The name of the game is stop relying on Google for traffic.

If you’re not playing that game yet, then you’re going to be in for a rude awakening.  Maybe not today, or tomorrow or even this year, but at some point the likelihood of your online business or affiliate site being affected is high.

So, I’m going to show you a detailed breakdown of one method that brings my sites hundreds of targeted visitors each day.

That method is forum marketing, and it’s one of the oldest sources of traffic online.

Why Forums?

Let me ask you a question.  Have you ever built a site that gets tons of traffic, but just doesn’t convert?

The answer is likely yes, at least I know it is for me, and while your conversion problem could be many things a lot of the time it’s your traffic source which is what makes forums perfect.

Traffic from forums is laser targeted.

Many people coming from forums are looking for a specific product are ready to buy.  They know what they want, all they need is a little reassurance from other people that it’s the “best” product.  All you need to do is provide them with that reassurance (assuming it actually is the best product).

And here’s how…

General Forum Rules to Live By

Before I give you the step by step method for generating forum traffic, here’s a few rules you need to follow.

• Follow the rules.  Your larger forums actually have moderators watching for people who are just their to spam the forum.

• Your first post should not include a link.  In fact, your first couple posts shouldn’t. Many times forums set a post count before you’re actually allowed to add a link anyways.  If you do encounter a forum with a post count (usually its either 10 or 50 based on my experience) then you need to spread your posting out over a week or a couple weeks.  There is no rush, the forum isn’t going anywhere.

• Do not troll 50 posts in one night; it is unnatural and you will get banned. I have personally been banned from 2-3 different forums.

• Don’t spam the forum, you will get banned.

• If you have nothing but 10 posts with links or even just 10 responses with links you will likely get banned.

• You’re not just there for links, you’re there to spark conversation and answer questions. Consider the link as a bonus and you’ll end up with more people clicking through.

• Don’t abandon the forum just because you get your link up. Continue to revisit the forums and make helpful posts with no links.  All it takes is 5-10 minutes a week, that’s it.

• Fill out your profile, add a picture (even if it’s a picture of your dog).

• Don’t use the same e-mail and profile information across multiple sites.  For instance, in my main niche I have 3 sites.  I use 3 different pseudonyms and 3 different e-mails.

• Forum moderators know what you’re doing.  It’s super simple to track the IP address that people are posting from.  So don’t think you can set up 20 different e-mails, spam the forum and be safe.  If you’re doing this from the same IP address you’ll get banned.

• This is about traffic, not links.  The whole point is for you to gain additional traffic sources that will remain over a long period of time.

• Many of these links will be no follow links.Pull your head out of the do follow sandbox and move on.  No follow links have value in terms of link diversity and building a natural link profile, besides, you’re not using forums for links.  If you are then you’re doing it wrong.

• Bottom line is don’t be an idiot and ruin this for other people just because you’re too lazy to do anything but spam links.

How to Find Forums for Your Niche

There are millions of niches out there; unfortunately not every niche is going to have active forums.  I’ve found if you can answer “Yes” to the following questions then you’re likely to find some relevant forums that will provide decent traffic.

Can you repair your product if it breaks?

For instance if your product is “bar stools” it’s not very likely people are going to be visiting a forum to repair their broken bar stool, but if you were promoting something like “best dog hair vacuums” I’d wager they are often online asking how the heck to get the dog hair out of the motor, cylinder, pinion, hose, etc.

Are there multiple products in your niche?

If someone wants to buy a vacuum specifically to clean up dog hair they’re liable to search for “the best dog hair vacuum.” Anytime you can add the word “best” in front of your keyword there are likely to be forums with people discussing your product.

Even if you can’t answer “Yes” to the above questions it’s there is still a possibility you can find some forums relevant to your niche.

Here are 3 methods I use to find forums:

1.  Search Queries (copy and paste into search engine, replacing “Your Keywords”):

Your Keyword Forum
Your Keyword Forum Year

2.  Search Queries (copy and paste into the search engine, replacing “Your Keywords”):

“Your Keyword” “powered by phpbb” inurl:/forum
“Your Keyword” “powered by phpbb” inurl:/community
“Your Keyword” “powered by vbulletin” inurl:/forum
“Your Keyword” “powered by vbulletin” inurl:/community
EDU And .GOV Forums – Targeted To Your Niche/Keyword

3.  Search Queries (copy and paste into the search engine, replacing “Your Keywords”):

“Your Keyword” “powered by vbulletin” site:.edu
“Your Keyword” “powered by phpbb” site:.edu
“Your Keyword” “powered by vbulletin” site:.gov

You’ve Found the Forums, Now What

There’s really 2 types for forum marketing that work.

1. Marketing as a user.
2. Marketing as an authority.

Marketing as a User

This is the method that I employ most often.

Essentially I find forums in my niche and “use” them by creating topics or replying to topics already created and leaving a link back to my site.

Being helpful or disagreeing and then providing a helpful answer often works best.

Here’s an example of a forum response:

I totally agree with the above poster.  My iRobot Roomba is the best investment I ever made.  I run that thing every morning and it rarely breaks down.

I ended up getting one after reading this review: Insert Your Link

Some times my responses end up being a lot longer than that, or they may offer a comparison of multiple products, etc.

Another way to market as a user is to create a topic.

Here’s an example of creating a forum topic:

Hey guys, I just got done testing 3 different tablet computers and I thought you guys might find this information useful:

Tablet 1

Insert Picture & 2-3 sentence review

Tablet 2

Insert Picture & 2-3 sentence review

Tablet 3

Insert Picture & 2-3 sentence review

End post with your recommendation.

Also if you want to take a look at some more reviews I found this site: Insert Your Link and this site: Insert Random Link (this helps keep it legit) pretty helpful.

These types of posts take a bit of time, but can be worth it sometimes.  Though make sure the forum you’re on allows “guides” or “tutorials” or whatever you want to call them.  I’ve spent a couple hours writing a nice little guide up only to have it deleted and get banned.

Marketing as an Authority

If you’ve built out an authority site and really want to establish yourself in some communities then this is the way to go.

It’s very important that you spend a lot of time creating a great profile and putting an unobtrusive link in your profile and signature.  If you noticed above I don’t use signature links or profile links unless I’m marketing as an authority.

This is just my opinion, but I don’t recommend you using this method and linking back to your site, or if you do, do it rarely.  It just looks shady.

This method will revolve around you creating a presence in the forum in a niche that you’re an expert in.  You can then toss a link in your signature or profile and traffic will eventually flock to you if you’re doing it right.

I have tread lightly here.

I haven’t found a niche that has made it worth it to get super duper involved.  Though, if you’ve followed Pat Flynn at all then you’re likely to know that this is really how he got started.  If you read this post you’ll notice that he echoes a lot of what I talked about, as far as being helpful and not just using the forum for a link or promotion of your site.

Does This Actually Work?

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while then you know I’ve talked about using forums for traffic.

But that was then and this now…in a post Penguin world.  Well, as far as traffic goes this still works amazing in some niches.

With the exception of Facebook and a couple other sources that site is receiving about 70 visitors a day from forums.

Whether this works or not for you is all a matter of taking action (bet you haven’t heard that before).

Forum Links and SEO

Last thing I want to say is be careful.

It’s not natural to suddenly get an influx of 20 forum links over night.

Find your forums, and space out your links.

Also keep in mind that when you build forum links they will either be naked URLs or anchor text.  You need to use both.  Strictly speaking from a conversion stand point naked URLs perform better.  But it’s not natural to have nothing but naked URL links from forums.  Occasionally people will link to your site with a “Click here to read the article I got this info from” or something of the like.

Was this guide helpful?

If this guide was helpful then do me a favor and share it with others.  Believe it or not we’re all doing our best to gain some independence from search engine traffic.

I’ll be honest, I’m beginning to really dislike doing these monthly reports.

It could be that Google Penguin has just put me in a bad mood or maybe I’m just being lazy.  Regardless they just don’t seem to serve the same purpose they did when I first got started.

You may see some changes to these reports in the future or you may not see them at all.

April 2012 Recap

Here’s a quick look at what went on last month.

Chasing Pace Highlights

I wrote one of my most popular posts: Forget Google, Check Out These AdSense Alternatives.  If you like it be sure to share it!

I talked specifically about one tactic (The Banks Button) I use on a lot of my affiliate sites that works wonders, and while I thought this was a highly actionable post I was a bit disappointed that more people aren’t trying this out.  Give it a shot, it could work wonders.

My wife completed her first Kindle Book!  It’s not published yet as we’re still formatting it some and working on a cover, but it should be up within a week.  I’m hoping that after publishing our first book the rest will go a lot faster.  As I know you may be curious this is a non-fiction book published in a niche that she’s an expert in.  Our future books will be a mixture of all sorts of books (novels, guides, children’s books, finance and lifestyle, and so on).

SEO Highlights

I added this section to my last monthly report thinking it would be a one time thing because of all the changes Google had made in March.  Unfortunately there were even more changes in April…

• Google Penguin.  April 24, 2012 is a day I will never forget.  Check out my initial thoughts here.
• Google Panda 3.5.  Most of you probably missed this update amidst the chaos that Penguin caused.
• Google Panda 3.6.  And most of you probably missed this update too.

My Goal Report for April 2012

Let’s see how I did in April.

Launch 2 Affiliate Sites.  Completed.  Besides launching sites for the purpose of testing I won’t be creating anymore sites for quite sometime.  Instead I’ll be focusing on niches I know convert.

Hone My Aged Domain Buying Skills.  Ongoing.  I spent quite a bit of time on ahrefs and Register Compass.  I didn’t purchase any Aged Domains yet, I think I’m being too picky.  I’ll definitely be purchasing some in May.

Average 10,000 Words Per Week.  Not Completed.  I failed miserably.  Average for April was 6,473 words per week.

Create 30 Web 2.0 Properties for Christmas.  Ongoing.  So far I’ve got 9 Squidoo Lenses completed and another 6 almost done.  My purpose for doing this is no longer focused on Christmas.  I’ll be getting into some more details here in the coming months, so stay tuned.

Income Breakdown

Media.net

• TOTAL: $566.44
  
• Last Month: $58.40
  
• Difference:  + $508.04
  

Infolinks

• TOTAL: $7.46
• Last Month: $1.20
  
• Difference: + $6.26

Amazon Associates

• TOTAL: $1,079.60
  
• Last Month: $1,328.59
  
• Difference: ($248.99)

Affiliate Earnings

• TOTAL: $128.66
  
• Last Month: $105.76
  
• Difference: + $22.90

MARCH 2012 TOTAL: $1782.16

• Last Month: $1,493.95
  
• Difference: + $288.21
  

Earnings Summary

Overall my earnings were up in April, but I’m calling it a losing month.

My main earner crossed the 100 post mark and even though I’ve only built a handful of links to the site it dropped to page 2 and beyond for most terms after Google Penguin.

Alongside my main earner, my other top 2 earning sites fell into the abyss as well.  Okay, not the abyss, but what else can you call page 5 or 6?

On a positive note other projects that I’ve been working out details for are starting to come to fruition.  I’m very excited about their potential at around the 4-6 month mark.

One last comment, this really isn’t about my April earnings, but I just recently sold my first couple items off my Squidoo Lenses.  I was shocked, but traffic is starting to pick up!

My Goals for May 2012

Publish 2 Kindle Books.  This is pretty simple and straightforward.  I just want to get 2 Kindle Books published.

Average 20,000 Words Per Week.  Yes, I know, I didn’t hit 10,000 word last month, so how the heck am I going to hit 20,000 this month?  No clue, but bottom line is I feel like I need to find a way.

Create My Squidoo Empire.  I’m close to half way done, my magic number is now 25 awesome lenses and then apply to become a Giant Squid (or Super Squid or whatever the lowest tier one is).

Purchase 2 Aged Domains.  I’m going to use one as a backup site and I think I’m going to experiment with some 301 redirects on another.  Going to have to force myself not to be so dang picky.

A Little Bit of Motivation

I’m going old school here for this month’s motivation.  Well, it’s old school for me.

When I was in college I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.  It was a toss up.

Part of me loved math and solving problems, while the other part of me just wanted to do something revolving around sports.  So, it came down to Civil Engineering or Sports Medicine.

Even then it was a scary decision, because what if I went into one of those fields and still didn’t enjoy it?  I couldn’t help but think no matter what I did I was going to end up disliking, and just get stuck in that career.  That’s when I had a very eye opening conversation with one of my (still) good friends.

He basically told me not to worry about it.  Eventually in life you’ll find something you love doing and if you truly devote yourself to that one thing you can find a way to be successful.  To this day, I believe that.

Quote of the Month

“No matter what you decide to do in life, if you’re good enough at it, you can find a way to get rich.”

- Anonymous Friend

How was your April?

Google unleashed the Penguin Update on 4/24/12

Let’s just skip right past the boring stuff.

I’m not going to talk about what the Google Penguin Update was, there’s enough people regurgitating that information.

Let’s get straight to the question you’re most curious about.

Were my sites affected by Penguin?

Yes.

How many?

Well, here’s the lazy math…

I have 57 domains, all I really track are the ones that bring in most of my income.  I had 3 sites that brought in around 75% of my income and they all got hit.

Here’s the results for their main keywords:

• Site 1 = #1 to # 77
• Site 2 = #1 to #67
• Site 3 = #1 to #23

Sites 1 and 2 were crap, but they were still earning.  I could care less about them though.

What really pisses me off is seeing my best site drop.  A site that was, and continues to be, the best site in its niche.  So, what did almighty Google decide was more important than my site?

I’m not going to go through all 22 sites now ranking above me, but here’s just a few of the winners:

• CNET.  Yes Google, we know you love CNET and all their bullshit reviews.
• Google Shopping Results.  Okay, now we’re getting somewhere, you want to make money just like I do.  This makes sense, just don’t start talking about quality while you return products that aren’t even being manufactured anymore.
• Walmart “keyword” Search Results.  Walmart sells about 10% of the products in my niche, but that’s what the people want to see right?
• My Facebook Page.  Genius, absolute genius.
• My Privacy Policy.  I get it, I should have no-indexed this page, but it slipped past me.  Thanks for the head up.
• My Squidoo Page.  Now you’re just messing with me Google, and that’s mean.

Google missed the mark on this latest update in terms of quality.  But that’s something else that’s already been covered a here and here.

The question is…

Now What?

The truth is that nothing has really changed.  I hate to keep saying that, but it’s the truth.

Google runs a search engine.  The search engine returns results based on an algorithm.  Google updates the algorithm as they see fit, which equates to them making more money.

This shouldn’t be earth shattering news, even though for most people it is.

Going forward you have three choices

Play by the rules, keep gaming the system, or avoid the system entirely.

Playing By the Rules

I want to make one thing very clear.  Quality sites, authority sites, eCommerce sites, aged sites, all got hit just as hard as affiliate sites, MFA sites, white hate sites, and so on.  The only differentiation I see on page 1 is a major preference towards BIG BRANDS.

If you’re reading this you’re not a big brand.

How exactly do you play by the rules, and what does that even mean?

First, you need to know the rules, or rather “rule”, and the rule is simple: Google must make money.

Starting to see where this is going?

That’s right…Google AdWords.

Am I being a little over dramatic?  Probably.  But if you don’t think every decision Google makes revolves around them making more money, then you’re sadly mistaken.

Gaming Google

Let’s get one thing straight.  If you build links in order to manipulate the SERPs then you’re trying to game the system.  Sure, some people build a handful of links and others build thousands upon thousands.  At the end of the day though, building links is building links.

The problem with it all is that building links still works.

There’s a reason Google declared war on blog networks prior to releasing the Penguin Update.

The reason?

They work.

High PR, relevant backlinks still work, and they work well.

The rest of this year you’re going to see a lot of SEOs building out their own private networks and Web 2.0 empires.  And it’s going to work well for most of them.  The question is, do you really want to spend your time doing that?

Is it time well spent to game the system?

This time next year when Google rolls out Sloth (targeting those who build links slowly) or Chimpanzee (targeting those sites that are butt ugly), or even Zebra (just because they love black and white), what happens if your sites get hit again?

Can you just rebuild and start over?  Will you have made enough money by then?

Getting Away From Google

This will be one of the most popular topics on many blogs and forums for months to come.  And then suddenly, when sites begin to recover from the Penguin Update, everyone will forget about the importance of diversifying your traffic sources.

And the cycle will start again.

Some people will have made a ton of money and they’ll either retire or start their own MMO (make money online) blog and make even more money telling people how they made money.

Other people will not have made enough to matter and they’ll either quit or start over.

Now the question becomes, if you don’t want to be one of the people in the latter group then what can you do to avoid relying on Google for all of your traffic?

There is really only one answer: BE AWESOME.

Content is not king, and never will be.  But Awesome Content is a whole ‘nother story.

I can’t tell you exactly how you’re going to approach being awesome.  That’s something that’s got to come from you.  However, in Pat Flynn’s recent podcast I did hear some amazing advice from Lain Ehmann.  She recommended you find what’s called your “unfair advantage.”

For instance, what is it that you have gained in life through natural skill or experience that gives you a leg up on the competition?  That’s as good of a starting point as any.

What Am I Going To Do?

To be honest I’m going to do a little bit of everything.

I’ve narrowed my site building to 3 main niches, though that doesn’t mean I will stop building out small niche sites just to see what sticks.

My goal is to utilize traffic sources that I haven’t used before and to develop better marketing plans to promote my content, while also still building links.

In addition to that I’ll also be experimenting with things like Kindle eBooks and possibly creating my own products.

Your Turn

Were you affected by Google Penguin?  Regardless, what are you plans going forward?  Be sure to let me know in the comments below!

The more products you sell, the more money you make.

Question is, how can you sell more products?

There’s multiple ways to increase sales, but I’ve found the easiest way is to increase conversions for traffic you’re already getting.  Assuming you have decent copy then all you really need to do is get your best posts in front of your traffic.

And that’s where the Banks Button comes into play.

What is the Banks Button?

If you look at the top right corner of this post you’ll see a partial example (partial because it doesn’t link out to anything).  Sorry if you clicked through to this post thinking you were going to get traffic generation tips, but if you did then you know the button works!

The Banks Button consists of 2 things:

1. A rectangular (or I guess any shape you want) button in the sidebar with some flashy text and some enticing words.
2. A link to an amazing landing page.

I didn’t invent text buttons, nor am I the first person to use them, but the tactic I’m about to show you has worked wonders on a lot of my sites.

Before I get into exactly how I create my own buttons, let’s take a look at how other sites are using them.

Sites  Using These Buttons

One thing I’ve noticed a lot lately is that major affiliate sites are using these buttons while smaller affiliate markets are failing to use them.

Every time you create a site that promotes a specific product or multiple products always take a look and see what the big boys (Amazon, Best Buy, Zappos, REI, and so forth) are doing in terms of site structure.

They’ve spent thousands, if not millions of dollars testing every single thing to increase conversions, so that’s always a good place to start.

Here are a couple examples:

Amazon.com

Zappos.com

As you can see these buttons are extremely simple, yet unbelievably helpful to visitors.

What I Commonly See Instead

For some reason I commonly see people not utilizing their sidebar properly.  I don’t know if it’s laziness or just poor site design skills, but here’s a few things to should consider.

Opt-in Forms

I get it, everyone and their mom is telling you the money is in the list.  The truth is though that some sites don’t function well with lists.  Even sites that you are utilizing lists on can still successfully implement the use of a Banks Button directly below the opt-in.

Search Bars

I have no clue why most WordPress themes include a search bar in the sidebar when you initially install the theme, but search bars don’t always work.  In fact, they rarely work well and in many cases just frustrate your visitors.

Recent Posts

For the love of Pete, please stop stacking your latest 20 posts in the top right sidebar.

I can understand if you’re a traditional blogger that you may want your readers to have access to some of your most recent or popular posts, but affiliate sites aren’t blogs, at least not in the traditional sense.

Most people that visit affiliate sites either want to review a product or buy a product, they could care less about what you posted over the last 2 months.

How to Create Your Own Banks Button

Most people are going to make excuses like, “I’m just not good with graphics,” and they’ll never even try what I’m talking about.  That’s unfortunate and it’s also a load of crap.

I use one program: Microsoft PowerPoint.  And I don’t even use it well.

Here’s exactly what I do

1. Find a cool background color or texture.  I typically use Google Images, but if you want to be truly legit you could always check out Graphic Rivers for some background images.
2. Find a font style that stands out.  I usually find something at dafont.
3. Create a shape that fits within your sidebar.  Most of my sites utilize a 305px sidebar, so I usually go with a 295px button and include the <center></center> tags.
4. Write one line of text that explains what the button is for and include the words “Click here” in size 14 font.
5. Write a separate line of text using a phrase that attracts attention in size 40 font (or whatever fits on the button).
6. Insert your button as an image in a text widget and ensure it links out to a landing page or a “Best of” page.
7. You’re finished!

Here’s a full example of a button I created in about 5 minutes.  Go ahead and click on it!

Where to place your button

Once you’ve created it, I suggest you check out this post by Peep Laja to find out more about where you should place the button.  A lot of my sites use sliders, so I typically place a slider on the top left and a Banks Button (or two) n the top right sidebar.

Change it up

As you saw in the examples above Amazon and Zappos are using buttons specifically targeted to current events like Mother’s Day or Summer.

Go ahead and make a few different buttons for different holidays or even make specific ones as new products come out.

Does Something This Simple Really Work?

Yes, it works.

Proof

On April 7, 2012 I added a 2nd Banks Button to one of my sites that links out to a single post.

How did it do?

March 24 to April 6

• Page Views = 6,323
• Visitors = 502
• Bounce Rate = 40%

April 7 to April 21

• Page Views = 6,629
• Visitors = 728
• Bounce Rate = 26%

So over those 4 weeks my page views increased approximately 45% (while traffic was only 4% higher) and my bounce rate decreased 14%!

That’s pretty incredible if you ask me.

The most important thing here is you need to link out to an amazing piece of copy, otherwise you’ll be wasting all those extra views.

Here’s What You Need to Do Now

I know you’re tired of hearing this, but you need to take action.

1. Choose 1 site, preferably one that gets a decent amount of traffic.
2. Choose 1 post or landing page, preferably one that is converting very well.
3. Use the steps above to make 1 Banks Button and put it in the top of your sidebar linking back to that post.
4. Leave me a comment on facebook thanking me or telling me I’m crazy

Below you’ll find my journey over the last month to find a viable AdSense alternative.  I’m still not 100% done testing and blending ads into my sites, but I’ve come pretty close to replacing my previous AdSense income.

So, if you’ve lost your AdSense account recently or maybe your CPC just isn’t what it used to be then make sure you check out some of the alternatives below.  You never know if or when you’ll strike gold.

Google AdSense Alternatives

I only had 4 sites with ads showing, so those are the only sites I tested on.  There was no real organization to my testing I just picked an ad network, applied, picked a site, tossed up some ads for about a week (and sometimes more) and watched how they performed.

Could I have spent a little more time developing a system and performing multiple tests across all my sites? Yeah, I probably could have done that, but that just doesn’t sound fun.  In addition, there are more alternatives than the ones I chose, but here are the 6 ad networks I looked into:

• adBrite
• infolinks
• media.net
• Chitika
• BidVertiser
• Yahoo! Publisher Network

This is not a definitive guide and regardless of how well these ad networks performed for me they will certainly perform differently in other niches.  So, like I’ve said before, make sure you test.

adBrite

adBrite was the first ad network I tried out mainly because I had always heard a lot about them.

Overview

Ad Formats.  There are 4 different ad format options, which allow you to place up to 6 ads per page, though the same type ad (what they call “zones”) can not be placed on the page more than once.

• Banner and text
• Text
• Fulll page
• Inline (very similar to info links)

Customization.  At first I tested “banner and text” ads, which I never entirely figured out because the dang ad was always a video ad.  I changed the settings multiple times to “not play automatically”, but that never worked.  My niches have always converted best with text based ads, so I’m not even sure why I was messing around with video.  Anyways…here’s a preview of what the text based ads look like (though I changed the colors to blend into my site).

Inserting the Ad Code.  Inserting the ad code was very straight forward and works very similar to Google AdSense.  I used WP-Insert and it took all of 30 seconds.

Payment.  Payment is mailed out the 1st of every month and as far as I could tell all payment is issued via a physical check.  You can set the payment threshold to whatever you want as long as it is greater than $5.00.

My Results

adBrite tied for first in terms of performing absolutely horribly.

I left the ads up for around 2 weeks on a site that usually gets 2,000 to 2,500 page views per month.  Not only was my CTR abysmal but the CPC was essentially $0.00.  If you are having trouble reading the table above it shows I’ve made $0.20 to date.

If I find a nickel on the ground I guess I could by myself a gum ball?

infolinks

infolinks was the second ad network I looked into.  I’m not sure how accurate this is, but infolinks claims to have the highest CTR in the industry along with the highest revenue sharing (they pay 70%).

Overview

Ad Formats.  When most people think of infolinks they usually just think of in-text ads, but there’s actually quite a bit more than that.  Here are the available ad types:

• In-text ads
• Related tags – chooses relevant keywords to display, similar to an AdSense link unit
• Tag cloud – similar to a WordPress Tag Cloud, except with infolinks instead of tags
• Search widgets -

Customization.  It took me a few days to figure out that you can actually customize quite a bit with infolinks.  At first I just left it on default and all the in text ads were showing up on random keywords (or rather the “most profitable” keywords that infolinks chooses) and were double underlined in green.

Later on I found out you can do the following:

• Change the link color
• Use single or double underline
• Choose keywords NOT to be linked
• Choose keywords to be linked
• Restrict which pages you want the in-text ads on
• Limit the number links per page

Here is a look at an example from JohnChow.com:

As you can see the link is double underlined and when you hover over it the infolinks ad pops up.

Inserting the Ad Code.  infolinks makes this incredibly easy with the use of a plugin.  It’s as simple as downloading, installing, and activating the plugin and then filling in your ad code.

Payment.  Payments are made within 45 days of each month end.  The payment threshold is $50 for Pay Pal or $400 for Bank Wire.  They also have another option where they’ll “upload” your earnings to a Prepaid Debit MasterCard, but I didn’t look into that much.

My Results

Right now I have infolinks on a site that was originally making about $30 per month.  I wasn’t that impressed at first, but it’s actually starting to pick up a little.

The following data is from the last 3 weeks.  Keep in mind that a couple of those weeks I didn’t have my ads blended, and this is a very low traffic site.

Overall I’m actually pretty happy with infolinks.  They’re super simple to use and they’re starting to perform decent.  I’ll likely add them to some other sites in the near future.

media.net

media.net was the third ad network I looked into.  I had actually never heard of them, but when I started searching for AdSense alternatives I spoke with some people who were making even more with media.net than AdSense.

Before I get into media.net I have to say I’ve been very impressed.  From what I can tell each person that signs up is assigned to a personal account manager.  I actually received a phone call after signing up asking if I needed any assistance placing ads on my site.

My account manager seems to follow up with me every couple weeks, though I’m guessing that’s just because I’m new.  It’s a nice change from Google who won’t hardly send anything but automated responses.

Overview

Ad Formats.  There’s 4 different ad types and you’re restricted to only no more than 1 of each type on a page.

• Content ad – shows text or image in nearly any size based on the keywords in your content
• Web bar – an ad bar that is used at the top or bottom of the site
• Search targeting ad – shows text or image in nearly any size based on the readers search history
• Mobile ad – ad displayed at the bottom of the mobile device screen when viewing on a mobile device

Customization.  You’ve got tons of options as far as customization goes, very similar to Google AdSense.  On top of that you can ask your account manager to help blend your ads into the content and they’ll do it for you.

I actually have only used the ad code that my account manager recommended I use, which happens to be a content ad.  Here’s a look at the types of ads I’ve been using:

I may start experimenting with different ad types, especially mobile ads, just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Inserting the Ad Code.  Pretty straight forward.  I use WP-Insert and just plop in the code.

Payment.  Payments are made at the end of each month (though this changes if you are classified as a “high volume Publisher) via Pay Pal or wire transfer.  Payment threshold is $100

My Results

I started using media.net on March 27 and so far to date I’ve made $363.69, which is about $19.14 per day.

I’ve just been using these ads on 2 sites and it’s nothing more than a 300×250 content ad in the top right of each post.  I’ll definitely be adding these to my other 2 sites very shortly.

media.net has outperformed everyone else by far and will come close to replacing my AdSense income entirely.

Chitika

I’ve only recently been using Chitika.  I had actually forgotten about them and only remembered them when I logged into my InfoBarrel account.

Overview

Ad Formats.  There’s 3 different ad types, though I haven’t experimented with them all yet.

• Search targeted ads
• Mobile ads
• Local ads

Customization.  It’s pretty to customize the ads and there are a lot of different options.  I’ve just been sticking with search targeted ads, like this one:

My problem so far is getting the ads to blend well.

Inserting the Ad Code.  Very similar to Google AdSense, again I use WP-Insert.

Payment.  Payment is made at the end of each month.  Payment thresholds are $10.00 for Pay Pal or $50.00 for checks.

My Results

I haven’t exactly done well with Chitika yet.  It’s only been tested on 1 site, which doesn’t get a whole lot of traffic.

Honestly the Chitika ads look like crap to me.  I’m just not a fan of them, and likely won’t be using them anymore.

BidVertiser

I didn’t find BidVertiser until a few days ago and haven’t yet given them a try.

I took a look at their site and they seemed like a viable alternative so I did want to mention them.  I’ll likely try them out in the near future just to see how it turns out.

Yahoo! Publisher Network

I never actually got to try the Yahoo! Publisher Network.  And even now I’m still confused as to whether or not they even exist.  Everything I read led me to believe they closed the program in 2010.  However, if you visit their site it appears to still be live…

In any event I filled out the information to “become a partner”, though I haven’t received a response yet, so I’m not quite sure what to say about Yahoo!.

I tried looking into Microsoft’s ad network, but it was all very confusing, and as far as I could tell they only offer PPC campaigns.

At this point I was a little worn out with looking into ad networks, so I just gave up.

A Few More Thoughts On Getting Banned

People are not just getting banned from Google AdSense.  This is happening across all ad networks.

To give you a little more insight, here’s an example of some correspondence between a publisher (not me) and media.net.  This occurred within the last week.

From media.net, to the publisher:

“Like most ad networks, we constantly receive feedback from our advertisers. Maintaining high advertiser satisfaction is critical to a healthy network that benefits all publishers.

We recently suspended a small handful of accounts for which our advertisers reported issues. Although this was necessary to maintain the quality of our system, we could have done a better job communicating this to publishers.

In your case, I know that you were not aware of any problems prior to the suspension notice.”

As you can see this publisher had their account deactivated for no other reason than advertisers complaining (most likely about sales volumes or conversions).

From media.net, to the publisher:

“I had a discussion with our Compliance Team and we have reactivated your Media.net account.

Please Note: Our Compliance Team will be closely monitoring your Quality Score moving forward. I would suggest that you work towards maintaining a High Quality Score and avoid purchasing traffic from low quality channels.”

Luckily their account was restored after several back and forth emails with media.net, but unfortunately that’s not always the end result.

At the end of the day you need to be serving ads on a website that is offering value (whatever that means to your readers).  The happier the advertiser the fuller your bank account.

A Quick Rant

I’m going to step out of character for a minute and go on a little rant because there has been one comment in particular (of late) that has really got on my nerves.

Around a month ago when Google disabled thousands of AdSense accounts there were multiple topics created across several different communities, forums, etc.  One thing I noticed is there’s always that one guy that responds with something like: “I’ve been using AdSense for 5 years and I’ve never had one problem.  If you actually take the time to follow the rules and create quality content then you’ll be fine.  End of story.”

Let me just say something real quick.  That’s complete bullshit.

At the end of the day Google (or any other ad network) exists to make money.  In order to make money they have to keep their advertisers happy, and if that means dropping a few thousand AdSense accounts each month then so be it.

One Big Lesson Learned

Google is not the only game in town.  For that matter even the major ad networks I tested above aren’t the end of the road.

While I didn’t end up making more money with any of the alternatives (though I came close, and it’s still early), I’m realizing more and more that true diversification doesn’t end with the niche.  You also need to look into diversifying your monetization strategies.

I know it can be a royal pain in the behind to manage and track multiple ad networks or affiliate networks, and I’m not suggesting that you need to be using 20 different programs at once.  But you need to know you have options, and what those options are.

So, that’s it for me.  I’m sticking with media.net and infolinks for now, though I wouldn’t rule out creating an LLC and trying AdSense again in the future.

Your Turn

Like I mentioned above, each niche is different.

Have you had better or worse experiences than me with any of these ad networks?

Let me know in the comments below and feel free to share the post if you found it useful!

Other than that I feel like I worked pretty hard and learned a lot in March.

March 2012 Recap

Here’s a quick look at what went on last month.

Chasing Pace Highlights

Niche Rivalry.  I know that Niche Rivalry has been popular, but unfortunately I’ve made my last update after I made my first few sales (I actually made close to $20 in March, which I was very happy with).  While I’ve stated that it will be my last update, mainly because I don’t currently have time to update the site, you may see some more from this case study later down the road.

Chasing Pace Makeover.  I’m sure most of you noticed that I completely redesigned Chasing Pace.  I had tossed up the old site using Pagelines, but it was getting to CSS intensive to make some of the changes I wanted, so I decided to change over to Catalyst Theme.  If you’re only going to buy 1 theme, it needs to be Catalyst.  Also, I would love to know what you think of the new look.

I Signed Up for Twitter.  I’m still figuring it all out, but I’m officially a Tweeter (is that right?).  Follow me here.

Link Building.  With everyone freaking out about BMR being deindexed, I made a post about link building methods that still work great.  The only problem is this actually requires people to take action, which is something that seems to rarely happen.

No More AdSense for Me.  As I mentioned above my account was disabled because my sites “posed the risk of invalid clicks.”  However, I’ve been experimenting and found some decent alternatives.  Also, I wasn’t the only one who lost their account.  In addition to the handful of emails I received here’s a few other people who got “banned”:

• Eric at My 4 Hour Work Week
• Zac at ZacJohnson.com
• Gauher at GauherChaudhry.com
• Here’s an entire thread at WF about even more people

SEO Highlights

There were a lot of changes made by Google in March so I figured I’d add this section for anyone that missed any of the details.

• Google states that they’ve sent out over 700,000 WMT emails in January/February
• Google announces over optimization penalty is coming
• Build My Rank gets deindexed
• Google officially rolls out Panda 3.4

*If you’re a little late to the party I recommend taking a look at Search Engine Land’s Panda Infographic

As a side note, if you want another great way to get some links, then reproduce your own badass infographics!

My Goal Report for March 2012

Let’s see how I did in March.

Launch 2 Amazon Sites.  Completed.  They are smaller niche sites I’m using to test the waters.

Choose a Kindle Niche.  Completed.  So, I spent quite a bit of time trying to decide what I’d like to write about and went back and forth on different topics.  I’ve narrowed it down to 2 topics and I spent about 3 hours at Barnes and Noble doing some research for 1 of them already.

Experiment with Pinterest.  Completed.  Okay, so I cheated a bit here because my wife actually did this.  Every Internet Marketer is going berserk over Pinterest, and I’m really starting to wish I would have listened to my sister last year when she wouldn’t stop talking about it.  I’m not recommending you do this, but if you think Pinterest is over-hyped then you’re sorely mistaken.

Replace Niche Chaser.  Not Completed.  This is now on the back burner.  I do at some point intend on replacing Niche Chaser, but as I’ve been building out more and more Web 2.0 properties I’ve been using Niche Chaser more and more myself.  Whether you use it or not being organized can be extremely time saving.

Income Breakdown

Google AdSense Earnings

• TOTAL: $0.00
  
• Last Month: $789.87
  
• Difference: ($789.87)

AdSense Alternatives

• TOTAL: $60.00
• Last Month: $0.00
  
• Difference: + $60.00

Amazon Associates

• TOTAL: $1,328.59
  
• Last Month: $1,709.17
  
• Difference: ($380.58)

Affiliate Earnings

• TOTAL: $105.76
  
• Last Month: $90.61
  
• Difference:  + $15.15

MARCH 2012 TOTAL: $1,493.95

• Last Month: $2,589.56
  
• Difference: ($1,095.61)

Earnings Summary

For the first time since August 2011 my income went down…a lot.  However, I’m super excited about the future.

No, I don’t expect my income to return to “normal” next month, though I hope with some of my new AdSense alternatives (which I’ll have a post on soon!) it will be higher.  The other exciting part is that I’ve got several new sites that are already starting to make sales and I just launched them in March!

In addition, I’ve worked harder these last few weeks of March than I have since before Christmas, and that’s a good feeling.

Unfortunately I do have a little more bad news in regards to my Amazon income for April.  I noticed I was losing a bit of traffic for one of my main sites even though I wasn’t dropping ranking.  As it turns out I didn’t analyze the search trends well enough because October through February are the prime time months for that site, while March through September show a 40% decrease in search volume.  That’s just the way some niches work.

My Goals for March 2012

Launch 2 Affiliate Sites.  I actually purchased both of the new domains tonight before writing this thread.  One site isn’t as much of an affiliate site as it is a “passion” site and the other will be a smaller niche site.

Hone My Aged Domain Buying Skills.  I recently signed up for accounts at ahrefs and Register Compass.  My goal for April is to purhase 2 aged domains to act as satellite sites to my main money site.

Average 10,000 Words Per Week.  You may have seen this goal before and it’s back again.  This helps keep me focused on getting content out there, and while it’s not a ton of content it’s still something.

Create 30 Web 2.0 Properties for Christmas.  Yes, you read that right, Christmas.  I was still too new to IM, and in particular Amazon Associates, to really benefit from Christmas last year.  I’m going to build out hundreds of 2.0 properties between now and August and then choose some niches to hit pretty hard.  Depending on how it goes my strategy may change a bit.

A Little Bit of Motivation

Although I’m not a big fan of Matt Damon, this month’s motivation (or rather inspiration) is coming from a movie I watched last night: We Bought a Zoo.

The quote I heard in this movie is perfect for people starting a new site or a new product, but have that continual feeling in the back of your mind that while you think what you have to offer is great, will everyone else feel the same?  My answer is, “Who the heck cares.”  Work up the courage to pursue something with all your heart and let the rest take care of itself.

Quote of the Month

“All you need is 20 seconds of insane courage and I promise you something great will come of it.”

- Matt Damon (We Bought a Zoo)

Your Turn

How was the month of March for you?  Be sure to leave a comment below and let me know!

Before I share the results I want to stress one thing: testing is important.

So many people underestimate conversion rates and instead worry about link building, traffic generation, or social promotion.  Why?  Because traffic is exciting.  It’s neat to see 100 or 1,000 unique visitors to your site each day.

For some reason people stop worrying about conversion rates.  Once their site starts to see a little bit of traffic they get traffic happy and start checking their analytics 20 times a day instead of taking a few minutes to run some simple tests that could double or triple their monthly income.

Think about it like this.  If you have a site that is earning $1,000 per month and your conversion rate is 3%, you could turn that site into $2,000 per month with the exact same traffic numbers by simple increasing your conversion to 6%.

The easiest place to start is with your links.

Moving the Buy Now Button to the Top

When I started testing on this site I had one link ID I was tracking across 3 different types of links: image, contextual, buy button.

I went to my 3 highest traffic pages and moved the buy button from the end of the post to just below the first paragraph and created a new link ID.

Overall Conversion: 8.29%

Top Buy Button Conversion: 10.11%

This is a super easy fix.  By simply moving the buy button towards the top of the post I can gain 2%.

Are Image Links Even Worth It?

Everyone always talked about how well image links can do, but in the niche I was in I was a bit skeptical.

So, again I went to my 3 highest traffic pages and added a new link ID just for images.  I changed the link out and guess what?  I was getting ZERO clicks to my images.

I personally haven’t experienced any penalties from Google for having too many affiliate links (sometimes up to 6 in one post), but I’ve always been warned it’s not a good idea.  I wasn’t getting clicks, so I went ahead and removed the image links site wide.

Overall Site Conversion: 8.29%

Image Link Conversion: 0%

How Well Do Contextual Links Actually Convert?

On a few of my sites contextual links are my bread and butter.  But on the site in question it was pretty obvious that most visitors have a lot of love for my buy buttons.

So, how did contextual links stack up?  Not very well.

Overall Site Conversion: 8.29%

Contextual Link Conversion: 3.49%

What Does all this Mean?

Well, for me it means about an extra $100 each month

For you, it means you need to start testing.

For the record it took me about 1 hour to set up new tracking IDs and switch out a few links to see where my conversions were coming from and what I could do to increase them.

Don’t be lazy guys.  Once you have a site that is doing well take a little extra time and make it even better!

A quick note, your conversions will not be the same as mine, so don’t just make the changes I made and expect to see results.

Everyone has their own methodology of creating sites.  Some people are bloggers devoting all their energy to one single blog, while others are in love with niche sites creating as many as humanly possible.

So, which method is correct?

The discussion is never ending, and I don’t have a black and white answer.

Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket

Whether this means building hundreds of sites or just a few the idea is to protect your sites (your income) by diversifying them.  This is not just diversification across niches, but also across hosting accounts, site promotion methods, content creation, design, and so forth.

There’s no point in building 50 sites in different niches if you’re just going build them all the exact same way.

What to consider when building multiple sites:

Pros

• Greater possibility of finding a winning niche
• If one site gets hit or hacked other sites are still up and running
• You have the option of flipping your sites to focus on the winners
• Networking opportunities will be more numerous

Cons

• You may never become an expert (see the 10,000 Hour Rule)
• Managing a lot of sites is not easy
• Overhead (domains, hosting, content, SEO) is likely to end up costing more

Put All Your Eggs in One Basket and Watch that Basket

If you talk to people lately regarding all the Panda updates some might tell you to just focus on one site and make it the highest quality site possible.  Google is, after all, focused on quality, right?

What to consider when building just one site:

Pros

• More likely to be considered an expert
• More time to focus on building followers rather than just building traffic
• Lower overhead costs (domains, hosting, security, etc)
• Networking relationships will often times be stronger

Cons

• If your site gets hit or hacked then say goodbye to your income
• Possibility of picking a “dud” niche
• You’re more likely to get frustrated (and give up) when your only site isn’t performing

You could argue that even with one site you can still be diversified by ensuring you have a wide range of traffic sources or incredible branding.  Unfortunately, regardless of what many people would have you believe, it would be difficult to obtain such a large following that organic traffic didn’t matter anymore.

The Math Behind the Mystery

I thought offering up a few numbers may be helpful.

The table below shows data for the first 46 sites (I have more than these) I built from July 2011 thru February 2012.  There are some key pieces of information you should know before making any assumptions about this data:

• Sites 2-6 and 8-20 were deleted (after a couple months) because they violated copyright laws
• Sites 21-22 were deleted because they were utter garbage
• The rest of the sites that made no money were just bad niches
• All these sites are in different niches

As you can see a lot of my sites didn’t make any money.  Site 1 is still active today and if I would have stuck with that site I could surely have made a lot more than $2.45, but no where near as much as Site 25.  That’s just the way it goes sometimes.

Some interesting points can be made from this data:

• 68% of my monthly income comes from 2 sites (or 4% )
• Not accounting for the sites that violated copyright laws, 14 sites (30%) made $0

Even though the data may suggest otherwise I am no longer an advocate of having “a lot” of sites.

Our New Strategy

My wife and I sat down the other day and came up with a game plan to hit our monthly income goal by 2014 and it included a list of 9 sites, but only 2-3 would require attention each week.  The others are really just set ‘em and forget ‘em (to some extent).

Unfortunately we aren’t able to work on 9 sites at one time and still manage to maintain high quality.

What I’ve learned is that after 50 or so posts it becomes extremely easy to write content for a site.  For instance the other day I sat down and wrote enough content in 1 weekend for all of April (for one site).  That’s my main earner and other than some social media I won’t be doing anything for that niche unless there is some breaking news to report on.

It’s a pretty good feeling to get ahead like that, and it allows me to start working on other sites that tend to take a lot more time at the beginning.

We’re taking this strategy and expounding on it.

My wife just recently created her “main” site.  I don’t know how much content she’s written, but my guess is around 30-40 posts.  Her new strategy is to start each week by writing 3 keyword targeted posts and spend the remainder of the week working on an “epic” post.  Her niche involves some do-it-yourself craft stuff so she’s been trying to write for 1-2 days and spend the rest of the week on pictures and crafts with some promotion on Pinterest.

Her goal is to work on that site until it has 100 posts and then start site number 2.  At that point it should be very easy to maintain site number 1.  Generally speaking that is how we plan to attack sites: work on one until it is fairly self sufficient and then move on.

How Many Sites Should You Build?

It really depends.  There is no wrong way of doing things, unless you’re just not doing anything at all.

Personally, I will never own just 1 site.  I think pouring all your energy and efforts into 1 site can be very profitable and worthwhile, but it can also be very dangerous.  Even if I were to work on just 1 niche, I would still build out several backup sites.

What about you?  What are your thoughts on how many sites you should build?  Leave a comment below and let me know!

(A couple days ago I made a very similar post at The Keyword Academy, and I wanted to elaborate some more and share it on Chasing Pace.)

I’ve never seen so many people panicking over Google’s latest attempt to shake up the internet marketing world.  They deindexed the almighty Build My Rank blog network along with several others and everyone is running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

Let’s be honest though, did you really not see that coming?

A blog network built for the sole purpose of manipulating ranking is always going to be subject to deinedexing.  That’s never going to change.  And as much as you might like all those other “underground” blog networks the glaring amount of OBLs and unkept sites is likely to grab Google’s attention at some point.

That’s not to mention all the other crappy spam links everyone has been using.

I’m guilty myself, though I’ve always, always preached link diversity, so while I’ve used things like BMR they make up less than 5% of my links (if that).

On top of all that Google has officially unleashed Panda 3.4, which has a lot of people asking, “So, what now?”

Now it’s time to listen to what people have been saying for quite some time.

None of this is new. People have been talking about this stuff for years. I’m just reminding you while everyone freaks out about BMR and the end of the world.

To be honest my link building methods aren’t going to change much.

Since day one of my internet marketing career I’ve hated building links.  It’s just not something I enjoy, and it’s one of the main reasons I started a case study about creating a profitable site without building links.  Guess what happened.  It turned into a very profitable site.

The problem is that links are necessary to rank and it’s not always easy getting organic links, regardless of what all the gurus keep preaching.  So, here’s your next best options…

Guest Posting

Recently there was an article on Affilorama that discussed link building strategies for affiliates. They interviewed a bunch of SEO “gurus” about what types of links they recommend. Guess what every single one of them said? Guest Posting.

So, guess what you need to start doing.  That’s right…guest posting.

Here’s 3 great resources for getting started with guest posting:

1. Guest Blogging: The Ultimate Guide by Glen at ViperChill
2. How to Guest Post to Promote Your Blog by Josh Klein and Darren Rowse at ProBlogger
3. Building the Link Juice to Get You a Six Figure Income by Patrick at Make Money with No Work

I’ve even talked about it here.

Why does guest posting work so well?  Two words: quality and relevance.

Forget about Page Rank and all that other crap. You get the chance to hand pick blogs with highly relevant content to link back to you, and there are 2 platforms that are making it super easy for you to get these links.

The Keyword Academy.  If you aren’t already a member of TKA, you need to sign up now (and I mean right now).  I’ve always stressed how valuable this community is and it’s about to get even better as they are working to release Post Runner 2.0, which looks absolutely amazing.  Oh, and by the way, if you don’t sign up now you will be paying a premium when it is released.

My Blog Guest.  I’m still fairly new to My Blog Guest, but so far I’m liking it.  I’m just getting started on finding blogs to post to and hooking in one of my blogs, but the interface has been fairly simple and I’ve heard a lot of great things.

It’s going to be tough to find better links, and now you have no more excuses.

Blog Comments and Forum Posts

We’re basically going back to the beginning of time with this strategy.  And guess what?  It still works.

No, not that Scrapebox or Xrumer crap, or Paul and Angela’s profile links, whatever that was all about.  I’m talking about finding blogs in your niche and actually taking the time to leave quality comments.  It’s about adding to the community and forming relationships.

You don’t have to be some type of forum God that knows anything and everything, but you’ll be surprised what can happen when you stop by a forum and actually take the time to answer someone’s question with a link back to your site.

I talked about it previously here, and I can’t stress enough how simple and successful this site promotion method can be.

Web 2.0 Properties

Building out some FREE Web 2.0 properties is a great way to add a bit of diversity to your link profile. There’s all sorts of means and methods of doing this.

Here’s 2 great resources for getting started with Web 2.0 properties:

1. Satellite Sites byDave at Grabapple
2. Web 2.0 Marketing by Dave at Zenduck

I’ve also talked about 2.0 links here and here, but to go into a little more detail here’s how I roll…

I choose about 10 posts on my site and come up with 3 relevant post titles for each post. Then I dip into my list of 2.0 properties (you can get my entire list by subscribing!) and assign 1 property to each post. I only use that property once per site, open an account and put up a decent 400-500 word post, plus fill out the profile and any other doodads they use.

I typically add a small update every few weeks for a couple months and make sure to get some text, images, video, etc. I put one link back to my post and I interlink within the 2.0 property.

Don’t be like everyone else and create 100s of spammy 2.0 properties. If you actually spend the extra 10 minutes and make it decent not only will it stick around and build up some nice PR, but you may even see some traffic.

Social Media

If you’re not getting in on Social Media then you’re missing out, and you’ll probably be left behind.  It’s everywhere people.

Here’s 5 great resources for getting started with social media:

1. How to Promote Your Website with Twitter by Philia a TKA Member.
2. Why I’ve Dropped Everything for Google + by Fraser Cain at Keyword Strategy
3. Getting Mass Traffic from StumbleUpon: A Definitive Guide by Glen at ViperChill
4. Going Viral on Pinterest by Colby Almond at SEOmoz
5. Timeline for Facebook Pages: The Complete Guide by Pat at Smart Passive Income

My take?

Every niche is different. Find what works and go with it.

My wife is making a site right now that I think will end up performing amazing with Pinterest, while I’m starting to use Facebook more and more at Chasing Pace and actually just signed up for Twitter thanks to Kent.

(Actually I just signed up for Twitter today, so make sure you follow me, even though I have no clue how to use it!)

You don’t need to spend hours on social media, but a few minutes a day will go pretty far.

Aged Domains

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this subject because it requires a little more knowledge than just going out and buying an old domain on GoDaddy.  But there’s a reason prices have been going up since late last year.

You can use these in several ways: satellite sites, backup sites, or as your main money sites.  However, unless you’re looking to build your own personal network then you’re probably better off just using the domain as your money site.

Until you have a pretty good feel for SEO I don’t recommend getting into these as you can burn through money quickly, though I highly recommend checking out this article at ZenDuck if you want to learn a little more.

At the End of the Day Building Links is Still Just Building Links

Everyone talks about “quality” links, including myself.  But the truth is that your sites can still drop in the SERPs regardless of how many quality links you build.  In fact, even sites full of organic links can get hit.

Link building is not for everyone.  As I mentioned above I can’t stand link building, but I will continue to do it because that’s what I’ve had success with.

You don’t have to build links to rank, but you do need links to rank.

No matter what choices you make going forward remember that Google is in the quality business.  They want to return best results possible (below their ads of course).  So, if your affiliate site is just another EMD with some crappy free theme and no real content then don’t be surprised when your sites are overtaken by the guy that spends a few extra hours creating more useful content than affiliate links and treats his sites as a business and not just another way to make money online.

I actually received my first 5 sales in the last week and am starting to rank for some of my main keywords.

This is the one mistake I see a lot of people make.  When you start to rank you have to hit the content hard.  People may disagree, but on every site I’ve built the moment I begin to rank well I start publishing a few articles a week and I’ve been able to ride the “freshness” wave for some long term rankings.

I’m going to have to suck it up and make some time (because I don’t have any more) to write content.

Okay, enough of me rambling, let’s get into some data.

Link Report

If you read my link building strategy you have a general idea of how I typically build links for a site.  You may also note that I listed some links as my “super secret links.”  Well, there’s actually 2 types of links I’ve been testing out and now that I’ve seen some good results I’d like to share 1 of them with you below (I’ll be sure to share the other, but not quite yet!).

So, here’s what I’ve done to date in terms of link building:

• Purchased Supercharged Bookmarks at IMtalk.org (these were all sent to the home page)
• Sent several Post Runner articles to the home page
• Commented on several blogs
• Built a couple 2.0 properties linking to the home page and inner pages
• Purchased a SERP Injector Luminous Package drip fed over 30 days to the home page (I’ll be revealing more about these links in the near future, as they are absolutely amazing, though not something I use on every site)
• Loaded up 10-15 (inner page) URLs into Backlink Banzai (this is the new link building method I’ve been testing)

(Note: these last 2 methods are some of the secret links I’ve been waiting to share with you; I’ve tested them and so far they are doing great on my sites, contact me or leave a comment below if you’ve got any questions about how to use them, don’t just use them blindly)

*Right now I’ve built a few too many links to the home page and will be focusing on inner pages a lot over the next couple months

Here’s what I haven’t done:

• Guest Posting.  This could be huge for this niche, but it’s not something I will attempt until my site is built out a lot more, probably 3-4 months away from doing this.
• Forum Responses.  Either I haven’t found them or this niche isn’t that great for forums.
• Build My Rank.  I will definitely be using BMR along with Link Authority in the near future for inner pages.

Rank Report

I don’t check rank a lot anymore (though I used to be obsessed).  I just checked a few terms that I built links for.  Here is a screenshot from Long Tail Pro.

You can see that I’m ranking for some decent terms, though Yahoo! and BING would disagree.  I’m sure I’m ranking for a lot more than just those terms, but I know those are the terms that are converting.  If I can get a term like “strawberry huller” to the top 3 that could easily bring in $20 a month.  Get 10 easy keywords like that and that’s $200 a month, which is a lot more than most people will ever make online.

Traffic Report

All I use is WordPress Jetpack Site Stats to track my traffic, nothing fancy.

Here’s a screenshot of what the last month looked like.

As you can see I’m still not getting huge traffic numbers.  Even though it says my busiest day was January 10, that was primarily from people who visited via Chasing Pace.

My busiest day was actually March 5, where I got 100 page views, which translated to 38 unique visitors.  Unfortunately I only got 2 clicks that day, which tells me my copy isn’t that great.  This is pretty normal, and I’ll likely have to rewrite a lot of content and restructure how the posts are laid out.

Sales Report

As I mentioned above I’ve sold 5 items in the last 3 days.

It only accounts for about $7.02 (at 8% commission), but I’m excited nonetheless.  Keep in mind that I’ve probably spent around $100 on the site to date, so I’ve still got a ways to go before I make any profit.

I’ve always found the first dollar is always the hardest, but once you can get over that hump it’s all downhill from there.  How well will this site do?  It’s still hard to say.  I don’t have a great feel for this niche yet, but I think it can definitely hit $10/day if not a lot more.  It really depends on how much time I can put into it.

My Last Update

I’ve received a lot of positive feedback for Niche Rivalry and I’m glad it’s been helpful to a lot of you.  However, I won’t be continuing to do updates.

My initial goal with Niche Rivalry was to provide people with an example of how I choose a niche and build out a site with the intent of becoming an authority, and I think I’ve done that.  Unfortunately I’m having to invest quite a bit more time into the site than I’d like to, instead of spending my time on sites that are already earning well.  In addition, these updates take me hours to make.

What I’ve decided to do is turn Niche Rivalry into a FREE course (of sorts) for people first breaking into Amazon Associates.  I’ll be changing a few things and adding a few things over the next month and I’m hoping the end result will help a lot more people get started in affiliate marketing.

With that said I will continue to build out the site, especially now that it is starting to earn, and if you ever have any specific questions don’t hesitate to contact me.

Other Posts in the Niche Rivalry Series

• Niche Rivalry: The Rivalry Begins (12/21/11)
• Niche Rivalry 002: Finding Seed Keywords the Easy Way (12/29/11)
• Niche Rivalry 003: Revealing the Niche (1/2/12)
• Niche Rivalry 004: Site Setup (1/9/12)
• Niche Rivalry 005: How to Write Like a Panda (1/19/12)
• Niche Rivalry 006: My Quality Link Building Strategy – Part 1 (1/28/12)
• Niche Rivalry 007: My Quality Link Building Strategy – Part 2 (2/26/12)
• Niche Rivalry 008: My First Sale (and my last update) (3/18/12)