How I Got Rich

What Would You Do With $1000?

I haven’t done my earnings report for October yet but it wasn’t a particuarly good month for me what with the Google update that happened mid month negatively affecting nearly all of my sites.

The dissapointment has got me thinking its time to shake things up a bit.

I have £650 / $1000 in my Webgains affiliate account that I was saving for a rainy day but I think its time to withdraw the money and try and invest it into something that will boost my earnings.

Here are my thoughts so far on what to do with $1000 to increase my affiliate marketing income:

10 Adsense Niche Sites: I’ve been following the work of Spencer (Niche Pursuits) and Trent (Online Income Lab) who make good money from multiple Adsense sites. In a recent podcast Trent spoke of how these sites should be looked at as an investment. They can be setup with content and backlinks for about $100 each and with the money I could setup 10. In a few months I could sell the top earner and the bottom five earners for about $1000 and then do another 10.

This sounds appealing to me at the moment but I am also skeptical as I’ve not managed to rank my existing (phystical product niche) sites very quickly or consistently.

One Adsense Authoriy Site: On Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income blog he has documented how he made an Adsense niche site that, by adding more and more content to, turned into an authority site that makes $1500 a month from lots of long tail keywords.

This idea also appeals to me as I have long been interested in building a big site but have struggled to devote my resources to it. With the $1000 I could order a load of articles and start building something for the long term. Although this idea is quite risky as 1) if I didn’t pick a good niche or keyword I would loose all the money and 2) if the site ever got penalised or down-ranked by Google all my eggs would be in one basket.

Spencer has also started a large site like this which you can read about here but lets be honest I’m no Spencer (or Pat).

Fix What I Have Already: I could take my top five performing sites and invest $200 in the them to make them even stronger (or get them back to where they were before Panda).

This idea isn’t very appealing as I wouldn’t really know what to do to them to get the most from the money. Buy more links? Add more content? This might be the most sensible idea as at least I know what I am working with but should I take more of a risk?

Something Else Altogether: I imagine it will be at least a week before the money comes through so that gives me some time to think things over. I’d love to hear from people if they have any advice or tips. Alternatively I could use the money to buy a new laptop which might increase my productivity!

So, what would you do with £650 / $1000 in order to boost your internet marketing earnings?

Web 2.0s for Link Building

Taking things a bit too far!

My next mission is to start building some Web 2.0 type sites like Sqidoo and WordPress which will link to my sites.

In the recent past I have bought a few jobs from fiverr.com and hired people on Odesk to build my Web 2.0 link wheels and pyramids but they tend to be only one page using spun content.

My plan now is to build 10 or so good Web 2.0 sites with about 5-10 pages on each one. I will add videos and images to make them look a bit more like a real site rather than just a spoke in a wheel. I’ll put a link on each of them to my main site but I won’t interlink them.

Once they are setup I will then get some backlinks for the Web 2.0 sites I’ve just made in the form of forum profiles, blog comments, social bookmarks, article submissions and other Web 2.0 sites.

Hopefully these big Web 2.0s I’ve made will act as buffers so I won’t have to send low quality links directly to my main site.

I think people have been doing this kind of thing for a few years now but I’m hoping it still works to some degree.

It also sounds like something I could hire someone to do for me when I get around to hiring a virtual assistant (as they like to call them).

Any one else doing this? What Web 2.0 sites are you using?

Funny stuff: http://www.cliconomics.com/how-to-suck-at-internet-marketing/

Monthly Round-up: May 2011

Last month was my best month in affiliate marketing so far and it gave me high hopes for April. As the month started it looked like I would not be disappointed. My daily earnings improved on last month and by the end of the first week I was on target to make over £2000. But then disaster stuck. On about May 8th one of my main sites got struck down by Google and was knocked off the first page for most of its keywords.

Possible Sighting of Google Panda

As I just mentioned up until May 8th I was doing pretty well and then one of my main earners got dumped out of the SERPs. It was an exact match domain which was ranking at number one in Google for the domain and also the plural of the domain. A few of the other pages I had built for this site were on page one and getting some good longer tail traffic. So overnight between May 7th and 8th I went from getting about 150 hits a day to around 30. The main keyword which was in the domain dropped to the bottom of page one and all the rest dropped right out of sight.

I had been working on the site right up to when it went down in the SERPs. I was adding new content and building links so it is possible I did something to upset Google or maybe it was to do with the Panda update. I’ve read there was an update to the Panda rollout around this time so perhaps it was.

I carried on adding content after the drop and managed to eventually get back to the number one spot for the keyword in the domain. The plural of the main keyword brought me the most traffic and after a while it did bounce back to page one for a few days before disappearing again.

The top line is the keyword in the domain and the other main line is the plural. Notice how lots of sites disappear on 6-May and never return. Brutal!

As this was one of my main sites it hit my earnings quite hard but I managed to limp on until the end of the month without going broke. I’m still working on the site and hopefully it will rise from the ashes back to where it once was.

New Tools

I had been using the free version of IM Automator which is a web based bookmarking tool for a while so when a slot came up on their paid-for Pro version I snapped it up. At $50 per month it was more than I’ve spent so far on a monthly subscription but I like the ease of use of the free version and I figured I’d use the extra features of the Pro version. The Pro version includes more bookmarking sites to submit your pages to, an RSS and directory submission service as well as an article submission service. I signed up mainly for the article service. You write one 500 word article with two links in the resource box and it submits it to 60 article sites which should all accept it. It doesn’t need any spinning so you can just write and submit. I wasn’t sure how good this was as how valuable can having links from 60 copies of the same article be? Surely they will all be duplicate content. You can submit about 20 articles a day so could in theory get about 2400 links a day. Writing 20 500 word articles a day isn’t that easy and I never managed more than a few each day. Plus if they are all from the same 60 sites how useful this is I’m not sure.

The sites I tested it on didn’t make any jumps in the SERPs and although I might be judging it too quickly I’m not going to sign up for another month. I guess if you had someone writing content for you each day or you had a backlog of content to get rid of and could take advantage of the maximum number of submissions per day it might worth it but for me at the moment its not. So I’m going to look for something else to spend my hard earned pocket money on. I’ve heard good things about Linkamotion of which you can read a review of here.

Outsourcing Mission

My plan is to outsource as much as possible so I can do other things with my time so I have been thinking of ways to do this. I am a bit nervous of handing over the reigns of my sites just yet so I’m currently looking to hire people to build links for me and write content. Using this template on sitey.net I managed to hire a couple of guys to write 10 articles of 500 words for $10 from Odesk. It’s not the best writing in the world but it is grammatically correct and makes sense. I wouldn’t put it on my main sites as I have another guy who does that but it will be good for building Web 2.0 properties and submitting to services like IM Automator Pro should I go back to it.

Linkbuilding with Web 2.0s

I am always looking for ways to get links but have only recently started doing this so am a bit behind the pack when it comes to link building. People have been using Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo for ages to get links and although the boat might have sailed a bit I’m giving it a go. I’m going to build out 10 or so Web 2.0 sites with multiple pages, images and videos for each of my sites and link to that site. Then I will build smaller Web 2.0s and do lots of other link building things and point those at my 10 big Web 2.0s. At least that’s the plan for now until I get any better ideas.

Things to Do

I really need to get a new laptop. This netbook has done me well for two years but it’s too slow now and I need something with more power. I’d like a mid range 13” one with 4GB of ram and a 500GB hard drive.

Nothing fancy just something that can get things done.

I need a new layout for my site as a lot of them aren’t really converting very well and not even earnings £1 a day even though they get 1000+ hits a month.

Things I Didn’t Do

I didn’t get a VPS due to lack of funds and time. I didn’t try out SEnuke X due to lack of time and a slow netbook. I didn’t use Sick Submitter once, apart from the pinger so think I will cancel this for now.

Earnings:

Well I think that pretty much sums up May 2011. I better post the bit you’ve all been waiting for: how much I earned.

My (gross) earnings for May 2011 were £1840

I am very pleased with this and was only aiming for £1700 this month (which is £100 more than last month) but was very happy to exceed this.

Goals for June 2011:

Last month I said I’m aiming to increase my earnings by £100 a month and I’d love to go for £1900 for June but in the last week or so of May I was lucky to get £50 a day on a good day so I’m not holding my breath. To get £1900 I will need to bring in £63 per day which is pretty hard when one of your main sites has been tanked by Google. To be honest I will be happy for anything over £1500 for June.

Last month I was mainly watching The Shadow Line, The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret and Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle.

What did you get up to in May?

Getting out of the Google Bunker

I few days ago I wrote about one of my sites getting struck down by Google. The site was doing pretty well and I’d recently started filling it out with more informational pages as well as general interest pieces related to the niche rather than it just being a site full or products (albeit with unique product descriptions of 300 words each). It was ranking pretty well for a number of search terms then overnight on the 12 of May 2011 it was deranked for a load of those keywords falling out of the top 200. It still ranks for its exact match domain keyword but is now hovering around the bottom or page one rather than being nailed to the top of the SERPs like it was for the past year or so.

I’ve been reading about Kirsty’s experience which sounds similar to mine although on a much bigger scale. For me this is just one site of many but as its fate could befall my other sites I thought I’d have a go at getting it back in the SERPs so if it does happen to any more of my site at least I will have some info or what to do or not to do.

So far what I’ve been doing is the following:

• Create a twitter account I’ve created a twitter account and am in the process of following as many people I can who are related to the niche. Hopefully a few of them will follow me back and maybe one day might retweet my site.
• Create a Facebook page I’ve had the Facebook like buttons on my site for ages but its not been linked to a page so I’ve not been able to track how many people have clicked them. Hopefully I can get some fans and then perhaps get some traffic from Facebook to show social proof to Google and also diversify my traffic sources a bit as 99.99% of my visitors come from Google.
• Keep adding new content I’ve read about people leaving their sites when they take a hit from Google and waiting for them to come back of their own accord but I think I will keep adding content as normal and try and get a new page or post added every few days.
• Keep building links I’m going to keep on slowly building links for this site. For months I never built any links and it got to number one for its main keyword but when I started adding more pages and targeting related keywords I started building links for them. This might have been what triggered the Google slap but it wasn’t anything major like an Xrummer blast. I went from no backlinks for a year to more than none all of a sudden. I will keep adding the odd Web 2.0 property and article or blog post.
• Try and reduce bounce rate On nearly all my site I like to make it as easy as possible for my visitors to get to the merchant sites. I don’t see the point in making them jump through hoops so they can buy a product. I promote a product with a review and an image and often a price comparison and then if they decide they want to buy the merchant is just one click away. I hear Google doesn’t like sites where the visitor only visits one page so I will need to try and create a bit of a labrynth on my site to keep the user there for a few pages before giving them what they want and what they came for.

That should keep my busy for now. Any other ideas of things I should be doing?

Another stick for Google to beat us with!

Looks like Google will be ranking pages on how quickly they load (if they aren’t already?).

Use their tool to find out how you can improve your sites before they get the chop in the SERPs:

• http://pagespeed.googlelabs.com/

Saying that I just ran it on one of my sites and it pointed out that I was resizing images with HTML so I am off to resize their actual size and save some space.

Thanks Google!

Stressed Out by Internet Marketing

Do you ever get stressed out by affiliate marketing? I’m working for myself so it shouldn’t really be the case but at the moment I am feeling pretty stressed out by the whole thing.

I’m making enough money to know that affiliate marketing does work and that it can lead to a great life but I’m far from that point at the moment. Nothing is guaranteed with affiliate marketing but its only been recently that I’ve started to get the fear that it could all slip from my grasp having got so close to the holy grail of working for myself from home (or anywhere I want) but not quite making it.

Since my recent attempts at link building I’ve started to find a few things that could pay off which have put even more things on my to do list which is getting longer by the day.

I feel I’ve totally painted myself into a corner by having so many little sites and my attempts at big sites never panned out which leaves me stuck between a rock and hard place.

Sometimes I feel like I wish I could start again and just work on one site and spend all day and everyday on it. But then what would that site be about? What happens if I pick a topic for it like I have done for 90% of my other sites that turns out to be a dud.

I’ve got too much to do and not enough time or money to do any of it properly.

Perhaps I should just sit back and accept that this is as good as it is going to get earnings-wise and just work to maintain what I have.

But I know I can do more.

So I will go on.

I feel better already!

Drawn to the Dark Side

As I’ve started to look into link building in more detail over the past few weeks I’ve been reading a few of the other affiliate marketing forums rather than just affiliates4u. Some of these forums have some pretty caviller approaches to getting links for your sites but from what I can gather they seem to work.

Blasting your sites with a 1000 or more links a day sounds like a recipe for disaster and it may well be but sticking a buffer site in between those links and your ‘money’ site seems to give a layer of protection no matter how superstitiously rather than scientifically that may be.

From reading these forums it sounds like a lot of people are deploying these tactics to get their sites ranking and making some money. If they are doing it why shouldn’t we?

It seems to be working now. It might not work for ever but is that a good enough reason not to do it?

I am half tempted to get some new hosting, put up some new sites and blast them to within an inch of their life with crappy backlinks until they get to number one for their targeted keywords. I am not talking about high competition niches like gambling, dating or slimming pills but just the regular ones like I am promoting now but maybe a bit more general that will make some money.

If it works I can reinvest the money into my proper sites and hopefully just use this approach as a stop gap (or become addicted to it and turn fully to the dark side).

What are your thoughts on this type of SEO? Is it black hat or just a bit off white?

Is it working for people? Or is it just another get rich gimmick that is well promoted and making the owners of the services that supply the links rich but no one else?

Backlink Update

This month I have been mainly focusing on link building for my affiliate marketing sites. At the start of February I picked three of my sites and started building links for each them. I will work on these sites for the whole month then re-evaluate at the end of the month and either pick new ones or keep going with some of the same ones.

The sites I picked were:

• A microniche, one product keyword domain site that is about number 120 in the SERPS for the two keywords it is targeting. I used to promote this site via PPC before I got booted off of Adwords and it did pretty well so to have it ranking well in Google and getting some hits again would be great.

• The other site was an exact match keyword domain website I started probably 18 months ago. It never ranked well for its main keyword and is currently on page three in Google but it does make a few quid a month so if I could get it on to page one I think it could do OK.

• The last site is one of my ‘big’ sites i.e. it is not a keyword domain site and will eventually promote a wide range of products. At the moment this site is just targeting one keyword and its plural (so two in total) but it not ranked at all for them.

The approach I am taking so far this month has covered a few different areas of link building as follows:

Article Marketing

• Ezine Articles
• Article Rich
• Article Base

I’ve only submitted one article so far to Ezine as although it is regarded as the best by many people it takes an age to approve articles so I am still waiting for my first one to be approved. I don’t want to submit a load that might get rejected until I know I can do it right at least once.

The other two seem to approve articles instantly so I’ve submitted about 10 unique articles to them altogether. Although I’m not sure how much their backlinks are worth?

I’ve also had some articles written for me that the writer submitted to Ezine Articles on their own account that have been approved already so I should get some links from those. Plus I got someone off of Wicked Fire to write 200 articles and submit them to some blogs. This was pretty cheap and the job was completed pretty quickly. The articles seem OK but I cannot vouch for the quality of the blogs they are posted on!

I got another article I had written spun into 250 new versions but have yet to do anything with them as although they read OK they are pretty similar. I think I will look for an auto article submitter tool and send them to some other article sites.

So my article marketing is going quite well, I’m trying a few different things out. I don’t think any of the links have been recognised by Google yet so no idea if this is going to help but fingers crossed.

RSS Feeds

About 99% of my sites are made using WordPress which gives out an RSS feed of the posts. I’ve been adding my feeds to a couple of RSS agregators which in theory will give my new posts an automatic backlink in their directly. I think this could be good if I expanded the list to a few 100 RSS agregators as every little helps (hopefully).

Facebook

I’ve been setting up Facebook pages for a few of my sites and putting ‘like’ buttons on the sites which connect the page with the site. This should get some links from Facebook and give the sites a bit more exposure in the people who like them’s feeds.

Social Bookmarking

I’ve also been submitting my sites to social bookmarking sites. Some manually, some via people offering their services.

Xrummer Backlinks

I think Xrummer is some kind of tool that lets you get loads of low quality links from forum profiles and blog comments. I ordered 5000 of someone rather than buying the software and doing it my self. As these links are a bit questionable in quality I have been linking to articles on article directories that link to my sites rather than link directly to my sites with these links using the articles as a kind of buffer. I did buy a tool called Scrapebox a while ago that I never used which I think does a similar job so will dust off my copy and trying and find out how it works – anyone used it?

I think that is about it for my link building activities. I’ve also been adding content to my other sites too. My earnings have taken a massive hit this month and are less than half they were two months ago so I’m really counting on some of this link building to pay off.

Can you help?

Anyone know a WordPress plug-in that auto posts new posts to a Facebook page? I’ve tried some but couldn’t get them to work.

Anyone got any tips for submitting sites to RSS agregators? Is it worth it, which ones etc?

Anyone know of a good article submission tool?

Which are the best article submission directories?

Anyone know of a good WordPress widget for letting people retweet, like the blog?

What other links should I be looking at?

If you haven’t already, check out fiverr.com for low cost people willing to help you build links for your sites.

Can you do me a Facebook favour?

I’m just having a dable with Facebook and have setup a page for this blog.

Could you, my dear readers, either click on the like button at the bottom of this post or go directly to the page and click the like button. http://www.facebook.com/pages/HowIGotRichnet/198702543477287

I want the ‘likes’ so I can get a decent url and I need 25 to do so (I believe). You can unlike after!

Thank you!

Drip Feed Blasts

Someone posted a link to this thread over on Wicked Fire and after reading the first post I was taken in.

Maybe it is a scam, maybe not, but it does sound like a potential answer to a problem I’ve had for the last two years: How Do I Get Backlinks for my Affiliate Sites?

I’m going to try out what he did to get his site ranking in Google on one of my sites. It will be a site that I’ve added about 60 pages to, each with about 200 words on all focussing on one keyword. The site isn’t on a keyword domain and as yet it is not ranking for the targeted keyword in Google (although it is for a few uncompetitive keywords).

Having all but given up on the site and all non-keyword domain sites I’ve not got much to lose with this site so will be trying out his backlinking method

The backlinking method appears to be using the Red_Virus social book marking service to get your site book marked at a load of web 2.0 social sites and then signing up for the Drip Feed Blast service which for $99 a month will get you 1000 links a day. As 1000 links a day to a new site will look a bit suspect the poster recommends pointing those links to the social bookmarking pages that link to your site you got from the Red_Virus package.

So far I’ve ordered the social bookmarking from Red_Virus at a cost of $19. Once that is completed I will get a months worth of 1000 links a day. This will cost $118 which is about £75.

If it works and the site gets ranked at all or moves up the serps I will be very happy but quite surprised.

But its worth a punt as I’ve not got much else going at the moment regarding backlinks.

At the moment the site isn’t in the top 200 pages in Google for the keyword I am targeting.

I will provide updates or if nothing happens during the month I will post an end of month report. I’ll use this tag on the blog: Drip Feed Blasts if you want to view all posts from this topic.

Fingers crossed!