How I Got Rich

Back from my Holidays

I’m almost back from my holidays.  Just spending a few days making use of a broadband connection and my laptop before returning to Thailand.  I did no work in July and still made the same amount of money I made in June which was really nice so had my two best months earnings-wise back to back.

Now that I’ve had a few days with my laptop and a decent Internet connection I’ve been checking my all my sites to see if they are still working and ranking ok.  One of my first fairly successful sites has just been overtaken in the SERPS and has been pushed to number two which was sad to see but I hadn’t updated it in over six months so can’t really complain.  I’ve since moved it over to WordPress and written more content for it in the hope of getting it back to number one but am not loosing too much sleep over it as its a seasonal domain and its season is about to end.

I registered two domains yesterday.  They are both clothing sites.  Clothing sites seem to be a bit hit and miss but I will stick something basic up for each of them and see what happens.

My big site is still floundering.  It gets some long tail traffic but nothing for the keywords I am targeting.

Which brings me on nicely to my main problem: backlinks!

I have no clue how to get them so am going to focus this month on finding out how to outsource them.  Once I have found out how to pay for them I will be apply them to all my sites.

My goal at the moment is to be earning £2000 per month by Christmas (so I can give up the day job) and then £3000 per month by June 2010.

Wish me luck!

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’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.

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?

Greetings from Thailand

Sawadee krap!  I’ve been in Thailand for about four days now (seems a lot longer) and have just got the  Internet setup in the apartment.  It’s very hot and humid here so the air-con is coming in handy!

I’m planning to stay out here for a while and live off my earnings from Internet marketing.  I’ve got a few debts from back home to pay off which is a bit of a shame as it means I will need to earn more than I would’ve done from affiliate marketing but the cost of living here seems pretty cheap so far so I should be ok.  My goal for September was to earn £500 a month which is about 28,000 bhat.  This should be enough as long as I don’t go to too many western-type places or buy too many gadgets (I’ve already succumbed to a fake mini iPhone).  By Christmas I will be aiming for £1000 a month from affiliate marketing and if I don’t make that will probably have to  get a part-time job.

Anyone got any recommendations of things to see and do in Bangkok?

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 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!

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?