How I Got Rich

Monthly Round-up for August 2010

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!

Monthly Round-Up: May 2010

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?

April 2010 Round-Up

Last month was pretty good bringing in around £600 (mainly thanks to one sale that bagged me £100) but April has been back to normal seeing me earn around £470 from affiliate marketing after I deducted my £40 AdWords spend.

This is a nice amount for little effort but its a bit depressing that I haven’t made any real progress in the past 9-10 months or so.

I have made new sites that make sales but as they get stronger my other sites don’t perform as well.  My big site is yet to rank for any keywords that people are searching for but I will keep on keeping on with it.

Ideally I’d like to triple my incone in the next 7 months or so but I can’t see where the breakthrough will come.

Any suggestions?

March 2010 Round-up

March was a good month, my second best after December 2009.  I spent about £65 on AdWords and managed to bring in just over £600 profit.  Most of that came from SEO and not the £65 I spent on PPC traffic obviously.

I made one very large sale which probably accounted for the rise in profits and I doubt I will repeat such a large sale again so for April I expect I will be back down to previous monthly earnings.

My ‘big site’ I started has still to get any organic traffic which is a shame.  I started in the same way I do my other sites but it has not ranked for the keyword I am going for.  The only difference is that it does not have a keyword domain – I guess this makes more difference than I thought.

I am going to buy a WordPress theme for this site but am not sure which one to get.  It is a shame you can’t try them out and have a look under the bonnet before  buying them.  I think I will get a Studio Press one unless anyone else knows of any other people selling good ones?

Still trying to get my older sites to number on in Google so I can hopefully start getting a few quid in from the sites I’d neglecting in the past.  Managed to get one website to number one for a keyword that got 27,100 exact searches last month according to the Google Keyword Tool (although I expect it is much less than that in reality).  That site is now getting about 25 unique hits per day so hopefully it should make 1 or 2 sales a week.

Goals of earning £800 by September 2010 and £2000 a month by September 2011 looking a long way off still!

Monthly Round-Up: February 2010

February was a poor month for me and I only made about 300 pounds and I had to spend about 80 quid on AdWords to get there.  This was my worst month for probably about six months and the first real big drop in profit.  But onwards and upwards as they say.

I have started proper work on a ‘big site’ but am only focusing on one type of product for now and will then start adding in more products once I am ranking ok for the first product type.

I’ve started paying for content and reinvesting some of my earnings from affiliate marketing now I am working full-time again.  I’ve been buying content in lots of 500 words and having the content focused around my niche keywords.  I had a site that had been at the bottom of page one in Google for ages and after adding the content it moved to number three in Google so hopefully I should see a return on that investment shortly.  Before that the site was languishing on page two and sometimes further out but after moving it to WordPress and separating each product review/description into a separate Wordpress post it moved to the bottom of page one in Google.  So moving to WordPress plus adding good written content can equal a decent jump in the serps for a site.

As for my big site I am having trouble finding a decent WordPress theme that is suited to an affiliate site.  I’m using a magazine theme at the moment and I do like it but it doesn’t quite meet my needs and I am having trouble deciding how to structure a site that is bigger than my usual one type of product site.

Can anyone recommend a good WordPress theme, free or otherwise, for a decent sized affiliate site?

How was February for you?

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.

December 2009 Round-Up

Well 2009 is over and it has been an interesting year to say the least.  First I got into affiliate marketing and then I moved to Thailand.  But first things first:  How was my December?

I left it quite late starting my Christmas sites but in the end I pulled my finger out and got a few up and running.  They were started too late to rank well organically so I decided to promote them via AdWords paying for each visit I received.

This started off well and on some days I was making £50 a day profit and I even made about £80 one day.  The month didnt carry on like this and as the items I was promoting ran out of stock my sales dried up.   I was also on holiday for the last two weeks of the month so couldn’t really set-up any new sites or AdWords campaigns.   I decided to leave my existing PPC campaigns running while I was away and kept my fingers crossed they wouldnt cost me too much.

When I got back to Bangkok yesterday I was pleasantly supprise to see I had earned £883 in December.  I spent about £223 on AdWords.  This is about double of what I’ve made in my last few months and has made me very happy.  If I could make this every month I’d be over the moon, especially out here in Thailand where the cost of living is quite low compared to England.

I know a lot of this has come from the Christmas market but I am determined to keep the momentum going and try and get in the same region this month.  PPC really helped alot as it allows your new ventures to get traffic straight away and get the sales trickling in.

How was your December?

Monthly report for September 2009

My eighth month of being an Affiliate Marketer is over and so is my first full month of trying Internet marketing full-time.

Unfortunately I have seen my income go down for the second month running.

In September I earned just £293 (£233 from Amazon & £60 from Awin. There was also £76 of transactions from Awin that were made in September but are still pending).

Last month earnings where £387 and the month before £435 so things are definitely on the slide!

In the last few weeks I have bucked my ideas up a bit and knuckled down with a stricter timetable seeing me do 35 hours a week.  Hopefully the seeds being planted will start to bear fruit in the coming months.

Feedback from other Affiliate Marketers is leading me to think focusing on just a couple of sites rather than lots of smaller ones is the way forward. So this is definately something I will think about this month with the aim of getting one bigger, more general site up and running.

I am now also looking for a full-time job so my days of doing AM full-time may soon be over.  I think I realistically need to be earning £750 out here to be able to survive and ideally £1000 a month to have some money to put away each month for travelling or otther purchases.

At the moment I am miles away from that amount so it looks like it will be back to being a wage slave, doing the 9-5 again.

How did you get rich: a couple of big sites or lots of little ones?

Monthly report for August 2009

Another month is over and this has been my seventh month in affiliate marketing.

Last month I made £435 (£407 of which came from Amazon and £28 from Affiliate Window).

My target for August was £500 but unfortunately I did not meet it.

For August I earnt £387 (£313 from Amazon and £74 from Awin and there is also another £76.45 from Awin which is pending and I guess will go through in September).

My main site only earned £175 this month where as last month it earned £251 despite still being number one in Google. It is seasonal so I expect it will go down again next month.

This has been the first month where I have not made a significant increase on the previous month. Have I reach the sticking point that beginners can quickly reach but to
surpass needs extra skills and knowledge, the point that seperates the men/woman from the boys/girls?

I didn’t do any work on am during the last two weeks of July and the first two weeks of August so perhaps that explains why there was a bit of a dip. Also I found that some of the links on my sites where pointing to products that were no longer available or were out of stock so that could’ve caused some sales to be lost. If you have any old site I recommend going back and checking the links are still active and valid.

I had some good results from my Affi style micro niche site which I was promoting via PPC which brought me £50 profit (after PPC spend) from 3 sales. After this I made 3 more of this type of site which I am also promoting with PPC. Hopefully they will see the same level of success.

I am now out of work so am going to be trying to do AM full-time but it is hard to stay motivated now I have lots of free time. Before I was putting in the odd few hours here and there when I could and found it quite easy to motivate myself. Now I have the whole day ahead of me free it is not so easy – seems more like a job now!

My medium term goal when I started with AM was to be making £500 a month by the end of September and as this is now September I will be trying my hardest to achieve this.

I’m still playing with small smingle type sites but have not come up with many good ones lately.

PPC for financial leads is where I want to get to in the next few months as well as working on a bigger long term site. Also there is Christmas to start working on…

Also a few other affiliate have moved into some of the niches I am working in taking the .org and .org.uk versions of domains I was using. Is this ok to do as I’ve seen a few niches I like but someone else is already ranked well in that niche?

How are things going with you? Learnt anything you’d like to share?

Monthly report for July 2009

With month six over I am pleased to report I have beaten my target once again.  The goal for July was £300 but I managed to earn £435 (£28 from AWin & £407 from Amazon Associates).

I spent £16 on PPC but this only brought in one or two sales so I did lose money on that.  I also signed up for Easy Content Units Pro which is about £22 a month.  Apart from that it was just hosting (£6 per month) and a few more domains at £6.66 a go that I spent this month.

I will be delving into the world of PPC in August and hope to invest some of my earnings in running some successful campaigns, or at least learning some more about how Adwords works.

I’ll have left my job by the end of next week and will be moving onto pastuers new and as I won’t have a job I will lots more time to crack on with affiliate marketing.  Hopefully my earnings will increase enough so that I don’t have to find another full-time job.

My target for August is £500. Wish me luck!

Daily Trends from Amazon in July 2009

Earnings from Amazon in July 2009