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! :)
What a lovely way to introduce yourself.
And whoever said that and upset the whole of Spain with just one post, wash your mouth out with soap, Spain has got more to offer than most countries and is an online marketer's dream. On second thoughts, maybe the negative poster already knew that and was just being tactical :)
Others plans include trying to learn Dutch in Amsterdam (hence my stay there for 6 months) after Seville with side trips to Poland and Czech Rep (and who knows Greece too). Go back home for Xmas, and fly out again to Thailand for a few more months. And of course, work on the sites. Money and time permitting.(no problem with time..:D, and money, we'll see). I'm living like a backpacker, really.
The allergies are killing me though. No freakin claritin anywhere.
Oh, this is a web forum - end of month report - it seems for April I'll have averaged a bit less than $200/day, or close to $6k.
I think the numbers as they stand are:
Feb - $130/day
March - freak month - $230/day
April - $190/day
I've asked my folks back home to set up a savings account so I can start putting tax money aside. I can see already I may have to pony up close to $20k at the end of the year...
My big site is down to 700 indexed pages (without titles) on Google, but I haven't noticed any drop in revenues since this all started about 2 weeks ago. I'm still waiting to see if a bomb's gonna drop anytime soon...
Others plans include trying to learn Dutch in Amsterdam (hence my stay there for 6 months)
It seems like when I search for something on the web there are countless useless sites many of which appear to be generated by some sort of dynamic content scavenging machines. I bet there are thousands of copies of the PHP manual floating around out there.
I'm guessing that in the long run nobody makes money without adding value, but then I keep thinking of Nasdaq 6000 or whatever the top was.:)
For someone with your cultural level probably the most interesting thing you can see here is the McDonald's
I was really only kidding with my comments and I think most of the readers got that. Spain is a beautiful place in a unique setting and never lacking in opportunity.
All - As for belief in making money, I didn't believe AdSense was worth looking into... then I put it on some sites and realized I had missed on hundreds of dollars, maybe thousands.
I'm in the 5 to 20 bucks per day range right now, for Adsense. Other revenue is double that, but more variable.
Inspired by the early $5 per day, I worked with my partner on how to go to the *next level*... which I saw as a progression from x dollars per day to 110% of x, then 120%, etc. On one of the sites, adding content - a page or so per week - has helped in traffic and in earnings. The regular work on getting it into the 2nd and 3rd tier SE's doesn't seem to have done much, but hasn't hurt.
Buying traffic from the bulk sellers didn't do squat, but it of course could boost an Alexa ranking if you want that.
On one site (it is targeting a common and timeless entertainment-related term, and was buried in some SERPS after an initial top 5 pos.), getting into DMOZ seems to have helped to pretty much match the search #'s per month that Overture's stats said are searched (hundreds per day). Low revenue, but it could get to $1000 per month based on a new idea that would leverage some other services that the demographics are probably happy to pay for.
Mostly I attrib. slow results in revenue growth to slow rate of making new pages and working my plan. Yes, I do have a plan, of sorts, and when personal life interrupts it then I regret the slowdown later.
But I've added some new content in various categories - finance, business, games, internet - and will be waiting for the results as I add even more.
After a redesign and expansion (from 20 to 50+ pages) of a business-related site with content that is timeless and always in demand, we're going to focus on a finance-related site with content that is timeless and always in demand. I reg'd a domain name a few years ago, and now for a year or more can see PPC ads targeting the very unique name that I came up with (imitation = flattery). Funny.
But I'm now intriqued by the idea of "build 1-5 sites per weekend" type of approach, as I have probably enough areas of interest to make that work.
It does seem to be a combination of niche & also simply numbers. Some niches do better, so get more traffic. Revenue is about a penny per page view, or $10 CPM, but as we all know (those with mulitple sites) it varies by theme.
Diversify? I used to be a SEO guru, but haven't focused too much (except to undo what became passe) lately. I rely 95+% on organic results, and could probably double my income by improving those. I use PPC just for fun, as I'm too busy to track the results. I've done the calculations of how to make a perpetual money machine, buying penny or nickel clicks and turning each one into a dime, but it hasn't worked yet.
But, I'm also going for a new idea (on 1 of the main sites to be focused on next) that is a twist on a successful strategy that will bring many organic and also returning visitors. There is a cost involved, but it is a one-time cost (no, not Yahoo! directory, but that is also in the cards).
I agree that to diversify away from internet-related income is a necessary long-term strategy. I make more *side money* from what you could call a hobby I have picked up, than from websites. Only the high risk of leaving a paying gig stops me from making the hobby pay $100k+ per year (it might do that this year, but it's risky and a long cycle time... intangible process). (Before you ask, I cannot reveal any more about the hobby here, publicly or private, but it is legal/moral and my family endorses it).
Good luck to everyone in their quests for higher income, because it *is* being done, and can be done by anyone who tries. I liken it to real estate, which is lucrative.... dry and tedious for many people, but with the right personality or zeal.... anyone heard of some Fired-up dude named Donald Trump?
Can search engine find the CMS website's content?
Kitty
The income is $8.00 to $10.00 per day only.
So I want to setup the 100 pages website.
Kitty
Kittychuck I would use a blog to experiment but for a major website get a host.
I'd also suggest doing some research for a CMS, because phpNuke is truly awful as far as most things go.
chris
I wish it had some value in it, like me saying I've broken the $300/day barrier, but alas.
A post for post's sake it is!
How're you coming along in your quest?
Pls e-mail when you will be in Poland? I may be a same time, you may stay in my sister house in Wroclaw or I may arrange locum for you in Warszaw
Do you planing to visit China? having here a lot of rooms, OK Internet. 2 bowls of rice a day - no problem
:-)
jan
rfung - Do you have a fan site somewhere? I mean one where we are your fans. You ought to make one and put some pictures on it, tell about your adventures, maybe sell some hotel rooms. Watch out EFV!
I certianly am inspired by reading this but the question is still in the back of my mind. How do you get these sites of the ground? I have 7 sites which are a combination of content sites and datafeed sites (I use Webmerge). The datafeed sites are doing virtually nothing for sales after over 6 months. I have a couple hundred pages indexed for each site.
How much time is spent after the sites are launched getting IBL, etc? Do you just link from one of your established sites?
My two main sites (both mainly content)are seasonal and during the winter they were giving me about $35 / day but that has tanked to about $10 +- / day. I know that building some sites that aren't seasonal will help this but since the datafeed sites I have are not performing well I must be doing something wrong.
If anyone could enlighten me on how to get my sites off the ground I would really appreciate it.
All the best.
Dave
my sites so far start earning money after 2-3 weeks, period.
my sites so far start earning money after 2-3 weeks, period."
Possibly. I have a fairly diversified set of niches though.
I plan to keep on keeping on and launch some more sites soon.
I just started a new site a few weeks ago. It's about a subject that is well-covered by other sites, but I've tried to *sort of* find a niche within this niche. ;) I don't know how well I'll do with it, but it's a topic that I've written about before. I just never made a whole web site about it!
I make a decent side income from several sites (a "big" one and several smaller ones). Most of the money comes from Adsense, but Amazon and CJ play a part too. I would like to diversify more, but there's so much work to do, so much to learn ...
rfung - Do you have a fan site somewhere?
If rfung created a fan site, with adsense on it, he would be on $500 a day:)
I have been doing $1200 per day over the past 8 months (on average).
I am not based in the US so maybe that helps me!
If anyone wants any tips/tricks then I would be happy help - that is what these forums are intended for I hope!
Go on rfung!
I have been doing $1200 per day over the past 8 months (on average).I am not based in the US so maybe that helps me!
If anyone wants any tips/tricks then I would be happy help - that is what these forums are intended for I hope!
Well shoot, Swanson, you don't need any kind of invitation. Tell us what you know. Very few of us are making that kind of money. Really. How can you help?
any pearls of wisdom would be greatfully received
It got so busy my web hosting disabled my index page because it caused 3 shutdowns of the server in the space of 5 minutes for all the sites on it. Very strange, and I'm wondering if I am being target of click fraud.
Google, I'm innocent!
Swanson: I'm up for a little exposure to whatever pearls of wisdom you care to impart.
Cheers,
BAD
