Last time we profiled author-turned-publisher Tim Carter, he was selling about 400 ebooks and 200 checklists monthly, ranging in price from $6.95 to $47. This was roughly equivalent to nearly $1,000 in daily sales of downloadable content. His websites were generating more than a million dollars in annual advertising revenue using the Google AdSense program as his sole partner. Tim is proof positive that a single entrepreneur with no publishing experience can build an integrated media empire on the Internet.
In our Ask the Builder Mequoda Case Study, Mr. Carter offers the following four tips that have proven successful for him.
- Post content that attracts high-paying AdWords. Don’t put a lot of content on your site that attracts low-paying AdWords. No manufacturer can afford to pay much for words that advertise a $10 product. But for a $1,200 product, the manufacturer might be willing to pay as much as $1 per click.
- The content must be evergreen (have a long shelf life). Therefore, Mr. Carter doesn’t do many tool reviews, because tools change frequently. But the basics of home renovation and repair don’t change nearly as frequently.
- It’s really helpful if the content is linked to a buyer’s emotions.Mr. Carter does not write much about commercial construction, mainly because for big companies, building is strictly a financial calculation based on how much more business they will generate with a larger store or warehouse.”It’s all by the numbers; it’s all about money,” he said. But for homeowners, the purchase decisions about renovating the kitchen or adding a new bathroom are all emotionally driven.
- Have many pages on your site. Don’t create pages that are 5,000 words in length, because Goggle limits the number of ads you can place on any one page. Take the content and split it up over hundreds of pages.”More content means more ads and more people (customers),” he said.
We hope to update our case study on Mr. Carter in 2007, but in the meantime, you should read the existing case study to learn how this single entrepreneur went from writing a syndicated newspaper column to owning and running a very successful integrated media empire on the Internet.
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