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! :)
It is my own stock but I use a fulfillment company to pick, pack and ship.
Thanks.
i mentioned earlier that my adsense was down, but oddly enough my AM was steady. I just found out why - one of my sites that got hit back in December/January by an update must have gotten a bump up on this update that brought my main site down. This is very reasuring, because it may suggest I have two types of sites (basic datafeed, but with different codebase) that can weather different types of algorythms.
In the next 2-3 days I will be launching a new site, and we'll see how that ones fares.
Thanks to Bourbon that site is now back to it's pre December traffic.
When you say "basic datafeed site" do you mean just a straight site generated from a datafeed or a site generated from a dafeed but with some sort of value adding (like your comparison site)?
Cheers,
BAD
My problem is that I have been out of service to make new websites, or even to think about new ideas. Sequences of changing my lifestyle from a computer geek to a silly social citizen.
Waiting for your sticky :)
If we joined forces I'm confident we could make some money on your mystery site, and get some people using your forum, respectively.
I thought this thread was taking a respite, since I'm obviously not making anywhere close to $300/day, but it keeps popping back up in the charts...
For the record, for the month of June I ended up at around $100/day, sooo, im kinda back where I started at the beginning of this thread. I'm thinking this thread should just die because it's awfully long with inane banter (yeah, some of it is mine, guilty as charged!) and later on I'll start another 'The Quest to $300/day - episode II' or something silly like that...
Made a couple of changes on the site and went to $10-20 a day with spikes to $24 up to $30-50 a day with spikes to near $60. This is on 1 site, not multiples.
My goal is the $100 then we'll see from there. Have a new site launch for the existing site next month(hopefully) and a new site, related topic later this year.
Just wanted to say to everyone here, thanks for the motivation and tips. And yes, I did pay the subscription fee for these forums, just to show my gratitude and support for the fine people running the joint.
Cheers,
Dan
What have you found the monthly costs to be in Europe? I'm going next year...I read you were living like a backpacker and I'll probably do the same so I think costs would be similar.
I've said it before, but as I write this at 3am back from yet another nice hang out night, I'll say it again - AM buys you time, which lets life to be enjoyed while you're young, and I'm having a very very very nice time here in spain....the 20 year old hot german girl I've been hanging out helps seal the deal for me too:)
ok, lousy plugin, but the point is made - I've gone this way because I didn't want to bust my ass working 10 hours a day in an office, only so i could enjoy life after 65. Early on I was on IM chatting with my cousin, who's busy with a big project for his company. He mentioned that he wants to keep working the corporate job because, on his own words 'my boss just bought a porsche'. Friggin-A, I say. I wouldn't trade the 2 months I've had so far for no fancy car, because with with Porsche comes a boatload of responsabilities... that's not to say I'm not being responsible now either. I am, but it doesn't include working for other people....
ok, i'll get off my drunken soapbox now...
Amen to that, since you might not even make to 65.
Life is for living not working 40 per week for 45 years.
Sevillian culture is unlike Madrid's or even Barcelona's - Sevillianos drink the most beer and go out the most in Spain. Beer is like water here. You always come home happy, but never (well, almost never) full out drunk, unlike in the UK. Happy but not to the point you'll regret the next day with a big hangover.
The 'bar' culture, and a bar here is always a mix of restaurant/coffee shop/bar is very big - there are at least 20 bars in my neighborhood. The weather is very hot during the afternoon, so the city almost closes around 2-7pm, and reopens later on so there's always people on the streets until 2-3am, every single day. It has a huge walking city center, with small streets you can walk with friends back and forth. Not like you'd want a car here, with narrow streets and no parking, but a scooter would be a nice thing to have. Compare that to San Jose, California, where to go to the 'local' supermarket, you have to drive 5-10 minutes.
Sevillian women are beautiful (even expat women agree ), the men are ugly, which makes you feel like you actually have a chance, damn!, if not, at least its more pleasant to walk around with good eye candy around you, but Spanish people are a bit closed too, because specially here it's a smaller city, and relationships matter more too. I know a lot more students and a few expats than locals, but everyone is generally friendly.
Anyway, that's where I've been the past couple months. I already changed my plans for the next 6 months to include countries where now I know people to stay with, which makes my trip so much more enjoyable. For those who have travelled/backpacked before, this is standard travelling fare, really.
But alas, this is not a travelling forum, so let's resume our regularly scheduled programming and talk about good ole exciting websites, because that's what we're here for... :)
Let me know if you come over to the UK for a few beers. ;)
By the way are most of your business run in US? What about Australia? Anyone knows anything about affiliates in Australia?
No, quite. And a good mature attitude, but it might pay you to minimise your overheads and invest in property/the stock market for some longer term security.
This thread has disappointed me in a way because it's gone from how I got to $300 a day into "how I spend $3000 a month partying in Europe on my aff income". By all means enjoy your party, but I'm now struggling to see how Rogerio meeting a hot german girl helps us become better affiliate marketers.
However, I know that Rogerio is young, intelligent and having a great time right now. Maybe I'm just a grumpy old man who could do with some partying and girls himself :)
As far as the actual work being done, I've hinted that I'm gonna go 'under the radar' and do some real work again. I'm gonna sign off on this thread for now, and see y'alls on the main forums. Appropriate, on-topic updates will be posted in due time, in a new thread, when there's anything to post about besides my mis-adventures in Spain and Europe :)
Hasta luego! Aufwiedershen!
Mike does have a good point.
But for the sake of differing opinions, I DID enjoy the talk of Europe thrown in there every once in awhile amid the affiliate marketing.
For users following the travel I think it allowed them to connect more. I for one have always dreamed of doing what you are doing, so hearing about it along with affiliate marketing really gave me some motivation.
I do agree this thread may be outdated though :)
All the Best,
C.K.
oh yeah...I guess one can say that I took the opposite path that I rfung took...:) last april, I had a chance to go to europe with friends but decided against it and my friends went there without me.. of course they had fun... I didn't go because I wanted to build my AM business that was when I just quit my job with no income at all... :)
but I'm proud to say after about 4 months... my AM business is going strong.. have established great relationship with a couple merchants to build up my online reputation and with income that exceeds $300/day....didn't expect to achieve that...and I did however took a 1.5 month semi-vacation in asia instead to visit relatives and friends while continue doing the work needed.. and was lucky to maintain the income level....
Although I'm not saying rfung should have stayed home and work on his site just like I did... to achieve excellent results.. what I wanted to say is that what works for someone might not work for someone else...and michael also has a good point in a sense my priorities is more inlined with his... but I guess it's a matter of priority that's right for the individual at that point in time.. I admire rfung for having the guts to try things out, share his experiences "in detail" and refocus to paint a better path for himself in the future... as long as he is not the mouse who is complaining and ranting on why someone would move his cheese...after eating up all the cheese *borrowed from the book - Who Move My Cheese* :) then in my book its a great experience to have...and this thread made me think what my priorities are...so to speak... so for newbies what path would you take?
That said, let's get back to getting to $300 per day. For the folks who are there and beyond, the question is how? Newbs like me are dying to know... :)
I have an idea for a new site where I think I definitely can make money from affiliate programs. It's a niche product which is definitely up-and-coming and is growing extremely fast. I thought I could make a "review" site and allow users to review the products from the competing companies in this industry and their products.
I'm just wondering where to get started. Design will not be a problem, nor will creating some great content. However, there will be no one visiting this site when it premiers. What do you suggest to promote the site at first? AdWords? Overture?
Thanks for any help you can offer!
So, not quite there just yet on the income, but I'm getting closer, and this forum has definitely helped keep me motivated and working.
Rfung: Why don't you start a "[OT] Where's Rfung" thread? that way everyone knows it's not really AM related. Come back to a "$300/day, the quest continues" later.
My 2c.
