How I Got Rich

Slow January

Is it just me or is everyone in affiliate marketing having a slow January? Before Christmas I was earning £50 a day some days. Now I’m making about £10 a day! None of my sites were Christmas specific so its not like the demand has gone.

Maybe people are tightening their belts. I hear there are some financial cuts and tax hikes going on in the UK at the moment? Maybe I should start looking into other areas to target…

How is 2011 going for you so far?

Monthly Round-up: October 2010

I’m not sure what month this is of my time in affiliate marketing but I think it might be getting close to two years now!

October didn’t start that well as by the end of the first week I got my AdWords account stopped so I had to rely on SEO traffic for the rest of the month.  I had been spending about 400 to 500 pounds a month on AdWords for the past few months which worked out to quite a lot of clicks.  So when all the that traffic stopped I was expecting a big drop in earnings.  In a way I was a bit glad I had been forced to stop paying for clicks as one of the main reasons I liked affilaite marketing is that it could be done with hardly any outgoings and was very easy to do without any regular monthly outgoings like a big direct debit to Google each month.  It was low risk in the beginning and that was how I liked it.

Thankfully the loss in PPC traffic didn’t affect me overall and I made more than the previous month!  Only a few quidmore but enough for me to relax now I was without my AdWords traffic.

How Did This Happen?

As I promoting a lot of sites in Adowrds that were also number one in Google the sites were getting traffic from both SEO and PPC.  I was paying for clicks for the same keywords my sites were number one at and as I wasn’t tracking which users, SEO or PPC, were making the sales I hadn’t realise the PPC traffic wasn’t really adding any value to my sites.

Without the PPC traffic my sites got less hits and less sales but overall they still managed to make a profit as I didn’t have to pay Google.

This isn’t the full story.  Some sites that I was paying a lot to Google for to get traffic were not making any profit and were being subsidised my sites that only got traffic from SEO.

Now the sites that aren’t ranked aren’t getting any hits and its down to my SEO sites to bring home the bacon.

The only real downside so far is that my Christmas site won’t get any traffic this year as it wasn’t ranking at all for any of its items.  Last year for was my first foray into PPC and it paid off very well with December 2009 being my best month at that point.  I was looking to repeat it again this year but without AdWords I can’t see how I can get any traffic.

As the seasons in the UK changed from Summer to Winter my sites which were making money changed too.  My big earners dropped right off but luckily I had some more Autumnal sites which picked up the slack.  If my sites were at their peak all year round I think I’d be doing pretty well but as things stand it is a constant ebb and flow of sites doing well for a few months a year.

I’m still paying for content to be written and still paying for links to be built although after this hiccup I might pause the link building for a while.

My big site still isn’t ranking but I haven’t given up on it and have a few more ideas for some big sites although I need to plan them properly first and get a decent design sorted.  I recently discovered the skills I learnt making niche sites are not really transferable when it comes to making a big site and that a big site is whole other kettle of fish.

I recently purchased a seven day trial of an article spinner which looks pretty good, although it is broken at the moment and I am waiting to hear back from their support about how to fix it.  Hopefully this will happen before the seven day trial ends!

Once I get it up and running I am planning to do some article marketing although I don’t know much about it yet.  It does sound, in theory at least, like a good way to get back links but we shall see.  Anyone else doing this?

I was quite busy overall in October although did have a week in Bali and a few days at the beach in Thailand so not all work and no play!

Christmas is Just Around the Corner

I know its more than three months away but now is the time to start your Christmas sites if you have not done so already.

Last December I had my best month at the time earning about 850 quid which was about double what I earnt the previous month.

I only started the site in November (I think) so imagine how much you could earn if you started now.

What do people buy (more of) int he run up to Christmas?

• New TVs
• Extra chairs and tables for when family come over
• New plates and cutlery
• Toys/presents
• Recipe books
• Hampers
• Booze

I’m sure there are loads more ideas out there but that should get you started.

Good luck and merry Christmas!

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!

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?

December 2009 Round-Up

Well 2009 is over and it has been an interesting year to say the least.  First I got into affiliate marketing and then I moved to Thailand.  But first things first:  How was my December?

I left it quite late starting my Christmas sites but in the end I pulled my finger out and got a few up and running.  They were started too late to rank well organically so I decided to promote them via AdWords paying for each visit I received.

This started off well and on some days I was making £50 a day profit and I even made about £80 one day.  The month didnt carry on like this and as the items I was promoting ran out of stock my sales dried up.   I was also on holiday for the last two weeks of the month so couldn’t really set-up any new sites or AdWords campaigns.   I decided to leave my existing PPC campaigns running while I was away and kept my fingers crossed they wouldnt cost me too much.

When I got back to Bangkok yesterday I was pleasantly supprise to see I had earned £883 in December.  I spent about £223 on AdWords.  This is about double of what I’ve made in my last few months and has made me very happy.  If I could make this every month I’d be over the moon, especially out here in Thailand where the cost of living is quite low compared to England.

I know a lot of this has come from the Christmas market but I am determined to keep the momentum going and try and get in the same region this month.  PPC really helped alot as it allows your new ventures to get traffic straight away and get the sales trickling in.

How was your December?

Post Christmas Market?

With the Christmas shopping rush about to end now is probably a good time to start thinking about what items to promote in the post-Christmas haze.

I guess fitness and weight loss items will be good but are there any other smaller niches that are at their most active in the new year?  Holidays might be a good one as people used to book their summer break straight after Christmas.

Any one got any hot tips?

Things have been going pretty well so far this money with PPC driving most of my sales.  Main problem has been items keep selling out and the merchants are not getting restocked so have to keep trying to come up with new ideas for items to promote.  Also my part-time job is taking up more and more of my time so had less time to cash in on the Christmas buying frenzy.

Hope your Christmas sites are going well and if I don’t get to post before the big day have a good one!

Knock me down with a feather – another £50 day

Another good day in the run up to Christmas.  Yesterday I tweaked my Adwords ads and updated some of my ECUs that were pointing to out of stock merchants and today I have a lower PPC spend and have made more commission.

Break down goes a little something like this:

• Awin: £42
• Amazon: £26
• Adwords: £14
• Profit: £54

Obviously these are all pending but I’ve not had many rejections so far (touch wood) and PPC spend isn’t in sync with sales as there are time zone issues afoot but overall it looks positive.

I’d love to spend today checking my sites and setting up some new campaigns but as regular reader may know I recently started a new part-time day job.  Although the job is only one day a week it also takes a full day to prepare so unfortunately today and tomorrow will be affiliate marketing free apart from the odd bit of stolen time.  I am quite gutted as I only get £35 for the day of work (which actually takes two days) and I could earn more than that from Internet marketing but its not all about the money right?

Down But Not Out

Not another £50 day yesterday but a £25 day which is still great.

• £22 was made through Awin
• £25 was made through Amazon
• £21.69 was spent through Adwords

A lot of the sales did not come via the PPC campaigns so I probably made a loss/broke even/made a slight profit on the Christmas PPC sites.  I put this down to a few of my best seller going out of stock and a fair amount of sales going through Play.com who only give about 0.5% commission.

This is all slightly out due to the fact my Adwords account is in a -8 time zone so it doesn’t match up with my Affiliate Window account which is 8 hours ahead of the Adwords account.  Has anyone managed to get Google to change the time zone of their Adwords account?

I am tempted to try and open a new account and put it in the right time zone this time as it is annoying me not being able to compare spend on ads with income from sales day by day.

That reminds me, I better put some money on my credit card as I will be getting a pretty big Adwords bill sometime soon!

Check for out of Stock Merchants

It is obvious you should regularly check the merchants you are linking to have the items in stock you are promoting.

However it is something that I overlooked and after going over the stats for yesterday I saw quite a lot of the items I was advertising on my sites were out of stock.  Some of them were still displaying as in stock on my Easy Content Units (ECU) but when I clicked through to the merchant the items were no longer in stock.

Chances are the user will go back to your site and try another merchant but there is also the chance they will just load Google in the current window and find another site with the item by-passing your site.

Another issue I had was that a few merchants had gone out of stock and Play.com became the lowest priced merchant with the item in stock.  This was bad news as Play.com seems to only pay about 1% commission so suddenly my sales were at a similar level but commission was slashed dramatically.

All the above would apply to SEO driven sites but with PPC it becomes much more urgent as you are paying for all your traffic and a bad day could wipe out all profits.

Again I guess this highlights the problem of having lots of small sites that applies to the approach I have taken so far.  The more small sites you have promoting individual items the more site and products you have to check to see if everything is working.

I think once the Christmas traffic has died down I will try and setup up a hand-full of high value PPC campaigns that get me £20 or so commission per sale.  Hopefully this should be easier to manage on a day to day basis.