What Nori Did On Her Summer Vacation...
Something For *YOU* To Think About
By Ken Evoy
What did my eldest daughter do this summer?
Absolutely nothing, so far, and not just "this summer" when
it comes to her SBI! site. She has put zero hours into her
anguilla-beaches.com site for the past 10 weeks because...
- she was studying for exams
- she was writing exams
- she was on vacation with the family.
Excuses, excuses! ;-) Despite that inactivity...
- She earns in the ballpark of 500 per month in Google ads,
totally passive income (approximately -- I don't want to run
afoul of Google's disclosure rules).
- She just earned another $3,000 commission for a house
sale in Anguilla (from the real estate agent she recommends).
- She earns hundreds more from villa rentals.
- Referrals to other local businesses are starting (ex.,
boat operators and direct referral to our favorite villa).
- Amazon and Priceline kick in some pocket change.
Yes, even when she's too busy to give her business a second
of her time for 10 weeks, her business rolls along. Over
the next six weeks of her "summer off," she'll make up for
her the past 10 weeks of inactivity by...
- adding more content, gearing up for fall and winter
- launching her store (drop-shipping for local artisans)
- and, if she has time, split off the real estate section
into her third site (anguilla-real-estate.com).
There are lessons here...
- The momentum and sustainability of the CTPM model is
tremendous. It builds and builds and lasts and lasts.
- Nori works steadily at her site, an average of
two hours/1 good page per week... more in summer and less
when she is especially busy during the school year.
- It took a couple of months for the first visitors to
start, and months more to build, but this is becoming a
long-term, lifelong income stream if Nori wants it to be.
- There is no limit to how big Nori could grow this, or in
which possible directions it could go. If she was an
adult, she would have taken the plunge and decided to quit
her day-job months ago, and moved to Anguilla.
Both daughters came to the same conclusion, and so have I...
Travel + real estate = high opportunity.
The average real estate agent is just too busy to build a
proper site themselves. They don't know about SBI!. So
what do they do? Yup...
The same thing that Dr. Burch, the SBIer dentist from
Mountain View, California, explains...
http://case-studies.sitesell.com/eazigoal.html
They spend $10,000 on boilerplate sites that get no traffic.
But they feel better... because they "have a site."
But that raises an opportunity for anyone, including my
younger daughter, Yuki. Nori has capitalized upon this
well. Her real estate agent-now-friend in Anguilla is
delighted to pay her thousands of dollars for every sale.
Heck, that's a sale she would not have had. Sure...
She DOES have a site that was developed by a "professional."
And naturally, about the only traffic it gets is from people
who see the URL on her business card!
Like my other daughter, Yuki, who knows Nova Scotia,
EVERYONE knows a lot about some place in the world... it
might be your favorite vacation spot or the place you live.
I am simply amazed that we do not have a higher percentage
of our sites focusing on the tremendous monetization
potential of "travel sites." Especially when I see how well
other folks, like Fiona McCardle and Jim Andrew with
rent-a-villa-in-tuscany.com, do with travel/rental sites.
Think about it. You may be delighted with your site, but do
you have a friend or relative or colleague who could be
doing SBI!? Travel sites are a great idea.
And, if travel is not your bag, let me repeat...
The lessons to be learned here remain true for every
small business niche.
You can read a review of Site Build It here.
