I was reflecting on my self employment and how it compares with having a “job” in the “real world”.

I came to the conclusion that when I had a full-time job, it was as if every day was a grey-sky day, when that uniform blanket of dark grey cloud keeps the sun out, forever.  There is a dull normality about it all.  There may not be any thunder-claps or heavy downpours, but there is never any bright sunshine to warm the soul either.

By contrast, for me self-employment has been like an extended period of unpredictable, unseasonal and very unsettled weather.  When I look at my affiliate marketing website stats and see that my latest precious new website has captured no more than 10 visitors in a month; when I write a carefully considered comment on someone’s blog only to press submit and get the magic word “discarded” in big black letters; when I carefully apply to an affiliate scheme only to log into my Commission Junction account  and see my application in the “rejected” list – these things are like bad-weather days, cold, rainy, windy, stormy days.

Conversely, when I make a big sale (as I just did today), it’s as if the sun of affiliate marketing has suddenly come out from behind those black SEO clouds  and all is well in my little self-employed world for a few moments as I bask in the warmth of my little successes.

So which do I prefer?  Oh come on, you know me by now.  I would HATE to go back to the grey life; a life of endless sun-less days with no hope of a sunny spell.  Give me the turbulent, changeable climate of self-employment any day.

Conversion Rate Boost for Top Ranking Keywords

Well, I have been playing with the new version of Webmaster Tools and it’s really something.

The three new pieces of information that are really exciting to me are the number of impressions for a keyword; the average rank for the keyword and the clickthrough rate for a keyword – in a given period.

This is exciting stuff.

The ranking/clickthrough/impressions data is especially useful to me when I have a site under test because say I have a microniche site with a theme keyword ranking average position 4 in a month, with 500 impressions in a month and say 50 clicks. In theory, once I get to know the average conversion rate for a targeted site at a given ranking, I could extrapolate the data to forecast with some accuracy what I can expect to achieve when the site gets to no. 1.

And herein lies the first eye-opener!

Aside from any inaccuracy with the “impressions” number, and there seems to be some, the big revelation is the conversion percentages.  To date I have been using the old AOL table from 2006 to determine what percentage of traffic a site could expect to receive at no.1, no.2 etc.:

Now, though, judging by what I see in Webmaster Tools for my sites, it looks as if this old data, based on averages for all sites whether targeted to a keyword or not, is really not appropriate when it comes to forecasting the clickthrough percentage at a given ranking for targeted, focussed, Thirty-Day-Challenge-Style microniche sites. Recent examples from my stats seem to confirm an example in a new training video on this subject on Thirty Day Challenge Plus, which I cannot quote, but if I take an aggregate from all the data so far I get these very approximate expected conversion rates:

OK so it’s early days, and these results are VERY ROUGH and based on a TINY sample, but this looks very exciting. On the face of it, this means that I can expect much higher conversions from targeted niche sites than the old table led me to believe.

Note how the total is way over 100%.  This is likely because the highly relevant, targeted pages involved really do pull in the traffic far better than the global average page for that keyword – something that I, and many others, overlooked since that original table appeared in 2006.

If, through use of Google Webmaster Tools, we build up enough case history in the conversion rates at a given rank for targeted sites, this will lead to big changes in the assumptions we make.  For example, at present the Market Samurai tool, which I love, applies a 42% multiplier to expected traffic to give “SEOT” which is expected traffic at number 1.  This is in line with the 2006 AOL data.  It will be interesting to see if the tool is changed in time to reflect what we will learn.

Please let me know your views on all this by leaving a comment below.

I have just analysed the performance on 17 of my Thirty Day Challenge-style microniche sites to see how the actual traffic stacks up against the estimated traffic that I got from Market Samurai or the Google keyword tool (it’s all Google data anyway).  I had read that often the actual traffic is less than the estimates, and from my analysis, it seems so.

Before looking at the results, I want to clarify that I calculated MY traffic estimates by starting with the actual number of unique visitors now, taking into account the site’s current ranking for its keyword, and thereby estimating how much traffic the site would get at the ranking that I reckon I could achieve (usually no. 1).  This adjustment is made by using the well-known table that I believe came from AOL in 2006 (it seems we still have nothing better!)  that shows what percentage of traffic a site is likely to get in each of the top 10 slots in Google:

This means for example that if I have a site that’s getting 50 unique visitors at no. 2, I can hope for, say, 175 when it gets to no. 1.

So, based on the numbers, adjusted using this table, I reached the following rather interesting conclusion:

On average, these 17 sites, ONCE THEY ARE RANKED AS PREDICTED, are estimated to get unique visitors for the main keyword equating to ONE THIRD of the exact match SEOT and ONE SIXTH of the phrase-matched SEOT shown in Market Samurai (whose numbers are in turn based on the Google Adwords tool).

Of course, 17 sites don’t make an in-depth study.  However, it’s based on real evidence and I will definitely be using this when it comes to estimating return on investment as part of the keyword research phase.  I’ll also recalculate the numbers each month to see how they change.

Well, I got a shock this morning when I tried to access the Google Keyword Tool from the Google KeywordToolbox, here:

http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/

because it’s all changed!

Google Keyword Tool Changes

It looks as if the local search numbers are now based on a 12-month average rather than the last month, and the whole GUI is all more slick than before.

You can also filter the results by categories.  Even down to product level if you like.  Could you do this before?  I certainly never did.   You can also limit the results to those that contain individual words from the keyword phrases.   Not only that, but there’s a handy link on each keyword to Google Insights for Search.  Now, maybe some of these features were in the old version, but I for one never saw them so either they are new or I’m only just noticing them now that they are “in your face” on the left of the screen.

All in all it looks great.  I am only hoping that everyone sees what I see and that this is not some sort of dream I had, because I had not read about it anywhere else.  Having said that, I’ve been off the keyword reaearch for a week or two.

One thing I haven’t got to the bottom of yet – and it could be important, is this sentence that appears just above the keyword list:

“Sign In with your AdWords login information to see the full set of ideas for this search”

I need to find out what more you get when logged into Adwords, or more to the point, what you DON’T get by NOT logging in…

Well, I’ve been pretty busy lately.  In the last week of January I decided that I needed to really go for it; to just do more of everything in the same time – to ramp up my productivity, as you may have read in my last post.

The plan was to produce four microniche sites per week, each with six posts scheduled for release over a few weeks and also some web 2.0 articles to support the sites.  I am pleased to say that, give or take a few hours, I am on track so far, with 12 sites up and running since the start of the project three weeks ago.

It really IS difficult.  I read the other day how someone who shall remain nameless reckons you can get one of these sites up “in a couple of hours”.  Well, it takes me nine.  There’s keyword research (average two hours per site); product sourcing (30 mins); domain, hosting and Wordpress set-up (30 mins); content creation (four hours); social bookmarking and setup in Google tools (30 mins); and finally web 2.0 articles (2 hours).  Total: 9.5 hours.  So as you can see, doing four a week is hard work when I have to fit in all my other stuff.

The other thing is that I will have to wait and see what results I get.  I’m taking, broadly speaking, the Thirty Day Challenge approach to these sites – they are all on “test” to see if they are viable.  I will be somewhat gutted if I get to the end of the project and find I have only a small number of sites that “pass” the test and are worth continuing with.  It could take a few months to reach the decision point on all of them – we shall see.

Right, better get ready for site number 13.

Following a review over Christmas, I have decided that I will continue with my bigger, longer-term, niche travel site, as was planned all along, but that I will recognise it for what it is – i.e. longer term, and now concentrate on doing things that will get some cash in during the shorter term.

So how can I do it?  Well, my most successful site is my Thirty Day Challenge-style microniche site on TVs.  In December it earned about £55 I think it was, and looks to be doing similarly in January.  OK, I know it’s a seasonal one, but it proves that the methodology can work.

SO, I reckon that it’s worth some commitment from me to try to do the so-called “rinse and repeat” and ramp up the number of attempted microniche sites.  To this end, I have this week published four new sites, each with one post now live, and five more scheduled in Wordpress.  They also all have Ezine articles, Hubpage hubs and Squidoo lenses, and I’ve done some social bookmarking for each one too.

My plan is to publish four sites per week, for 13 weeks.  Judging by the workload this created last week, that is a hard target for me.  Hard, because I write quality, value-added content, and this schedule means I have to do it FAST.

The other difficult thing is that I have no clue whether the microniches I am trying will work.  From August to November, I built seven microniche sites, and only the one has “worked” so far.  I am very concerned that even if I somehow keep to my gruelling schedule over the next 13 weeks and produce 50 sites, only, say, five of them will “work”.  It makes my heart sink, that thought.  On the other hand, if I end up with, say, 20 successful sites out of the 50, I will be over the moon. So, I am applying the Thirty Day Challenge methodology with blind faith, suspending all doubts and giving it a proper test, with a decent volume of sites, to see where that takes me..

So far, week 1, four sites up.

Sometimes, when I think about what I am doing on the internet at the moment, i.e. getting going in internet marketing, I think that somehow I am not adding anything; just grabbing  business off other affiliates – or trying to.  I was starting to think how I was not adding anything to the world, just diverting business from other people to me.

I was making the mistake of thinking that the online world is different to entering self employment in the offline world in this respect.  But, let’s face it, there are 12 estate agents down the road from me, and two of them are new.  Well, these new ones – are they not the equivalent of my online scenario?  I mean, they too are not bringing a new product or service to the market, and they too are diverting sales from the existing estate agents rather than creating “new” sales out of nowehere.

After all, for the small businessman starting out, it’s surely a lower risk to enter an existing market with a twist on an existing service or product than to try to convince people to buy something totally new that they don’t understand, unless you have really deep pockets.  I mean, look at Edison’s light bulb – how long did he take to get that right and earn some cash?  And what about Dyson and his plethora of prototypes before he got that vortex vacuum cleaner working right.

No, I can see this now – for those with little capital, the initial route to self employment on- or off-line is like diverting a stream so you get a little of the water.  A stream of business.  One that’s flowing already.  Diverting some of what’s there to you, not finding a way to make a new kind of water, and not mining for a new spring in the desert.  I’m convinced that for most people who go it alone, in the early days it’s just about going where the business is and diverting a little of it to your enterprise – where of course, you will try to add a little USP, a little something that makes you something more than just another estate agent, internet marketer or whatever.

For me, this realisation helped me to stop devaluing what I am doing online.  I am fighting for business just as valiantly and just as respectably as any estate agent, solicitor or baker in the high street.

As I write this I’m coming out of a couple of bad days during which I have felt that I have made little progress and taken a pessimistic view of what I have achieved in recent months and where I am taking it all.

I was trying to understand why I felt that way during these last couple of days so I can try to avoid it, because it is basically negativity that is getting in the way of my progress when it happens.

I have to say that for me a lot of the problem is the home working.  Being alone for most of the day is not for me and never will be.  I hate it with a passion.  I’m never good alone – I need people; I love people.  I knew when I embarked on this journey into self employment, when I jumped, that it would be like this for some time.  What I didn’t realise is that occasionally even I would not be able to shake off the demons that sometimes creep up and surround you when you are alone.  Worry about money.  A lack of confidence in what you are doing.  No longer knowing your place in the world.  I have noticed that, when I am working alone at home, these demons tend, if you are not careful, to grow; to surround and envelop you, to paralyse you so that you cannot move forward.  They torture your soul so that it is impossible to see any aspect of your fledgling business in a positive or optmistic light.   They are the voices that say:

NO – I just typed in a load of negative stuff and then back-spaced over it because I don’t want you to read all that rubbish, which, at the end of the day, is the best way to describe all that negative speak from those pesky demons – it really is RUBBISH.

So, I now realise that sometimes when I work alone I become vulnerable to an attack from the demons, and that when it happens, it can blow all the worry out of proportion – now that I understand this, I am on my guard – ready with a counter-attack of POSITIVITY that will kill those demons dead!

I am, to be honest, a bit ashamed of having to admit to this, but early this morning, I was struck by a sudden bout of self-pity, wondering how I can ever make this self employment work.  The Internet Marketing, granted, has had some early successes, but they are of course small, and I think it was this that started me off was thinking, as I lay in bed in the early hours, just how far I have to get to reach the stage when I am able to pay the bills from the business income.  Basically, my income for September was just under 1% of what I need to live.

I say I am ashamed because, well, I have come a long way since the beginning of August and I always knew it was going to take a lot longer than a couple of months.  My partner is supportive, and thanks to the income from that quarter, we are almost, but not quite, paying our way.  So the shame I feel at my self-pity this morning was really because I know that I am in a better position than many.  I have a chance to do something about my lot, to make a success of things in a way that I decide, unlike many people in the world who, for one reason or another, can do nothing but grin and bear their situation.

I am redoubling my efforts now, and calling upon deep reserves of drive and positivity to get me through this, because I know that most beginners in business, especially Internet Marketing, wake up one day and find themselves at the end of the honeymoon period and facing many months of slog to get to their goals.  This is the point, I suspect, that tips most would-be Internet Marketers over the edge and causes them to give up.  Not me.

After about two months in this game, following the Thirty Day Challenge internet marketing formula, and learning an absolute SHED load of information, I have come to settle on a niche to develop, one that I am happy with, and one that has lots of possibilities.  I am going to tackle the travel industry.  Now let me tell you how I reached this point:

At first, for my “challenge” test site, I was advised in the training to examine my “interests” and subjects “I know about” – but these yielded no immediate ideas, so to keep up with the challenge deadlines I decided to do something based on a physical product where I had identified a hopeful keyword.  Hence PushchairStroller.net was born.  This was a failure in terms of the challenge, because there was a quirk with the keyword, half of it being used only in the UK and the other half only being used in the USA.  So I got to number 1 and no traffic. Of course, I have no interest in pushchairs, and to be honest the next site was a little more interesting to me – in the field of fitness.  I like to keep fit myself and I was OK about writing articles on this subject.  However, the “digital product” that I am referring people to – well, you really can get the same information anywhere on the internet if you can be bothered to look – and I can’t honestly say I believe in it.  However, I stuck with it as a learning exercise – and I am still pushing it because it seems that it is more competitive than the research suggested and I cannot get it near the top of the search engines just yet.  The traffic of 15-20 visitors a day have not bought anything.  Today I added an email subscription box – subscribe and get a free guide.

Oh dear, this was meant to be a quick post.  Anyway, on to the next site, for an electronic product.  This has been up for about six weeks and is now at no 5 for its main keyword with about 15-20 visitors a day.  Three sales so far, which is not bad for the number of visitors.  I am pushing this like crazy – no – that’s a lie – I would LIKE to push it but things get in the way..

Then I directed by search towards travel, because actually I am interested in it and like writing about it – like so many writers, of course!  I did some keyword research and quickly found that most of the niches are mega-competitive – but at least it is a wide area to look at.  The  monetisation side is excellent too – if only I could get a sale or two.  My first two test sites went well – well weird that is.  One has yet to rank anywhere interesting, and the other, after about four weeks, is at number 8 for the theme keyword.  The problem is that the 1200 forecast visitors for the number 1 slot should dilute into something more than the two-a-day I am getting at number 8.  So what is wrong?  Who knows.  There is some seasonal stuff coming into the mix, but I allowed a lot for that and even so..

The point of this post, which I have digressed from, is that last night I hit a sort of epiphany – I realised just how “right” the travel niche feels for me, and that I am indeed ending up following the advice and marketing something I actually like – why on earth could I not see this in August when I was looking at my interests and trying to relate them to Internet Marketing?  I am not stupid, but in this case I was hopeless – couldn’t even see what was right in front of my face!

Oh well, not much time lost and at least one of my pre-travel test sites has made some sales!  Now, I have been either brave or stupid and registered a rather generic travel brand-rich domain name and intend to build content on this for a long time.  Alongside this I intend to develop a lot of (hopefully) quick-win micro-niche sites with keyword-rich domains.  And I am trying not to think about the £1800 gross that I am not earning each month, which is what I need to pay the bills.