The Pillars of Virtual Real Estate
Just like financial ‘experts’ often do, many people try to make building online income sound like some kind of super complicated thing, which it is not. If you want to build virtual real estate you only need 2 main things:
- Content – a whole lot of content
- Links -A heak of a lot of inbound links
This is not news to anyone who reads Internet marketing blogs. But it’s so simple it’s almost ridiculous. If you’ve got some cash to invest then you can hire 2 full time people:
- A good quality writer
- An experienced link builder
If you hire someone from the east it is quite inexpensive and if you own a business you can deduct the expense. You can also hire a programmer if you want to get fancy, but otherwise you can make due with a WordPress installation to manage your content.
Setup the content management system and have the writer go to town cranking out decent articles in a clear but broad niche. It’s important that the niche be broad so you have room to make thousands and thousands of related articles.
With the combined effort of the writer, builder and an AdSense account your virtual real estate or passive income engine will slowly grow month and after month.
The more content you build and the more links you have coming in – the more valuable the online property. Having 400 articles is like renting a studio. Having 20,000 articles is like renting a mansion. I owned some studios that have turned into mansions.
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3 people have left comments
Francois said on August 25, 2009, 3:20 pm:
I ‘ve found your recipe for virtual real estate very interesting. As well as the comparison with real estate, which requires as you know a very high invstement – i.e. high risk.
As you know, I own actual real estate. I wanted to diversify and to set-up virtual real estate: web sites. I’ve just opened a site selling design watches: http://www.watchmydesign.com. The site is great; all the back-office is automated for minimal maintenance, I’ve subcontracted to a company the storing, packaging, sending bits for a cheap rate (variable costs only), I’ve built the stock, and I now just have to do some advertising to sell watches. Still, I’m now realizing that’s an awful lot of work, that it will get worse when I will have to deal with customers (the batteries are not working; the watch is too big, too small, too red, and so on…), or to update the product catalog, that stock is expensive, and that benefits will be very small, if any. The good news is that investment was minimal (apart from 6 months of my life), and if things go wrong, I won’t loose a lot of money. Still, it would be better to win some money, and I’m considering selling the company as soon as there are some sales. I need to find a buyer though… I tried to follow Tim Ferriss advices, but I didn’t really find the winner products
Selling information seems to me a much better idea. And sub-contracting the work to people in less-expensive countries sounds to me brilliant. I have a few questions though:
- do you think this would be as profitable in French ? You obviously get more English-reading people in the world than French ones.
- how would you choose the subject ? that’s the key, isn’t it ?
- could you tell us what are the sites you are running ?
- do you have employees / resources in other less expensive countries ?
I would really enjoy reading more articles about this topics. Leo Babauta recently wrote a guide on how to start a blog; maybe you could do the same on virtual real estate ,
François
Fred said on August 25, 2009, 4:52 pm:
François,
The watch page looks nice but I agree, sounds like a lot of work selling a physical product. I read Ferris’s book too but don’t remember much. We also met him when he came by Madrid, he was pretty cool.
- do you think this would be as profitable in French ? You obviously get more English-reading people in the world than French ones.
I don’t know but I think so if you really get into it. You found our blog through esprit-riche.com right? Michael (from esprit-riche.com) is making some money from 2 French ebooks he wrote and promotes on the blog. I make some money from selling some Spanish ebooks about making money online (that I write) and I’m now just starting to test selling ebooks in other Spanish niches (those I don’t write). It’ll probably be a challenge but I think it can be done.
- how would you choose the subject ? that’s the key, isn’t it ?
As you probably know they are generally ‘how to’ type products. I try to think of what would people actually pay for to know how to do or how to do really well.
- could you tell us what are the sites you are running ?
Yeah, spainexchange.com, entremodelos.com, articulo.org, buscoafiliados.com, chocolateconchurros.es
- do you have employees / resources in other less expensive countries ?
Yeah, in Colombia, Indonesia, India, Chile, and Filippines. I guess I’ll make a post about it, thanks for the idea!
François said on August 27, 2009, 4:41 am:
Hi Fred,
- Tim’s book is about setting-up a web business, fully automated so that you don’t have to work for it. He’s selling some magic powder for athletes. Obviously, his product is much easier to manage than mine. This is I believe where I chose the wrong product. However, I’ve automated my web site. So I should save time on this side.
- Yes, I’ve found your blog through Michael’s site.
- Since you are writing books in Spanish, I guess yes I could do the same for France. The market is not smaller.
- Too bad I don’t speak Spanish !
François.
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