About PPC, I guess Perry Marshall is the best in that area? Recently he just hold a seminar that only invite people who spend thousands of dollars/month in their PPC campaign in Maui (if I recall, the cost is also a few thousands dollar). But then again, he focuses on helping small business that create products, so I don’t know whether the techniques can be applied to affiliate business as well.

How are your larger sites doing compared to your smaller ones? I’m in the process of expanding my first 5 sites up to 50-60 pages each. I hope doubling their size will double everything else (especially earnings), especially since I think I’ve got better keywords this time (no more of that “lose weight fast” stuff).

@Javier, Paralysis Analysis is something that can hold a lot of people back, I agree. I think the best way to get over it is to find a reason why you must succeed.

For me, it’s because I’m virtually unemployable (thanks a lot, masters degree) and if I don’t make this work I’ll end up flipping burgers at McDonald’s. Plus, it really motivates me to get my girlfriend to quit her job and to travel all over the world sending postcards to people back home to make them jealous :)

Hope your sales pick up soon, buddy!

@Stefan, Website #5 has been on hold since December. It’s in the tattoo niche and I just don’t have the resources to build it the way I want to right now. Basically, I’d like to get (buy) a bunch of images of cool tattoos and make a gallery-style site. It’s on hold until I can get the money to buy a butt-load of photos.

I’m thinking of selling it though to someone that maybe has a bit more enthusiasm than me…

One of my other sites was sandboxed a while ago. Basically, it was fairly new and I was so excited that I built too many links too fast and all of my SERP’s dropped like a rock overnight. I was on the first or second page of Google, then BAM! down to page ten or lower. It only lasted about a month, though.

This is different than the “new site bump” though. I like to buy my domains months before I actually start building a site. I’ll put up one or two articles and just let the site age while I work on other things. I don’t like all the drama of the “new site bump,” so I try to start the clock early and let the site get some age before I truly build it out.

I don’t know if Mark still sells it or maybe you could ask him if he’s willing to sell it to you as a stand alone product.

Sales have been not as good this month but like Clayton says, dry patches come and go. I think one of the keys is volume – the number of products you’re advertising – because some will only sell once a month so you need potentially a hundred at least to do really well. Just bid on product names.

Mark has tried to keep the KW research simple in the beginning, because he knows it is the hurdle that stops 75% of people from ever moving forward. He tried to take out all of the trouble of analysis that paralyzes most people.

I do like his new method a little better, but I agree, it could be a little more detailed. Personally, I target a lot of keywords that sometimes only get 500 searches monthly. Of course some of my sites have over 100 articles on them now, so I still get more traffic than a 30 page site with 1000 search keywords. I have found that the lower search terms are more targeted to buyers, so they convert better, and there is less competition, so they are easy to rank for. I have some that i landed at the top of google within 2 weeks, and only have about 100 backlinks. This makes adding new content to your site more regularly a lot easier. Of course, I am not all about “set it and forget it.” I keep building and adding new content regularly. I try to add at least one article every 2 weeks to each one of my sites. then, spend 2 weeks building backlinks to the new articles.

Anyway, good luck, and keep up the great work. Don’t fret about ppc. I have done a little, and did make some money using it, but I make more money off of SEO and social media marketing than from the paid traffic.
PPC is a good way to monetize a site quickly, but it is not for everyone.