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

I’ve had to now. I did a report for myself, of all the sites I’ve created and how many pages of actual content each site has. The answer wasn’t pretty.

I have 51 domains. I have created very little real content for the majority of those domains.

• 30 sites have fewer than 10 pages. 9 actually have 0 pages. Several of these are new. Several of these are not new. ;)
• 9 sites have between 10 and 20 pages.
• 7 sites have between 20 and 50 pages.
• 1 site has a little less than 100 pages.
• 1 site has a little more than 100 pages.
• 2 sites have between 1,000 and 2,000 pages. One of these sites earns $2 a month if I’m lucky and the other generates between $50 to $150 in income each month before expenses.
• 1 site has over 4,000 pages. This site makes about $0 each month. I’ve made exactly $10 off this site in a year.

Now, these last three sites are run on a database, so I haven’t actually created that many "articles" of content. And looking over the rest of the list, I was struck by just how little I had accomplished over the years with these websites. Clearly the hobby attitude isn’t doing me any favors.

It appears from this analysis that I have a serious problem focusing on anything long enough to actually produce anything.

Now, I’m trying really hard to change that. I am setting some goals (probably a waste of time) and practicing some serious self-discipline (counting on this to help) and making a plan. The plan is the thing I feel certain will help the most. The plan is nothing more than telling myself I need to do so many pages for each site before I move on. Some people might call this a goal, but I don’t. It’s a plan.

I’ve decided I’m going to build a real business around these websites of mine and that means getting to work and focusing on producing something. I’ve listed these in a spreadsheet and I’m going to start at the bottom, adding content to each one until I’ve reached a level that I think is useful and has earning potential. There are also a few very specific sites that I’m just going to get rid of when the renewal comes up.

I’ve seen the signs. It’s time to step up and do the work.

Problems with Production and Focus - Read more posts like this at Perpetualized

When I need to go in one direction or the other with a plan, I generally try to keep an open mind. I don’t wait for a sign, but when one crops up, I try to always pay attention.

I have a tendency to accept positive signs and ignore negative signs. The reasons why I do this are simple. I tend to believe God doesn’t punish us on Earth for wrong decisions we make here. I think he’s saving all that up for later. :o But when we make a right decision, I think we often see the benefits of that decision sooner than later.

Of course, making a wrong decision can lead to negative consequences, but those are likely of our own making, not divine intervention.

I realize this doesn’t sound entirely rational, but what with faith is?

Anyway, I’ve been seeing a lot of signs lately, and it all goes back to a particular epiphany I had in June of 2007. I went off track after that epiphany and didn’t do what I set out to do based on something I felt like God had put in my heart in answer to a pressing weight I’d been feeling with my work life. I intended to build my own website empire. I didn’t because I kept getting distracted with the next best way to build it.

Of course, over that course of time, I’ve learned so much that I almost think I wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t gone through those times. Right now, I feel on the cusp of finally understanding the big picture and seeing how it will really be possible to turn my obsessive website habit into a true money making venture.

I had a re-epiphany a few months ago, and things are really starting to fall into place. I feel compelled to try to stay on track this time and not be distracted by other ideas and thoughts. Here’s praying it happens, because I certainly keep seeing the signs that I might finally be on to something.

Do You Believe in Signs? - Read more posts like this at Perpetualized

I am still tracking for a solid $1 a day, and I just finished another site. Or partially finished, I should say. I will be adding more content over the next couple of weeks, until I reach 20 – 25 pages, possibly 30. Heck, I could probably do more than that, but I’m going to start there.

The thing is, I don’t like the idea of all my income coming from one source. I want to diversify and I think I’m going to do that. This particular site is well suited to affiliate promotions and at the moment that is the way I’m going to go with it.

In fact, I might stick to affiliate promotions as much as possible because this does give me the best chance for diversification.

I’ve created this one site in April. I did a couple in March. At the moment, this gives me a total of 49 websites, but this includes all the domains I own including the many personal sites I run.

I have found it difficult to separate out the sites based on what their purpose is, so I’m just going to go with this number in the future for all my forecasting. It’s easier that way. Of course, this is going to give me some really bad forecasting models, but maybe that’s best too. I do too much forecasting anyway.

I look back and realize I’ve already learned a few things that make it apparent I have made some bad domain decisions even with these new domains I’ve purchased, but at least I have discovered this early enough to make changes in my future domain purchases. My fast or slow? decision seems to have panned out for me.

I’m going to have to figure out how to track some of this stuff so I can be more effective. I’m also going to have to get back to work!

Website Empire Road Bumps - 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 won’t go into too many details here, because I think I’ve been pretty clear that although I run my websites as a business, I think of them in my head as a hobby. Life is busy for me most days and I don’t want to add the pressure of running a home-based business to myself. I know this is self-deception, but I’ve also made clear in the past that I thrive on self-deception when it comes to procrastination and work.

This girl I’ve been following seems to be on the track to really making it with her own website empire as she approaches $28 a day in earnings. However, she’s building sites at the speed of light. Her plan as she’s said is to just get the sites up and then build links to them and push their rankings up. She’s going about that phase of things in a way I wouldn’t but mostly she’s just waiting until she gets all these sites online and filled with content.

This is good for her productivity, it appears, because she certainly has the websites to prove it. However, this all out rush to put up a ton of websites and then go back to them to fix them and rank them and then start earning “real” money from them seems shortsighted.

Here’s why.

I actually toyed with the idea of my own headlong rush to create lots and lots of websites and then worry about generating income.

Then it occurred to me quite suddenly that if I pursued such as path, I would be shooting myself in the foot.

Where’s the opportunity to learn from your mistakes? Where’s the chance to make minute, or significant, changes to your methodologies if you set a course and plow straight ahead?

It doesn’t make sense to me to build site after site without taking the time to learn from the building, ranking, and earnings of each one.

So it comes down to this. I’ll be following each site I build through the whole process of structure, content, ranking, and earnings before I move on. Technically, I’ll probably have more than one site going at a time, but I won’t be holding back on any particular phase of my empire building so I can “batch process” or otherwise “assembly line” my websites.

I prefer to learn as I go.

Can you imagine discovering a key factor in increasing site earnings only after you’d built 100 to 200 websites? What if it was something that wasn’t that easily fixed, like a domain issue? (Remember the still ongoing controversy about hyphens versus no hyphens and .com versus .org versus .info?)

These are very good reasons, in my opinion, to take it slow(er).

Fast or slow? Learn as you go… - Read more posts like this at Perpetualized

I thought about going into details and had in fact written this whole long post about it, but then thought…nah. Boring stuff and probably too personal to boot. So let’s skip all that.

Here’s my new plan.

Following a plan that is much more in line with my own way of working with websites (building small sites about topics of interest to me so I can write) and monetizing them in a slightly different way than I’ve done in the past, I’ve been bringing in a steady $1.00 a day this month. My goal is to multiply that over the next 6 – 12 months and create a little website empire for myself.

I’m at $1.00 a day right now and my next goal is to reach $30.00 a day.

Simply stated, I just have to do what I’ve already done 30 more times to reach my goal.

Since I have created a few new sites that aren’t in the search engines yet, but the ones that are total 7, I assume that means I’m going to have to create 210 more websites. Not sure if that’s realistic or not since I take at least a day to build one good site and I only work on this stuff twice or thrice a week.

Then again, I could have just chosen terrible topics. I think it’s going to take quite a few more websites for me to find out.

I’m toying with the idea of posting stats for these new sites. We’ll see.

Getting busy building websites and my own little website empire - 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