One thing I’ve noticed is that many marketers suggest you put up vague links that say things like "Click here to visit the … website" or "Click here to buy this at …" I’ve tried this on a couple of websites and I have to say, my old method seems to work better, my old method simply being a link in the post wherever I mention the product with the product name hyperlinked using an affiliate link, and a link such as "More info about …" or "Buy … " at the end of the description or post.

I’ve never been one who believes in all that silliness of telling your visitors that you’re using an affiliate link. Who cares? Links are links and everyone knows that. Common sense says if you can make a few pennies from linking to something you were going to link to anyway, you should do it and anyone who thinks bad of you because of that is probably a socialist. ;) (Private joke here. LOL.) All I can say is that I’m a capitalist and I’m proud of it.

Through Amazon, I’ve made a total of $253.51 this year from a few sites I run that I haven’t updated in a long time. I wish it were more money but frankly, when I built these sites, I knew nothing about keyword research or promotion, and even now that I do, I don’t usually bother with any of those older sites. Many of these older sites also promote extremely low value products. To be exact, it took 576 products sold to make that income, which comes to a commission of just a hair over $0.44 per sale.

According to my Amazon report my conversion rate is 6.77%.

I have just put one site online that links to Amazon and another affiliate program that I do okay with which pays me a 5% commission, and the sites I previously built to test out the "Click here to visit the … website" or "Click here to buy this at …" method of linking are about to be converted back to my previous way of linking so I can check for an increase in sales and conversions.

Back to the topic of this guy’s advice. I don’t know him, and I don’t know if he’s an honest fellow or not, but everything he says makes sense to me, and I’ve been using Amazon to monetize my websites since 2001.

I’ll be reading more of his stuff.

I have two days left in this week and I have about 16 more pieces of high-quality content to create for my current website project. Since I’m serious about this challenge I’ve set myself, this means it’s time to get back to work.

I intend to persevere, work hard, and deliver!

Amazon Affiliate Links Do Make Money - Read more posts like this at Perpetualized

Considering today is the first time I’ve submitted any new articles promoting any of my current websites since mid-March and that I haven’t added any new websites to my empire since then either (and only 1 site at that), I am optimistic.

I’d like to see my income increase without adding any additional sites if at all possible. The reason for that is because I would really rather make at least $1 to $2 per day for each site. I’ve put a lot more work into proper research for most of the new sites I’ve created and I’d love to see that pay off.

Currently, none of my sites are closer than the 2nd page for their keywords in the search engines. I will be adding some new content to the sites that appear to be on their way up in earnings, because it means the new content will have the best chance of making a difference.

Traditionally, my method was this: I’d brainstorm interesting domain names for topics I found interesting. Research? Nah. I preferred catchy domain names. ;) I have since learned that this doesn’t work well when you want a website to actually be financially self-sustaining. You need a site that is at a minimum going to earn back its domain cost and its share of hosting expenses. So, lesson learned.

Now, I find a keyword in a topic of interest to me (see how I still just do sites I find interesting?) and then I find a good domain name to go with it. This lets me get the best of both worlds. I get a site that I’m not going to be bored with (I hope) and a domain that makes it more likely my site will actually get traffic and be able to earn enough to stay online.

I am done with hanging on to domains that can’t even pay for their renewal costs. This is a drain on my energy and drain on my finances.

To summarize, I have 8 articles linking to 9 websites.

(Technically I have 11 websites I’ve created since January, but 1 of those was a personal political statement about healthcare reform, and the other was another personal site – no keyword research involved in the creation of either site.)

My goals for the coming weeks are to finish some sites I have in limbo. I bought a few domains that I haven’t built sites for yet. When those are complete, I will be focusing on promotional activities for a short while. I need to test some things and make some effort to get as many of my sites on page 1 as possible and as close to number 1 as possible.

From my work on an older site I have that is number 1 for several competitive terms, I realize you can’t rush rankings. So I will alternate between building new sites and working to grow and promote my existing sites. This way I can learn as I go.

And finally, I will be working to use my new knowledge about research to my advantage on a few older sites I have. They’ve been around for years and are ranked for several okay terms.

One site specifically is ranked #3 in Google for a term that has about 1,600 exact searches a month and about 1,070,000 results in quotes for the term. The site is nicely aged at about 5 years old and positioned well to branch into some other keyword phrases that get considerably more searches but have considerably fewer competing sites. I’m going to try my hand at spiffing up that site and see where it leads me.

Although I’m willing to create many sites to generate the income I would need to make this my full-time career/job, of course I would rather improve fewer properties to make more money per property if at all possible!

Now, I just have to get to work!

Website Empire Per Day Income Inching Up - Read more posts like this at Perpetualized

I have several older websites that still get email. Those emails are usually nice comments about the usefulness of the site and I always smile a little when I get one. I wonder too, why some of my newer sites don’t see those kinds of comments.

The differences between these sites is simply this: The older site has tons of links that link out to other useful sites I’ve found over the years. The newer sites have fewer links out, and are more heavily populated with my own “original” content. Now, I realize original content is important, but sometimes I know there’s someone out there that’s better able to say what it is I want said. These are the times when link outs make the most sense and when I should be linking out.

Come to think of it, many of the sites I visit aren’t spectacular in and of themselves, but they are able to pull together stuff on the web and make it useful in a way that it wasn’t before.

That’s why I like social bookmark sites. Articles and blogs are all pulled together by tags. It makes browsing easier and more useful.

Aggregators are important tools when it comes to the web, because there’s just so much data available and that makes for some serious information overload. I use up a lot of time online.

I’ve been thinking of doing more aggregation sites like those older sites I still have. I love them and I’ve always thought they served a great purpose. These days you see fewer and fewer niche aggregators–or maybe I’m just not looking in the right places!–but there’s a bigger need than ever for them. Even the small social bookmark sites get overrun with so much content that narrowing it down to a very specific topic is difficult.

In essence I’ve created my own aggregated links within Google Reader. But I’ve still ended up with so much stuff to sift through that I feel a little like I’m going to go crazy sometimes with the speed reading that I have to practice to get through all the headlines.

I’ve also noticed how stingy some sites are about linking out, and I admit I’ve caught myself being that way too sometimes.  Is this really the way I want to be?

I can make this stuff easier for others to digest by pulling it together on some of my sites. Frankly, I’m tired of trying to be an island of content. I’ve said before I have too many domain names and I might have just found a better use for some of them.

If my site is good enough, any visitors I send away will eventually make their way back.

Islands and links - Read more posts like this at Perpetualized