How I Got Rich

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.

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?

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?

2009 & 2010

2009 has been a pretty good year for me.  I gave up my boring IT job, moved to Thailand and tried my hand at Internet Marketing full-time.  Going full-time didn’t boost my earnings as much as I thought they would so I got a couple of part-time jobs to tide me over.  The year finished on a high note with me earning £883 in the last month setting a new personal record.

I’ve learnt a lot in my first year in affiliate marketing and will be putting that into practice in 2010.  Some of the things I will be focusing on in the new year will be:

• Stop buying domains for small-time keyword niche sites. I have enough of these sites in various states of completion to last me a long time and the list is getting too many to mention.  It always seems easier to stop working on long term projects to start a new project that most of the times doesn’t come to much.
• Get my big sites up and running. I have three big sites I plan to get going this month and work on throughout the year.  It was going to be two but I am having quite good success with one niche using PPC that I an going to build a big site around it and promote it via PPC.  The other two will be content sites that I will aim to get traffic organically for.  I need to stop procrastinating around getting started and Just Do It.
• Make more use of PPC. I stayed away from PPC for a long time as I was scared of losing money but most times I have tried it it has paid off.  The amount of traffic I can get from it massively out numbers any traffic my sites get from organic search results alone.   I am going to delve deeper into the world of PPC and AdWords and see how much more traffic I can bring in.  SEO will not be neglected as I think it is essential for long-term success but PPC is just as valuable.
• Reinvest profits. I haven’t done much of this so far but I am going to look into ways of reinvesting my profits in my sites.  Content writing is an obvious solution and perhaps link building is also something I should look into outsourcing.  Anything else I can spend my money on?

My goals and resolutions for 2010 are as follows:

• Do something every day that can bring in money.  I read this somewhere else and liked the idea.  It can be a small thing or a big thing but basically each day you are adding something to your ‘portfolio’ that could lead to a sale whether it be launch a new site, add a new product, start a new campaign or just add a new link to a merchant.
• Be earning £2000 profit per month by end of 2010. I want to be earning £2000 per month by the end of 2010.  This is more than I earned in my day job and will put me in a nice position for when I return to England plus I will also be able to live very comfortably out here on that much too.

Non-Affiliate Marketing:

• Learn Thai
• Take up a sport and stick with it throughout the year – possibly Tennis, Golf or Muay Thai
• Start a diary blog for my travels
• Learn to draw
• Get back in touch with 3 friends from my childhood/school days

My First £50 Day!

After only a few day after posting about how I wanted a £50 a day site I managed to bring in over £50 in sales in one day.  This wasn’t from one site but spread across many but it  is still a new personal best for me and a nice change in my fortunes.

I put this down to finally giving PPC a proper go as most of the traffic came via Adwords ad I had setup in the past few days.  Yesterday I spent £13.01 on Adwords clicks and made £66.76 in commission which gives me a profit of £53.75. Some of the sales came through non-Adwords traffic so I will have to work out exactly how much I earnt from the Adwords traffic but I am certain it is more than the amount I spent.

£50 a day equals £1500 a month which would be amazing.  If I could make £25 a day in the not too distant future I would be very happy.

Hopefully this is the start of something good rather than a glitch in the Matrix.

I Want a £50 a Day Site!

There was a thread started recently on the affiliates 4 u forum where someone was asking advice about their site which they claim is currently making £50 a day profit  [ click to view thread ].

No offence to the owner but the site doesn’t look that amazing and doesn’t have tons of content so seems like something most of us could pull off quite easily.  But as with most things that earn good money it is all about the idea rather than the execution. Although the trademark domain is a risky strategy.

Anyways, it got me thinking, £50 a day is about £1500 a month which is an amount I would be very happy to be bringing in and would allow me to live comfortably out here in Thailand.  So why haven’t I got a £50 a day site?  There are many reasons and the main being because I haven’t had an idea good enough.  This can be seen from the 40 or so sites I have at the moment that just about bring in £400 a month combined. Imagine if five of them were £50 a day sites…

Do you know of any sites that bring in this kind of money?

Are they massive sites with lots of products or has someone just come up with the right idea at the right time?

I’m Back!

It’s been a while since my last post (about 25 days) and a few people had gotten in touch to check if I was still alive and doing affiliate marketing.  Well I am still going, I went away for a week but apart from that have been plugging away quietly.

How Are Things Going?
Sales are doing ok for this month and I should do better than last month but not up to the level I was a few months ago.  I got a bit disheartened at the start of the month but have been putting in a lot more work of late, updating older sites, making new sites etc.  My older sites are starting to rank well with a lot in the number one position in Google for their main keyword.  However this doesnt guarantee traffic or sales and some of my sites that are number one still get very little traffic and few if any sales even though they get 5-10k exact seraches according to GKWT.  This is why I have so far been making lots of sites.  Waiting for one of them to take off as until I have got a site up and running I don’t know if it will bring in any money or not.  Still not got an eye for spotting a good niche.

Big Site
All the advice I have had so far has been to make a bigger, more general site that I can focus on rather than having lots of little sites to distract me.  So far I’ve been wary of putting all my eggs in one basket (especially since my choices so far have been so hit and miss) but as my other approach isn’t really paying off I am going to give it a go.

I’ve picked my niche, almost got a name for the site and should be ready to go at the start of November.  I will be building it around Wordpress for now but have some planning to do of how to structure it.

Getting a New Day Job
As some of my regular readers may know I gave up my day job a few months ago to come to Thailand.  My earnings were going up month on month before I came out so I thought they would continue to increase and soon be enough to live on out here without getting another full time job.  Alas they did not and since my earnings started to go down I’ve been looking (a bit half-heartedly) for a new job.  Part-time would be ideal but there is not much on offer out here and due to the strict immigration laws teaching is really the only option for a farang and there are not many part-time teaching jobs on offer.  Hopefully my earnings will rocket and I will avoid going back into working for the man.  I think £650 per month would do me nicely out here and allow me to focus on really putting my all into Internet marketing.

Anything exciting been happening in the world of affiliate marketing in the last month or so?

Are you all ready for Christmas (I’ve not done anything which I am sure I will regret)?

Another Busy Day at the (Home) Office

As the new work hard regime continues I have had another busy day today.  I got one site up and running with a Wordpress installation and 10 new product posts.  I have also been researching products and have found six products I am going to setup atomic/micro niche sites for.  These are items I think might be popular at Christmas time so will try and get them up and running this week.

I’m not sure if I will promote them via PPC or leave them for a while and see how they rank organically in the SERPs.

Business has been slow this month and I am only on £221 so far for the month with less than 10 days of September to go.  When I started out about six months ago September was going to be my make or break month with a goal of £500.  I don’t think I will hit that this month but will carry on regardless for another few months at least.  I still have £99 of commission pending with Affiliate Window so if that got confirmed by the end of the month it might not be so bad.

Giving up the Day Job

Friday was my last day of work and I am now unemployed so I guess that makes me a full-time affiliate marketer!

I’m only earning (from affiliate marketing) about a third of the monthly take home pay I was getting from my job so I can’t say my affiliate marketing earnings  have allowed me to give up the day job.

I’m off on my travels next week so I am hoping the £400 I am making from affiliate marketing a month (plus my final paycheck, returned deposit from flat, etc) will allow me to  give affiliate marketing a go full-time.

My goal is to be making £2,000 per month from affiliate marketing by the time I return to England as I believe this will be enough for me to go full-time in England.  Wish me luck!

PS It feels good staying up until 11.30 on a Sunday night and not have to worry about getting up for work the following day.

Monthly Target for May 2009 Achieved

My target for May, my fourth month in affiliate marketing, was to make £75 which is a £25 increase on last month.

The first week of May was quite quiet and I started to think it wouldn’t happen but then Google intervened and moved a couple of my pages to near the top of their relative SERPS.  It wasn’t long after this that the sales started coming in.  The most sales I made one day was 11 which is a new record for me.

Today I checked my Amazon Associates account as I do each morning and my total earnings for the month to date was £75.57 which came form 59 sales.  One site made a whopping £40 which I am very happy about.  If nine of my other sites start performing at the level I will be on £400 a month which would do me very nicely.

There are still 10 days left of the month so perhaps my total will grow.  I have more sites to come online in the next couple of days but I am away for the last seven days of the month.  It will be interesting to see how my sites fare without me.

What should I set my target to for next month and more importantly what should I spend my earnings on?