April Affiliate Recap and May Goals 2013
April was an OK month. I achieved quite a lot business wise although I did spend an awful lot of money on new domains, projects, designs and coding.
It’s actually getting quite hard remembering everything that I’ve done this month, but here’s a good overview:
- Designed and installed new theme on Graduates.co.uk with more content, sections and an eBook on the way.
- Added a new theme to Teens.co.uk plus hired some more writers
- Bought and started a couple of new mini-sites which I’ll outline below
- Overhauling my trading website, improving coding of certain pages and hiring 4-5 writers with preparations to get it into Google News
- Bought a new domain, TradeProfits.com, which I think is a good investment for a trading site that I might want to develop in the future
- Started a new project with a partner which I don’t want to mention yet as it’s still not ready!
- Undertaken more research and strategies to generate traffic away from Google
Two New Websites Bought and Launched
It’s not often I gloat about new websites purchased or started although in this case I was really proud of some of the purchases I made last month.
First of all, I bought a six year old, PR5 NHS smoking website, SmokeFreeEngland.co.uk, that receives 6,000 visitors per month for under $2,000. It was originally a dropped domain (re-launched under the government open license just a couple of months later) and it has around 1,000 root domain links from government, health, news, university and smoking sites.
To be honest I have little plans to develop the site as yet. I bought it for value really and see a number of ways to make my money back including flipping to smoking affiliates, developing an e-cigarette affiliate site on it or selling advertising on numerous PR4 inner pages.
A week later I also stumbled across the domain StudentFinanceCalculator.co.uk in a big domain sales thread for just $200. This term gets 15k exacts in the UK and I actually already have my own student finance calculator tool coded one of my other sites. I’ve basically re-installed this tool on this EMD mini-site in the hope that it will rank easily for its term and soak up natural backlinks. I’ll also use the additional traffic and PR from this site in order to collect additional emails and create further opportunities for advertising on my student network.
May Affiliate Goals
I’m providing an overhaul of strategy for my main trading website, which revolves around hiring 5-6 writers to try to get the site into Google news and become a real authority in its industry. I basically want to take the site to the next level. This also includes getting videos made and expanding the social media campaign.
On my graduates site I’m going to be launching a new eBook as well doing some expensive PR for it. I’m hoping to get it into the newspapers and get some traction going with it. My aim is to turn it into the best graduate careers advice and postgrad study-funding portal.
In general I really want to pivot my business away from Google – this means finding alternative traffic sources and revenues. In 6-12 months time I’d like my traffic to be something more like this:
33% from Search (90% Google, 10% other – so only 30% of my total traffic is from google, including navigational brand queries)
25% Direct Type-ins
25% Referrals
10% Social
7% other (including email, forums, word of mouth)
I have a lot of ideas on how to do this. I also think it’s important to outline that guest posts are an excellent way of generating traffic. If you can add 5 guest posts per month which bring an extra five visitors per day then that’s an increase in 750 visitors per month! In other words, regardless of whether you consider guest posts white hat or against Google’s guidelines, they are a completely natural form of marketing which I can’t see Google penalising (at least high quality guest posts on high editorial sites where one of the main intents is to generate more referral traffic).
Finally, I’m planning to add a new Ultimate Guide to Disavowing Links article to my SEO site Searchable.co.uk later today, which will provide a series of shortcuts and advice for formatting the disavow file really quickly after exporting links from other tools. Hopefully it will get some good link bait and PR – I’ll link to it here when it’s ready.
FYI: Just wanted to say thanks to Pat from SmartPassiveIncome.com and Affaholic.com for linking to one of the interviews I did with James here: http://www.affiliatefyi.com/interview-with-james-from-mum-network-ltd. Interviews are honestly a great way to build natural links to your site (both by being interviewed and interviewing others).
March Affiliate Review and April 2013 Goals
Hey everyone! I got back from Israel early this morning at 5am and I’m a little tired but here goes…
March Recap
March was a bit of a disappointing month to be honest. I hired a writer from Elance to get started on Teens.co.uk, which I was hoping to 30-50 pages to last month, who then disappeared and never responded.
My social media manager for one of my bigger sites is doing OK, however even though we’re building followers and fans I’m not actually seeing any traffic generation from it. Social media is really starting to look like a traffic retention and loyalty strategy rather then traffic generation in my opinion. I’ve seen my clients use Facebook to great effect, however that’s only because they post free stuff and offers which gets 1,000s of FB likes (the other stuff they promote gets virtually zero engagement).
New eBook and Tools
I released my first professional eBook this month and did some PRs for it too. We got around 150 opt-ins in March, which I’m happy with. I also got an article published on SearchEngineJournal.com, which you can read here, plus I had some very useful tools coded to one of my student sites, which is getting some great links from Universities, student unions and forums.
I also picked up a big SEO client with a turnover of $x,xxx,xxx last month so I’m looking forward to working with them since it’s nice to add a big client to my portfolio. I’ve also been considering offering additional services such as PR, content writing and SEO audits on my consultancy website Searchable.co.uk. I’m not actively looking for long-term clients but if I could earned a few hundred bucks doing some remote work, consultancy and SEO audits here and there then I’d be happy with that.
The main reason the month was a disappointment is because I’m becoming disillusioned with one of the industries I work in (binary options). The industry is completely filled with spam (more then payday loans) and even if we do get traffic to our site, the market is so unregulated at the moment that either operators 1) skim our traffic, 2) don’t pay us, or 3) at the very least charge us ridiculous fees for making withdrawals. I also keep getting invoices with “invalid” CPAs or CPLs missing, which are removed from our income with no reason given.
Honestly the binary options industry is pure scum and I’d avoid it like the plague if I could. Even 24Option, one of the largest brokers, took two months to send us our payment after I chased them up every day for over a month. All of the brokers are just new Israeli companies using the cheap Tech Financial white label and basically have a model of making money quickly and cheaply before they disappear. Not to mention 90% of the brokers are based and operated in Cyprus, so I’m guessing that’s going to affect our business with the bank depositors situation.
I also did some research about my business accounts and learned the difference between capital costs, expenses, capital allowances, entrepreneurs relief AIAs and how all of that affects my tax liabilities. Overall, I just learned a ton of stuff I’d never even heard of before, which will have a weighting on my business decisions going forward.
Golf course in Israel.
April – New Plans: One New Project/Partnership
The good news about April is that I’m starting a new project with a friend, which I’m very excited about. It’s not going to be reliant on Google for its traffic and revenues but I just want to get the site installed and running before I give more information about it here.
Next, I’m also planning to get a new theme, layout and content for my graduates and careers website. I’m adding guides on post-graduate study, MBAs, PHDs and conversion courses, which should turn it into a really useful resource for graduates. I already added 20-30 pages last month which worked out quite well.
Finally, I’ve got a pending bid on a UK government owned website which ends tonight. It’s got nothing to do with any of the industries I work in, but it’s got some great backlinks and traffic, and I’m sure I could make an ROI just by selling a few links on it. My other plan was to build it out and monetize it using AdSense or affiliate marketing, and then flip it for 3-4x as much. I also came close to buying another website for low $xx,xxx last month but the buyer backed out in the end.
Anyway that’s all.
Cheers.
Top 5 Moments of my Business as an Affiliate
I’ve been meaning to write one of these type of posts for some while now. I’ve been waiting over 30 minutes on live chat for BlueHost.com to fix an issue for one of my sites, so what better a time to write an article?
FYI: For those who don’t know, I started my first affiliate website Mosesbet.com, a poker tournament website, back in autumn 2009 during my final year at University. I graduated 8 months later in 2010 and since them I’ve been working full-time on my own.
I’m going to do this list in chronological order since otherwise it would be a bit confusing.
- Making My First Mid $xxx per Month Website. The first and second websites I created back at Uni were complete failures. Seriously, I must’ve spent close to one hundred hours working on Mosesbet.com, writing tons of content and doing SEO but to no avail. I’m pretty sure any sane person would’ve given up by now. After 4-5 months, I decided to buy my first exact-match bonus .org domain from someone on a forum for $200. I added a few more pages and links, and got it ranking no.1 for its term and within a few week it was bringing in maybe 4-5 RMPs per month. Unfortunately, on revenue share this was only equating to around $50-$80 per month. By October 2010 (around 6 months later) however, I decided to switch from a revenue share model to CPA and voila, the site was instantly making $400 – $500 per month! This was the first serious money I’d been making since I started affiliating and it felt incredible. Furthermore, it was completely passive income in every sense of the word. A light bulb had gone off in my head after this success because I’d suddenly realized how to make money online and choose the right keywords and affiliate strategy.
- Outsourcing Content for the First Time. 6 months later, by April 2011, I’d learned the formula for creating profitable websites and re-investing the money. I was making around $3,500 per month revenue but I was still writing all of the content for my websites myself. During this month, I was making a new casino website and decided to outsource the content for the first time. This was a completely new experience to me because I had managed to make a completely new website just by spending a couple hundred dollars on casino reviews and guides. It felt awesome being able to just re-invest some money and build sites without having to write all of the content myself. By this time I was practically making a new site every month (my aim at the beginning of the year was to build one site per month capable of earning $200-$300 per month each).
- Buying My First Website and Premium Domain: BuyGold.co.uk. A month later, I bought my first premium domain and website outside of gambling (BuyGold.co.uk) which you can read about here. I was extremely happy with this purchase because a) it was the first premium domain I’d owned that I was proud of, b) I thought it was a fantastic investment and b) I felt I got an extremely good deal. I bought the PR3 website for £7k (around $11.5k) but at the time I thought I could easily generate affiliate earnings of $3k per month if I could get it high up the first page. I also thought buying at that price was a great investment since I could almost definitely flip it for more. Anyway, it turned out that I bought it at the perfect time! Gold prices shot up the following few months. Within 2 months of purchasing the site it was making $300 per month, and in the following month it made a whopping $1,860! Within 6 months of purchasing the site, it had made $4,500 (a 40% ROI!).
- Selling my First Big Fixed Prepaid Ad Deal. 3 months later in July 2011, I managed to sell a HUGE 3-month, prepaid ad deal across a dozen of my gambling sites for $7,500. This was a ridiculous amount to me, especially when it bumped up my total earnings for that month beyond $10,000. I literally took all of this money and ploughed it straight back into new sites, domains and projects. It massively speeded up my growth and 3 months later I resold the exact same ad deal for $7,500, and then another for $5,000 3 months later! I honestly think I just got lucky at this point because there’s no way the buyer even made half of that money back. This just shows how important luck can be in growing a business.
- Incorporating my Company. I had plenty of chances during late 2011/2012 to incorporate my company. This was such a big deal to me because up until then I was just running my business on a month-by-month basis and seeing how it goes. I knew I wouldn’t incorporate until the time was right – in my head this included stable revenues, good growth and strong projects which I knew would at least get me through the next 12 months. The last thing I wanted to do was incorporate my business, shout it to the world, only to fail and dissolve it 6 months later and get a job. Anyway, by October 2012, I’d managed to sell one of my site for 6 figures and it was the perfect time to incorporate. I had enough projects with momentum and enough money in the bank to bankroll me for at least the next 2 years. It felt like a life goal had been achieved – I mean how many people accomplish this feat and start their own company?
Anyway, that’s my top 5 moments as an affiliate and entrepreneur. If you decide to write your own article then let me know and I’ll add a link to it from this page!
Note: I just thought I’d add that last year I managed to sell the first site I started, Mosesbet.com, for $4,500. In hindsight it showed it wasn’t a complete disaster because even at 100 working hours that equals $45 per hour whilst at Uni!
February Affiliate Recap 2013
February was an awesome month for me, probably one of the best months I’ve had since I started my business. For the first time I feel like I’ve come into my own, set myself up for the future, and built credibility in the industry.
Among other things, I’ve learned from my partner how to better structure a business and not leak costs in bank transactions, prepare contracts and work in a professional level with AMs, and I’ve also learned a lot about PR, social media campaigns and how to outsource and run multiple websites.
Outsourcing was a big thing for me last month, and I’ve now got some writers who can write and post content on my websites as well as some community managers to manage my social media accounts. Using Google Alerts has also helped me a lot with content planning and keeping on top of things in various industries.
February LAC Affiliate Conference
The affiliate conference was great and we had a lot of fun. I met up with Nick and James from Inbound.co.uk and in addition to watching a couple of the LAC presentations (David Naylor was great by the way), we did a video debate on the future of mobile advertising as well as soaking up any free drinks we could find. We ended up talking to the owner of TheBookiesOffers.co.uk, who has some solid rankings on his site. It was interesting to note how little poker affiliates from PAL there were (or the lack of a planned meetup like last year), which I guess is indicative of the state of the industry in the last year.
I also managed to secure a big ad deal for one of my sites at the event, which made it definitely worthwhile. Apparently the guy had been trying to reach me by email but it got lost in my junk box, so it if wasn’t for the LAC then I never would have got in contact with him.
Earned a lot of Natural Links!
One of the reasons why February was so cool was because I managed to earn like a dozen natural links across some of my sites. I even wrote an article about it on SEJ, which should get posted early this week if I’m not mistaken.
I know people say there’s no such thing as natural links in gambling, but now I think that if you write strong enough, engaging, unique content or reporting, and build relationships with the right sort of people and contacts online, and find a way to get your content seen by 1000s of people, then you’ll be surprised by the results.
Starting a New Email Campaign and Launching an eBook
This month we’ll be launching a new ebook on our BinaryOption.com site, which I’ll be promoting through as many verticals as possible. It’s the first time I’ve created a proper eBook with professional design in PDF format etc. I’m learning a lot of things from working on this site that I want to translate on my other sites too.
My aim is sort of to create 4-5 sites which all have regular, fresh news content, add value to visitors and have social media managers which can be run on a break-even basis. If I can just get sites to run break-even than that means over time they’ll continue to grow and turn into brands on their own, as well as increasing the size of my email list. If I can outsource the on-page and social media campaigns on a break-even basis than it also gives me more time to focus on PR, SEO and expand the site in general.
March Affiliate Goals
My affiliate goals for March are essentially to keep building up my sites. I’m aiming to put together a whole new jobs section on my Graduates site, which will require a lot of planning and investment. I’m also tempted to get a new design and odds comparison software on my sports and gambling website but that probably won’t be done until April/May.
I had a really good offer for one of my penalised sites last month, which I turned down. Even though it was a really good offer, I’m really tempted to wait until the end of this business tax year in April before I sell any $x,xxx websites or domains so that I have enough time to re-invest that money without paying tax on it.
Finally, I’m going on holiday to Israel on the 20th March until the end of the month so just going to try and get as much work done before I leave and have some fun in the sun.
Affiliate Marketing 101 – How I Plan my Work Day
I wanted to update this blog a little so decided to write an article about how I plan my workload on a daily basis. I’m juggling numerous projects at the moment and hiring even more writers for my projects, so much so that I could probably keep 2-3 employees busy on full-time basis if I had an office and enough money to pay for their salaries!
I tend to split my day into three segments so that I can break up my workload a bit.
9 AM (Work Load No.1) – Wake Up, Check Emails, Check Traffic, Browse Forums, Check Twitter Streams, Skype Conversations and News Updates
I guess 9AM is a really lazy wakeup time for most people, although for affiliates I’m not too sure. I’ve started getting quite a lot of phone calls at around 9.15-9.30 and it’s got to the point where I need to start getting up early in order to answer these calls.
After making a cup of tea, I’ll check my emails, Skype and scan the Internet for my daily news and information absorption (this includes the major Search news sites as well as Twitter, BBC News and BBC Football).
I try to spend the mornings replying to emails and prioritizing my workload for the day. I ask myself what I need to get done in order of priority. For example, if I’m ordering 30 pages of content that I know will take 1-2 weeks to complete than I’ll try to get that sorted out first.
I also try to dedicate my day towards a certain project (two at max). This includes analyzing the site, assessing if I want to invest money in any tools, advertising spots, managing, editing or uploading content and analyzing my user experience and traffic etc.
I genuinely feel like the best performing sites might not have as many links as an average site ranking 1st page used to have last year but they do have regular, fresh content published on a daily basis and probably better usability scores which is improving their rankings. Therefore I’m really trying to move away from ordering content in chunks and uploading it, to a more fluid system of regularly updated, editorial content. The issue of course is that it’s easier to order in chunks and upload it in a 2-hour session, rather than spending 15 minutes every day uploading content to a site. This is why I’m trying to find some reliable writers who can upload news content themselves.
12 PM (Workload No.1) – Manage Content, Speak to Advertisers, Edit Websites, Manage Writers and Deal with Emails
This is when I get the majority of my actual work done. I’ll send various emails to advertisers, send payments, receive invoices, mange my writers and respond to any issues that come up.
The sad fact is, while I could spend this time writing content for my own sites, I’ve got so many projects that I need enough spare time in my day to just have an overall view of everything (i.e. project manager role). Things always come up which I have to respond to such as advertisers wanting to speak with me, writers sending me content, partners to speak to, phone calls etc.
I also spend quite a lot of time analyzing the marketplace, seeing where I could improve or add useful tools to my site such as this one at the bottom of the page, plus I browse the business forums I use at least once per day. For example, here at AcornDomains.co.uk I’ve done a large amount of business buying, selling and developing premium domains.
If I have time, I might try to write an article for my affiliate or SEO blog, Searchable.co.uk. The problem I find with writing however is that if I’m going to write something than a lot of the time I get more value writing as guest posts on authority sites such as the Guardian, Search Engine Journal, startup magazines or interviews with other sites. The fact is, if I’m going to write than I may as well write on topics that I’m an expert on (which money can’t buy) as opposed to writing content for my own sites that could be outsourced for $20 per article. And while I’d love to write more on AffiliateFYI.com, the fact that it’s Penguin’d means that the number of visitors who will actually see my articles is really low.
4PM (Workload No.3) – I’ve got off-peak gym membership at my local gym so I usually go there at around 2-3PM then come back and do some more work.
At this point I’m just doing low intensity work: sending articles out, responding to emails, communicating with other affiliates or AMs on Skype, checking everything is still running smoothly. I spend a lot of time trying to plan ahead, reading articles on social media strategies and comparing what the leading sites are doing as well as trying to forge partnerships and might have the odd meeting during the week to see my consulting clients.
Sometimes if I’m really motivated by a project I might be working from 4PM – 9PM hooked on addiction. For example, when I’m having something designed or coded it’s easier speaking to my coder so we can make changes in real-time rather than sending emails back and forth.
So that’s my day for you. Overall it’s mostly centered around communicating and managing writers/AMs/marketers/coders and assessing competition to see where I could improve my sites.
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About Me
Hi my name is Adam and this is my affiliate blog. I've been working in the online marketing business for two years and graduated from Uni in July 2010.