• …will let me pay by Paypal
• …doesn’t require a UK postal address
• …will let me do a whois opt-out on .co.uk
• …has fantastico and CPanel
• …doesn’t cost an arm and a leg

I’ve tried signing up with a few but due to my location I never get past the final stage for reasons related to my location.

Feel free to post affiliate links to your recommendations.

Cheers.

Post from: How I Got Rich

After work and between the gym and my Thai class I wrote a few more bits of content about an older site which is finally climbing the Google tree and is at number three.  These were two 250ish word product reviews that I have done as separate Wordpress posts.

I’ve also decided to split apart my big site I am working on into two smaller big sites as the two areas are not that closely related.  After deciding this I spend some time looking for a UK based host I could host the site with as I want to move away from having all my sites on one server based in a different country to the one I am targeting.

After I’ve picked the host I will look for a Wordpress theme that meets my needs and get cracking on the site.  I want it ranking well for at least one product before Easter so I’ve not got long to get something up.  Hopefully I will have a quiet weekend and get some work done.

One of my newish sites made its first sale netting £10 commission which was nice.  A few more of those this month will make me happy.

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I heard about Price Tapestry a long time ago but after a quick look I decided it was a bit too advanced for me and I left it alone, especially after Easy Content Units came out and did what looks like something similar much easier.

However, I am sure there is much more to Price Tapestry than I am aware of and as I start my ‘big site’ it is probably something I should investigate to see if I could be of use to me.

So before I do do any of my readers use it or know much about it?

Does anyone know of any sites that use it they wouldn’t mind linking to?

Is it easy to use?

After work today I wrote up two 200 word product reviews for my ‘big site’ and spent far too long tinkering with the placement of product images on it wasting valuable time.  The rest of the evening was spent at language class and then stuff for work tomorrow.   Roll on the weekend when I can spend a good chunk of time on my sites.  It’s a fun life!

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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?

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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.

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I stumbled across this website yesterday – Thailand ebooks – and it occurred to me that this was the kind of site I should’ve thought of or at least something along these lines.

Since being in Thailand I have been thinking about trying to find a way to use my location and experience of being in Thailand from an affiliate perspective.  I thought about a Thailand blog (which I did start) but couldn’t think how to monetise it.  I presumed the readership would already be based in Thailand so what could I sell them?  I couldn’t find any Thai affiliate programmes and ordering items online overseas is a bit risky due to the officials down at customs always on the lookout for tea money.

But the above site finds a clever way around that by promoting online products of which in this niche there are money.

Hats off to your sir whoever you are!

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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?

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Nearly all my niches look good on paper with well priced products (£20-£100) and 20,000~ exact searches a month.  However once I get the sites to number one in Google I quickly realise that either the Google Keyword Tool was misleading with its estimate for exact match searches or no one wants to click on my sites or that the click through rate for being number one in Google is less than 5%.

Take one of my earlier sites for instance.  Last month it is reported by the Google Keyword Tool to have gotten 18,100 exact match searches but during that month it only got 529 unique visitors which is less than 3%.

I know the Google Keyword Tool is not renowned for its accuracy but surely this is way too out for it to be of any use?

I have checked my other sites and nearly all of them get around 5% of the figure quoted by the GKWT making them a waste of time as the traffic is so low!

How do you check that a niche is actually searched for?

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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?

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After a recent post in the smingle thread on the a4u forum which recommended a domain name and gave a projected monthly income of around 150 a month if you got that site to number one in Google I decided to have a look at my sites and see how they performed each month financially.

It was pretty depressing reading.

I used the tracking IDs in Amazon Associates of which I create a new one for each site and then looked at the monthly reports.  Out of my 30 or sites only one was earning more than 50 a month (and only during a certain season).  The rest were bringing in around 5-20 a month.  Some make a few sales via Affiliate Window but not more than they do via Amazon.  I do have  a couple of micro niche sites which looks like are my biggest earners and they are promoted via PPC but are still not bringing in anything to write home about.

According to the information given in the smingle thread my domains and sites all sound  good in theory:

• Keywords with 8,000 – 20,000 exact local matches a month (sometimes more)
• Products that retail between 10 and 100 (more on some sites)
• Easy to navigate sites with product reviews and price comparison ECUs where relevant
• At number in one Google for their main keyword

But even with all that they are just not getting the traffic or bringing home the bacon.

A few people have advised me to find my best site and develop it further and to continue doing what I am doing as it working but I don’t really have a best site and what I am doing is too big to keep doing i.e. too many small sites not making much money and taking too much time to keep track of and up to date.

To make this year a success I need to shake it up a bit and try something new…

Post from: How I Got Rich