A friend of mine approached me recently and pointed me at a “Stunning New PLR Package In Highly Lucrative Niche“. This scheme basically buys you a website template, pre-built with Google AdSense adverts, access to a load of articles, and a few bundled ad ons, and promises that if you buy it, you can fiddle with a bit of work, and then watch the cash roll in.
My friend asked me if that was the sort of thing I was interested in? Hmmmmm……
This “Niche” was basically student loan consolidation, so it’s a financial loan “niche”. It’s the Unsecured Loans market, which is clearly a huge, multi 10’s of Billions of dollars / pounds / bucks / yen etc market a year. I would stay away from this and all other mass markets: Real estate, Back pain, Hypnotherapy, Stop smoking, Weight loss, Exercise, Loans, Mortgages, Poker, Gambling, Credit Cards etc etc, are all not worth it in my humble opinion. These aren’t “niches”, they are mass markets. Yes there are big gains to be had here if you can really break into the mass market, but there are ten thousand people thinking the same way, so why set oneself up for the hardest fight right from the off?
Let me give you an example, I know a guy, Rob Benwell, who sold the Niche Domination System. What was his niche? Fish care! Not just fish in general, Fish are a market not a niche. No, his niche were just Discus Fish. This is his website: www.discus-fish-secrets.com It doesn’t make him a fortune, just about a $1,000 profit per month last time I heard. And he has many such sites. How to raise, care for and breed Discus fish?!? Now that’s niche! I’d rather have 10 small niche sites like this, each bringing in a few hundred pounds a week, than 1 site on loans, which would be a lot more effort, may never pay off, and be significantly higher risk.
Personally I would rather be a medium fish in a small pond; than a medium fish in a big pond, where there are bigger fish about, if that makes sense?
I have relationships with a couple of Financial Advisor’s, and have toyed with the idea a couple of times of going into the lead generation side of things, as they have the contacts to be able to make it pay. E.g. one of them does lead generation at the moment, and he reckons for every 100 qualified leads he gets (i.e. they fill out an “I’m interested in a unsecured loan, here are my details, someone call me.” form), he makes £2,500 GBP ($5,000 USD) profit. But getting those leads is damn hard! How much traffic to a website on loans do you think you need to get 100 people to give you their personal contact details and ask someone to call them? I’d say, that even if you had a really professional looking website, with great original content, you’d be looking at most at a 0.25% conversion rate from organic traffic. So you need 40,000 unique visitors to get 100 sign ups. Tough.
I would say that a full half (probably more) of everyone I meet who is trying to make a living online, tries to go after at least 1 of these high profile markets. I’d also say that 95% of the people I meet trying to make a living online, are not successful (which I define as being able to give up all other forms of income and live comfortably).
To my mind it’s pretty obvious that those 2 statistics are inexorably linked! I would also never buy a “Stunning New PLR Package In Highly Lucrative Niche“. If it was that stunning, the guy would be doing it himself, several times over, quietly dominating the niche, and rather than trumpeting it, he would be desperately trying to make as much money as possible before the word got out.
PLR (Private Label Rights) Packages are basically schemes where you get access to content, usually in the form of articles, that you can package and resell. But PLR Packages are a waste of time, because you are sharing your content with every other person who subscribes to the package. You are paying to use duplicate content, bad idea. I would say that when buying a PLR package you are actually taking a step back, because you erroneously think you are a step in the right direction, and that’s not a good start. Any business model where you buy the bits off the shelf, plug them together, and then expect the cash to roll in…. well you hopefully get the point.
If it was that simple, why would this guy by telling the likes of you and me, and offering to sell the hidden secret for just $49 USD? I’ll tell you why, because there’s another mass market “niche” that I didn’t list before, it used to be called the Get Rich Quick market, now it has a new name: the “Internet Marketing” market. I.e. people who want to make a living online and have a few bucks to throw at buying a “Get Rich Quick, give me $49 and I’ll tell you everything you need know and do to be holidaying in the sun while the cash roles in.” scheme. This is a multi $Bn world wide market.
This is actually the model that you need to follow though if you want to break into the extremely lucrative Internet Marketing niche. First, you need some modest success. You need to launch that website that makes you some cash, it needs to be > $10,000 within 3 months as a minimum. First, and this is the most important, you need to milk it for all it’s worth, until other people catch on and competition is squeezing your profit. Then, here’s what you do, you need to collate all you evidence: ClickBank cheques; Paypal statements; pictures of you on holiday with the Ferrari and gorgeous girl on your arm. Then turn what you did into a “system” and then sell it. After all, you have the proof right? It’s simple isn’t it? Of course that niche will be busted right open and the chances are only a small fraction who buy your system will make any money, but meh, you’ve probably just made 50 grand, so what do you care, right?
Do you know I’ve actually spoken to people who have lost their job, borrowed $20,000 USD and then gone to an Internet Marketing forum and asked what they should spend their money on to get rich online, but please it’s got to be quick, and guaranteed to make a profit, cos their money will run out soon and that’s all they’ve got to feed their family, and then they don’t know what they’ll do can they can’t get any more credit! {:-O Seriously, I’ve seen it.
It is however entirely possible to make a decent living online without targeting these mass markets, and I know several internet millionaires. What’s the common denominator? They all produce (in different ways) genuinely original products and services and websites, and they devote a significant amount of time to SEO and marketing their site. Some sell info products, most however have commissioned these themselves and are not selling other peoples stuff (though I do know successful affiliate marketers too). Some sell physical products, and they vary from pure drop shipping with a few scattered work from home “employees”. Some have progressed to visiting China and importing directly container loads of stock and have warehouses and offices and employees and the like.
It’s also entirely possible to make a modest income and be “rich” in other ways. Take Dave Taylor: of www.askdavetaylor.com He earns a modest $100,000 USD a year from that one site (that’s all he’s got) mostly from AdSense. But he only works part time, and he takes an entire month off work every summer to spend with his family. (His blog is pre-loaded with time delayed content for that month.) That’s his goal, he’s a happy man and I have immense respect for him for it.
I know another guy in Ireland who amongst other things, plies his trade on MySpace and the other social networking sites, doing for example affiliate leads for things like online paid surveys. He’s not wealthy, but he doesn’t have to work an office job to feed himself and his family. He made me laugh actually, cos he said to be once: “Whenever I get a bit bored and am lacking motivation, I just pop down the pub for a Guinness and watch all the fools trudging to and from work all day. That normally cheers me up.”
So what’s the moral here, well it’s simple: There is no Get Rich Quick scheme in Internet Marketing. If you find one, keep your mouth shut. If someone’s selling you one, there’s little chance you’ll make any money in it. Don’t try to buy an income stream, go out and carve yourself a little corner of the net from which to peddle your genuinely unique and value add, wares, whatever that may be.
