How I Got Rich

Monthly Round-up: May 2011

Last month was my best month in affiliate marketing so far and it gave me high hopes for April. As the month started it looked like I would not be disappointed. My daily earnings improved on last month and by the end of the first week I was on target to make over £2000. But then disaster stuck. On about May 8th one of my main sites got struck down by Google and was knocked off the first page for most of its keywords.

Possible Sighting of Google Panda

As I just mentioned up until May 8th I was doing pretty well and then one of my main earners got dumped out of the SERPs. It was an exact match domain which was ranking at number one in Google for the domain and also the plural of the domain. A few of the other pages I had built for this site were on page one and getting some good longer tail traffic. So overnight between May 7th and 8th I went from getting about 150 hits a day to around 30. The main keyword which was in the domain dropped to the bottom of page one and all the rest dropped right out of sight.

I had been working on the site right up to when it went down in the SERPs. I was adding new content and building links so it is possible I did something to upset Google or maybe it was to do with the Panda update. I’ve read there was an update to the Panda rollout around this time so perhaps it was.

I carried on adding content after the drop and managed to eventually get back to the number one spot for the keyword in the domain. The plural of the main keyword brought me the most traffic and after a while it did bounce back to page one for a few days before disappearing again.

The top line is the keyword in the domain and the other main line is the plural. Notice how lots of sites disappear on 6-May and never return. Brutal!

As this was one of my main sites it hit my earnings quite hard but I managed to limp on until the end of the month without going broke. I’m still working on the site and hopefully it will rise from the ashes back to where it once was.

New Tools

I had been using the free version of IM Automator which is a web based bookmarking tool for a while so when a slot came up on their paid-for Pro version I snapped it up. At $50 per month it was more than I’ve spent so far on a monthly subscription but I like the ease of use of the free version and I figured I’d use the extra features of the Pro version. The Pro version includes more bookmarking sites to submit your pages to, an RSS and directory submission service as well as an article submission service. I signed up mainly for the article service. You write one 500 word article with two links in the resource box and it submits it to 60 article sites which should all accept it. It doesn’t need any spinning so you can just write and submit. I wasn’t sure how good this was as how valuable can having links from 60 copies of the same article be? Surely they will all be duplicate content. You can submit about 20 articles a day so could in theory get about 2400 links a day. Writing 20 500 word articles a day isn’t that easy and I never managed more than a few each day. Plus if they are all from the same 60 sites how useful this is I’m not sure.

The sites I tested it on didn’t make any jumps in the SERPs and although I might be judging it too quickly I’m not going to sign up for another month. I guess if you had someone writing content for you each day or you had a backlog of content to get rid of and could take advantage of the maximum number of submissions per day it might worth it but for me at the moment its not. So I’m going to look for something else to spend my hard earned pocket money on. I’ve heard good things about Linkamotion of which you can read a review of here.

Outsourcing Mission

My plan is to outsource as much as possible so I can do other things with my time so I have been thinking of ways to do this. I am a bit nervous of handing over the reigns of my sites just yet so I’m currently looking to hire people to build links for me and write content. Using this template on sitey.net I managed to hire a couple of guys to write 10 articles of 500 words for $10 from Odesk. It’s not the best writing in the world but it is grammatically correct and makes sense. I wouldn’t put it on my main sites as I have another guy who does that but it will be good for building Web 2.0 properties and submitting to services like IM Automator Pro should I go back to it.

Linkbuilding with Web 2.0s

I am always looking for ways to get links but have only recently started doing this so am a bit behind the pack when it comes to link building. People have been using Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo for ages to get links and although the boat might have sailed a bit I’m giving it a go. I’m going to build out 10 or so Web 2.0 sites with multiple pages, images and videos for each of my sites and link to that site. Then I will build smaller Web 2.0s and do lots of other link building things and point those at my 10 big Web 2.0s. At least that’s the plan for now until I get any better ideas.

Things to Do

I really need to get a new laptop. This netbook has done me well for two years but it’s too slow now and I need something with more power. I’d like a mid range 13” one with 4GB of ram and a 500GB hard drive.

Nothing fancy just something that can get things done.

I need a new layout for my site as a lot of them aren’t really converting very well and not even earnings £1 a day even though they get 1000+ hits a month.

Things I Didn’t Do

I didn’t get a VPS due to lack of funds and time. I didn’t try out SEnuke X due to lack of time and a slow netbook. I didn’t use Sick Submitter once, apart from the pinger so think I will cancel this for now.

Earnings:

Well I think that pretty much sums up May 2011. I better post the bit you’ve all been waiting for: how much I earned.

My (gross) earnings for May 2011 were £1840

I am very pleased with this and was only aiming for £1700 this month (which is £100 more than last month) but was very happy to exceed this.

Goals for June 2011:

Last month I said I’m aiming to increase my earnings by £100 a month and I’d love to go for £1900 for June but in the last week or so of May I was lucky to get £50 a day on a good day so I’m not holding my breath. To get £1900 I will need to bring in £63 per day which is pretty hard when one of your main sites has been tanked by Google. To be honest I will be happy for anything over £1500 for June.

Last month I was mainly watching The Shadow Line, The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret and Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle.

What did you get up to in May?

Monthly Round-up: March 2011

I don’t think I’ve a monthly round-up for a while but this month it is a welcome distraction from content writing.

My earnings peaked in November and December 2010 with one of my Autumnal sites taking off big time thanks to an increase in the number of people searching for it. But that niche’s popularity was short lived only lasting two months before it went back to getting 30 or less hits a day.

As most of my sites are seasonal when one site is doing well the others take a break and don’t bring in much money. As my Autumnal sites are not making any sales now, this month saw some of my Spring sites come out of hibernation and start getting a few more hits.

Earnings are still down from the end of last year and in March 2011 I made £280 less than I was doing in November and December. Its a drop of 20% which is not what I was hoping for when I set my goal of increasing my earnings by 10% each month.

I guess its a lesson in factoring in seasonality of a product when picking a niche or area to work in. Some of my sites I wouldn’t have considered seasonal when I picked them but after looking at a years worth of data there are definite patterns and its worth also noting that most seasonal niches tend to have short periods of popularity and long periods of inactivity.

If you have a good spread of sites each peaking in different months you could weather the storms but its frustrating to see your sites bounce around in terms of how much money they bring in.

Selling Sites

I made an effort to try and sell one of my sites this month. It was at number one in Google so I emailed the people who are bidding on the keyword it is number one for and asked them if they wanted to buy it. It’s not a great opportunity for an affiliate site but if you are bidding on that keyword it might be nice to also have the number one site to get some extra traffic. I’m not desperate to start selling sites but wouldn’t say no to lump sum of cash that I could reinvest in some link building for my other sites as that is my main priority at the moment.

Earnings for March 2011: £1120

Update: a few people have asked my how much each site makes and things like that. I’ve done this quick pie chart to show how the income is spread over my 50 sites or so. As you can see there are a few that bring home the most money and loads that don’t bring in much at all. The main sites that make the most tend to change each month as the seasons change and things go in and out of favour.

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!

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!

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!

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?