Sometimes I look through my old notebooks in search of business ideas that I might be able to tweak and recycle. I usually end up coming across some things I’ve tried that qualify as “f%#kin’ nuts”. Here are three that I just had to bring up.

Number One: I had a great domain to do with DUI/DWI in my local area, so I built an adsense driven site for it. I promoted the site by getting big 14 inch bumper stickers printed up that said “Help with DUI” then the web address. We plastered those things everywhere that we figured folks with DUI’s would be. All over the bus stops, club restrooms, everywhere. We even put them on all of the parking blocks in front of the DUI classes and at the liquor stores.

At the time those DUI ads were some high paying clicks. I ended up selling the domain but I still use the sticker method for some other niches. One thing I’ve learned to be true is that if someone directly types in your web address, they are generally way more committed to the visit than someone who stumbles upon you.

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Number Two: I had a”review site” for a dating service with a nice payout. I localized it by grabbing the domain “www.CitynameDaters.com”. One way I marketed was to pay for a spot at a local theater in the pre-show ads. (The local ad slide show that runs for 20 minutes before the previews start)

The ad said:

“Did you bring her here for the lighting? Meet someone beautiful at www.CitynameDaters.com!”

Oh man, this one was classic. I use to love to listen to peoples reactions when the ad came up. I even heard some people repeating the site out loud to try and remember it. Excellent.

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Number Three: Now this one is so far out there that I don’t even know what to say. I bury my face in my hands everytime I think about it.

I once ran an arbitrage campaign based on keywords that had to do with Dyslexia. The idea was that people who searched the term (that actually had Dyslexia) might see the sponsored links on the left side of the page (instead of the right) and be more likely to click them than the organic links.

I’m quite sure that is not how Dyslexia works but at least I made a few bucks. I know that it had nothing to do with my wacky theory, but still.

Looking back, if anything it just proved once and for all that I am out of my damn mind.

One day I was looking at a massive paypal account balance that belonged to a client of mine. I was doing freelance web design at the time and I had to set up a few “Order Now” buttons for the books and CDs that this guy sold. They were all hard goods that had to be shipped. Nothing downloadable.

He was a fairly well known conference speaker and he sold alot of product and I mean he sold it steady. When I looked at his stats I saw order after order that had come in daily for the last year. His account was so large that I actually called him on the phone to suggest that he shift most of that money into a safer account. The guy was bumping up against six figures and it was just wasting away in a no-interest, paypal account!

I remember sitting there thinking, “I sure would like to be getting a cut every time somebody orders from this guy”. I mean how cool would it be to get paid every single time that someone ordered directly from the merchants own website without even having to make a referral?

It was a daydream, and anyhow it could never be done. At least not legally……….. or could it?

That’s when the Digfield school of thought kicked in and I hatched a plan. Today I am so very glad that I hatched that plan and I’m going to tell you exactly what I did.

Before I do though let me just say a couple of important things:

First off, you do not have to be a web designer to use the method that I am about to disclose. However, you will need to deal with people about their websites and you need to understand something that all web designers know.

What you need to understand is that even some of the most intelligent and wealthy clients have no concept of how websites work. Alot of them are terrified of hiring a web designer in the first place because they don’t know how to tell if they are getting a good deal or getting ripped off. It’s like hiring a mechanic when you know nothing about cars. It can be daunting for people to say the least.

This is why a really popular folk singer who gets an enormous amount of traffic may have a crappy “Front Page” designed website that he did himself. Even some very well known corporations have their front desk secretary learn a little bit about Dreamweaver so she can put up some little poopy squat site online. They don’t know who to trust and they don’t want to sound stupid so they avoid “techie” people like us. We make them very nervous.

If you are smart you can use this to your advantage. Be kind to these people. Understand that they are on edge about this stuff and show some respect to them for being the great entrepreneurs that they are in their field of expertise. Odds are, you don’t know a damn thing about whatever it is that they do so well either. They are not stupid. They are just great at something else.

If you can lock on to this understanding then you are way ahead of the game. It will ease their fears and they will get comfortable with you. Then, like finding a good mechanic, they will never go to anyone else.

I have never cheated any of my clients and I have a great rep with all of them. I do not advocate nor do I do anything fraudulent for my scratch. Having said that, I did figure out a way to help existing website owners make more money and become their only affiliate. Not only that, I get paid every time they make a sale even if I have nothing to do with referring the buyer.

Here’s What I Did:

First… I realized that this guy had been selling his materials for years before he ever had a website. He was still only selling hard copy versions of things that could easily be converted to mp3s and pdfs. It made me wonder how many other popular people were online not cashing in on their abilities.

I started doing a little searching. I searched for local speakers and musicians. People that might have local celebrity status. I tried to concentrate my searches on older speakers and artists since they would be more likely to have a poor web presence. (Younger groups grew up on computers). I started book-marking every site that could possibly sell something, but wasn’t.

Then I started trying other searches. I would search the words “to order” along with “send payment to” or “mail check to” and that helped me dig out some sites that had great products but were only set up to take checks or money orders.

I was book-marking my ass off.

Second… came the slow dance of emails. (And you better make it a very slow dance if you really want this to work) I wrote up what I call an “approach letter” to about 50 of these sites. It’s not a sales letter in any way. I did not want to go into the category of “spammer” at all. I wanted to start a conversation and nothing more at this point.

Most of the letters were very unique and well thought out. For example if I wanted to email a 49 year old indy jazz saxophonist who gets local radio play I would look at his whole website site first. I would try to find info about him on other sites. Then I would write to him and use that info through out the letter making sure to leave a question at the end. For a bogus example:

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Mr. Fitzpatrick,

Man, I was so happy for you when I read that you were given the Independent Jazz Musician of the year award earlier this year. Now that is really a serious accomplishment. I’ve book-marked your website and I wish you the best on your new CD.

Is that coming out in June?

- Danny

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I wasn’t sure what to expect and, of course, the majority never replied but I could not believe how many of these people did write me back. And not only wrote me back but also asked me questions like where I was from and how I found out about their work.

This opened a garage sized window for me to say… “Actually, I found you on-line. I work on-line. Have you ever considered selling your music/training courses/chicken feed/whatever through your website? I help people do that all the time. I’d be glad to help you.

(Even at that point you win some and you lose some. There can be several email exchanges after that. Some act interested but never follow through. But if you have chosen your contacts wisely and you even get 2 or 3 to say, “yes, help me”, you just cashed in one big ass check that will pay you for years.)

Third… Once I had a few clients wanting my help I met with them personally if they were local (Major trust builder. Meeting relieves 99.9% of their jitters.) Although, some of them didn’t mind doing the whole thing via email or telephone.

I explained to them that they would need to set up a paypal account for themselves and that I would set up a “shopping cart” on their site and prep their files for sale. (Basically just ripping the CD into mp3s or converting docs into pdfs… some of them had video but not many.)

I also explained to them that my only fee for setting it all up would be a $2.00 - $5.00 (depending on total cost of product) fee per sale and that we could easily roll that into the on-line price of the item. I.E. The 4 CD workshop that sells at the seminars for $70.00 would sell on-line for $75.00 so the buyer eats my fee. It is a system that pleased us all for the most part.

Fourth… With the clients full blessing I set up a new ejunkie account in their name and connected it to their paypal account. I uploaded the converted files to ejunkie and set them up with an affiliate payout of our agreed upon amounts.

Fifth… I log into my own ejunkie account and grab my affiliate hoplink for the clients products.

Sixth… Again, with the clients full blessing I add a link to their website menu called “store” and you guessed it, it’s my ejunkie affiliate hoplink to their products right on their own home page menu!

The “store” page itself is just a matter of copying and pasting code from ejunkie so that’s why I say you don’t have to be a designer to pull it off.

So now, every single time anybody comes to these websites from anywhere and buys something I get paid, which means… I am the ONLY affiliate and I get my cut of every sale even if I never refer a single person for the rest of my life.

And it’s a beautiful thing when you can tell that “Mr. Fitzpatrick” must have done a show or won another award just by looking at your own paypal stats.

Class Dismissed.

(*Note: I have used other affiliate setups as well and if it is domain sensitive on referral then you would just do it like this: Set up a simple php page redirect on the clients website called store.php have it kick over to the domain that the referral needs to come from. The page it kicks to should be another php redirect that kicks through your affiliate link to the actual store page. So it is like a real fast double php forward but it goes so fast the visitor is none the wiser. It works like a charm.)

(*Note 2: Yes, I eat the small ejunkie fee, if you can call it eating. It gets covered a hundred times over.)