For some reason, I’ve been feeling in a much better mood since the beginning of this month.  I’ve had new visions for some of my projects plus feel better about my business position in general.

First of all, I’ve got some impressive plans into how I’m going to develop Graduates.co.uk.  I’ve already published a postgraduate funding eBook and done some outreach for that, however I also have plans to launch a postgraduate funding directory for different University scholarships, funds and grants (similar to the Postgraduatestudentships.co.uk website).

I think once I hit a certain mass I’ll be able to start charging Universities to add their own bursaries and departmental scholarships to the site.  In addition to the above, I’ve signed up to a couple of affiliate programs which offer practice numerical and psychometric tests for graduates, plus I’m considering adding a white label powered graduate jobs board to the site in the near future.

I’ve also got a couple of PR campaigns planned down the line, which I’m hoping will get me some national coverage.

New .Co Domains and Projects

I’m a huge fan of the .co domain.  I honestly think it’s going to become the defacto extension of choice after .com (and .co.uk).  It’s also extremely under-devalued at the moment, as many affiliates have never heard of it or appreciate its value in SEO.

Anyway, I’m pretty excited to say that I bought ForexBrokers.co yesterday, as well as registering SpreadBettingCompanies.co for $10 a couple of days earlier.  Other .co domains in my portfolio includes MobileCasinos.co and MobileSlots.co.  I did consider purchasing BettingSites.co recently, although I thought it was a bit too expensive to purchase without any reasonable intent to develop it.  I also own BettingSites.org.uk anyway so didn’t think it was worth it in the end – although it looks like it has a new owner since I last checked.

My plans are to de-index and re-launch a few of my Penguin’d sites on these new domains to give them new life.  This includes ForexAccounts.net > ForexBrokers.co, MobileCasinoBonus.org > MobileCasinos.co and I’m considering moving TotalSpreads.co.uk > SpreadBettingCompanies.co (even though it isn’t penalized).

One of the reasons I’m developing these EMDs is because I’m still waiting for two of my bigger sites to recover from the original EMD update, which was over 7 months ago.  Rather then waiting for a refresh, I’d rather balance my business risk my developing these new EMDs and taking advantage of the update interval. This way, if there’s no new EMD refresh then these new sites will prosper, whilst if there is an update then it gives my other sites a chance to come back.

Nominet’s Direct.uk Announcement

Nominet (the organization which manages the UK namespace) has launched round two of its direct.uk initiative, i.e. bringing out the 2^nd level website.uk extension in addition to the existing website.co.uk.

For me personally, it gives me a new UK domain that I can launch my penalized UK projects on.  This is pretty good news considering it also doubles my assets in premium UK domains.

I’m unsure whether the consultation will get passed in its current form.  It still seems a little unfair to give first right of refusal of the new .uk domain based domain registration age between .co.uk, .org.uk and .me.uk owners.  I think most agree that the new direct.uk domain should be given to the .co.uk holder directly.

Also, in the last 7 months since Nominet.org.uk first launched the direct.uk consultation, they have been actively promoting .co.uk domains to UK businesses on their website AGreatPlaceToBe.co.uk.  It seems fraudulent and flat out illegal for them to be heavily marketing the .co.uk domain to businesses when they’re planning to launch .uk in 2013/14 behind their back, which could go to a completely different owner.  Imagine purchasing a .co.uk for your business only find that someone else will own the .uk version 6 months later.  I’m not a lawyer but I imagine they’ll be plenty of lawsuits heading their way.

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May was another slightly disappointing month for me personally.  A combination of my gaming affiliate commissions decreasing and a lack of recovery for anyone from the last Penguin update were a bit depressing.

Right now it’s just a depressing SEO industry.  The mid-level affiliates seem to be squeezed out by either big brands or one-page, disposable blackhat SEO websites (just search for “online casinos” if you don’t believe me).

Good sites that were hit by Penguin or the EMD updates (and did everything they can to remove or disavow all of their unnatural links) still haven’t recovered, meanwhile spam has made it’s way to the top of the SERPs for competitive queries.

I’ve had a few sites, where I removed or disavowed literally every single unnatural link to my site.  I still had no recoveries, despite the fact that I’d earned some authoritative natural links and had been publishing good content on a regular basis.

EMDs seem a bit of a joke now too.  The last EMD update was now over 7 months ago and I don’t think a single site has recovered, regardless of the improvements made.  Yet I can start a brand new site on an EMD now and it ranks page one or two within a week.  Obviously the moral of the story is to not rely on Google for your main source of traffic but at the same time there are so many hypocritical things that Google does or lies about is still frustrating.  The fact that I can re-launch the same website on a new domain and have instant rankings, yet can also earn dozens of high quality links, mentions and social signals to the same website on the original domain and see no recovery is just dumb.

Even as an SEO consultant, it’s getting to the point where I may as well go back to the old habits of buying links since it’s working so well for my competitors.  It’s infuriating seeing Matt Cutts doing weekly webmaster help videos about the most insignificant things and joking about the color of his T-shirts, where as the biggest questions go unanswered.  Apologies for ranting on my blog but it’s taken the Webmaster Spam team seven months to release the second iteration of Penguin in addition to incorporating Panda in ever flux, yet they still haven’t figured out how to stop one-page sites on five-day-old domains and web 2.0’s ranking for some of the biggest keywords.

May Affiliate Recap

With that rant over, I got quite a few things done in May.

First of all, I bought two new domains, Tabloids.co.uk and UniversityRankings.co.uk for around £100 each.  While I bought both domains for value, I also had some ideas of how to develop them.  For example, Tabloids.co.uk could be a summarization of the best tabloid news stories (I was also thinking of doing something more app related), or I even thought about launching a PR website on it.  UniversityRankings.co.uk is also a nice domain that goes alongside by student/graduate websites.  At 12k exact searches it would be pretty easy to stick up a website with the latest ranking tables such as this one from the Guardian which was just launched.

Secondly, I managed to hire another few writers for my financial trading website and have two news articles per day now.  I’m working on getting videos created next month, hired an external SEO/marketing guru plus we’re planning to install a forum soon.  Overall, I want to turn it into a more “sticky” site that is a better community resource for traders.  I’m also seeing more value from having a sticky brand site that captures user email addresses, information or gives you expanded reach for promoting new articles (the same is true for a large Facebook page reach).

I also expanded Graduates.co.uk with some new sections, an eBook (due to be installed on the site to collect opt-ins this week) and some new connections and outreach.  I’m increasingly looking towards Facebook, PR and conducting interviews with careers experts as a natural traffic source for this website.  I thought of tons of new ways to really get this site going, especially in the media (I already did an interview with a woman from The Times about young entrepreneurism in the UK).  I’ve also written down in my six-month goals on my laptop that I’m aiming to create some sort of jobs/postgraduate course database for this website which would be a great monetization strategy.

Lastly, I did quite a bit of work improving the SEO and blog of my SEO website Searchable.co.uk last month.  I managed to do a number of interviews and outreach for the website plus added some unique, interesting content such as:

• How to format your disavow file with excel
• Why Google Analytics is flawed
• What is Google’s definition of white hat SEO?

Each of the articles I’ve written for that SEO blog seem to increase the traffic quite a bit, so hopefully if I can keep up the pace I’ll be able to start getting more reach, social signals and promotion from it.

P.S I managed to hook my friend Sam up with a pretty good job in the industry last month.  I felt quite good about that!

June Affiliate Goals

It’s getting increasingly more difficult having “goals” that I write down at the beginning of the month and then complete them. I often get so busy managing workers (and getting stuff completed based on their own timeline), plus unexpected opportunities always arise here and there that I have no control over.

For example, one of my clients are now doing really well  (I don’t want to mention the niche but they’re already one of the biggest sites in their industry).  They hired a new employee a few months ago and are now looking to hire another one too.  The point of the story is that they’re looking to pay me on an ongoing basis for SEO and marketing consultancy services: it’s just coincidence really.

I’ve got another 50 pages planned for my graduate careers website, plus I’m focusing much more on content development strategies focused on users and Facebook outreach rather then getting content uploaded for the sake of search engines.  I think this is the key change in how I run my websites going forward.  I’d rather write one excellent, opinionated article per week (which I can do PR and journalism outreach for) then have a boring daily blog.

I’ve also got plans to run a PR campaign for my financial trading website plus improve the existing media deals that we offer advertisers.

The post May Affiliate Recap and June Goals 2013 appeared first on AffiliateFYI.com - Affiliate Marketing and SEO Tips.

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)

How Am I Going to Get Away from Google?

The facts are that I don’t want to rely on Google anymore.  Even if you’re an expert in white hat SEO and get the best links possible from PR and newspapers, I still wouldn’t want to rely on Google.  It’s far too risky.

With that said, I want to explain how I’m going to try and get away from this pure play SEO mindset and do proper Internet marketing.

Make a Website where Visitors Come Back for More Content

First of all, I think it starts with the actual quality of your website and the value that you provide.  You simply can’t expect a small 100-page affiliate site to rank for big keywords long term using white hat SEO anymore.  White hat SEO is all about building a brand, getting the right “signals” and organic growth.  In other words, you need to plan a website where users come back for more information.  If your site is set up to receive traffic from Google, convert it into paid leads and for never come back, then your long-term plan is already flawed.

In order to get users to come back to your site, I think you need some sort of value such as excellent content, useful tools, daily deals, interviews, surveys, competitions, information, guides, research, directories and/or a service.  You also need consistency with all of this stuff – good things take time and commitment to build out properly, and information needs updating every now and then.

What Marketing Methods Am I Going to Use?

Over last the couple of weeks I’ve realized that SEO is only a tiny fraction of the online marketing channels available. The problem is that quite frankly my websites have sucked in the past.  This has made traffic diversification such as social media harder because for the most part the content genuinely hasn’t been good enough to be shared.

On the other hand, if you publish great, industry-leading content or thought provoking/humorous stuff then other people will be happy to share and follow your stuff.  The same is true of hiring expensive, high quality writers instead of generic copywriters at the starting salary level.

With that being said, I plan to use the following channels to diversify my traffic:

• Direct Type-in Traffic – Hardly anyone ever mentions this as a traffic source but it’s the most important one in my opinion.  Building a brand with great content means having repeat visitors who follow your brand and come back for more.  Personally, I want the mentality that direct, type-in traffic should be my biggest traffic source.
• Referral Traffic from other Blogs, Forums and News Sites – There’s nothing wrong with guest posting if it’s done for the right reasons, i.e. driving traffic to your website and adding credibility to your brand.  I also think having content linked to from forums, whether it’s natural links or people clicking your signature, is great.  I also get a lot of people visiting AffiliateFYI.com through my signature on the major affiliate forums – imagine if you did this with forums in your own niches…
• Content Syndication and Social Bookmarking – If you write a great piece of content, why not get it syndicated across the web? Post your articles on leading social bookmarking and blogs in your industry. Make this a force of habit too!  The Inbound.org website is a great example of this.  I’ve also realized that if you publish something great, you should really be reaching out to journalists and other bloggers using more personal contact methods. 
• Video Marketing – I’m fairly new to this game, but I’m going to be investing reasonable sums of money of the next few months in videos for some of my sites.  They provide a great alternative traffic source, add value to articles, plus if you syndicate them in the right places then you can get increased traffic and exposure for your brand.
• Twitter, Facebook and Google+ Having more followers means more people reading and discovering your content once it’s published, as well as more referral traffic.  Furthermore, authoritative followers who re-tweet your content can create huge amounts of traffic.  I’ve already seen this happen with some of my previous AffiliateFYI.com articles.
• PR and Infographics - Again, if done for the right reasons I think these can be great traffic generation and branding strategies.  Conduct surveys using your user base or summarize information from elsewhere and produce killer PR stories with infographics on your site.  Get the message out there that you’re an authority site and a leader in the community.  A good investment in PR will also lead to increased communication with bloggers, reporters and journalists, which will bring additional opportunities further down the line.
• Email Marketing – Regardless of how you incentivize people to sign up to your email, your aim should be to turn your email list into a steady stream of traffic to your website.  Find a way of providing enough value to users to keep visiting your site (e.g. premium content, competitions, freebies, weekly deals).
•  Create a Service or Product – I’m strongly looking into doing this for one of my trading website, i.e. a premium service that I can offer.  I guess the overall advantage of creating a product is that it puts you in a better position to do PPC and Facebook marketing, other people will naturally review and link to your product, plus it provides a diversified revenue source.
• Partner with Other Leaders in your Industry – There’s nothing wrong with a bit of cross promotion with others in your industry.   SEOmoz and Distilled.net do it all the time, as do Facebook and Bing etc.  I’m working with a University for one of my sites, which provides a service that actually adds value and credibility to one of my own student sites.

In conclusion, these are just a handful of ways that I/you can plan to diversify my traffic and stop depending on any one-traffic source.   They also all indirectly lend themselves to an organic, white hat SEO strategy that plays into my hands, plus when you create an industry leading site then the opportunities (including reporters, journalists and advertisers) come knocking on your door rather then the other way around.

I’m also keeping an open mind when it comes to consulting plus I genuinely enjoy writing/blogging on certain issues relating to internet marketing (such as new gTLDs), which I guess also helps with the marketing aspect of things and builds my confidence going forward.

The post How I’m Going to Make the Transition from SEO into Pure Play Internet Marketing appeared first on AffiliateFYI.com - Affiliate Marketing and SEO Tips.

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).

The post April Affiliate Recap and May Goals 2013 appeared first on AffiliateFYI.com - Affiliate Marketing and SEO Tips.

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.

The post March Affiliate Review and April 2013 Goals appeared first on AffiliateFYI.com - Affiliate Marketing and SEO Tips.

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.

1. 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.
2. 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).
3. 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!).
4. 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.
5. 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!

The post Top 5 Moments of my Business as an Affiliate appeared first on AffiliateFYI.com - Affiliate Marketing and SEO Tips.

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 20^th 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.

The post February Affiliate Recap 2013 appeared first on AffiliateFYI.com - Affiliate Marketing and SEO Tips.

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 1^st 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.

The post Affiliate Marketing 101 – How I Plan my Work Day appeared first on AffiliateFYI.com - Affiliate Marketing and SEO Tips.

New Theme on StudentMoney.co.uk

This month has been extremely productive so far.  I got a new theme designed and launched on my student money site (http://www.studentmoney.co.uk) plus I’m getting some really useful tools coded for the site whilst I’m away.  This will include a student loans repayment calculator and a weekly budget planner.  These will be useful tools for students as well as great PR and link bait for my site.

I’ve also been doing a little PR and promotion for the site, teaming up with some core partners and charities such as NASMA (National Association of Student Money Advisors) and cash back partners.    I’ve got more content to stick up on site as well as some special deals and a few other things to get coded when I return.  The next step for the site is a strong SMO (Social Media Optimization) strategy, combining social networks with forum posts and social bookmarks.

Writing and Contributing to more Newspapers, Magazines and Startup Blogs

As I’ve gradually been outsourcing more work, it’s given me more time to write for other sites including newspapers, magazines and startup blogs.  This is why I haven’t been writing at AffiliateFYI.com as much as I used to.  I really enjoy writing for other sites, building my credibility and giving my expert opinion on things.  It also helps increase my connections and Twitter followers.

I’ve written a few articles this month for various sites such as the Huffington Post and GrowthBusiness.co.uk.   I’m also aiming to become a regular monthly contributor for a couple of other business blogs too.

New eBook and Business Deals for my Trading Site

I managed to get a nice 10,000+ word eBook created for my trading site but I’m going to wait until I get back in February before I get it coded to the site and start a newsletter.  I’ve also got more plans for Investing.co.uk and I’m planning to focus all of my energy on building this up into a leading resource that covers everything, similar to money.co.uk.

I’ve pretty much decided I’m not going to develop OptionsWinner.com and just focus in Investing.co.uk instead.  The reason is that I need to narrow down on my projects and this will pay huge dividends when it comes to my SMO campaigns.  My plan is to just focus on 4-5 sites this year (1 per industry).

i.e.:

• One site for students
• One site for graduates
• One site for investing and finance stuff
• One site for gambling (which covers sports betting and casino)
• One site for SEO and marketing

I think this is a pretty solid strategy, I honestly don’t see the point in having multiple sites in the same niche anymore.

Ordered my First Business Card!!!

I’ve ordered my first ever business card from VistaPrint.co.uk for the LAC in February, which you can see below.  It’s fairly basic in design. I would have got a custom one made but as I don’t have a special logo on ARGMedia.co.uk yet so I didn’t see the point.  250x cards for £24 seem like a good price anyway.

If anyone fancies meeting me at the LAC in February then get in touch with me through the about page on this site.

The post Early January Affiliate Report appeared first on AffiliateFYI.com - Affiliate Marketing and SEO Tips.

December was a pretty straightforward month and I managed to get some downtime to think more about my projects and come up with ideas to take my sites to the next level.

A friend also asked me to join him and get a house in Thailand next April so I think I might do that and work there for a few months.

Income

First of all, income-wise it was pretty good.  I’ve got players on revenue share from the last 2 years, which are still earning me decent money across half a dozen operators.  It’s just nice to know that the hard work I did a year ago is still paying dividends in revenue (I genuinely never expected this revenue to continue so I just consider it all a bonus).  I’m also still bringing in a little traffic from Bing and other places which are still picking me up some RMPs on a few dead projects.

Ideas and Business Strategy for My Projects

I’ve managed to come up with some bigger strategy moves for some of my websites for 2013.  For example, on Graduates.co.uk I had discussions with a major jobs website to implement a white-label jobs board on my site.   This will help increase traffic to my website, help add more value, and massively boost my SEO strategy from getting links from jobs directories, careers websites and Universities (basically using the jobs board as link bait).

I’m really happy with my strategy for my bigger websites because regardless of SEO, traffic or profits, I feel like I’m building a really useful end-product that will pay dividends down the line.  For example, if I make a leading careers portal, investment portal or student money website then I can start marketing it with PPC, newsletters and social media down the line and forget about SEO.  Essentially the website’s content and features are the end product and I’m in no rush to get anything ranking or make money.  Every now and again I get advertisers getting in touch who want to pay for advertising anyway.

Finally I decided I’m going to focus my gambling energy on a single, all-in-one website with weekly betting tips and newsletter.  As for my other premium gambling sites like MobileBetting.net and MobileGambling.net, I’ve been working hard to clean up most of the links and hopefully sell them down the line.

Writing and Blogging as a Part-Time Income

I mentioned briefly in my 2013 business goals that I wanted to write for some major blogs or newspapers and add credibility to myself as an industry expert.

Thankfully I managed to get started on early by writing an article for the Guardian on Nominet’s decision to launch a consultation on a new direct.uk domain.  I’m also planning to write for the Telegraph and Huffington post for a couple of my sites in the future, as well as contribute to SEO and Internet marketing blogs.

New Projects:

I’m not sure if I consider this a new project or not since it was something I was doing anyway, but I decided to launch my consultancy services and SEO blog on a new site, Searchable.co.uk.  The advantage of running another website is that it’s another asset in my business which I could potentially sell down the line.

The post December Review and January Goals 2013 appeared first on AffiliateFYI.com - Affiliate Marketing and SEO Tips.