This Affiliate Marketing Path

I realize that this is pretty late - but this fall has just been a very unproductive one, sitewise, and it’s getting very frustrating!  I had all of these things I wanted to try out and test… but they’ll have to go on the backburner for now because I have a new “job” at my FT job which requires a lot more work, I have a family member getting married,  and a family member who’s been in the hospital this month - and between it all, I just haven’t had the time I’d like to work on the sites.

Fortunately, all the work I put in in the past is still paying off (one of the best perks about this business), here are September’s earnings:

$1265.40 - Adsense
$983.46 - TLA
$36.39 - CJ
$6.25 - ClickBank
_____________
$2291.50 = Total

As far as my home improvement site goes, it’s now up to number five on Google for its main keyword, and the competition ahead of me is fierce, so I’m going to have to come up with some very clever, hard-hitting strategies soon to bump myself up!

Here’s how it did - during this week there were still directory submissions going on and I had submitted a few articles to article sites to promote it.  Still waiting on the latest batch of 50 new articles to post to the site.

HIS Status:

#7 on Google (up one spot)
Adsense earnings for last week (9/10-9/16):  $55.60 (down $1.02 from last week)
Page impressions for last week: 1,765 (down 48 from last week)

While the visitors and earnings dropped a bit, I was still very happy to see it move up to number 7 on Google.

This past month I’ve barely touched any of my sites (!) because I’ve been so busy with my real job and family things.  But fortunately, in this field, the money keeps coming, even when I don’t have time to work on them.

The only thing that bothers me is that things are going so well lately, that I’m really afraid NOT to work on them - I guess I’d better start getting up at four in the morning again…

So, first, I’m happy to say that the main keyword for my HIS showed up on the first page of Google today!  I’m thinking that I can thank the directory submissions I bought last week for this site and the great new links I got pointing to it a few weeks ago for this.  So, here’s the update:

HIS Status:

#8 on Google (bumped up 18 spots!!!)
Adsense earnings for last week (9/3-9/9):  $56.62 (up 9.56 from last week)
Page impressions for last week: 1,813 (up 216 from last week)

August Earnings:

$866.62 - Adsense
$53.00 - “Cold Cash” from a company I don’t even remember becoming affiliated with?
$917.92 - TLA
$148.11 - CJ
$2.35 - Linkshare
_________________
$1988 - TOTAL

Now I’m disappointed when I don’t hit $2,000!

I’m not going to spend any of this month’s earning’s on site stuff because I have so many articles that I’ve ordered that I haven’t even posted and because it’ll be nice to pay some bills down - so there will be no budget posted for now.

I hope to answer some reader comments in the next post.

This week I submitted four articles to directories to promote the site - once again, I wanted to do more, but haven’t had time lately.

Status:

#26 on Google (no change)
Adsense earnings for last week (8/27-9/2):  $47.06
Page impressions for last week: 1,597

So, I’m in the same spot on Google, but my earnings and visitors increased which is partly due to those new inbound links I recently got.

Here’s to doing more this week!

Perhaps we should call this the “weekend update” since I’m having a hard time getting it done on Fridays.

This week, I was busy in my offline life again, so the only thing I managed to get done is to submit a promotional article to four article sites and I did a bit of social bookmarking.

Here are the results:

Status:

#26 on Google (back up to the starting position)
Adsense earnings for last week (8/20-26):  $19.68
Page impressions for last week: 1,099

So, things increased by a tiny bit - but now that I’ve been paid for August I can outsource some good work for the site and hopefully things will really start picking up.

Okay, I know I was going to do these updates on Fridays - but this week I’ve been incredibly busy - both at my job and at home - so I didn’t get much done on the sites and I didn’t get to post my update here yesterday.

What I did do is suggest this site for inclusion on a very big site, and this morning, I got an email informing me that my site was included, so I’m very happy about that.  Since it was just added this morning, I don’t think it will affect the rankings yet.

I also linked to some of the internal pages of the H.I.S. from some related blogs I have - so hopefully this will do more good than harm.

Status:

#33 on Google (a 7-spot drop)
Adsense earnings for last week (8/13-19):  $19.54
Page impressions for last week: 834

So, as you can see, everything dropped since last week, but considering that I really didn’t get to touch the site in the past two weeks, I’m not too worried - let’s just hope this week proves to be more fruitful.

Woohoo!  Doesn’t that sound like a load of fun?!?

Actually, I decided to post my progress on this site not only for readers out there, but also to keep me in check with the site - I think if I set up a specific day to post details on the progress of this site - that I might get my butt in gear and not lose focus so easily.

So, here’s where things stand today -

Main keyword: #26 on Google
Adsense earnings for last week (8/6-12): 30.17
Page impressions for last week: 969

What I’m going to do this week: Submit articles to article directories, also waiting on my writer for new articles to post to the site.  May do some social bookmarking.

I added some social bookmarking buttons to my posts and thought I’d share the code snippet, so here it is:

<a href=”http://del.icio.us/post?url=<?php the_permalink();?> ;title=<?php the_title(”,”,display);?>” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://del.icio.us/favicon.ico” alt=”Delicious” title=”Delicious” border=”0″></a>
<a href=”http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=<?php the_permalink();?>&title=<?php the_title(”,”,display);?>” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.digg.com/favicon.ico” alt=”Digg” title=”Digg” border=”0″></a>
<a href=”http://cgi.fark.com/cgi/fark/edit.pl?new_url=<?php the_permalink();?>&new_comment=<?php the_title(”,”,display);?>&linktype=Misc” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.fark.com/favicon.ico” alt=”Fark” title=”Fark” border=”0″></a>
<a href=”http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?t=<?php the_title(”,”,display);?>&u=<?php the_permalink();?>” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://search.looksmart.com/favicon.ico” alt=”Furl it!” title=”Furl it!” border=”0″></a>
<a href=”http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=add&title=<?php the_title(”,”,display);?>&bkmk=<?php the_permalink();?>&labels=<?php the_title(”,”,display);?>&annotation=” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.google.com/favicon.ico” alt=”Google” title=”Google” border=”0″></a>
<a href=”http://www.netvouz.com/action/submitBookmark?url=<?php the_permalink();?>&title=<?php the_title(”,”,display);?>&description=Website-Title” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.netvouz.com/favicon.ico” alt=”Netvouz” title=”Netvouz” border=”0″></a>
<a href=”http://www.newsvine.com/_tools/seed&save?u=<?php the_permalink();?>&h=<?php the_title(”,”,display);?>” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.newsvine.com/favicon.ico” alt=”NewsVine” title=”NewsVine” border=”0″></a>
<!– <a href=”http://reddit.com/submit?url=<?php the_permalink();?>&title=<?php the_title(”,”,display);?>” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://reddit.com/favicon.ico” alt=”Reddit” title=”Reddit” border=”0″></a> –>
<a href=”http://www.shadows.com/features/tcr.htm?url=<?php the_permalink();?>&title=<?php the_title(”,”,display);?>” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.shadows.com/favicon.ico” alt=”Shadows” title=”Shawdos” border=”0″></a>
<a href=”http://technorati.com/faves?add=<?php the_permalink();?>” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.technorati.com/favicon.ico” alt=”Technorati” title=”Technorati” border=”0″></a>
<a href=”http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmark?t=Website-Title&u=<?php the_permalink();?>” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.yahoo.com/favicon.ico” alt=”YahooMyWeb” title=”YahooMyWeb” border=”0″></a>

I just posted mine under the content area.

I noticed that my main keyword for my Home Improvement Site is on the bottom on page two of Google and remembered that I was going to focus on that site!

So, since it is my biggest money-maker, and since it is doing well on Google now, I’m going to plan out my budget for the next few months and incorporate some heavy promoting and building of that site.

Here’s my tentative September budget:

$250 - 50 short articles for the home improvement site
$150 - Directory submission and social bookmarking services for H.I.S.
$180 - 20 good articles to promote different pages of the H.I.S.
$100 - Sponsor H.I.S. on a WP theme
$180 - 20 good articles to promote other sites (keep some fresh links coming in)
$180 - Hosting (I know!)
$150 - PLRs
$100 - Blog posts
——-
$1290

I think that will be good for now, and I really think that if I can stick with this for a while, that I may be able to really get my main site going.

So I had this internet cash burning a hole in my pocket and I went over to the SitePoint Marketplace with the intention of finding an AdSense earner and investing in that.

What did I do instead? I bought a brand new site for $850, earning nothing, because it’s ADORABLE! There is hope, though, it also has some great scripts and a nice amount of good content. And I really liked the topic. I just have to promote it now - which shouldn’t be too hard because it looks totally original and professional.

So, maybe the next time I browse the Marketplace I’ll actually invest in something that’s already earning something! It’s always good to have a site you adore, too, though.