How Focus Produced My First Sale

I've been on WA for just over 3 months, my site is almost that old and I've been an Amazon Affiliate for 2 months. I got my first sales last Thursday and Friday. One on Amazon US and 3 on Amazon France. So the prediction that I read somewhere here on WA soon after I joined has come true. It IS possible to start making money within 3 months. I say "within" because I choose to do this part-time. If I put in full-time hours that sale may have come sooner.

Focus

What I really want to discuss is the need to FOCUS - this is important for all of us, but especially for new comers.

I have focussed on having ONE website, One Affiliate association and TWO social networking sites.

And in a weird way I have found that this approach has made other same-niche affiliate bloggers into collaborators rather than competition.

One Website

My site, "Older Motorcycle Riders" is a mixture of motorcycle gear review articles and general motorcycle lifestyle articles. A ratio of about 3:1 (more reviews than articles). I decided to mix it up just for the sheer enjoyment of writing in a wider context about my passion. Maybe it could be argued that this is a loss of focus - maybe if I wrote only reviews my first sale would have come sooner....

But I don't think so - my lifestyle articles have attracted just as much traffic as my reviews and I can still include affiliate links in those articles.

My earlier articles were far too short and, in a word, c***p. But I'll keep them and will go back to rework at least some of them at some point. I started three months ago by churning articles out without much thought about my readership. I was learning about keywords and getting to grips with the technicalities of my WP dashboard. My head was in a whirl and I never envisaged that I'd be writing THIS blog.

Nowadays I write fewer articles - 2 a week instead of 5 or 6. They are longer and have proved to be much stronger in terms of reader captivation, keeping visitors on my site and SEO power. I have quite a few page one articles. And they have produced my first sales. Search engine entries onto my site are growing steadily.

One Affiliate Association

I applied for various niche-related affiliate programs and I was accepted on to all of them. However, I found that I was spending a lot of time learning about how to use them and how to integrate them into my site. This took me away from writing content.

So, I shelved the bespoke motorcycle luggage, motorcycle hire and motorcycle tour affiliate programs for now. I will go back to them when my site is more mature and I have a lot more "evergreen" content. I made a point of writing to my contact person on each program and got very supportive replies.

I also decided against having google ads on my site. I don't like the look of them and personally, I've never clicked on a google ad .... so, not for me ....

Amazon Affiliates is where I've put all my eggs, so to speak. Yes, I know the adage about the danger of putting all one's eggs into one basket. But, Amazon is a safe bet. It has a huge customer base and it's so easy to add links. I have a plugin that automate the links in my text and another that makes my Amazon links world-wide so I don't lose a sale if somebody from, say, the UK clicks on my US Amazon links (proof, the 3 items sold via Amazon France following a click-through on my site).

Two Social Networks

I set up G+, Twitter and Facebook accounts when those processes came up as part of the training here on WA.

Twitter and G+ are really working for me. Twitter is where I really get a lot of great niche-related followers and interaction. G+ grows quickly and I get a lot of good SEO juice from there. It is important to stay as niche focussed as possible and both communities will repost what they consider good content. It's important to do the same for your followers. I'm slowly collecting a lot of evergreen niche related articles from other blogs that I regularly re-tweet and repost on G+. I do this at a ratio of 4 posts by other people to one of mine. Every blog post that I've reposted/ re-tweeted I have commented on. I am beginning to get comments back as a result. All these comments are niche-related comments from niche-related blogs and all give me great back-links.

I have a FB profile and a FB page - both strictly niche related. I have had hundreds of followers join me in just a few weeks but I rarely log in. I've not taken to this platform. But I'll keep both FB pages. As my site matures they may well prove important. My posts and other niche related stuff that I like from around the Web get posted to both FB pages automatically.

I worked hard to set up a system in which I can do all of this and a little more ... in just 15 to 30 minutes 5 times a week (live contact) and one 2 hour session once a month (when I set up a month's worth of reposts of evergreen content). I shall write about this in another blog - or maybe even venture into my first WA training ....

As a result of sharing good content and mixing it up with my own content on Twitter and G+ I am getting increasing organic traffic.

FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS .......

• Don't be tempted to have lots of websites just because you can here via the WA system.
• Stay niche-focussed when you write and mix up the types of niche-focussed articles on your site.
• Choose which social networking platforms you ENJOY and have strictly niche-focussed accounts on them. Have separate personal and niche-focussed accounts.
• Being strictly niche-focussed you will find all sorts of great contacts, ideas and opportunities falling into your lap.
• Being strictly niche-focussed you will find loads of evergreen content on other blogs which you can comment on. Then you promote those blogs on your blogs and via your social networking. You will get comments back .... it takes time, but it works.
• With your focus on your one niche site, your one affiliate association and your niche-focussed social networking - the competition seems so much less. WHY? Because you are working in collaboration with them. I've had somebody who also promotes motorcycle gear via Amazon promote posts of mine with Amazon links for motorcycle gear.

Plenty of time to set up another site a year or so down the line when your first niche site is bringing in a good monthly income.