I Suck At SEO, Now What?
Yesterday I wrote about the poor results one of my affiliate websites achieves in the search engines result pages: Check Out My Google Stats.
Here are more stats for that same site:
Commissions Earned This Month: $191.25
Amount of Sales: 32
Avg Commission/Sale: $5.97
This is a straight affiliate product site - no contextual advertising of any kind.
Simple, low key, under the radar, thin affiliate, non-scraped content, non-datafeed, less then 10 pages, hand built affiliate site. One of my first (I think it was my 2nd affiliate site). Very low maintenance, very basic and hands free.
Basically a site that anyone, at any level, can build.
I realize many affiliates and webmasters make $200 an hour through one of their websites instead of just $200 a month. But hello - I’ll take it.
It all comes down to numbers. Build and maintain ten of the same results websites - that’s $2,000 a month. Twenty - that’s $4,000 a month. Not everyone needs to be a rock star online with 10 million visitors a month to earn money.
Funniest part: I’ve lost interest in building any new straight affiliate sites and am focusing on spreading my wings a bit online.
But although I’m not building any new strictly affiliate websites - that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped building up and maintaining what I have. Trying new marketing methods for one to see what kind of traffic I can drum up outside of SEO. More targeted vistors = more cash.
Trying new affiliate products. More $ per avg sale = more cash.
Trying new onpage factors. Strive to earn more $ per visitor.
Develop relationships with other targeted webmasters. More visitors = more $.
Never said I wasn’t crazy. But there definitely is money there for all levels of affiliate marketers - super affiliates and not-so-super affiliates. I think my sad, sorry numbers reflect that very well.
Keep plugging away and give it your best shot :).
Empress:
February 28th, 2006 at 10:34 am
I think we all start out in this business with stars in our eyes. We’ve all read those stories about how people make $1000’s a day just doing stuff online. We think this won’t be too hard - and then try it. Realize that it isn’t as easy as it looks - that there are many factors that make us successful online - the trick is to figure it out.
I think what you’ve earned this month is great! Like you said - build 10 like that and you’re laughing… build more - I’ll see you in Hawaii
I’m really glad that you wrote about it. I’m glad that you’re open to trying new things - but sharing what you’ve learned - thank you
Digger:
February 28th, 2006 at 11:06 pm
Procrastination is my hardest thing to overcome. Like you I’ve seen results from sites I’ve built and rather than going “Wow” and busting ass after seeing success I tend to sit around for a month or two only doing “just enough”.
Maybe I need to set a new goal or something, like “when I make $X a month for the first time I get to do X, and until then I don’t get to do X”.
Terry:
March 1st, 2006 at 2:44 pm
Instead of focusing on ‘new’ and basic maintenance this month, I’m going to set aside a good chunk of time to focus on building up what I have.