Making Money Online Swiping Ideas

When it comes to making money online, there are literally unlimited ways to go about accomplishing that goal. But the smart internet entrepreneur is always keeping a close tab on what other successful online marketers are up to with their business. That is where the “Swipe Files” and “Idea Files” come in extremely handy.

What is a swipe file? It is basically exactly what it sounds like. It’s a file full of content that you have swiped from other sites, magazines, newspapers, etc…. Swipe files are usually used by copywriters, and whenever they see a great ad, sales letter, headline, etc… they make a copy of it (or cut them right out of a magazine or newspaper) and put it a file for future reference. Then when they are getting ready to write an ad or sales letter, they can browse their swipe file to get ideas. People have been creating “Swipe Files” forever and there is nothing wrong with it, as it is a commonly used practice. Just know that the content in the file is used for inspiration and ideas, not for copying and pasting as that would be plagiarism.

Like swipe files, I like to visit my favorite sites and take notes on what I like and don’t like about each site and save that information in what I call my “Idea File”. My idea file is similar to a swipe file, as it is a place to draw inspiration, but it is different because I am not saving actual content. I am creating a list of things that I like about different sites I visite. Here are just few examples of things you might find in my “Idea File”.

SITE DESIGN – When surfing the web (which I do a lot of each day) I love to take note of each site I visit’s overall design to see if there is something that I really like that might look good on one of our sites, or future sites we have planned.

For example, this site’s design was created from a cool site I saw that was using the WordPress Church theme from StudioPress. So I purchased the theme, customized the color layout, added a logo, uploaded it to Making Money Online Dot Com’s server and I thought I was done.

Then a few days later I found another theme that I really liked called the Ultimate Blogging Theme from Carl Ocab. I loved the theme, but I really liked 2 elements of the design a lot (the 3 boxes on the top of my index pages and the footer layout), so I purchased that theme too, and extracted those 2 elements and added them to my site.

Then there was one more thing I really wanted, which I had in my Idea File for months before ever opening Making Money Online. John Chow and Zac Johnson both have this cool way of displaying their featured posts on their index page with a scrolling display plugin. So I sent a few emails to the guys over at Unique Blog Design (the company that designed both their themes) asking them what they would charge to create that for me. Well I never heard back from them, so I just went to Elance and found someone to create it for me there.

Of all the things I keep in my Idea File, “Site Designs” probably has the most in it. Not only do I have just a whole bunch of URL’s in there, but I have taken hundreds, if not thousands of screen shots over the years of sites where I like some part of their design.

COOL PLUGINS – Since this site is built on the WordPress platform there are just TONS of plugins out there to enhance your visitor’s experience. Whenever I see some kind of cool function on sites I visit I try and find out if it is a plugin, and if so… which one they are using.

Also, many bloggers nowadays run posts each month (if not several times a month) listing their favorite plugins and/or any new plugins that have just come out and let you know exactly what they do. I have a HUGE LIST of plugins now and what they do in my Idea File for whenever they might come in handy.

PROMOTIONS – Everyday website owners are coming out with new promotions for their sites, as well as running contests to get people coming back each week (or if you are lucky each day). The first contest we ran was a result of a post we read from Dan Keller over at TycoonBlogger.com. It is a Comment Contest which we are still running now.

Another example of a promotion I have in my Idea File is Shoemoney’s “Free Shirt Fridays” where each Friday Jeremy promotes a company that sends him a shirt. It is an ingenious idea, and he gets a ton of free shirts to wear (or do whatever he wants with) as well as other products sent to him each week. We have a cool idea planned for this site that I am sure you are all going to love, and the inspiration for it came from that promotion.

WHAT THEY ARE PROMOTING – It is hard to stay on top of every new product, eBook, service, etc… that comes out in your niche each week. A good way to find new products is by visiting other websites and see what they are promoting. Of course everything your competition is promoting might not work for your current site(s), but it might work down the road, so I like to keep a list of things people are marketing. This really comes in handy when you are writing a post, as one of the products you saved might be perfect to promote in that post. Also, if you are short on ideas of something to write about… you could always do a little research and write a post on one of the products in your file.

NEWSLETTERS – Do you have a subscriber list for your site, or are planning on building one? Before we ever added our first sign-up subscription form to one of our sites, I literally signed up to hundreds of online newsletters, and I kept a copy of my favorite newsletter layouts in my idea file. Not only did I keep a copy of the layouts (which helped a lot when designing our newsletters), but I also kept notes on how each webmaster’s subscription process went. Many have cool “Next Step” pages that explain the double option process so the subscriber knows they have to do one more step before they are actually subscribed.  Others have thank-you pages that are designed to get you to do something else. I really like the fact that every newsletter is different and you can learn something from everyone you sign-up for. With some you will learn something that you want to add to your newsletter, and with others you will learn things you do not like and want to stay away from.

If you are ever planning on creating your own subscriber list, I suggest you sign-up for as many newsletters as you can and see what others are doing. If you don’t like receiving a bunch of newsletters in your current email account, I suggest you create an email account just for newsletters. Then you can check your account once a week, or whenever you feel like it.

There are several other things I keep in my Idea File, but you get the basic understanding of how it works. There is nothing worse than seeing something really cool and saying to yourself, “I need to do that on my site” and then a little while later totally forget what it was. If you are good about keeping an Idea File, then you won’t have to worry about that happening.

Remember… Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, so don’t feel bad doing something similar to what your competition is doing. Just don’t copy them exactly or you might offend them a little, and you don’t want to do that either.