PublisherPoint

No matter how you found this site, I really think you’ve stumbled onto something good. The Internet is completely littered with fake gurus and so-called experts trying to help people make money online. The problem is that most of them have only ever made money from teaching you how to make money. And it’s a vicious, scammy cycle.

That’s exactly the opposite of what I’m going to be doing here on Publisher Point. I have no intention of writing a 10,000 word sales page offering you an e-book that will change your life all the while I hide behind my computer without any real knowledge. Publisher Point is going to eventually be the ultimate resource for how to make money online. A few of the things I have in mind are:

- active forums where you can go, day or night, to get solid advice about virtually anything

- consulting services for webmasters and entrepreneurs with both small and large budgets because everyone needs a mentor to get started

- dozens, if not hundreds, of e-books

- success stories and testimonials of real people who have made real money online

- new Web site and business ideas that you can start inexpensively

- the ability to purchase a Web site review that will literally dissect your site and give you all the feedback and advice to take it to the next level

…and much more.

What I am NOT going to be doing is pimping out the products of other gurus, telling you that you really need to buy X’s product while I collect a % of the revenue. That’s not what this site is about. It’s about offering an honest service that will help you make money on the Internet. That’s all.

Now, with that being said, you probably want to know more about me – who I am and what I’ve done. You can get a brief rundown on the Credentials/About page, but since this is my first blog post, I might as well go a bit more in-depth here.

I’m just about to turn 28 years old. I have been creating, running, and selling Web sites since mid-2005.  I went full-time in early 2006 and have never looked back at my day job once. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet the right people and pursue the right business ideas that have truly given me a comfortable life, setting my own hours and working whenever I want. That being said, this is not an easy business…it does require a lot of work.

Anyway, I’ve always been interested in making Web sites. I know basic HTML and a little bit of CSS – that’s all. In 2004, I was an absolute fanatic of the Xbox game, Halo. So, when I heard Halo 2 was coming out, I started up a site dedicated to the game before it was launched. Little did I know, that decision would ultimately change my life. I threw up a static 10-page site about Halo 2. The information I put on the site was mostly unique and it was interesting, so little by little, visitors started increasing. Mostly search engine traffic. By the time the game was released, it was doing about 1000-2000 unique visitors per day. I was making around $1-2 per day from an Adsense unit I threw up.

Then in 2005, I came across an e-book that talked about Adsense tweaks and maximizing your revenue from it. I followed a few of the ideas and promptly woke up the next day to $5 in earnings for the day. At that moment, I saw very clearly the power of making money online. 5 minutes worth of tweaks immediately increased earnings more than 5x. If I could do that, why couldn’t I increase it 10x, 100x, or even 1000x? And that’s exactly what I did. By the time I was done with my tweaks, I was making around $15/day from the Halo 2 site. I looked into some more ad networks and got my earnings up to nearly $1000 per month. However, I knew it wouldn’t last forever because video games always run their course, or the sequel comes out, etc. So I knew it was time to make something big happen.

I started digging around webmaster forums, looking at sites for sale. Without getting into specifics due to NDAs I have signed, I came across a site that was making $30,000 per month. It looked like something I could do myself, so I hired some Pakistani programmers to code me the first version of a site like that one. It cost me $100, and it was pretty awful. But it worked, and I started working on the site every day before going to my day job (and even while at my day job, but sshhhhh….).

To make a long story short, I grew that site to 400,000 uniques per day and it still stands as best site in its market. But there is virtually no way I could have accomplished that without talking to other webmasters and other successful businessmen. There are 3 different people in my early days that I can directly attribute my success to, and it was never them holding my hand and walking me through what to do. One person introduced me to a forum that I didn’t know existed. The members of this forum ended up being so valuable to me through networking that I can honestly say I never would’ve grown my site that big without them.  It’s VITAL that you have other people you talk to and learn from in order to make money online. You cannot just read a guru’s e-book and set out yourself making millions upon millions. It won’t happen.

So that’s the beginning of my story. The site above ended up selling for $800,000 and I made as much as $55,000/month from it on under $5,000/mo expenses. Since then and during then, I have started many other ventures that turned into huge sales as well. I am a firm believer in selling your online business when it’s at its peak. I’ve seen time after time, webmasters hold onto their “baby” thinking it will always be there for them. It won’t be. Sell it when you can and leave future innovation and survival up to someone else…and move on.

That’s my story in a nutshell. Over time, I’m sure I will discuss more of the projects and businesses I’ve started and profited from. Feel free to contact me with any questions you might have about this site, the consulting services, or just to say Hi.

Good luck and be sure to bookmark Publisher Point!

Just about everyone has a favorite TV show, so why not make some money from it? Forget the illegal and oftentimes unethical sites that promise to let you stream your favorite shows for free only to bombard you with spyware disguised as advertisements. Let’s learn how to make a legitimate monthly income, possibly even a living, off of your favorite show.

What To Do

First off, you probably won’t have much success if you choose a show that’s already run its course and isn’t on the air anymore. So forget about your Happy Days blog; it won’t work. Choose something that isn’t showing any signs of going off the air and something you really like. The most successful sites I’ve operated have been the ones that I created for passion first, money second. So if you like Dancing with the Stars, go with that. If you like House MD, go with that.

Here’s a tip: check the ratings every week to see which new shows are doing well. This gives you a better chance of finding something that doesn’t have much competition online, but yet is going to be around for a while. For example, Lie to Me is a new show that Fox is heavily pushing, and it’s getting some pretty decent ratings. It has a good premise and shows all the signs of lasting several seasons. This will give you a few years of income rather than just going with something like “24″ which probably doesn’t have more than 2 more seasons left because it’s already been around nearly a decade.

So once you’ve chosen the show you want to blog about, from there you follow the standard methods of promoting a blog. In a nutshell:

1) Stay on top of the latest content related to the show. Write about it often, come up with creative blog posts about it, and give potential readers what they want: insight and up to date information about the show.

2) Visit forums and other sites related to the show and join their communities. Put a link to your blog in your signature. There are no better targeted visitors than those from a similar site.

3) Work on building up links from various sources.

There are lots of resources out there on promoting your blog, so use those on your new TV show blog.

Potential

Much like any blog, the potential is almost unlimited. If you become the premiere unofficial blog for a particular show, you’re looking at anywhere from $500/month for a not so popular show to $25,000/month for a more popular show. Of course it all comes down to traffic.

Monetization

You should use the standard ads such as seamless Adsense integration and, depending on the size, CPM banners. There’s a whole other source of revenue you can find with a blog like this though, and that’s affiliate sales of products. If you run a show dedicated to “30 Rock,” sell official “30 Rock” products with affiliate links. Work them into your blog posts so they seem natural. Don’t just throw up a banner and expect the sales to flow in.

Another great opportunity is to create a CafePress account and sell shirts and other products with stuff related to “30 Rock” but do NOT use copyrighted material. For example, in the most recent episode, Tracy Jordan said, “Do you wanna know why Catholics can’t eat meat on Fridays? Because the Pope owns Long John Silvers!” This was a line that pretty much everyone who heard it laughed at, so find a way to put that saying on a shirt. People will buy this stuff. I’ve seen it and I’ve done it.

Estimated Cost to Start (excluding any promotion)

Less than $100

Resources

WordPress
99 Ways to Promote Your Blog

The video game industry is obviously huge, so this idea has enormous potential. New games are released all the time, and when one comes out, there’s about a 3 month time period afterwards where thousands, if not millions, of people are searching for cheats, tips, tricks, and other help for that video game. Creating a Web site about the right video game at the right time can lead to some big short-term profits (and even some nice long-term recurring profits).

What To Do

If you’re already an avid video gamer, this won’t be difficult. You probably already know what’s coming out and what’s going to be big. But if not, check a few sites, such as IGN.com and GameSpot.com, to see what’s coming down the road. DON’T pick a game that’s releasing in a month or two. Pick something that’s releasing in 6-12 months. This will give you plenty of time to establish yourself as the ultimate source for that video game.

Leading up to the launch of the game, you should keep the site updated fairly often. Any time some new screen shots or information comes out, post about it and share it on various forums. Don’t worry about revenue right away; that’ll come later. By the time the game launches, you will have a decent amount of content up on an aged domain that’s older than the thousands of sites that will launch AFTER the game’s released. You’ll have a huge edge over them in the search engines.

Potential

Here’s an example. I started a Halo 2 site about 8 months before the game launched (Nov 2005). I updated it here and there, nothing significant, until it launched. After it launched, I spent about 3 months adding new stuff to it. To this very day, that site still makes me $50-100/month. Keep in mind, that was a Halo 2 site and, since then, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, and Halo Wars have all come out. So don’t be misled into thinking the site will immediately die a few months after launch. At its prime, the Halo 2 site was making around $1200/month. That was with very little work. In its lifetime, it made nearly $10,000 and, like I said, still makes money today.

With WordPress and just a little bit of work, there’s no reason you can’t launch a small network of sites for upcoming games. Don’t worry about monetization at first; just build up some content and backlinks over the 6-12 months, and once the game launches, you’ll be set.

Monetization

Once you’re at a point where you want to maximize revenue, I’ve learned that the best way to monetize a site like this is with Adsense. Unless the site is getting massive traffic, CPM banners won’t make you as much as CPC. Optimizing Adsense on a Web site can literally increase your profits by 10x, so be sure to blend the ads in nicely with the rest of the content.

Resources

GameSpot
IGN
WordPress

Social gaming is one of the fastest growing markets in the United States, and it’s only going to grow faster. Zynga’s FarmVille on Facebook grew to more than 60 million monthly users only to be followed by FishVille and PetVille, which are both growing just as quickly. This is a huge market that’s exploding before our eyes, and the players of these games will do anything to get an edge on their friends. Most social games offer virtual goods that players can pay for with real cash in order to progress quicker, look cooler, or basically be better than other people playing the game.

If that sounds unlikely to you, think again. Zynga’s revenue for 2009 is rumored to be over $500,000,000, and a rival company, PlayFish, just sold to Electronic Arts for over $200,000,000. This is an enormous market that you can take advantage of on a micro scale.

What To Do

You need to reach these players with a product that will give them an edge. Zynga and other virtual currency-oriented companies have already proven that the players are willing to spend big money to level up faster than their competition. And they will do this by purchasing an e-book that guides them in that direction. So how do you do this without being an expert yourself? There are three ways you can approach this business idea:

1) Play the hell out of the game yourself for a week and take detailed notes about what works best. Let’s face it, these games aren’t rocket science, and the players on these games aren’t rocket scientists. If you have the time, you can gather all the valuable information and insight on the particular game you decide to write an e-book for, and then write the e-book yourself.

2) If you can’t write or you don’t have the time to play, you can find someone who’s already an expert and pay them to write it. Use Google to your advantage, find blogs dedicated to a particular game, and contact that blogger. Either pay them a flat fee to write it or promise them a percentage of all sales you make. Be creative and work something out that benefits you.

3) The last way is to simply promote an e-book that already exists and make a commission on each sale. You’re going to have a much harder time turning a profit doing this, but it can still be done. Use Google again to find existing e-books on the game you choose.

Speaking of choosing a game, you should obviously choose one that’s popular. You can use AppData.com to get all detailed information about particular games and see which ones are the biggest. Choosing the biggest one isn’t necessarily the best idea because those are already saturated. Pick something that’s medium to large in size, and go after that.

Potential

While it’s doubtful that you’ll become a millionaire pimping out e-books on how to level up faster in social games, you can definitely make a good living in this field, especially if you’re creative. One example is Farm Domination dot com which is currently for sale. It’s earning an average of ~$1400 per month just selling one e-book to help players level up faster in FarmVille. There are countless others, particularly for games like World of Warcraft and Mafia Wars.

Resources

Zynga
PlayFish
How to Write an E-book by Remarkablogger.com
FarmDomination