This Affiliate Marketing Path

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.

Not only do I get to celebrate my birthday today, but I also get to celebrate another record month… here are my July earnings… I really believe that most of this is due to the fact that I’m now pouring everything I earn into the business, mainly into paying writers for unique, informative articles. And I also attribute it to not being afraid to test out many different things:

$1038.73 - Adsense
$756.32 - TLA
$407.26 - CJ
$59.28 - ClickBank
$6.82 - Linkshare
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$2268.41 - TOTAL!

Now I’m at the point where I’m like… oh crap, I hope this keeps up!

I’m trying out AuctionAds on some new blogs, the blogs are totally product-oriented so I thought they would be a good spot for testing. The only annoying thing so far is that once in a while the ad won’t display at all, and sometimes when it does, it shows popular products rather than targeted ones, until I refresh the screen and then it goes back to targeted ads. Once I get some visitors I’ll really be able to make some good comparisons.

Anyone have some success with AuctionAds?

If you’re like me, you’re subscribed to a few too many newsletters and have been overwhelmed with marketers trying to get you to sign up for Instant PLR Cash.

The price tag of $47 sounded pretty cheap - so I checked the copy out - basically, it looks like you get a bunch of junk that you could buy on Ebay for $.01, some tips on ad placement and stuff most of us are more than well aware of, and 1000 PLR articles.

This is the part that almost makes me want to buy it - the copy says they’re quality articles “written by a schoolteacher” (wow) - however, this is available to 1000 people. So I’m wondering what the niches are so I can try to determined how much the articles will be used, because there are always niches that hundreds of people will post over and then there are the ones where only one or two will.

So I was wondering how good the articles are and what the niches are over, and as of now there seem to be no review of it out there. Anyone try it out?

I logged into Adsense today to find that my earnings were dramatically lower than average, and then I realized that my number one performer - the unique content site that I’ve been working on for years - had gotten a nice handful of visitors today but no clicks. Then I went to the site and realized that my Adsense ads across the site are displaying the same gaudy image home loan ad - WTF?!? It’s like the ugliest non-targeted ad. I guess they’re experimenting or something, but if it doesn’t change soon I’m going to have to switch it out with something else.

Anyone else’s Adsense doing weird things?

I also wanted to brag about my record Adsense day I had this week - $54.44 - it’s these little things that really help keep me going sometimes

What’s your record Adsense day?

Now that $100 a day by the end of the year actually seems plausible, I decided to really focus on three different areas to work on to increase my revenue.

01 A couple of great, high quality sites that I enjoy working on. I really hope for these to be awesome, unique sites someday - sites that people will want to revisit and not for just plain facts. I have been writing for these myself and I may outsource some of the writing.

02 Unique content sites - I’m hiring authors to write informational articles over different topics - I guess these would be your typical “affiliate sites.”

03 Massive amounts of content - I’m posting loads of PLRs and hiring bloggers to get huge quantities of content up - if quality content and unique content doesn’t work wonders, maybe tons of blog posts will.

My concrete goal from this point on is to post 50 articles a day - between hiring bloggers, outsourcing other writing project, and posting PLRs and various other articles. We shall see if it works!

Site-wise that is. Someone asked me on a previous blog post what I’m doing, how many sites I have, etc. So I thought this would be a good time to stop and take inventory and post it here.

I now have 38 sites - keep in mind though that I’m only making a decent amount of income from a small handful of those, the rest are just seeds that have been planted, waiting to be nurtered.

One of those sites is a huge blog network - it has 35 subdomains and each of those is a blog (each one treated as a different site). This blog network was originally a test, to see if, indeed, 35 sites all linked together would do well in the search engines. The answer, for now, is yes - it’s been working splendidly well. Of course, I have put a lot of work into a couple of these blogs and have gotten many natural links pointing towards them. On these other ones, I have used PLRs on them and have also recently hired bloggers to post original posts.

The work I do now is setting up the sites, moderating forums, and posting articles. I now hire authors to do all of the writing for my sites, and I think this is the biggest reason for my recent rise in income. So that’s what I will keep doing until I believe I can afford to pay myself some.

…they have really been working hard to make this move work, and I think we’re almost at a point of a successful move.

The bad news is that TLA paused many of my ads since the sites were down overnight which resulted in a $400 drop for the month’s projection - I just hope that gets cleared up soon.

Argh, the perils of a little success… one step forward, two steps back.

The Problem: CPU Exceeded on WordPress Blogs with BlueHost

Since the move to HostGator did NOT go smoothly, I quickly switched the DNS back to BlueHost. I was a little tempted to just stick with BlueHost and start deleting some plugins to possibly resolve the issue, until I did a Google search for ‘CPU exceeded wordpress’ and realized that this was a very prevalent problem with BlueHost - it looks like it even happens to people with small sites and after reading through forums, I realized that no one seems to have resolved the problem.

So I think I really need to move, as scary as it is. I’ve written to HostGator about the problem with the blogs not opening with them, got a reply back 24 hours later asking for more specifics, and now I’m just waiting. I’m worried about switching the DNS back to them because their response time is so slow and I cannot really afford to wait on them.

Grr….