INTERNET ONLY RESOURCES FOR PET BUSINESSES
This Internet only resources section is for anyone who already has a pet-related website and is looking to either attract more traffic or add additional revenue streams.
This Internet only resource section is perfect for rescue organizations, pet groomers, pet sitters, dog walkers, doggie daycare facilities, etc., that already have a website that is NOT their primary source of income but wouldn’t mind earning some additional revenue from their website (and who wouldn’t?).
While you mainly use your website as an online “brochure” or to get listed in the search engines, or to give directions and hours of operation, why not add some earning muscle to your website while it’s just sitting out there?
Dog walker? Why not sell dog food without carrying a single bag? Groomer? Why not sell an ebook on housetraining that is automatically downloaded without you ever having to mail a thing, deal with customers or anything?!
How about cashing in on selling discount pet products on Ebay without listing a single item or selling a single thing?
Just by adding a few links to your site, you can earn passive streams of income. Granted, it’s probably not going to make you rich or send you into retirement, but earning any amount of income without lifting a finger is OK in my book.
Following are a few ideas to get you started.
REVENUE GENERATORS
EBooks
Ebooks are digital, downloadable documents that can be sold over the Internet. Most of them come in a simple PDF format or as some other digital file form.
While ebooks are not unique or applicable to pet sites, I wanted to discuss them because there are so many of them available and their benefits still apply.
WHAT’S IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND: The key thing to understand about selling ebooks on your website is that the entire process is automated. The real work is in writing and creating your ebook but once that’s done there are websites that are designed to do ALL the work for you. You just post a copy of your ebook on your own website and these sites collect payments, handle refunds, and deliver the downloads.
Don’t want to write and develop your own ebook? No problem. You can sell a gazillion other ebooks that other people wrote and get paid a generous commission on each one you sell (usually 50% of the sale price).
And when I say “sell”, all I mean is pasting a line of code onto your website.
Allow me to get specific. For example, I wrote an ebook called “Happy Housetraining”. The Happy Housetraining ebook is sold via a third-party company named Clickbank. Clickbank is the leader in the field for selling and managing digital downloads of ebooks.
Yes, it took me about three months to write the ebook but since then I’ve sold hundreds of copies and all I do is cash the checks that Clickbank sends me every month like clockwork.
But the real beauty of ebooks is being able to leverage the efforts of other people by paying them a commission to sell them. And again, Clickbank takes care of the entire thing. Like billionaire J Paul Getty once said, “I’d rather have 1% of the efforts of 100 than 100% of my own efforts.”
To be specific, I sell the Happy Housetraining ebook through Clickbank for $14.95. When someone buys it directly from one of my own links (again, still going through the Clickbank shopping and payment process) I keep the entire amount (less a small percentage, about $1, for Clickbank). When someone else sells my ebook, I get half and they get half since I’ve chosen to pay a 50% commission. Again, Clickbank handles the entire transaction for me as well as my affiliate. I probably sell about 7 or 8 ebooks a month but better yet, I have about 20 affiliates that each sell one, two or more copies each per month. See how that’s a much better proposition?
Assuming you still have no interest in writing your own ebook, you can still profit from them and help utilize dead space on your existing website.
Clickbank offers dozens of existing pet-related ebooks that you can begin selling immediately (once you sign up for a free account).
Take a look at how I sell my own ebook (Happy Housetraining) alongside a bunch of other ebooks (click below and scroll down towards lower part of page past the training items for sale):
MY EBOOK SALES PAGE EXAMPLE
So you can see that you have the choice of writing your own ebook, promoting someone else’s ebook or both!
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE…
How many times have you seen that phrase on a late night infomercial or a hyped up website? I just threw that in for a chuckle. But the last thing I want to advise you about ebooks and why you must offer them is this: By selling or giving away valuable and information in an ebook you accomplish two things:
1. You build credibility with your customer or potential customer
2. You can use the ebook to upsell and cross sell other products.
Point number 2 is critical to understand and if you get nothing out of this site but one thing — this is it!
By including links to other offers or products within your ebook, you’re getting your offer in front of a warm prospect who obviously is interested in what you have to offer (they downloaded and in many cases even paid to get your ebook).
For example, in my “Happy Housetraining” ebook, there are natural discussions about crate training and how to use it effectively. The whole premise of my book is based on crate training principles. So doesn’t it make sense to include links and information within the ebook that take the reader directly to crates that I sell?
Same with dog food. Many new dog owners (who want and need to learn about housetraining) are interested in the best foods to feed their new puppies. Doesn’t it make sense to link to some dog and puppy foods that we sell? Same with wee wee pads.
So you get the idea. I actually reverse engineered my ebook with my store. I wrote the book using the best and most practical information I could find and THEN I added those housetaring products to my store! I was already selling food so I didn’t add that after writing the book. So what better way to upsell a motivated audience of readers who paid for my knowledge and trust what I’m saying then to offer them RELEVANT products that are easy and convenient to order? It’s really a win-win situation.
CREATING YOUR EBOOK
Creating your ebook doesn’t have to be a complicated affair. You can simply write it in your favorite word processing program and convert the document to an ADOBE PDF file. You’ll need Adobe Acrobat to convert your word processing document into a PDF file.
Check Out Adobe Acrobat HERE
The software that we used to create the “Happy Houstraining” ebook is a package called “ebookGold”. We found it easy to use and more cost effective than spending over $400 for Adobe Acrobat. But either format is acceptable. We created our ebook in both formats. We purchased “ebookGold” and paid someone who already owned Acrobat to turn our file into a PDF for about $50.
Find More Info On ebookGold HERE
GOOGLE ADWORDS
Another way to earn passive income to your site is to ad Google Adwords to your site by participating in a program called Google Adsense. Notice the little text ads at the top and bottom of most of the pages on this site? Those are Google Adwords. They look like this:
What’s important to understand is that Google Adwords can generate a passive income stream. Anytime someone clicks on one of the ads you’ll get paid a commission. What you earn depends on what the advertiser bid to have their ad displayed. The key is having enough traffic come to your website because without traffic your website won’t generate many clicks or sales of any kind for that matter.
To register to become a Google Adwords Publisher (not an advertiser) you’ll want to sign up for the Google Adsense program here:
Google AdSense
To sign up as a publisher it’s free and pretty easy to do. Another no-brainer.