Newbie Journal - Watch Me Build My Empire From Scratch

Hi
I am a newbie too. I now have a personal blog, and my first product!! Well pleased. Over the last week I have had 15 subscribers to my list (this is now my focus!!) and did the "newbie dance" again this morning when 1 more dbl opt in was confirmed.....woop woop!! Have I made any money yet.......no!!! Oh well still early days....good luck to one and all!!

Nick
 


Tireswing said:
What kind of competition are you facing in these new KWs.
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All less than 25k exact matches in google, most under 10k. I'm using market samurai to assess competition and have been setting a filter of <30k SEOC then concentrating on the keywords that have around 10k or less kw in title competition. If the top 10 for those keywords has lots of low pr pages, forum posts etc then I figure its should be easy to get on the first page.

GL to you Nick. Any reason you are just focusing on your list rather than using other methods as well?
 
Quick update:

turns out that the second site isnt a complete wash - Im high on the second page for a couple of the lower-volume longtails on google and yahoo, but still nowhere for the kws that are getting the 2-3k searches a month.

first site is now #7 on google, #1 on yahoo. Only two sales but so far 4.5% ctr (only 25 clicks though).
 
So for some reason, after putting up original videos on 5-6 video sites all linking back to the first site, as well as building more links from blog comments ive been bounced back to the 4th page for most of my kws - some of the videos posted two days ago are ranking higher than the actual site. Not sure what to make of that... on a positive note i have made 6 sales already with a 15% ctr.
 
Damn well I completely forgot to keep this thread updated.

I have made a few mistakes in that I keep getting too far ahead of myself and have started too many sites and bought too many domains already.

The first site is now ranking in the middle of the first page of google for all of 5-6 keyphrases I am targeting. It is making sales but the income is really small. I am consistently getting about 30 visitors a day but it only made $10 last month. All I have on there now is a review of one amazon product with affiliate links. Time to build the site up and add reviews of lots of similar products and see if that results in more sales. I am not sure how much time to dedicate to this one as while I can easily end up dominating that small niche the commissions on the products are really small. Adsense pays about $1 per click for a lot of the KWs, maybe just stick ads on there? I also plan to start building an email optin list on this site (and the rest of them).

The second site is also doing well, it is in the niche I said I thought I had miscalculated the competition in. Well as it turns out I now have it ranking from abotu 5-15 for 6 keyword phrases. The craziest thing is, and I cant figure this one out - I have inadvertently got that site to #7 on google for a related keyword that gets nearly 15k searches a month that I was not even intentionally targetting. So I am in the process of changing the site a bit to cash in on that particular one.

That site is also getting about 20 visitors a day now but sales are slow, approx $15 on amazon so far this month.

What is a good CTR for an amazon affil site? So far this month I have had about 600 visitors to both sites and amazon is showing ~110 clicks with only about 5% of those clicks actually ordering something. I have no idea if this is good or bad, probably not enough data to know either way.

I have launched 3 or 4 other sites since then but it is starting to spread me a bit thin already. LOL at the idea of running 100 mini sites all making small amounts of income as a business model.

One site I built around a search term getting 5k exact searches a month that I got an exact match domain for is now high on the 2nd page after a bit of link building with web 2.0 sites etc. Just the past few days I have been hitting 30-40 visitors a day for that one, which is odd because it is still on the second page. I am monetizing it with a clickbank product in the employment niche but have not made a sale yet. I have had about 20 hops to the sales page but 0 order form impressions and no sales. Too early to tell if its the product, sales page or whatever that sucks.

Anyway the good news for me is that the SEO etc is working and I am starting to get traffic to my sites. Now to work on learning how to monetize them better and actually start making some money from them.
 
Hey, nice to see you're doing something right!

So far, with 600 visitors, 110 clicks and a 5% conversion rate? That's a beast ass start for anyone if you ask me. Just scaaaaaleee that up. That's why I have such a big problem with these minisites, gotta make so many just to make a decent income. Even worse with Amazon's shitty commission %. You should take your current model and try it with another network/offer.. But after you get your current projects stable and running smoothly.
 
Yeah thats what I have realized. My original line of thought was hey just make 50 sites making $5/day, ez game.

Having just checked the rankings for my second site I am now in the #2 and 3 spots for two of the product names I am targeting. According to the KW research I have done those terms pay about $5/click. If I make an affiliate sale on amazon for that product I get about $8.

My question is, which is easier? Getting people to click adsense ads or getting them to buy the product from amazon. Right now it is a review site where I am directing people to my affil links through the reviews, I am not running adsense or any other ads.

Obviously the answer is just test it and find out what works, but I am interested to hear other experiences anyway.
 
I'm new at this stuff too, but it seems to me that that all depends on the keyword. Some are a little more "buyer" friendly, but starting out I found those ones to be more competitive (suppose you've proven it's still easy to rank for those if you dig around and find the right ones, though.)

I like Adsense because a person doesn't necessarily have to be ready to buy something, you can just post a good enough article to get them primed enough to click away. Seems to work easy enough for me. Just make sure you're targeting keywords that get at least a couple dollars per click.
 
There's a "look over my shoulder" course that your "watch-me-build-my-empire" plan reminds me of. Matt Trainer (themarketingmoron) has a freebie promotion video that covers the details of a plan for building a 12 million dollar business based on a stable of affiliate/cpa wordpress sites built and fueled by an expensive subscription service.
His earning projection seems over optimistic, but he does recommend you working your ass off for 6 months to get the thing off the ground.

Some may find his 70 minute presentation inspiring (I can't comment on the course this video ties in with, I can say his CPA NINJA course is worthwhile for high end marketers)
want-to-make-1-million...
 
SimonD said:
...snip...

My question is, which is easier? Getting people to click adsense ads or getting them to buy the product from amazon. Right now it is a review site where I am directing people to my affil links through the reviews, I am not running adsense or any other ads...snip....
Click to expand...

Both.

Seriously, I have MFA sites where people either buy amazon or click adsense.

::emp::
 
emp said:
Both.

Seriously, I have MFA sites where people either buy amazon or click adsense.

::emp::
Click to expand...

Interesting, I will have to try adding adsense to the site too. Anyone have good links about optimal positioning of adsense panels on a blog?
 
My question is, which is easier? Getting people to click adsense ads or getting them to buy the product from amazon.
Click to expand...
Adsense.... I only have adsense and Vibrant (only allowed on major sites) on my sites..

Anyone have good links about optimal positioning of adsense panels on a blog?
Click to expand...
Adsense Hotspots..

general_en.jpg


I get 90% of my clicks from the "red" area as shown above.
 
Ok I havent put up Adsense yet, is there a recommended WP plugin that will automatically insert an ad block into the top of each post (the dark orange zone in that picture)?

One thing that is interesting - I couldnt figure out how I was ranking my 2nd site for a quite high volume phrase that I hadnt even built any links for. Then I noticed that I had used about 4-5 internal links in various posts using that anchor text all pointing at my root domain. That was enough, with no external anchored links to get it to number 6-7 on the first page of google for that term.

This has made me think more about internal linking and I will definitely be paying more attention to doing that properly on other sites as I build them.

So far my original two sites have driven about 150 clicks on amazon this month, converting at ~5% still. Not even enough $$ to pay for my drinks on a night out yet but its nice to see that the concept is working relatively well.

My third site that is promoting a clickbank product (yeah i know... gotta try everything though) is now dancing around the #9-#12 spots on google. So far have only had about 30 clicks to the sales page and no conversions... too early to tell if its a dud product (seems quite popular on clickbank) or a dud keyword for that product.

I launched a new site a month ago that I am really excited about. 15k exact searches a month for a product that sells for $200-400 on amazon. #1 is a 1 page blog (literally, no about/privacy/contact pages) with 40 profile backlinks that hasnt been updated for a year. I'm quite sure I can really dominate this little niche but I may have been sandboxed already. I went a bit overboard blog commenting on dofollow blogs in the first week and got myself on a 'popular comments' sidebar that suddenly had me showing 200 backlinks in yahoo site explorer - which quickly jumped back to about 40 links a week later... since then I am firmly stuck on page 10, doesn't seem to be moving at all despite slowly building other types of links.

Lets hope that is only temporary, I am thinking this is a good niche to use blogsense (autoblog plugin) on and pull lots of content from amazon and ebay. I am still getting traffic for lots of product longtails so this should be a good way to get lots of odd longtail searches.
 
Well my clickbank product site that is still hovering around 10-12 on google just made its first sale taking my earnings this month to about $40.

This is growing far slower than I expected but thats the reality of it, it is all a learning experience and as long as the graph keeps pointing up in the right direction I am happy.

My biggest problem is still too much reading/thinking/scheming and not enough action...
 
Also someone just ordered $300 worth of stuff on Amazon from one of my sites - takes my earnings for the month purely from SEO to over $50.
 
Thanks Dan but I would be careful if you are using Easy Adsense yourself - there is a lot of feedback on that page that indicates the plugin creator is stealing clicks, I will stay well away from that one myself.
 
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