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Angry Birds – 350+ Million Downloads

By the time you read this post, another several thousands of iPhone and mobile devices will have downloaded the world famous Angry Birds gaming app. I’ve already written on the app several times now, but there just doesn’t seem to be anything that can slow Angry Bird’s growth down.

In the latest Angry Birds news, the company has now reported that there have been over 350 million downloads of their gaming apps. Quite amazing! Last year I wrote about how Angry Birds generates over a million dollars a month, imagine how much it generates now! With over ten times more downloads and users, the company is just a pure cash cow!

Here’s a few more amazing statistics from Angry Birds / Rovio.

  • Every day over 300 MILLION minutes are spent playing Angry Birds on mobile devices.
  • 3 MILLION plush toys of Angry Birds have been sold since June 2010… but latest reports are over a MILLION plush toy sales per month!
  • Over 1 MILLION Angry Birds tshirts sold every month!
  • Angry Birds is now playable on over 25 different platforms, including iOS, Android, Nook, Chrome Web App

So how does Angry Birds keep the trend going and make users keep coming back for more? It’s all about the updates and new versions of the game that come out each season.

Make Money Off the Angry Birds Craze

Let Rovio worry about how they can continue to bring in more and more players. Instead you should be worrying about how you can start cashing in! Refer back to my “Make Money with Angry Birds” post a few months ago and read about how some web sites are selling for over $80,000 on Flippa, just for helping other figure out how to beat Angry Birds levels! Since I wrote this article, there have been several more Angry Birds sites that have been sold for big money on Flippa.

As mentioned earlier, there is also a huge craze for Angry Birds plush toys and clothing. Yes… there are even Angry Birds Halloween costumes available. Halloween and Christmas are going to be very kind to Angry Birds this year. Don’t forget to get in on the action!

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12 September, 2011 Posted by: Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Make Money, Marketing, Web Developement

What You Need To Know Before Starting An Internet Business

Who needs what?

Business is about filling needs and to be successful with business you need to be more than a marketer. You need to be a person who helps people achieve their goals.

Advertising can seem fake, dishonest and downright scandalous at times. However, the goal of successful advertising should be to encourage and motivate your target prospect to fulfill their dreams.

Perhaps this is why we see so many marketing messages that promise the world.

“Get Rich Quick.”
“Lose Weight in 3 Days With Our Magic Pill.”
“Hypnotize Your Ex And Get Her Back!”

Obviously your product must fulfill on it’s promise but creating an internet business isn’t just about your product.

You need to fulfill the needs of a person who knows they have a problem. Here is how you start…

Can You Even Make Money Selling That?

“I have a great idea!” he said. “I am going to sell book mark holders! When you are reading a book you won’t lose your book mark.”

“Who is going to buy that?!” His dumbfounded friend replied.

“Hmmm…Librarians?”

Just because you think a product is a great idea doesn’t not mean that you can make money selling it.

There needs to be an active community of people with a deep desire to buy what you are selling.

The most important thing is to make sure that there are already people looking to buy what you want to sell.

A good place to start is with the people who are already making money in the niche.

Firstly, is anyone even making money in the niche? If not that is usually a sign you need to move on and choose a better niche.

If there are other people making money in the niche then you should buy their product or at least study their sales system.

Do they lose money selling their first product and make it up with repeat buyers? How are they getting customers? Is there anything you can do better than your competition?

Another very important thing to know is how deep the market is.

Market depth is judged by how many products of increasing price are sold.

For example, if a market supports selling extremely high priced products then you can be confident that you can sell low priced products, medium priced products and high priced products.

On the other hand if everyone is selling extremely low priced products then there is not much depth in the market.

Select a niche that has a deep back end and increase your long term profits.

A great place to answer these questions is in the community forums.

If your niche doesn’t have a forum then it is probably not a good niche. A healthy buyers niche will almost always have an active community.

What Are The Top 10 Questions Asked?

A community forum is a great place to do market research and find out what your target prospects really want.

In every forum you will find large amount of beginner level members who ask the same questions over and over. This is an indicator that their is a desire people have that is not being met.

They are actively searching for a solution to their problem so you can be confident that you can make money selling a product that fulfills their needs.

Another great part about a forum is you can learn about the things that drive your target prospects.

You can intimately learn their behaviors, motivation, desires, interests and goals and you can use this information to create new products and service them more fully as well as learn how to market to them.

For example if you find that many forum members say over and over again that they have a particular frustration or fear then you can target the language of your marketing around these issues.

This will let them know that you are providing the solution to their problems as well as help motivate them to take action.

These emotional ‘hot buttons’ are an important part of marketing because often we have to motivate people to better themselves.

When you know what dives a person deep down inside then you can help them get off at the right stop.

This guest post was written by Ryan Parenti, who runs the site Marketing On The Web by getting free gifts with his Money Newsletter.

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24 August, 2011 Posted by: Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Make Money

Key Insights to Buying and Selling Web Sites

As a long time developer of Internet businesses, I’ve always built things myself. Now with the growth of the Internet, the days of do it yourself are opening up to a real business of buying and selling web sites businesses.

This video and blog post come from my coaching of Zac Johnson while he was developing his new book, Flip This Web Site. What I share below are 3 case studies from Flippa, done live (and I’ve never worked with Flippa or know any of the people involved in these web sites, so this is my opinion only), showing you how to evaluate a web site business purchase by looking at 3 sites that were bought recently on Flippa.

Key Insights to Buying and Selling Web Sites

Buying and selling web sites demands that you know the business you are getting into and have some sense of how to evaluate it.

After all, if you buy a site that needs tons of tech development, and you have no tech skills or don’t know anyone, or can outsource this well, that’s not a smart buy.

But if you know your skills and can leverage the foundation someone else has built, this is a powerful tool. And it’s smarter than building from scratch, or if you want to develop a portfolio of businesses.

What inspired me about reading this book is that there is real value in a web site purchase. This is not just about buying a domain, which is an excellent investment but often requires business development.

Here I’m talking about buying a web site that exists, with assets like steady traffic, email lists, and sometimes revenue. The way Flippa lays it out for you is powerful, easy, and safer than anything I’ve seen before, including eBay.

Here’s the 3 skills I see as important to buying and selling a web site:

Smart Buyer 1. Tech Savvy

Many sites for sale have been developed to a certain stage technically and either need more time, money, or resources to grow.

Those with technical skills may find these kinds of sites lucrative. Of course the nature of coding means you need to look at their code to make sure it makes sense, and you can adapt it your own way.

In a world powered by AJAX, PHP, and MYSQL, it’s a no brainer to buy many of these businesses. Think of it like buying a fixer upper house, can you add the right tech tools to improve performance, and of course drive traffic and revenue?

I’ve seen several examples of purchases, especially on the lower end, based on technical teams who can simply fix and either flip or grow a web site.

If you don’t have technical skills, be sure to research whether you need them for the site you are buying. Bad code is after all, bad, and if you can’t adapt it or improve it, you’ll have to start from scratch…which defeats the purpose of buying a web site if you can do it yourself.

In the video I share an example of a site that has traffic and an iPhone app sold for around $3500; if the iPhone app alone is good, this is a pretty low price to get going, but as with all things Internet, buyer beware…check under the hood before you buy.

Smart Buyer 2. Search Savvy

Flippa has many, many sites with high PageRank, keywords, traffic, and built are search. Search experts have long known the power of acquiring sites and creating a portfolio of high traffic, usually leveraging what they already have and integrating the new site into what they are already doing.

Search sites based on strong keywords may also be smart for a newcomer who simply needs some traffic and an existing site, while they learn the craft. Be careful if you are too much a newbie, but the allure of a search site in this market is easy to figure out.

Just be sure you check all their claims, check their PageRank out using tools like SEOFirefox (among MANY others), and search for the keywords related to the site to see the positioning.

Just like buying a house, do your research and look for what’s lacking; that’s where you can add value, and leverage the existing site to either grow your business or integrate it into what you are doing via search.

Smart Buyer 3. Internet Marketing Savvy

Internet marketing should be a required skill for anyone buying a web site, because if it doesn’t make money, and you can’t help it make more money, what are you doing?

Sure you can buy a site that is generating revenue, but anyone in the business knows you’ll have to keep up and adapt. Knowing how to convert traffic, write copy, and continually test and update the site is crucial to success.

My favorite inspiration from this review was a site called RecruitingBlogs.com, a Ning site with a huge community, traffic, and targeted to a human resources audience. Career sites with traffic and a loyal audience are incredibly valuable, and this one listed as selling for $95,000 on Flippa.

In about 4 years the loyalty this site built enabled the builder to flip it for a nice profit, and give more than just a web site…he sold a loyal audience and traffic that monetizes.

That’s the key to building a business online; loyalty and monetization. Be sure to check out Flippa and see what’s up, this is not only smart, it’s a new trend in this growing business called the Internet!

This guest blog post was written by Declan Dunn, be sure to check out his Pivot and Profit video series here, and on YouTube.

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19 July, 2011 Posted by: Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Make Money

Make Money with Angry Birds Web Sites

Angry Birds will go down as one of the most successful and viral mobile video games ever! You can even see the popular game on television being used on different mobile phone devices. Everyone wants in on the Angry Birds market! The creators of the game have already raked in millions upon millions of dollars, with earnings of over a million dollars per month!

But a better question is… how can you start making money off the Angry Birds craze?

Being an active user on Flippa, I’ve noticed a lot of attention and selling of “Angry Birds” related web sites. Some of these properties are selling extremely well. Here’s a few of the top auction listings and what they eventually sold for.

AngryBirdsNow.com – Bidding Ended at $89,000

An excellent name for a site, but it’s actually more focused on a bunch of online games than just Angry Birds. The site serves up a ton of traffic and ranks extremely well for Angry Birds related terms. (listing)

AngryBirdsGear.net – Sold for $2,500

I really liked the design and setup of this site. As merchandise and toys of Angry Birds keeps growing, so does the demand for more online specialty stores. That is exactly what AngryBirdGear.net created with their dropshipping site. (listing)

AngryBirdsGoldenEggs.com – Sold for $27,000

The first site mentioned Angry Bird games, then the next site focused on Angry Birds merchandise… now this one focuses on everything and strives to be an Angry Birds news and resource web site. (listing)

As you can see, there is no reason for you to sit on the sidelines while Angry Birds is making people a lot of money. Just because you aren’t the creator of the game and they don’t have an affiliate program, it doesn’t mean you can’t make money. Resource sites, merchandise, online games, the upcoming movie and news released on their upcoming games… there is a whole world of content and users for you to work with. Get creative and maybe you will have the next big Angry Birds site for sale on Flippa!

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16 July, 2011 Posted by: Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Make Money

Mark Zuckerberg is Making Flippa Users Rich

Mark Zuckerberg is at it again… he’s making people rich! But this time it’s not through Facebook or even what he’s currently working on. This time it’s about what he’s done in the past!

This is the second time Zuckerberg has worked on a web site several years back, only to let the domain expire and be picked up by some else. I guess if I was worth a few billion dollars I wouldn’t care about any domains except facebook.com either.

So what’s going? How are others making money off Mark and his old domains.

Did you see “The Social Network” movie? Remember the FaceMash web site that Mark originally created and it viral like crazy. Everyone on campus wanted to get on the web site and start rating their fellow college students. The domain for the site was facemash.com, but was actually the draft of what would soon become facebook.com

Mark let the domain expire a few years back, someone ended up acquiring, then just a few months ago someone listed it on Flippa where it sold for a sweet $30,000!

It looks like the cycle is happening again. This time it’s for the domain name that Zuckerberg worked with while he was at Harvard. The site is StreetFax.com and is currently listed on Flippa for $5k with no bids.

Lots of people are familiar with the FaceMash.com domain due to the success of “The Social Network” movie, but I don’t see the same glamor and attention for StreetFax, however many web sites and news outlets are still covering the story and listing at Flippa.

The bottom line is, everything Mark Zuckerberg touches turns to gold… even if he has lost his grip, or ownership of the project.

Even more exciting than the residual flow of wealth that comes from Mark Zuckerberg, is the ability for others to take action on grabbing these domains and trying to flip them for quick profit.

Will lightning strike twice for another domain related to Mark Zuckerberg and life before Facebook… or will this one just fizzle out?

 

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04 July, 2011 Posted by: Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Make Money