How I Got Rich

So far out of all the link building methods I have tried getting a backlink from a post on a blog with Google page rank (3+) seems to be the most effective. So after being told many times by people like those at Sitey.net it is worth the hassle to set one up I am going to give it a shot. Buying a post on other people’s blog networks is ok but it would be nice to have my own so I can control how long a post stays on the front page for. I could even sell spots on the network to raise a bit of cash. If I was doing SEO for hire then it would also be nice to be able to have access to my own blogs to get links from.

Getting the Domain

This is probably going to be the hardest part. I could either look into getting an existing domain with page rank (PR) and paying a premium or just registering a new domain at the standard rate (about $10). I’m not really sure where to look for existing domains, I have looked at dropped domains but not had much luck. What sort of prices do existing PR3 domain sites go for and where should I look to buy one? When it comes to buying a new domain and then building up a site which might get PR I’m a bit sceptical. I have quite a lot of sites now, some that are over two years old, and the last time I checked only a couple had PR and none over 1. This tells me that it will take ages and lots of work to get PR for a new site. Am I right?

Hosting the Site

This might get expensive too. Each site should be on a new IP I think. So this sounds like separate hosting accounts of at least paying for each site to be on a different IP. How much would this run to? At the moment I pay $10 a month for Hostgator or about £25 a year for hosting for my newer UK sites. Setup 10 sites and it starts to get expensive.

Building the Blogs

I’m not too worried about this as I have access to some pretty good content writers who would be up to the job of writing for some new sites. It could get expensive if I get too many sites though.

How Many Sites in a Mini Net?

So if I build a mini network of blog sites how many do I need? At the moment I am seeing results from posting to about 20 PR3 blogs. My posts and links don’t stay on the front page for long but the results are ok for what I pay, but not amazing. So how many sites would I need to make to get enough links to rank a site? Would it be cost effective? I’m not doing anything too competitive at the moment so there wouldn’t need to be too many sites. Off the top of my head about 20 sounds possible.

Cost of Setting up a Mini Network

• Domain: £7 (if bought from new)
• Hosting: £25
• Content: £20 (starting with 20 500 word articles)
• Backlinks: £50 (the blogs will need their own links)

I think that is about it. So for each site it would cost about £100 to setup, that is if I bought a new domain. There is also the chance that the site doesn’t get PR and isn’t worth anything. It also might make money of its own if I stick a few affiliate links on it (or is that a no-no?).

If you have lots of sites in the same niche this could work out cheaper as you could link to lots of you sites from the same set of blogs.

Anyone got any experience of building a mini net/blog network for backlink purposes? Do my costs sound about right? Was it worth it?

My third month as a full-time affiliate has ended and my new role as full-time-stay-at-home-dad has also started as my girlfriend has gone back to work after her maternity leave.

While we were both off work I had plans to try and do five hours of work a day but that never really happened. I’ve now scraped that plan and no longer have a timetable, I just do a bit of work when I can. Some days I do nothing and others I do maybe up to an hour. This probably isn’t enough to help me reach my (current) goal of £2000 per month but its the best I can do at the moment and I prefer this approach as it means I don’t beat myself up when I don’t reach my target hours of work per day. When the baby is a bit older I might hire a baby sitter/nanny for a couple of hours a day so I can pop over the road to Starbucks and do a quick bit of work each day. They only charge 2 quid an hour so its not going to break the bank!

Less is More

So what have I been doing with my limited time? I haven’t got time to write my own content or find good links so now I have to pay for these. I’ve got a couple of content writers which I am using for content to use for links (Web 2.0s & Articles) and to put on my sites. I’d rather write my own stuff for my sites, at least for the important pages but I haven’t got time and this is better than nothing. I’ve heard the term LSI Content be mentioned a few times but am not really sure what it is, anyone know about it?

Backlinks

I’ve bought lots of types of banklink over the past few months and I think I have found out what works for me from the things I’ve tried. Right now blog posts from blogs with PR seems to work. I’ve tried Web 2.0s, social bookmarks and other stuff like that but what seems to work most of them time is a blog post on a blog with PR (3 or 4) with a link to my site. If you can find such blogs who are willing to let you post then good for you but if you can’t you will have to pay for it. Sometimes the boost in the SERPs stick and something it doesn’t and your site drops down again but while the site is number one I make sales so it is worth the money IMO. It gets hard to find new providers though so once I’ve used the couple I know about and need to rank a site for other keywords I don’t have anyone to turn to. If you know anyone selling blog posts or a service that will let you post to blogs/sites with PR please leave a comment.

Social Bookmarking

As I just said blog posts are working for me at the moment. But they don’t always work, as a competitive niche can be hard to crack. It is also worth mentioning that I rarely just use the blog posts on their own. The blog post seems to be the icing on the cake that moves the site but before I use the blog posts I will social bookmark my pages, do a few Web 2.0s and maybe a directory submission. I was buying social bookmarking services but at abou $10 for 100 bookmarks it was getting quite expensive consdierng how many sites I have (40+?). I’d heard good things about Social Demon/Bookmark Demon but it sounded like a fair bit of work to setup it up and as I’m tight on time I thought I’d leave it for now. I then signed up for the trial of Social Adr which is touted as a lazy persons social bookmarker. The trial expired and I didn’t cancel the service so am still using it but can’t say I’ve tested how effective it is but it is very easy to use and does get you bookmarks. Whether they get indexed or not is another matter.

Xrummer and Scrapebox

I’ve not had much luck with buying Xrummer (forum profiles) and Scrapebox (blog comments) blasts that link to the above bookmarks and blog posts. I’m not sure if I’m doing it right but it doesn’t seem to make much difference to my sites ranking when I do it.

Adsense

So far I’ve made all my money promoting physical prodcuts from places like Amazon. But now after reading Trent’s blog, the Online Income Lab I have been persuaded to start making some Adsene sites. Trent has made good progress in a few months so I am following his approach to try and diversify my income a bit. I used a tool called SECockpit to find my niches which made it very easy. Even if you are not making Adsense sites and are just looking for niches in general I highly recommend this tool. I’ve setup one site so far and have registered three more domains which I am setting up now. These sites are quicker to setup than the Amazon type ones I have been doing so far so they could be a better use of my time. My goal is to get 10 setup before the end of September and then see if any of them make any money.

Earnings for August 2011

Last month I earnt £1186 which was quite a drop from a few months ago hwere I made £1840 but this month was a bit better.

My earnings for August 2011 were: £1500

I was pretty pleased with this as its £50 on average per day and movement in the right direction. My goal for September is £1600 and my goal for the end of 2011 is £2000 per month.

How was your August 2011?

Since starting to read Trent’s Online Income Lab and following his move from Amazon product niche sites to Adsense niche sites I have been thinking more about starting to make some Adsense sites of my own. The main thing that attracts me to them is that they should be easier to outsource than the type of product based sites I am making at the moment.

Adsense Keyword Research

The main thing that stopped me from taking the plunge was finding some good keywords to get started with. Using the Google Keyword Tool I found it very hard to find keywords that matched my criteria of getting over 3,000 exact match local searches a month, had a CPC of $1 or more and weren’t in too competitive niches.

SECockpit

After reading a review on Trent’s site for SECockpit (aff. Link) and seeing that they had a $1 5 day trial offer on I thought I’d give it a go. SECockpit is like the Google Keyword Tool taken to the nth degree! It not only looks up your keyword but also analyses the competition and gives it a niche ranking. I think this is similar to what Market Samurai does but SECockpit is s web app and is apparently much faster and quicker to use.

Why I cancelled the SECockpit Trial

Although I loved SECockpit I decided not to sign up to the full service once my trial had finished. The sole reason for this was that I had found about 35 keywords that I think I can build sites for. This will keep me going for a while and then once I have used I will probably sign up for the full service and find more niches. SECockpit is not only good for finding Adsense niches but also the regular product niche sites I make too so I think it definitely be a valuable tool to have.

TO find out more about this keyword research tool visit the SECockpit website now.

I’ve recently signed up to the trial of Social Adr (affiliate link) which is an automated social bookmarking tool. It seems to be working in the sense that I submit a site and it submits them to various social bookmarking sites. Out of the sites/pages I have submitted so far most have so far been submitted to over 50 sites. There doesn’t seem to be a way to see these submissions though so doing anything to get them indexed might not be possible which is a shame.

Edit: after having a look around you can see where your bookmarks have been submitted and as they are submitted with other people bookmarks to active accounts on the bookmarking sites some of the earlier ones I checked had already been indexed.

There is a free version but you have to do some manual work. The trial I have signed up for is the fully automated AKA lazy version where you just submit the page url, title and description and it does the rest. The service isn’t cheap and the trial isn’t really long enough to see if the links actually do anything so I am not sure whether to sign up to the full version when the trial finishes.

So has anyone out there used this service? If so please let me know. At the moment I am paying $10 for a site to be submitted to 100 social bookmarking sites via someone on Wicked Fire. This does seem to be a cheaper alternative but do the bookmarks created by Social Adr count?

If you want to know more or even sign up for the trial go here: http://socialadr.com/ (aff. link)

This month I became a full-time affiliate. Well, a part-time dad and a part-time affiliate. But either way I gave up the day job to earn my crust soley from affiliate marketing.

Going Full-Time

I didn’t take to going full-time very well and found it very hard to get the hours in. I set myself the target of doing five hours a day but this soon went out of the window and I was finding it difficult to get anything done most days. I decided that if I had such limited time I would spend it outsourcing link building rather than writing and adding content to my sites as this would take the least time and get me the biggest return on my time. I figured spending 10 minutes filling in a form to order some links would be better than spending 10 minutes writing half an article for one of sites. At least I was getting something done. Some of the link building paid off and some of it didn’t. I’m still trying to find out the best type of links to get a small niche site ranking.

Holiday!

After all that hard work it was clear I needed a holiday so off we went for a week in Phuket. There was no internet at our hotel, well there was but I refused to pay £4 per hour so I stayed offline for a week which was nice but also meant I spent about 1/4 of July not doing any work at all.

Staying Motivated

When you are doing affiliate marketing on the side trying to steal an hour here and there, working is quite fun but once you go full-time it just becomes like any other job and after last month’s drop in earnings I am finding it very hard to stay motivated and do some work. This usually happens when my earnings dip. I think “what’s the point in putting in the work if it doesn’t correlate with my earnings”.

July 2011 Earnings

Last month I brought in £1200. This was down quite a bit from the £1840 I made a few months ago.

My gross earnings for July 2011 were £1186 ($1930).

That was a bit of a kick in the nuts and not a good way to start my full-time career as an internet marketeer. But I have been busy the last three months or so a drop is to be expected I guess.

The Future

I’m not really sure how to progress. A grand a month is nice for a few hours work here and there but its not enough. I want to be making a solid £2000 per month by the end of the year and then much more after that. But at the moment that seems like a step too far. I’d love to lock myself away for a month and work 24/7 but that just isn’t possible.

Adsense

I’ve been reading Trent Dyrsmid’s blog: http://onlineincomelab.com/ and have been impressed by the quick progress he has made with Adsense sites and I am keen to give it a go. Anyone else done this kind of thing?

How was your month?

My plan when I started full-time just over a week ago was to do a minimum of five hours work a day. This doesn’t sound like much but it was more than what I was doing before so in theory it should lead to an increase in profitbaily.

To Do List

I wrote out a rough to do list of things I would do and on Monday morning I set about working through them. Unfortunately I only managed about three hours on Monday. Oh well, it was the first day so probably best not to dive straight into it. Tuesday wasn’t much better and by Thursday I was down to maybe one hour a day!

Link Building

Although since going fulltime I’ve not been spending that much time on my actual sites I have been outsourcing a fair bit of link building. When you’ve not got much time this is probably a good way to at least get something done as it doesnt require much input from you apart from money. I’ve seen mixed results from my efforts, some sites have gone up nicely in the SERPs and some have not moved. It is confusing as it is hard to sort the wheat from the chaff when it comes to rating a link building service but if something works I have been using it again. Social Bookmarking seems to be doing me quite well at the moment so I’m thinking of signing up for Bookmarking Demon. Has anyone used it?

Mini Net

I’ve been reading over on Sitey.net about creating your own mini net. Or network of sites you own that link to your main site. I do like this idea and am now going to start looking for some relevant domains that have dropped. Unitl then I will start using the cheaper content writers I’ve found on Odesk to make some Web 2.0 mini sites.

Fitness Regime

I also mentioned in my last post that I was going to start a new fitness regime while I am off work. I was thinking of doing 30 mins of cardio before starting work but suprisingly that never happened. I have been doing it in the evening instead which suits me better as I’m definately not a morning person. The new fitness plan has been stuck to for the most part and I’ve been doing weights three times a week, swimming almost every afternoon and then cardio in the gym in the evening almost every night. Hopefully by the end of the seven weeks I will be in better shape than ever before.

Slow Summer

Last month I had a pretty poor month and this month the trend has contiuned. My sites aren’t getting the traffic that they were in the previous months and this has affected my sales. Fingers crossed for an Autumn revival.

This has been a bittersweet month for me (first time I’ve ever used that word). After the heights of last month where I brought in £1840 I knew I’d be hard pressed to beat that personal best this month. I wrote last month that my goal for June would be £1900 but that I’d be happy to clear £1500.

But before I get to the bitter part lets start with the sweet.

That Friday Feeling x 100

The end of June brought to a close my day job and as of Friday 1 June I no longer have gainful employment! So for the second time in my life I am going to try my hand at affiliate marketing full-time.

Giving up the Day Job and Going Fulltime Part II

Last time I tried this was about two years ago when I first moved to Thailand. After a few months in the game I had managed to get my earnings to about £500 per month. I figured if I went fulltime I could start to build on that and could soon get to £1000. Things didn’t go quite according to plan and due to me being lazy and preferring to enjoy my new surroundings rather than sitting at the laptop for eights plus hours a day my earnings didn’t increase and even started to go backwards. It wasn’t long before I had to get a fulltime job again and try and find time for affiliate marketing on the side.

Giving it another Shot

Due to a change in circumstances and my earnings reaching a respectable level I am now going to try and be a fulltime affiliate again. I hope I have learnt my lesson and will be more disciplined this time around as I don’t really want to have to get a proper job ever again! With a bit of luck I have learnt a few things in the past couple of years that will allow me to increase my earnings.

The New Regime

As my girlfriend has got seven weeks of maternity leave left I am going to try and go all out for this period and get as much done as I can. I want to try and outsource some tasks so that when she goes back to work and I am left holding the baby I will have as much free time as possible.

Over the next seven weeks I plan to do five hours of work each day. This doesn’t sound like much but if I am focused I think I can get a fair amount done. I’m not going to be reading forums or checking my stats but working hard on adding content to my sites. Content and links will be bought and I will just work on adding the content to my sites and using the affiliate marketing tools I already have.

A Healthy Body for a Healthy Mind

I’ve been going to the gym for years but have been a bit slack over the past few months. After reading this post on another affiliate marketing blog I have decided to set myself another little challenge for the next seven weeks. That challenge is to do 30 minutes of exercise each day. I hope this will help keep my motivated when it comes to work and stop be getting bored being indoors. I’m going to aim to head to the gym each morning before I start work. I might even do 30 minutes of swimming each evening too. It seems a shame not to use the gym or the two pools in my complex when they are right here. I will also continue to aim to do three weights sessions a week. If I can stick to this I will throw in a few Muay Thai sessions as well. I plan to get a lot done in these next seven weeks as they will be my last months of (relative) freedom for a while!

What I did in June

I did a fair amount of work in June on my sites. Mostly this was focussed on link building and research rather than actual hands on stuff on my sites. I bought some new tools, with the main one being Linkamotion, which I have not gotten around to using yet.

What I will do in July

I’ve got a lot of content that I’ve bought so I will be adding that to my sites. I’m going to try and do one Linkamotion article a day which should give me 50 links to a site each day. I’m going to try and not spend much money testing out different link building tools and deals this month as I want to use what I have already. I want to try some new themes out on a few of my sites to try and increase conversions as I have a few sites that get 50 hits a day but don’t really make many sales.

Earnings for June 2011

Last month I earned £1840. My goal for June was £1900 and I said I’d be happy with £1500.

My (gross) earnings for June 2011 were £1200

Pretty bad eh? I put this mainly down to one of my main sites getting knocked off the first page for loads of its keywords mid May and never recovering. Some keywords came back a bit but nothing like before. Other sites didn’t manage to pick up the slack and keep my earnings stable so I dropped £640 this month. Ouch!
I was looking at my average earnings and for the first six months of 2011 they have been £1400 a month which is pretty good I reckon. Now I am fulltime though things need to get better quickly.

Goal for July

I’m going to go for £1500 for July. My long term goal has been to get to £2000 per month by the end of September 2011 but after June’s poor show this is looking increasingly unlikely to happen. I’m still going to give it a try though.

How did you do in June?

At the moment I am still trying to find some affordable and effective link building methods.

In order to test different types of links I’ve been trying different things on different sites. I guess this is one of the benefits of having lots of sites: you’ve got lots of testing grounds.

But testing one service or approach on one site and another on a different site takes a lot of time.

Sometimes I feel I’d be better off if I threw everything at one site rather than spreading it across many sites.

So far I’ve been doing articles one one site, social bookmarks on another, then Web 2.0s on that one and then forum profiles on this one.

All this has really got me though, is small movements on each site. I can’t afford to do it all on all of my sites but I think I’ve been going at it the wrong way.

Perhaps it is time to try everything on one site and then see if it moves before moving on to the next site. I might not know exactly what worked as I tried lots of things but maybe that isn’t a problem? Maybe there is no one or two things I can do that will move my sites up in the SERPs and I should give up trying to find it.

I guess this is the downside of having lots of sites: that you have too many sites to test things on and end up spreading yourself too thinly.

If you are just starting out in this game I recommend you either:

• Limit yourself to three to five sites and throw everything you have at them (time and money)
• Find a scalable model/method/approach and hire someone else to do it on lots of little sites.

Either way, don’t do what I’ve done and end up with lots of sites on page one or two and hardly any at number 1 in Google!

The other day I did a mini review of a new backlinking service I was trying out called BackBlasts.com which you can read here. If you were interested in the service you will be pleased to know it is now live and prices start from $10 a month.

When I tested the service I used it on two sites.

For one site I linked directly to my site and spread the 1000 links a day over three URLS from my site and used four keywords as the anchor text.

For the other site I set it up so that the links BackBlasts created were linking to some blog posts that then linked to my actual site. The 1000 links a day for this site were split over 10 blogs posts so each got 100 backlinks a day.

After about two weeks of this my sites had moved up the SERPS.

Project One (direct linking) was targetting 4 keywords on my site and this is how they moved:
kw1: #8 to #6
kw2: no rank to no rank
kw3: no rank to #28
kw4: no rank to #43

I’m pretty happy with that. It is an old site (~2 years) which never got any backlinks and never really ranked so its good to see it get some exposure in Google now.

Project Two (using blog posts as buffers) was targetting 2 keywords:
kw1: #7 to #6
kw2: #25 to #20

Not a massive jump but its heading in the right direction. Will be interesting to see if this continues.

The blog posts I am using as buffers have no page rank and I doubt the blogs are that high quality so maybe this played a part? Would it be better to point the links to some more repuatable sites like Squidoo or Ezine etc?

Now that Backblasts has gone live I’m going to sign up for the $10 100 links a day package and point them directly to one of my sites as a test. 100 links a day shouldn’t draw any unwanted attention to me from Google should it?

• http://backblasts.com/

Has Google done another mini update recently? I ask because quite a few of my sites have made jumps in the SERPs. Anyone else noticed anything positive or negative?

Cheers Google!