http://ijumped.net poppy

This my blog about jumping into the unknown. Not literally, you understand, but metaphorically, and in this case, career-wise. Or career-unwise. It’s all about my undying urge to break away from a lifetime of compliance, received caution, and the ingrained need for job stability. My jump, although not life-threatening, has a lot in common with the physical leap off the back of the cross-channel ferry into the darkness. It was born not so much out of careful planning as out of desperation. I may sink or swim, and my survival (in self-employment at least) is by no means certain. I may get a life-saving hand just when I need it, or I could be left to flounder in the depths.

Being renowned for starting things that I never finish, I can’t promise anything, but I am starting this blog today with a view to recording the thinking and experiences, the successes and failures, the joys and woes, as my jump into the unknown unfolds.

Of course, nobody knows for sure what has happened, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence.  I have read about a merchant who has reported affiliate sales down “across the board”, i.e. across many affiliate websites, and I also read about a man who usually earns $1000 per month from his websites; slashed to virtually nil during the past month.

Many more seasoned observers are saying it’s “just part of what affiliate marketing is all about”, changing what you do, putting up with whatever Google throws at you.  But I realised yesterday that, for me, it’s far too high a risk to have all my income coming from this source.  I am only getting just over £100 per month right now, ten months in (well – I was), but I would hate to spend another year getting that to £1000 a month only for it to revert to nil for months on end following a Google update.

So, I have decided forthwith to diversify, and that I can no longer afford the luxury of going after Google’s “free traffic”  full-time and using this free traffic to provide all of my income.  Instead, I will spend 50% of my time on that, and the other 50% on getting/doing freelance work or developing other projects or maybe even experimenting a little (very cautiously) with paid traffic.

This will slow the development of my empire of affiliate sites, but it still means I can spend a good 25 hours a week on them, on average, more than many people have the luxury to do.  It will also mean I will be working towards more diverse income from more than one source, which will be lower risk for my overall business.

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.

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.

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…

I have submitted a lot of articles to EzineArticles now, but the success rate of people visiting them and clicking through to my sites varies a lot.  However, there is something of a pattern forming.

The first thing to say is that my rubbish articles do rubbish.  Few people read them, and virtually nobody clicks through to the underlying web site I am trying to draw attention to.  OK, fair enough.  I must not write rubbish.

It gets more interesting though..

The next class of articles are those that are what I would call self-contained, where you read it, and you have everything you came for.  A good example is the safety guide.  You know the thing “Steam Iron Dangers – Don’t Fall into These Traps”; or “Folding Snooker Table – Avoid These Hidden Hazards”.  The thing about these is that once a reader reaches the end, your invitation to “visit folding-snooker-table-today.com for more information and some amazing bargains” is pretty empty – because the reader found your article by searching for safety tips – probably.  He has all he needs thank you very much, and has no reason to visit your site.

This brings me to the third class of article.  This is the one I am aiming for from now on.  It’s the sort of article that’s a real “hook” or a “teaser”.  I have found that things like “Folding Snooker Table – A Beginner’s Guide” have worked well for me, assuming of course that the object in question is something that people are interested in.

The point is that this sort of article is giving people a start in the subject; giving them the information and confidence that they need before they can choose and buy a product that perhaps they have not bought before.  Having read such a “primer”, it’s a very natural step for the reader to capitalise on this new-found confidence and click on the link to see some examples of the product on your niche site.

In a nutshell, it’s about sowing seeds rather than giving a bouquet.  Seeds are a starting point; a bouquet is the end.

Back in November I wrote a post entitled “I Really Don’t Know Life At All” – and since then I have received a lot of people here who are looking for the lyrics of this great song by Joni Mitchell, properly called “Both Sides, Now”.

So, if that’s what you’re here for – there’s a link to the lyrics below so you don’t feel cheated, but why not have a look around while you’re here?

I Really Don’t Know Life At All / Both Sides Now Lyrics

Well, to be honest, January was OK and February only brought a small dip in the TV sales, so can’t complain really. Total commission down to £68 from £73.

So, February was the first month of my self-imposed challenge to ramp up my Thirty Day Challenge-style web site production.  How did I do?  Well.  Pretty well, actually.  My target was 20 web sites in a month, and I did 19.  So that’s 19 on top of the, erm, one successful microniche site I had at the start of the month (we won’t mention the eight failed ones).  Of course, I also have the long-term project – the yet-to-rank-for-any-keyword, no-traffic travel niche site..

But I have more exciting things to report from February:

When I took my month-end look at sales and traffic, I found that of these 19 new sites, nine were already receiving some traffic.  More than this – of these nine, no fewer than FOUR sites had produced a sale – and this within a month of going live in each case.  On analysing the conversion ratios, all four sites have had around 50 unique visitors each, of which about 50% clicked on the affiliate link and one bought!  So that’s 1 in 50 visitors buying – and on each of four different sites.  I only hope that ratio continues!

So, I have to consider the first month of my “90 day project” as I’m calling it, pretty much a success.  I’ve made a slow start in March, with just one more site added so far and it’s already 3rd March, but I am committed to adding another 15 sites this month.

There are also other pressures coming into play now.  My other half has just come to the end of a temp job which was not even paying the bills as it was, but now there’s nothing coming in apart from the affiliate commission.  Let’s hope for more than February’s £68 in March then..

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.

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.