amateursurgeon

As promised on my earlier thread, I'm going to offer a full disclosure journal of my first steps into making money online.

I know these threads have a habit of dying, so I'll commit to updating this at least once a week for 3 months, and see how we're doing then.

Apart from a decent understanding of php/web dev, and quite a bit of time spent reading wickedfire, I have absolutely no freakin' idea what I'm doing, so I'm sure I'll do lots of daft things that you (and I) can learn from.

My first site is a niche Wordpress blog. I bought 2k words of content from kingofsp (great service, btw) to get me started, and am putting a couple of articles up.

I intend to get traffic through SEO, and I'll play about with PPC as well to see what sort of results I get.

Monetisation will all be done through affiliate links.

My chosen niche is sleeping bags for toddlers and babies. Why? I think baby stuff is probably recession-proof (I have a friend who buys organic baby food for her kid and then eats shitty "value" food herself - go figure), and there is no end of stuff that people will buy for their kids.

I'll publish the URL in due course (next week or week after)

Done so far:
Registered domain
Got wordpress set up
Loaded a couple of articles
Put one affiliate offer on

To Do Next:
Set up traffic counters
Put affiliate "product" offers down the side (I'm waiting for approval on some of them)
Install more plugins
Get some SEO links going

Income so far:
$0

amateursurgeon

Done - have set up traffic counter using StatCounter Free invisible Web tracker, Hit counter and Web stats

Armakuni

Good start, AS, hope you'll keep the project alive for the promised time.

zensiq

sounds good, keep us updated

turbolapp

Good luck!

__________________

amateursurgeon

Thanks for the encouragement.

So far I'm finding playing about with different strategies & tools dangerously addictive

BTW - Turbolapp, your post in another thread about tripling your previous job income since last year really gave me a kick up the arse to get on with it - thanks!

Demon

Instead of using counters, set up analytics tracking instead.

Good luck on the site!

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amateursurgeon

I'm using statcounter. GA looks really good, but I'm really not convinced about giving all my traffic data to google.

Although I suppose that's probably only something I should worry about if I'm doing a lot of PPC.

HarveyJ

There are other services that are basically the same as Googles... Google just has the added benefit of being able to export all the data into other forms you can use, like tracking down to regional areas where you traffic is coming from, and even outputting a report into GoogleDocs
...
You're paying for that convenience by giving them your info, so its up to you to decide on the trade off.

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And finally, what's wrong with sucking cock?

Just sign up to Affiliation Cash and do it already!

elime

HarveyJ is exactly right. Google Analytics is actually quite a good tracking tool, but you'll just be feeding the G monster. The more I learn about them, the more often I wear my tinfoil hat.

__________________

turbolapp

I'm in the market for a new tinfoil hat, mine is worn to the core.

__________________

amateursurgeon

Just got OpenX up and running for ads in my blog - I'm wanting to list ads down one side for products and got sick of fiddling with the ad networks rotator scripts.

Glad I did now - I reckon this software's got potential.

emp

OK... I promised to match each serious post by amateursurgeon by one of mine, so here I go:

Internet Marketing - a Noob Overview

This board and I get many questions along the lines of "how do I make money on the internet?"

Well, apart from not asking someone who has no clue, here is an overview of costs and revenue for starters. Look at these lists and you will be able to see why this is an attractive field.

Costs
We will concentrate on the bare essentials here. With these in place, you can tap all revenue streams.

Domain
Hosting
Content

Revenue
This is a list of possible revenue streams, you can come up with more.

Sell domain names
Sell developed sites
Sell content
- articles
- templates
- Logos
- Scripts
PPC programs
- Adsense
- ..
Affiliate Marketing - Pay per Lead
Selling items
- ebay
- dropshipping
- your own store & inventory
Sell digital products
- databases
- ebooks (urghs)
Subscription based site
SEO Services
..
..

As I said, it is easy to see that the revenue side of things in Internet Marketing reaches far and wide.

Of course, you can easily spend a lot of money on sites. Content is a broad area and you might well and will invest in scripts, designs, etc.. if you can't do it yourself. The point here is: You don't have to. Every penny you save on the costs side is pure profit. So grab some coupons, get a hosting account and a domain name, slap wordpress on there and start writing.

If you are still unsure on how this will make you money: See my domain selling report over at domainingtips.com

I am no stranger to SEO, but what I did there can be done by ANY NOOB.

::emp::

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"We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." - Charles Bukowski

Blind Ape Seo ¦ My WickedFire articles

amateursurgeon

Ok, site's up... realised I was spending too much time worrying about getting a clever ad script going so that I could push different baby offers.

Everything is taking me ages to do at the moment because my skills are so rusty, but I'm sure I'll get up to speed soon.

The url is....

Toddler Sleeping Bags (and babies too)


I've bought a few more domains in the niche that I'll probably throw sites up for using related content


In ref to emp's post my monetisation strategy is going to be affiliate and ppc ads. Although I'm still trying to find a decent vendor of sleeping bags with an affiliate programme.

I agree about keeping costs down, but you also need to be conscious of how much time you spend on different areas - particularly in my case as I could be doing none-MMO things that make money in the short term. That said, I expect to have to invest a lot of time up front whilst I'm getting going.

Done since last update:

• Got the site up and running
• Got crawled by google
• Registered some more domains in the niche

To Do Next:

• Lots of work on SEO
• Tidy up the presentation a little
• Add privacy policy etc (as required by adsense)
• Add some more content

Lessons:

• Putting an Adsense block on your page is a great way to get listed in Google very quickly - I got crawled within minutes! (although no rank yet)
• Be careful about getting too dragged into using clever technology (openx in my case). You can end up wasting time on something which doesn't add that much value. It will be useful, but not now. Focus on what will move you closer to revenue faster.

amateursurgeon

Doh - was wondering why I wasn't getting any visits.

It helps if you have the right project code on your page for statcounter.

amateursurgeon

I've now created a keyword list of about 200 keywords in my niche, with search volumes (not sure of accuracy), and the number of exact matches for each one. I'm going to use this to help with my SEO efforts, feed into to PPC if I decide to go that route, and give me more ideas to expand my efforts within the niche.

SeoReborn

I use OpenAds. I think they must have changed the name to OpenX. Anyway, i use it to rotate adds for different places on my site, to different ips, different priority etc. I have to say, its a really good software.

In addition, have you thought of selling ebay baby sleeping bags? Maybe another avenue for revenue

SeoReborn

amateursurgeon, looking at your site, I believe you should see a better CTR if you move your 2 square/rectangular affiliate banners from the right hand panel to just below your site name "Toddlers Sleeping Bags (And Babies Too)". As you find and get onto new affiliate programs, add to this so the banners become like a horizontal navigation of affilate links under your main title.

amateursurgeon

Thank for the suggestions re better layout for CTR - I'll give that a try. I need to get some traffic there in the first place at the moment though.

I hadn't thought of Ebay - would that be through auctionads, or their affiliate programme?

Re: OpenX - agreed, it looks great. I've stopped using it for now as I was spending too much time fiddling with it to get it working. I'm planning on getting a VPS account set up shortly so I can start playing about with some of the SEO empire techniques from Eli's blog. When I do that I'll probably set OpenX up in its own ad domain so I can use to to distribute ads across my sites.

SeoReborn

Re: OpenX. Definately a good future step is to run the ads on a seperate server. Right now I am using it on the same site as where the ads are displayed, but it has always been my plan to seperate the job.

As a ebay affiliate you could get custom ads on your site and get revenue for each successful bid sale. https://www.ebaypartnernetwork.com/f...owitWorks.html

amateursurgeon

Not had a chance to do much more this week with the site as I picked up a new consulting client for my "proper" business. Have booked out a few days next week to focus on online stuff and get this moving.

I'm going to really focus on learning SEO basics with this site - I'm really interested by all the stuff I read on Eli's blog, but figure I should walk before I try to run. Will probably subscribe to SEOMoz next week as it seems to have a good rep for the fundamentals, unless someone has a better suggestion?

xenthur

uhmm maybe there's an error regarding your statcounter?
you could use web analyzer if you want...

you can collect data regarding the activities of people accessing your website so that it will enable you measures and then reports on the web site traffic and online behavior of visitors.


i am starting using it my blog "online marketing guide" few days ago though...


BTW i hope you can soon fix everything up..Good luck with your business.

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amateursurgeon

all sorted now. it was me being a spastic.

amateursurgeon

Another week's flown by, time for an update...

I subscribed to SEOMoz- there's some good info on there. I have a feeling some of the SEO guides are a bit out of date (one recommends Overture tools), but the tools are worth a look, and they helped me move forward.

I've used their tools, along with Micro Niche Finder, and the Keyword Discovery free tools to build a keyword list. I've then grouped the keywords into 6 groups, which I'll use as my Wordpress post categories.

Once I've got that sorted, I'll get onto link building, and actually trying to get the thing ranked for my chosen keywords. I also need to look again at the site to get some decent offers up there.

My goal is to have the bulk of the work on this site (and a sister site aimed at babies) by this time next week. I don't want to spend too long stuck on one idea as I know at this stage of things I need to throw as much shit as possible at the wall.

On a side note, I've just signed up with Copeac - I'm going to have a chat with my AM to get some recommendations for other things to try once this is up and running.

amateursurgeon

Missed a sentence out there - after the post categories. I need to add some more content as well, and sprinkle some of the keywords through the site.

amateursurgeon

Since the last post, I've done the following

1. A lot of keyword research, and realised this niche is probably on the small side to be particularly profitable.

2. Decided to focus on just 3 keyphrases for this site, and once I rank for those probably create another site for different phrases.

3. Got a signed up with a couple more aff networks, including ebay partner network

4. Set up PHPBay free edition - it's brilliant. I'll defnitely buy the Pro edition soon.

The main visible change is that I've TOTALLY revamped the site. This has taken me a long time to do, as I've taught myself wordpress theme editing in the process. I'm now confident that the next niche blog I need to roll out I can probably get done in a couple of hours. I'm much happier with the layout. The title tags etc are right too.

I'd appreciate any feedback and comments : Toddler Sleeping Bags

Once I've got this thing ranking and bringing in even a nominal amount of money, I'll probably set up a combination of Wordpress MU and OpenX to enable me to quickly get loads more set up.


The next step is to really focus on getting ranked for my keywords. I've done some on-page work for that, but I'll spend some time getting links and social bookmarks.

Armakuni

I'll just say that the frame with "Post categories" and "Recent posts" on the right there would probably look much better if you had the bullet points properly aligned to the left. The way it is now (centered) looks cluttered.

Kudos for keeping the project and the thread alive. Keep going

stmadeveloper

So you are going to wait weeks/months before building another site? Here is a suggestion... since your taking the time to do keyword research (good move).

Spend a few more minutes doing competition research. Determine what you need to do to outrank them - and do it.

Then move on for a few weeks with your next sites - then come back and check on things and do a little more.

Otherwise you are just sorta spinning your wheels waiting to rank right? Each new site you build gives you more juice to beat that competition anyway.

__________________
AFFILIATE WORDPRESS THEMES

tweak50

Agreed. I couldn't think of how to describe it, but cluttered works just fine.

__________________

amateursurgeon

@armakuni - thanks for the feedback. I've adjusted it to the left, it looks much better.

@stmadeveloper - great advice. That's exactly what I'll do next


On an unrelated note, I've just discovered http://www.myipneighbors.com/ from a post on Nickycakes blog. Well worth a look if you haven't seen it already.

amateursurgeon

Ok, I have done a little offsite work:
Set up a squidoo lens
Used Socialmarker to tag all the dofollow links
Submitted to reddit and got a dofollow link
Found a niche parent article site and posted an article there with a link

Google rank for my main kw is about 70 ish at the moment.

I'm going to leave the site alone for a week or so to see what happens.

In the meantime, I'm going to investigate a different project - PPC with a couple of the affiliate networks I'm signed up with.

emp

Good redesign, nice work.

What this site needs now - and I am wondering why you have tackled a lot of stuff BUT this... is CONTENT.

Add content at a steady pace for a month.

The key ingredient here is: Steady.
I found that one article every two days keeps Google happy.

Where to get content?

Well, baby-related content should be easy to get, but here is another way to get it: Amazon.

Yes, amazon.

Go to amazon and bookmark all products and books related to your niche.

Write an article about each one of them.
Yes, please do include your affiliate link.

Ready??? GO!

On a related note:
There is a FREE baby - name database up for grabs at Top Content Data » Welcome
:.emp::

__________________
"We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." - Charles Bukowski

Blind Ape Seo ¦ My WickedFire articles

mattgatten

Any profits yet? Full disclosure is full disclosure! hahaha

Great work. Got my juices flowing. Ugh!

__________________
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amateursurgeon

Yep - I'm banking it big time. $0.28 so far from adsense clicks.

Will get on to the posting. I've been putting it off because I'm most interested in the bits I can automate quickly. My plan is to get this working and then streamline the process so I can get loads of them up with a fixed investment of $ and time per site.

Am I right in thinking that the posts don't need to be very long - is around 100 words each enough?

AS

amateursurgeon

Ok - 3 posts written, one posted today and the next two autopost 2 days apart. I'll need to get quicker at this at that took me about an hour to do!

Did as emp suggested, and visited amazon - plenty of reviews their to rewrite

Have also set up blog on technorati

patrick24601

amateur: Consider hiring someone out for your post writing. Cost me $10 yesterday to get three of them done. I now have them set up to auto post every monday on my blog.

If you have not already done ensure you get that wordpress plugin package that is offered elsewhere on here. Has about 6-7 plugins that are awesome.

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amateursurgeon

That's a good approach, and what I plan to do. I feel I need to do this one mainly by hand so I understand how it all works.

The way I'd like to have it set up is that I have the process streamlined such that I know every blog will take me 1.5 hours and cost $30 (for example) to launch. That way I know if I can be confident of an average return of say $30 a month, I can launch 5-10 per niche and get a return within a couple of months.

That plugin list is great - I have used a lot of them for my blog and a few more. When I get a chance I'll post a list.

shudogg

lol.It is great to see people venturing out into new boundaries. This forum gives me a lot of inspiration to try new things.

__________________
Make $500 A WEEK

amateursurgeon

Another week, another few posts. I'm getting into a decent rhythm now. Once I have my workflow sorted for adding amazon affiliate links, I reckon I should be able to nail out 3 posts in 30 minutes. I'm alternating "info posts" with book / product reviews. The "schedule posting" feature in wordpress is a lifesaver.

My earnings have doubled, to $0.58 woohoo!

But my rankings are all over the shop - gone from nowhere to page 2 on yahoo, and have dropped from page 6 out of the top 100 on google. Not fretting too much at the moment, I know it takes a while to settle down.

SEO wise, I'm now adding a few images and putting alt tags with keywords in. Not sure how much difference it will make, but worth a shot

I'll pump some more content in next week, then look at getting more links.

I've also taken up SEO Mike's challenge on the "No More Excuses" thread, for a different blog - I am already finding my second blog easier and quicker to set up than this one!

amateursurgeon

Ok, 2 weeks since the last update, and 2 months in. I got a little disheartened with toddlersleepingbag as it is getting slammed in the rankings despite my valiant content adding efforts. So I've had a little break from it to try some PPC.

I put together a little CPA Poll system, a topic, and wired it up to Tracking 202 for analytics. Launched yesterday, and was going great until I realised the page wasn't working in IE. Doh.

My first ad on GG was also getting a .2 CTR, so I got a QS slap from GG, and now I can't run it for my main keywords Tried deleted campaign, no joy.

So instead, I've run the campaign on MSN, and am getting a 3-4% CTR with new ads. I'm about breaking even on clicks so far (total earnings today $13.50, using an adcenter voucher, so a small profit). Used the analytics in T202 to trim the keywords list, should make more money tomorrow!

emp

OK, I had promised more help than I have given.

So here is one of my feared Photochops.



We will go through some of my points.
- rename "home"
This is (IMHO) a noob error. Call your home page something that has to do with your topic/site.

- remove the stripes.
They have no function and make the page look busy as hell.

- Remove the adsense link block.
No one clicking there? remove it. This will make your other adspaces more valuable.

- Recolor the Black stripe
Sleeping is one of the fear-laden things for young parents (sudden infant death, ..) This will also be one of the concerns driving the research into infant sleeping bags. Making your site look like a graveyard does not endear you to your customers.

- rethink the ad strategy.
Right now, you have this horrible, blinking mess on the top right of your site.
Remove all of them and promote ONE or two offers.

And a possible end result:



(The green rectangle would be a premium adspot)

You STILL have to add content. You have not added amazon links/reviews/products. All I see now is 13 sites in google of which probably 6 are mere navigational pages (April overview/March Overview/Home Page,Category Overviews...)

When to stop?

Well... I did a bit of market research
Google: "Toddler Sleeping bags"
Ignoring amazon, here are some page 1 results:

Sweetbedbugs.com --> 265 pages
Littlebigfoot.com --> 65 pages
babyinabag.com --> 45 pages
netkidswear.com/kidsleepingbag.html --> about 42 sleeping bags

So aim for about 100 pages and you might get there slowly.
Keep in mind that all these pages are pure resources for your blog. Articles, product reviews, etc..

GOOOOO!

::emp::

__________________
"We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." - Charles Bukowski

Blind Ape Seo ¦ My WickedFire articles

amateursurgeon

Thanks for the pointers emp!

I have updated my site accordingly, and it looks a LOT better. Unfortunately I have done nothing else this week as I was struck down with tonsillitis. It was bad enough that I qualified for proper painkillers from the GP, which is an added bonus as I have quite a few spare in case of inconvenient hangovers or boredom. So, not much done this week apart from watching the ceiling spin round and having some really strange dreams.

Since my last update, I've been looking into PPC more. I ran a poll campaign on MSN adcenter through to an email submit, which generated me nearly $70 in revenue.

I used $100 worth of clicks to get that $70 income, but it still proves the concept is workable. I was using a £50 adcenter voucher, so it's still profit, just not sustainable. I guess it counts as "making my first buck online", so I'm pleased.


Encouraged by this, I've joined up with the PPC Coach program, and I'm following his course. I will, of course, post up my progress with PPC coach along as a review in this thread.

From my experience so far PPC is more attractive to me than blogging, as I'm a systems freak at heart. What the Toddler Sleeping Bag blog has taught me is that it seems to require a hell of a lot of content to rank - which could make scaling difficult for me. I'm going to carry on with it though as I think the lessons in SEO will be useful.

A concrete benefit I've found from having this site is that I don't seem to be having the troubles getting accepted by networks that some people seem to. Even having something as basic as this up seems to reassure aff managers.

I think I may have made a fatal error early on in not being sure how well my niche will monetize - even if I do get to result 1 for "toddler sleeping bags", will it make bank for me? I probably could have sorted that out early on by running a PPC campaign before I invest time in SEO. That's something I'll try next time.

Ok, on to getting some more content up, and launching PPC campaigns

Total gross income so far = $68.75 (PPC campaign) + $1.82 (blog)

emp

You could, of course just sell the site now.

::emp::

__________________
"We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." - Charles Bukowski

Blind Ape Seo ¦ My WickedFire articles

amateursurgeon

Now there's an interesting idea. I don't think I'm quite done learning from it yet, as I'd like to see what backlinks and more content does to the ranking. Although it's pretty clear this site isn't going to make my fortune, I've already learned things that I can apply to ventures with more potential. And maybe, when I'm done learning, selling it is the best thing to do.

But does a non-ranking site with $1.83 in income have any value? If so, what sort of ballpark?

I'm guessing DP is the place to sell stuff like this?

Bompa

Hi AS,

I think it's been over two months on this one site?

Where is it ranking in Google now?

Imo, you need to stop everything you are doing, (especially stop all site
tweaking), and focus 100% of your energy on getting backlinks.

What good is a pretty site that is wonderfully navigatable with lots of
interesting, relevent content IF IT HAS NO TRAFFIC?

Get traffic first, then tweak the site.
Get traffic first, then monetize it.
Get traffic first.


just one man's opinion,
Bompa

__________________
Blog Networking - Video Parasiting!

emp

now, bompa... If you weren't just a fucking douche, you might have provided tips / tricks / links with which to get traffic. But you just wanted to troll, not add value. Asshat.

Yes, of course build traffic. I would still go with building content.

Also:
I think your adsense is too intrusive.

- Try putting it on the LEFT side, so it is closer to the navigation.
- Fucking get rid of the topmost adsense link block... ARGH.
- Make your excerpt text longer, so the ads blend more.
- Also make the link color in adsense the same color as the links in your right sidebar.
- Out more posts on the front page (7) and display adsense every 3rd post only.

I copied this how to from here: WordPress - add Adsense to your blog

But I already tweaked the code for a 3rd adsense spot.

Here ya go:

Code:

<?php
$postnum = 1;
$showadsense1 = 1;
$showadsense2 = 3;
$showadsense3 = 6;
?>

which would go at the top.

Again copying from the above, you already have this:

Code:

<?php if ($postnum == $showadsense1) {
echo '
Your adsense code goes here
';
 } ?>

<?php $postnum++; ?>

and you would add another block below the first ad, but above the counter at the bottom. Here it is all together:

Code:

<?php if ($postnum == $showadsense1) {
echo '
Your adsense code goes here
';
 } ?>

<?php if ($postnum == $showadsense2) {
echo '
Your adsense code goes here
';
 } ?>

<?php if ($postnum == $showadsense3) {
 echo '
 Your adsense code goes here
 ';
  } ?>
<?php $postnum++; ?>

The first bit says the values, then the values are checked each time WP goes through The Loop.
If the counter matches what your value is, the ad is shown. Changing the numbers lets you change the placement.

No, no sexual favours please. Just paypal me some beers.

::emp::

__________________
"We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." - Charles Bukowski

Blind Ape Seo ¦ My WickedFire articles

amateursurgeon

Thanks for the feedback - I've missed a week with my updated, but for good reason, been busy with other IM projects

I have removed the link at the top, and made the suggested changes to adsense code.

Here's a neater way to do it in php:

at the top

at the top part of The Loop

at the bottom of The Loop, just before it iterates:

(I've managed to remember how to code after a 5 year break )

I haven't done much else with the blog, as I've been busy with other stuff, so a quick update on my general situation.

As I mentioned before, I've sussed out that my chosen niche is unlikely to recoup the investment of my putting a lot of time into writing articles. I'm not going offload it right away though, as I want do some linkbuilding to see how it works.

I'm investing all my time (and some money) into learning PPC, as I think that will provide me with a quicker return. I know I'll need to pick up SEO again later as it's good for longer term income.

I've also set up a joint venture with a friend of mine who's a very successful marketer (the old-style kind - mailouts, ads in papers, PR etc) which I'm already learning loads from.

All in all, this experiment has been a great way for me to find out more about Internet Marketing, enough to know that I want to pursue it as a career. Luckily I have a 1 day a week contract that (just about) covers my living costs, so I have time to spend on this.

I've got another 2 weeks to go before the promised 3 months is up, so I'll keep posting how my "first steps" are going, although they will probably be more in the field of PPC than with this blog.