Adventures in Lifestyle Design from a Path Less Traveled
New Website Traffic Experiment
I’ve been reviewing the 4 Hour Work Week since I’ve now been through the whole process once (including that ever-so-desirable “Liberation” phase). Plus, I’ve been thinking over some conversations I’ve had with Javier when I was in Singapore.
Basically, it has become painfully obvious to me that I am incredibly ineffective at getting the most out of my time.
I have developed an extremely convoluted way to make money online last year that takes a lot of work and is incredibly boring.
That’s not going to make a very good e-book title if I ever actually make my own product:
How to Make Money Online with Tedious and Soul-Crushing Work available today for only $47. Hurry, only 27 12 copies left!
For 2011 I have decided to focus on streamlining the whole process. I am talking about the 80/20 principle.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, the 80/20 principle is described in the 4 Hour Work Week as 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. You can apply this idea to just about anything from money, work, gardening, exercise, etc.
Anyway, if this principle is true, then only 20% of my tedious and soul-crushing work is responsible for 80% of my results.
In other words, I am wasting a lot of time, energy, and money.
I listened to a recording by Mark Ling (who essentially taught me most of what I know about making money online) called something like “Millionaire Mindset Upgrade” where he explains that:
Money = Leads (or traffic) x Conversions x Average $ per Sale x Number of Sales per Customer
The first part of the equation is traffic. Traffic is probably one thing that people struggle with the most.
For the first half of 2011, I am going to focus on applying the 80/20 principle for traffic generation.
Over the past few months, I have built 4 new websites with my girlfriend. Each of these sites is fully built, but I have not promoted any of them in any way yet.
What I intend to do is compare popular forms of traffic generation by promoting each website in a different way.
Method A – This method will include a strict article marketing schedule. It’s no secret that Jem008 over at Affilorama has been a huge inspiration to me. He claims that his success was from going after low-competition keywords with the 21 Day Article Marketing Blitz that they teach in Niche Profit Classroom. For this method I will not be spinning articles. I will have 2 sets of articles the first set goes on the website, and the second set is used to market the website.
Method B – This method consists of exclusively using blog networks. There has been a lot of debate about how effective they are. Some people like James Pruitt have been vocal about how ineffective they are, while others like Jackson Lin attribute them to their success. Let’s find out once and for all! I am a member of Article Marketing Automation, SEO Link Vine, and Unique Article Wizard so I will be using these three services to submit articles after having them spun.
Method C – This site will be marketed using social media alone. If it’s social, I will probably try it here. I will be using methods that I pick up from reading James Pruitt’s blog, who is in many respects, the king of social media at Affilorama.
Control Method – This will be a combination of all 3 of the above methods. I will use manually submitted articles, blog networks, and social media here. This site will help keep things in perspective against a comprehensive marketing plan.
All of these websites are already built in straightforward AffiloBlueprint / AffiloJetpack fashion. They are just waiting to be marketed. All of them have keyword-rich .com domain names that were purchased last autumn. I’ve done everything I can to make sure that all of them are starting on even ground.
Metrics – Since each site is in a different niche, I think it would be foolish to judge these sites by how much they earn. Instead the key metric will be traffic. Other key metrics are the money invested in marketing these sites since I know a lot of marketers (myself included) are running on a tight budget. I’ll also be looking at the amount of time required to make each method work, since my personal goal with internet marketing was to break free of actively working for income (and I imagine a lot of you don’t want to create “another job” for yourself either). Of course money and earnings are important, so I will be mentioning these as well.
Time frame – I’m going to be doing this experiment for 6 months. Starting Monday January 17 2011 and ending Friday July 15 2011. This should give each method enough time to work (I’m thinking of those slow blog networks here).
I will be posting weekly updates on Fridays again for this experiment.
I’m not positive yet, but I may do some follow-up posts after the experiment is over to evaluate the set-it-and-forget-it potential for each method.
Good for You Too – I will be using various tools and programs to get traffic to these sites. If you buy any of these tools through my affiliate link, I will give you a cool bonus package. I promoted AffiloJetpack as an affiliate last summer, and I learned some lessons from that, namely, don’t offer your personal labor as a bonus–too time intensive. Don’t get me wrong. It was fun to work with the people that bought through my link, but I was just spread way too thin and the whole thing just turned into a time management disaster.
While I was traveling around Thailand I took some time to write several small e-book guides. I cleaned them up and gave them fancy e-covers after I returned to the US, and I’m going to give them out to anyone that buys any of the tools or programs I am using through my affiliate link. A win-win for both of us :)
Let’s find out together how to get the most traffic for the least time and money invested!
Click Here to Learn More About the Bonuses
Now, I’m going to go and enjoy what might just be my last weekend of freedom for quite some time before starting this thing on Monday. Have a great weekend, everyone!
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Very cool – good stuff Clayton.
My 2011 will consist entirely of link building – ugh… But, I have some automated tools too, and I’m curious to see how they all perform.
That’s awesome that your domains for this experiment are aged – in my experience that helps TONS.
I look forward to following your progress, have a a great weekend!
@Devin, Thanks for the comment. Yeah, once I figure out the most effective way to get traffic, then I can focus on getting tools to streamline or automate that process even more.
LOL! I think it is kind of sad if I’m so slow at building sites that my fresh domain is considered “aged” by the time I actually finish building the site.
Ha – I guess a few months ago isn’t really that aged… better than buying ‘em last week though!
@Devin, haha! Every bit helps I guess. Have fun with your weekend reading :)
What a great experiment Clayton! I’m fortunate enough to not be running on a tight budget, but have been working non stop to really make sure I know what I’m doing with AFB. Once I got to $1-2k/month revenue on my own I had planned on outsourcing work till I got to $10k+. But your testing technique seems a way better strategy to do this. I can’t wait to see the results!!!
@Joe, Thanks, I hope that this experiment will not only help me figure out the most effective way to get traffic, but I hope it helps lots of other people too.
Love the new project. Can’t wait to see what you discover. If I had to predict a winner it would be social media. Best of luck.
@Francisco, To be honest I think social media is going to be the winner too, but I suppose we’ll see…
Best of luck Clayton! Can’t wait for results either :)
@Ashton, Thanks!
A great experiment, Clayton. I’m especially interested in seeing how the social media stuff pans out for you, since this is something I haven’t really done much of myself. It will also be fun to check in weekly to see how this is progressing for you!
@Michelle, Yeah, Its something I’ve never really done very seriously myself before this. I’m curious too.
I echo the others on this…what a great experiment.
I struggle at the moment flicking between different linking methods, and different ways of getting traffic, and I haven’t a clue which is best at all.
I’ll be following this closely and I to look forward to your results.
I have to say though, I’ve been doing quite some reading on the Social side of things, and I think your social marketing might come up trumps in this experiement.
Over the next 12-18 months you’ll see a huge social layer develop on top of ecommerce as more and more of our online purchases are directly influenced by our friends’ purchases and recommendations, and I believe we’ll see a LOT of products and services springing up all over the place online in relation to social commerce.
Social is deffinately the way to go ;)
Ben.
Awesome – The very experiment that I’ve been waiting for someone else to try – especially when they make the results public!
Just a tip – in my humble effort, I found that it largely depended on the niche you were in. IM stuff seems to go better if you get social, niches that cover topics people don’t want to discuss – like health – SEO seems to work OK for.
Still reserving judgement on blog network vs article directories.
But then I dropped the ball early in the game….so over to you! Can’t wait :o)
@Rach, Oh yes, I’m testing blog networks on an awkward health condition. Something that I doubt anyone would ever “digg” “tweet” or “like” LOL!
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