In my last post I wrote about my holiday to Oz and that I was going to do a blog for the three weeks I am out there. Well here are the details if you are interested:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/australiatrip11
• Blog: http://australiatrip.co.uk/

Feel free to spread the word!

Australia Trip Mini Blog is a post from: How I Got Rich

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!

Monthly Round-up: September 2010 is a post from: 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!

Monthly Round-up for August 2010 is a post from: How I Got Rich

I’ve setup and started the first of my two big sites.  It is called Comedy Box Sets and can be found at this address: http://comedyboxsets.co.uk/

I watch a lot of comedy TV serieses and after seeing a profitable affiliate site about a TV series I thought why not try and combine a hobby (is watching TV a hobby?) with an affiliate marketing venture.

I am not too worried about the design at the moment and am going to be focussing on adding content for the time being.

The plan is that as I watch a comedy show I will write a little bit about the series of the episode on the blog and put some links to merchants that sell that DVD.  If there is any merchandise available for the show I will link to that also.  Then there is tickets for standup comedy shows and films that the actors are in.

I know alot of people are downloading TV shows now but I hope there are still some people out there buying DVDs.

I am going to try and promote the site using as many means as possible and have setup a twitter account for it and will probably do a facebook group.  Does anyone know how to get lots of twitter followers quickly? I think I will do a mailing list at some point too.

It is not going to be the most profitable of sites but I hope it will be fun to write and something that will hold my interst over the months and years.

My other big site will hopefully be more profitable as it will be selling a wider range of items at a wider range of prices but I am yet to start that one.

Big Site #1: Comedy Box Sets is a post from: How I Got Rich

I know I left it very late but I have finally got two Christmas sites up.  They are both about a single toy I think will be popular this Christmas.  One costs about £50 and the other about £20.  I think I’ve left it too late for them to be indexed and ranked well so I have started a PPC campaign for each one.  Hopefully they will get some action before the big day.

The campaign I started yesterday has already had a few clicks which have lead to clicks through to the merchant but no sales as of yet.  I am quite confident I will make some sales as my sites have the lowest prices on them thanks to an ECU unit.

I’ve got two or three more Christmas domains so will be working on getting those sites up and running by the end of the weekend.

How are your Christmas sites doing?

Christmas Sites Ahoy! is a post from: How I Got Rich

I recently purchases two domains for niches I already have sites in.  The domains I had already are abbreviations of the ones I just purchased with the new ones getting more searches and are the domains I should have registered in the first place.

I was toying with the idea of redirecting the original domains to the newer ones but have now opted to build a separate site for each domain.  Today I almost finished one of the sites with just the privacy policy, disclaimer pages etc to finish.  The site is for a summery niche so hopefully I will get a couple of sales out of it before the winter months kick in (if they haven’t already).  I will then keep it updated and hopefully it will be well ranked for next year.  The other is probably also a seasonal one as it for sporting equipment for something I doubt is that popular in the winter months.  Again if I can keep working on it and get it ranked for next year that will be good.

I have a bunch of other domains registered which I will be aiming to get a few sites setup for this week although I am starting my first of two half days a week volunteering at a children’s school type place this week.  I’ve also started looking for a job as my earnings have dipped too much and will not be enough for me to eek out a subsistence on as its much more expensive out here than I thought it would be!

Still haven’t started any sites for Christmas!

Another New Site is a post from: How I Got Rich

As the maid was coming I went to the Starbucks over the road with my Netbook to do a few hours of affiliate marketing work.  Unfortunately I couldn’t get on the Internet over there so had to work offline.  This gave me a good opportunity to develop a new WordPress theme for my single product, micro nice sites.  Previously I had been making these sites by hand using HTML & CSS but I thought using WordPress will make it easier to add more content as I can just do a new post rather than a new page and also I can benefit from the supposedly favourable way Google ranks WordPress sites and blogs.

I modified an existing WordPress theme I had developed and changed it to one column with three side bars that sit below the last post.  I built the theme then started adding content.  This was a bit of a mistake as to copy a WordPress installation and its content from a local machine to the online installation looks quite hard and something I decided not to attempt which meant I had to copy it manually.

I finished the site yesterday which took two days including the design of the theme.  This was longer than I hoped to spend on one of these single product sites as they are very hit and miss as you are definitely putting all your eggs in one product.  I also had problems with the ECU price comparison widget as some of the merchants were not showing in the search results which could potentially lose me sales if the visitor goes off to check if that merchant has the product in stock.

I’ve  setup an AdWords PPC campaign for it which should get me some traffic and some sales – fingers crossed.  I will let it run to £13.75 of clicks (which is the amount of commission I will get from a sale) and if it has not made a sale pull it.

Working Offline is a post from: How I Got Rich

As the new work hard regime continues I have had another busy day today.  I got one site up and running with a WordPress installation and 10 new product posts.  I have also been researching products and have found six products I am going to setup atomic/micro niche sites for.  These are items I think might be popular at Christmas time so will try and get them up and running this week.

I’m not sure if I will promote them via PPC or leave them for a while and see how they rank organically in the SERPs.

Business has been slow this month and I am only on £221 so far for the month with less than 10 days of September to go.  When I started out about six months ago September was going to be my make or break month with a goal of £500.  I don’t think I will hit that this month but will carry on regardless for another few months at least.  I still have £99 of commission pending with Affiliate Window so if that got confirmed by the end of the month it might not be so bad.

Another Busy Day at the (Home) Office is a post from: How I Got Rich

After yesterday’s decision to turn over a new leaf regarding my affiliate marketing efforts I had quite a productive day.

I started work at 8.45am after going to the gym and having breakfast and worked through to 11.30am when I stopped for an hour to make and eat lunch.   During that 2hr 45m session I started on my latest site and added 10 product write-ups for it with each being between 100 and 200 words.

After lunch I finished the site off by adding the contact, about, discliamer and privacy policy site and did a link exchage for it and submitted it to digg to get it indexed.  The site is now ready and I will add new product posts to it as the weeks go on.

At about 2.15pm I started work on another micro niche site for a single product.  I used an existing template of mine and had most of the site ready by 3pm when I stopped work for the afternoon and headed out to Bangkok’s Chinatown.

I got in at around 8.30pm and half worked, half browsed the web whilst finishing off the new micro niche site.  The Internet was very slow so didn’t get much done.

I went to bed at about 12.30am feeling quite pleased that I had got one site up and running and almost finished off another one.

If I can keep this up I should be able to get a couple of new sites up and running each week whilst still being able to add content to existing ones.  My goal is to be making £100o a month by Christmas.

Today hasn’t been as productive as the apartments were getting fumigated to I went over to Starbucks to work.  I did about four hours there until the laptop had run out of battery.  I went back home but they had not finished so I sat by the pool reading for a few hours.  This afternoon I have been finishing off the micro nice site and fixing an old site I have just noticed wasn’t rendering properly for some reason.  Tonight I will start a new site and hope to get five products listed on it.

I’m determined to make this work as I can’t face another month of seeing one or two pounds commission coming in most days being the norm.

Day One of the New Regime is a post from: How I Got Rich

I spent today making two new atomic niche sites, each one is for just one product.  My previous site in this style has done quite well (£50 in a month) so I thought I’d start doing a few more.  If I can get 10 going that bring in £30 a month I will be very happy.  I have also started a PPC campaign for each of the sites to help drive traffic to them.  I think I will be a bit less cautious with my bidding this time and try to get my CTR up with some high bids at the beginning.

Finding products that didn’t already have a micro niche site already was quite hard as nearly every product I looked up had a site already.  Someone has been very busy!

I’m going to spend a day researching products and then get the domains registered then spend the next day setting the sites up and starting the PPC campaigns for them.  Hopefully this should be a nice little earner for September.

Two New Micro Niche Sites Done is a post from: How I Got Rich