It’s been a weird week.  It seems that one of Google’s near-daily algorithm changes has had quite an impact on the traffic I am getting to my websites.  Like many people in the UK, I have noticed a significant drop in traffic since early June.  And I mean 75%.  This seems to have happened in the U.S. earlier – in May, hence the “Mayday” name being given to this update.

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.

…to quote the Barbara Dickson song.

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..

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.

Hello again

As you may know if you read this blog regularly, I am building a niche site about holidays in the sun.

When I started, the intention was to have categories under the main site that would be based around longer-tail keywords, because with the travel niche being so competitive in internet marketing, I realised I would have no chance on the more popular keywords such as “hotels in Spain”.

So, I picked a few keywords that looked less competitive.

The problem is that the training I got during the Thirty Day Challenge taught me how to evaluate keywords but did not take into account any regional targeting.  Trying to apply the same criteria to the UK market just does not work.  Whereas, for example, in the 30DC we are taught – go for a keyword with traffic at no. 1 of 80 a day or more, and phrase-matched competition of 30,000 or less – these criteria are not right for targeting the UK, and the problem I have is that I cannot find any information on what the UK criteria should be.  Maybe I should email Dan Raine in Manchester?

Meanwhile, until Dan Raine reads this or until I find the answer somewhere else, I just have to muddle through as best I can, testing this and that strategy and finding through my own expenditure of time and money what works and what doesn’t.

There must be many people new to Internet Marketing who are targeting the UK market who are in the same position – it would be good if there were a central resource for our experiences.  (Maybe there is – if you know of one, PLEASE let me know!) The problem with Internet Marketers as a group is that they are all so cagey about what they do, I mean exactly what they do, in case someone “steals” all their business or spams them up.  Or something.

Anyway, back to the long tail of travel.  In the travel industry, this means something like the process whereby suppliers bring an ever increasing choice of micro-niche holidays to the market, aimed at an ever-decreasing number of customers per product.  In Internet Marketing, long tail is similar, but based around keywords, using an ever-increasing number of micro-niche keywords, aimed at an ever-decreasing number of web page visitors per keyword.

As I understand it, the reasons we go for long tail keywords are:

• they are highly targeted to visitors who searched for something very specific, and are very likely to buy
• there is very little competition even in a competitive industry

The big problem of course is that you still need some minimum amount of traffic in order to get some sales.  evaluating that traffic is very difficult using the standard tools like Google’s Adwords Keyord tool or Search-based Keyword tool, because the numbers just are not there for the really low volume, focused keywords.  The only way I know of really assessing the traffic is either to make a test site (a la Thirty Day Challenge) and get it to number one and see for yourself what the traffic is like, or to do a short Adwords test.  The 30DC site build takes time – and if you are aiming at a low volume keyword, you could spend a couple of days on the site and all its initial promo only to find that there is no traffic.  Ever.  This has happened to me several times now.  So, I am moving towards using Adwords as a test as this costs less than £10 a time; usually less than £5; and saves about two days work.

So, my plan for the travel site was to build categories where I could go for longer tail keywords, yet have everything under the umbrella of a strongly-branded site, a site that in time would earn reputation and authority and where the sum of all its microniches would be greater than if they were all separate sites, thanks to the domain authority.  This was always the plan, but what has changed recently is that I have found a few travel affiliate blogs and had an interesting dialogue or two with some of the authors.  It seems that in travel, you basically have to go long tail – and then go looooonger.  It is just so competitive that you can ONLY go for the low traffic, long tail keywords.  Attacking “hotels in Majorca” will leave you, even after quite a lot of work, in a very long queue behind Expedia, TripAdvisor, Holiday Watchdog, Thomson, ulookubook.com, sunshine.co.uk, Alpharooms, Thomas Cook and the rest.  Because in travel, these big boys are on the ball when it comes to the internet.  It’s not like engineering components.

I am changing tack, therefore, to go even longer tail.  I am also thinking more laterally about the travel keywords – seeing what I can come up with that does not just include the destination in the keyword, but could be based around a specific attribute of travel, say based around  travel advice, travel tips, safety etc.  Whatever – it has to be long tail, and I think I will need to verify the traffic via Adwords, if I can.  As you can tell, I am learning as I go.

So why am I bothering with travel at all given that it’s so competitive?  Why not just go for low hanging fruit instead?  Well, I am INTERESTED in it for one.  Secondly, a customer is likely to generate at least £15 and as much as £100 in commission, so you don’t need as much traffic as if, say, you are selling DVDs (also ridiculously competitive – but without the commission levels – why would anyone do that?)  Mostly, though, it is the interest thing.  I have already spent too much time over the last few months trying desperately to inject humour into my writing about really dull topics, and I can do it, but it’s a killer.  Here’s an example:  Oil Filled Radiators.  See what I mean?  I tried..

So on I go with the travel niche.  I will keep on with the microniche sites too, but there are only so many hours in the day and the travel site, now at 50+ articles since starting on 1 Oct (and no traffic), takes a  lot of work!

***** If anyone reading this would like to offer advice to me and to others on succeeding in the travel niche, please leave a little comment.  Go on, do it now..

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.

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.

Well, as it is the start of October, I have just done a quick review of what I have managed to do in the past two months, since the start of the Thirty Day Challenge.

I now have several websites up and running.  There is the 30DC one, which I have abandoned, because it failed its 30DC test, as although it has been at or near to the top of Google for some time, there were virtually no visitors.  Ironically, it did attract a sale – my first sale – via Amazon, and commission, the amount of which will be etched on my mind forever – £1.57.  It was a shame that the sale was so small.  Pushchairstroller.net, the site in question, had products that averaged about £150 which would have given me more commission than this.  Since that website was deemed a “fail” about mid-August, I started on another one, this time selling a so-called “digital product” (which basically means a load of pdfs, video clips and audio podcasts) in the fitness field.  The website looks great and I have continued to add posts and build links to it, because, unlike the pushchair site, this one did not go straight in at the top and it was clear from the early days that it had a lot of competition.  Until yesterday, having been live for about six weeks, a search on the main keyword for the site would find my site lower that number 100 in the list – but yesterday it suddenly hit 100.  The site is listed higher for another keyword that has less traffic, and this ranking has been improving gradually and I am in the top 10 with that one.  Traffic is gradually increasing, and is usually about 20 a day – not enough.  However, I am continuing to work on this website to see if I can get it higher up the list and more traffic – so I can see if the product sells.

My next website, number three, is in the field of electronic goods.  This had its first round of content and satellite articles etc. finished by about the end of the first week in September.  Since then I have had three sales from this site, and commission of about £16, again from Amazon.  The conversion rate is excellent so far, so this site has passed its 30DC test with flying colours and I am working on getting it ranked higher than 8th or 9th where it now sits, with traffic at about 20 a day.

In about mid-September I began two concurrent travel sites.  I love holidays and everything that goes with it, and thought I could easily write content for a travel site or two – which has proved to be the case.  Unlike the electronic site, which bores me to tears when I write for it, the travel sites are a dream to write for.  So far, these two sites have been live for about three weeks, and the worrying thing is that despite one of them ranking at no. 8, it is getting between three and zero hits per day – the estimated traffic at number 1 is 1200 per day – so there is clearly something wrong.  These site are a bit of an experiment, because although they both meet the 30Dc criteria, the keyword of one is a subset of the keyword of the other.  The longer one gets half of the traffic of the shorter one.  I was hoping to capture both lots of traffic – but to date the 2nd site of the two has not ranked anywhere.

I also decided last month to develop a long-term website in travel – I have a set of domain names for this, and I have started putting content on this main site – rewritten from articles on the other test travel sites.  I am desperately waiting for some traffic and the first sale on one of the test travel sites to see if I can make it and to see if developing this big travel site is going to be worth the work – it’s a very lucrative sector in internet marketing – but also a very competitive one.  It’s just an industry that appeals to me so much – it’s close to my heart, and my partner has worked in the industry and feels the same way as I do about it.  So having a nice big authority site in the travel industry does sound “right” for me.  What I am planning is to find good keywords and develop test sites on each one, re-writing the content and putting each post onto the main travel site too.  This give me an incentive to find travel industry keywords, because we almost get two posts for one.  The main site is more of a generic travel site, so the home page is unlikely to rank, but the categories and posts will be optimised for keywords that basically pass the 30DC criteria, so should have a chance of ranking – the thing that they will not have is the keyword in the domain name – rather it will be in the category and/or post URL.  Anyway, we shall see how all this goes.  As I say, as of now I am desperately awaiting some traffic at my first travel test sites.

Sort of “on the side” I have also put together a site on a keyword relates to sexuality.  it’s not an adult theme, but more to do with lifestyle.  I can identify with this minority, being a part of it, and this made it very easy to develop the website.  I have not really followed the 30DC process with this one, because from the very start it went in at number one, has stayed there ever since, and has attracted about 50 hits a day.  I joined a dating affiliate scheme and put an ad on the site about a week ago – and the day before yesterday to my amazement, £1.22 landed in my account, being payment for a lead – which I didn’t even know was part of the deal!  Now, I need to find time to attract some more traffic to some related category keywords, as this is clearly going to be a site with potential.

So, in nine short weeks I have developed six test sites, one fail, two passes, and three still under test.  I have had commission for four sales, and one lead.  I have also started the longer-term wannabe-authority web site in the travel industry.

Of course, total gross earnings of £17.69 in September is not all that near to the £1800 gross per month that we need to break even in our household – but hey – all I need to do is 100 times the same – and I am there!  Seriously, I am pleased with the start I have made here, from nothing, but there is quite obviously a heck of a long way to go!  One of my main fears is that I will slide backwards and not go forwards, in terms of traffic to the sites and sales.  It will be hard, and I have to be ready for this, if during October I actually earn less than this month, or get less traffic.  I have to be ready to face that and bloody well carry on regardless!

Well, I have this morning been trying to follow my thirty day challenge training and use Market Samurai to generate some interest about my websites and maybe even get a few backlinks one day, by making some appropriate comments on other people’s articles and blogs.  How frustrating this backlink building is.

ijumped poppy

Basically, I have just spent five minutes skimming a blog post, and typing in a considered comment – a quality comment.  I followed the rules as stated, and pressed submit.  What happened?  Well, back came a web page with a totally blank screen except for one big, bold, black word at the top – DISCARDED.  Well, thanks for that, Mr Webmaster.  Thanks for a user-friendly experience at your web site.  Thanks for the consideration.  Thanks for the badly-executed automated judgement that my comment was a worthless addition to your site, which actually it was not.

You know, this is one of the things that is wrong, very wrong with Internet Marketing.  If you are on someone else’s territory, whether it is a personal blog or a big blog site like hubpages, you are treated summarily by whatever rules they decide to enforce.  If they enfoce a new set of rules to the ones on site, well, that’s up to them, it’s their site.  If they send you a curt rejection message with no thought about the image it gives of their brand – who cares?   There is often a lot of unfairness, a lot of bad practice and a lot of sheer incompetence in how these sites interact with visitors who want to make a contribution of what is actually “content” for their site if only they could see clearly instead of going over the top with their trigger-happy condemnation.

It seems to me, to paraphrase that old song, that too many webmasters are “seeing the world through spam-tinted glasses – and EVERYTHING looks spammy now!!”

I am not yet used to this Internet Marketing world.  Every summary rejection of my comments on other people’s sites feels like the equivalent of someone punching me in the chest.  Not exactly painful, but not something you want to have done to you all morning.  I think I need to change my attitude a little.  I am taking it too personally.

Wel, great excitement this Saturday morning.  I spent the first couple of hours writing three more articles for my latest two test sites, and then allowed myself the luxury of checking my Amazon associates account for Thirty Day Challenge test site number two, the TV DVD Combi review site, and hey presto – the first sale for this site – a TV/DVD!  This means a nice £7 commission, which is Amazon’s ceiling for my newish associates account.

The thing about this is that the site only went live on 3rd September, some 16 days ago!  More than this, I have only had around 100 unique visitors to the site, of whom about 50 have clicked the offer advertisement – and one bought!  This is tremendous news, but could of course just be beginner’s luck.

Anyway, it has given me a great lift and is a lovely start to the weekend.  Oh, and of course I must thank the Thirty Day Challenge team once again for their excellent training.