Step by Step Approach to Business Building

It’s nearly the end of the year and to focus on the “Master Plan” I have for the Rich Sage, I need to outline a few ideas. My objective is to create a site that focuses on making money online, a membership that explains to people HOW to build a business online, and building a membership network. Included in the network is the small business membership, which is the main monetizing model.

I’ve already added a few other advertisers and recently updated the “Advertiser” tab with a few ad products. I put the ads at only 10% to 20% of the amount charged by a few competitors. I can increase those rates a few times a year as the traffic grows.

All this is fine while the VC money is going into Web2.0 operations. They will advertise. However, when the stock market takes a good correction (as it’s doing now) or trends to a recession and VC money dries up, the ad spending will go WAY DOWN. I don’t want to make the same mistake as AOL that bet the company on ad spending before Google days.

I’ll take a more conservative plan and have several monetizing channels.

I’ll now outline my plan:

• At this time I am link building in several places, including directories, article sites and blogs. These are one-way links coming back to the Rich Sage. These links bring visitors, and arouse the search engine to send more visitors.
• My next step is to create a contest -Next quarter or perhaps, by the end of the year. I’ll give away 4 websites that are connected to a Rich Sage Affiliate Program (Maxsimo Network) that produce an income from $750/month to $5,000/month. So, the grand ($5k/month), first ($2.5k/month), second ($1.5k/month) and third ($0.75k/month) prizes will be offered sometime starting in spring of 2008. I’ll award them over 4 months, when the mailing list is around 10,000 subscribers.
• Each subscriber will equal ONE entry. When I draw one of the prizes, I’ll extract the list, add bonus contest entries and pick the winner using a computer program or a simple Excel file.
• Everyone reviewing the Rich Sage Blog and/or Membership area or the NEXT Super Stock Site will get:

1. Blog: 100 Entries added
2. Member Area: 150 Entries added
3. NEXT Super Stock: 200 Entries added
4. All three: 500 Entries added

By doing #4 from above, a Contestant can have 500 more entries in the contest.

The above points are added when someone creates a review for the Rich Sage, as I’ve detailed here or NEXT Super Stock >>

2008 Rich Sage Make Money Online Contest

I’ve got the prizes lined up. I got an idea on how I’ll administer the contest and pick the winner. The element that is left is how I’ll promote it, and the Contest Rules, which are perhaps, the most important.

For the contest promotion, I’ll follow the same “game plan”…

• Articles
• Press Releases
• YouTube Video (soon!)
• A few forums (Dec.)
• Several Contest Site Ads (Jan. 08, thru the quarter)

I’ll discuss all these elements as I finish the finer details on the contest.

Getting back to my step by step business building theme…

My plan is to achieve the steps of getting from 1,000 to 10,000+ visitors per day. To reach those numbers, I have a series of STEPS that I’ll follow. The first of which was link exchanging and reviews, then the articles, which I am in the middle of doing now. When that is going nicely I’ll find others to do both tasks and focus on the next element: the contest. I’ll let you know how all of it goes!

Rich Sage