Local Business SEO Journal

I just built them out in Wordpress, wrote bunch of articles, and embedded the amazon links within the text, as well as at the bottom in 'order now' buttons that I made. Used a plugin to cloak the affiliate links so it wasn't plainly obvious what I was doing.

The first site I ever made I have ranking #1 for my term. Not anymore because I fucked up and dropped a domain that had my nameservers, so everything went down for a few days.

The mistake with that site was: targeting a product on Amazon that peaks at about $35. When you're only getting max 6% of that, it's not a ton of money UNLESS the #1 position gets you a lot of traffic and conversions, which mine doesn't because its a smaller subset of a subset of a niche.

My second site that makes $15 commissions is via Amazon's partner programs (endless, smallparts, I think they just added another). The items sell for >$100 and I get around 15%, so any sales there are pretty awesome.

It's also personally very hilarious to me to just get someones Amazon cookie for 24 hrs and see what they randomly purchase. So far I've gotten commissions on condoms, a minnesota twins mr. potatohead, a pack of 4 bags of green tea, etc. Fucking hilarious what some people end up buying.

On PPC side, I just got the results back from a campaign I'm running in Brazil. Will update in next post.
 


Ok so for the first test, what I did was use 14 total images. 7 of them were more 'normal' looking girls, and 7 of them were more 'model' type girls.

I used CPM instead of CPC. I think this might have been a mistake, will talk about why in a bit.

Normal
Total Impressions: 51,780
Total Clicks: 21
Average CTR: .041%
Average CPC: $0.41
Average CPM: $0.11
Spend: $5.97

Ok, so this was a cheap way to get data for sure. Here's the problem I think I faced with CPM. My ad targeted about 225k users. The frequency was 5.2, meaning that on average a user saw my ad 5.2 times. I think starting CPC would have been better because it costs me nothing until I hit the house CPM, at which point they just shut my ad down if it's not getting clicks.

Anyways, within this "Normal" looking girl split, I had CTR's ranging from 0% to 0.08%, the latter being closer to what's considered standard for Facebook, so I've heard. I put a pic of a pretty mediocre looking girl in the mix, and she performed as the 4th best ad overall, over some much hotter looking natural girls. The ones that did the worst looked too "stock" photography, the women looked sort of mature and professional.

Model
Total Impressions: 55,277
Total Clicks: 21
Average CTR: .038%
Average CPC: $0.35
Average CPM: $0.12
Spend: $6.48

Ok, so I got some more impressions on this one, the same amount of clicks, and a drop in my CPC. When I used images that were of CLEARLY famous brazilian women, they failed. By failed I mean the CTR was One Fourth of what I got using very attractive, but not famous brazilians. My best performers here seemed to be girls that looked like hot brazilian girls you might find on Facebook.

Conclusions
So I got about ~42 clicks total, and 0 conversions. I used 1 title and 1 body copy, so I'm going to mix it up. My targeting was super super broak to get the 220k demo, and I'm also direct linking at this point.

I just created 6 campaigns, targeted more for age, using three different titles, two sets of body copy, and six images that hopefully will use the data I've gotten to improve. I'm shooting for better CTR, and I tried to write the copy to really persuade them to sign up as well.

p.s. I also noticed via prosper202 that running it from 9pm-2am got the overwhelming majority of clicks vs running it at any other part of the day

tl;dr - read it bitches
 
Just started using onehourtranslation.com for translations - way faster, more accurate.

Spoke with my AM today about some techniques, definitely sent in over 100 ads today all of which were disapproved for various reasons. I think I've got a good feel of how to get them past now while complying with all regulations.

In addition I was running the wrong offer, so that's probably why there weren't any conversions, stupid mistake.

On the SEO side, I spoke with the machine shop for a recommendation, he's going to shoot me one in the next few days. My VPS is all fucked up, I have to fix it so right now most of my sites are down.

I read bb_wolfe's financing guide for newbies, and as I am in self-imposed brokeness (all of my poker money is in an account I can't really touch unless I need it to scale) I signed up to onforce.com like he recommended to get some extra cash coming in. Need a professional reference, going to have to work on that.

That's all for now yo
 
My AM's tips and OneHourTranslation definitely improved my CTR - I made an average increase of 500% in CTR. I also have made 3 conversions so far, but I'm gonna need both cheaper clicks and higher conversion ratio to get this offer into the black.

Just did some body copy revision, changed 'join' to 'install' so they aren't as surprised when it prompts them to install the FB application. We'll see how it goes once they get approved - almost peak hours in Brazil, so hopefully I can get these out there in time!
 
Just finished fixing all of my websites - fucking hell, I'll never be that stupid again.

Got my two Amazon Affiliate properties back up, I'll be spending some time building link pyramids to these bitches and getting my more profitable site higher up in the rankings. Even four sales a month pays for all of my hosting and domains for the year, and then some.

Will keep updated.
 
Working on sites this morning...

Anyone have any recommendations for WP themes they use for affiliate websites? I need something other than Lightword for my amazon sites.

Also, I'm looking to scrape up an additional $1500 this month. Looking to get into some content writing/etc to grab it, or willing to do most anythign else provided my hourly is high enough. Any ideas or recommendations here?
 
Ok Amazon just cancelled their program in California due to some retarded law, so my sites are ruined for the time being. Going to need to find another way to monetize these sluts.
 
Izaya said:
I know what you mean, getting clients is the #1 thing to do, but having a nice website is also pretty beneficial. When I made my site I just bough a theme from theme forest: Premium WordPress Themes and Web Templates - ThemeForest

Also I recommend getting gravity form plugin it's like 1000X better then contact form 7. [ http://www.gravityforms.com/]

My focus is/was on setting up a business system so that I can be replaced by some else to do my work.

Also you can get some nice business cards from vista print for under $15 and in less than 5 minutes of work, definitely recommend getting some: www.vistaprint.ca

^ Everything above can be done in under a day, but the benefits are continuous, so it's definitely worth doing.
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Hey dude - my site is semi-live. Thanks for the advice, though I don't really agree when you say 'set up a business system so that I can be replaced'. At some point you offer 0 value to the business, and I actually enjoy working towards my biggest dreams and goals instead of just shooting for $xxxxx/mo income and dreaming of sitting on beaches/etc.

But aside from that, I'm gonna push the hell out of clients this month and really try to nail down some more contracts. I need at least $1200-1500 in profit this month in addition to offline businesses to hit my end of year goals.
 
Just finished listing some shit on CL to sell to put me at ~$2.5k income for the month. I can't use 'sell shit on craigs' method next month so next month is 100% about pitching. Ideally I'll land 3-4 clients next month and put me on track for earning by the end of the year.

I'll keep the thread updated with new insights and techniques for pitching clients come next mo!
 
Put up a CL ad today - got a call from a local business center for a referral partnership, which sounds cool to me.

Also got a call from a small engineering startup looking for a website, spoke with them and quoted $600 for a Wordpress-based design. August is looking good so far!
 
Sup guys,

Picked up a SEO job today. Hourly, but it'll do for now in lieu of having clients (which I'm still pushing on). The guy's website is http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/ and he's looking for SEO help. I've noticed a bunch of stuff, but mainly he ranks #1 for 'free marketing seminars' - doesn't look like a ton of search volume there for that. I suggested targeting higher volume keywords. Also, his homepage is designed in Frontpage with the blog being WordPress.

Should I advise him to convert the entire site to WordPress? If so, how do I even go about doing that while preserving link structure? Little lost on exactly how to proceed, but don't want to lose the job so any tips would be MUCH appreciated!
 
Hey phoenixrising hit me up I do SEO out of OC I could give you some tips to get clients.

Helping out a fellow WF member plus I wouldn't want to drive all the way down to SD for client meetings haha.
 
im a loooooong time lurker, but this may be one of my favorite threads. a lot of good info in here and i really appreciate it
 
phoenixrising said:
Sup guys,

Picked up a SEO job today. Hourly, but it'll do for now in lieu of having clients (which I'm still pushing on). The guy's website is Free Business Audio mp3 Interviews | Internet Marketing Secrets And Business Marketing Strategy | Michael Senoff Interviews The Masters Of Direct Mail Selling, Advertising And Marketing and he's looking for SEO help. I've noticed a bunch of stuff, but mainly he ranks #1 for 'free marketing seminars' - doesn't look like a ton of search volume there for that. I suggested targeting higher volume keywords. Also, his homepage is designed in Frontpage with the blog being WordPress.

Should I advise him to convert the entire site to WordPress? If so, how do I even go about doing that while preserving link structure? Little lost on exactly how to proceed, but don't want to lose the job so any tips would be MUCH appreciated!
Click to expand...

do yourself and your clients a favor and NEVER post their url's on WF
 
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