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! :)
Its just that to establish that sound base needed to enjoy the lifestyle takes quite a bit of risk management. I agree that doing the groundwork at the beginning - writing systems (your formula) for your sites and then launching them does save the need to work like mad all the time from then on.
Its just that you need to get past a certain threshold to protect yourself otherwise a few months of low income can force your hand into having to go back to a less satisfactory lifestyle.
rfung, its an inspirational story that has helped so many people - I know you will make it succeed.
Fortunately I got lots of free time in July and August which I will probably dedicate to improve my website by adding and improving features aimed at generating more organic traffic.
i'm still hoping to achieve at least $300/day by October ;).
Bourbon wiped us out, too. Down to 1/4 of what we were making, and now we're in the red every day.
This is funny though - we're not 100% wiped out. We are, in fact, where we were last year at this time in revenue.
We're definitely not giving up. Hell, we can lose money for nearly a year before we'd be in a position to have to do something else. We were only days away from Phase 2 of our growth program here, anyway, so hopefully we'll be back on top soon.
Enjoy Spain,
Hunter
Unless you were living off AS/AM with a lot of responsabilities that now you no longer can satisfy, you just end up with a little bit less money on the bank every month.
On a brighter note, I just found a new flat to live here in Seville, one with internet. I'll be jacked in back into the world in no time;)
Now that hurts.
After reading most of this thread, I took the plunge and swapped out all 336x280 rectangles to Adsense yesterday. Got a 1.6% click through, ~19,000 impressions and almost $19.00 in revenue. Add that to my traditional banner ads (no pops) and I turned in a $33.00 day. Pretty good for us, as I'm still learning the ropes, even though our site is going to have its 10th anniversary this year.
Hope to continue to learn from these forums, and hopefully contribute as well.
Thanks everyone!
There will always be the opportunity to work, but you won't always have the opportunity to go out and do the things you want to do. I definitely think rfung should keep on enjoying life, and slowly work towards the goal. After all, money is neither a limited resource nor something that should be an end in itself- just something to help you do the things you really want to do in life.
I've been semi-retired since 2001... I started AM in college and once I graduated, I just didn't bother getting a job.
Like most Affiliate Marketers, I've had some great times, some really tough times and then, some more great times! :)
I always said: "it's better to regret something you HAVE done than to regret something you HAVEN'T done..." Enjoy life and relax while you can... if things fall apart, *then* get a job.
Don't worry folks, Search Engines always mix things up, just work on fixing the "problems" that caused your poor rankings, eventually you will have a super stable site that will withstand most SE shakeups.
I couldn't agree more.
It may be that when a strategy you've tried isn't working, it's time to step back, reflect, and consider new strategies, rather than working harder at the same old one.
It may be that when a strategy you've tried isn't working, it's time to step back, reflect, and consider new strategies, rather than working harder at the same old one.
Thats all well and good. Except when your strategies are supposed to conform to the way of the web. By that i mean your SEO is perfect, you have great inbound links etc etc. Then Google goes and whacks its head and starts pulling some proper spastic manoeuvres and moves the goalposts for everyone who has conformed to the guidelines ;oP
Ska
Google is getting smarter with experience and the old "tried and true" ways of manipulating them are running into trouble. It's a big game and when the old ways no longer work so well, then it's time to step back, get some perspective, go back to the drawing board, and try anew. That's my take, but I'm always interested in other points of view.
As you said it is time to move on and find new ways to beat the algos. Does that mean we all have to start creating spammy sites consisting of other peoples hard work?
Fortunately I don't rely on the web for my income. AM is a hobby and as long as it pays the rent on domains and hosting I can wait and learn.
One day, One day
;oP
Ska
Ska
Thats what I mean ;oP
Ska
Just under a month ago I started putting adsense banners and text links on a few pages to see what would happen. So far I’m averaging about $4 per day. Ok, I’m hooked. I’m now giving the site a makeover, adding more content and will put adsense on all pages. Then with the tips I’ve picked up from this forum I’ll experiment with some affiliate adds.
Call me an underachiever but my target at the moment is to get to $20 per day.
There is some great info in this thread that others will never see.
Now that some of the Bourbon update is changing again (we're seeing *some* recovery of traffic and income, maybe just enough to skate by while we diversify) is any of your income coming back?
Inquiring minds want to know,
Hunter.
My affiliate revenue has been steady, oddly enough. I would have thought it would go down in direct correlation to lower traffic, but I'm pleasently surprised to see average of $30/day from affiliate sales only.
And yes, I'd second the request for people to post many of these questions on the main forum - you're bound to get a lot better answers than the few people who are signed up for this thread.
I haven't done much in the way of work - Sevillian work ethic has been all around me, undermining my efforts. Most of my friends here in town will be leaving back to their countries, so I may stay for 2-3 weeks more here. Without so much social activities, I can better focus on work... :D
we invest huge amounts of energy into "fooling" (... Google... ) into believing that our sites are the most deserving of their top rankings
Not all of us, surfin2u >;->
Some of us are busy investing time and imagination making sure that our sites are the most deserving of their top rankings.
It's a slower start but it does make it a lot easier to ride out the storms like Bourbon.
Okay, so I can afford to be smug because Bourbon doesn't seem to have touched my site... but I suppose now I'll see my empire collapse in ruins come the next major update... >;->
I'm currently looking to reach $400/day by the end of this month but it's proving more of a struggle than I'd anticipated...
Not all of us, surfin2u >;->Some of us are busy investing time and imagination making sure that our sites are the most deserving of their top rankings.
I couldn't agree with you more. I like to think that my site really deserves the top rankings that it gets. The praise from visitors and advertisers doesn't hurt either... ;-)
Good luck with $400 a day.
The praise from visitors and advertisers doesn't hurt either... ;-)
Amen to that.
Good luck with $400 a day.
Thanks. I just found a new client, so I might make the target after all.
I used to get a lot of returns but I solved that by selling product testers. Women love this feature and don't mind paying for them ($2.00 each + shipping). I make $1.00 off each one and $1.00 on the shipping so I'm ahead of the game. My returns have fallen to almost zero.
Another good thing about the tester samples is that customers, concerned about purchasing from a new vendor, will take the chance if it is only a few dollars involved. We offer very speedy shipping, promising to deliver in 3 days and we usually do so the next day. We under promise and over deliver. We amaze them with this and this gives them confidence to return to make actual product purchases. Shopping cart abandonment has also been reduced.
I have also spent time working on my conversion rate. What I have found works well is testimonials. I use the Yahoo Store interface for ordering and there is a customer feed back feature. We take all the wonderful testimonials we receive and plaster them all over the site. Again, we build confidence.
Although I sell color items, and I have huge images on the site, my site loads in 8 seconds, so customers don't get turned off and leave. I used to lose a lot of traffic when the site loaded in 20 seconds.
Having done all of that, I think I'm ready to start advertising. I did not want to spend $100 a day on advertising, with poor conversions, slow loading times and a high % of returns. It would not have been cost efficient.
Even if I spend $100/day and I make $100/day more in profit, I know I'll work hard like hell to keep the customerf or life. I'll make my profits on the back end. I could live with that, since I'm here for the long haul. My next goal is $500/day profit.
