Affiliate Musketeer

I can’t believe we’re here already. It seems crazy but I’ve been posting my affiliate earnings up here since January – 7 months ago! Where does the time go? In January I set about my affiliate journey and promised myself I’d have my own affiliate marketing company by the end of the year.

Well, 7 months later I still don’t have my own affiliate marketing company but I’m pleased to say I feel as though I’m on the right track. Whilst my earnings have not seen a substantial increase these past few months, I feel like I learned some very important lessons in August that will serve me well as we move into the last quarter of 2010.

If I ever wanted to summarise my experience as an aspiring affiliate marketeer, I believe the following paragraph would paint a pretty good picture.

I saw my Bar Stools site rank for a day then fall off the radar, then rank again a few weeks later, make a sale then fall out of grace again. I set up a PPC campaign that lost money hand over fist but learned some interesting things about keywords and the site’s potential. I experienced my first ever server issue because one of my sites was performing beyond all expectations and exceeded it’s monthly bandwidth and I’ve personally been through a rollercoasting tirade of emotions that range from the absolutely desolate to the gleefully optimistic. Oh! and I heard that Affiliate Window Alerts program KA-CHING! for the first time ever…

All that sounds great but show me the money

I don’t know why I even bother with all the preamble up top, this is the bit everyone wants to see and I get the most questions about so here goes:

Income:

• Affiliate Window: £0.92
• Amazon Associates: £14.96
• Commission Junction: £511.01
• eBay Partner Network: £62.49
• Google AdSense: £6.17
• USFreeAds: £25.00
• Others: £0.00
• Total Income: £620.55

Expenses:

• Directory Submissions: £25.00
• Google AdWords: £295.62
• Hosting: £100.00
• Total Expenses: £420.62

Gross Profit:

• £199.93

As you can see, it wasn’t a particularly profitable month and by the time you take your taxes off etc you’re not looking at much money at all. However, as long as I’m earning more than I’m spending and showing signs of revenue growth (or at least believe that I can grow) then I’m happy to keep my head down and continue working hard at this. As I said earlier, I feel like August has taught me a few valuable lessons that I’ll be putting into action for September and I look forward to this update next month.

Key Learns:

Here’s a few things that I’ve learned in August that might help you:

• Keep motivated. Don’t let not ranking or no traffic deter you from your course. Use your anger like adrenaline and just pump yourself into more link building, article writing or other forms of work.
• All links are good links. Forum posts, blog comments, articles, directories, signatures, profiles, reciprocals but to make any of them effective you need a healthy mix of all of them. Therefore, when you outsource your backlink building, make sure you don’t just ask for ’120 Profile Links on High PR Domains’ – this is not the answer to your ranking problems – get 30 of each type, for example.
• If you have to pay someone a few quid for a good link, consider it. As long as you spend from the pot you made the previous month, you’ll be OK.
• All content is good content. Buy some PLR Articles for your niche, take 20 minutes to rewrite one of them and then submit it to as many sites that will give you a backlink as possible (PR Sites, Article Sites, Blog Posts). Do this once a week for a different article. Try article spinning if you can’t be bothered to re-write them.

Finally, if you’re wondering why any of this advice is worth following; here’s the reason why. My Bar Stools UK affiliate site is not ranking at all for it’s own domain name (within the first 10 pages at least) and it’s been online since February. In August I followed the tips above and by the end of September, you’ll see exactly how these things have made my site rank in the SERPs. And, as we all know, as soon as that starts to happen and I get in one of those top 5 organic spots, my Bar Stools site will start making money, I promise!

In other affiliate news:

• Kirsty’s taken 4 months off
• Lammo’s shared one of the most emotional, candid and insightful affiliate journeys I’ve ever read
• Joe’s started posting again (about time )
• Gary’s realising the importance of family life
• Shane’s kicking arse for a noob
• And Finch just opens your eyes on a whole darker side of affiliate marketing

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