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How To Help Your Friends, Family and Community and Then, Of Course, Make Money From It.

I’m sure that internet money makers are just as diverse as people are in general. We come from every corner of the earth and our methods vary even more than our locations. But one thing we have in common across the board is a general knowledge of computers which inevitably leads to people around us always asking for help with computer related problems.

If you are like me, it aggravates you to no end when people think that you are their free “computer guy/girl” just because you are friends. And you probably fantasize about smacking them in the face. (Repeatedly)

I have a philosophy that comes in handy for this situation. It goes like this: “If something that sucks keeps coming up in your life, either find a way to stop it or at least find a way to monetize it.”

Since the only way to stop it, in this case, was to cut all ties to family and friends I opted for choice two and figured if I could monetize the situation at least it would suck less.

As usual, I pulled out the notebook and started my mental whirlwind. Several hours, three tacos, two Dr. Peppers, and a coffee later I had four very profitable solutions. (I may have had some Reeses Pieces too… or maybe I just wanted some… hmmm.) Anyhow, today I will share one of those solutions with you.

I had been noticing that almost everybody who asked me for computer help had a certain thing in common when I launched their internet browsers. None of them had ever changed their default homepage and apparently didn’t even know how.

Sometimes it was MSN and some people had their ISP homepage there but one thing was very clear, whatever page was there to start with was still right there. They just accepted it as their starting point, no questions asked.

I knew right then that this was an opportunity for the most intensely targeted traffic I could ever get. I was right too. But when I realized that there were some really high traffic community computers that I could get to, I almost had an orgasm.

There’s money to be made from pesky people. I do it and there’s no doubt in my mind that you can do it too.

This method also works with people who are not so clueless about home pages as well because you are doing something “nice” for them.

Never forget though, there are still so many computer ignorant people around you starting to use the internet that it’s almost scary. Carpe diem.

Here’s the to do list:

The first thing to do is register a generic domain that will look good as a homepage for pretty much anybody. I have quite a few. Something like www.OurStartSite.com will do very well.

The second thing to do is put together a generic “homepage” layout. This will just be the template that you use to quickly put up custom homepages for people. You can do these however you want but I always make sure to include the following in the template:

a.) a simple header image
b.) a main text area
c.) a link area
d.) adsense ads
e.) adsense search box
f.) a place for affiliate offers

In it’s generic form my page ends up looking like this: www.OurStartSite.com/Digfield

(Note: If you want to skip step two and just use the exact basic template that I designed for myself, you can get it here for just 12 bucks. It includes the html template, the Photoshop files and fonts for quick editing. Plus the adsense ads are already in place. Just plug in your ID and you’re done.) Instant Download after payment.

The third thing to do is start customizing that template for your pesky friends based what they are really into.

So, for example, if aunt Linda is a Dallas Cowboys fanatic her page is going to look like this: www.OurStartSite.com/Linda

Just scrape some wiki facts about the Cowboys or whatever the niche is for the text area and see if you pull relevant ads (some niches are too broad but most of the time she’ll be getting targeted ads up the wazoo). If not then you can just use your affiliate area to sell anything you want.

Hmmm… now what could we put in aunt Linda’s affiliate area? Oh I don’t know maybe just anything in the world from the NFL Shop affiliate program. There are affiliates for everything. You get the idea.

Now all you have to do is tell pesky aunt Linda that you did something special for her and go change her dusty default homepage to her own personal Cowboys shrine.

Of course aunt Linda has no clue that almost everything on her new home page funnels directly into your wallet but she doesn’t need to know. She’s just thrilled that her “computer guy” nephew did something sweet for her.

I would never ask aunt Linda to click any ads anyhow, but she’s still going to because she’s actually interested in them. Go figure. Win/win. At some point she’s probably going to start buying things from the NFL shop without my prompting too.

Plus, from now on, if I ever hear aunt Linda talking about something she’s interested in I can serve up an appropriate ad right on her home page any time I want.

To top it all off she’s most likely going to kiss me on the cheek and thank me for doing such a sweet thing.

Man, sometimes I think I’m the devil.

The fourth thing to do is start whipping these little pages out for everyone who has no concept of setting their own homepage. For that matter, do one for anyone who would leave it in place if you did a custom page for them. Be sure to personalize one for every computer in the house based on it’s primary user.

I would certainly recommend doing one for all of your poker buddies with that convenient (cloaked affiliate) link list that leads to every gambling site from Golden Palace to Bodog.

They only take a few minutes to customize. Get creative. Get paid.

The fifth thing to do is start volunteering these free pages to every public place you can think of. If you get them in the right places, you will get steady paid.

I currently have them set up in a community center, hotel lobbies, one library and several assisted living facilities. All “community shared” PC’s that launch my page every time the browser comes up.

—————————————————————–

Here’s something important to remember when you type your text body for public computers: Keyword your paragraph wisely so that good ads will show.

For example if you are doing a page for an assisted living facility, don’t use “assisted living facility” as your main key word. That will just bring up ads for other competing facilities.

Instead, you could say things about “active seniors” and “benefits for seniors”. Do a little testing. It’s well worth it.

—————————————————————–

There are a million directions that you can go with this information. Just pick one and go get your money making groove on.

Is this the nicest thing in the world to do for “friends”?

I don’t know. Maybe.

How nice is it for them to call me in the middle of dinner to say:
“I’ve got an old saddle and I thought maybe you could help me sell it on the ebay.”?

Yeah, I’ll help you sell your stupid saddle on “the ebay”. I’m changing your damn homepage too, dill weed.

Class dismissed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 2:21 pm and is filed under Make Money, Out Of The Box. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “How To Help Your Friends, Family and Community and Then, Of Course, Make Money From It.”

dill weed says:
May 16th, 2007 at 4:47 pm |
so are you still going to help me sell that saddle?

hEh

great post, i’ve thought of this before, but never really got around to doing it, your post just kicked me in the ass to start getting creative on what i can do. Thanks digfield.

ps.

sell my saddle dammit!

dill.
mike says:
May 19th, 2007 at 8:53 pm |
Damn genius, I’m going to start calling all the libraries in a 5 mile radius. I’m thinking even without personalising the pages for people in specific if you made some kind of generic search page with the google search, hell even made it look exactly like google, you’d still make decent money in the right places. Cheers
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How To Help Your Friends, Family and Community and Then, Of Course, Make Money From It.

4 Responses to “How To Help Your Friends, Family and Community and Then, Of Course, Make Money From It.”

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