Affiliate Musketeer » Money Making Challenges

February’s Affiliate Earnings

WhiteKnight — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:40:29 +0000

As you know, I gave myself a target in January to double January’s earnings from affiliate marketing. To summarise, I started one new site in January and turned on a PPC campaign for a previously successful campaign. I made a gross proit in January from affiliate marketing of £150 and you can see the full break down of how I did that in this post. Did I achieve my goals in February?

OK, in February I started a new site over at this url. I have posted fairly regularly about how this site was set up and how it’s doing in my affiliate marketing series here. I also turned on an old PPC campaign that I hadn’t had enough money to run since September last year. I made a few minor tweaks on two other sites such as adding in AdSense and Amazon Associates. My target was to double January’s earnings and here’s how I fared:

Income:
ebay Partner Network: £139.67
Commission Junction: £100.00
AffiliateWindow: £49.07
Amazon Associates: £0.58
USFreeAds: £25.00
Google AdSense: £5.46

Total income: £319.78

Expenditure:
Google AdWords: £108.00
Hosting: £20

Total Expenditure: £128.00

Gross Profit: £191.78

As you can see there’s a huge increase in PPC spending on one of my sites which actually ran at an £8.00 loss for the month. However, the product is entering high season come the spring so I’m confident that getting cookies onto user’s computers will come to fruition next month. I also think it will be useful moving forward to be able to trend the entire campaign over a full year and thus identify troughs and peaks in earnings for this particular site.

My new site didn’t perform well at all. I have made a commitment to this site however and still have high hopes for it. It is still very early days yet so I’m not prepared to give up just yet. I am concentrating on two key sites, the Bar Stools UK site being one of them, and will continue to add content and build links and try and generate organic traffic. I have been through the figures and my simple calculations do not justify any PPC spend on this site so all the resource time should be put into SEO.

The organic traffic trend for the month is attached below:

As you can see the trend is upward, albeit very slow but I’d expect this. Traffic is all organic and is being driven purely by organic rankings. See below for a list of the top 50 keywords for the month:
bar stools uk
z bar stool
matilda bar stool
z bar stools
john lewis bar stools
tivoli bar stools
matilda bar chair brown
bombo bar stool
matilda bar chair
matilda stool
retro bar stools
assembly instructions for bombo bar stool
jack bar stool
mathilda bar stools
mathilda gas lift stool
ruby red bar stools
sam bar stools
(breakfast,bar) (stool,chair,seat) folding
4 square coloured plastic bar stool
71cm bar stool faux leather
85cm high bar stool
abs kitchen stools
abs modern silver barstool
aero flower stool
bar stool manufacturers
bar stool star feet
bar stool uk buy with back blue
bar stools bombo leather
bar stools bonded seat
bar stools in chrome and faux leather uk
bar stools over 85 cm
bar stools square base
bar sttol matilda
barstoolsuk
bistro bar stool
bistro bar stools
black bar stool sale
black bar stools with sqaure base
black folding bar stools
black wood retro style folding bar stool
blue with back stool uk buy
bombo bar stool copy
bombo bar stools uk
bombo bar stools white
bombo barstool in white
bombo barstool leather brown
bombo black “”bar table”"
bombo stools reviews
brushed steel bar stools
buying stools

I am confident that the site will improve in it’s performance as I tweak the offers. I am of the opinion currently that the prices charged by my merchants for some of the stools are a little high and do not provide real value to my users. It will be my goal for March to source better deals on the products to make them more competitive.

Conclusion

My goal was to increase my earnigns by 100% but I only managed a 62% increase. Whilst this is a little upsetting and maybe even disheartening, I’d be happy with a month on month growth rate of 62% so I mustn’t let this get me down. I shall continue to attempt to double my earnings for March and am therefore looking to increase affiliate revenue to £640 for March without increasing PPC costs. I have high hopes for my PPC campaign moving into March and hopefully the Bar Stools site can chip in with a higher revenue figure too.

Actions for February:

Build Links to my PPC Site
Build Links to my Bar Stools site
Source better merchants for bar stools whose prices are more competitive
Continue to add content to both sites
Increase revenue to £640

What do you think? Am I shooting too high? What do you feel about my conversion rate given my apparent highly targeted search referrers…am I under performing?

How To Build A Money Making Affiliate Website From Scratch

WhiteKnight — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:17:07 +0000

I run a few affiliate sites. I make a few hundred pounds a month. I’ve been in digital marketing for over 6 years now and helped lots of other companies make money. I’ve even founded and sold my first business and used the profits to buy a house. Now it’s time to put all of that behind me and start again from scratch. This post marks the start of a new series of posts about my new affiliate site. In this series I am going to talk you through every step of setting it up and reveal everything I’ve done at each step of the way and even show you how much money it’s making me. I hope to share everything, including my frustrations, and I hope you’ll find it useful.

How To Build a Money-Making Affiliate Website from Scratch

Early Stage Research
This chapter looks at all the things I did to research my idea. It includes keyword research, product research, whether or not it would interest me, potential commission (merchant) research and domain research.
Site Design
This chapter will show you how I easily created my affiliate site so that it was simple to update and free to setup.
Building a useful Site
In this chapter I begin to look at how to add value to a site so that it is of genuine benefit to your users.

January’s Affiliate Earnings

WhiteKnight — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:05:20 +0000

So, it’s approaching that time of month where I look back over the past few weeks and tally up all my earnings. I don’t normally publish them here but this month I’m turning over a new affiliate leaf and giving it a go. I’m sure it’ll motivate me to do better next month. Already in January I’ve started a new site with a domain I registered waaay back in 2008. I don’t actually know what happened but the domain gets a few thousand exact searches a month and a couple of weeks ago, a light switched on in my head that made me think ‘ah, yeah, I’ll just set up an affiliate site on that domain’. The original plan, you see, was to set up a full ecommerce site but as cash is tight at the moment and I don’t have the money to buy in stock, I thought I’d try and run an affiliate site instead.Sooo, anyway, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, here’s my earnings for January and where the money is coming from. (stats to 28th January)

eBay Partner Network: £132
USFreeAds: £25
AffiliateWindow: £40
Total Income: £197

PPC Spend: £27
Hosting: £20
Total Expenses: £47

Gross Profit: £150

Not so good, huh? nope. Well, there is a reason and I mentioned that in a post about being more cautious with your affiliate earnings over here. I haven’t really recovered since then but I’ve got my game face on now and am back in the swing. I’ve turned on my PPC campaigns again and launched one new site so far. I would say that February’s earnings should more than double.

So the challenge for February then:

Double January’s earnings.

FAILED: Money Making Challenge 14/11/08

WhiteKnight — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:11:59 +0000

In November of 2008, I wrote a post on this blog about how I wanted to make $690 in 11 days. I threw together a few ideas and actually did release a WordPress Theme but only actually managed to raise $190. A whopping $500 short of my intended target. It’s been almost a year since that initial post and whilst I can’t say I’ve learned a lot in the last year, I can say that my appreciation of focus has certainly developed.

Back in November 08, I was faced with the difficult (but possible) challenge of making $690 in 11 days to clear a credit card debt – I actually used money from other sources to pay the bill but I soooo wanted to do it from online work. Anyway, what I realised was that giving yourself short-term (very short-term) challenges can actually be detrimental. Internet marketing and generally working online is pretty much the same as traditional business/work, you can’t just expect things to happen overnight.

Part of my problem back in November 08 was that I needed money NOW. This was good at giving me some key motivation but the reality of the internet is 11 days is not that long to start from scratch and create a money making scheme. By giving myself such a short deadline, I left myself with very limited options to get that money into my bank account in 11 days. The only way this was possible was to use PayPal or sell something direct and take payment direct.

Basically I just didn’t have the resources to achieve this because 11 days is not so long to create something. I could of perhaps chosen at least one other options:

Do freelance work on Elance. I would need to make the $690 in 7 days to give elance 4 days transfer time. At the time I did not consider this option at all because for whatever reason I felt the money would not come quick enough.

The other thing that would have made more sense would have been to spend 11 days promoting one of my other websites that already existed and try and make IT make $690 for the month – but that would certainly not have been an instant in my bank money making plan.

So I guess ultimately the problem was that I wanted to the money too soon and just couldn’t come up with an original enough idea or product (or, forgive me for saying it, scam) that would turn the money round in the time frame necessary.

In my next money making challenge, I think I’ll give myself more time (1 month) and be realistic with my expectations!

Can I Make £460 in 11 Days?

WhiteKnight — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:14:40 +0000

OK, so it’s the credit crunch here in the UK. I have an exploding credit card bill and I need to pay £460 by the 28th November 2008. The strength of the £ to the $ at the moment is weak, which is good news if I’m working in $s, and it means I need to make $690 in 11 days by any means possible to stop my card from going into arrears!

Now this is aside from all of my other projects, this is something that needs to come from online work in whatever form, fixing pages, sellings ads, selling links whatever I can do to make this money.

OK, so what are my skills? Well, I can code CSS/XHTML, WordPress Themes, Write copy pretty well, carry out minor server changes, flip websites, I’m a certified Google AdWords Professional…I have a number of online properties that have just been sitting there for a while. Maybe it’s time to try and monetize them?

So what IS $690? Well, it’s 10 products at $69 each, 10 sales of $69 each…or, 20 sales at $35 each…this seems more possible. I could custom code a nice WordPress Theme, sell the sponsored links on it, then perhaps make it work with Build a Niche Store, and then sell the final theme for $35 each, including installation.

I could find a nice clickbank product that pays out at least $35 per sale, throw up a landing page and try and sell 20 in 11 days….

Ok, so my mind is racing with possibilities but I need a plan of action. *Has a quick think.*

Ok, mind made up, I will try and do as much as I can, from all of these possibilities and then list the earnings that I receive from them in 11 days’ time. I am halfway through a custom WordPress Theme that will integrate into Build a Niche Store, so that’s where I’ll start.