Megadomainia

I often read people at DigitalPoint ask how many clicks per sale is considered a good conversion rate.  The answer from the community is usually the tried and true “it depends”.  Since this isn’t very helpful for someone who is just starting out, I thought I would share my perspective of the question. [Read more →]

Another month has passed and I continued my steady upward swing for 2008.  Ironically, I was incredibly busy with other aspects of my life and I did not work nearly as hard this month as I have in previous months.  I am not really surprised at my numbers however since search engine rankings are usually based on archived links.  I think it was just a matter of being rewarded for work I had done in the first quarter of the year.

Here are the numbers…

$2696.27 in Sales
- 313.20 in Expenses
= $2383.07 in Net Revenue

$2383.07 / 30 Days in April = $79.43 Average Profit Per Day

It is always fun to set new records, but the only downside is that I am well short of $200 per day.  This is a little disappointing, but as long as I am making progress then I can live with it.

So in Part 1 of this series I talked about how I get started with promoting an affiliate offer.  This consists of doing some research, building a mini-site, then using article marketing and social bookmarking to see if I can get some conversions.  If I get lucky and make a couple of sales then I expand my efforts to attract more traffic.  The ultimate goal is to build long-term search engine rankings that will provide a steady stream of visitors.

If there is one thing I have learned over the past year as an internet marketer it is that backlinks are the single most important aspect of search engine optimization.  Keyword selection and on-site SEO optimization are helpful, but nothing is more powerful than hundreds of links pointing to your website.  With that I mind, I focus nearly all of my efforts on building as many possible.  Again, I only invest my time and energy on this tedious process after my first phase of testing has shown results.

The good news about building links is that many of the tasks can be outsourced.  This is key for me because I only have a couple of hours a day to dedicate to affiliate marketing.  Sure you drop a few hundred dollars doing it this way, but the time it saves is well worth the price in my opinion.  Here is my checklist for each site:

- Build 1 Squidoo lense with a unique article linking to my site.
- Build 1 Weebly website “ “
- Build 1 Hub Page “  “
- Submit a PDF article to Scribd “  ”
- Submit an article to Gather under one of my themed profiles
- Create a MySpace page with 5 blog entries and 250 friends (link back to my site)
- Submit site to 500 directories using this guy
- Add 5 to 7 more articles to my main website
- Submit each new article to 50+ social bookmark sites (1 article per week)
- Hire a link builder from GAF to get 10 PR2, 5 PR3, and 2 PR4 links (about $150)

This entire checklist is completed over a period of about 45 days.  If things go well then I typically see a steady increase in both traffic and sales.  Ideally the project will earn at least $300 per month, which is more than enough to justify investing more work into climbing the SERP’s.

I hope this helps some of you who are struggling with how to generate traffic to your websites.  Of course you already know how much money I make online, so there is no sense pretending that these strategies have made me a millionaire. Nonetheless, I am excited about the future and this is the template that has worked for me.  If you need a more comprehensive plan for building a money-making website, then I recommend reading Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate.

Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Here is a brief synopsis of what I do to make money online through affiliate marketing.  Remember, I don’t get involved with PPC advertising…for two main reasons.  The first is that I know how cut-throat the competition is, and the second is that I believe you can successfully make money on the internet without risking much upfront.  That being said, my SEO techniques do take time to reap rewards and most people don’t have the patience to see them through.

I usually start a new project by identifying an offer or product that catches my eye.  This could be because I know it is selling well or simply because I am intrigued by what the publisher is offering.  I follow this up with research on how many websites/affiliates are promoting it and using the Google keyword tool to get an idea of how popular a niche is in terms of search volume.

Once I feel confident that there is adequate demand for the offer I build a quick website with either XSitePro or Wordpress.  Almost all of my sites follow the same format.  I use the home page to briefly discuss the problem that people searching for my keywords typically have, and I conclude by highlighting the affiliate product that provides a solution.  Sometimes I “review” three or four similar offers and other times I just provide one solution.  Either way, I get paid when they click on the affiliate link and purchase what I recommend.  Pretty simple stuff.

Since I rely almost exclusively on search engine traffic, it is important that I provide enough unique content to capture adequate traffic.  I usually start by including five articles of about five hundred words each. This seems to be enough to get about forty visitors a day, which provides some insight into whether or not the project is worth my time.  I also add a stock photo to each article and name it with the keyword phrase that the content focuses on.  This helps to provide some traffic from image searches on the topic.

After the website is built I submit five unique articles to ezinearticles.com and isnare.com.  I target each one towards a different angle or keyphrase that potential customers might search for.  I also bookmark each one of my website articles on social bookmarking sites.  Generally I submit each one to fifty sites at a rate of one article per week.  By the end of this cycle the site has been live for about two months. 

Ideally, I will have generated enough sales to start investing more time and money into the project.  If sales have been slow (or in rare cases non-existent) then I let the site “simmer” for a few months.  I’ll make some final tweaks to the sales page and wait and see if a miracle happens.  Every once in a while a project will seem like a bust but then all of sudden the Google-effect takes over and it begins to capture steady traffic and sales.  This is when I reinvest my efforts and try to take it to the next level.

In my next post I will write about the things I do with the profitable projects…

Well I was able to sustain most of the progress I made last month…much to my surprise. I ended up averaging over $50 a day in affiliate marketing after costs.

I am launching another couple of projects in April that I hope will add to the bottom line. It usually takes a while to see results with SEO, but it would be nice to find a hot product right off the bat. I’ll need it if I am going to reach my goal by June…

Here are the numbers…

$2067.47 in Sales
- 307.56 in Expenses
= $1759.91 in Net Revenue

$1759.91 / 31 Days in March = $56.77 Average Profit Per Day