Website Scaling for Increased Profit
With sales improving for a - now friend - student’s first profitable website in the style of a product review site. I thought you would benefit from listening in to the pep-talk I sent through on how to scale a website, as I know how hard it is to stay focused on actually creating stuff online that will bring in increased profits.
“My … sales have improved since last week … I’ve had a sale a day rather than a sale whenever, which is good news!! I know I’ve more work to do which bit by bit is getting done, so it’s cool.”
Time for Some Website Scaling
That is good news … When conversions go up, as in your quote, this is an important time to get out a whiteboard or butchers paper and work out whats happening.
When these jumps are so big, it can always be traced back to something that has changed either on-site or off-site but it will be somethings measurable with online tools.
So while you should be very proud about a stability of one sale a day… Where is your graph of sales…
- When did this change and by how much?
- Does it correlate with any other metrics?
- Has your visitor count gone up?
(therefore making it just a traffic boost, further refined by looking at unique vs return visitor graphs) - Or is this a true conversion boost?
- Is the site ranking any better for keywords related to the sales?
- Are all the sales from one product?
- Whats working about current conversions tactics for that product?
- How can things be improved even more?
- Can you increase trust by recording mug shots, audios or head shot videos?
- What is the current conversion rate Unique visitors vs sales?
- Are you ready to install the opt-in form to capture the non-buyers?
- Can you add more value to the opt-in freebie?
- What would the typical visitor want as a freebie anyhow?
Answer all those questions with a positive yes/completed/ready… AND it might just be time to ‘turn on the gas’ over at Google Adwords (Pay Per Click advertising).
Starting with a budget of $30 over one week in an attempt to uncover some affordable keyword that result in more sales.
* If you can make the $30 back you will have a crucial set of new metrics to analyze!
* If you can make double, you can double the budget.
* If you double the profits you can keep scaling until it plateaus at a safe investment level.
PPC will initially need to be monitored every night, but if you site is converting and your ready to catch the opt-ins…
Well the system has proven itself to you, it’s making money on autopilot, now it’s just a matter of:
A) Scaling (increase) all elements of the current model/website upon itself
- PROFIT MARGINS (increase them by finding affiliate products with better returns or create your own)
- TRAFFIC (increasing traffic by creating content and links, on and off page, should be an ongoing process)
- CONVERSIONS (might be time for some split testing via Google’s Free Optimizer Tool or adding some trust and bonding elements)
- CUSTOMERS (increase the long term value of visitors via email list capture and marketing)
- SYSTEMATIZE (automate, know, record, refine your current system for a profitable website so that its easy to follow and duplicate)
B) Scaling the website model into vertical, horizontal and diagonal markets.
- Based on the SYSTEMATIZE process (above), what is the system for building your current website and making it profit on autopilot?
- How can YOU refine that system so its easier for YOU?
Example: Can that whole site be built quicker and simpler using just Wordpress? - Can you create the whole site again (unique content but based on the current model and the exact same niche), duplicate yourself in the marketplace, double your sales with little effort because a lot of elements are in place (like Affiliate links, opt-in codes and product top tens)
- Can you create the whole site again, from scratch even if its a simpler version, using your current skills. 100% ownership of the whole process no outside help.
- Can you outsource each of the recorded elements in your system to DIFFERENT freelancers and get 10 of these created in bulk? 1 freelancer does step #6 for all 10 new domains… or you do each step but for all 10 sites and so on.
- Can you use the whole system in a similar but different niche, say still the same broad market but a different problem and solution.
If you can make one sale a day with the current project = ~$1000 a month (this is the current profitability of the website).
Scale that up using duplication building one new site every 3 months
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | TOTAL | ||||||||||||
| 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | = | 12k | |||||||||||
| Project #2 | 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | = | 9k | |||||||||||||
| Project #3 | 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | 1k | = | 6k | ||||||||||||||||
| Project #4 | 1k | 1k | 1k | = | 3k | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1 year of scaling to 4 profitable websites | = | 30k | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Scale that up using advertising to $10,000 a month
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | TOTAL | ||||||||||||
| 1k | 2k | 4k | 8k | 10k | 10k | 10k | 10k | 10k | 10k | 10k | 15k | = | 100k | |||||||||||
| 1 year of scaling to 4 profitable websites & scaling each with PPC | = | 100k | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Scale using BOTH:
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | TOTAL | ||||||||||||
| 1k | 2k | 4k | 8k | 10k | 10k | 10k | 10k | 10k | 10k | 10k | 15k | = | 100k | |||||||||||
| Project #2 | 1k | 2k | 4k | 8k | 10k | 10k | 10k | 10k | 10k | = | 65k | |||||||||||||
| Project #3 | 1k | 2k | 4k | 8k | 10k | 10k | = | 35k | ||||||||||||||||
| Project #4 | 1k | 2k | 4k | = | 7k | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1 year of scaling to 4 profitable websites & scaling each with PPC | = | 207k | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 207k per year plus an ongoing 39k a month | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Now, as you know, that is a dream world because we get in our own way constantly! Real life will get in your way and old habits will stop you from making this a new habit.
Successfully fulfilling that dream would only come if you could turn off all the emotional distractions associated with the Internet Marketing industry off and just laser-focus on doing one of the following three things single-mindedly:
- Scale your current website using Adwords.
- Create your own information product that solves or addresses the same problem that your website centers around.
- Condense the current system down and then continue to refine and duplicate it.
…And that’s just for starters because none of those above speculations include creating your own information product that solves or addresses the same problem that your website centers around followed up with back-end/opt-in sales via your continually growing email lists.
I look forward to seeing your next leap forward!
THE TAKEAWAY: “Just Keep Doing It and Doing It!”