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!
For WP themes take a look at newwpthemes.com. They have some quality free WP themes. You can pay $20 to remove the branding (forced links in footer/sidebar).
I’m using modified versions of the Studio Press magazine theme for my bigger sites, the support forums have been useful when I’ve had a couple of problems.
I reccomend studiopress sites I make all my sites in their themes now. Their support is fantastic.
The difference between your big site and your small sites when getting them to rank isn’t just the domain.
Your small sites all have a static homepage optimised for the phrase whereas your big site is a collection of posts, basically duplicate text from elsewhere in your site.
If you had the homepage as a static landing page with links through to products or product categories you would probably do a lot better with rankings.
Hi Ian, how is it duplicate content from eleswhere in the site? Have I done something wrong?
What would I have on my static home/landing page and why would it rank better than a blog page?
Thanks.
http://yourdomain.co.uk/
http://yourdomain.co.uk/sleepingbags
http://yourdomain.co.uk/sleepingbags/eurohike-adventurer-200w-sleeping-bag.html
All have the same content. (Maybe not exactly the same, but share a lot of the same.)
Your posts are unique content
Your category (http://yourdomain.co.uk/sleepingbags) is just a duplication of the text on those unique posts.
You homepage is another duplication of the text on those posts.
You’ve not done anything wrong, this is how wordpress is, it’s just not the best for SEO and changing it means it will be a helluva lot easier to rank well.
Having a static landing page for each phrase means you can target phrases a lot more accurately than a page which updates with every new post.
First of all decide which page you would like to rank for the term ‘sleeping bags’
It won’t be an individual ‘post’ as the term is too competitive and one post won’t cover all the information. It won’t be your homepage else when you update with a load of tents there will no relevant text about sleeping bags.
This means you need a page (page.php) all about the range of sleeping bags you offer and this will be used to target that phrase and get backlinks.
I would create a static page called yourdomain.co.uk/sleeping-bags which goes into details about the suppliers you test, the different types of sleeping bags, which is best for when and then a list of your top 5 selling bags as well as linking by manufacturer and type.
This page will be very targeted and link through to the products.
It is quite hard to explain in a comment box but hope that makes sense. If not post up on a4u and see if others can explain better and i’ll have another stab.
Thanks Ian. That makes sense I think. I will create a page for sleeping bags. What should I have on my home page them? Would it be better not to display product posts and just have one page that links off to all the product pages like sleeping bags, tens etc?
Where do the posts come into it?
Cheers.
homepage -> target big terms e.g camping equipment
static pages -> target smaller terms e.g tents, sleeping bag etc
product posts -> target exact products e.g khymer XS3000
If it was me the homepage would be about how great camping is but how important getting the right equipment is and how your site is there to help them.
Then, on the static pages e.g /sleeping-bags I would talk about why choosing the right one is important, who the different makers are and what the different options are.
If you search for ‘camping equipment’ you will see most of the results displayed just display the domain.com – this is because the homepage ranks for this term.
Whereas if you search for ‘sleeping bags’ then 7/10 is a domain.com/something/something/sleeping bags – this is because an internal page ranks for this term.
This is because different parts of the site target different terms, not everything is done from the homepage, the homepage just brings it all together.
£600 profit is great stuff! I can’t help but detect an undertone of dissapointment in your blog post and I can relate to it. It’s strange really; there you are, having a great month (your best since December), yet you sound flat and possibly a little disheartened in your post. It is exactly how I was feeling until tonight when something good happened (one of my sites returned to the SERPs). Despite having my best month since last September, I was feeling really flat and sad and genuinely hopeless about my affiliate sites and I think it is a psychological thing.
Maybe I was expecting too much? Realistically, I am making profit and it has been increasing month on month since December, so why am I so down – and in your case – why are you so flat?
I think it’s because we simply want more now and we wish we were there already. The reality of things though is that every business takes time to build up and even if you increase your profits by a tiny 5% each month, in 12 months time you’ll be better off…and in 12 months after that you’ll be flying…
I’m a bit off track here but all I can say is don’t get disheartened about your big site not pulling in the dough or getting its rankings yet, its going to take time but in the meantime, there’s nothing stopping you from analysing that big sale you don’t think you’ll get ever again and taking stock of THAT site and try to increase its earnings.
If your big site isn’t working yet…put a little bit of love into a one that is. You know you can improve it. So go do it.
Keep up the blog posts too!
Thanks Ian. I think I get it. I will have a go at setting it up tonight and see how I get on. Cheers.
Musketeer, good to know I’m not the only one! I see the profits going up but it is not quick enough and each month when they go down or don’t go up zaps a bit of motivation from me. It all seems to be so random with one month one site doing well and then the next another site doing well and not the one that did good the previous month. Doesn’t seem to be any pattern or consistancy.