How I Got Rich

Don’t think I have done one of these for a while but as I am now back from my holidays I thought I better do a quick one for August.

I was away for the first three weeks of August (as well as July) so didn’t do that much work on my sites but the main thing I have been doing is the outsourcing of the acquisition of forum profile back links (you can read how I did this on this blog). I ordered them in batches of 120 and did it for four of my sites but its been over a week now and the links are not showing up in any backlink checks I’ve done so cannot say if they have made a difference or not. I doubt these links are very high quality but they’ve got to be better than nothing.

I’m still outsourcing written content which is really helping my sites as I’m too busy/lazy to write my own content these days and this way allows me to get good, fresh content for my sites. Have a look on ODesk and see if you can find a good writer if you are interested in doing this.

I still haven’t gotten around to trying out the financial leads through the Affiliate Marketing School as I am still scared of losing lots of money on PPC but I will bite the bullet one day – maybe once some money starts coming through from AWin.

My ‘big site’ is still not ranking at all which sucks. I’ve done about 50 200 word product pages for the desired keyword and its still not on the first 60 pages of Google and judging by some of the other pages in the top 600 the competition isn’t that stiff. This is my first site which does not have the keyword in the domain and I’m now realising just how much a keyword domain helps.

I’ve also started three new keyword niche sites this month after a long time of not starting any new sites. None of them are particularly good niches as they get pretty low hits but they might bring in a few quid each month which is nothing to complain about but not really the road I want to keep going down long term (lots of little sites).

What I am thinking about at the moment is moving from getting a large slice of a small pie to getting a small slice of a big pie. At the moment my sites do quite well in the SERPS (apart from my big site) but the niches are pretty low traffic so even if I get to number 1 in Google and take a large slice of the niche pie I still don’t get much money. But now I am thinking to maybe go after a more competitive niche but aim to get in the bottom half of page 1 and just have a smaller slice of the much bigger niche pie. To do this I will still need a keyword domain but as they are all gone in the competitive niches I might start appending them with buy_____.co.uk or _______store.co.uk as I’ve seen other people doing this. I don’t really like the idea of muscling into niches in which other affiliates are already operating but people are doing this to me now so maybe its time I started doing it too. What do you think readers?

This month my profits were up about 10% on last month which I am pleased about and I will be aiming to do the same next month.

In September I will be mostly working on my Christmas site – it’s only 3 months away!

I just received an email from the guy who I had contracted to build me 120 links using the Angela & Paul packet service thing via ODesk.

I got sent an Excel spreadsheet with links to 120 forum profiles and in each profile my website was given as the users website with the anchor text I had provided.

I have checked to see if the backlinks have been recognised yet using the http://www.backlinkwatch.com/ website but I guess it is too early for them to show up. I will be keeping an eye on this and seeing if my site moves up in the SERPS. It is currently at number two after recently being knocked from the number one spot it had held for a over a year.

I paid $11.11 for these 120 links. I’m not quite sure where the Angel & Paul packet part comes into play but I’m pretty sure I could do this myself if I had the time and the inclination.

I’ve got another order of the same but for another site currently being worked on by another contractor so will see whose work I like best before picking one. Or maybe I will use them both.

At the moment this is the only link building method I am using part from the odd link swap through the a4u forum.

I will report back once the links have settled.

Has anyone else used this kind of link building method or do you know of any other link building methods?

After reading about the link building services offered by some of the freelancers that use ODesk I decided to sign up and see if I could procure any of their services.

I have just had my first job accepted and am now waiting to see what happens next.

I am after some of the Angel & Paul packet links but am not too sure exactly what this means so need to look into it.

Will report back when the links are done and see if it makes any difference to my sites in the serps.

If anyone has any tips on how to work with people via ODesk to outsource backlinks please let me know.

Back to work tomorrow…

I’m almost back from my holidays.  Just spending a few days making use of a broadband connection and my laptop before returning to Thailand.  I did no work in July and still made the same amount of money I made in June which was really nice so had my two best months earnings-wise back to back.

Now that I’ve had a few days with my laptop and a decent Internet connection I’ve been checking my all my sites to see if they are still working and ranking ok.  One of my first fairly successful sites has just been overtaken in the SERPS and has been pushed to number two which was sad to see but I hadn’t updated it in over six months so can’t really complain.  I’ve since moved it over to WordPress and written more content for it in the hope of getting it back to number one but am not loosing too much sleep over it as its a seasonal domain and its season is about to end.

I registered two domains yesterday.  They are both clothing sites.  Clothing sites seem to be a bit hit and miss but I will stick something basic up for each of them and see what happens.

My big site is still floundering.  It gets some long tail traffic but nothing for the keywords I am targeting.

Which brings me on nicely to my main problem: backlinks!

I have no clue how to get them so am going to focus this month on finding out how to outsource them.  Once I have found out how to pay for them I will be apply them to all my sites.

My goal at the moment is to be earning £2000 per month by Christmas (so I can give up the day job) and then £3000 per month by June 2010.

Wish me luck!

Just seen this little tool for WordPress on another affiliate blog and thought I’d post it here incase anyone hadn’t seen it.

The idea is that it records which keyword your sales came from or something like that.  Read the full story here:

http://shanebrown.co.uk/new-wordpress-keyword-tracking-tool-plugin/

Well I am off on my summer holidays next weekend so am frantically trying to tie up as many lose ends as possible regarding my affiliate marketing websites.  I did think about taking the netbook with me but with a 12″ screen it is too big plus where I am going I’m not sure if it would survive the journey.  I did look into getting a cheaper, smaller one but there doesn’t seem to be any £100 or so mini netbooks on the market.

Instead I will try and find some internet cafes and try and do the odd hour here and there although I don’t know how realistic that will be when I have the option of being on the beach or by the pool.

So before I go I will load up the USB stick with all my site info and try to find a FTP programme I can run off the thumb drive so I can easily upload any files.  As I use WordPress now for nearly all my sites updating them shouldn’t be too hard providing I have internet access.

Have a good summer!

Recently I set up a new site that I was going to promote via PPC using Google’s  AdWords.  I set the site up and created a page for each item and put an image of the product on the page and an Easy Content Unit comparing the prices from different merchants.

Instead of adding content I decided to start some AdWords campaigns for the site to get the ball rolling and hits coming in before I got around to writing and adding the content.

The next time I logged into AdWords to check the campaign I noticed my keywords had a 1/10 quality score and the reason given was something to do with a poor quality site.   The low quality score means my ads will hardly ever, if at all, be shown.

I then added the content, waited for it to get indexed and started a new campaign on the same account for the site.  Google noticed straight away and gave me another 1/10 quality score.

So now I have registered a new domain and am in the process of moving the content over.

Once I have done that I will start a new campaign for the site and hopefully it will pass Google’s criteria.

Fingers crossed…

I have never really been able to find good backlinks.  I’ve done the odd link exchange and blog comment but apart from that I’ve just relied on on-page SEO. 

Most of my sites are in small niches so this method has done me OK so far.  My sites either rank OK with content and on-page SEO or they don’t.

But as I’ve recently started outsourcing content writing I thought I would have a look buying some backlinks.

The first place I am trying is http://www.socialmaximizer.com/

They allow you to chose how many sites you want to get your site bookmarked at according to your budget and then they take it from there.

I have just ordered £13.81 or $20 worth of links which is about 100 of them for one site.

The site is in the bottom half of page one in Google and according to http://www.backlinkwatch.com/ has backlinks from two websites.

I will report back when the backlinks start to show up and see if it does any good or not.

Have you used any backlinking services?  How did you find them?

May 2010 was my best month in affiliate marketing so far apart from December 2009.  I did quite well last month so wasn’t sure if I would be able to top it but was very pleased when I did. Also  one of my sites that started the month off well and was on page one in Google got knocked way down the SERPS for some reason at the start of the month and didn’t make any more more sales.  But a few of my other sites stepped up and I made a good income for May.  Also during this month my Adwords account was suspendde due to non payment until the last few days of May so I only spent about £9 on clicks which was very good.

A fair amount of this traffic was seasonal though so I need to keep working other sites to keep me going all year round.

I’ve also been doing a lot of outsourcing.  I’ve been getting someone to write product descriptions for me which keeps me supplied with fresh content for my sites and is something I would definitely recommend to anyone who has trouble motivating themselves to write content.

I have also outsorced the design of a webstie which I am very pleased with.  I will be using this design for my PPC financial leads project so I wanted something good and I was happy with what I got.  I will be starting work on this in June.

I will be away for six weeks from the start of July so am trying to get as much done before then as probably won’t be able to do much affiliate marketing work whilst on the road.

How was your May 2010?

I was checking my Amazon stats this morning as I do each morning and noticed some sales from a site I had forgotten about.  I hadn’t setup and tracking for the site in StatCounter so never saw it in my list of sites and therefore had forgotten about it.  It looked like one person had bought quite a few things which was nice so I looked up the site to see what state it was in.

Most of the links are still to active products and the site is now number two in Google for a 22,000 exact match keyword according to the Google Key Word Tool which is nice to see.  Further examination of my sales stats shows it has been making the odd sale here and there over the past few weeks and months.

I’m now going to update any dead links on the site and add a bit more content and see if I can get it to number one.  The items on the site sell for well over £50 and are not sold in many shops so on paper it sounds like a pretty good niche.

Fingers crossed…