How I Got Rich

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?

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?

Monthly report for September 2009

My eighth month of being an Affiliate Marketer is over and so is my first full month of trying Internet marketing full-time.

Unfortunately I have seen my income go down for the second month running.

In September I earned just £293 (£233 from Amazon & £60 from Awin. There was also £76 of transactions from Awin that were made in September but are still pending).

Last month earnings where £387 and the month before £435 so things are definitely on the slide!

In the last few weeks I have bucked my ideas up a bit and knuckled down with a stricter timetable seeing me do 35 hours a week.  Hopefully the seeds being planted will start to bear fruit in the coming months.

Feedback from other Affiliate Marketers is leading me to think focusing on just a couple of sites rather than lots of smaller ones is the way forward. So this is definately something I will think about this month with the aim of getting one bigger, more general site up and running.

I am now also looking for a full-time job so my days of doing AM full-time may soon be over.  I think I realistically need to be earning £750 out here to be able to survive and ideally £1000 a month to have some money to put away each month for travelling or otther purchases.

At the moment I am miles away from that amount so it looks like it will be back to being a wage slave, doing the 9-5 again.

How did you get rich: a couple of big sites or lots of little ones?

Monthly report for August 2009

Another month is over and this has been my seventh month in affiliate marketing.

Last month I made £435 (£407 of which came from Amazon and £28 from Affiliate Window).

My target for August was £500 but unfortunately I did not meet it.

For August I earnt £387 (£313 from Amazon and £74 from Awin and there is also another £76.45 from Awin which is pending and I guess will go through in September).

My main site only earned £175 this month where as last month it earned £251 despite still being number one in Google. It is seasonal so I expect it will go down again next month.

This has been the first month where I have not made a significant increase on the previous month. Have I reach the sticking point that beginners can quickly reach but to
surpass needs extra skills and knowledge, the point that seperates the men/woman from the boys/girls?

I didn’t do any work on am during the last two weeks of July and the first two weeks of August so perhaps that explains why there was a bit of a dip. Also I found that some of the links on my sites where pointing to products that were no longer available or were out of stock so that could’ve caused some sales to be lost. If you have any old site I recommend going back and checking the links are still active and valid.

I had some good results from my Affi style micro niche site which I was promoting via PPC which brought me £50 profit (after PPC spend) from 3 sales. After this I made 3 more of this type of site which I am also promoting with PPC. Hopefully they will see the same level of success.

I am now out of work so am going to be trying to do AM full-time but it is hard to stay motivated now I have lots of free time. Before I was putting in the odd few hours here and there when I could and found it quite easy to motivate myself. Now I have the whole day ahead of me free it is not so easy – seems more like a job now!

My medium term goal when I started with AM was to be making £500 a month by the end of September and as this is now September I will be trying my hardest to achieve this.

I’m still playing with small smingle type sites but have not come up with many good ones lately.

PPC for financial leads is where I want to get to in the next few months as well as working on a bigger long term site. Also there is Christmas to start working on…

Also a few other affiliate have moved into some of the niches I am working in taking the .org and .org.uk versions of domains I was using. Is this ok to do as I’ve seen a few niches I like but someone else is already ranked well in that niche?

How are things going with you? Learnt anything you’d like to share?

Monthly report for July 2009

With month six over I am pleased to report I have beaten my target once again.  The goal for July was £300 but I managed to earn £435 (£28 from AWin & £407 from Amazon Associates).

I spent £16 on PPC but this only brought in one or two sales so I did lose money on that.  I also signed up for Easy Content Units Pro which is about £22 a month.  Apart from that it was just hosting (£6 per month) and a few more domains at £6.66 a go that I spent this month.

I will be delving into the world of PPC in August and hope to invest some of my earnings in running some successful campaigns, or at least learning some more about how Adwords works.

I’ll have left my job by the end of next week and will be moving onto pastuers new and as I won’t have a job I will lots more time to crack on with affiliate marketing.  Hopefully my earnings will increase enough so that I don’t have to find another full-time job.

My target for August is £500. Wish me luck!

Daily Trends from Amazon in July 2009

Earnings from Amazon in July 2009

Monthly report for June

Well I reached and exceeded my target for June of £150 and brought in £255 of commission.  I’m really pleased with this as its a just a little over double what I did last month and with it being only my fifth full month in affiliate marketing I think it shows I could make a living from this in the future.

£140 came from one site and the other £110 from 13 other sites.  Some sites failed to make a sale but overall most are making some money.

The main challenges for next month will be the changes to the Amazon Associates commission structure which I think will hit me quite hard.  If the new structure had been in place in June I think it would have reduced my earnings by about 45% as I make a lot of use of direct links.  But I shall not be giving it any thought as I go into July and will just work hard on getting new sites up and running and adding content to existing sites and continuing to try and find backlinks.

My target for July is £300 – wish me luck!

May 2009 Round-up

My target for May, my fourth month trying my hand at affiliate marketing, was to earn £75.

Not only did I meet that target but I  ended up bringing in £125!  This has really inspired me to keep going with affiliate marketing and keep up the level of work that has got me to this point.

I was out of the country on holiday for the last week of May  so couldn’t check my stats or do any work but was pleased to come home to find I had had a very profitable week whilst on holiday.  I even had a dream whilst on holiday that I checked my Amazon account to see I had made £117 which when I got home was up to £125 for the month.

As usual 99% of  my sales came from Amazon but I have been increasing my links to other merchants slightly in the past few weeks.

My target for June 2009 is £150

April 2009 Round-up

Well my target for April was £50 and I just made it with around £53.  £49.50 came from 50 sales through amazon and two more sales through two other networks.

Only launched one site in April and didn’t do any PPC so almost all profit (apart from my time).

Target for next month is £75.

How was April for you?

March 2009 Round-up

March 2009 was my second full month in affiliate marketting.

My goal was to earn on average 1 pound per day to reach a total of 31 pounds for the whole month.

I came close with 29.45 which all came from the amazon associates programme.  I had been sending traffic to other merhcants but none of them converted.  This amount came from 50 sales which shows I am earning less than 1 pound per order on average.  If I was getting 10 pound commission per sale I would be a happy man but from what I understand promoting higher priced items is a much harder game.

My goal for April 2009 is to get 50 pounds in referral fees.  Wish me luck!

Sales for March 2009