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!

Monthly Round-Up: May 2010

May 2010 was my best month in affiliate marketing so far apart from December 2009.  I did quite well last month so wasn’t sure if I would be able to top it but was very pleased when I did. Also  one of my sites that started the month off well and was on page one in Google got knocked way down the SERPS for some reason at the start of the month and didn’t make any more more sales.  But a few of my other sites stepped up and I made a good income for May.  Also during this month my Adwords account was suspendde due to non payment until the last few days of May so I only spent about £9 on clicks which was very good.

A fair amount of this traffic was seasonal though so I need to keep working other sites to keep me going all year round.

I’ve also been doing a lot of outsourcing.  I’ve been getting someone to write product descriptions for me which keeps me supplied with fresh content for my sites and is something I would definitely recommend to anyone who has trouble motivating themselves to write content.

I have also outsorced the design of a webstie which I am very pleased with.  I will be using this design for my PPC financial leads project so I wanted something good and I was happy with what I got.  I will be starting work on this in June.

I will be away for six weeks from the start of July so am trying to get as much done before then as probably won’t be able to do much affiliate marketing work whilst on the road.

How was your May 2010?

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!

£1 a Day from Each Site

I was just looking through my list of sites and I have around 40 sites that are up and running.  Some are more up and running than others but all of them are in a position to make a sale at some point.  After seeing this it occurred to me that if they were all making £1 day I’d be bringing in around £1000 a month which is pretty much my main goal in affiliate marketing (and life!).

Most of my sties promote low cost items so for the majority of them they would need to make around 1.5 sales a day to get £1 in commission (I learnt my lesson and no longer promote such low cost items).  Some of my sites however can make around £20 a sale so that would even things out a bit.

But alas I am way off this target and am nowhere near £1000 per month.

But is £1 per day per site too to ask?   It doesn’t sound like it but it obviously is.

Today I’ve been mostly wasting my time reading affiliate marketing blogs as I thought work would be closed tomorrow due to the red shirts but our boss knows better so we are back in work tomorrow so no Internet marketing for me.

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.

Back to Work, Full Time!

Well being a full-time affiliate again didn’t last long.  Less than a week later I have a new job but will be working full-time not part-time like before.  This means my time for affiliate marketing will be greatly reduced.  I wasn’t looking for work but something landed in my lap and was offered ito me and I am not in a position to turn work down so I will be starting next week.

Maybe this will spur me on and give me an incentive to put more effort into my affiliate marketing sites.  I must admit I had been getting lazy.  Around my previous job in England I still managed to put in quite a bit of effort into affiliate stuff and got to a level of earnings I have yet to go above (apart from Christmas) after trying affiliate marketing full-time for the past few months.

I’m setting myself the goal of writing four new product review pages/posts a day to one of my existing sites (rotating through the sites) and also adding one new product review page to each of my two big sites.

With the extra money coming in I will be reinvesting some of my profits from Internet marketing into my sites by buying content and looking into link building and how much that costs.  Anyone know any thing about that?

My long term goal is still to get from my current earnings of about 400 pound a month to 2,000 a month by the end of 2010.  Will I be able to do it?

How Much Do My Sites Earn a Month?

After a recent post in the smingle thread on the a4u forum which recommended a domain name and gave a projected monthly income of around 150 a month if you got that site to number one in Google I decided to have a look at my sites and see how they performed each month financially.

It was pretty depressing reading.

I used the tracking IDs in Amazon Associates of which I create a new one for each site and then looked at the monthly reports.  Out of my 30 or sites only one was earning more than 50 a month (and only during a certain season).  The rest were bringing in around 5-20 a month.  Some make a few sales via Affiliate Window but not more than they do via Amazon.  I do have  a couple of micro niche sites which looks like are my biggest earners and they are promoted via PPC but are still not bringing in anything to write home about.

According to the information given in the smingle thread my domains and sites all sound  good in theory:

• Keywords with 8,000 – 20,000 exact local matches a month (sometimes more)
• Products that retail between 10 and 100 (more on some sites)
• Easy to navigate sites with product reviews and price comparison ECUs where relevant
• At number in one Google for their main keyword

But even with all that they are just not getting the traffic or bringing home the bacon.

A few people have advised me to find my best site and develop it further and to continue doing what I am doing as it working but I don’t really have a best site and what I am doing is too big to keep doing i.e. too many small sites not making much money and taking too much time to keep track of and up to date.

To make this year a success I need to shake it up a bit and try something new…

Back to being a Full-Time Affiliate Marketer again

I have now finished my part-time contract I was on and am now back to being a full-time Internet marketer again.  I will be looking for a new job (hopefully part-time) as I am still earning bugger all from this lark but hopefully before I find one my fortunes will pick up.

Last month was amazing but this month has been back to normal and I think I will be lucky to clear £400 which is nowhere near enough.

I am starting to wonder at what point do you call it quits and admit that something isn’t going to work out for you and move onto something else?  I guess if I have another month without any rise in profits then I will have to have a long hard look at where I am.

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?