How I Got Rich

Monthly Round-up: September 2010

Bit late this report but here it is anyways. September wasn’t as good as August and I was down about 5-10% from the previous month. I spent about 500 quid on AdWords which is not a direction I really want to be going on but I think those days are over now anyways!

The small drop was a bit of a disappointment but should not be too disheartening as a lot of my sites are primed for the summer months so the dip is natural although it does show I need to focus on some more Autumnal and Winter niches to keep the revenue even throughout the year.

I’ve been buying a lot of backlinks the last month or two which have come in the form of forum profile links via ODesk and paid for blog commenting. Both have seen my sites rise slightly in the SERPS so I will be carrying on with this for the foreseeable future.

I’m still outsourcing content writing too which is going well.

I started a new site which had a more generic domain name instead of the exact match Smingle style keyword domains I normally use. The domain is widgetshop.co.uk Obviously I would have loved to have widget.co.uk but it was gone so hopefully the addition of shop won’t be too much of a problem. The reason I have decided to try this type of domain is that now I am acquiring backlinks, something I’ve never done in the past, I feel I can go for more competitive or general niches as I can use the backlinks to boost my site in the SERPs. I will be reporting on whether this works or not.

My Christmas site is still getting more content but now that I can no longer rely on traffic from AdWords PPC I am not confident it will bring in any cash which is a shame as last December was really very good for me.

I read on this affiliate marketing blog about someone launching a new site that is more general and it has inspired me to try and do something with one of my more general domain names. Unfortunately my domain is in the same niche or area as their one so I hope they don’t mind a bit of friendly competition (if I ever get around to doing anything)!

I’ve also discovered a few blogs on people who travel around the world living off their online earnings. They seem to do it with a mix of affiliate marketing and other types of sites that earn them money. This has been pretty interesting reading considering my situation so is something I will be looking into more in the future.

Goals for the next few months are:
Earn more money! Obvious but the amount I am earning now is used for living expenses and things like that. If I could get a few more hundred pounds a month I could do some serious investment in my sites with links and content which I think will help move my up a level or two.

Get a big site up and running. I have couple of domains which I think would be good but its just a matter of picking one and spending a few hundred pounds on content and links and seeing what happens. Bit reluctant as its a bit of a risk as to whether I can get a site ranked in a competitive niche or not. If it works though I could see a nice increase in revenue.

That’s it really. Bit of a long one but hope you found it interesting!

Back from my Holidays

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!

£1 a Day from Each Site

I was just looking through my list of sites and I have around 40 sites that are up and running.  Some are more up and running than others but all of them are in a position to make a sale at some point.  After seeing this it occurred to me that if they were all making £1 day I’d be bringing in around £1000 a month which is pretty much my main goal in affiliate marketing (and life!).

Most of my sties promote low cost items so for the majority of them they would need to make around 1.5 sales a day to get £1 in commission (I learnt my lesson and no longer promote such low cost items).  Some of my sites however can make around £20 a sale so that would even things out a bit.

But alas I am way off this target and am nowhere near £1000 per month.

But is £1 per day per site too to ask?   It doesn’t sound like it but it obviously is.

Today I’ve been mostly wasting my time reading affiliate marketing blogs as I thought work would be closed tomorrow due to the red shirts but our boss knows better so we are back in work tomorrow so no Internet marketing for me.

That Sunday Night Feeling

Now that I am back working full-time some of the things I’d left behind are returning.

The main one is that Sunday night feeling where you know you have work the next day which is even worse after having some time off.  Last week I was off from work and was on holiday and today (Monday) is a public holiday so I am getting that Sunday night feeling a day late but it is just as strong if not stronger.  I am really fired up to do some affiliate marketing work but have lots of planning and preparation to do for the day job so can’t even do that!

I’ve set myself another goal which is to be earning £900 a month by the end of June which is about four months time.  This should be enough for me to quit the day job and go full-time again.

I plan to do this via my existing sites and the addition of one big site which I am yet to start.

Can it be done? Watch this space.

Getting all my sites to number 1 in Google

This might sound like an obvious goal but for now I am going to focus on getting my existing sites to number one in Google.  Most of them are at number one in Google for their main keyword but not all of them.

Normally I start a new site, put up some content and wait for it to get to number one.  If after a while it is not on page one or close then I leave it and move on.  But as I have vowed to not make any new sites for a while I am thinking I might as well get the sites I have to number one so I can see if any of them will get any traffic.

I have sites for keywords that get, according to the Google keyword tool, anything from 3,000 to 50,000 exact searches a month.  As I’ve now realised the Google keyword tool is not to be believed and does not even give a rough idea of searches.  This has made me think that I might be sitting on a site that gets 100′s of 1000′s of exact searches each month and I won’t know until I get the site to number one.

So with that in mind I am going back to my older sites that don’t rank well and seeing what I can do to get them to number one.

I’ve never really done any work on back links so I might have to finally get around to giving it a serious go.  I will also be adding content which I will probably end up outsourcing as I don’t have much spare time any more.  It is quite expensive at £10 for 500 words but probably cost effective in the long run?

Anyone got any tips for getting a site to number one in Google?

Back to Work, Full Time!

Well being a full-time affiliate again didn’t last long.  Less than a week later I have a new job but will be working full-time not part-time like before.  This means my time for affiliate marketing will be greatly reduced.  I wasn’t looking for work but something landed in my lap and was offered ito me and I am not in a position to turn work down so I will be starting next week.

Maybe this will spur me on and give me an incentive to put more effort into my affiliate marketing sites.  I must admit I had been getting lazy.  Around my previous job in England I still managed to put in quite a bit of effort into affiliate stuff and got to a level of earnings I have yet to go above (apart from Christmas) after trying affiliate marketing full-time for the past few months.

I’m setting myself the goal of writing four new product review pages/posts a day to one of my existing sites (rotating through the sites) and also adding one new product review page to each of my two big sites.

With the extra money coming in I will be reinvesting some of my profits from Internet marketing into my sites by buying content and looking into link building and how much that costs.  Anyone know any thing about that?

My long term goal is still to get from my current earnings of about 400 pound a month to 2,000 a month by the end of 2010.  Will I be able to do it?

Busy Beaver

I’ve had quite a productive day today.  This morning I wrote a few new pages of content for one of my old sites that was languishing  around page three in Google for ages and since I moved it to Wordpress has crawled up to the bottom of page one.  I’ve slowly been adding more posts to it to help improve it’s ranking.  There has been no change as of yet but I hope soon it will move up to the top.  Its more of a seasonal site for the autumn but it can’t do any harm getting it to the top now.  According to the Google KeyWord Tool it got 18,100 exact local searches last month so hopefully a few of them will click through if I get it higher up the page.  At the moment it gets about 100-200 uniques a month and makes a few sales.  Its never going to make me rich but as I’ve already bought the domain I might as well use it and see if I can make a few quid from it.

Ranking for Two Keywords

Regarding the above site I would ideally like to get it ranking for two keywords.  One is, lets say, red monkeys and the other is big footballs.  The product I am promoting does both things but has two different names that is referred to.  The domain I have used is redmonkeys.org.uk and the site is on the first page for that term but for the keyword big footballs the site is nowhere to be seen.  I’m not sure the best way to go about getting the site ranked for the other keyword.  I’m starting to build backlinks using that keyword as anchor text and I’ve started using the keyword more throughout the website so hopefully things should pick up.

If I focus on getting the site ranked for big footballs is there any way it will affect the ranking already achieved for red monkeys?

Another thing I did today was add a new product (well the first product) to my ‘big site’ and setup a PPC campaign for it.  Hopefully I get lucky with this product and start to see some sales come though.  My aim is to add one new product to this site per day and set up a PPC campaign for it.

Back to being a Full-Time Affiliate Marketer again

I have now finished my part-time contract I was on and am now back to being a full-time Internet marketer again.  I will be looking for a new job (hopefully part-time) as I am still earning bugger all from this lark but hopefully before I find one my fortunes will pick up.

Last month was amazing but this month has been back to normal and I think I will be lucky to clear £400 which is nowhere near enough.

I am starting to wonder at what point do you call it quits and admit that something isn’t going to work out for you and move onto something else?  I guess if I have another month without any rise in profits then I will have to have a long hard look at where I am.

8 Pages in 2 Hours

I read something just now in Kirty’s blog which has inspired me to set myself a new challenge.  Kirsty mentioned that she sets herself the target of writing eight pages a day and aims to do so  in two hours.  Later on she says each page is about 250 words.

After reading that I have decided to set myself the same target.  Each day I will write 8 new pages for my existing sites (of which I have many).  I will aim to do it in two hours but will give myself longer if need be.  Each page will most likely be a WordPress post with an image of the product a link to the merchant and an ECU where appropriate.  Each post should be about 150-250 words.

Two hours isn’t long and I will spend the rest of my time working on other aspects of my sties including link building, finding new products or anything else I can think of.

Right, I better get off and start writing!

2009 & 2010

2009 has been a pretty good year for me.  I gave up my boring IT job, moved to Thailand and tried my hand at Internet Marketing full-time.  Going full-time didn’t boost my earnings as much as I thought they would so I got a couple of part-time jobs to tide me over.  The year finished on a high note with me earning £883 in the last month setting a new personal record.

I’ve learnt a lot in my first year in affiliate marketing and will be putting that into practice in 2010.  Some of the things I will be focusing on in the new year will be:

• Stop buying domains for small-time keyword niche sites. I have enough of these sites in various states of completion to last me a long time and the list is getting too many to mention.  It always seems easier to stop working on long term projects to start a new project that most of the times doesn’t come to much.
• Get my big sites up and running. I have three big sites I plan to get going this month and work on throughout the year.  It was going to be two but I am having quite good success with one niche using PPC that I an going to build a big site around it and promote it via PPC.  The other two will be content sites that I will aim to get traffic organically for.  I need to stop procrastinating around getting started and Just Do It.
• Make more use of PPC. I stayed away from PPC for a long time as I was scared of losing money but most times I have tried it it has paid off.  The amount of traffic I can get from it massively out numbers any traffic my sites get from organic search results alone.   I am going to delve deeper into the world of PPC and AdWords and see how much more traffic I can bring in.  SEO will not be neglected as I think it is essential for long-term success but PPC is just as valuable.
• Reinvest profits. I haven’t done much of this so far but I am going to look into ways of reinvesting my profits in my sites.  Content writing is an obvious solution and perhaps link building is also something I should look into outsourcing.  Anything else I can spend my money on?

My goals and resolutions for 2010 are as follows:

• Do something every day that can bring in money.  I read this somewhere else and liked the idea.  It can be a small thing or a big thing but basically each day you are adding something to your ‘portfolio’ that could lead to a sale whether it be launch a new site, add a new product, start a new campaign or just add a new link to a merchant.
• Be earning £2000 profit per month by end of 2010. I want to be earning £2000 per month by the end of 2010.  This is more than I earned in my day job and will put me in a nice position for when I return to England plus I will also be able to live very comfortably out here on that much too.

Non-Affiliate Marketing:

• Learn Thai
• Take up a sport and stick with it throughout the year – possibly Tennis, Golf or Muay Thai
• Start a diary blog for my travels
• Learn to draw
• Get back in touch with 3 friends from my childhood/school days