Marketing Plan 101 – focus on MTN/NSS 2
Well I called this post a “marketing plan”, but I think I should have called it a starting or starting over plan. Over the past two months I’ve helped probably 100 of you get your heads on straight.
Part of that was my fault and it’s because of how I set Black Hat Digest. Mostly it was their fault though for not using their heads or really hearing what I was saying.
So let’s qualify you now 
- If you REFUSE to get out of the IM niche please recognize that nothing below this point will really help you.
- If you REFUSE to scale this out nothing below this point will help you.
- If you REFUSE to learn anything — nothing will help you.
- If you REFUSE to think for yourself nothing below this point will help you.
Now for some encouragement.
Now in the Black Hat Digest 30 Day guide I broke a ton of methods down. I gave you tools, scripts, and if your in NSS 2 I gave you even more. What I didn’t ‘really’ give you was a 1,2,3. I tried, but building a network is a complex issue. There are so many ways to go, so many skill sets, etc… So I’m going to assume from this point on that you know how to get hosting, domains, and install a script. If not I refer you to point 3 above. Those things aren’t really hard – little kids can do most of it so I know you can handle it.
MARKETING PLAN 101 SHOULD TAKE ABOUT 12 HOURS OF WORK – IT’S FAST AND LETHAL
So let’s plan out our network:
The first thing we need to determine is what our network is going to be about. We don’t want a site on fishing, a site on hamsters, and a site on couches. This is where your head comes in. Use it. Personally It’s just past Christmas time and I have 4 kids. So I’m thinking about *and already have many sites on* toys. So my network is going to be toys.
We have to fess up and admit I’m old and not hip anymore. So I’m going to have to do a couple things to figure out what to target. The good news is that there are many places to tell me what’s hot, etc.. Do a google search for ‘niche research’ and you will find something to help you. Google trends, google sets, etc… are all great places to start. I personally use wordze to do most of my research but I still tend to use some free tools first.
I suggest the google keyword research tool? It’s a great place to actually find out what folks are searching for… and how they are searching for it. Guess what? That’s half the battle. Once you’ve got a few phrases jump on over into Wordze (no it’s not free, but I bet you can afford a one day trial).
Do your research now. Figure out who you have to beat, and how to beat them. Cancel out of wordze if you want afterward, but have a game plan (o.k.).
I’ve gone into research enough here on BHD, and there are literally hundreds of places to do it and learn about it. Use your head if you aren’t comfortable with it – and go learn somemore.
Research is done – Let’s think about a top level site.
So we’ve got some keyphrases to target at this point. Now it’s time to come up with a plan. Normally when I do something like this I like to have a top level site. A big fat stinking money site. But let’s be honest at this point and admit that I don’t have a bloody clue what to focus on. Will lego’s sell? Will it be kids bikes? What niches am I going to be able to break into fast and hard?
I have no clue…. so I’m going to “skip” this section for now. Don’t worry, I can “plug” in this white hat site whenever I want. (back to this in a second).
HOSTING
So let’s plan things out smartly. Normally I suggest three different hosts or servers for all this. But this IS a recession and I’m going to do my best to keep our costs down. So let’s stick with a VPS server and a shared server. A VPS server is a server that is partitioned and while it has less room than a dedicated you have all the features of one.
For the VPS for this I’m going to say Liquid Web. They are a stable company and they will secure your server for you. I’m assuming your new at this and the idea of securing your server is a scary thing. The basic Linux VPS will do you just fine for this right now. At a later date (when the sites are profitable) you can scale up if you need to.
Shared host is totally up to you. Make sure they have php5 enabled and they aren’t strict. That sort of leaves hostgator out of the picture. Note: If you want to you CAN keep costs down and just get the medium vps package at liquid web. I’m not going to be leading you to far down the dark side with this tutorial. Just buy a couple extra IP addresses and spread things around.
Set up your management system
So once you have your hosting you are going to need to install some kind of linking solution. If you are a NSS 2 black hat member you can use the linking command center. If you have no clue about a linking solution just plan on doing the work manually (I hate manual work). The important thing to remember here is that you are going to making a lot of sites and at a later date you are going to want to add more. Do you want to do all that interlinking by visiting all your sites and editing or do you want a central control panel. If you are going to use the linking command center please note that it was not designed for a shared host environment – put it on the VPS.
Opps wait – that’s it. Since this is all about links you’ve got your solution or your plan at this point.
Get your domains
Your going to need at least 5 domains at this point.
These domains are what I’m going to consider “black hat foundations”. They aren’t quite 100 percent legit, and they aren’t horribly black hat. If we play our cards right they will even pass a human review.
So far our only “cost” is hosting and domains. Let’s assume an average of 20 dollars a domain though (price of many aftermarket domains). Your total costs (beyond nss 2 if your a member) is only $160 set up, and just 60 per month at this point. ( I can almost guarantee this back your first month if you were smart with your research).
Domain Name Set up
We’ve got our five domains and we need to quickly get them geared up for “cash generation”. The set up here is important – the little tweaks and changes you do are up to you though. For this guide we are going to use the microtargetniche sites (MTN). The latest version of MTN sets up ebay, sites in a flash and are made to be spider traps. I love them – and this is how we do things.
For each of your domains install a MTN site in the root. (domain.com). Then install a wordpress blog in the back end. (domain.com/blogkeyword/). Use your head setting up the blog. Get a nice template. Post in a couple ‘real’ posts. Use some articles. KEEP PINGING ON FOR THIS STAGE…. once your done – turn it off.
Open a text file and following the MTN instructions make a master link page. It’s going to link to all your blogs, and all the index pages of these sites. Add it to the MTN sites in the control panel.
Use the script from “DAY 7″ (site map to blog) to populate all those blogs. Where do you get the sitemaps? Another site in this mini network. If you are in NSS 2 you have a number of other tools to make mass posts to your blogs. Use them at this point – shareasale2blog, etc….. Make sure that pinging is off for this stage. When complete turn pinging back on.
Add some content to all your MTN sites (not much – just a little. They are meant to be self populating for the most part but you do want to give the engines something to grab on to.
Add your blogs and some snippets promoting them to wordpress monthly. (WPM is inside NSS 2 as well).
Use the promotion center in NSS 2 if you would like.
Setting up 5 domains like this just takes a few hours. MTN sites intstall easy and for the most part are ready to go.
Now we need a few more external links going to these sites.
Quick and dirty promotion that doesn’t take forever….
1- Use your RSS feeds (1 hour)
2 – Using wordpress monthly and the promotion center in NSS 2 should be enough to keep things busy on top of the rss feeds.
3 – umm this is all covered in the 30 day guide. I hope you read it
Conclusion
Well we’ve set up a mini network in about a day. It’s got 5 sites, and 5 blogs. All of them are having links built through NSS 2 tools and RSS feeds. Being in wordpress monthly will keep the blogs active even if you aren’t.
Time for a nap
When you wake up from the nap and over the next few weeks any content you add to things will be purely to your long term benefit. You can’t go wrong adding more content to your blogs, or to the MTN sites. You also can’t go wrong submitting more content to wordpress monthly. The more links, and content you have the easier it’s going to be to rank.
The good news is that your long tail keywords will be going through the roof – and the constant stream of posts and links through your sites are all going to help you. If you’ve taken the time to do your research right you will be getting traffic instantly from google blog search and msn pretty fast. Google will love to crawl your MTN sites, and the blogs being updated will actually gain you some trust pretty fast. Since the MTN sites slowly open up new pages it will also look like your growing naturally.
Cash in on your Competitors’ Work – SpyFu Ad History
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