How to Create a Killer 5-Minute Presentation

How to Create a Killer 5-Minute Presentation

Developing and delivering a five-minute presentation seems an easy enough task at first — until you realize the condensed format actually requires significantly more efficiency, focus, and attention to detail than longer presentation types.

When there’s less time to get your point across, every second counts more.

While short presentations can be unexpectedly challenging to create, when done correctly they can be more impactful than longer presentations.

Five minutes is just enough time for you to present a compelling narrative about one topic, without any filler or fluff. The time limit forces you to pack as much valuable information as possible into your presentation while maintaining a coherent structure.

The shorter format also encourages audiences to pay more attention.

But how can you ensure your short presentation accomplishes everything it needs to within just five short minutes? We’ve put together an (appropriately condensed) guide on five-minute presentations to help you get started.

→ Free Download: 4 PowerPoint Presentation Templates [Access Now]

How Many Words Are in a 5-Minute Presentation?

A person speaks on average 120 to 160 words a minute, which means the average five-minute presentation will be anywhere from 600 to 800 words. That means every word should be carefully chosen to support the central idea of your presentation.

When constructing a longer presentation, you might be more concerned about transitions and keeping the audience engaged with more extensive narrative elements.

In a short presentation, everything you say should directly tie back to your central premise and further advance your main point. By keeping a tight scope and using your words carefully, you’ll ensure your time isn’t wasted and the audience leaves with a clear, singular takeaway.

How many slides are in a 5-minute presentation?

Generally speaking, you’ll want to stick to just five or six slides for a five-minute presentation, but there’s no set limit on how many yours will require. You may choose to have twenty slides and to spend about 10 or 15 seconds on each depending on your subject matter.

More important than your slide count is what each slide contains. While it’s a good rule to keep your slides simple and focused on visuals (instead of text) for a presentation of any length, this becomes especially important when you’re dealing with a condensed presentation window.

It can be tempting with a small time window to try to cram in as much information as possible — resist the urge. Instead, focus on simple, clean visuals that (once again) all tie back to your central premise.

If you’re concerned that scaling back the scope of your presentation will leave things out, add a slide at the end of the deck with additional resources and information that your audience can access after the presentation is over.

5-Minute Presentation Example Format

If you’re looking for a starting point for your own five-minute presentation, we’ve created a basic outline below you can use to organize your initial thoughts in the planning stage.

You can choose to devote one slide to each section or multiple slides if you want to break them down further.

Feel free to make departures from the structure depending on the content or format of your presentation. Just remember not to give your audience too much to chew on — the key here is — you guessed it — tying every slide back to one central idea.

An Extremely Short Introduction

Your first slide should serve as an introduction to the topic of your presentation. Try to limit your title to around six words or even less. If your title is too long, it can become unwieldy and your presentation may confuse your audience by covering too much.

Remember: your audience (hopefully!) already has an idea of what you’re presenting on, so you don’t need to spend too much precious time or slide real-estate explaining what you’re going to cover — just jump right in.

A Problem Slide

Most presentations can be boiled down to a problem you’ve identified, solved, or are in the process of solving. Lead with that familiar narrative. It will give your presentation a clear starting point and prime your audience for the rest of your slides.

A Solution/Analysis Slide(s)

Now that your problem has been introduced, tell your audience what they need to know about what you’re doing about it. In shorter presentation formats, you’ll want to focus less on the details and more on the big-picture items. Ask yourself: what does your audience need to know when they leave the room? Anything that falls into the “nice to know” category can be cut and delivered to stakeholders after the meeting in a follow-up email.

A Conclusion Slide

The conclusion side allows you to bring a coherent end to your presentation and summarize the important takeaway points for your audience. Don’t skimp on your conclusion just because it’s a short presentation — it’s the last thing your audience will hear from you. A good conclusion will reinforce the other information you presented and ultimately makes your presentation as a whole more memorable.

5-Minute Presentation Examples

While we (unfortunately) weren’t in the room when these presentations were originally given — and therefore can’t confirm with 100% certainty that they ran for only five minutes — these decks all clock in at under 15 slides and use a simple format to convey a problem and solution.

1. AirBnB Pitch Deck

2. Buffer Pitch Deck

3. Mixpanel Pitch Deck

How Do I Create a Killer 5-Minute Presentation?

Here are some best practices to follow when crafting a short presentation.

1. Focus on the most important part.

The greatest challenge you’ll have when designing your presentation is choosing what to focus on — but from the format we discussed above, you can see how important it is to have a single premise to design your presentation around.

It’s easy to become overambitious in your presentation or to be overwhelmed by the information you want to present. Choosing a single idea to focus on gives you clarity when designing your speech and allows you to cut extraneous information. It also provides a narrative structure that your audience can more easily grasp.

2. Research, fact-check, and do it twice.

Your presentation is your chance to shine — but the shorter format also means that each point you make is going to be more visible, memorable, and consequentially more vulnerable to scrutiny.

Take the time to thoroughly research the subject of your presentation and ensure every point you make is both technically accurate and easy to understand. This will put you in a better position to field questions and discuss your subject in-depth. With a strong command of your subject matter, your delivery will also be more confident and convincing.

3. Appeal to how people learn best: stories.

A story can give meaning to your presentation and elevate it to more than just facts, figures, and some flashy slides. Building your presentation around a simple, easy-to-understand narrative (like the problem/solution narrative we showed you in the template avoid) can make your content more digestible. Your presentation will only last for a few minutes, but the story you tell needs to stick around in your audiences’ brains for longer — and stories naturally help humans understand and retain information more easily.

4. Don’t skip that practice session.

Just because your presentation is only five minutes doesn’t mean you should try to wing it. Your audience’s time is valuable, and practicing your presentation before you deliver it to them will help you make the most of it.

From CEOs to interns, everyone can benefit from practicing their presentations in advance, no matter how confident they are.

If you’re able to deliver much (or all) of it by heart, your delivery will be much more natural, allowing you to develop a stronger connection with your audience. And once nerves hit, you’ll have the muscle memory to fall back on and carry you through the rough patches!

5. Relax and don’t rush.

You only have five minutes to present, so it’s only natural to feel pressure to go a little too fast. Stay relaxed throughout your presentation and avoid distractions, such as someone informing you that you only have a minute left.

Staying focused on your presentation itself will improve your delivery and give you more confidence, even if you’re normally terrified of public speaking.

If you find yourself needing to speed through your presentation to squeeze it into a five-minute window, that’s a good sign you’re trying to do too much and need to consider cutting your slides down.

You Know Your Audience Best

When creating your five-minute presentation, think about your audience and craft it to appeal to them.

The information you decide to highlight and the way you frame it will be vastly different depending on who your presentation is meant for.

It’s natural to be nervous going into your presentation, especially if you don’t like public speaking or have a fear of it, but with enough consideration and practice, you’ll be a master of whatever subject you hope to present.

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Lessons Learned from 175 Website Flips: Mushfiq’s Easy Win Strategies for 10x Growth

Lessons Learned from 175 Website Flips: Mushfiq’s Easy Win Strategies for 10x Growth

Mushfiq S. is a name I keep hearing more and more about. I’ve been aware of his work, but had never connected with Mushfiq until now. 

Mushfiq is the owner of a popular  website flipping newsletter and EasyWins.io. To date, he has completed over 175 website flips, whether buying, selling, or brokering website deals. 

Even more impressive, he’s done all of this while still holding a full-time job. 

How did he manage to flip so many websites? He’s created systematic processes of “easy wins”. These easy wins are tasks, or site improvements often overlooked but take relatively little time to complete and provide a big impact. 

He then took the processes and bundled them into a resource you can purchase at EasyWins.io. It’s not a course, but a growing database of 100+ strategic wins for website creators to 10X revenue and traffic

This week only, the Niche Pursuits audience can get $50 off EasyWins.io right here.

100+ battle-tested strategies applied to 175 websites over 12 years to increase website valuations

  • 100+ strategies and growing!
  • Sort by category, impact, and effort required
  • Lifetime updates
  • Guaranteed impact or 100% money back

Get $50 Off Easy Wins

Watch the Entire Interview

How did Easy Wins get started?

Mushfiq started his first website as a college student in 2008. Then in 2010, he got an offer from an Australian company to buy his website. 

At the time, Mushfiq didn’t even know you could sell a website. This was just around the time Flippa and other website marketplace platforms were just getting started, and there wasn’t a lot of information on website sales.

The sale of his first site netted him $25k. The company that purchased his site is now known as Slashdot Media, the company behind SourceForge and other popular brands. 

As other college students were going into debt and working minimum wage jobs, Mushfiq got his first glimpse into website flipping and found his passion. 

Mushfiq says browsing websites for sale on sites like Flippa and Motion Invest is almost like a hobby for him now. Whenever he has a little downtime, he finds himself scrolling website classified listings. 

Website Flipping Examples

Mushfiq’s website flipping hobby is paying off big time. In the last few years, he’s been able to 10x a handful of sites. 

Example #1: Outdoor Website

In April, he bought a site in the outdoor niche from Flippa for $23,000. At the time, the site was only making $300, about a 70x multiple. By just about any standards, this meant the website was notably overpriced. 

As most people passed the site over as of the high asking price to revenue multiple, Mushfiq saw the potential. 

The site was receiving over 100,000 views a month. Mushfiq knew it was under-monetized. In just a few short months after adding advertising and affiliate links and applying several of his other “easy wins”, the site began making $3,000 a month. 

Ten times the original monthly sales, but he didn’t stop there. Last month the site did $7k in monthly revenue. 

I would maybe just chalk this up as good luck, but this wasn’t the first time Mushfiqs has 10x revenues. 

Example #2: Relationship and Dating Website

In 2019 Musfiq had similar results when he bought a relationship and dating website for $25,000. At the time, the site was making $1,000 per month with 30,000 pageviews. Again Mushfiq believed the site to be under-monetized and had plenty of potential. He was able to bring the site from making a mere $1,000 per month to over $8,000. 

100+ battle-tested strategies applied to 175 websites over 12 years to increase website valuations

  • 100+ strategies and growing!
  • Sort by category, impact, and effort required
  • Lifetime updates
  • Guaranteed impact or 100% money back

Get $50 Off Easy Wins

Using his systematic approach of applying his list of easy wins, he was able to quickly grow this site in less than a year.

What makes a good deal?

Mushfiq spends hours looking for great sites. He’s says finding these opportunities for a 10x revenue flip typically only happens once per year. There are a few very particular things to look for to make this happen. 

  1. Previous Owners.
    Mushfiq loves to find amateur bloggers or hobbyists that are writing about their niche because they love it. People who start a passion blog have great content but lack the experience to generate significant revenue from their online presence.
  2. Lots of traffic, low monetization
    Low monetization can mean a lot of things, and different industries have different benchmarks. It could also mean other monetization channels, whether that be from advertising or affiliates.
  3. Quick deals
    Mushfiq prides himself in fast deals. If there is enough potential in the site, he’s ready to strike a deal. Mushfiq won’t spend much time negotiating. If he can get the deal done quickly and the opportunity is there, he is willing to pay the full asking price.

Mushfiq’s Website Flipping Process

Each deal is held anywhere from 3 months to 1.5 years. Each site is different, but the operational aspects of Mushfiq’s website flipping process have been boiled down into a few categories: growth, stabilization, and maintenance. 

Growth: 

As a developer, Mushfiq says he loves to work in sprints. Each time he purchases a new website, he will put together a sprint of easy wins to build momentum for the project. 

The growth stage is when he is focused on income. This is where is putting in the changes to take the site from, say $300 to $3,000. 

Stabilization: 

At this stage, the focus is on infrastructure. Maybe a new website theme is needed, removing or adding plugins, site speed, or structuring keywords. 

Maintenace: 

Depending on whether he is planning for a quick flip or keeping the site in his portfolio, maintenance may look a little different, but ultimately at this stage, the goal is to look at page keywords, content, etc. Essentially he wants to keep doing the things that made it a great website in the first place. 

Using EasyWins.io Strategies for OwnTheYard

100+ battle-tested strategies applied to 175 websites over 12 years to increase website valuations

  • 100+ strategies and growing!
  • Sort by category, impact, and effort required
  • Lifetime updates
  • Guaranteed impact or 100% money back

Get $50 Off Easy Wins

Each phase will leverage different strategies found in the EasyWins database. To show exactly the type of strategies that are in the list, Mushfiq gave my site OwntheYard.com a quick audit and shared exactly what he would do to improve the site. 

I knew there was room for improvement with my site, but what surprised me was just how quick and easy the suggestions Mushfiq suggested would be to implement. 

These suggestions were things I could do once and be effective for the life of the website. 

I’ve included just a few of the recommendations he provided. You can see all his recommendations with the Youtube video here. 

  • Sticky Side Bar Ad

    I was already using Ezoic on my site and have been monetizing quite nicely this way, but Mushfiq shared a way that I could optimize to earn even more.

    The sticky sidebar ad is one of the highest-earning ad placements. On a handful of my pages the sticky sidebar ad was not enable. By enabling I should instantly see a spike in revenue.

  • Minimizing Featured Image

    Above the fold is one of the most valuable places on the page. By reducing the large featured images to be smaller, I could get more content above the fold and provide a better user experience.

    Making featured images smaller would also result in more ads being shown higher up on the page, providing additional revenue.

    Mushfiq also recommends using tools like Canva to add a customized logo or making the images unique as he’s seen a better performance than when using custom vs stock photos.

  • Adding Link Text

    I used the AAWP plugin  and the AmaLinks Pro plugin to push traffic to my Amazon affiliate links, but one area that I wasn’t linking was the link text.

    A quick, easy win would be to add link text when mentioning products and brands. Both text and image links are high converting links. By adding the link text we should see a significant increase in the number of on-page clicks. 

  • Replace Amazon Native Ads

    At the end of many pages, I include a “Shop Related Products” option using Amazon’s native shopping widget.

    Historically this native shopping widget provides low conversions. Mushfiq’s recommendation was to replace the native ad with AAWP product comparison or telling the readers my best product suggestion at the end of the article as a call to action.

Implementing EasyWins.io

Anytime I start thinking about optimizing my sites, I start feeling overwhelmed. Owntheyard.com has over 500 pages. Optimizing feels like a never-ending task. 

Mushfiq recommends only looking at the top 10 revenue pages or pages with significant traffic, and the suggestions like updating the themes featured image position would only have to be done once and implemented across the site. 

Mushfiq also sees some of his Easywins.io customers leverage the database of strategies to provide the list to a virtual assistant to complete the tasks. 

These just scratched the surface of the strategies Mushfiq and EasyWins.io have to offer. There are over 100 and the list keeps growing. 

You can get $50 off the database this week when you purchase EasyWins with the NichePursuits link here!

 

How to Detect and Eliminate Keyword Cannibalization

How to Detect and Eliminate Keyword Cannibalization

Keywords are king when it comes to engaging users and increasing your search engine ranking.

As a result, search engine optimization (SEO) has become a multi-million dollar business with a host of experts offering advice on how best to move up the search engine results page (SERP) and claim the coveted number one spot.

Most actionable SEO advice boils down to a few solid suggestions: Do your market research so you know which keywords are relevant to your target audience, and create content that’s timely and relevant.

Something that doesn’t make the SEO rounds quite so often is keyword cannibalization. While this unpleasant-sounding issue won’t sink your website, it can cause your pages and posts to rank lower than they should and — if left unchecked — could harm the overall reputation of your site.

Here’s what you need to know about finding, evaluating, and eliminating keyword cannibalization.

Access Now: 20 SEO Myths to Leave Behind in 2020

What is Keyword Cannibalization in SEO?

Keyword cannibalization occurs when two or more pages on your website end up competing for the same keyword.

Let’s say your company sells roof shingles. Your blog content will likely include posts about how to extend shingle life through proper care and maintenance — with the right combination of authority and actionable insight, this kind of content can attract the attention of your target audience and lead them to purchase shingles from your site when their home requires repair or replacement.

To ensure you’re capturing the right audience, you do a keyword search and find that “roof shingle prices” ranks extremely high. You then create multiple pages that all leverage this keyword — one piece might deal with the most costly shingle types, another with less-expensive options, and a third with the costs of potential repairs if shingles are damaged.

The problem? By using the same keyword for each page, you’re essentially stealing search engine rankings from yourself.

Here’s why: From the perspective of search engines each of these pages is its own separate entity with its own authority and page ranking, meaning your pages are fighting for SEO attention.

What’s more, these similar-but-different pages will split your click-through rate (CTR) across multiple links, in turn decreasing the value of each page. As a result, these three pages might rank sixth, seventh, and eighth in SERPs while a single page could rank second or even first.

How to Detect Keyword Cannibalization

The simplest way to detect keyword cannibalization is to create a spreadsheet containing the keyword(s) for any content you create.

Before making a new post, check your spreadsheet and see if you’ve already used the same keyword. If so, consider tweaking your content to focus on another keyword or ensure that the content you’re creating is substantially different than that of previous posts.

You can also check for keyword cannibalization with a quick online search of your most relevant keywords. If you see multiple pages from your site listed close to one another in SERPs for the same keyword, you have a cannibalization problem.

In addition, keyword cannibalization checker tools can help ensure you’re not missing potential overlap — better to know ASAP and modify your content before it gets pushed down the search rankings by more targeted posts from your competitors.

How to Eliminate Keyword Cannibalization

So what happens if you discover keyword cannibalization on your site?

First, take a look at the content on each page. Wherever possible, combine the information from both pages into a single post to boost search rankings and increase authority.

In the case of our shingle company, for example, it’s worth combining the “most costly” and “least expensive” shingle pages into a single post that targets the “roof shingle prices” keyword. If there are particular aspects of low-cost or high-priced shingles that could help customers make their decision, create new posts with new keywords, and link to them in the original post.

In other cases, you may find that older posts on your site are still ranking highly thanks to targeted keyword use but are no longer relevant to your company’s product line or service offering. Here, it’s a good idea to integrate any useful data from older posts into newer content and then delete the original, in turn allowing search engines to rank up your most relevant post.

Worth noting? As with anything in SEO, there are exceptions to the keyword cannibalization rule.

For example, if you have two posts with the same keyword that are both highly ranked and their ranking position isn’t fluctuating, there’s no need to combine them.

If competitors’ pages start to rank higher, however, or if your top-ranked page stops delivering sustained click-through rates, this could indicate the need for action.

Keyword Cannibalization Checker Tools

While keeping a spreadsheet of page URLs, metadata, and keyword use can help reduce the risk of unintentional cannibalization, this becomes prohibitively complex as sites scale up.

Consider an ecommerce site that sells multiple types of winter jackets — with a product page for each jacket, category pages for each jacket type, and blog posts around jacket care, storage, and repair, it’s easy for keywords to overlap and SERP to suffer.

Keyword cannibalization checker tools can help streamline this process and reduce the risk of missing a potential keyword problem. Some popular options include:

1. Keylogs Keyword Cannibalization Checker

The Keylogs Cannibalization Checker offers a free trial — simply log in with a Google account that’s connected to your website(s) and the Checker does the rest.

You’ll get results about any pages on your site that are competing for the same ranked keyword along with strategies to resolve the issue. Worth noting? The free tier of this tool only tracks three keywords across one site. Paid plans are required for multiple sites and unlimited keyword tracking.

2. SEMrush Position Tracking Tool

SEMrush is a popular SEO tracking and monitoring toolset. With a paid plan, site owners have access to a Cannibalization report within the SEMrush Position Tracking Tool, which provides a cannibalization score for the keywords entered.

A 100% score means no cannibalization has been detected — lower scores indicate potential problems and will specify both affected keywords and cannibal pages.

3. Google Search Console

Using the performance report section of Google Search Console lets you view the queries that have earned your site impressions and clicks from Google searches.

Drill down into these queries with the “pages” tab to see a list of URLs that rank for specific keywords and queries — if you see more than one URL from your site listed for the same keyword, you may have a cannibalization issue.

4. SEOScout Cannibalization Checker

SEOScout’s Cannibalization Checker offers an alternative to managing keyword spreadsheets. Simply create an account for a 7-day free trial, enter your site’s domain and the tool will create a report detailing any duplicate keyword rankings, allowing you to quickly track down and eliminate cannibal content.

5. Moz Keyword Explorer

The Moz Keyword Explorer lets you find ranking keywords, determine page ranking positions, and make decisions about which pages to keep and which ones need to be reworked or eliminated. Moz also makes it easy to download CSV spreadsheet files which can then be analyzed offline for duplicate keyword listings.

Staying Aware of Keyword Cannibalization

For site owners and admins, cannibal keyword content is problematic — multiple URLs ranking for the same keyword can negatively impact page authority, frustrate potential customers, and reduce SERPs.

Solve for keyword cannibalization by finding duplicate keyword use, then combining or deleting content as needed to ensure your most relevant content earns the highest SERP placement with popular search engines.

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