Wham or Scam

There is a history of debate in the internet marketing world about whether placing AdSense on your blogs and websites is a yay or nay approach to making money online. Some say that you will not make nearly half as much money with Adsense on your blogs compared to affiliate links. They are of course referring to blogs and websites that either have one or the other; but what about blogs and sites that have both?

The common argument is that if you place Adsense on a page or site that is also selling affiliate products the Adsense will lure the visitor away from clicking on your affiliate link, with a potential for some serious loss of revenue. However, I have been hearing different of late. When I first started setting up adsense sites when I first started internet marketing (2004) the revenue was mediocre to say the least. I have never bothered with it since.

AdSense and its development has come a long long way since then and the technology exists now to hyper-target your ads to every visitor to your site. This is particularly useful for sitemasters who are targeting an audience in a specific country. You will inevitably get visitors from countries where the product you are selling is not applicable or available in that country; the AdSense ads however target your ads to reflect similar offers to that visitors country or region, and even something completely different if that visitor has a browsing history.

The upside? That visitor from the non-targeted country was going to click out of your site anyway (the product was not relevant or available to the country they live in) so why not give them another avenue to leave your site? – the AdSense ad that is targeted specifically for that visitor. Visitor happy, you earn revenue.

The Downside? Sitemasters who decide to display AdSense ads must place a privacy policy on their sites. This is  no biggie, there are plenty of templates out there, but it’s one more thing that is likely to put people, especially newbies off. Another potential problem is that the revenue earned will be negligable compared to the affliate commissions earned. This is likely to happen if the ads are placed in a postition on the site where people are likely to click them over the affiliate links in the post (such as the middle of the post). It is here that careful consideration must be given to the placement of the ads.

I have decided to conduct a little experiment. I am going to place AdSense ads on all my sites (bar this one) that also run affiliate links. If things don’t work they can be taken down at a click of a button. It just gives me a little more chance of some revenue. Unfortunately I will not be able to give precise amounts of revenue earned through AdSense (it is against their Terms of Service), but I will give a rough indication of whether things are working the way I want.

AdSense Goals:

• 3 Sites – aiming for an average of £0.25 per site per day. (Yep, I know its low, but I can always change it). If this goal is met then I would be earning in the region of £22 per month.
• This figure will be reviewed every month.
• As stated above, I will not publish exact AdSense revenue but I will state if the figure has been exceeded or not.

Right, I am now off to place some privacy policies and set up some AdSense.

i’ll keep you posted.

Today I made the decision to outsource a lot of my blog content and article work. The reason? I find article marketing very time consuming and I just get way too caught up in the details of the article (such as keyword density, questions like “does this article sound right?”) that I just don’t get anywhere with it. I try so hard to shake all those doubts, and the reality is that it does not matter; but the result is that it takes too much time to get the articles (and blogs) out there.

I am soooo glad that I started off doing it the hard way at the beginning. I was and still am proud of what I achieved with the articles that I did write; but if I am to move my business forward I have got to get the sites out there; not faff about with things that I worry about that don’t need worrying about.

How does it feel? Not good. I like to be in control, do things my way. However, I have chosen an outsourcer that is based in the UK, is reasonably priced (around $7 for a 350 word article) and I am reasonably confident they can get the articles back to me in a decent amount of time (although it is a Bank Holiday here in the UK so i’m expecting a little bit of a delay). From what I understand people are very pleased with the service they have received, which I am happy about.

I requested 5 articles from them for now (just testing the waters) which would cost around $35. If I am happy with the service they will get more work from me.

So, if this outsourcing project goes well I can concentrate on the things that I enjoy such as market research. I’ll keep you posted on developments.

Other News

I am planning to move this blog over to my Hostgator account, along with cancelling addon services for a domain that I no longer use. It is just a waste of money paying for hosting on another hosting company when I can get unlimited websites set up on hostgator for a minimal monthly charge. All my domain names will remain with the other company as it costs no more to keep them there, and transferring them is just too much hassle. I expect a little disruption to the service, and I will let you know nearer the time when this move is likely to happen.

The past four months has also been a great time for commissions. Every month in 2010 has seen commissions over £100. I never thought I would EVER see results like this! I am starting to see a little drop in visitor numbers to the site that is earning the commissions, but looking back on the trends over the past year it happened this time last year. Just got to ride with it and hope it picks up again.

It’s been two years since I joined Wealthy Affiliate University. What an amazing two years they have been. I was the biggest skeptic there was when it came to making money online – just like the others who got burned again and again by money making programs that just didn’t live up to expectations.

Wealthy Affiliate University was the last ditch attempt to make things happen. I learnt and learnt and took action – not a lot of action – but enough to get me that first sale. That was the turning point for me – a sale of £93.65 changed everything – IT MADE ME BELIEVE.

That sale was followed by another a few days later, then another a month later, then some more over the course of the year until now, where January and February have seen close to £200 in commissions each. If you had asked me this time two years ago whether I thought all this was possible, I would have said no. Now I would gladly tell someone that it IS POSSIBLE to make money online; but it takes work and a lot of patience and determination!

Now, ask me whether I would rather work 10 hours on affiliate marketing or 7 hours in a regular job, I would say hands down the 10 hours. Once you have experienced that first sale your mind starts to change – in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr your mind can never go back to it’s old dimensions.

When things start happening you know that it is POSSIBLE to go well beyond the limits of a regular job and you are more than happy to plug away at the affiliate marketing machine. Your goals are ever expanding ‘can I make more sales this month than next’?’ In a regular job the  effort you put in does not directly correlate with the rewards you get back – the Law of Diminishing Returns. With affiliate marketing, the effort you put in will eventually be returned. There is no limit to what is possible and that is what is exciting.
Is it about the money? No, I love the money, but it’s not all I do affiliate marketing for. Affiliate marketing is a chance for me to build something of worth, something that I can call my own and nobody can take away. The business I have built over the past two years is MY baby and I ACHIEVED those results and IT FEELS GREAT!

So how did Wealthy Affiliate University help me? It bought me down to earth. The first thing that the site and people who are a part of it say is that it is NOT a get rich quick scheme and it DOES take a lot of effort and hard work. If you are prepared to put in the hard work all the tools and resources are there to help you succeed, and is you stick with it you WILL get that first sale.

Who knows what the next year will bring.  I can guarantee you I will still be working online, i’m, addicted. I have a number of projects I have in  the pipeline, including Project 2011. It is just a question of keeping up the momentum and see where we land.

Happy Times

Wealthy Affiliate Unviversity Review

Well, my first campaign for Project 2011 is taking a lot longer than first thought. It is one of those things that once you start you discover that there are so many things that link to it. It just means that it will take a little longer to set up.

I have also had the ‘do or die’ moment with this business. I won’t go into detail, but work/employment/wage slavery is really getting me down. So I have said to myself that now is the time to make things happen. I had to redo one of my travel sites, and it’s not fully complete yet, but the results are that January has been the best month so far in terms of commissions. I still have a long way to go, but it’s the getting started that’s the hardest part.

The site I am currently working on is in it’s VERY early stages and is nowhere near complete. However if you want to take a look at beginners-affiliate-marketing then feel free.

I’ll keep you all updated on the progress.

Well, unfortunately I haven’t been able to work as much on my Project 2011 as I had hoped. We have had appalling winter weather here leaving us with 6 inches of snow for the best part of the week courtesy of the wonky jetstream. This has meant no IM work and playing catchup with the real work files in order to get things back on track

Anyhow, i have finished my work-from-home files from yesterday and I am now going to start my catchup with Project 2011. I’ll post some snowy pics soon.

Until later!

Well, hope you all had a great new year and your heads don’t hurt too much. Now, here are some of my plans and targets for January; it’s going to be a busy one…

1. Set up my affiliate marketing blog.

This blog will primarily be set up to help people wanting to start out in affiliate marketing offering advice and tips on how to best go about it. I’m not promising it will be any good, but it’s worth a go. Usually when I start a new niche site I just set the blog up and off I go but this one needs a little planning due to the keyword competition of the subject as a whole. I also need to set up the blog so it is easy to navigate – something which I didn’t take much notice of with my other blogs and I think it has hurt the potential of the sites. Which leads me to the next point….

2. Revamp my two travel sites.

Well in all honesty the only thing that these two sites has taught me was how versatile the WordPress blogging platform really is. I realise now that I haven’t utilised these sites to the best of their potential and in all fairness they can be rated as rubbish. I am going to try and salvage them but I am going to need some advice from those trusty people at Wealthy Affiliate. In the meantime, if any of you have any tips for improving the sites then feel free to email me or leave a comment. The sites are:

Holiday Sun Cape Verde

Holiday Sun Kenya

3. Pay Tax

I have until January 31st to pay any tax on any earnings this year. Unfortunately for the Customs dudes it doesn’t look like they will have much off me. In fact, they may even end up paying me. We can only hope. Of course this is all dependant on whether I actually get the activation key in time to do the tax return online. Then I have to work it all out. They are not the fastest people on earth, bless them.

4. Work out how to operate an email marketing campaign. I’ll explain more when I figure it out myself.

5. Email Hostgator as I seem to be paying for two accounts. I was actually my fault, but i need to stop those extra payments.

Well, there you have it, my goals for January 2010. I think they are largely achievable, I just got to work towards them and not be afraid to ask for advice.

On a more worrying note when I started my computer up this morning it didn’t sound too healthy. It works, but it made me wonder what a crappy place I’d be in if my computer died. It made me wonder whether I should invest in a cheapish, basic back up laptop? After all it could be claimed back on my tax return?????? It also made me think what would happen to all my documents and research stuff if I had no hard drive left after a computer self-destruction fit. Mmmmm, I think I should investigate the possiblity of online document recovery……

Project 2011 is just-for-fun-crappy-named-project set up to help me get motivated to try harder this year with my online make money business in readiness for April 2011.

Why April 2011?

It’s all to do with the combination of Working Tax Credits and the lousy pay in my chosen occupation. This year and next year I qualify for working tax credits, but the year after (beginning in April 2011) I do not qualify for this money robbing me of a cool £150 per month post tax income. This money allows me to live away from home without going bankrupt.

What’s the challenge?

The basic game of Project 2011 is to replace the £150 per month income with my own income from affiliate marketing. I haven’t quite worked out how to do this yet, but the basic aims are:-

To make an average of £150 per month profit by 5 April 2011.

This average can be made through any online venture: affiliate marketing, online surveys etc.

You can follow my progress through the Project 2011 category posts. I really should set up a separate website but can’t be bothered. I’ve added tickers to the top of the page you can follow my progress in real time (although by the looks of it they may need tweaking a wee bit )