Insurance Lead Gen Website Making $500 to $1000/Month – Case Study #3

Oct 292010

It has been a few days since I wrote my last post. I’ve been busy with work, and trying to build out a network of websites. It’s really hard work. All things considered, my day job is by far the easiest route and most financially rewarding. Unlike working for others, hard work does not guarantee financial success as a web entrepreneur. Nevertheless, being an entrepreneur is the only way to gain any sort of control over your financial future. Beside, I already have one boss at home, I really really really don’t need another one. Anyway, I digress.

I read an article tonight from the HuffingtonPost and there is this one website I’d like to profile. It is an insurance lead gen website — ZipQuote.com. According to Alexa, it is ranked in the 3 millions and it has so little traffic that Compete.com does not even have its stats. Yet, according to the site owner in the article, he is making between $500-$1000/month. Not bad at all. And, according to Google, there is very little search for its exact keywords: “Zip Quote”.

You key in a zip code for a given category (home insurance, auto insurance, life insurance, etc.) and it display a list of providers. The listing is powered by Sure Hits, which is a well known lead gen ad network for insurance and loans according to my research. It seems pretty straight forward. For those of us who want to try out monetize with a lead gen website. This one seems to be a good fit to model after. In fact, if you like the website design/template, you can contact the designer to see how much it cost. Do share with us what you find out. Good luck!

Tips on Searching for Powerful Free WordPress Themes

Oct 192010


As a web and WordPress newbie, one of the thing I had a hard time figuring out is what WordPress theme is suitable for me. Like you I wanted to minimize my learning curve and try to spend most of my time on the “making money aspects” of the web.

Today, after procrastinated for many days from developing a new website other than working on my blog. I found out there is an extremely easy way to search for free WordPress Themes without having to use Google.

Sign on to WordPress’s Dashboard, and goto -> Appearance -> Themes -> Click on “Install Themes” and select the features for the theme you are searching for. Yes it is that EASY!!

Here was a theme that I found and installed by using the above feature filter to narrow down the ones that I am interested in. The theme is call Suffusion and it is by far the most sophisticated and elaborate free theme I have seen. Check out what you can do with the header and footer. It’s beautiful isn’t it? I hope this help. Now lets go and create a nice website to make some money.

P.S. I think when we had achieve some success we should donate some of our knowledge and money to those who had help us on our journey to be web entrepreneur.

The Difference Between Web Hosting and Domain Name

Oct 092010

To use an analogy. Web hosting is like a car, while the domain name is like a custom license plate. You change car, but still keep your custom license plate. When the police pull you over, he will be able to get your information based on your custom license plate number.

You register your domain name with a registrar like Godaddy.com, but you do not need to host your website with them. I thought it was a big hassle to register your domain name with one company, and host your website with another. In fact, I didn’t even know that was possible. I know – I am a real newbie. But, in fact, it is very simple to host with any company. Just goto your domain registrar account and change the NAME SERVER to point to the hosting account’s server name (which is given to you when you sign up with a hosting company). It is like going to the DMV and letting them know that you have changed car.

I recently moved my blog from Godaddy to HostGator. It cost me about $10/month, but my site is a lot faster and I can host as many websites as I want on this one hosting account. I used to pay only $4.50/month with Godaddy. But it was really slow to the point that it wasn’t usable and I can only host one website. I am very happy with HostGator. Its interface is clean and most importantly the speed is fast!

It took me a long time to decide to move away from Godaddy. I even call Godaddy to ask them what needed to be done to speed up my website. The only way was to upgrade to a dedicated server (which means yours website has the server all to itself), which is very expensive! A blog like Pooruncle.com in this early stage does not need a dedicated server. I just needed the response time to be fast whenever one of the few hundred of my readers is browsing my blog.

With my new found hosting speed and unlimited website hosting, the future of my internet venture in domain name investing and website monetizing just got a lot brighter.

Developed Web Sites Valuation

Oct 032010

I have read a few articles about determining the web sites valuation. I found these articles and the follow up comments to be useful and want to link them for future reference.

Expert Discusses How to Sell Developed Web Sites.
One of the more interesting sessions during the recent Epik Developers Conference was about selling developed web sites. David Fairley, who operates a web site brokerage, explained the fundamentals of buying and selling established sites.

1. Cash flow the site produces (net profit or EBITDA)

2. Organic SEO rankings
3. Traffic stats
4. Cash flow and traffic trends (is it growing?)
5. Business model (ecommerce, dropshipping, affiliate, ppc)
6. Domain name (high quality generics add some value)
7. Average sale on your site
http://domainnamewire.com/2010/09/29/expert-discusses-how-to-sell-developed-web-sites/

At What Revenue Multiple Do You Sell a Website?
http://www.elliotsblog.com/at-what-revenue-multiple-do-you-sell-a-website-9477

Quick update: I spotted on one of the automatic websites valuation that my bargain deal site, bargainsaddict.com, is worth a whopping $603,918! Anyone interested in buying?

The Genesis of the Domain Name Industry

Sep 292010

I came across a few articles and blogs written back in 2005 and 2007 which seem to summarize the genesis of the domain name industry. I think it’s a great collection of writings to keep as a reference as we web newbie dealt into the world of domain name investing. The last link is an exclusive interview with Frank Schilling posted yesterday. He talked about the current state of the domain name industry.

Masters of their Domains – by Business 2.0 on December 2005
Forget condos and strip malls. Domain names, the real estate of the Web, have been delivering far greater returns. How some of the savviest speculators on the Net are making millions from their URL portfolios. This article was written back in 2005 on Business 2.0.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2005/12/01/8364591/index.htm

Giving the Audience Its Own Domain – by Business 2.0 on March 2007
Richard Rosenblatt helped broker the $580 million sale of MySpace. Now he wants to build millions of sites like it – this time, in vertical niches.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/12/01/8394990/index.htm

The man who owns the Internet – by Business 2.0 on May 2007
Kevin Ham is the most powerful dotcom mogul you’ve never heard of, reports Business 2.0 Magazine. Here’s how the master of Web domains built a $300 million empire.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/06/01/100050989/index.htm

Making money on domain names: dirty business or brilliant strategy? – by VentureItch on Mary 2007
http://www.ventureitch.com/?p=161

The Domain Game – by David Kesmodel 2007
Find out how an array of dreamers,wildcatters and misfits became rich on the real estate of the World Wide Web. The Domain Game is a 209-page book that chronicles the exploits of the world’s leading domain investors and explains how you, too, can make a foray into this fast-growing market.
http://thedomaingame.org/

Interview with Frank Schilling on the current state of the Domain Name Industry – by IDNBlog on September 2010
http://idnblog.com/2010/09/28/exclusive-qa-frank-schilling/

How to Create a Website Like PoorUncle.com With WordPress and Mystique Theme

Sep 182010


Here is a step-by-step guide to create a website (blog) like PoorUncle.com with all its functionalities and ad placements. It involved absolutely no programming! PoorUncle.com is powered by WordPress 3.0.1, Mystique Theme 2.4.2, and 11 Plugins.

1. Once you have registered a domain name and bought a hosting account, Install WordPress with One-click Hosting Applications. This step may take up to a couple of hours before it is installed.

2.  Sign in to WordPress Dashboard, ie. pooruncle.com/wp-admin.

3. Install Mystique Theme for FREE: Appearance-> Themes -> Install Themes-> by search for “Mystique”, then click install.


4. Install Plugins: Plugins-> Add New -> Search and install each of the following plugins:

a. Ad Squares Widget
b.  Akismet
c.  Contact Form 7
d.  All in One SEO Pack
e.  Google XML Sitemaps
f.  Really Simple CAPTCHA
g.  Tweet Blender
h.  Tweet This
i.  W3 Total Cache
j.  WordPress Related Posts
k.  WP-PostRatings

(I will keep updating this post with all the remaining steps, until it is complete.)

$10,000+ Monthly Advertising Income from a Blog Website – Case Study #2

Sep 182010


When I got interested in domain investing and domain monetizing a few months ago, one of the first websites (blogs) I visited was DomainNameWire.com. The blogger (author), Andrew Allemann, mainly writes about domain news; and his niche is in policy and legal issues. I think he is well respected in the domain industry and a lot of domain investors frequent his website for domain news. If you want to make serious money from advertising on your blog, I think you should study his blog. I don’t know him personally. But just by reading some of his posts and being around his website for a few months, my impression of what made his blog *successful are:

1. The ability to write well.
2. Writing posts in a news reporting format.
3. Concentrate on a Niche within an industry.
4. First to break the news.
5. Ability to attract domain investor readers, hence, attract advertising dollars.

Some stats for your reference: According to Alexa, site has been on line since early 2005, traffic rank in the 16,000′s, has over 900 back links. According to Compete, site has between 40K-80K unique visitors a month, and over 200K visits. Top 3 refer sites: Google (17%), Domaining (7%), TheDomains (7%).

Here is the potential monthly income based on DomainNameWire’s advertising prices. Given that most of its ad space is sold, the potential monthly income is quite close to the actual projected advertising income, AND that’s not including other income generated from the website like affiliate commission and income from its News letters.

Powered by WordPress: My First Ever Web Site to Made Money – Part 2

Sep 172010

As you can see from my very first website, it was really ugly and not very functional. Not to mention, it was a real pain to maintain. I kid you not, it took me half an hour to post one deal. When I first started I’d just go to deals2buy (my favorite deal site) and look for deals that was appealing to me and belongs to a company that I have an affiliate relationship with. Then I’d log in to my affiliate network account (either Commission Junction or Linkshare) and try to find the affiliate link to the deal so that when someone click on the link it would take them to a web page where the deal was displayed. That wasn’t very easy to do.  A lot of time, I couldn’t find the deal link and the search on the affiliate network tend to be extremely slow. I will write another post regarding the difficulties I had with setting up and running a deal site.

I manually post deals on my site off and on for about a couple of months, while looking for an alternative. I knew there was something called Web CMS (content management system), but I wasn’t sure how much it would cost or how much effort is needed to install it. From my midrange I.T. background, every piece of software was custom install and it tend to cost a lot of money! So I wasn’t optimistic about finding an affordable solution and be able to install the software easily.

In general, when I don’t know about something, I have the tendencies to read up on all the different products and solutions out there. (I think most of us do it the same way). As I started researching, I found that there was tons of free software out there. The amount of free software I found on line was just incredible. My concern and experience was there always is a learning curve with any new software and the installation is always a real pain in the butt.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I read up on this free software call WordPress. It was a free blogging web software. It wasn’t a CMS, but a lot of people use it as a CMS. It was really popular from what I read. It sounded like a winner, until I read the installation instructions, which included: uploading the software to the host server, creating tables, setting up configuration, etc. Well, I barely learned how to register my domain name and only have some vague idea what a hosting server was. To install WordPress manually was not something I was ready to do. I downloaded the software to my pc and sat on the installation instructions for weeks.

One day, I was playing around with my hosting account on Godaddy and saw a tab called applications. When I click on it, I saw a whole bunch of FREE software I can install. And, the beautiful was, it does it automatically. No need to manually create tables, no file uploads, no configuration. Most web hosting companies offer this feature..and it is called: “One-click Hosting Applications”.

If you have GoDaddy hosting, goto Hosting Control Center, and click on “Your Applications”:

One-click Hosting Applications: As you can see WordPress is the first application on the list because it is the most popular! Just click on it, and tell it where to install. (For example for this blog: to install it at the root directory, would be /pooruncle.com or inside at a sub-directory, would be /pooruncle.com/blog. At first I tried to install it inside a sub-directory. But for some reasons I couldn’t get it to work. But at the root directory it works fine and that’s probably how you want to install it.)

Hope this is helpful for some of you. It’s really easy. Let me know if you have any problems. You can install a whole bunch of stuff. For example, you can install WordPress in your root directory, then install a Forum in a sub-directory. I didn’t install a forum on this blog. But I installed a forum on my deal site.

Here is how my deal site look like. Thank you WordPress, and thank goodness for One-click Hosting Applications.

PoorUncle.com is Now #1 on Google

Sep 072010

It’s nothing to be proud of when people do a search with the term “Poor Uncle” and my blog is first on the result listing. I just thought it is neat that it is the first listed. Just a few weeks ago, my website was no where to be found on Google. I thought I’d share my new found relevant with being a poor uncle. If I were associated with being a rich uncle, now that would be something worth writing home about.

Insightful Advices from the Pros

Sep 062010

I have been interested in stocks that yield dividends ever since the internet bubble burst in 2000 and even more so today because stocks with dividend actually has a lot higher return than putting your money in a saving account. So, I was particularly interested in what the owner of Dividend.com has to say in his interview, Paul Rubillo, CEO and Founder of Dividend.com.

Some stats for your reference: Based on Compete.com – about 60,000 visitors for July. Top referring sites include: google, yahoo, sogtrade, and cnn. #2 on google with the search term “dividend”. It’s a hybrid site with paid and fee content. He has the following advice which I thought was heart felt and should be taken seriously by those with a wife and kids (Me! :) ).

To summarize what I would really want your readers to think about, is that they should chase their dreams with calculated risk. Don’t put the family at risk ever. The job environment is real tough out there. Build your dreams while you maintain your regular job. Step into things slowly before putting it all on the line. Most importantly, make a difference with what you are trying to do. If you can make a product or write about things that will make life better for people, you are on the right track. Don’t build the 6th best Facebook or 5th best site about your favorite team. Be the best at one thing and work your butt off to get there.

The entrepreneur, Eric Borgos, who sold Bored.com for $4 millions and owns about 9,000 domain names and countless number of websites has the following advice. Here’s what I found most helpful. You can read the rest of the Eric Borgos interview on MO.com.

I really don’t have any good ways of getting traffic. I have tried paid advertising, link trades, paid links, viral videos, search engine submissions, social bookmarking, and press releases, but none of that has ever done well for me.  I find that if I create good sites, eventually search engines pick them up and other sites start linking to them, and then they start making money. But, many of my good sites never get any traffic at all. It is really a gamble, and each of my sites is like a lottery ticket. The more sites I have, the more chances I have of winning.

I have launched many sites over the years that I thought would be huge hits, but they ended up going nowhere. So, although I don’t have any good suggestions on what to do about this problem, I can suggest what not to do, which is to put all your eggs in one basket. I see many people who spend months planning a site and then launching it, counting on making money from it, only to end up with nothing. You need to keep your mind open to the fact that your site may not end up being successful.

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