June was actually a record month for me which was great, but it was also a very enlightening month.  I have decided that I need to get to another level in the internet game.  While I have made some ok money with affiliate marketing I guess I have bigger plans.  With that in mind I am taking a bit of a break from this blog.  My goal is to be back in fall with some exciting announcements.

What announcements you say?  Well I have three product ideas that I want to experiement with.  They would all be ebooks distibuted through clickbank.  I have one idea I can do with my father, another I will do on my own, and a big idea that will require the help of a expert.  I will start with the first two and learn enough to move on to the third.

 I will still be promoting my affiliate sites during this time and probably trying new things in this realm as well.  I just know that I want to shift away from making money for others to making more money for myself.  Of course this is easier said then done…but you have to start somewhere.

Feel free to contact me even if I am not blogging.  I always like to hear from other people in the industry.  Hopefully I will have some good news to bring in the fall!

Here are the numbers…

$2871.80 in Sales
- 356.90 in Expenses
= $2383.07 in Net Revenue

$2383.07 / 31 Days in May = $77.00 Average Profit Per Day

I will still be blogging even though I missed my goal.  I consider it as missing my target date and not a complete failure.  My goal remains…it is just going to take longer than I wanted.

Here is the link to the meetup.  I would love to see this thing grow over time.  I know there are plenty of affiliate marketers and small business owners in Cincinnati who would enjoy this networking chance.  It is not always easy to meet others when you are trapped behind your computer all day, and this meetup should make it easier.

If you are not in Ohio, then maybe this post will inspire you to start your own group.  I paid the $45 for meetup.com only because I don’t have the time to market this thing.  I have tried posting in Craigslist before without success, so I thought I would try another angle.  We’ll see what happens…

 http://internetpro.meetup.com/64/

I have two shared hosting accounts – one with Host Gator and the other with HostICan.  I have never had issues with either one until today when HostICan fell off the grid.  Hopefully the issue will be resolved here shortly, but I obviously won’t be making any money from those sites during this time.  This is frustrating, but it also reinforces a decision I made in January to spread my sites across multiple accounts.

There are many things that fall out of your control with affiliate marketing.  Google could penalize your websites, you could lose important data without having a backup, and of course…your hosting company could let you down.  The last two instances can’t be entirely prevented, but they can be controlled.  In the case of hosting, a simple shared account is typically less than $10 a month.  This makes it incredibly affordable to protect yourself from losing valuable uptime if something goes wrong.  When you start to get cheap with things like this you set yourself up for disaster.

If you try a lot different niches like I do then you know how quickly your portfolio of websites can grow.  I will often publish a simple site, do some basic promotion, and then let it sit to see if I get any conversions.  Depending on how much effort I put into a project, it might lay dormant for three or four months before I come back to it.  In the meantime I am building new sites in other niches.  Before I know it, I have ten sites loaded into my hosting account.  This would create a big problem if they all went down at the same time.

My current benchmark for websites per account is ten.  After that I either sell the duds or let just delete the domain (rare).  Once I have ten good ones going it is time to expand to another hosting account.  I recommend this strategy to anyone who wants to avoid losing all your sales when technical problems occur.  It may only take five minutes for your host to fix the issue, but in the meantime your customers are buying from someone else :0

BTW – I strongly recommend Host Gator (especially after today).  I have used both their online chat support and telephone support.  Both times they fixed my problems in less than an hour.  I think they cost a buck or two more per month than other companies, but I will gladly pay this small premium for their proven customer support.

Because I rely on the search engines for traffic instead of PPC, the formula is bit more complex for me.  Generally I set up a simple website with a main page and 4 or 5 articles to start with.  I will then submit another 5 original articles to places like ezinearticles.com to build a small traffic flow.  This process usually takes a couple of days and my goal is to earn two or three sales.  Obviously this isn’t much, but it does let me know that the sales page converts on some level.  Ideally I would see a conversion for every fifty clicks to the offer.

Now I know there is some potential and I can test out some new keywords.  Let’s say I built a site about attracting women.  If I targeted the phrase “attract women” and had some success, then I will continue my other online strategies to boost traffic for this term.  Once I average 50 visitors a day I can gauge if this keyword will produce on a consistent level.  If it doesn’t then I know it is time to try the next approach.  Remember, I have already experienced some sales so I know the product has potential.

The second phase of testing involves trying a new keyword to increase conversions.  In the example website above, I might write some content focusing on the phrase “meeting women” or “dating women”.  Even though this may seem like a subtle change, it could be all it takes to increase sales.  If your sales spike after promoting these terms then you know you need to focus more on the new terms.  If conversions decline, then perhaps you hit the nail on the head from the beginning.

They key is to keep throwing new keyword content into the mix and finding what sticks.  Even though your site will start slowly you can still measure results between the different terms.  Always think in future volume.  How proportionate are the conversions to the time and money you spend on them.  If you are in a niche where you can easily get five hundred visitors per day, then you might only expect 1 in 300 to buy.  If however it takes a lot of work to get steady visitors and only 1 in every 100 convert, then it might not be worth your time.

It is not always easy to pick a proven winner in affiliate marketing.  Everyone writes and thinks about things differently.  So while your buddy might convert on every 30 clicks for a product, your particular style and strategy might not even reach 1 in 100.  That being said, it might be worth it if it was easy for you to gain your 100 visitors. 

It is all about how much time and effort is involved when measuring productivity with article marketing and SEO.  The only thing you have to be cautious of is giving up on a project too early.  You could literally wake up one day and find yourself in the top 5 search results and your sales steadily growing.  So let a project simmer if you are getting frustrated.  Submit it to 700 directories and work on something else for a few months.   Once your site climbs the SERP’s it could be whole different story.

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.

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.

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…

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

I have to be realistic here folks – I am not sure the $200 a day goal will be realized by June 1st.  So far my best month averaged about $50 a day, which of course means I would need to quadruple that effort.  I am continuing to experiment with new strategies in hopes of finding another substantial revenue stream, but I just don’t know if it will happen by June.  The thing about it is…I don’t really care!  I would love to hit my goal but the fact is that I am making progress and the internet has provided me with some much needed extra money.  As long as things continue to grow I will be happy.

This isn’t a post about me quitting on my goal.  It is just me reflecting on the reality of the situation.  My internet business may never reach $200 a day, but it is on pace to triple my earnings from 2007.  Although this won’t put a Ferrari in my garage, it might be enough to help move my family into a bigger house.