It’s been quite a while since my last DatMoney updates, and the main reason is the fact that I haven’t been around as much to keep up. But at least I get a few posts in each week. Anyways, because I have been busy, I decided I’m going to start outsourcing a few things. That’s just one of the many updates… let’s get straight into it.

Outsourcing Some Work – I was too cheap and hardheaded to outsource a lot of work. I think this is one of the main reasons why it was hard for me to multitask with all the projects that I’m working on. I’ve actually hired someone to help me out with the small tasks of building links, blog commenting, writing articles, etc. Don’t worry, these tasks are mainly for my other sites so that way I can focus a little more here.

But if you know of people who can help for cheap (or even for free), please let me know. I can definitely use the help, and who knows, you’ll probably learn a thing or two from me in the process.

Price Changes on Ad Space and Paid Reviews - I haven’t changed my prices for over a year now which is a good and bad thing. And good thing because advertisers get a pretty good price for what they are getting. But bad because that means I haven’t been increasing my stats like I’d like to.

Since I’m nearly around 900 RSS Feed subscribers (even though Google hasn’t updated my RSS counter) and all my stats are pretty decent, I’ve decided that on June 1st, 2009 that I will increase my prices. Of course, it won’t be anything drastic. I haven’t figured it out yet but more than likely I’m just going to increase prices by $5.00 USD a month or review.

I’m just easing it in and $5.00 isn’t even a big increase. Of course, if I really start promoting and my stats skyrocket, then that’s going to be a different thing.

If you sent me an e-mail regarding a paid review or ad spot already (or before June 1st) then you’ll get the old prices.

Password to the $100/Day Adsense Post Sent – I finally got around to sending out the next batch of e-mails for the password protected post of making $100/day from Adsense. If you subscribed since the last batch, verified and stayed subscribed, you should have the e-mail. I think I got everyone prior to today, so if you happen to missed the cutoff, you’re going to have to wait until the next one.

If you didn’t receive the password but subscribed, more than likely it’s in your spam so check it before you contact me. And if you just feel as though you never received it and you’re currently subscribed, then drop a comment or contact me and I’ll get it to you.

Site Flipping Series Update - Just a quick update, I’m considering just using a domain name and niche that I already have setup that is relatively new so you guys can follow along with that. I think you guys are more interested in the later results in progress rather than the very beginning.

Though, if the site I show you guys makes consistent money that is pretty good, I may actually hold off on selling it. I would prefer recurring revenue, if the money is right, rather than a lump sum up front… especially if there is a lot of potential in the site.

Guest Post Anyone? - Since I haven’t been able to update as much on here, I figured I’d give you guys chances on guest posting if you want to. Of course, you’ll get a backlink to your site (and whatever anchor text you want) as well as your post being sent out to the 800-900 subscribers of DatMoney.

I’m not too picky on the type of post, I just want it to be informative, interesting or related to online entrepreneurship. If you are interested, just shoot me an e-mail with an example of your post and I’ll let you know if it’s cool.

RSS Feed E-mail Delivery Hours Changed - Before I had my RSS Feeds sent out between 11am – 1pm EST but since my work schedule has changed slightly, I figured it’d be easier for me to get posts at a later time.

Currently, I’ve set it to be delivered between 3pm – 5pm EST but maybe possibly change that to a little later. I’m sure no one is going to care anyways, but I wanted to inform you guys if you were ever expecting to read my post right when you got it in your inbox.

Well, that’s it for now. Let me know if you guys have any questions!

I’m sure you guys are aware of the fact that I partner up with various online entrepreneurs that would like to work together on some joint venture. A lot of people approach me because they have ideas on joint venture projects and of course you guys also know I openly invite people to work with me. Now, I don’t mind if I have time but some of those joint ventures just don’t work out.

This is why I compiled a little list on why joint ventures do not work.

Lack of Commitment

I think there’s an old fashion saying that goes on the line of “successful people take action and initiative while others just sit there wishing and daydreaming for things to come.” Well, although we’re all daydreamers and we wish for things, that doesn’t go good with working on joint ventures.

When it comes down to it, when there is a lack of commitment, that just spells failure just shortly up the road. Because if one person slacks, that just brings everyone down with them.

Who wants someone to join up in a “joint venture” and expects the other person to do all the work? If there is a lack of commitment from both parties, or even just one person, then it’s just about over.

No Communication

If I was working by myself, then it’d be easy because I call the shots, I don’t have to discuss things with other people, etc. But since you’re in a joint venture project, everyone is essentially equal. So, you have to communicate so no one is butting heads, there’s no duplicate work being done, you guys are on the same page, you can fill in for someone if they have an emergency and so on.

I’ve worked with quite a few people in my short tenure of working online and one of the worst things is the lack of communication. Matter of fact, a few of my joint venture projects broke off because of this.

If you guys remember my ListLunatic site flipping team, well, one member didn’t have good communication and kind of dragged everyone else down so we were forced to cut the rope with him.

A Bunch of Hard Heads That Don’t Work Well With Others

If you are hardheaded and you think you are right all the time, or isn’t willing to listen to other people’s ideas and feel as though everything needs to be done exactly how you expect it to be done, well, that’s a joint venture just waiting to fall apart.

I’ve actually been pretty lucky because I’m probably the hard headed out of everybody. And honestly, I don’t think I’m that bad. I listen to everyone and I don’t get my way all the time. But if I’m 100 percent sure something will work, I will try to push that out there.

Wait, I hope people didn’t stop working with me because I’m the hard headed one! LOL!

No Plans

If you have no plans, no outline or anything like that, guess what? You probably don’t even have a joint venture at all either. Because you can always discuss working with someone but if you guys have nothing to work on or don’t have some sort of plan devised then the project is just going to be a go-with-the-flow type venture.

In my experience, those don’t work out well. And although you can definitely work through it, more often than not, someone is going to give up because of the bad results from all the work put into it with nothing much to show.

All of these are pretty much self-explanatory but I just wanted to point out from some of my past experiences that ended some of my joint venture projects. Matter of fact, there are some people who I just never heard from again even on numerous attempts to contact them.

Oh well. Maybe next time!

If you’re starting from scratch when it comes to flipping sites, you need to pick a niche to start on. Now there are people who randomly pick and get lucky while others don’t. I do that sometimes but then again, it’s not exactly random because I look at keywords that are getting high search engine traffic, usually. But there are plenty of steps you can take on how to pick a niche for site flipping.

Personally, I like to pick a niche that I’m actually interested in or something that will keep me entertained while I’m doing it. I don’t like picking niches that bore me because when I do that, I feel as though I’m just working online for money instead of enjoying it.

Don’t get me wrong, if you are just working for the money, no ones stopping you. I’m just not a big fan of working, working, working just for a check unless I really have to. And speaking of working for money, if you have any site that’s making money then you should be able to sell it with no problem.

But let’s get into picking a niche.

What’s Hot and What Do Buyers Want?

Like I said in the previous paragraph, buyers want money making sites. Or at least the potential the site has to make tons of money. That is pretty obvious because no one wants to invest in something without getting some return back plus more. They want to invest now and in the long run, they get their money back and with some additional work, they profit from it.

A good place to start is to head over to Sitepoint’s “Want to Buy” section. But I’m only looking for things that I’m capable of doing and interested in.

If you guys take a look within the past week or so, there are a lot of people that are looking for sites that I’m probably not going to attempt to do. For instance, directories, applications for social sites, forums, etc. I think those would be too much work so it’s pointless to try to learn something brand new.

What I’m looking for is something in a niche that I’m actually interested in, that I know I’m capable of doing and something that will put money in my pockets while I’m doing it.

Since I didn’t find anything that would help me pick a niche (most people wanted something that I wasn’t interested in, something that I couldn’t do or was just asking for sites that made money) let’s try the other Marketplace sections.

The thing you have to really look for are sites that people are actually bidding on. If they get no bids, it’s either because they are overpriced, not worth it or people don’t see potential (or possibly just missed the listing).

After looking through the different sections on what people are bidding on, the main ones that I would be interested in doing are: health-related, sports, games and cars/bikes.

Is the Niche Competitive? Are Their Keywords I Can Rank In?

Out of the four niches that I’d be interested in making a site for, there’s only one that is probably highly competitive no matter what you create the site for. The health site.

People are so crazed about getting healthy and losing weight that the niche has become similar to make money online niches: they are over saturated.

You can probably say the same for the other niches that I’ve picked but every single one of those have so many sub-niches that you can work with.

I’m a big sports fan but I also want to do minimal work and sports would require me to keep up with everything daily so I’m going to pass on that.

Now video games and cars/bikes are things that I’d be interested in and I wouldn’t have to update daily or anything like that. So, let’s pick some random things relating to video games and cars/bikes and see if there’s low/high competition and if there’s good keywords for us to rank in.

Instead of using both examples, I just do the cars. What I did was Googled “new cars 2009″ because people are always into the new things. Of course, cars have the same models each year, just different. I found an article based on my search and found “the best new cars of 2009.”

After looking through, I picked some random ones and I typed it into the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool.

After looking through, I decided to go with the Nissan Skyline GT as my pick. So I typed in “Nissan” into the suggestion tool and saw:

As you can see, “Nissan Skyline” and “Nissan GTR” are highly searched for. Don’t worry, we’re going to be focusing more on the long-tail keywords rather than those specific ones.

Time to see how competition it is. All I did was a simple Google search for “Nissan Skyline GT” and “Nissan Skyline GTR” and both came up with just a little over one million search results. I know that’s a lot but I’d say if you can get a highly searched for keyword with a million or less search results, then that’s actually pretty good.

Does the Niche Have Potential in the Eyes of the Buyer?

Now it’s hard to say since we didn’t even set anything up. But based on the above, it definitely should. It’s highly searched for, I don’t foresee the car models going out of style soon and more than likely it’ll make some good money.

Our goal is to basically get all our stats up so we can have proof to potential buyers.

Now that is how I would potentially select a niche for a potential site flipping project. Don’t get me wrong, I was just showing you guys an example, I may not necessarily use the car site as the example site for you guys to follow. But don’t worry, once I actually pick it, you guys will know and be able to follow along.

Stay tuned for more on the site flipping series!

I decided that I would start a full site flipping series, post by post and go into details with examples. I think this would be great for anyone that was ever interested in selling a site but never knew all the aspects of it so it turned them off a little bit.

In the site flipping series, I will include details on how to start a site, how to get it designed and setup, how to promote it and build links, how to do keyword research for it, how to sell it, etc. I’m sure a lot of you guys have seen similar posts on other blogs but I guess the difference is the fact that I’ll try to be in depth with everything.

Actually, I was thinking about starting a brand new site so you guys can just follow that site as an example. Though, I think it’ll be a pretty hard commitment to start a brand new site with all the other projects I have going on so I may also consider just using a relatively new site. But I guess I have a little time to think about it.

I guess this project will be similar to the Listlunatic.com site flipping team project except I’ll actually write in depth on exactly what I’m doing.

The Listlunatic project was more on the lines of “hey, this is the site, check it out, figure out how we sold it for $2,000 in a month!” In actuality, it might have been a little more than one month but since it was a team effort, we all only worked on it maybe a few hours each. We didn’t have many posts and after a strong start, we all slacked a little bit too.

I decided to do this because whenever I go, people will always tell you like “look at how I make money and this is kind of the guide to do it” but they never give examples. Which I can understand because they don’t want to have people taking over their niche and adding tons of competition to themselves.

So, I will try to do it. Hopefully it works out for everyone. Stay on the lookout for that!

Remember when the Revolution WP themes were free? Well, I hope you guys all took advantage of downloading those prior to it going back to premium. I think it was towards the end of 2008 where the big buzz was the fact that all the Revolution WP themes were available for download for free but the catch was you was paying for the support.

All that changed in 2009 because all those themes are back to premium and you need to pay for them. But as I was looking around, it seems that if you downloaded it already when it was free, you are still available to use it (with no support, of course).

If I am wrong, someone please let me know.

But I was bringing a friend into the online money making world and we came up with a killer idea, killer domain name that is extremely brandable, killer plan, low competition and now we’re pretty much set to get things rolling.

There have been good things and bad things while working with others on joint ventures and I’ll probably post that at some other time. I’m actually hoping to get those posts out this week.

But anyways, we decided that we would use the Revolution themes to experiment with because it would make our site look professional and we kind of wanted a setup like Crack.com where we could have plenty of different options right on the homepage.

Plus, if you guys remember when we sold ListLunatic.com, that was a Revolution theme too. So, why change success and things that work, right?

A lot of people that I know have downloaded the Revolution themes before when it was free but of course, not many of us are css and html savvy. I think a lot of people postponed even attempting to use it simply because they didn’t know how to change anything to make it custom to what they want. Well, there are plenty of useful articles that I have found to support Revolution themes for customizing but the main one you need to know is:

Set Up Your Blog with Revolution Magazine Theme

Forest is definitely knowledgable when it comes to design work with websites and I’m sure you guys remember him being part of our team that sold ListLunatic.com… matter of fact, he was the one that made that killer header for that site.

But this is your opportunity to try out the Revolution WP theme that you downloaded months and months ago when it was free.

What are you waiting for… try it out!