YouTube. Long sad story short – In 2010 (after 7 years since it started) the money drastically was down. I sold the site for a fraction of what it made in one month =(.

Selling a website

This is actually a pretty fascinating real life experience I had. I had a website that I tried to sell to several companies for only 25,000.00 and nobody was interested. Then one day a company called me and I ended up selling the site for over $150,000.00. Thanks to the TV show Shark Tank!

Selling the site section of this post is shorter than the buying section because a lot of it is up top in the other section but here it is.

A couple years ago I had this site that was a web service. I don’t think many people knew that it was even mine.

The details of my site for sale:

The revenue model was to offer the service initially for free then up-sell other services on the backend. This was done through an email drop campaign giving value but up-selling people into our subscription model, affiliate offers, and random other stuff.
The site was getting about 500 new users per day into a very specific vertical.
The site didn’t do a huge amount of traffic but the conversion rate for the free users was huge like 70% of the users that visited the site initially opted in.
The site paid out 100% to affiliates OR users could get additional products in the service by referring friends.
The majority of traffic was coming from affiliates.

The site grew very quickly between affiliates or active users referring people. It was a great viral free user acquisition method.

The first month revenue was about $1,000 first month, 2nd month – $2,400, 3rd month – $4,200, 4th month $7,200. This was top-line gross revenue. Only about 10% was profit. So while those numbers looked awesome in growth, and they were, the 4th month in it was only at $720 in profit. It was snowballing well though because a lot of it was subscription and compounding.

So the valuation of the site from a baseline of 4* annual profit on the high side of the 4ths month revenue would be around $35,000.00.

I was only into this site about 4 months but it was a side thing that turned into something bigger and now needed support and affiliate management and all that crap I hate to deal with or divert resources to.

So I was ready to sell it.

I figured it would be a easy quick sale. Remember these users were awesome leads in a very targeted niche. Most of the companies that service these users will pay $2-$5 PER LEAD so I figured I would have people going nuts trying to buy this site. Forget about current revenue the value in hundreds of free leads per day was amazing. Or so I thought…

I went to several companies pitching it to them at $25,000.00. I was amazed that NOBODY was interested. I mean WTF!!!!!

Then a friend told me about this show called Shark Tank. If you have never seen, basically people pitch all their ideas to these 5 investors and sometimes they will fund them but most of the time the ideas are stupid. But what I found amazing was how the “Sharks” positioned their deals. It really got my brain cooking.

Then one day a company in the vertical called me and said that they heard I wanted to sell it and wanted more information about it.

The Position:

They asked the standard questions… traffic, revenue, asking price, offers before etc..

I cut the guy short and said, “I appreciate your interest and as you can imagine we get a lot of interest because it’s generating so many free leads per day that would be a goldmine for companies like yours. Just to get to the point I would take $125,000.00 for 90% of the website. I really love the site and want to stay involved so I would still like to be part owner. Also if the site sells within 1 year I want 25% of the purchased price. I am sure you can get 10x what I am asking for the site and if you are just looking to flip it then I would like to be compensated for that.”

Sounds crazy right? Well the guy said that sounded fair and the deal was done within 48 hours from the time he called me.

Here is the kicker. He sold his parent company that bought the site only 3 months after he purchased it. He emailed me to let me know and that he was not sure how to evaluate what 25% of that property would be worth being it was wrapped up in a big deal. He offered to send me $25k extra instead of trying to figure out what 25% of that part of the sale was worth. I am sure I could have got more, but I agreed to it. I figured – shit I already am happy, let’s not get greedy.

So that is how I sold the site. A site I couldn’t sell for $25,000.00 – I was able to sell for $125,000 with a 25k bonus kicker. Thanks to Shark Tank.

Its ALL about the positioning.

I have been involved with so many website sales in the last 5 years it’s crazy. Whether it’s my own or someone else’s. I also consult with this Venture Capital firm out of Omaha Nebraska that buys and sells websites, anyway, what I am trying to say is please pay attention to this when you are selling:

POSITIONING IS EVERYTHING

I made several mistakes in selling the site above.

I was contacting people and I sounded desperate.
I had thrown out a round number, 25k I was asking.
I was trying to sell a 25k site to 5-20 million dollar companies.

In the example above I not only changed the price but I also drastically changed the way I was selling it. I was no longer just looking to sell something cause I was done with it.

By holding on to a percentage of it I now took the position that I was looking for a “partner” that would have full control over the site but I still wanted to be an owner.

I also was now asking a price that the company would pay attention to. Again this was a 10 million dollar firm and while 125k property was not a HUGE risk for them it also was significant. A 25k purchase is perceived as “cheap”.

Important thing about taxes! Specifically long and short term capital gains. If you own a property for over a year then you only have to pay around 15% long term capital gains tax. If you own the property for less than one year then you are taxed at your normal rate (I think).

Anyway with the Auction Ads example it was about a 22% difference if we could get long term capital gains. Even though I only had that company for 4 months we were able to get long term capital gains because the core assets contributed were from another company called ShoeMoney Ads which was over 2 years old. That was a make or break deal so I am glad that worked out.

Reasons not to sell your website:

Ok here is the thing. Having excess money sucks. Now you have to figure out what to do with it. Yes I know…cry me a river. Just ask anyone though it’s a major pain in the ass and sometimes it seems like all you can do is lose it. Mo money Mo problems – Biggie

Do you have a plan on what you are doing with the money you are getting? If it’s just going to be to put in the bank then DO NOT SELL IT. I can’t tell you how many people I know worked their asses off to build a website. Sold it for 4 times revenue. Went on to their next ventures that flopped and now it’s 5 years later and their original property has grown 10x the size and they have a little money in the bank left over.

Reasons to sell a website:

If you are getting long term capital gains in one lump sum that is pretty awesome. Especially when you take into account how long it would have taken you to earn that much money paying your normal income tax. Also factor in if you sell and get one lump sum you will be gaining compounding interest on that money which even makes it sweeter.

What I am trying to say here is that your valuation might be at 4 years revenue but your actual true profit might be 7-8 times revenue by getting long term capital gains and compounding interest on that money. Hopefully that makes sense because it is a BIG deal.

Seth Godin wrote a book about quitting called The Dip. I don’t mean to say that selling your website is quitting… but when you think about it… it is. The best reason to sell a site is that it’s not something you enjoy doing anymore. For me AuctionAds, when it hit 2 million dollars a month in revenue, was now a bigger operation than a one person show. To grow the company I needed to hire a full support team, CEO, CFO, etc etc. Bleh that was not for me at that time. I was done.

Key Points I want to leave you with

Be careful – I have known people who have gotten sued for false or misleading claims when selling a website. While that might sound pretty easy and straightforward lemme tell you I have seen some CRAZY shit. Here is a example that isn’t even that extreme. One of my friends bought a domain name from someone saying that it was for his father for a father’s day present so it wasn’t really worth that much to him. Well he took the domain and launched a website that became very popular. The person he bought it from sued him for 10x what he sold him the domain for. He cited that the person made false claims on why they wanted to buy it and for some reason I guess that holds a little water. Anyway my friend ended up paying him 50k to go away (he only bought the domain for 10k). Anyway just be careful.

The deal isn’t done until it’s done - There are several reasons deals fall through. Usually from my experience its from a pride perspective over little stupid dumb shit. I was selling a site in 2009ish and everything was cool except for this one little stupid thing that me or the buyer were willing to budge on. It was so stupid. But it ended badly… something along the lines of me telling him to take his agreement and shove it up his ass. I know… Super Classy! But 2 days later we ran into each other at a conference and he was the last person I wanted to see. Long story short we got hammered together and the deal was done the next day.

Now on the other side of that I have had deals that were completely done and wrapped up. Even signed contracts….. but were not actually executed until the money was delivered. At the last minute the person pulled out. Yup it happens. It’s not money in the bank until its money in the bank.

Have a plan – I know I touched on this before but no matter if you are buying or selling have a plan with, know what you are going to do with the property or money you get from it. It sounds SO EXCITING to sell a company/website for millions of dollars… But there is a reason 80% of lottery winners end up worse off after 5 years from getting their money. I’m telling you money can really suck… especially if you have never had it or any experience on what to do with it.

On the flip side of that when buying FOR SURE have a plan. With my example in the first part of this you can see I had a general outline of what I needed to do as far as staffing goes… my expenses for that… my monetization plans.. So keep that in mind

Guy Kawasaki says there are 3 times you will sell your site: Too early, Too late, or just at the right time. I can’t agree more.

I hope you enjoyed these posts. HOLY BALLS, combined they’re about 5500 words!

Win a WP Theme with the TemplateMonster Giveaway - DailyBlogTips

Win a WP Theme with the TemplateMonster Giveaway

Posted: 28 Jan 2015 12:03 PM PST

It’s time for a new TemplateMonster giveaway. This time we’ll be giving out 3 licenses to any WordPress theme on their website. If you are looking for a new theme for your blog or website, read on.

The rules are pretty simple:

1. Visit the WordPress themes section on TemplateMonster.com and write down the number (for example #50731) of the theme you want.

2. Leave a comment on this post with the number of theme you want. You can describe why you liked it if you want.

3. Next Monday, February 2, I’ll be picking 3 winners at random among those who left a comment. The name of the winners will be posted on this same post as an update, but they will also receive a notification via email.

As you probably know I am a big TemplateMonster fan. I am a long time client, and bought several templates there over the years. I am sure you’ll be able to find one theme there that suits your needs as well.

Good luck everyone!

Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

ProBlogger: Design Trends of 2015: How Your Blog Can Adapt

Design Trends of 2015: How Your Blog Can Adapt

Posted: 28 Jan 2015 06:51 AM PST

This is a guest contribution from Owen Andrew.

Since mobile internet began to overtake desktop internet usage in January 2014, there have been major innovations in website design in light of this trend. In general, websites have been opting for a simpler, mobile-friendly design. Maintaining a blog in such a fast-paced environment can be a huge challenge, but staying on top of trends is required for success. In order to keep your blog interesting and relevant in the upcoming year, there are five design trends to keep in mind when continuing your work in 2015.

Image via shutterstock.com

Emphasis on Mobile

With so many people turning to their mobile devices when going online, it's no wonder that many blogs have begun creating content that is easy viewable on smaller screens. While mobile used to be a consideration, for web-savvy designers, mobile is now the focus. If a site doesn't work on mobile, you are now neglecting what is likely the majority of your audience, so start any web design process by focusing on mobile, and adapt that design to work on a desktop screen, rather than vice versa.

Focus on Typography

Thanks to Google Fonts, a free package of various typefaces, and a recent decrease in typography package prices, there has been renewed interest in creating a unique look through higher-end typography. Typography is not only useful for creating a more beautiful, unified look for your blog or website, it can also have a large impact on the readability of your text– especially on mobile platforms. For example, fonts such as Verdana and Georgia have been shown to have the best readability on screens. Small touches such as typography can lend a lot to a site, and help it stand out among the competition.

Minimalist Design

Because of the new emphasis on mobile, the web design landscape is expected to be much more minimalist than in previous years. The emphasis on flat designs and stripped-down icons will be more present in 2015. Apple, Microsoft, and Google have all embraced two-dimensional buttons and icons recently, and other websites are beginning to follow suit.

Large Background Photos

A major web design trend in the upcoming year, large background photos have become popular because of their ability to fill in an otherwise sparse, minimalist site. This trend has been facilitated by an increase in bandwidth across the globe, and allows for scrolling sites filled with large pictures and lots of information. Using large background pictures is great for home pages, and when used with flat-design buttons lends any website or blog an expansive, elegant appearance.

Expandable Menus

To accommodate the simpler look that is currently prominent in website design, bloggers and blog sites have started utilizing expandable menus in order to keep the blog decluttered and clean-looking. These expandable menus are often integrated with flat designs that use intuitive, minimalist icons rather than three-dimensional ones. These expandable menus are especially well suited for mobile, where they can stay out of the way of the text and media.

Blogging, especially for a living, is an extremely competitive field. Keeping up-to-date on current trends in design will enhance your content by supporting it with a cleaner, more modern look. The internet is estimated to contain more than 152 million blogs! Staying ahead of the curve on advances in technology and design will help your blog keep ahead of the pack.

Owen Andrew is a tech journalist and Apple enthusiast. When he's not writing or drooling over the latest Apple announcement, he's usually hanging with his kids and doing family activities. Feel free to give him a shout on G+ or Facebook.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Design Trends of 2015: How Your Blog Can Adapt

ProBlogger: Going from a Blog to a Vlog: What the Big Companies Can Teach Us

Going from a Blog to a Vlog: What the Big Companies Can Teach Us

Posted: 27 Jan 2015 06:31 AM PST

This is a guest contribution from social media analyst Matthew Yeoman.

The move online from only having a blog for your online marketing is, of course, one which has long since been abandoned. Brands now have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and on and on to promote their website and the blogs themselves.

A trend towards video, with YouTube leading the way, has lead to the rise of the vlog as the next big thing in content marketing. Many of the biggest brands in the world are on YouTube. They are killing it with views, subscribers (there's a familiar term for bloggers), and brand exposure.

I'm going to be using data supplied by SocialBakers to look at two channels: Apple and Red Bull. These two brands have contrasting styles of content presentation. You can see both extremes of how you can vlog successfully, and how this relates to blogging.

The Apple vlog strategy: Quality over quantity

We all know Apple to be one of the highest quality electronics manufacturers in the world. Their products are sleek, sexy, and right to the point. It's no surprise that their vlogging strategy follows this exact style guide.

Apple's vlog works on having high quality content at only the most high need moments. You can expect a new video on their page for a product launch, and their bi-annual events are also posted.

To look at the numbers, here are Apple's top ten most viewed videos as of Oct. 30 2014:

TITLE	VIEWS	LIKES	DISLIKES	RATIO [%]
Apple – Holiday – TV Ad – Misunderstood	6723096	46077	3891	92.21
Apple – Introducing iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus	5478799	34912	5081	87.3
Apple – iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus – TV Ad – Duo	5408369	21099	8642	70.94
Apple – iPhone 5s – TV Ad – Powerful	2855270	22496	2295	90.74
Apple – iPad Air – TV Ad – Your Verse	2526843	20616	1779	92.06
Apple – iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus – Seamless	2522625	15249	1823	89.32
Apple – iPhone 5s – Dreams	2042473	20378	1331	93.87
Apple – Mac 30 – Thirty years of innovation	1891868	26777	2114	92.68

Click on any of those 10 videos and you'll see a high quality video with incredible production values. This is part of Apple's overall brand strategy of being a bit elitist. Your brand strategy on both your vlog and your blog has to match the overall feeling of your brand as well.

An interesting approach that Apple has taken is that they have disabled comments on all their videos. Take a look at the Likes and Dislikes for each video, the ratio shows a percentage of how 'Liked' Apple is on YouTube.

Their Like/Dislike ratio is, at best, 92.68. At lowest, 70.94. They average out in the high 80s. This is highly unusual for a brand as they typically score much higher. Nike Football has nearly a 97% Like/Dislike ratio for their 10 most popular videos.

Apple is a bit of a controversial brand. In order to escape the nightmare of YouTube comments, they have chosen to disable comments. If your brand blog has problems with controversy following you, you may want to disable them on YouTube as well. Apple's low ratio shows that their YouTube page would likely be filled with negativity, avoiding it may prove to be a wise move on their part.

Everything I have just talked about parallels Apple's blog exactly. They write about the same stuff they're vlogging about, and they update just as often. The posts themselves are very well produced, and there's no comment section. Are you starting to see the similarities in blogging and vlogging now?

Red Bull fosters community and rapid video releases

Red Bull is a company so vastly different from Apple that it is no surprise that they have gone a completely different route with their vlogging. With a target marketer of nearly always active millennials, with short YouTube attention spans, and a product that is best with constant promotion, Red Bull have turned to the power of LOTS for their vlogging. Here's a typical video:

Short, punchy, full of action. And infrequent actions isn't their style. Here is what the Red Bull video page looked like at the time of this writing:

Seven new videos in the last 24 hours! You'd think that this extreme audience, with some videos catching virality and getting 1 million+ views, would have an equally unpredictable subscriber growth. You'd be wrong about that:

That growth is so consistent that it's boring! This approach, however, is far from boring. They have taken the concept from their daily blog, and applied it to a vlog. If you're seeing growth in your brand's blog with daily updates, this may well be the approach you take with your vlog to increase your channel subscriber growth.

The other thing that they are doing, which Apple isn't, is fostering a community by opening up their comment section. Now it is, I'd say around 50% of the time, full of pointless trolling. The rest of the time you'll see their fans voicing their amazement, asking if it's fake or not, or bragging about crazy stuff they say they've done.

Their channel engagement rate shows this consistent brand interest paying off as people come back again and again to comment:

Just like Apple above, everything that Red Bull does on their blog they also do on their vlog. Both have a clear vision of who they are as a brand, and link their content strategy across vastly different content delivery platforms.

What you can learn from Red Bull and Apple's vlogging

There are two key takeaways from this:

You need to match your company voice to the content style you deliver. A high profile brand needs a high end vlog – just like their blog. A high-energy brand needs high energy content with a frequent delivery schedule – just like their blog.
Your community engagement will depend on the type of feedback you typically receive. Brands with controversial images may benefit from having no comments associated with their vlog. Those with a youth market need to help foster a community, and the comments section is where that happens.

How all of this ties back into your blog is that you will likely have already learned a great deal of how you will vlog thanks to your blog. If your comment section is notoriously filthy, clean it up by disabling it. If you have seen a community growing around your brand in the comment section that goes beyond trolling, open up your comments and allow the community to grow. Above all, make sure that the tone and presentation of your blog and vlog match one another for a consistent brand voice.

Matthew is the social media analyst over on the Devumi blog. You can find him there every Wednesday and Friday writing about the latest developments in social media. Stop by the blog, follow the @Devumi Gorilla on Twitter, or check out this article, to learn more about Devumi

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Going from a Blog to a Vlog: What the Big Companies Can Teach Us

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

It’s Official — AdStation is Kicking Email Marketing’s Ass

Posted: 27 Jan 2015 07:00 AM PST

Email publishers have nothing to bitch about anymore. Pretty much everything they need is finally available to send the most targeted email offers possible thanks to AdStation.

First off, if you don't already know, AdStation is the email channel at Adknowledge, and the biggest big dog in email advertising and data monetization. I'm writing about their newly upgraded service because it's helpful, it works and it's going to change the industry.

So what's new with AdStation? Now, you can choose and build offer templates and creatives. You can select the advertising categories you feel your audience will be most responsive to.

And, you can set the frequency at which your categories are delivered. Of course, all of this also comes with offer recommendations based on the biggest response-based database in the industry.

For example, if your audience is interested in Health and Beauty, you can select categories like Anti-Aging, Cooking School, Weight Loss, and Fashion. And let AdStation match the highest converting offer from its deep list of advertisers, thus netting you the absolute highest PPCs for your audience.

All of the awesome added control features come with one even bigger bonus — and it's the change that I'm personally most interested in because it's an absolute game-changer for email marketing in general: you can now connect to the platform via a simple SMTP relay.

AdStation is now without API integration, which has been a barrier for some mailers. The SMTP relay is the faster, easier, simpler solution. A lot of mailers have been unable to work with the best solution in the industry, simply because they lacked the technical resources to get up and running. Set up via SMTP relay is fast and easy – it takes an hour or less. That's why people like it.

Here's the bottom line: AdStation is powered by proprietary, response-based targeting. This delivers the most relevant offer to the most receptive consumer at the most appropriate time. And now, they're giving you more and easier access. Oh, and you can do it all without any integration. That just can't be beat.

Contact the AdStation team to get started.

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