long haul to success

[phazex]

Hi Everyone. Being that is my first post to webmaster world, I might as well make it about something I can encourage others with.

A little under a year ago (August 2004), I started a quest to end life's daily rountine... Working 8 to 4, eat, sleep. Repeat... What I found, through a friend, were affiliate programs. First, let me tell you all a little about myself. I work for a retail store and I'm an MIS student. I also do web development as a side job.

Anyway. Impressed by my friends profits through programs such as Linkshare and CJ, I set out to make money for myself. I spent serveral months learning (SEO and new script languages), failing, and experimenting before my AWS datafeeds sites took off. My first check in October, from Amazon, was $400, but I couldn't be happy with just that amount. Months later, I was averaging about $900 monthly.

Now im earning a little over $2000 monthly. Keep in mind thats from 30 data-feed sites with marginal monthly expenses.

If I've learned anything from almost a year that I've been into affiliate programs is that you have to be patient first. If you fail the first few months, just keep on working to make your affiliate sites "quality".

To the future:
I recently expanded my affiliate network to about 80 data-feed sites, but only half of them are fully indexed. In effort to increase profits, Im going to revamp the network entirely so "none" of my sites look like "run of a mill" affiliate websites. Also, because can't plan for all of Google's frequent alog. changes, I suggest investing into PPC.

The end game is to slowly, but surely get away from the affiliate business. I plan to get into more content orientated areas that will generate income for years to come.

Thanks all.

[hdpt00]

I'd be careful with relying solely on datafeed sites. A lot of them get de-indexed from google as fast as theyg et idnexed. If you aren't modifying them heavily you shoudl seriously consider it.

[David Bowley]

Well done on the success, but I'd echo what was said above - datafeed sites aren't exactly a great foundation with which to build your affiliate business. Remember to diversify, there is alot more to AM than datafeed sites.

You express how you want to go into content sites and away from AM, however you may not realise that these two go hand in hand quite well. You can still be into all the AM stuff and make a content based site, infact I'd encourage this more than doing datafeed sites. Like you said it will last more long term won't it, and will still be making you advertising and affiliate commissions.

[Psazf]

Hello All,
I'm 100% new to this forum, I was reading all the 4xx topics message (Rfung), and now I started to read other topics.

Can someone help me with the meening of:
- AM (affiliate marketing?)
- AWS?
- data-feed sites?
- Bourbon? (in Rfung topic)

Thansk so much
PSAZF

[phazex]

I am actually slowly moving towards full content based sites that run adsense style ads for income. I am having some success with content sites that feature AM, but I'm having mixed results. Im having to test my theory (review based sites with AM) from a domain thats not related to the topic, but the added benefit is that the domain isn't sandboxed.

I've also developed two full content based websites over the past year and they recently got of the sandbox earlier this year. My newest project is a highly competitive keyword, and once I get out the sandbox the income from adsense shoud be equal to that of my 30+ data-feed websites. *cheers*

[Nefig]

Hm..

phazex, how much do you make now from your 30 df-sites? Are they sandboxed or fully indexed?

[phazex]

Nefig, I'm making about 500$ a month from AWS itself, $1000-$1300 from Adsense, and about 200$ a month from CJ... So, its actually about $1700-1900 monthly now (may and june have been bad months).

I just did some checking, only 5 of the 30 sites are making what I get from AWS, I suspect as much because those sites have the highest PR. The remaining 50 data-feeds sites (I have 80 total) only have a few hundred pages indexed.

I don't have enough pr to spend around to all of those sites, so Im going to have to buy text links...

My goal was to make 1-2 data-feed sites daily. I've maxed out on Amazon categories, I might decide go over Linkshare.

What drives me to create sites that I know don't have any long-term potential? It's stories like this [entrepreneur.com ]

The wave is about to crash (if you depend on Google), but im going to ride it as long as I can :)

[hunderdown]

Definitions:

- AM is affiliate marketing, as you guessed.
- AWS is Amazon Web Services, a data feed that Amazon provides that can be used to set up:
- data-feed sites--sites with content that mostly or entirely consists of data from an online merchant, whch they make available as a data feed.
- Bourbon is the name for the latest Google update.

[Psazf]

Hi hunderdown,
Thank you very much!

[aff_dan]

phazex

are you using XML from AWS?

Danni

[vik_c]

Managing datafeed sites is really time consuming, even with all the software available for it. Just thinking about 80 of them makes me tired. Besides as hdpt00 said these sites tend to drop out of Google very quickly. Careful.

[phazex]

Vik_c, yes im using XML and nusoap to process the results.

It's not really time consuming as you think it would be, the time consuming portion is making every one of them look unique. I just issues updates to the network when I want to change things as ad placements over all network.

It'll be a year ago this coming August, and I haven't had any problems yet.

Im most likely going to setup an additional 60-70 sites via Linkshare.

If I had to spend more than 5$ per month for every site thats online, I wouldn't be doing this at all.

I can keep costs down to a bare minimal by buying reseller accounts and dedicated ip addresses.

I'll keep everyone updated as how things work out.