Website Building Update – Week 44
Well, June is over and that means I need to do another monthly update. In June I made $1338.82. When I break it down to each website’s performance it looks like this:
Website #1 – $204.86 ($86.58 from PPC)
Website #2 – $94.04
Website #3 – $148.44
Website #4 – $665.40
Website #5 – $0 (on hold)
Website #6 – $205.14
Website #7 – $0
Other Shenanigans – $20.94
My income was just a little lower than last month. But I’m not complaining. Most of it was completely passive. All the work I’m doing these days hasn’t kicked in yet, so I’m really excited to see the results next month!
It seems like all I can do is just barely stay ahead of my worker. Between proof-reading spun articles, making web 2.0 sites, and submitting to a handful of directories, I’m spread pretty thin. This is just growing pains though, and it should only last until I can finish my mad dash to my August 26th deadline or until I can find some sort of clever way to download all my scattered thoughts to my worker.
I am currently weighing outsourcing all of my link building efforts. Has anyone ever used Offshore Ally or any other backlinking service? I probably won’t get around to this for a few months, but I want to start shopping around.
Also, is anyone out there considering getting AffiloJetpack? I’m putting together a bonus package and I’m wondering if there’s anything you guys would like to see to sweeten the deal? Currently, I’m thinking I could do some keyword research and header design for you. What do you think?
July 2nd, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Hey Clayton,
A grand a month, net, in passive income, pretty cool! Nice work, it’s been great following your progress. I’ve been experimenting with oDesk to outsource all of my link building efforts. I have a full time job and it just doesn’t get done otherwise.
If you haven’t used oDesk before, you get screenshots of your worker’s computer every ten minutes, and there is a rating system in place so hopefully you’re hiring quality talent.
I picked 5 pages/keywords for them to work on, I’ll let you know in a month or so how my rankings are going.
July 2nd, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Considering that June is typically a slow month for online sales, your results are very good! I think things will go better and better soon
I’m also thinking of hiring backlinking force, so will investigate this question soon.
Offshore Ally – just looked into this, some packages are quite expensive, some are interesting, like full-time link-builder. However, I think for 300$/month we can hire dedicated VA with good link building skills. At least I have told to some guyes who work with such VAs.
July 2nd, 2010 at 2:11 pm
@Devin, Thanks for the tip. I never really took a good look at oDesk, but I’m nearing the end of my rope here, so I need to find a way to get things running smoother. Looking forward to your update on rankings.
@Anton, This is my first full year in IM, so I didn’t know June was typically a slow month. That’s kind of nice to know that things SHOULD only go up from here. Yeah, Offshore Ally is kind of pricey, but if they already know what they’re doing and I don’t have to explain how to build links to them, it might actually be worth it. I’m still shopping around, but I know Sean Morrissy recommended Offshore Ally.
July 2nd, 2010 at 2:59 pm
@Clayton, nice work.
Am surprised you want to outsource something you can do using a software like Senuke. I use Senuke and it does wonders!
didn’t know june is a slow month…thot it was only me experiencing a “dip” in sales
Dennis’s last blog ..Internet Marketing – Week 18 & 19
July 2nd, 2010 at 3:08 pm
Clayton,
Great job this month with your earnings stats!
…just like your earnings, the work you put in comes in later down the road usually when you least expect it.
July 2nd, 2010 at 3:15 pm
@Dennis, Hmmm… Okay. Now I need to think over SENuke too. Yeah, I think February through June tend to be slow months after hearing from a few “veterans” in the biz.
@Yolanda, Yeah, that’s what really keeps me motivated these days. I can’t wait till I finally earn more than I spend and can afford to do “normal” things like buy clothes, eat out once in awhile, etc.
July 3rd, 2010 at 5:28 pm
Congratulations Clayton on your second month over the thousand mark! It’s good to see you are having some consistent success with your earnings. I can certainly relate with your desire to be able to buy/do “normal” things with your earnings – right now, pretty much everything I’m earning is going right back into the business, but I know that by making sacrifices now things will be much better in the near future. Hopefully things will really pick up as well starting next month. I expect you’ll see some nice improvements come the end of July!
July 4th, 2010 at 4:47 am
Clayton, congrats on your earnings man, you’re a real inspiration!
Do you mind sharing with us how many top 10 (or even better top 3) rankings you have? Concrete numbers would really help me understand what my targets are and where I am in this whole aff marketing puzzle.
Thanks in advance!
July 4th, 2010 at 10:08 am
Hey Clayton,
I’m starting on my 2nd niche soon and want to find out more from you how and where you find a good overseas staff. What are the tasks you outsource and how much you pay the person to perform the tasks??
Writing articles seems to be getting abit boring for me so I’m thinking of finding someone overseas to do the task for me at a good price as my local friend seems to be getting tired rewriting 100 over articles for me for the first niche.
Cheers
Javier
July 4th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Hey Clayton,
You are right about the struggle with outsourcing and the need to ‘get your head’ in order to get the best bang for your buck.
Hope you don’t mind, but we are at nearly the same stage as you and are learning from your outsourcing experience as well as trying our own ways too….at the mo we are starting to use James bookmarking packages and an article submission service through a private article network….
Hey, what about an article spinning package for the 20 articles that are provided with AJ? Kinda kills two birds with one stone by keeping your worker employed and giving you a really practical edge?
July 5th, 2010 at 8:09 pm
@Michelle, Yeah, I hear ya. Times are tight over here. Fortunately, they seem to be slowly getting better. Any day now I’ll “break through” and afford some normal every day things for myself.
@John, I think I only have maybe 3 or 4 keywords in the top 3 results. Maybe 20 or 30 in the top 10. Each of my sites gets about 2000 – 3000 visitors per month with an average CTR on my affiliate links of about 20%. Right now I’m getting about one sale for every 50 hops. I hope this helps.
@Javier, Hey, I used the website OnlineJobs.ph. It’s a sort of classified site for Filipino workers. They charge a monthly subscription fee, but you should be able to find a writer there within a week or two and then you can cancel your subscription. You’ll probably end up paying them about 10,000 PHP or so per month, which is about the same as $225 USD.
Make sure you get a writing sample from them. The number 1 thing you want in a writer is English fluency.
@Rach, Hmm… Interesting idea with the spinning for the AJ launch. I’ll have to turn that one over in my head.
What do you think of James’ social bookmarking service? I’m at the stage where I’m starting to explore other means of traffic besides SEO. Are you getting good results with it?
July 5th, 2010 at 9:31 pm
Hi Clayton,
Normally, when you employed the Filipinos full-time, how many articles in total do you get your employee to write and rewrite in a month?? How you plan their work schedule?
Cheers
Javier
July 6th, 2010 at 11:13 am
@Javier, My writer does about 3 articles per day. I’ve heard that other writers can be a lot faster, but her English is REALLY good. And she can write in a conversational style which is good for the niches I’m working in.
I’ve had a lot of really bad jobs in my life, so part of me wants to be “the best boss in the world.” For the most part I don’t really care when she gets the work done, just as long as she gets it done. Basically, I’ve trained her how to write good articles, so all I need to do is send her a list of keywords and let her go.
Good luck with your hiring!
July 6th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
Hey Clayton,
Probably too soon to tell about James’ backlinks – it has only been a couple of weeks and this SEO thing take ‘for-ages’ (as my daughter would say)!
See ya
July 7th, 2010 at 6:15 pm
@Rach, Yeah, you’re telling me! My first website is about 10 months old and the home page keyword FINALLY broke onto the first page of Google. This is not a business for the impatient.
July 7th, 2010 at 9:35 pm
Hey Clayton,
I have gone through the website you introduce. Just want to check how do you pay your outsource writer and tell her what to exactly what you want her to do?
Does your writer has a good friend to introduce so I do not need to go through the hassal of looking for a good writer like yours?
Cheers
Javier
July 9th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
@Javier, She doesn’t seem to have any friends that need a writing job, I’m afraid.
Anyway, you can pay your writer via PayPal. I just basically send her an e-mail explaining the psychology of the niche (their unique pain and pleasure points-ie “weight loss” is “being embarrassed about how you look” and “feeling attractive and healthy”). Then I give her a list of keywords and let her do any research that she needs to do to write a good article for the keywords. You can also use Jing, which is a free video software to record yourself doing something. One of the best ways people learn is to see someone else do something. Just record a video of your writing an article and your writer should get a good idea of what you want them to do.
I hope this helps.
July 23rd, 2010 at 6:14 am
Hi Clayton,
Thanks for considering us. I understand we come up as bit pricey but then I believe a part of it is due to quality we offer. Our guys are well trained over what they do and we have a class infrastructure with backup in power, bandwidth and human resources. You don’t have to worry about training or attrition when working with us. I am sure you won’t like to end up with a guy who runs away after 2 months of training – that is just one of the case we cover!
Plus when you work with us, you don’t get a data entry guy, rather you get the benefit of experience of a company that has been built upon Internet marketing – Offshore Ally was born out of our need to expand our clickbank business and we are more than eager to help our clients repeat the same success!
I will love to work with you and I have also sent you an email regarding it. Lets talk over it!
For all other guys out here, please feel free to contact me for your queries or requirements. I am sure we can work out something that is mutually beneficial and in budget
- Yours Offshore Ally!