How I Got Rich

Last keyword domain niche site I promise!

Ever since starting out in affiliate marketing I have been building smingle style keyword domain niche sites. I’ve probably bought about 40-50 domains so far and have at least a very basic site setup on nearly all of them. Only a few make money but some do ok which is why I have carried on down this route.

My First Big Site
A while ago I vowed to stop buying anymore domains or starting any new sites and start work on a big site that did not have a keyword domain and targeted a bigger, more general niche. That site never really took off and I soon gave up on it. I didn’t buy many more domains and worked on expanding my existing sites out of their niches to try and make them more profitable. This worked on some sites but not on most of them. Moving a niche site out of its niche proved to be rather trickier than I thought.

No more Mini-sites
Lately I have been getting back into my old habit of buying keyword domains and setting up basic sites with a few pages and then leaving them to gather dust. Last week I bought another one that is hardly going to set the world alight.

But now I have made (another) decision to stop with the small sites and go full steam ahead on a big site.

A Big Site: My Second Attempt
I have picked an area to work in that, based on my niches sites, converts quite well online and has lots of merchants with a wide range in prices from 10 to 100s of pounds per item. Some items in this area are seasonal but overall the products should sell all year round.

I’ve bought the domain name. Obviously I would’ve loved an exact match keyword domain but on an area this big that was gone long ago so I opted for one with the main keyword in it and two other words in front of it. Whether this helps with ranking is debatable but it might show to users viewing the site the SERPs that the site is relevant.

Which UK Host?
So now I need to find some hosting. I am going to host this site separately from my other sites as I would like to keep it separate and also use a UK host for a bit of a boost in the SERPs. Any recommendations of a good value UK based host with Fantastico and CPanel for one domain and a WordPress site would be much appreciated.

My Big Site Strategy
My strategy for the big site is pretty basic and I could do with sitting down and coming up with some ideas to make it a bit more creative but for now I am going to be adding products from the area as 200 word product reviews and take it from there.

Big Site Link Building
As for link building I’ve not got much idea. So far I have been using forum profile links and blog commenting which I have paid for on my small sites and this has worked on some sites and not on others so I don’t really trust these methods. For this big site I don’t really want to take any risks so will be looking at ways to get good quality links manually.

My Eight Month Goal
My goal for this big site is to be making me ₤1000 per month by the end of July which is only 8 months away. Is this possible, can I do it?

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How to Pick a Big Niche for my Big Site

In prepartion for me giving up the day job and becoming a full-time affiliate marketeer in about seven months I am planning to work on a ‘big site’ from now to then with the goal of it bringing in ₤1000 a month by around July 2011.

Along with the income from my other sites this should cushion the blow of leaving my job and cover the bills until my full time earnings kick in.

The main thing stopping me from starting this big site is deciding on what area or niche to set the site in.

I’ve got three ideas I think are worth a punt but I am very wary of picking the wrong one. I am aware of ‘paralysis by analysis’ which is all too common in new affiliates starting out but seeing as I’ve never really made a successful site so far I don’t want to get it wrong.

My criteria for this project is the following:

• Products must not be seasonal – or at least not completely die out for parts of the year
• Products must cost over ₤50: so that they bring in at least ₤2.50 per sale of which I will need 400 per month at this price which is 14 a day to reach my target.  Increase the product price to ₤100 and I will need just seven sales a day.  This is very rough as commission rates vary between merchants.
• Lots of the merchants operating in this area must have affiliate programmes.  Don’t want to be competing with brands or merchants that I can’t promote on my site.
• Cannot promote with PPC.  Due to my run in with Google Adwords I can no longer get traffic via Adwords so it must be a product type/area/niche I can promote via SEO and get traffic via the organic search results.

Ideas on a postcard please!

Monthly Round-up: September 2010

Bit late this report but here it is anyways. September wasn’t as good as August and I was down about 5-10% from the previous month. I spent about 500 quid on AdWords which is not a direction I really want to be going on but I think those days are over now anyways!

The small drop was a bit of a disappointment but should not be too disheartening as a lot of my sites are primed for the summer months so the dip is natural although it does show I need to focus on some more Autumnal and Winter niches to keep the revenue even throughout the year.

I’ve been buying a lot of backlinks the last month or two which have come in the form of forum profile links via ODesk and paid for blog commenting. Both have seen my sites rise slightly in the SERPS so I will be carrying on with this for the foreseeable future.

I’m still outsourcing content writing too which is going well.

I started a new site which had a more generic domain name instead of the exact match Smingle style keyword domains I normally use. The domain is widgetshop.co.uk Obviously I would have loved to have widget.co.uk but it was gone so hopefully the addition of shop won’t be too much of a problem. The reason I have decided to try this type of domain is that now I am acquiring backlinks, something I’ve never done in the past, I feel I can go for more competitive or general niches as I can use the backlinks to boost my site in the SERPs. I will be reporting on whether this works or not.

My Christmas site is still getting more content but now that I can no longer rely on traffic from AdWords PPC I am not confident it will bring in any cash which is a shame as last December was really very good for me.

I read on this affiliate marketing blog about someone launching a new site that is more general and it has inspired me to try and do something with one of my more general domain names. Unfortunately my domain is in the same niche or area as their one so I hope they don’t mind a bit of friendly competition (if I ever get around to doing anything)!

I’ve also discovered a few blogs on people who travel around the world living off their online earnings. They seem to do it with a mix of affiliate marketing and other types of sites that earn them money. This has been pretty interesting reading considering my situation so is something I will be looking into more in the future.

Goals for the next few months are:
Earn more money! Obvious but the amount I am earning now is used for living expenses and things like that. If I could get a few more hundred pounds a month I could do some serious investment in my sites with links and content which I think will help move my up a level or two.

Get a big site up and running. I have couple of domains which I think would be good but its just a matter of picking one and spending a few hundred pounds on content and links and seeing what happens. Bit reluctant as its a bit of a risk as to whether I can get a site ranked in a competitive niche or not. If it works though I could see a nice increase in revenue.

That’s it really. Bit of a long one but hope you found it interesting!

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!

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!

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!

What I done did today

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.

Monthly Round-Up: February 2010

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?

That Sunday Night Feeling

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.

Can’t Even be Bothered to Check Sales AKA post-Christmas Blues

After such a great month in December 2010 has got off to a demotivating-ly slow start.  I left most of my PPC campaigns running that did so well in December but they hardly get any impressions and very little clicks and even less sales so I have stopped them.  Other sales have been pretty slow too.

Its hard to get motivated when things take a turn for the worse even though it was expected after the Christmas rush.  I looked at my array of sites and can’t really pick a winner out of them to focus on.  Some make a fair few sales but they are of low cost items whilst others make little sales but they are of higher priced items getting more of a good amount of commission.  None of them really stand out and look like they could be scaled up to bring in more money.  Most are ranked well but still don’t get much action.

I’ve just bought a new domain for a popular and competitive niche that I am temped to solely focus on for a month or so and try and get a good, big site up but what if it never outranks the big boys and I just waste my time?

Should I just focus on what I have already and try and get all my little sites up to date and firing on all cylinders?

How do you stay motivated when things slow down?