I’m not sure what category this idea/concept falls under except the “money” side of things. Once your initial ’setup’ is complete you can pump out a new ‘niche’ a day and turn it into some pretty instant traffic. This post was originally over at our “black hat – white hat” blog, but it’s good enough to be here as well…. so I’ve updated it.
Ready?
Here is what you will need:
- Hosting. I recommend a VPS for this – but you can put 5 to 20 instances of this concept on the same server. Liquidweb has treated me well, will ’secure’ your network, and help you with great support. You don’t want to go “cheap” on your first VPS that’s for sure. You will probably need the extra hand holding you get with a good company.
- Wordpress Mu. This is your secret weapon. It’s going to let you burst into new markets fast and easy. Go get it here: Wordpress MU.
- Squidoo Account, Blogger Account, and Bookmarking Demon. (this is optional but really really helps).
- An Account at the Promotion Center through Niche Site Special 2 (black hat membership). (this is optional but really really helps)
In regards to the hosting, you can use a shared host but you must ensure they are willing to set up wildcard subdomains first. I’ve always found this to be a hassle and it’s just easier to get a VPS. If you get a good support staff it will take them a few minutes to do, or you can take this opportunity to learn how to do it yourself. There are tons of tutorials out there.
For my example we are going to be busting into the computer market. So I go register a domain such as “computer-cheap.com” or something similar. I install and set up Wordpress MU. Normally at this point I take the time to do a few other things to get the most out of this.
GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR WORDPRESS MU SETUP:
1. I make a newsletter series. Usually just 5 or so messages. I take companies I find in linkshare, commission junction, etc… that are related to computers and I just e-mail out a promo for each of them. I load them up in order, them load them again, then load them again. Basically I’m just hitting them up with something like this:
Check out tigerdirect, check out apple, check out dell. Then check out tigerdirect again, check out apple again, check out dell again. Over and over again. If they manage to get on the newsletter I don’t care if they opt out after 25 weeks and getting the 3rd tigerdirect mailing. Chances are they won’t, but eventually I’ll hit them up when they are looking to buy.
Adding the newsletter isn’t a requirement – but it is worth it usually even if it does add on an hour or so to this set up.
2.) Take the time to customize a template (there are hundreds of them out there). I add in my opt in box directly to the template and since I use Aweber for my newsletter I also make a “pop up” box to make the ad pop up when visitors first arrive. (I want them in that newsletter). Since MU allows each user to select their own template you could easily have a mix of adsense,affiliate offers, etc… just by having multiple templates.
3.) I’m not worried about adsense income with these – I want them to purchase something from MY affiliate links not someone elses. I’ll make some pennies off the other steps we take. Plus since I’m not using my adsense account(s) I can be a little risky with some of the promotional methods I chose to do.
5.) Make a wordpress mu user for each topic.
You end up with urls like this:
dell.computer-cheap.com
apple.computer-cheap.com
macbook.computer-cheap.com
hp-laptop.computer-cheap.com
acer-with-xp.computer-cheap.com
Make a few posts for each user account (make sure model numbers and features are in the posts, titles, etc… ). Write em down – your going to need the urls of each of your links. For the rest of my example I’m going to pretend that I’ve made a post on a the “handy dandy laptop” under the macbook user account. My url is going to look something like this: www.macbook.computer-cheap.com/1/12/07/handy-dandy-laptop
Next I’m going to open up three browser windows. Squidoo, Blogger, and Wordpress. I’m going to make a quick post about “handy dandy laptops” using keywords I think (or have researched) people will be using to find these things. For squidoo I’m going to activate at least 4 or 5 moduals.
End result: I now have:
My Wordpress MU page, a squidoo page, a blogger blog, and a wordpress blog. I’ve interlinked all of them but the focus is my MU page because I OWN that one. I’ll use the others for traffic and ranking help, but I sure as heck don’t want to depend on any of the things hosted elsewhere to stay there forever.
I’ll take my keywords, and each of those urls and head on over to Bookmarking Demon and get the initial links to get me spidered and to increase my “squidoo rank”. Next I’ll submit all those sites to the “Promotion Center” at Niche Site Special 2.
That takes care of my intial linking strategy. I just want them indexed. The Promotion Center takes over the long term link building and I can move on.
If after a few days I start seeing some good traffic at squiddo or to my MU site, I’ll go ahead and start making comments on related blogs. I’ll use Comment Hut for this. Basically Comment Hut goes out and finds related blogs, lens’s, hub pages, etc.. Spits em out in a text file and I can go comment on them. I have a few choices there – and it really depends on how I want to do things. If you don’t already own comment hut – google comment kahuna. It’s free but returns less results.
I can:
Manually make a comment to each one.
Use a script to make fake comments on each one.
Trackback Spam them.
Referrer Spam them.
Or just start linking to those posts in future blog posts so I get the trackbacks the acceptable way.
There are also a few more things I can do. Usually there is someone somewhere in some forum selling submissions. For like 20 bucks I can get my MU site put in a couple hundred directories, but I normally don’t have to go that far. There is always myspace, hubpages, and a few hundred other social networks out there just waiting for me to drop links in. That’s what they are there for right?
That’s just a drop in the bucket, there are still hundreds of other ways to build links… and even generate content for these sites. There’s rss feeds, viral stuff, link injection, and more.
Moral of the story and your game plan:
1.) Set up MU.
2.) Make a page on a individual product.
3.) Find 3 ways to build sites pointing to it.
4.) Get them indexed.
5.) Figure out how you are going to keep building links steady over the long term.
AND FINALLY – never ever do anything with the root of computer-cheap.com. Don’t link to it, don’t reference it, etc.. That way if you ever do anything to get banned your other users will be fine.
Have questions? Ask away.
Cash in on your Competitors’ Work – SpyFu Ad History
Popularity: 56% [?]
Tags:
wordpress mu 
