Website Building Update – Week 42

June 18th, 2010 by Clayton

Wow! Week 42. That means I only have 10 weeks before it’s been a whole year. I’ve got to step up my game!

I’m done writing articles for now and I got articles spun for my girlfriend’s website (others will be completed soon). Now it’s time for some intensive backlinking! Personally, I enjoy this more than writing or spinning articles because I don’t have to think very hard (I told you I’m lazy, right?). Just copy and paste articles while listening to an audiobook or a podcast in the background. Actually it’s quite enjoyable

I decided to not worry about blog networks for now. I’m doing something right, so I’m not going to ask any questions. Once I get caught up with article marketing, then I can take a look at how effective AMA and all those other networks are, and correct course if necessary.

Anyway, I got back spun articles for my girlfriend’s website. I’m helping with the link building for her site. All of our sites are part of the same company, she’s just the “project manager” (or whatever) for this site and she has her own Clickbank account. So, you won’t see any results for her site on this blog. But it gives me something to do while I’m waiting to get spun articles back for my own sites.

This week was pretty good. Looks like I’m on track to making somewhere between $1000 – $1500 this month.

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How to Destroy An Article Theif

June 15th, 2010 by Clayton

In February, I was working on a relationship advice website. Not all of my pages on my website were indexed yet, and just for fun, I decided to check my site against Copyscape.

Of course I got some random dude on elance trying to pass my writing off as his own “fluent English” and win a job, but there was one other instance where a trashy celebrity blogger decided to do a cutsey Valentine’s Day post by stealing one of my articles. This really pissed me off for some reason.

I read a bit of the subject and most people said that this stuff happens all the time and that it’s a waste of time to fight it. I’m vengeful and spiteful though (some of my more charming qualities), so this wasn’t a good enough answer.

I developed two plans to deal with Mr. Michael Wheeler… er, I mean the unnamed trashy celebrity blogger.

Plan A:

Ask him to remove the article since it is in violation of my copyright.

Fortunately this worked. He took the article down. But what if the webmaster doesn’t do this? How can you kick someone in the balls over the internet?

Plan B:

1. Contact the offender’s hosting company and tell them that they are hosting a website that is in violation of your copyright.

2. Contact the offender’s hosting company’s bandwidth provider and tell them that they are providing bandwidth to a hosting company that is hosting a website that is in violation of your copyright.

3. Contact Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. and inform them that the offender’s website is contains stolen content that you produced. This will get the offender banned from Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

4. Contact Google AdSense, Clickbank, other affiliate merchants, etc. that the offender is using to monetize the website and inform them that the offender has violated your copyright in an effort to promote their product or service. Suggest that they terminate their relationship with the offender in order to maintain the quality of their brand.

5. Contact any “friends,” partner blogs, or clients that the offender may list on his website and inform them that their buddy has some serious issues with copyright laws. Advise them to end any relationship with the offender in order to keep themselves from looking bad and stop the offender’s toxic reputation from spilling over onto them.

If you particularly petty and vindictive (like me) and enjoy watching someone self-destruct like a dying star collapsing on itself, feel free to cc the offender on all e-mails you send out. There is nothing quite as rewarding as making sure your enemy watches as you systematically destroy them.

Whether you choose Plan A or Plan B, the stolen content will be removed one way or the other. Congratulations! I hope you didn’t have too much fun.

Posted in Hijinks, Things That Piss Me Off | Comments (9)

Website Building Update – Week 41

June 11th, 2010 by Clayton

I keep steamrolling ahead with these sites. I’m getting articles spun while I finish up writing the last few sets of original articles. I finished the additional articles for website #2 bringing it up to 50 content articles. I’m feeling really optimistic about my keywords and the potential for my websites. I can’t wait to start building backlinks

Now I just need to focus on website #1 and then its time for some fierce backlink building!

I’ve been reading some posts on forums here and there about how blog networks like AMA and such are pretty much worthless due to the fact that the majority of the sites that get content from these services suck (no visitors, no PR, some don’t even change from the default WP theme). I’m curious if this is true? Are there any alternatives?

Sales-wise, this week wasn’t particularly remarkable. I’m still feeling pretty optimistic though. All the vital stats for my sites are consistent, so no harm done. Summer is going to start any day now in Seattle (keeping my fingers crossed), and I’m nearly ready for this second wave of intense article marketing hopefully in time to play in the sun a little bit.

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Website Building Update – Week 40

June 4th, 2010 by Clayton

Well, it looks like I’ve got just under 3 months to hit my $2500 / month mark by my August 26th deadline.

In May I made $1360.53. Seeing as how I may be interested in selling some sites down the road, I thought it might be a good idea to start documenting their individual monthly earnings:

Website #1 – $349.50 ($142.74 from PPC)
Website #2 – $61.53
Website #3 – $151.03 ($22.72 from PPC)
Website #4 – $373.21
Website #5 – $0 (website on hold)
Website #6 – $334.02
Website #7 – $0
Other Shenanigans – $91.24

This week I shifted focus to Website #2 for generating more content articles. I am sticking with my productivity trick from last week to pump out heaps of articles.

One of my good friends recently graduated from college and moved back to Seattle. She’s considering leaving her profession as well, so I gave her a copy of the 4 Hour Work Week. This got me thinking that I’ve, in many ways, drifted away from the 4HWW lifestyle. I guess I’ve just been busting my ass trying to get my “muse” up on it’s feet.

I’m thinking of revisiting the 4HWW and all of the exercises in the book in order to get on track for my trip this autumn (whether it be Thailand, Argentina, or elsewhere).

Anyway, this week my dry spell ended and I made some good money. I’m feeling really good about the next few months.

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Website Building Update – Week 39

May 28th, 2010 by Clayton

My productivity has dipped over the past few weeks. I’m trying to get back on track, especially if I’m going to hit my $2500 / month goal in 3 months. This week I’ve been keeping myself productive by logging what I do all day in 15 minute increments. At first, this was just an experiment to see where I’m wasting all of my time, but it has taken on an unexpected productivity-boosting effect. I guess I don’t want to look back on 8 hours worth of data only to see that I’ve wasted 4 hours of it playing Bejeweled online. Well, whatever works…

I’m thinking of selling my car. I barely ever use it anymore, plus apparently it is against the law to park your car anywhere for over 72 hours within the Seattle city limits (rarely enforced, except in my neighborhood). If anyone lives in the Seattle-metro area and is interested in a 2005 Toyota Corolla in good condition, please contact me. I’ve had this car for 4 years and it has literally never broken down on me or had any problems.

Anyway, I’m pumping out heaps of articles these days thanks to my productivity trick. I wrote 23 articles in just 3 days. This was enough to get website #3 up to 50 content articles and give me time to tweak the site and have it looking extra-sexy. Meanwhile my worker is cranking out more articles for websites #4 and #6. I’m well on my path to world domination.

I went through another dry spell this week. Whenever a dry spell hits, it usually starts to get to me after a few days. I’m so close to actually earning more than I spend each month, so each and every sale is very important to me. This week was pretty tough on me.

Clickbank Mystery: This morning I made a sale of $4.15 for a product that I have never promoted. I have never made an affiliate link for the product, so I have no clue how this happened? Any guesses?

Every now and again, I get hop clicks for products I promoted over a year ago in my direct-linking PPC days. I never really thought much of it, but this new development is just bizarre…

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Website Building Update – Week 38

May 21st, 2010 by Clayton

Well, as expected, my “hot streak” is over (for now). It was nice making $450 in one week, but I sort of knew I couldn’t keep it up without more traffic. I’ll eventually make $450 weeks the norm, but it will take some time.

This week was pretty cool, though. I sold this product that costs over $400 and I get a 50% commission on it. The person that bought it did a monthly installment plan, so I get about $50 a month for the next 3 months. Pretty sweet! This makes me want to promote that product more. And just think… I was starting to lose faith in non-clickbank affiliate programs

I also cleaned up some websites this week and made them a bit nicer-looking. Hopefully this will help conversions.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been trying to slowly add content to all of my sites. For some reason, this made me feel overwhelmed. So instead I’m going to focus on one site at a time. This seems to be a lesson that I have to learn over and over again: don’t spread yourself too thin.

Question: Has anyone that reads this blog ever sold a website? I really want to know how to do that. More importantly though, how do you determine how much a website is worth? Mark Ling says it would be realistic to sell an AB-type site for 18-48 months of earnings. What would make a website worth 18 months vs. 48 months of earnings? I’m not interested in selling anything just yet, but I might be a few months from now depending on how much my sites are worth…

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Website Building Update – Week 37

May 14th, 2010 by Clayton

I’ve been having some good days lately. Honestly, I can’t really explain the results I’ve been getting. I’m getting about the same traffic and about the same hop clicks. It’s probably mostly luck. After all about two weeks ago I went 5 days with no sales. I guess it just comes and goes. I hope it doesn’t go for a while though…

Anyway, I set up a few deadlines and a business plan yesterday with my girlfriend. It’s her goal to finish actually building her website by next weekend. And I want to get each of my sites up to about 50 pages of content (all marketed) by August 26 (the one year anniversary since I started making these sites).

Based on my conservative estimates, I think I should be able to hit $2,500 / month by August 26 pretty reasonably. Of course, I could do much better, but $2,500 is a very achievable goal. It won’t make me rich, but at least I should be able to stop losing money every month.

Then sometime in September or October, my girlfriend and I can take a trip to Thailand. We can stay for about two months and then return in time for the holidays. $2,500 should go a lot further in Thailand.

The only bad part of this plan is that I’ll be in Thailand during NaNoWriMo, which is a pity. I’d rather spend my time riding an elephant than writing 1,500 words a day. I guess I can always do NaNoWriMo some other time. Someday I’ll write that novel. I guess it will just be more interesting if I can get some elephant riding under my belt first.

Anyway, this week has been pretty good. I’ve almost reached one of my goals of having a sales spike on each day of my Clickbank report…

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Website Building Update – Week 36

May 7th, 2010 by Clayton

Looks like my luck has turned around this week. I’ve been making some solid back-to-back sales. I think this is mostly due to the fact that website #6 is starting to bring in some money now that it is out of the sandbox.

I still feel like I’m trying to balance a bunch of spinning plates between this and the census, but things are definitely getting better.

My PPC campaign looks like it’s paying off this time. I’ve only made two sales, but I’m only spending a few dollars per day, so it’s worth it.

Today, my SERP’s on all of my sites are mysteriously down. It’s too early to know why or if it’s anything to worry about. It might just be a hiccup with Market Samurai or a twitch in the Google algorithm. I hope it’s nothing, though.

I am also seriously considering moving to Thailand for a few months (probably this autumn when the monsoon season is over). It seems I can get a good apartment for about $100 – $300. Why be poor in America when you can be middle class in Thailand?

PS: If you’ve tried to e-mail me through the contact page, I might not have gotten it. Nothing personal, it’s just that I’ve noticed quite a few e-mails seem to go straight to my spam folder. Try again. I’m pretty busy these days, but I’ll eventually find your message.

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Website Building Update – Week 35

April 30th, 2010 by Clayton

So, I have no real self-control. Once I get an idea in my head, I’m going to end up doing it probably sooner rather than later. After seeing Keith’s results with PPC, I’ve decided to start a few small but cautious campaigns. I’m bidding on “product name review” type keywords and doing a Sean Morrissy type pre-sell and offering a bonus as an incentive to buy from me.

I figure by setting my budget pretty low, I can pay for a day’s worth of advertising with about half an hour of census work. When I look at the upside (Keith’s results), I figure I’d have to stupid not to at least try this.

No sales yet from PPC, though. I’m not spending much either. Only a few dollars total for a couple days of advertising.

Today is my birthday too. I am 28. My birthday feels pretty irrelevant though. All I want is to make enough money travel and do what I want, when I want to without having a desk job. And the only person that can give that to me is myself. Overall this year has been a painful year of struggling to make it online. I’ve had a lot of fun though and I feel like I really am starting to understand how to make it work. I think 28 will be a much more exciting year.

This week started off really badly. I went 5 days with no sales at all and only one $17 rebill. I haven’t had a stretch of bad luck like this in a while.

I’m still rolling forward though, pumping out more articles for low-competition keywords. My actual output has been lower this week, since I could only work about 2 or 3 hours per day (because of census training), but the girl I hired seems to be getting the hang of article spinning and is more than making up for any time I can’t actually work.

Hopefully, I will get more time next week to focus on link building and article writing.

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Website Building Update – Week 34

April 23rd, 2010 by Clayton

This week has been really busy for me. I’ve been writing articles like crazy (at least 3 per day). I’ve also hired someone to help out with article spinning and I’ve been spending lots of time making training videos to show her how to do things and managing technical problems. I’m really excited about this though. She seems like a really cool person.

I’m up to about 35 articles on each site. I’d like to get that up to 50 or so. Then what? I’m not really sure. Maybe I’ll sell some websites. Maybe I’ll just set-it-and-forget-it. Mark Ling says that a website is worth 12 – 48 months of earnings. Based on this, my sites are worth anywhere from $500 to $28,000. That’s a wide spread…

Plus, what’s to stop me from putting up an AdWords campaign, spending $1000 / day and “earning” $500? Could I just say my site earns $500 / day and ask $730,000 for it (48 months of “earnings”)?

I made a few bonuses this week too. I’m gearing up for a final shot a PPC advertising. I figure if I bid on product review keywords and give out a bad-ass bonus as an incentive to buy, then PPC should finally be worthwhile for me. If not, I’ll probably pull my hair out, screaming, and never try PPC again. I’m not going to do it for another month or so though, I’d like to increase my income a bit before I try PPC again.

I’m going to Portland this weekend to visit a friend before I start working for the census on Monday. I’m excited about taking this little vacation. I think I work too much and this will be a fun way to have one last hurrah before I go to work on Monday.