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When you're off the rat race, what's life like?
:)
(Sorry if I've gotten your thread a little off topic rfung.)
I dont think you need 20 merchants to make it ...In an average i think you can make it with 3-4 merchants and there are many who make many times that that with a single merchant :).
Diversification is good but i beleive too much of it will be a distraction! ...If you make some money with one niche/merchant ,just exploit the hell out of it before thinking about any other niche!
Thinking of merchants like amazon, they pay like around 5% (with tier commissions maybe a little higher) but for the sake of conversation let's say it's flat 5%, it seems like one would need to sell tons and tons of stuff to get to $10000, say an average item is $25, 5% of that would be $1.25, in order to get to $10K one would need to sell about 8000 items at a revenue of $200000 for the merchant, that's pretty significant, if you own your own store and do as much you'll probably earn maybe triple? or sell 1/3 of the stuff and you'll ready get to $10K?
I guess my question is here... are people using high % commission or low are also ok? to get were you are... $10K/month.
rfung... sorry for the off topic... topic.
People making that kind of money (and I think Michael makes a lot more than $10k/month) dabble in financial and travel products. In those industries you can make a LOT more than your average 5% commission. Amazon is not the way to go rich, unless you have really high traffic - the high performance Amazon affiliates in the Amazon forum report around $5k-$7k/month in sales (well, those that are brash enough to blantantly scan their checks and post them online anyway :)).
I've read that a lead (not a sale) for a loan or a mortgage refinance will yield $60 bucks. Four or five of those a day gets you your $10k. Of course if you run PPC to advertise it your actual profit might be lower... not to mention, the competition over those items and products is fierce.
Gopi - I agree, too many merchants is not good either. I'm just having a hard time making more from the ones I have now. One of my problems is the one typeA site I have - I think its a little too competitive for me. I didn't realize it when I started the site. I am making some money with it though, so I want to keep it. I have a few merchants for that site and its an industry I'm sure someone could make >10,000/month with - I just haven't been able to yet.
I don't think I could compete with the financial or travel people either, despite how much I've learned about SEO from this site.
Financial leads generally yield between $6-25. The applications that will get you upwards of $60 come from closed deals (or atleast very complicated and detailed forms/apps), whereas the 'leads' are simply prequalifications.
Also, selling high-profit items can do it to. Some ink companies offer 25-30%, some software companies offer 50%. And trust me, there is a huge difference between 10 and 25% :)
Edit: a few more I can think of.. hosting can hit upwards of $100 commission with brave midsized contenders, and there are many many $50/60 commissions out there.
And satellite as well, upwards of $50/60 a sale is possible with the right resellers.
1) paying for your own health insurance
2) paying self employment taxes
everything else is pretty awesome
;)
Health savings accounts should benefit many self employed persons in USA. Not sure when posting links is ok (no affiliations and appears to be non revenue site) but hsainsider.com appears to be a good site for information.
sorry if off topic, just thought it would be helpful
But ...
- Work whenever you want
- No boss
- Work whenever
- NO boss
These make up for everything.
lol - even as I am preparing to go full time in AM I can feel it already the walls in my house getting smaller :) and sometimes if the day is great out there I don't want to work - so yes I've experienced some of the isolation and lack of motivation all in one go ...
Me, I graduated high school with a C+ average, the hardest class I took was "metal shop" went into the tried and true blue collar job of choice "construction" and never made more than 50K in one year.
We met online and the first month we went out, I was only doing affiliate marketing as I quit my job, I mad e a total of $130.
Not too long later I now make over 3 times what my wife does, she has to ask for days off and count them against vacation time, me on the other hand, vacation? sure why not! Am I gloating about this fact? Hmmmmm.
I also know from being in the hard ass world of construction for so many years that things change rapidly. For this reason I save all my money within reason, and even though I don't have to work at all hardly, I still put in a good 6-8 hours a day looking to expand and consolidate my gains.
To me the way affiliate marketing is, it's like the gold rush in the 1800's. If you just keep digging and looking, sooner or later you'll hit a rich vain and you work it hard till it runs out. After a while and a lot of looking, (trying things) you just get better at finding the vains of gold.
Lot's of people in and out to talk to and it puts me more in a work frame of mind as opposed to watching tv while sitting on the couch with a laptop.
So tell me, does everyone here have more than one site, or is it a one site thing? I have one site that's going well, but I've been getting ideas about starting another site, on a completely different topic... Is that the way to go, or concentrate on that one site?
Sure, focus almost all of your attention on one site if you wish, but it may be prudent to develop a few other income streams on the side too.
Personally I would rather have a bunch of small sites each making me 200+ per month, than a few big sites.
C.K.
But usually it consists of doing nothing but walking down the beach (Malibu) with my yellow lab. Stephen Spielberg, & Sean Connery live nearby, but they are too busy working (chumps).
Every other month I fly to Mexico in my other jet (747-400) with some of my close friends. We go down there to do a little sport fishing.
Every 6 months I update my website.
(Sounds like it may be the life of a Google founder? That isn't me though.)
Hey I got that lifestyle too!
...and then I wake up and go back to the daily grind.
A friend warned me, "When you leave your job, you will get much less done. You will have tons more time, but you will be much less productive (until you crack the whip). The irony will blow you away."
Sure enough, that is exactly what happened. For awhile, I was working about 45 minutes a day. I was lazy and the money was great, so the inspiration to do more was fleeting.
As for the social aspect of working at home... I kid a friend at the office because he always complains that he never meets anyone. Me? I just went to a wedding this weekend. Got two phone numbers (had to work hard for one of them) and was picked up on by another. I'm currently dating someone that I met recently at a coffeehouse that I frequent. I've been invited to a Halloween party by one of HER friends.
Working at home won't prevent you from meeting people. Only a shy personality will do that.
Some days I fly to Europe on my private jet, other days I just drive my Lamborghini down Melrose (look for the yellow Murcielago if you live in LA).
But usually it consists of doing nothing but walking down the beach (Malibu) with my yellow lab. Stephen Spielberg, & Sean Connery live nearby, but they are too busy working (chumps).
And I eat dinner at fancy restaurants every night with my wife...Morgan Fairchild! Yeah, that's the ticket! We pay for our dinner with real spanish dubloons recovered from the sunken vessel belonging to my great-grandfather...BlackBeard the Pirate. Yeah! That's the ticket! And then we call the babysitter...Queen Elizabeth! Yeah! That's the ticket! And we tell her we're going for a quick space flight to the moon before coming home to our three MENSA children!
Personally I would rather have a bunch of small sites each making me 200+ per month, than a few big sites.
How much traffic does a "small site" generate? ;)
How much traffic does a "small site" generate? ;)
I had no idea it was ever about traffic. Personally I look at how much it is making me, minus the ad expenses. I send targeted traffic to the site, that is the best I can do.
I really don't care how much traffic a bigger site gets... It's the bottom line.
C.K.
traffic is important in the sense that without ANY traffic, there won't be any profit.
<say this to your favourite lullaby song>
a little bit of traffic that makes a ton of money is better than a ton of traffic that makes no money, but a ton of traffic that makes a ton of money is better than a little bit of traffic that makes a ton of money.
:)
Wins for me every day. Why spend more in PPC/bandwidth for the same "ton"?
I'm just being facetious :)...my last day on my job is tomorrow (maybe my last job forever?), and I'll be off to England the month after.
Rfung, realize that you are doing right now, what I dream of doing while at work everyday.
I work, and think at the same time. I can see my last day there, and then me leaving to go move to another province. And I would love to go to England too. I swear, I am right behind ya! It will happen sometime this year.
About the traffic thing. I can see where you are coming from. All I worry about is doing what I can about traffic. So far all that is from is AdWords... Soon Overture. So as long as I do my part in finding as many targeted KeyWords as I can for the niche I am trying to profit from, then I can't really do any more.
Yes, In theory if you have targeted traffic and get say a 2% CR, and then ad more targeted traffic to it, then you should make more profit.
C.K.
Well i have been in the computer/internet field for 24 years. I'm burnt. Luckily I found adsense and will do my best to apply what i know to make it work for me. We have been doing the traffic targeting thing for clients since we started but I think it's going to be more fun/rewarding to target what i want, not other clients. I love my work but after so many years maybe there's something better :)
