When I was starting out, I’ve went thru so many different techniques of how to make money online with minisites. One thing that I noticed is that everyone has their own way or version on how to do it. But over time I’ve developed my own systematic way on how to make money with minisites using PPC. It is pretty straight forward, you don’t really need a lot of expensive scripts or programs, all you need is a little patience and willingness to learn more about it. Here’s my Ultimate Guide in Making Money Online with Minisites using PPC.

Domain Name

Minisites need traffic to make money off it, one of the best and cheapest way to get traffic is thru Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The best thing about domain names is that even without work, it commands a good Search Engine Position by just the domain name alone. So the first step is choosing the right Domain name that will boost your traffic thru SEO, here are the methods that I go thru:

Use Google Keyword Tool External

Step 1: Search for a topic that you’re interested in

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There are two things that you do have to take note of, one is the keyword and the other is the area. As for the keyword, just type in the keyword in the text area. The keyword can be a general topic and don’t worry, Google will narrow it down for you and find topics for you to choose from. As for the area (Refer to image above: English, United States), it comes down to what domain you chose.

• .COM, .NET, .ORG, .INFO, .ME, etc. are considered gTLD (Global Top Level Domains)
• .PH, .SG, .US, .CA, . TV, .MX etc. are considered ccTLD (Country Code Top Level Domains)

If you chose gTLDs then you simply choose English, United States and if you chose a ccTLD then you have to choose the corresponding country of the domain (e.g. .PH = Philippines). The reason for this is that ccTLDs only command high SEO in the local searches only, for example, digitalcamera.ph will only rank highly in the Philippines. The only advantage of ccTLDs is that there’s a lot of availability for registration and you get to dominate a certain country’s searches.

Step 2: Examine Results

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One of the first things that you have to do is to change the “Match Type” to “Exact”, the reason for this is that Google gives you, as default, broad searches which basically adds up the keywords as long as it was typed in the search bar. What you need are specific searches, people who are specifically typing in Google the exact keyword, in the example above what we’re looking for are people who’re typing “Printer” in the search bar. Remember being specific is what will propel your minisite in SEO. **NOTE: You can arrange the searches from the top searches to the bottom by clicking the title bar of each column. Also, the result may not always be accurate, as for example, searches for flowers might be high in February but low in other months.

Step 3: You don’t need to manually type it in

Scroll down to the bottom of the search results, you’ll find “Download Keywords” button. What this means is that it allows you to download all the results above to a notepad file. After downloading, open the file and all you need to do is Copy all keywords (Select All then Copy — **Shortcut: CTRL / CMD A then CTRL / CMD C).

Step 4: Go to Godaddy’s Bulk Domain Registration

Paste all that you copied from the text file you downloaded to the text area provided by Godaddy’s text area. Check which domains you’d like to register, I personally would recommend going after .COM, .NET, .INFO or .ORG, as I’ve experienced higher earnings from these domains. And click “Search”. **NOTE: You’ll see a lot of Error messages after searching, simply scroll down till you see the box and all the available domains will be listed. Also, steer away from brand names and trademarked names, as you can be sued for using their name.

Step 5: Check results

After searching thru GoDaddy’s results, I found that PrinterCart.net is available. So you need to see how much searches does this keyword get, I did a “Find” function with your browsers (Shortcut: CTRL F / CMD F) and typed the keyword to search in the results to take me quickly to the exact keyword (it’s faster than manually browsing thru the whole list).

Step 6: Asses Searches and Competitors

To assess how many competitors you have, do an exact search of the keyword in Google Search. This can be done by adding the Quotes (“”) to the searches, in the example above, searching for “printer cart” rather than printer cart. What you really need to know is how many results are there in the search engine. There are many discussions and rules on how to go about doing it, but I personally have my own way. My way is:

• Searches: Must be 3000 and above
• Competition: Must be 100,000 and below

I’ve assessed that domains that I registered that matches the criteria above gave me great results, while the ones that don’t, don’t earn as much.

Step 7: Know how much Cost Per Ad clicked (Earnings on ad clicks) for PPC

Go to Google’s Traffic Estimator Sandbox, you’ll see the page similar to the image above. Type in the keyword with the Quotes (“”), and select all countries and territories on the bottom (except if you chose a ccTLD, then chose the specific country).

Look at the column of “Estimated Avg. CPC”, that’s pretty much how much a click can earn you. The question is, Is it worth my Time? The answer to this can only answered by you alone. Think about how much money are you looking to earn per minisite, Here’s my personal formula:

Traffic X CPC X 5% (Average CTR) = Earnings per month

 

In the case of Printer Cart, it is 4400 x $1.71 x 5% = $376 / month. But you see I’m estimating that you get all the 4400 traffic, so that’s the maximum earnings you can reach each month with the domain, PrinterCart.net.

This Post is part of the 6 post series on the Ultimate Guide to Making Money Online with Minisites using PPC

• Part 1 – Domain Name
• Part 2 – Installing WordPress
• Part 3 – Configuring WordPress
• Part 4 – WordPress Themes, Minisite Design
• Part 5 – PPC Ads (Google Adsense)
• Part 6 – Writing Minisite Contents