[METHOD] My first few thousand in IM - Lessons Learnt

[buyandsale]

Hey Guys,

I've been a member here for a while, and have learnt heaps. While I'm a Sales Director for a Web Company, I like to do some IM on the side for fun, it's more of a hobby than anything, but find it very interesting.

So after a few almost-successful campaigns, I came up with a great idea. So here is the method (I won't give niche, but some will work it out as this hit various forums very hard).

1. I found a D-Grade Viral Celebrity who's name was getting 50k+ Exact Searches per month. I investigated, and found that there was no real marketing push from them.

2. I approached them, and after 4 un-replied attempts to contact them, I simply wrote the following email:
SUBJECT: I'll give you $100 via paypal if you don't like my idea - business proposal
MESSAGE: Call me to discuss, #### ### ###, I am 100% serious about the $100 if you don't like my idea, let's make some money together.

3. I got a call within 5 minutes (literally), and proposed an eBook in this celebrities niche on a 50/50 split. I told them I'd write the eBook, and have them look over it for approval.

4. I bought an exact match domain (.com wasn't available though) and begun SEO with a 2-week pre-order campaign. I also bought an exact match for a similar slightly longer tail, and put content up.

5. I done my own link-wheel, had 5x web 2.0's, bought some xrumer profiles, scrapeboxed 25k links to these, and 1k links to my main from the highest PR links I scraped. I linked EVERYTHING to the long-tail domain, put it in Google Webmaster tools .etc along with the main.

6. I done FB Ads for the Pre-Order to the main, made good coin

7. After the longtail domain jumped up the ranks to within the top 5 and I didn't get sandboxed, I went in Webmaster tools, and said "Site Moved" to the main. I then 301 re-directed everything.

8. I started hitting the main with the same strategy as with the longtail, got to #1 within a week, selling a decent amount of pre-orders.

9. I made a considerable amount of cash on pre-orders before the book was even written.

10. I wrote the book, done a sick design (I used to be a designer), got it approved by the minor celeb, and we were good to go.

11. I upgraded my server to a VPS on Hostgator (Mistake #1).

12. I uploaded the book to Wordpress eStore (Mistake #2) with PDF Stamper and all.

13. Celeb hit his fan pages with the link - Site went down within 15 seconds. Thanks Hostgator.

14. I rang Hostgator, had it back up within 5 minutes.

15. Made a killing for 10 minutes.

16. eStore is very vulnerable - unencrypted link went VIRAL. Every forum related to the niche, got posted on the facebook Fan Pages, everywhere. Sales stopped.

17. Still #1 - still selling a few books, trying not to think about how much money was lost.

Lessons Learnt
-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1. Don't listen to everyone who says it's impossible to rank for high traffic keywords - pick a niche that no-one is trying to market, and make your own product. Pay someone to make it, who cares, just make a market of your own that didn't exist.

2. I don't know whether my 301 redirect idea is effective, I was paranoid about sandbox (never been hit there, just heard about it), and decided to think outside of the box. It's an obscure idea, not sure if it's any good, but it worked for me, and I have results from it.

3. Don't trust Hostgator. They're F****** liars. I spoke with their tech support 5 times and they guaranteed me I'd get 20mbps when I needed it. Judging by the possible traffic, I've done the maths - it shouldn't have gone down.

4. Don't rely on a Wordpress out-of-the-box eCommerce system to protect your book. This is your gold, protect it properly. I was once a programmer, I could've written my own software for this, but was lazy and used something off the shelf - never again.

5. Don't pick a celebrity that has a bunch of haters. The celeb I picked had twice as many people hate them as loved them, and out of spite, I got hacked.

6. Don't rush things. Take your time, think things out, and thoroughly plan every possible outcome. I was in a hurry due to excitement - if I wasn't, I could've made an easy 50k, instead, It's NOWHERE near that.

7. Beware of Karma - I was using pirated software to build this site from start to finish, and pirates are what cost me my fortune - Karma is a bitch, so I'm copping this sweet.


We live and we learn, hopefully you can learn from my experience guys.

Good luck!