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

However, today I join the self-challenge crowd as I set up a challenge for myself. Let’s call it The 50 Dollars in 50 Weeks Challenge.

I need to get to work if I want to start seeing some income coming my way, so here’s what I’m going to do.

For 50 weeks I will be building a (minimum of) one site a week with the intent to earn $50 a day.

I’d love to be able to say I’m going to pop out 3 or 4 sites each week, but I do all the work myself so that’s not likely to happen. Anyway, $50 a day would mean I could officially abandon the old career path about 9 months into the challenge. That would be nice, because I’ve been toying with that option a lot lately anyway.

Every site will have to bring in about $1 a day on average, which seems like a stretch to me. My current income from my websites is more along the lines of $0.10 daily for each site on average. I have spreadsheets to prove it. :) Some sites do better, some do worse, but the average averages out and this average has been hanging around with my websites for almost 5 years.

It is definitely time to do something different if I want to beat this challenge.

These will be product related sites, with a minimum of 20 pages of highly-relevant, high-quality, unique content monetized with affiliate links and possibly some contextual ads.

And that’s it. Now, it’s time to get to work. The challenge started today and I have 17 more pieces of highly-relevant, high-quality, unique content to write this week!

Challenging Myself to Get to Work - Read more posts like this at Perpetualized

The haves do the work, even if they hire it out. No matter how it happens, in the end, the work does get done.

Have nots do some work, but maybe not the work that needs to be done to move a website towards its earning potential. They might think of themselves as hard-workers, but in the end, the truth is that they either do too little, or waste time on the little things that don’t do anything to move them forward.

That’s me. I work hard, and I work a lot, but I don’t always (almost never) work at what really needs to be done.

Since I’m practicing self-discipline now, I’m changing that. And yes, despite my prior rant against accountability, I have a spreadsheet that makes me accountable to myself for what I’ve accomplished.

Nothing fancy. I have a set number of pages of real content I want on each site I build, based around good keyword research (as opposed to bad keyword research—at a time when I’m really not 100% what the difference is :) but nevertheless I move on…).

My spreadsheet has a single column where I input the current number of pages of real content I have on a site (excluding any standard pages such as privacy, about, contact, blah-blah). I update the number whenever I add content to a site. So there you go. Simple. Easy. Only someone who is lazy wouldn’t update it… (I am self-disciplined, I remind myself. I’m not talking about me.)

I wrote previously about how I had looked at my report (this same spreadsheet, from which I learned the undeniable truth about how much content I’ve actually not created for all of my websites) and come to the conclusion that I had issues I really needed to face.

I’ve never really given my business a chance to grow into something because my work ethic sucked.

It’s time to change that, so here I am, practicing self-discipline and trying to become the person I want to be.

When I looked at that spreadsheet, it was clear to me that all my bellyaching about how much work I’d put into my websites and how little progress I’d made was more than a little skewed. I don’t know what all the work is that I’ve been doing, but I’ve clearly not been doing it with any kind of focus or plan. There’s no regularity to the pattern, no signs of systematic follow-thru or follow-up on any of my web projects to date.

For me to really make the changes I want to make, that has to change dramatically. I have to pick one path, one method, and stick to it until the end. Minor course corrections are always going to be okay, but massive overhauls of how I’m trying to do things won’t work. Because frankly, that’s probably what’s been throwing me off track all along.

So, I now have a plan—and I’m quite excited by it.

The Difference Between the Haves and the Have Nots in Web Marketing - 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 might have been sucked into a scam, but I bought the product at $77. I really don’t know at this point if I’ve wasted my money or invested in my future, but you can be sure I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve followed the blueprint and tested the methods.

What sucked me in to buying Google Sniper?

I can’t do a lot of website updates and maintenance, not because I physically can’t or don’t have time. My problem is interest and stick-to-it-ness. I get bored with topics so quickly that it makes updating a nightmare of tediousness.

Now that I’m ready to try to generate some income from my websites and turn them into a real business that might someday replace my “day job” income, I was convinced it might not hurt to pick up some more skills in internet marketing to complement my web building skills.

I can’t wait forever, learning on my own. I’ve been doing affiliate stuff for years and had only limited success. Most of that is my fault, I know that. I abandon things too easily. Even when I start making money from a site, that isn’t usually enough to keep my interest high. I tend to build and move on.

The methods in Google Sniper seem to mesh exactly with the way I feel I’ll have to work to get anywhere. I’m not personally looking to make oodles of money per site, but I would like to make enough to replace said day-job’s income level. And since I work only part-time, I think if I’m not able to do that with Google Sniper then it’ll be a sure bet I got scammed with the product. :)

On the other hand, if all goes as promised, I’ll do just fine! Here’s hoping to my future success and Google Sniper’s ability to fulfill on its promises!

P.S. I’m not offering a link to the product because I can’t say if it’s worth a dime, much less the $77 I paid for it. :) If it turns out to work, I’ll be sure to put up a link for it somewhere on the site. ‘Til then, if you want it, you’ll have to Google it. And if Google Sniper sucks, I’ll be sure to let you know if the money-back-guarantee is honored.

Update: The Google Sniper program doesn’t appear to suck, but I was not interested in the program I got upsold on (yes, I’m a sucker!) so I have requested a refund of that particular product. As I told George Brown (Google Sniper creator), the program might work for some people very well, but it’s in an area I have no interest in whatsoever. I’ll let you know if/when I hear something…

Is Google Sniper a waste of money? - Read more posts like this at Perpetualized