How to Generate Leads for Local Businesses Using Blogs – Case Study
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On 18/7/2012 (Wednesday), I have decided to do an online experiment – an experiment to help business owner to leverage on the internet and to collect local leads using blogs.
Business owners include plumbers, piano teachers, violin teachers, tutors, interior designers, carpenters, furniture shop owners, doctors, chiropractors and so on. The list goes on and on.
One of the major obstacles they face is getting new leads. Without new leads, there won’t be any new customers to sell to and their businesses will die a slow (sometimes painful) death. Most small business owners are very busy managing their daily business affair. So most do not have a proper marketing system to help them get new leads.
In Singapore where I am staying, the common online marketing strategies that business owners use are listing on coupon sites such as Groupon, listing on online classified ads and directories, using Google Adwords and Facebook Ads.
These strategies will ONLY work if you have a proper product funnel. Most just signed up for these programmes and hope they get LOTS OF Customers and LOTS OF $$$. But it seldom works this way. Let me share with you why. Listing on coupon sites like Groupon is bad for small businesses and most owners are going to lose money. Listing on online directories is not ideal too as their ad is competing against thousands of other ads. Most have underperforming ads. Using Google Adwords and Facebook Ads is going to burn a BIG hole in their pocket as too as most use them blindly by not optimising the ads, the squeeze pages and lowering the cost per click.
So possibly, using blogs to reach out to customers may still be one of the most cost-effective (I didn’t say free) methods to educate your customers, to get them to buy from you and to build a strong following.
So what is this online specifically about?
Even though I have started this experiment about 2 months ago and it is still ongoing, I really want to share with you what I did, the challenges I face, the results I gotten (small, big or none) and the steps I took to solve some of the problems I face. I am also sharing what I had been doing due to the good response I had gotten for the 3-parts Niche Tutorials.
When I first started, I have no idea if everything is going to be ok:
Honestly then, I have no idea if it would have worked or not. There were many factors to consider such as category of your niche, competition of keywords, type of customers, spending per customer, whether they will buy online and even if they buy online, what kind of products/ services they really want and how much they are willing to spend.
Looking through all these unknowns had given me a BIG headache and I was scared too – scared to have created an experiment which had a negative outcome and to hear my readers booing at me.
I was hesistant then but my buddy, David from “Learn Niche Marketing” encouraged me to start this experiment so as to prove that lead generation using blogs REALLY works. So now, I decided to create this case study and share it with you.
Well, since this is just an experiment and whatever happens, it will be for the fun of it, right?
Plus by sharing what I did, perhaps you will be able to tweak my methods and develope your personal strategies to help your local business.
Choosing my niche:
So I have decided to go into a niche which I really love – Math Niche. Having background in children’s education psychology, my strength (beside coaching and internet marketing) is teaching students and helping them to drastically improve their academic results within a very short time frame.
As the Math niche is very wide, ranging from pre-school Math to University Math, I must narrow it down further to Primary school Math. I chose this niche because I already know parents are spending a lot of money in this niche plus I have over 10 years of working experience with parents whose kids are in this age group (9 to 13). According to this article – Asia spending billions on tutors: study, Singapore spent US$680 million in 2008! Imagine how much more parents are spending NOW? Perhaps 1 billion dollars solely in Singapore? Who knows? :p
After doing more research and observing the local tuition trends, here is the demographic of my customers:
– Parents with children who are in Primary 5 and 6
– Parents’ age falls between 30 to 50
– Living in Singapore
– English speaking
– Internet savvy
– Already spending money on their kids by signing them up for tuition, buying Math assessment books, registering for motivational workshops. (monthly expenses per parent is estimated to be at least $100 per month and it can go up to over S$5000/ month considering the fees paid for more premium tuition services and other enrichment programmes.)
So the niche has been selected and I am going to set up my blog – my online vehicle for collection of local leads.
There will be a 3 key components:
– Free content as blog posts
– Subscribed content (Reader needs to opt in to get my free e-book)
– Paid content (Reader needs to pay to get it)
Now, let’s go!
Niche Blogs Tutorial 3 – On-Page and Off-Page SEO
Welcome to Tutorial 3! We hope that by now, you have read and applied what you have learnt from Niche Blogs Tutorial 2. (If you have yet to, please go back to Tutorial 1 and start from there.)
For those of you who have started creating your blogs, it is time to look into the on-page and off-page seo strategies of your niche sites.
This phase is really important because the amount of traffic going to your site is dependant on how well your site is ranked for the keyword or keywords. More traffic means more visitors and it means more $$$.
In the SEO world, there are 1001 techniques to get your website ranked well in the search engine. Some work well for others but may not have worked well for us. There are other techniques which have worked well for us but are ineffective for others. We hope that by sharing what work well for us can give you some clues on how you can start.
While I was planning to write this post, I have initially wanted to explain what on-page and off-page SEO is. However, I realised my intention of creating this tutorial series is to share our exact strategies of building niche blogs and NOT teach what SEO is. So I have decided to just share other people’s webpages which explained what on-page and off-page SEO are.
So are you ready? Let’s go!
Here is our on-page and off-page SEO strategies. (Do note that you can use these for all your blogs.)
On-page SEO:
For blog home page:
1. Install All-in-one-SEO-Pack plugin
2. Fill in the Home Title, Home Description and Home keywords.
*Check out these resources on how to write proper Home Title and Home Description.
– Meta Description (seomoz)
– The Netsetter: SEO Writing Tip #2: Optimize Your Meta Description Tag
How to Create an Authority Site And Start Making Money – 8 Steps
Passion gas fuels an authority site. Nothing else can do an equally good job as passion gas.
An authority site grows from your desire to share your passion with the world. An authority site grows with you.
For instance, if you love dogs the way Cesar Milan loves dogs, you have an authority site.
Recently, I started another site about Maths. I love Maths and have coached numerous students in this subject.
I had my very own special way of engaging the children and getting them to grasp “hard” Maths concepts within minutes. Something that most parents are not able to do. I have BIG dreams of holding my Maths workshops for parents and children too.
So, a month ago, after a discussion with my friend, David who runs iPhotoCourse Digital Photography, I have decided to embark on another journey to build another authority site. (My other authority site is a wedding planning blog)
The result: A month later (today), my site has started making money.
Here is the process to start earning your first dollar:
1. Deciding your niche
As mentioned, this niche must be a niche which you love alot. If you love it alot, most likely you know alot about it too and this will help you to have a great start because you know what your readers want. For instance, if you love cooking, start a cooking blog. As a stay at home dad, I have started to pick up cooking recently. This is a great recipe site I love to visit – MunchMinistry.com and they hold cooking classes for its community. Thus, charging for cooking classes is their way of making money by blogging about food.
2. Getting a brandable domain name
For niche blogging, we are always on the lookout for low competition keywords which are easy to rank. However, since I am building an authority site, the domain name must be brandable. It means it should not be something like “studyingprimaryschoolmaths.com” No one will want to type such a long name. A better name might be “MathsExcel.com”
3. Keyword research
Now, this keyword research is for finding suitable keywords to rank the pages in your website. For example, if “how to excel in Maths” is a suitable keyword, you can record it down and use it as one of the titles for your blog post/ article. After your keyword research, you should have a list of 10 to 15 keywords. Choose a keyword for each article title.
4. Blog set up
Here are the rules I follow:
– WordPress platform
– Clean white background
– 2 columns with right sidebar
– Basic pages to have: contact, about me and two more pages which matter to your readers
– Product/ service page (your money page which differs and is dependant on the niche you are in.)
– Opt in form/ page (for building your list) (I recommend GetResponse)
5. On-page and off-page Seo
Make sure you optimised all your pages and your entire site. One plugin which you must use is “All in one SEO” plugin. You can do manual backlinking by finding other sites/ blogs in the same niche. Do not miss out the social bookmarking too. In addition, you can choose to engage Warriors who provide reliable SEO services in Warrior Forum.
6. Content Creation
There is only one rule to follow: provide quality content. An authority site is very different from niche site. It is not set-and-forget blog. One of your goals should be to build a community around your site. So you must meet the needs of your readers. Build your site for your readers. If you don’t, someone else will.
One way of churning out quality content is to write yourself. The other way is to outsource some of the writing to good writers. You can train and guide your writers to write in the way you want.
7. Direct your content to pre-sell your product/ service
Your blog content should serve some purpose and one of them should be to provide great value to your readers and to show them how good you are. You must provide an impression that since your free content is good, your paid content is even better. So this will turn some of your readers into paying customers.
8. Choosing a payment processor
You can use PayPal.com. If you have an affiliate program which can get others to sell for you, you can use e-junkie
Problems (with solutions):
Niche research – Though the steps seemed simple, finding the right niche is the hardest step. When I asked my students in my coaching program what do they love, most gave me a blank look. Others need more time to think about what they are passionate about. So give yourself time to think about your niche.
Keyword research – This part can be difficult for most people. As this is an authority site, it is ok to find bigger keywords which have more competition.
Content creation – I know some of you do not love to write or prefer to outsource this part. Yes, you can do it. The next challenging part is to find good writers who you can trust and who can write in the style you like. So you may need to go through some firing and hiring of writers before finding the right one. Expect that even good writers won’t stay long as they have other commitments too. So always be on the look out for better writers.
Too overwhelming for newbies – Though there are only 8 steps, the learning curve for newbies can be very steep. So give yourself ample time to fully understand every step and execute it so that you can learn what works or does not work for you.
How do you find this process? Do you prefer building authority site or smaller niche site? I love to hear your thoughts.
Start Ranking and Earning with Exact Match Domains
The number one common problem that most bloggers face is not able to generate traffic.
This is what most newbie bloggers will say “I have spent weeks and months working on my site and there is not even a single visitor to my site. I am toasted!”
If your site is not ranked for any keyword, then there won’t be any traffic or visitor going to your site.
However, this problem can be easily overcome by using this particular method which we teach all our students.
This method is called Exact Match Domains. (EMD)
After the Penguin algorthim update, EMD are still ranking very nicely indeed in Google’s search. In most instances, most of our domains are ranking in Google’s top ten for their related keyword phrase within a few days.
Once these sites are ranked well and traffic starts to flow in, their earning potential is HUGE!
Let’s work out the Maths.
If a EMD site is making $10 a month and you own 300 of such niche blogs, you will be making a nice comfortable figure of $3000 a month doing nothing after you have set up your sites to run on autopilot.
And now, you might be feeling worried because you know setting up 300 blogs is not an easy task…Not to worry, here is the simple system we have created for our niche blogs project.
Step 1: Research on suitable exact match domains using Keyword Canine.
Step 2: Buy the domains using Namecheap.com
Step 3: Generate 1 Primary keyword and 4 Secondary keywords for each domain.
1 Primary keyword is for the main article of 800 words.
1 Secondary keyword is for the other articles which are about 500 words each.
Step 4: Allocate the content generation to your writers. (or if you enjoy writing and can write well and fast, you can do it.)
Step 5: Once the content is ready, the domains will be set up and the content will be sent to your virtual assistant to have the domains set up.
Step 6: Once the niche site is set up, another virtual assistant will take over the on-page and off-page seo.
Rinse and repeat the steps and you will soon have your 300 money-making niche blogs within a few months.
In the next post, I will be showing you exactly how our niche sites team will be setting up 20 blogs within 30 days and how you can easily do the same.
What kind of niche blog will you be starting off with? Share with us your idea on our Facebook wall.
Top 2 Blog-Related Business Ideas – What Can Work For You
I love blogging. Beside offline consulting, blogging is the other best business ideas that anyone can easily start from home.
In fact, if you have been reading the news about Google Penguin update, there has been a lot of worries and guesses what still work and what no longer work. Still, most people are still trying out blogging because there are so many millions of sub niches to make money from. Use this free tool – Google Keyword tool to find your sub niches.
By now, you should know what blogging is and how it can make money. These are a few ways
– Adsense
– Amazon affiliate
– Clickbank affiliate
– Private ad sale
So in this blog post, I want to share with you the big picture of 2 niche business ideas in 2012.
(I will also be sharing some very specific numbers so you can work on your first blog or improve your blogs right after reading this blog post.)
1. Small Niche Sites
In case you are wondering what a small niche site is, this is what a small niche site is made up of.
– 1 Primary article consisting of 800 words.
– 5 Secondary articles consisting of 500 words
– 1 Contact me page
– 1 Privacy Policy page
– 1 Sitemap
Objective: To rank one keyword of the Primary article on first page of Google and to earn money through Adsense or selling affilitate products in Amazon or Clickbank.
Keyword criteria:
1000 or more exact match
$1 or more CPC (for Adsense)
What you can use a niche site for:
– To flip it for a higher price. Normally, the selling price is at least 20x its earning value. If it has an earning revenue of $50 per month, it’s selling price should be around $1000 (50 x 20) Sometimes, the selling price may be higher if you are selling to small medium companies which are in the same niche as your blog.
If your blog is in drug rehabilitation niche, a drug rehabilitation centre may be interested in buying your site.
– To grow your blog further. You can continue to add more articles, capture opt-ins to grow your subscribers list and to build a social community such as creating a Facebook fan page. Naturally, with more subscribers, traffic and probably more revenue, your site’s value will definitely increase. And your small niche site will grow into a very big website called an authority site.
2. Authority site
As mentioned, authority sites are very big sites with lots of content. However, having lots of content is not enough. It must have good quality content so that your readers will return to your site. With higher traffic, you can consider selling advertising space in the form of banner ad or text link ad in the blogroll or in the content.
Objective: To build and grow it into a mega monster so that it can bring you a monthly stream of passive income either through selling of ad space or selling products (affiliate or personal)
In the next blog post, I will be reporting the exact steps our team has taken to build our small niche sites. We have been always wanted to start something from scratch so that anyone, including you can easily duplicate our strategies and take action instantly.
Yes, I know most of you may be thinking of “Not another blogging topic.”
However, this series of blog posts is going to be different because we are going to do it differently next time.
Criteria 1 – Build a clusters of money-earning sites which we will want to sell to our customers
Criteria 2 – We will be building our sites as a team (no more one man show and we will be showing you where you can get yours.)
Criteria 3 – Using a proven strategy to get maximum result within the shortest possible time (3 to 5 months)
Criteria 4 – Generating a continuous passive income stream using this one business model
What do you think of these 2 business ideas? How useful are they? Do you think it is easy for you to implement? I love to hear from you.
If you have any question regarding any of the steps, do leave your questions below and I will get back to you within a day.
“Blogging + Offline Consulting” Combo Course Available Now!
For the past few months, my students and I have been using my breakthrough method to sell blogging services to customers at record fast time ($8000 within 30 days!)
Now get this right:
1) All the students start from scratch with little or no blogging/ offline consulting knowledge
2) This system is so easy to create that even a twelve-year-old kid can do it.
3) Each blogging service can fetch as high as $500 to $3000 if you know how to do it (I’ll show you).
This is one of my most successful programmes in teaching people how to build a business from nothing to something HUGE using really simple techniques and I’m proud to say that it was a smashing success!
4-figure income has be made within 30 days!
Microblogging & Branding Using Facebook fan page
Do you have a Facebook account?
Most probably, you have a Facebook account and you are have been using it everyday.
Facebook is the most popular social networking platform which allows you to blog, share your updates and post your photos and videos.
The best thing is when you post in your Facebook wall, you get instant traffic to read your content because your friends are going to be able to read your updates on their walls. Isn’t it great?
Free traffic!!! And you get it instantaneously.
In this post, I will talk about a blog – an online magazines for iphone and it uses Facebook to drive traffic to it.
Read more
