August 2002

Website Technique
One Page Websites

This is an updated white paper Tom wrote for the National Speakers Association Convention

Tom Antion�s One Page Website Method

Overview:

I have identified a method to create extremely cheap websites that have an extremely high and ongoing return on investment. The method involves making one page websites on tightly niched topics and selling digital products (ebooks mostly) from these sites. You need little or no knowledge about the chosen topics.  

Note: This method is absolutely NOT meant to replace my method for creating deep content rich sites to enhance your speaking career. It is simply a credible way to get a regular profit coming in from the Internet.

Here is the exact method I use for creating one page sites and some figures on my first two sites http://www.wedding-toasts.org and http://www.wedding-speeches.org

Updated figures 7/31/02 The Wedding Toast e-book has taken in approximately $4032 in the first seven weeks with a profit somewhere between $1500 and $2000. The Wedding Speech e-book brought in $411 in the first week.

I will cover the following steps: 

• Topic Selection
• Ebook Creation
• Domain Name Purchase
• Site Creation
• Dedicated Hosting
• Pay per click Search Engines
• Ebook Delivery
• Additional Adverting/Affiliate Program

Topic Selection

You can certainly pick topics that interest you, but that is not necessary for this idea to work. The important thing about the topic you select is that the numbers work out.

For the least risk and highest return you will pick a topic that has a very high number of searches and a very low cost per click if you were to bid on the keyword or keyword phrase associated with the topic at a pay per click search engine.

If you are willing to bid high enough to be in the top three positions at the most popular pay-per-click search engine, Overture.com, you will show up at the top of Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos and many other popular search engines. This is generally called a �sponsored listing.� The point here is that it�s important to stay in the top three bids so that your listing shows up on all these other popular sites. Also, when you use pay per click search engines you have little or no delay before traffic is reaching your site. Using the free submission area at regular search engines could takes months to get your page indexed, if they ever get around to indexing it at all, and there is no guarantee of a high ranking.

To determine the popularity and cost per click for keywords I use an Internet tool called the Search Term Selection Tool at the same http://www.overture.com There are other tools you could use, I just happen to use this one. To find it you visit the above site. Click on �Advertiser Center.� Then click on �Tools.� Then click on �Term Tool.  (Don�t be surprised if you can�t find it because it�s so popular they move it around frequently.) If that�s the case, email me and I�ll find it or find another tool for you.

When you type a word into this tool it will tell you how many times in the past month real people searched on the word or phrase. It also tells you the different ways the term was used in search phrases.

For instance if you type in the word �Fishing� one of the results you would get would be �Fishing Lure� which was searched for approximately 17,000 times in the past thirty days. When I checked, the cost per click was 23 cents to get me into one of the top positions. When someone searches for the term �Fishing Lure� and clicks on it,  I would pay Overture.com 23 cents. I only pay if someone actually clicks to go to my site, hence the term Pay-per-Click. This isn�t too bad, but let�s see if we can find a better deal.

I typed in �boat.� One of the terms that came up was �used boat.� It had 71,000 searches and a cost of 13 cents per click. That�s a way better and less risky deal than the one above. Let�s analyze why.

The obvious reason is that it has over 4 times the number of searches and the cost per click is roughly half. The less obvious reason is that a person looking for a used boat is most likely prepared to spend a lot more money than a person looking for fishing lures. I have no proof of this, but it seems logical on the surface although those fishing people can get crazy and buy all kinds of stuff.

I play with the tool until I can find words that have 20,000 and up searches and cost per click of less than 10 cents.

Skill and equipment needed to do the above section:  Nothing much but a computer, Internet connection and a little time.

Ebook Creation

Let�s continue with the �used boat� example. What would we sell a person searching on the Internet for �used boats?� The first thing that comes to my mind is an ebook on How to Buy a Used Boat and Not Sink Your Bank Account or something like that.

Am I qualified to write such a book? Absolutely not! I�ve got a tiny bit of boating experience from years ago, but you would not want me helping you pick one out. So what do you do?

Elance to the rescue

Here�s what I did on my http://www.wedding-toasts.org site. I put out a bid on http://www.elance.com for two ebooks. One for Wedding Toasts and one for Wedding Speeches. In the bid I also said I wanted two sales letters. In two days I had a contract with a writer from Ohio who had been in 12 wedding in the past two years. Total cost for two books and two sales letters . . . . are your sitting down?  . . . $550.00

My contract with the writer required the documents to be created in Microsoft Word because I knew I would want to put in my own material and tweak everything before converting it to the downloadable format I use. I spent about 5 hours adding material and formatting the Toast book nicely for conversion to Adobe PDF for distribution. I spent another couple hours improving the sales letter. My college intern is finishing off the Wedding Speech book.

I won�t bother putting the exact figures here because they will be obsolete tomorrow, but the Toast book by itself brought in about $2000.00 the first month with a profit, after considering the pay per click costs, of about $1000.00 i.e., the entire project was paid for, and made a profit, in the first month and actually self financed the pay per click costs because they were only incurred as sales came in.

So far I�ve identified another twelve topics that we are developing and soon I�ll probably put several staff people on this full time shooting for about $1000.00 per month profit on each new project.

Skill and equipment needed to do the above section:
You probably will want to get the Adobe Acrobat program to create PDF files so that you can make changes to the Microsoft Word document before you convert it.  With a little help, you�ll learn what you need to know about converting to PDF in about 20 minutes.

Domain Name Purchase

Since domain names are much cheaper now, I grab up every one I can think of that pertains to my subject. For instance right now I have bestmantoasts.net, bestmantoasts.org, best-man-toasts.com. Overall I have about 300 domain names covering many different topics. I get them at http://www.KickStartDomains.com

Since Overture only allows me to use its service to drive traffic from my company to one site about Toasts, (they don�t want one company to dominate all the top spots)  I am optimizing the other Toast sites using various keyword strategies to get good rankings in regular search engines. As those sites mature in the rankings over time, I can reduce my dependence on pay per click traffic, thus increasing profits.

Skill and equipment needed to do the above section:
No skill or equipment required.

Site Creation

Knowing how to make a web page yourself cuts out virtually all the site creation costs. This simple skill is invaluable. If you have enough need, bringing it in house will save you a fortune. I have a staff member that made me 200 websites in two weeks using the technique that follows. I could have easily done it myself, but my time is now better spent on other things.

I use Microsoft Front Page on almost all my sites and despite the dire warnings of all the broke technical people, it helps me make a small fortune each month.

Templates

If you visit http://www.wedding-toasts.org  you will see a lovely wedding theme with the entire site shaped like a heart. This template cost me $15.00. I searched the web for �FrontPage Templates� and then searched the sites that came up for �Wedding Theme.�  

I installed the theme, slapped in the sales letter. Put the links in for the shopping cart and there you go  . . .  a little marital bliss money generator . . . and I�m not even married hahaha

Header Sites

This little program even makes the entire deal cheaper yet. I bought Armand Morin�s header generator http://www.headergenerator.com We used it to create beautiful banners for the top each of the other 200 websites we are developing. You can see a sample at http://www.wedding-speeches.org We put the banner at the top of the page. Then we put a box underneath it to hold the sales letter and in less than five minutes a new money machine is born.

Skill and equipment needed to do the above section:
You will need either someone to do this for you or the willingness to learn the basics of website creation. What is being proposed here is the lowest possible level of expertise.

Dedicated Hosting

My first one page site is hosted on a high speed server which is overkill and costs about $22.00 per month. When you get several websites going it�s much more cost effective to get a �dedicated server� which means it only has your websites on it and you pay a monthly fee. This does NOT mean you keep it in your basement. The machine is housed in a regular hosting company and maintained by them. They do the data backups, they provide the battery backup and generators to keep the thing running if the electricity goes out, etc., etc., etc.

I use http://www.hopsis.net  888-373-3910 craig@hopsis.net  It costs me $150.00 per month for up to 200 websites. It�s going to take me a while to get all the 200 websites going so I�m using some of the space as an employee benefit. You get a free web space for working for me.

Actually, I�ll probably never get all 200 sites on that server because I have made myself a personal rule, that when the income from sites on that server exceeds $20,000.00 per month, I will get another dedicated server somewhere else. This is so that all the income does not stop in case of a catastrophic failure on the first server.

Skill and equipment needed to do the above section:
You will need the ability to follow directions. Do not get a server unless it has a �No brainer� interface. Many companies expect that a person getting a dedicated server is a web master and technically capable of doing all the complex functions. Do not use this type of company!  Make sure your host company includes training.

More on Pay per Click

There are over 200 pay per click search engines, but at the time of this writing only Overture dominates. Google started it�s own pay per click service and since Google itself is so popular I have no doubt it will be successful.

I suggest you don�t waste your time on any of the others because most ask for a deposit to be used against your clicks, but many of them will never deliver all the clicks.

Delivery

You can�t forget this very important part of the deal. You must be able to deliver the ebook in real-time. Much of the fascination with ebooks is the �immediate gratification factor.� If you think you can limp by and email the book to someone after they call you, or fax you or snail mail you, just tear up this paper and do something else. You are not getting it. You will lose most of your sales with this kind of thinking and your costs to drive traffic will most likely exceed your sales, making this a losing proposition.

What I�m talking about here is selling electrons. The customer decides to buy your ebook from your good sales copy. He/she purchases it through your automated shopping system, downloads it, and the money automatically goes into your checking account. You have no printing, no shipping and no postage.

http://www.KickStartCart.com is the system I use. You can get a free ebook on how to pick a shopping cart/delivery system by visiting http://www.public-speaking.org/ebook.htm Keep in mind though there will be a small investment here.

If you are not already set up for ecommerce with digital delivery, you will have make this happen. The nice thing about it though is that now you can run an infinite number of websites off of one ecommerce system. The more sites you add, the cheaper your costs are per site and you can still run your entire speaking business off the same system.

Skill and equipment needed to do the above section:
Minimal skill in learning how to add products to your website and shopping system. Make sure your shopping system includes training.

Other advertising / Affiliate Partners

I am currently looking for pay-per-click advertising programs on wedding related websites and also beginning to look for affiliate partners. No data is available at the time of this writing.

Good luck and contact me if you have questions about making this happen for you.

Tom Antion