I apologize if the image to the left offends you. My best friend has red hair, and she would absolutely KILL me if I made this joke in front of her. LOL!
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So let’s get started…
Two days ago I purchased a domain called http://lolphotoz.com/. This is going to be a fun website to play with, but not only that, I’m going to try and make some money off it as well.
Please bear in mind that I have never done anything like this before in my life. The websites I normally create are about product related niches that are monetized with either Clickbank or Amazon. Not sure how I’ll react to a completely different type of venture, but I’m excited to check it out.
So here’s what I’ve done so far:
- Set up the Website with WordPress and MeGusta (best theme for this type of site I’ve seen so far)
- Create a Facebook Page
- Create a Twitter Page
- Integrate Twitter and Facebook with Website
- Attach the site’s RSS feed vis Linksalpha.com to social media
How I Intend to Get Traffic?
Many people (especially from the warrior forum) have been complaining about the Panda and Penguin updates that were released earlier this year. The fact is, Google updates their algorithm over 500 times every year. That’s almost 2 times a day.
Google is a beast for delivering traffic… there’s no doubt about that. However, it’s very unwise to use Google traffic as your ENTIRE business model. One algorithm update could wipe out your whole business. Not a sustainable strategy at all.
That’s why I’m excited about this website, because it’s going to be taking advantage of social sharing. Internet users spend more time on Facebook, pinterest and twitter than they do on search engines. Social media is the future, so it’s best to at least learn some strategies for how to take advantage of the ENORMOUS potential in social traffic.
This site http://lolphotoz.com/ is going to have to have content that gets people to share. Think about it. One person decides a picture on your site is worth a facebook like. Let’s say that person has around 500 friends connected to their profile. Your website is now presented in front of 500 more people. Out of that 500, maybe two or three decide to like as well….
… Now they ALSO have a list of friends that will see your funny picture. This is how joke sites go viral. They post entertaining content, and every time a share or like is pressed, their website is advertised to a few hundred more people.
I’m going to reveal a few sneaky NINJA tricks later in this post, but for now I’m going to stop there….
Now the real question is how am I going to make money off this site.
In all honesty, I don’t expect to make a heck of a lot of money per visitor. The power of a good user experience and humour site is the MASSIVE number of visitors it can attract. I created this blog two days ago, and I’m already receiving 150 visitors on my third day. That’s insanely high compared to a three day old product review site.
So ideally, I’ll make a small amount of money per visitor from a TON of people. There are two directions that I’d like to test in this case study.
CPA Offers vs Google Adsense
Both of these monetization strategies would work very well for this site. Google adsense is capable of showing ads that reflect the recent searches of incoming visitors. So for example, if a visitor was searching for electric shavers on google, it’s likely that an electric shaver ad will be displayed on your joke site. E
Advantages of Adsense
Even a CTR of below 1% could end up being a lot of money if you manage to create 10,000 visitors per day. Which is very doable with this kind of website.
But let’s say that we only get to 2,000 visitors per day.
Here are some conservative calculations…
2000 X 1% CTR = 20 clicks per day
Avg CPC = 50 cents
.50 X 20 clicks = $10/day
…..So with fairly conservative numbers, are joke blog could make around $300/month with Adsense.
Now if we later decide to flip the site on Flippa.com, we’re looking at a sale price of around $6,000. If you advertise your site as an autopilot adsense site (which it will be) you should be able to get 20X the amount of profit generated/ month. Which is why $6,000 was calculated. Maybe you’ll only get 10-15 times. But that’s still at least $3,000-$5,000 straight into your pocket.
Google adsense looks promising….
Why choose CPA offers instead???
There are two reasons to choose cpa offers instead of Adsense.
1- Cpa offers are often more profitable than adsense.
But like everything else, it needs to be tested to find out for sure. At the very least, you need to briefly (say a week or two) split test adsense vs CPA for profitability. Different niches perform very differently.
2- You ONLY have one adsense account
Now I really don’t think my adsense site is at much risk at all with a humour site. Adsense is on joke blogs all the time, and there’ s nothing blatantly against the TOS by using adsense. That being said, I prefer to avoid anything that dangers my future business. I want to be involved with adsense for the long haul. So I really don’t want to risk anything.
If I get banned from a cpa offer, that’s no big deal, there are tons of others to choose from.
I should also clarify at this point that this strategy DOES follow google’s TOS. I’m just a paranoid bugger that only uses adsense for extremely high quality sites. I’m hoping that Lol Photoz will become a reasonably decent humour brand. And at that point, I’ll have no problem adding Adsense.
Picking a Domain Name
You should pick a domain that sounds cool. Remember that we are not trying to optimize this site for search engine traffic. Therefore an EMD would be completely pointless. We would have a better chance of attracting traffic if we choose something that sounds fun and brandable.
To be honest, I’m not the hugest fan of my domain name. I wish I would have picked something more creative. There’s a humour blog I like called evilmilk.com. To me that sounds fun.
But if you want some ideas….
www.roflhappens.com
www.lmaobook.com
www.humorpark.com
www.laughingcentral.com
www.extremelolz.com
www.funstupidlol.com
Just pick something fun, the domain name isn’t crucial at all, but it’s still a good idea to get right.
I created a video –> Picking a Domain Name <—- awhile back that discussed what domain name you should pick. I broke it down into two different strategies. Either pick a “keyword rich domain” or a “brandable domain.” In this case, you should be trying to create a brand.
Setting Up the Blog with WordPress
For me, using wordpress is really a no brainer. Not only is it a lot easier to install and get running, it also has a whole boatload of wordpress plugins that will help us get some massive social traffic.
===> For People that are Beginners to WordPress <===
Here’s a WordPress Start Up Tutorial that Will Get you Up and Running. Once you learn how to set up wordpress once, it will become infinitely easier set up sites in the future. Learning how to use WordPress is becoming a necessity these days.
The WordPress Theme for Our Site
The Theme is actually VERY important for this type of site. We need our site to look cool… but we also want a site that will maximize our CTR in a very general and un-targeted niche.
The most popular theme for a funny picture site is www.9gag.com… If I were you, I would not touch this theme with a ten foot pole. Too many sites are using it now, and it will be nearly impossible to make your site STAND OUT from the rest of the crowd.
Instead, I would pick something like the Magusta Theme.
This theme is actually what I will be using for Lol Photoz. Not only does it look better (IMO), it’s also used by far less sites. Which means your site will stand out from others, and will have a pretty awesome style to it. My site is obviously a LIVE DEMO now that it’s on the interwebz. But if you want a more up close look, go to Theme Forest and see whether it’s right for you.
On a Budget – Couple of Free Options
Both of those free themes are reasonable choices for the site we’re going to build. The Magusta Theme is certainly a notch or two better. But Super Wp or Rapido are also very nice themes.
NEXT STEP – Creating a Facebook Page to Build an Audience
We can’t just wait for Google to send us traffic. This type of site thrives on social sharing. Facebook has millions upon millions of users that surf through content daily. We need to go straight to the source. FACEBOOK will be the key to our Traffic strategy.
So let’s get started…
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Head to http://www.facebook.com/pages and click on “create a page”
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