How I Got Rich

Monthly Round-up for August 2010

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!

Outsourcing link building with ODesk – First Job Finished

I just received an email from the guy who I had contracted to build me 120 links using the Angela & Paul packet service thing via ODesk.

I got sent an Excel spreadsheet with links to 120 forum profiles and in each profile my website was given as the users website with the anchor text I had provided.

I have checked to see if the backlinks have been recognised yet using the http://www.backlinkwatch.com/ website but I guess it is too early for them to show up. I will be keeping an eye on this and seeing if my site moves up in the SERPS. It is currently at number two after recently being knocked from the number one spot it had held for a over a year.

I paid $11.11 for these 120 links. I’m not quite sure where the Angel & Paul packet part comes into play but I’m pretty sure I could do this myself if I had the time and the inclination.

I’ve got another order of the same but for another site currently being worked on by another contractor so will see whose work I like best before picking one. Or maybe I will use them both.

At the moment this is the only link building method I am using part from the odd link swap through the a4u forum.

I will report back once the links have settled.

Has anyone else used this kind of link building method or do you know of any other link building methods?

Outsourcing link building with ODesk

After reading about the link building services offered by some of the freelancers that use ODesk I decided to sign up and see if I could procure any of their services.

I have just had my first job accepted and am now waiting to see what happens next.

I am after some of the Angel & Paul packet links but am not too sure exactly what this means so need to look into it.

Will report back when the links are done and see if it makes any difference to my sites in the serps.

If anyone has any tips on how to work with people via ODesk to outsource backlinks please let me know.

Back to work tomorrow…

Back from my Holidays

I’m almost back from my holidays.  Just spending a few days making use of a broadband connection and my laptop before returning to Thailand.  I did no work in July and still made the same amount of money I made in June which was really nice so had my two best months earnings-wise back to back.

Now that I’ve had a few days with my laptop and a decent Internet connection I’ve been checking my all my sites to see if they are still working and ranking ok.  One of my first fairly successful sites has just been overtaken in the SERPS and has been pushed to number two which was sad to see but I hadn’t updated it in over six months so can’t really complain.  I’ve since moved it over to WordPress and written more content for it in the hope of getting it back to number one but am not loosing too much sleep over it as its a seasonal domain and its season is about to end.

I registered two domains yesterday.  They are both clothing sites.  Clothing sites seem to be a bit hit and miss but I will stick something basic up for each of them and see what happens.

My big site is still floundering.  It gets some long tail traffic but nothing for the keywords I am targeting.

Which brings me on nicely to my main problem: backlinks!

I have no clue how to get them so am going to focus this month on finding out how to outsource them.  Once I have found out how to pay for them I will be apply them to all my sites.

My goal at the moment is to be earning £2000 per month by Christmas (so I can give up the day job) and then £3000 per month by June 2010.

Wish me luck!

Buying Backlinks

I have never really been able to find good backlinks.  I’ve done the odd link exchange and blog comment but apart from that I’ve just relied on on-page SEO. 

Most of my sites are in small niches so this method has done me OK so far.  My sites either rank OK with content and on-page SEO or they don’t.

But as I’ve recently started outsourcing content writing I thought I would have a look buying some backlinks.

The first place I am trying is http://www.socialmaximizer.com/

They allow you to chose how many sites you want to get your site bookmarked at according to your budget and then they take it from there.

I have just ordered £13.81 or $20 worth of links which is about 100 of them for one site.

The site is in the bottom half of page one in Google and according to http://www.backlinkwatch.com/ has backlinks from two websites.

I will report back when the backlinks start to show up and see if it does any good or not.

Have you used any backlinking services?  How did you find them?

Outsourcing Written Content

When I first started out in affiliate marketing I was quite happy to write 200 word product descriptions of things I’d never used or seen in real life but once I experienced my first downturn in profits I lost most of my enthusiasm for all things slightly boring and since then I’ve found it hard to motivate myself to write much content for my sites and as any SEO’er will tell you Content is King.

Recently I started paying for articles for my sites to be written by someone else.  I was happy to pay them and they did a good job.  I was making money so I thought why not reinvest it in my ‘business’?  Whenever I started a new affiliate marketing site I would commission a 500 word piece of content for that site on the topic of the niche to give the site a kick-start in the SERPS.  Now I am going to have a go at getting the product descriptions outsourced.  Hopefully this should speed things up a lot and allow me to get my sites ranking faster and bringing money in quicker.

Once that is all sorted I will need to have a look at getting backlinks outsourced as so far I have hardly managed to get any for my sites.

Can anyone recommend a backlinks provider?

Getting all my sites to number 1 in Google

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?

Paying for Backlinks

I’ve been pretty bad at getting backlinks for my sites.  Some of them rank well without them and others don’t but it has never compelled me to go hunting for backlinks for my sites.  I do the odd link exchange via the a4u forum and have tried blog posting but it is so time consuming and often comes to nothing.

Recently I saw an advert on a forum for 100 social bookmarking backlinks for $25.  Turnaround was reported as 72 hours.  There were lots of good reviews of the service so I thought ‘why not?’.

I placed my order picking one of my sites that is about five months old and has never ranked well.  It is currently on page seven off Google although the other day it was on page three.  My order has now been processed so I will sit back and wait for the backlinks to be indexed.  If the page rises in rank beyond page three then I will probably get this done for some of my other sites and start including the £12 as part of the cost of setting up a new site along with the domain name.

I will report back in the next week or so with how the site is doing.

Update: http://www.backlinkwatch.com/ is showing 107 backlinks.  Most of them however don’t have any anchor text so not sure how effective they will be.  The site is now on page two in Google and is number 17.  So far so good.

Update: on page four now.

Atomic Niche Site Update

I started a micro niche or atomic niche site a while ago for an item that retails for about £1000.

I built the site using the product model number as the domain and then put an Easy Content Unit price comparison widget on the home page.  I left the site to see how well it would rank organically and it got to number two in Google after a few weeks.  It was getting about five hits a day but no sales.  I left the site as I assumed the item was too expensive and that not many people were searching for the item.

Recently I have been looking into PPC and AdWords and thought I would give promoting this site using PPC a go using the new things I have learnt in that area.

Today I logged into Affiliate Window and saw that the site had made a sale! The item sold  for £1,158.00 which got me £19.58 in commission.  10% would’ve been nice, or even 5% but in this case I will have to settle for 1.5% thanks to those stingy b*~tards at Dixons!

I think I will setup another one of these sites soon…

I paid for 58 clicks which cost me £12 so I will only make about £8 on this one but it is a start.

Update: I have since made another sale from a different merchant which got me £31.91 commission.  This has come from 68 clicks which cost me £14.69 giving me a total profit of £36.80 so far.  I am happy with that and think I will build a couple more of these sites.  If I had 10 up and running performing like this that would be £300 per month.

Update II: Another sale through today for £852.17 which brought me £17.04 which is about a 2% commission rate.  PPC spend is now at £15.18 which gives me a gross profit of £68.53 and a net total profit of £53.35.  I will definitely be making a few more of this type of site this week.  Just need to find out which merchants offer decent commission rates as 1% is pretty poor.

Update III: Another sale for this site came through today which brought in  £29.88 commission from a sale of £995.99 (3% commission rate).   This brings the gross profit up to £98.41 which after deducting the PPC spend of £20.25 leaves a net profit of £78.16.  The other sites I made in this style after this one are yet to make a sale but it’s early days.

Update IV: Bah! The sale from update III has been decline.  This was £29.88 of commission I thought was comming my way but according the Affiliate Windows data it has been ‘web declined’.  Not sure what that means?

Update V: Another sale for the site, still no action on the other sites though.  This one gets £15.93 commission from a sale of £796.52 although this is still pending.  This brings the gross profit for this site up to £64.88 and with a PPC spend of £21.29 the net profit stands at £43.59.

Where is my site Google?

Yesterday I saw that one of my sites that had recently made it to the number one spot was no where to be seen in the Google search engine results pages (SERPS). This wasn’t one of my main earning sites but it made me realise that this could happen to any of my sites and if it were to happen to a big earner I’d be in trouble!

I hadn’t registered any new domains for a while as I had decided to work on my existing sites and try and get them ranking a bit better. But after Google’s treatment of one of my well ranked sites I decided I better get some more sites up and running to try and spread my earnings across multiple sties and therefore spread the risk of losing a site and a revenue stream

I saw down with my girlfriend and we went through some ideas for niches. Coming up with niches is probably my joint weakest area along with getting links. Luckily she came up with a couple of 40k exact match domains and one 60k exact match domain and a few 12k ones. I registered about five domains and got the first site up later that day. A few of these sites are seasonal and will make most of their sales in the summer months so I am working on getting those up and running first. The others should makes sales all year round so I will get those sites up and running after the summer ones are done. Think I will take some time out this weekend and get them all up and running.

If anyone wants to swap any backlinks get in touch.