Forum Moderators: skibum
Disclaimer: I am not a expert affiliate marketer - some folks here can earn what took me months to learn in a few days only. But I found out what works for me and until my knowledge increases and develops, I'll stick to it - it just takes a bit longer, and the money's still good ;)
A quick recap of my background so far just to reintroduce the thread:
Recently off school, and working full time as a web designer for a year - when an early mid life crisis struck me - is this what life is about? a 9-7 job, go home, go work, repeat ad nauseum? I've found out that most people coming out from school faces those questions about life - I was no different than them.
Except - I had an idea for a website - a textbook swap and price comparison - this was an idea from way back while I was in school - but one that I didn't have the time or the full technical knowhow to implement. Now that I was done with school and facing the prospect of running in the rat race for eternity, it became more of a drive to get something going - I started building it and that's when I ran into Amazon affiliate program and datafeeds.
Within weeks I had a semi functional site running - and started doing some link exchanging. While searching for some help on the topic, I ran into webmasterworld! At first I was interested only in the link development forum, then somehow I migrated here to affiliate sales - while here, I started realizing that there were many people making money selling all sorts of things. I was only interested in how I could do Amazon better, primarily because I knew how to do their datafeeds, but also because textbooks was all I knew about. Mortgage? Credit cards? Hotel reservations? Gambling? I knew nothing about those industries!
Anyway to keep this (relatively) short - a year ago I discovered this forum. 6 months later I had a decent textbook site which was making me about $20/day. At that point I was already up to my ears from the corporate drone lifestyle and just about ready to quit my job - it was a gamble, but one would only need to look at the potential of affiliate marketing to know that if you play your cards right and you have some sort of idea what to do, the skies were the limit. It fit perfectly with the feelings I was going through, avoiding the rat race, doing something for myself, where I wasn't trading time for money, but instead building a sort of 'equity'. I pondered - if I am doing this part time and I can earn $20/day - then what happens if I go all out and do it full time? A fairly easy decision - I quit my job at the end of September.
Should I fail in affiliate marketing - I only have the next 45 years to work for someone else. Heh! In the meantime, the two problems I face is that I'm really bored with staying in the house for so long :) and to save money I moved in the the parents - to change a bit from this routine, I've decided to move out to europe and live somewhere over there while still doing more sites.
This new thread now will try to convey my ongoing quest to move from the $100/day I reached last month (6 months after I went full time) to $300/day - which is just short of $10k/month, a VERY nice round sum to reach, in my opinion :)... The $100/day pretty much lets me live anywhere in the world fairly comfortably (if it's not the french riviera, or beverly hills - you get my drift), but $300/day would let me actually start saving and possibly investing in real estate, and thus diversify one's revenue streams. That's the plan anyway.
...so after this extensive (re) introduction:
Last month my revenue was about $100+/day. Most of it was adsense - and so this month I was hit bad when adsense decided to go wacko and lost 40% of the revenue stream. Luckily, a site redesign increased the click throughs to make up for the shortfall, with the net effect that I'm a little bit over $100/day with adsense and affiliate sales combined. The current revenue for February has been around $135/day. Should it keep steady till the end of the month, that'll be $3750 in my pockets.
One site I put up last month - consumer products for women - I linked it to my PR5/Pr4 sites and got immediately indexed, and a few days later it was being found by surfers. This month adsense has started showing and paying(some pages still show public service ads) - from a paltry 50 cents at the beginning of this month, to $11 bucks today :) not a lot by any stretch of the imagination, but this is how all sites start anyway!... it has also generated some affiliate sales, so all together the new site has pulled in about $100 bucks.... We'll see how it grows(or not) in the following months.
I also have one site redesign to go through - this site is based on an amazon feed and has about 50,000 pages indexed - it gets some traffic, but due to the bad design it doesn't convert nearly as well as I'd like. Another site I have lined up was going to sell products from HSN.com - again, still in the works. I'm sure once I get those two sites up I can boost my daily revenue to closer to mid $100's...
Anyway - let's see how long it take me to get to $300/day. Place your bets, gentlemen! :)
but it comes right from Google so you know it's legit.
That's only if you assume they never put out patents just to confuse things for the SEO forums crowd as to what they are really up to. :)
Therefore, I can now say that one's own perceptions about AM can change dramatically as more pages get indexed and found in M/Y. Last month, rfung's $300/day target seemed distant and now I am thinking about having a $1K day every day :)
After a busy day job in marketing, this is still a pleasant hobby activity and a great way to learn about customer behaviour and usability of web sites. I now build 1-2, sometimes 4-5 sites each weekend and just move on without too much analysis of how earlier sites are performing. Most long-term AMers say the same thing - just keep building and move on. I wasted almost a year by trying it on 20-odd pages and wondering why I made very little money. :)
Welcome to Webmasterworld.
Noticed you just joined this forum and then went after RFung right off the bat. Interesting way to announce your arrival!
Like most others on this forum, I do not know RFung personally, but I consider everyone trustworthy unless s/he proves otherwise. FWIW, I have found Rfung's posts to be quite informative and inspiring.
I too try to contribute as best as I can (which often means not a whole lot!) here. I look forward to reading your helpful contributions at this forum as well.
Peace!
rfung doesn't need another supporter, but I'll lend my support anyway.
I've chatted with him quite a few times via IM and he's been nothing but honest and helpful. We've exchanged ideas and he's given me sound advice.
If the skeptical "seasoned internet marketer" is searching for 'textbooks' to try and find his site, may I humbly suggest you're on the wrong track. If you were his target audience, would you search for 'textbooks'?
I'll leave the rest to you...
I am an seasoned internet marketer with over six years under my belt promoting various online businsses and services.
I've only started affiliate program for about the same time as rfung ( i know this from recent chat via AIM) but have avg. close to $300 a day this past two months. It's 90% hard work and 10% luck and timing.
A seasoned internet marketer should be able to make a minimum 10x my current online income.
kz
are those sites you build each weekend big sites (datafeeds, etc..) or small very targeted sites with just a few pages?
I'm kind of in the same situation as you. I have a day job in marketing and a bunch of sites on the side that make me a little more than $1K per month.
I really want to try to take this AM thing to the next level and make a serious income.
Is your traffic from PPC or SEO? And, you really think success in this business is just matter of building site after site non-stop? Just a game of numbers?
by the way... .... .... heard a lot about the RSS feed 'thing' but i am not really sure about all these ...doesn't satisfy with what i can get from the one hour search from G and in WW forum ..appreciates if anyone here can point me to some good/dumie readings ... just a sticky pointing me to some good resources will be very very good enough.
thanks a lot in advance.
[ sorry for the off topic question ...however rfung, your quest to $300/day is much related to RSS, right? ;) ]
My way is only one of several ways people are being succesful with, so take everything in perspective...
:)
I don't see the concern on basing your revenue off organics as long as you diversified. It's highly unlikely all your sites would be dropped. Of course, I'm not sure if rfung is diversified enough yet, but he's certainly got the opportunity to do that now that he sees what can happen to one site. The point is organics in themselves are not a liability to a business.
Absotively!
As long as there are organic engines, there will be organic results. Relevant results. All you must do is make your sites the most relevant they can be and become authorities in that category. Keep adding content and links, and you won't have to sweat over every little tweak to the algorithm.
Algo updates aren't designed to kick a site out of the index - they're designed to improve the relevance of the top results. If you are a top site in your category, your site is helping to "set the standard" for future top results - that's why it's hard to knock a top-ten site out of it's position. The only exception is if a top-ten site got there by using spammy techniques.
OK, so I had a couple of $1000 days, but they were from commission from one single network, probably someone buying the same expensive item on two days. Not knowing what it is, I don't know if they will need to buy any more for ten years. :)
I spend < $3/day on Adwords. That is for market research, not directly to make money. ;)
I was really supporting rfung when the newbie jumped in with his sceptical remarks. To get back to rfung's thread, it's better to be doing a steady $300/day than have peaks and troughs. At the Orlando conference I think it was skibum's presentation where he showed a slide of about 50 cheques on the floor, and he said he would stick the photo on his wall to remind him of a good month. Apparently, some were small amounts, but the message was that it is better to diversify and make small amounts than to build a monolith supersite and worry about ranking, 302 hijacks etc. We have members here with over 500 sites, but it has taken them 3-4 years to build. Some are 1-2 page content sites with AS; some are product sites, some are forums.
The true moneyspinners are the ones in the AdSense forum and elsewhere who hint that they are in the AS "UPS Club". I know some who don't post much because it is their livelihood and have literally dozens of staff to manage a single online property. They observe and apply the new tips they pick up.
At my humble level of AM earnings, I find it helps to "give a little and get a lot". By way of example, I haven't spent a cent (other than $5 to set up) on Adwords - my WW friends give me any coupons they can't use themselves and I do likewise. (It pays to attend G seminars) :)
Ash
Nice post anallawalla. I agree - getting checks from many different sources is much better.
I would rather have 50 sites than 5 sites earning money!
C.K.
the $100-150/month cashflow doesn't have to come from free traffic... as long as there's a positive cashflow it's still a good deal...
It's just that the motivation is a bit lacking - a bit of success can make you a lazy bum. Once I settle in Seville in a few days, I should get back on track. right now my internet access is from the computer at the hostel, and they dont have SQL/dreamweaver installed... ;)
I don't see the concern on basing your revenue off organics as long as you diversified. It's highly unlikely all your sites would be dropped.
But if your traffic is all organic (SEO), your traffic isn't diversified. Odds are the bulk of it is coming from Google. A well rounded site will also get traffic from PPC (assuming the site can make more than $0.05 per visitor) and word of mouth (what I call "organic") methods as well.
Even if you have 500 sites all relying on SEO, if they all use the same methods, they could all be dropped in a very short amount of time. If they're on the same host, have the same templates, are interlinked, or get links from most of the same sources, it's even more likely.
When people talk about diversification, they're often talking about a single aspect. You need diversification in your niches, diversification in your traffic sources, diversification in your merchants, diversification in your revenues, diversification in your markets, etc.
When people talk about diversification, they're often talking about a single aspect. You need diversification in your niches, diversification in your traffic sources, diversification in your merchants, diversification in your revenues, diversification in your markets, etc.
I think that _ultimately_ this is what any of us should be striving for total protection - heck, in fact, even at this point, you're still relying on all your income coming from the internet. Diversification could be taken a step further into real estate, or stock market, etc.
In practice, at the same time there's value in diversification, there's more value in specialization. The more you do a certain method, the better you get at it. Anyone of us starting out has to face the decision of keep doing what's been succesful for you for relative certainty of profits, or spend your energies into something new. At the point where I'm making $300/day consistently, I may try other methods, and if they don't succeed, its okay because I still have a base of revenue coming in. But, if I'm making $10/day and I know I can replicate that success, it would be foolish to drop that in favor of trying to stick to the rule of diversification by trying something new and untested.
You've already fallen into the trap that if you start making $300 a day off of free traffic, that's your base of revenue. Your base of your business is free traffic from search engines? Just as easy as you can replicate a $10 a day little site, Google can knock it to zero and start a little replicating on it's own.
Many before you have fallen for the same trap becoming reliant and considering free traffic as a base. Some recover, some don't and have to get a job, some make good Ebay power sellers.
Have another question. Of your free SE traffic, what percentage comes from Google, Yahoo, MSN?
"It's just that the motivation is a bit lacking - a bit of success can make you a lazy bum."
Another trap. Once you start making a little money, you start feeling comfortable, maybe not working as hard as you did when first starting out. But there's always competition out there looking to wipe you in the SE's, could be some up and comer that's working as hard as you used to or found the same niche and about to bounce you off a few nice listings.
Anyone here hear of Brett before webmasterworld? I rest my case :)
You've already fallen into the trap that if you start making $300 a day off of free traffic, that's your base of revenue. Your base of your business is free traffic from search engines? Just as easy as you can replicate a $10 a day little site, Google can knock it to zero and start a little replicating on it's own.
Many before you have fallen for the same trap becoming reliant and considering free traffic as a base. Some recover, some don't and have to get a job, some make good Ebay power sellers.
Sorry - I don't believe that. From what I understand you're saying that's like saying never to use free traffic whatsoever, which in my opinion is just foolish. Yes, google can knock it to the ground (as it apparently has done so for me) but so what? business goes up and down, and I've raked in some tidy profit for the time it lasted/lasts. People doing PPC may find products that are fashionable at the moment and those campaigns too can die but I doubt anyone would jump in to say 'dont bother with that, because it will only last a couple months'. Competition plays a part in PPC too. Besides, I meant to say that I'll specialize in free traffic for my first $300/day, then I will try my next $300/day with PPC, and then my $300/day with one page sites, so on and such. We all have to start somewhere and stick to it for a while and set goals to accomplish.
About being lazy with a bit of success -just about there I admitted it's a problem.:) But at $150-$200/day would I rather spend my days programming new sites or enjoying Barcelona?... besides, I will get back to it, don't worry....be happy... life is not all about business, or affiliate marketing.
This whole thread is my way to help others (and as Michael says, you do get to meet some cool people and even get some ideas too) - it's all a prelude for my upcoming ebook MLM chain mail mass spam ultra affiliate handbook...
[edited by: rfung at 8:42 pm (utc) on April 23, 2005]
When people talk about diversification, they're often talking about a single aspect. You need diversification in your niches, diversification in your traffic sources, diversification in your merchants, diversification in your revenues, diversification in your markets, etc.
MovingOnUp, could you explain what you mean by the last 2? (revenues and markets).
Wouldn't markets be the same a niches?
C.K.
Where do you see that? Quote me. I said free traffic is great but don't base your business on it, that's just common sense. Do you disagree with that?
