SimonD

Hey everyone,

Ive been aware of the basics of internet marketing and SEO for some time but was always too lazy to actually get down and do it. Well, I have finally got down and done it and have some big goals.

My initial plan is to go the SEO route with niche sites, mainly reviews with affiliate links. My first two sites are based on Amazon products, their commissions really seem to suck but its a start and I am using it as a learning experience to build on.

Site 1: Found a product on Amazon that seems popular (has lots of positive reviews). I researched and found 4 or 5 keywords related to the product each getting around 3k-6k searches a month and very little SEO competition in the top 10 in google. I have been using Market Samurai to dig into the keywords and scope out the level of competition.

Registered k1-k2.com Someone has bought k1k2.com but just has a spam blog with some ad links and no content. With only 15 PR0-1 backlinks they are bouncing around the top spots on the first page of google. Should be easy enough to compete with. I later found an ever better keyword phrase that I didnt think of the first time that gets 8k searches and still has low competition and got an exact match .net so i will have to get something up on that, but will wait and see if the money is worth it on the first site.

For content I have just put up a wordpress page, several articles I wrote myself related to the product and today my product review with affiliate links.

As far as link building goes I submitted it to 10 social bookmarking sites manually (man that is boring, will be outsourcing from now on) and commented on 15-20 blogs although only a third of those have been approved yet. I have written a few articles and posted them to 2 article directories and thats it. 2 days after launching the site it is on page 4 of google for my main keyword so its looking good so far. I also created 5-6 forum profiles from a large list of high PR forums that I found somewhere.

As far as blog commenting goes, the one thing I have noticed that has been most succesful with getting comments approved is telling them that their post was so good would they mind if I use it on my site/link to it on my site. People seem to be flattered that I would want to use their content and a few have even been to my site and left comments thanking me.

Ok this is getting quite long, Ill post details of my second site and further progress later if people are interested. Hopefully this can be a constructive journal to help out other newbs and I would really welcome any advice or criticism along the way.

Walden

I'm in a similar position Simon. Review website, about the same search/month in Google. My website should be up and running in the next day or two and then I will be endeavoring on climbing the Google ladder. Keep updating, I'm interested to see how a fellow Aussie goes, I'll keep in touch with my progress/fuck ups go.

cheers,
Walden.

IMHopeful

I'm new to the game to. Just make sure you automate ASAP. Writing, posting, answering, etc...will drive you nuts!

Sounds like you're on the right track though.

SimonD

Thanks guys, keep me updated with your progress too.

Onedollaridea

If I was you, do this with a time lag, around a week or two as otherwise people are just going to get into your niche if you are successful.

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Check your fricken grammar and spelling!!

SimonD

Can you elaborate? Im definitely not going to be naming my sites/KWs.

SimonD

Quick update:

Page 1 of google (number 10) for my main KW 3 days after launching!

emp

Nice going. Now don't rest just yet.
<deep breath>
How is it converting? How many visitors are buying? Are there return visitors? How many pages are indexed? Where are you on other search engines? How many backlinks do you have? Where can you get more? Are there other products that could tie in? Can you get people to register for your newsletter? Do you have more content lined up? How can you improve conversions? How can you get people to come back?

And....

What is the next site?

::emp::

__________________
Your Logical Fallacies - know them to avoid them

That's because all programmers are also ninjas.(but not all ninjas are programmers) - LogicFlux

Blind Ape Seo

dchuk

...<3

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SimonD

Thats all really great stuff to be aware of, thanks. Too early to say for the questions about sales and conversions but I will be monitoring all of that and testing different things to improve conversion rates. I will be adding a little more content slowly, at least something new every week. There are definitely other products that tie in and I already have plan for what they are/how to promote them but will see how sales go with the initial product first. Whats good is that many of these products are already strongly recommended by Amazon themselves when people click through to the product page. I need to set something up to start collecting email addresses too, thanks for reminding me.


The next site went up yesterday. Its another amazon product niche, this time a small range of items that sell for $60-150 each so commissions are better. Ive selected 3 products from this category from the same company that are each getting 2-3k searches per product name a month. The quality of SEO competition is still quite low but I think I will have to build more links for this site and might not rank quite as quickly. Today was the start of link building - social bookmarking, some blog posts and forum profiles and I have outsourced 100 links each for both sites for someone to submit to directories.

emp

I would recommend a new article evbery few days for a new site, then go to once a week.

One thing I found really helpful was having a "future posts" calendar in my WP backend, like this one:

See Future Posts Scheduled While Writing or Editing WordPress Post

That way you can write and schedule posts ahead of time and see when more content is needed. (I like to batch writing)

::emp::

__________________
Your Logical Fallacies - know them to avoid them

That's because all programmers are also ninjas.(but not all ninjas are programmers) - LogicFlux

Blind Ape Seo

SimonD

Ok only problem I have is that my "money" article is the latest blog post which is my review with affiliate links. I want that to be the topmost post on the page when people visit the site, can I sticky it there or is there another simple solution... seems like a dumb question I know but I really am a newb. As it is my site is one blog page, thats the main page, with separate pages for about, privacy, sitemap and disclaimer. I guess make the main page a separate page for just the review which everyone lands on and link to the blog in the menu/sidebar?

emp

Yes.

Also refer to the main page in your blog posts frequently.

::emp::

__________________
Your Logical Fallacies - know them to avoid them

That's because all programmers are also ninjas.(but not all ninjas are programmers) - LogicFlux

Blind Ape Seo

dchuk

Make sure you're checking exact match search volume and not broad match, to make sure you aren't going after ghost traffic

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SimonD

Thanks, yeah I am only going for exact search volume.

SimonD

Update: got the first site sorted with a static homepage just containing the review. I now have a separate menu link for the blog which I have added to and queued up some content.

Speaking of content... man i got hardly anything done today except write more articles for each site. I submitted 4-5 articles for the second site to different article directories and added a new post. This is going to become so time-consuming as I get more sites up, will have to outsource it soon but am reluctant to spend much money yet until I actually have something coming in.

Ive found another promising niche and purchased 3 domains related to that, got an exact-match .net and two others all quite closely related. Was hoping to get one up today but spent too long fucking around writing and submitting articles. Im going to need to get another hosting account too so I dont have multiple sites in the same niche on the same IP (just using cheap $5/month shared hosting for now).

SimonD

Ok so its only a few $ for me but... FIRST SALE. 7 clicks, 1 order

22mil

Gratz dude!

I'm liking your thread, seems like you got your shit together and have a grasp on what is needed. Are you heat mapping your site to see where people's attention is most focused? Sometimes changing the placement of your affiliate links / call to action can increase your CTR and conversions...

Keep up the good work... I'm yet to get something going on my side.

SimonD

I havent done anything like that yet 22mil because it doesnt seem worth it until I have consistent enough traffic that the data actually means something.

Update:

My second site isnt looking quite as promising so far. I think I may have really messed up my analysis of the level of competition. I made two mistakes - picking keywords that have too many competing results in google, and not getting an exact match domain. There doesnt seem to be enough money in the niche to really make it worthwhile building the amount of links I now think I will need to rank so I am going to abandon it for now...

Lesson learned but its surely not worth throwing more time and resources after a poorly-planned idea.

On a positive note - I have found a couple of great, related niches and registered 3 exact-match domains for each one, with each main KW getting 4-8k exact match searches a month. Its going to keep me really busy for the next few days getting the sites up and some content written, but it should be worth the effort for these niches.

Tireswing

What kind of competition are you facing in these new KWs.

Nick Stentiford

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

SimonD

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?

SimonD

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).

SimonD

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.

juntao65

Dude you already made sales? That's fucking wicked for seo.

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SimonD

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.

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sevnup

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.

SimonD

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.

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facehead

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.

jake321

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...

emp

Both.

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

::emp::

__________________
Your Logical Fallacies - know them to avoid them

That's because all programmers are also ninjas.(but not all ninjas are programmers) - LogicFlux

Blind Ape Seo

SimonD

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?

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zingo

Adsense.... I only have adsense and Vibrant (only allowed on major sites) on my sites..

Adsense Hotspots..



I get 90% of my clicks from the "red" area as shown above.

SimonD

Amazing, exactly what I was looking for thanks.

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SimonD

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.

dchuk

YESSSS

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SimonD

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...

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SimonD

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.

DanWesson

Easy Adsense

Another good one that is useful for all around ad placements is

Ad Manager

It's a little more hands on, though.

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SimonD

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.

valeraz

Hi SimonD!
tnx for your journal, its inspiration stuff for me as noob. until now i just read and plan, i think its time for acction.
tnx again and GL!
keep posting !

overbech

wow! have been at this for a couple months and still have never made a sale.

my new thing is i just made a review site with links to amazon associates trying to sell the item. but ya, no sales yet bet at it for a couple weeks.

puroz

Lol man your rocking.

I got like ~140 clicks on amazon and 1 sale worth 2$ to me. I'm trying to tweak things as of now to increase amazon sales because i think EPN is starting to screw me. I sold 150$ worth of stuff(not counting acru's) and they only paid me 40$

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DanWesson

It sounds like a lot of people too dumb to be bothered to set things up correctly. It does default to the authors ID and have a couple of other things that need to be changed when you set it up, but I hardly would accuse him of stealing clicks since I am making money daily with adsense using his plugin.

Most of those people complaining surely have never seen an adsense payout, and want to blame it on something. I am making mid $xx daily with it and have seen no issues.

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SimonD

Oh ok good to know then, thanks.

Had a nice end to the month - sold another clickbank product at $18 a pop and another big amazon order which took me to nearly $70 for the month. This clickbank product site has been sitting there for months without a sale then gets 2 in 2 days - I recently changed up my presell copy but its hard to say if it made a difference without more numbers it could just be variance.

For the last 2 guys who said they are trying to get started with amazon: make sure you are selling things that are minimum $100 per item. My first site is flogging $25-40 products and while it has made more sales it is worth fuck all in commission to me compared to the other site where people are buying something that is commonly bought with a bunch of accessories that total $150-$300 depending on what they buy.

JahRuhle

Its actually really important to have those sites that sell cheaper items more frequently. Remember; the more items that get shipped, the higher your % of payout will be, and amazon pays retroactively, which means once you make that jump from 4% to 6%(or w.e it is) they will pay you that extra 2% on all your previous sales as well.

bak3ray

thanks for this.