Ryan McLean : Slightly Unconventional

#60 Niche Site Update

iniartworksmallAn update on the progress of my new niche site. Good news is that I have finished all the work for it in just 3 days.
 
Hey guys! Ryan here from Instructions Not Included, and I want to give you guys an update on how I am going on the niche site or the small site that I am creating to market the Lully, which is the product that helps stop night terrors in children. My child had night terrors and this product helped him to stop having night terrors during the night.
 
If you do not know what night terrors are, consider yourself lucky; but basically that is when your child wakes up kicking and screaming and having a tantrum but they are not actually awake. So it is very stressful as a parent because you cannot console your child. It is very difficult to wake them up and to make them stop having these night terrors.
 
So I was really excited to find this product which solved my problem. And I was also quite frustrated with the product that it was such a hard solution to find out there.
 
If you are a parent and you have a child with this problem, then it is very hard to find out about this product and I locked into it because I was listening to this week in StartUps and eventually Capital Fund who was talking about how they funded this startup and so I had to do a lot of googling to find them and I found them through like a sleep study blog post on Stanford website about the Stanford Sleep Study or something like that. So it is very hard to find, so I want to help the parents out there who have children who have night terrors.
 
I want to share this with them to help them, but also there is the opportunity for me to market this product through Amazon, because it is available on Amazon.com. I thought I could create a website; I could market this product and I could send them through my Amazon affiliate link, and if anyone buys then I get a commission for that.
 
So that is kind of the basis for my website. I set the goal to creating about 10 articles and spending no more than a week on this site, was what I gave myself. And I am happy to let you guys know that I have created 13 videos, which will turn to articles, and I have only spent 3 days on this site. So today is the third day that I am spending on the site and basically everything is being done now.
 
I have just finished the videos and I am just uploading the videos. And then I just need to write a couple of descriptions and then I am done and I will hand it over to my awesome virtual assistant who will then go ahead and will upload all those to YouTube, will upload the podcast to Soundcloud and will order those transcriptions. And so really, I am done at the moment in terms of what I need to do for the site.
 
I will probably need to revisit it in a couple of weeks when I can actually get those transcriptions done. My transcribers combined can do about 2 hours of audio transcriptions per week, but they are currently working on stuff for On Property. So they will be finished with that in about a week or so, and then I can provide them with the Dreamy Dad ones.
 
In case you did not know, the site is called DreamyDad.com. So I will provide them with those transcriptions, that will take another week for them to deliver those; and my virtual assistant will then receive those and will upload those both to YouTube and to the website, so in a couple of weeks we should have the transcriptions done. We should have them up on the website, and then we are hoping to start to achieve some things, start to get some traffic and maybe get some sales. I am not hoping for a lot. This is really, I guess, a trial for me. But if I could get any sales through this, that would be pretty cool.
 
So at the moment, I think we have uploaded 7 videos of the 13 because I am still processing some of them. But let us go ahead and have a look and let us just use the term night terrors. I am searching in YouTube to try and find myself. I uploaded these videos probably about 24 hours ago now, and I am now on the second page and still have not found myself; third page, okay. So it looks like I am definitely not ranking for night terrors at the moment, but that is a pretty highly searched term so I am definitely not expecting to rank for that in the early days, maybe down the track if my videos do prove popular.
 
One of them was symptoms of night terrors. Let us search for that and see if we come up. Alright, so I am not on the first page, scroll down, not on there at all. So basically, I am not appearing in YouTube at the moment and I am not surprised by this. I am used to putting video up in YouTube for On Property, and if it is for an obscure term it is going to rank for that basically, instantly, for On Property. But I do have a couple of years history with that site, and YouTube knows that people watch my videos and that people like my videos and stuff like that. I am not completely surprised that my videos are not showing up. Let us try this one: how to deal with night terrors.
 
Let us have a search for that. Okay, if we search how to deal with night terrors in YouTube, I am actually the 6th result at the moment. And we have not created any thumbnails for these yet. Well, I have created them but they have not been uploaded.  I am actually the 6th and the 8th results on that page, so that is good. And we also have some thumbnails to upload which will make the videos more likely for people to click on. So nothing really happening in YouTube at the moment, but it has only been 12 hours so I will report back to you guys in the future.
 
But basically, I am super excited to get this done, super excited to work on something that is different from On Property. And it is also just good to get in the creative space of doing something new and then thinking about how can I take that across and apply that to my main site which is On Property. And so I have been thinking, I have been mulling over the last days about potentially doing more high-quality content in the future. So rather than just a talking head video, I am actually thinking about doing some higher production stuff here and there to really engage the audience and to have awesome videos. But that is not something I am going to launch any time soon, but it is something that I am thinking about.
 
And I did really enjoy creating this site for the Lully, creating DreamyDad.com, and I like the process of creating this mini-site to solve a real need out there where people need help and to recommend a product that I absolutely love myself. So definitely I will be thinking through things and how can I replicate this across another website. At the moment I have no ideas.
 
And then the other thing that I am quite passionate about is Super Smash Brothers Melee, but there are a lot of issues about copyright and stuff like that if you are going to be uploading footage of the game. And Nintendo does not seem to be very happy to work with players and creators so I am probably going to stay away from that market.
 
But so I am going to monitor my life and see what other problems that people might want solved on the internet, is there a product that I can recommend, or even if I just create videos and make some money through advertising on smaller sites, that is definitely something that I want to pursue and want to consider because my goal was always to be a media company, not to be a property company. And so for me to be working on this night terror website, I know it feels like I am doing what I wanted to do, which is creating content, creating media and then hopefully making money through that. We will see how we go with this, if it does well, if we start selling some products then I will expand it and do more videos.
 
And I will also consider talking about sleep in general and also I will probably go back to the founders of Lully and see if we can get another interview with them to cover topics in more detail and call on their expertise. But whether we see any traction before I go down that path and make the effort because I can see I am getting traction, I am selling their product then I can say, “Hey guys! I am selling x amount of your product per month. I really need your help in doing a video,” and they are probably more likely to do it.
 
So I am excited about this website, DreamyDad.com. If you want to go ahead and check it out, it is a small niche and I am not even sure if I am going to make any money, but hopefully I can help those parents out there who have night terrors.  So we will see how it goes. That is my update, so 3 days of work. Let us track it and see how much money are we going to make from this website. Was it worth the 3 days of work or should I have just spent those 3 days creating videos for On Property or working on other things.

But it definitely made me think again about Outspoken.co as well as PodcastFast, and particularly about not pursuing those sites and not pursuing creating my own products because it is just so much effort. And rather than pursuing those, to try and find other areas where I can create content and market a product and make money in easier ways. So I do not know. I will be mulling over it.  I will keep you guys updated as thing go. But that is it for me for today.
 
So until next time, if you want instructions go and buy some furniture.
 
At the end here, I just want to quickly mention the sponsor of the Instructions Not Included Podcast, which is Snappy Checkout. Now Snappy Checkout is the tool that I use to collect credit payments online, or credit cards online. It helps you manage all your products. It can help you deliver your products as well and provides a really seamless checkout experience for customers, both on mobile devices and on their computers. So it is absolutely awesome! It connects with Stripe, which is a very popular payment platform or back end system. And the fees are super affordable. I think it is something like you pay 30 cents or 2%, whichever is less per transaction.
 
For a lot of places like Gumroad, you pay a 5% transaction, so on a thousand-dollar product that is $50. With Snappy Checkout, you pay a Stripe fee which is 2.9% plus whatever fee – $2 or whatever percent it is, whatever is less. So if I went with Gumroad and sold a thousand-dollar product, I will be paying $50. If I use the Stripe with Snappy Checkout, then I end up paying – I think, it is around $31. So it is a big difference. It is a big saving and it is a really awesome tool to manage things on the back end and also provide you with a lot of analytics of how many products you are selling and shows you your monthly stats. So I track all of my sales through that and it is really useful. Great customer support as well, I highly recommend it. If you want to check it out, go to pelt.com, P-E-L-T.co/checkout.
 
That is my affiliate link for Snappy Checkout and thanks to them for providing me with that affiliate link so that they can be a sponsor of this podcast and hopefully drive some revenue for this podcast so we can keep it going and potentially increase the production value of this podcast. If it starts making money then I will spend more time investing in it and maybe even try and get some people to help me with it just to increase the production value of this site. So thanks again Snappy Checkout! Go to pelt.co, P-E-L-T.co/checkout to look at Snappy Checkout and sign up to day.


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#33 Deleting Websites That Make Me Money Fri 31st July 2015

iniartworksmall

Today I deleted websites that actually made me money. Why would I do that? Because I want to focus on the websites that make most of my money.

Hey guys. Ryan here from Instructions Not Included. Today, I had a horribly unproductive day. My mind was just not in it; it was all over the place. But I did make a big decision today about really focusing on the websites that I have.

What I did was I looked at – I had a couple of small sites one’s called InspiringAudioBooks.com another was called TiredAndSleepy.com. There was another one called YourEnergyDrinks.com and these were making probably collectively around about $1,000 a year, maybe, if you could count that much.

But I just felt like they were sucking up my energy and distracting me and there was always maintenance issues or they’d get hacked or something like that. It’s just a real pain in the butt to have these websites that I don’t actually want.

I’d always imagined that one day I would go and work on these websites and build them up or one day I would sell them for a few thousand dollars or something like that. But I was looking at it and combined they’re making maybe $100 per month.

Which means that they would sell for – actually, it wasn’t even $100 per month, I don’t think. Anyway, they would sell for like $2,000 all up, if I could be bothered to do that.

So, what I decided to do was just basically delete them. It sounds crazy to delete $100 per month from your life but they were just distracting me and causing me to lose focus and I’m making $5,000 a month from On Property, it varies from month to month.

When you’re making so much money from one site and other sites that are making combined $100 a month are taking away your focus. Then, it makes a lot of sense to really focus on just one website.

Another thing that I’m super excited about today is – tomorrow, I’m actually going to my first Super Smash Brothers Melee Tournament. Super Smash Brothers Melee is a GameCube game that was released in 2001. It’s a fighting game but it’s a very popular game and there’s a big scene behind this game.

People play competitively to win money and stuff like that. I’ve been really into this game for the last 4 months or so, ever since I found out that this was a competitive game.

I used to love Super Smash Brothers as a kid. When I was in High School, I used to play with one of my friends on 64 and bought myself a GameCube after I found out that Melee was actually the competitive version of this game. I’ve been playing that, loving that and then found out that there’s a tournament up in Brisbane, about an hour from my house. So, I’m heading out there, I’m going to be playing GameCube all day tomorrow.

So, I’m pretty excited about that. I play as Princess Peach, is my character. Random fact but, yeah.

So, I spent part of today trying to work out, how can I actually play this on my computer? Because there’s a Netplay version where you can play people from all over the world, like you’d play Call of Duty or any other game online. You can connect and you can play Melee against other players online. But, oh my freaking gosh! It’s just been so hard to try and work this out.

I think I’ve got a solution now but I’ve got to download this program called Xcode that’s 2.6 Gigabytes. So, that’s going to take ages to download, like, all night for me.

I’ve got the program but I can’t connect my controller to the computer even though I’ve got an adapter. It’s not programmed for the computer so you’ve got to hack it. No wonder there’s not a lot of people playing this online.

It’s really hard to work this out. I do actually own Melee.co. So, I’ve been thinking about starting up a channel or something like that to help people with the issues that I’ve been having and to help the scene to get it more competitive and easier to play and stuff like that.

So, that’s something that I’m pondering but, again, I don’t want to spread my focus. I think one of the good things about Instructions Not Included is I’m doing it, it’s a fun thing, I’m not trying to make money from it.

Whereas, with these other sites, I was. If I was to start any more sites like Melee.co or something like that, it would just be for fun with no intention to make money. If it grew an audience and made money, at the end of the day, then happy days. But I just need to consider it in my own mind that it is just for fun.

What else have I done today? I also am moving over PublicSpeakingPower.com. As you guys know, I changed the name to Teach Speaking and I talked about another domain, which I bought which is Outspoken.co. I’m actually going to change the brand name to Outspoken Co or Outspoken.co.

That’s kind of the update there. I’ve just been migrating that across today but I haven’t fully completed that. So, yeah, pretty useless day for me. But you can’t have a win every single day of your life. I do my best. I do my best, I do my best that’s a song that I could sing.

Alright guys. I’m just rambling. It’s Friday afternoon. As you can see, I have freaking lost my mind. I don’t know what is going on or what I’m doing. So, until next time. If you want instructions, go and buy some furniture.


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Should Your Niche Sites Be About Things You Are Passionate About?

Recently I set the goal of creating 20 profitable niche sites by the end of 2013.

My strategy was to go after every and any topic that had low keyword competition and an ability to make money. I am now considering altering my strategy and applying more focus to my work.

The successful sites that I have have generally come from some aspect of my life. They either represent something I am interested in, have a passion for, am skilled at or a problem I have.

The recent niche sites that I have bought and created haven’t ticked any of these boxes. I simply did a bunch of keyword research and then created and website and outsourced some articles.

It is WAY too early to tell if these sites will be successful, but what I have found is that I don’t feel like I am adding as much value to the Internet with these niche site.

Starting a site about cars, or coffee machines, or any other product may be lucrative but it isn’t very interesting to me.

Starting a site about property, or finances, or disease, or medicine, or family or self development is interesting to me and I feel like I can add a great deal of value to these sites.

So my goal of 20 profitable niche sites by the end of 2013 has not changed. It is still my goal, but rather than throwing up and old niche site I am planning to only create sites where the content interests me.

I will also only be creating sites that would eventually have the ability to have 100 or more posts on there and where I would be able to launch my own product (which is proving very profitable).

I’ll keep you updated in how my existing sites are going (as I am now planning to scale these out further) as well as how my new niche sites are progressing.

I might even do a comparison between the sites I enjoy making, and the ones I am only making for the money.


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July 2013 Niche Site Progress Report

I know income reports are a dime a dozen these days. Pat Flynn was really the mastermind behind them.

He brought a new level to trust to the online income space.

I am following in his footsteps and will be creating my own income reports. Not to build trust with readers but to help myself.

I want to be able to monitor exactly how much income I am making and how my websites are progressing. For me it just makes sense to do it in the public eye.

If I’m going to do it I may as well show other people.

Here is my July 2013 website report. I won’t reveal the URL’s of each website, but I will track them with numbers (eg. Niche Site #1 etc)

My goal is 20 profitable niche sites by the end of 2013.

Niche Site Content Progress

I will be tracking the content progress of each of my niche sites. Because after all it is the content that drives the traffic that drives the sales.

So in almost all cases more content equals more traffic equals more sales.

Below is the number of articles I have on each niche site. The goal is for each niche site to have an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM of 10 articles and a home page article. Then I am ‘doubling down’ on the sites that show promise. Giving them 20+ articles.

Niche Site #1 – 127 (goal: 200)
Niche Site #2 – 1 (goal: 10)
Niche Site #3 – 13 (goal: 20)
Niche Site #4 – 17 (goal: 10 – achieved)
Niche Site #5 – 12 (goal: 20)
Niche Site #6- 9 (goal: 10)
Niche Site #7 – 1 (goal: 10)

Visitor Traffic

I will be tracking visitor traffic to see how my traffic overall is growing or declining.

I won’t be tracking pageviews or any other metrics at this stage.

Niche Site #1 – 7,540
Niche Site #2 – 5,157
Niche Site #3 – 7,515
Niche Site #4 – 856
Niche Site #5 – 2,969
Niche Site #6- 85 (first full month)
Niche Site #7 – 3 (just launched)

RyanMcLean.net – 505 (personal blog)
WhiteSummerStore.com – 6 (potential ecommerce store for my wife’s products)

Total = 24,636

Site Income

At this stage I will not be disclosing how I make my money from each site.

I earn income through a mixture of Adsense, affiliate income and my own product sales. Most sites are a mixture of 2 or 3 but some sites do rely more heavily on just one source of income

Niche Site #1 – $781.88
Niche Site #2 – $15.46
Niche Site #3 – $84.43
Niche Site #4 – $5.96
Niche Site #5 – $181.65
Niche Site #6 – $0.18
Niche Site #7 – $0.00

Total Income: $1,069.56

This is not my best month (I think that was about $1,300+) however it is a great month and my 3rd month over $1,000.

I am really excited because in August I will be reinvesting ALL of this money back into more sites to try and grow out my income.

Ideally I would have 20 profitable niche sites each averaging about $100 each. So the goal is to be earning $2000/month in January 2014.

August Goals

July has come and gone and August is here and I plan to do big things in August.

6 new niche sites

That’s right I have done the keyword research, bought the domains and I will be creating 6 new niche sites in August. I already have 3 up and running with at least 1 article on them.

So in my August niche site progress report I should have traffic stats for a whopping 13 niche sites (just 7 short of my goal of 20).

Ideally I would like to have 10 articles on every single website before the end of August but I don’t think that is going to happen. That would be something like 60 articles or 2 per day, and remember I only get a few hours each week to work on my sites.

More Videos

I attribute a lot of my success to creating YouTube videos of my blog posts and then linking back to the site with them. It is the only link building strategy I am currently using.

Eventually I would like to create a video for EVERY SINGLE BLOG POST I have. It can’t hurt after all. However, that is not my goal of August.

My goal for August is to have a video for every single home page article. I will let you know how I go.

The Current Strategy

Previously I was trying to follow “project 10” which was getting 10 articles up on a website before creating a new website. But due to the time lags in getting content I have had to adjust this.

Instead I am using “buckets” – a concept I got from the lean start up.

Basically each stage of a niche site’s development is classified as it’s own bucket

Buckets would be (buying domain, getting home page published, getting 10 articles published, putting images on the posts, creating videos for the posts).

The idea is that each bucket is only allowed a certain amount until it is deemed “full” and cannot be added to. The idea is that this forces you to complete some tasks further than you otherwise would so you can free up space in the bucket for newer projects.

I will be tracking what stage my sites are up to and trying to get as many buckets empty as possible.

Thus concludes my niche site update for July.


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