The "How Are You Doing" Challengs
Inspiration is important so you don't go insane.
Hi everyone, thought I'd send out an update of my journey. It has been about three and a half month since I joined WA and it has been a journey to say the least. I have been incouraged, discouraged, moving at leaps and bounds and at a slow crawl all at once it seems.
To date I have two websites. Firstly my dog blog "The Healthy Canine" has fourteen posts and two static pages. I have it monetized with Amazon, PetsMart, PetFoodDirect and Adsence. Right now I am averaging about a hundred visits a day and maybe one click a week. I was nearing my ninety days with Amazon and they had already sent me an email that I had to make a sale pretty quick or was going to lose my affiliation. A couple of weeks ago I needed to buy a couple of books pertaining to a different shiny object I am looking at. I figured I might as well order through my blog. I did that and a day or so later I got an email from Amazon congratulating me that I was accepted as an affiliate and they gave me links to the area to get my banners. I thought I already was an affiliate? Anyway I suspect I was on the verge of getting fired when I made the sale. Either that or you are not fully an affiliate until you make the first sale. The transaction showed up in the reports but have yet to see any commission or even if there will be a commission. Maybe they will keep the commission for their payment to make me a full fledged affiliate LOL.I have earned a whopping $2.98 Canadian from AdSense. It adds up after a few thousand page views.
I did make a mistake early on. I was so anxious to see some traffic that I paid $5.00 at Fiverr for someone to send me traffic. I figured what the heck traffic is traffic so long as it's organic. Well that gave me traffic alright and I got to see how the charts in GA and GWMT lookes when there is traffic. Actually all that did was impede the reality as to whether I was actually attracting some traffic with my content. Well it's been two months and the Fiverr dude was only going to send traffic for six weeks. I am now averaging about a hundred visits a day and have about twenty keywords showing in the SERPS anywhere from position ten to position 100. In other words I am showing up in the first ten pages (according to GWMT anyway). It doesn't look like that when I plug in the keywords. The site has changed over the last little while because for a long time I only had two keywords showing and they were positioned at about eight hundred fifty.Having said that I am getting almost no return visitors. This is discouraging because it is the return visitors that will eventually buy something.I hope I am at least giving people some answers to their dog issues. At this point that is all I can hope for.
The other site is my WA affiliate site "Come In To Income". That one is getting hits on a keyword "how can I make money fast". That is getting them to the site but I am totally honest in that WA is not a place to make money fast. I guess by saying that they are moving on. I am okay with that though because I don't aim to get someone here thinking that they will make money fast. I am not telling them it is going to take years but am saying it is building a real legitimate online marketing business and building any business takes time. Today my thoughts are WA is a fantastic place to learn and mingle with like minds, but to make a living I am not sure. In my opinion it all boils down to how much money do you want to "invest" to get high quality traffic that will convert. I am looking to change my strategy and position myself to invest in a high quality product that I can make good commissions from. I will then invest in getting the targeted traffic that is more likely to convert. If I can make a little more in sales than I spend to make the sales then I am okay. I will then concentrate on volume.
Again WA is doing exactly what it promotes. For fifty bucks a month you have everything you need to build a solid legitimate business that you can be proud of.The only not so good part is it will take a long time. More time than some of us have. At the beginning it is said that it will take at least three months to get something happening. That is true. My dog blog proves that. Unfortunately even if I make a sale a day it is simply not enough payback unless I sell one Mercedes every day.
It is also scary when a seasoned internet marketer living on a low budget cannot make ends meet or is having a hard time making ends meet. It has also been said that if you manage your time right, do the work etc. $400.00 month is doable. For me that is not enough.
Soon I will be spending more time on a new shiny object so if you want to find me look me up on Facebook or Google and I am also on Linkedin. You all know my real name and what the front of my head looks like so you should be able to find me. I will also be keeping up my membership here so I will be around to participate in discussions etc. Who knows maybe I'll sell a Mercedes through AdSense!!
Recent Comments
14
this is really interesting and helpful, with a number of great points made along the way- thank you for writing, Andy
Matt, I think you are falling into the trap that most of us drop into at some point. shortly after this most people move on to something else, deciding that internet marketing is not for them.
I joined in July of last year but for probably six of the past ten months I have done little to nothing on the website, for other reasons. For the first two and the last two months though I have added as much content as I can. I am building a large authority type site because I am in an extremely competitive sector and I currently get around 500 hits a month from 80 pages. Not a lot for 4 months' work right?
But I know that if I keep adding more and more decent content I will start to get more and more traffic which will turn into more and more sales. In the meantime it's a case of picking up as much knowledge and expertise as I can along the way.
It does take a lot of faith - there isn't a day goes by when I wonder if it will ever begin to turn into something that provides me with an income. Looking at it becoming something that will be truly life changing is another world at the moment, but who knows, it could happen. The thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that I don't need to make a fortune from it (that would just be a bonus) and the knowledge that the more I read, the more I understand that it is a case of slowly but surely building an online presence.
I also understand that three articles, or pages if you prefer, a day is a decent rate according to the experts - I've done around 80 in 120 days so I'm well behind the "going rate". There's the thing - I really should have around 360 articles by now, but I genuinely believe that if I keep going, keep adding more, keep learning more it will be a case of when rather than if.
My point is that I think it is necessary to build your site as large as you can for it to have any real effect in the rankings.
More content
= more keywords
= more rankings places
= more hits
= more sales.
My trick, for now, is to treat your website as a hobby rather than a money making project, that way you do not feel so bad when nothing seems to be happening and at the same time you are continuing to build your project.
For anybody struggling to continue with membership - and until my site starts to work for me this could be a very tough year so I'm with you - save as much useful info as you can to read offline. Within around six months most people should have picked up enough knowledge to continue to try to build a moneymaking site with or without any further help from WA, but of course if you can afford to continue so much the better.
Thanks for your comments. Very interesting. I understand that it is a lot of work and have to keep at it. I will never leave online marketing. It is perfect for my personal situation. Just have to work harder but more importantly work "smarter". I can't even fathom 80 pages at this point. What you say makes perfect sense. Lots makes more : ).
Hi Matt,
I can see your point, $400 a month isn't enough to live on. My niche site is also dog related and it took a long time to get any sales. Probably around three or four months to get the first one. After that it was usually only a sale or maybe two a month, but little by little it's been going up. Still not a lot either, certainly couldn't quit my day job yet, lol. But, every time I think of giving up on it, I see there's more sales than the last month, sooo I keep going.
Anyways, it's up to you. If it's really what you're passionate about keep working at it. Maybe add some reviews of certain health products for dogs to your site and what they would do to benefit your visitor's dog. Just a thought anyways, since that's what I did on mine and it seemed to help get more people to click through and buy.
Another thing is Amazon doesn't pay that high of a commission either. Maybe there are some products related to your niche that you could become an affiliate of from somewhere else that would pay better. It's something I've been thinking of looking into myself.
You have a nice looking site so far, BTW! Sorry to have blabbered on so long here and again, it's all up to you on whether you want to continue with the niche or not. It does take a long time to get any results though. Best wishes to you! :) -Sherry
Thanks for your comments and kind words. I will keep the niche going I like blogging about the dogs but I can't think of any big ticket items to sell on it. I was thinking of making it a hobby though and starting another one that I can display and review bigger items in.
I understand its a time thing and gotta keep plugging away. I'll figure out something.
I also find it useful to check my stats once in a while on Google Analytics and Webmaster tools. I did wonder again the other day if I had taken on to broad a niche (in the mobile phone contacts section), even if I did so deliberately, because it is very highly competitive. I know I am going to need hundreds of pages to make any impact, but commissions are good.
Checking your stats shows you that visitors are increasing, which helps you keep the faith! They are good for checking what people are clicking on and which search terms they are using. As you progress it's also worth looking up the cost of pay per click. I noticed recently that there are NO advertisers for one of my popular search terms so it could be very cheap to advertise to get onto page one using that term.
The best thing to do in the early months is to use the quiet time to learn all you can, such as Google adwords and analytics because they can be very helpful later on, and keep going through the training. It's amazing what you miss the first time but like anything else, it's a learning curve. Even facebook and google didn't make it overnight!
What you said plus 1
"Something" that is Attractive enough to sell and valuable enough to pay a good commission or in other words "A valuable MUST have".
WA provides a sound footing to get you started but in reality you need either plenty of WA referrals or something that sells fast and pays a good commission, which is the best way to go?
I disagree. What you need is time and lots of good content. Too many people worry about sales early on. Work on getting the clicks first and foremost, the sales will follow.
With dogs there is plenty of content to attack and there should be lots of sales opportunities. Matt, think of things like vets and pet insurance. Both should pay healthy commissions, you could for example have a page on why finding a good vet is important. Large vet practices in the UK pay commissions and commissions on Insurance can be very good.
Pet food is worth looking into as well. My dog has to have wheat free food which is around $60 for a 10kg (around 22 pounds) bag. Large distributors do home delivery, I'm sure there must be affiliate schemes for this sort of thing.
Excellent! Thanks for the marketing tips. I feed my dogs grain free and your right it is expensive. Selling lots of that would pay off. Targeting the vet practices is something worthwhile looking into as well. I don't see large vet practices like you mention around here. I forget that I have the world for a market place. I'll investigate the practices in the UK.
Thanks again
See more comments
Thanks Andy, pretty much my WA experience and online marketing thoughts in a nutshell
Happy Sunday