Website Building Update – Week 46
This week has been a little off. I took a short camping trip last weekend to Mt. Rainier with my girlfriend and went hiking through the forest. My girlfriend took some vacation time this week too so I’ve been working part-time on IM to spend more time with her. Plus I got this stupid rash on my right hand from camping (I think) and it makes typing more difficult…
Anyway, I’ve shifted focus to website #4 for link building. This really excites me since this is one of my “big earners.”
I sent James Pruitt my keywords and URL for him to give me my cool prize for his blogging contest. I’m eager to see the results from his social bookmarking. I want to branch out from SEO to get traffic from other means. Heck, this blog is actually a big experiment in non-SEO traffic! I do absolutely zero SEO work on this blog and I get about 1500 visitors / month just from forum posting and blog commenting. Not too shabby.
I’m still ridiculously stressed at the moment trying to keep up with my worker. I wish there was some kind of easy push-button way to build backlinks without so much work. I just want to send someone a couple hundred bucks and say “here build links to every one of the pages on my site,” without having to go into some lengthy, in-depth discussion of exactly what I want them to do. I guess I can just keep dreaming 
But things are pretty consistent. If I make a sale tomorrow and Sunday, then I’ll finally put a sale on every day of my Clickbank report. I’ve got my fingers crossed…
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July 16th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Hey Clayton. thanks for the mention.
Blog commenting and forum posting are both great forms of traffic. Maybe if you did a few guest posts, maybe even one a month on a high traffic blog, you could get even more than that.
Hope your hand gets better. did yo stick it in poison ivey? been there,and it isn’t fun.
Anyway, should have your articles and bookmarks done by the end of the weekend.
I know what you mean about lack of seo. When i started IMRelations, I didn’t build links or anything, just posted in my sig file in the forums, and it was my first site making money. that’s when I kind of started taking it a bit more seriously and started trying to actually optimize it and build a few links. funny thing is, most of my sales still come from other blogs, or the forums.
July 16th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
@James, No problem. I’d love to get more into guest posting, but I’ve got my hands tied right now with my convoluted article marketing strategy… Leave it to someone like me to make things more complicated than they need to be LOL.
Yeah, I don’t know about my hand. I think I might have gotten bitten by a spider while I was loading firewood into my car. How lame is that? I get a rash, but I don’t even get it doing something cool like trudging through poison ivy…
Thanks for the update on the articles. My hand may be messed up this week, but at least I got someone to write articles for me while it heals LOL!
July 18th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
That sucks. i understand the article marketing problems. That is the first thing I started outsourcing. one reason I love having my own services too. Often instead of cash I can exchange some articles for submissions. This way, i get mass submissions for SEO,and I can focus on doing a few high quality Social sites and guest blogs.
You got to be careful with spider bites. What starts as a simple rash can quickly change if it was a brown recluse or something similar. I would get it checked if you can.
July 18th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
@James, I don’t even know if it was a spider bite… It’s all one big mystery to me. I’m just trying to think of logical things that might have caused it and a spider bite is the best I can come up with. It’s getting better though (thankfully).
I’m not too keen on doctors these days. I went to the emergency room in January for a sharp stabbing pain in my eye. The doctor saw me for 5 minutes and essentially told me to “buck up” and “walk it off” and then sent me a bill for $1000. Since I only make about $1000 / month in profit and don’t have any health insurance, that kind of sucked.
Anyway, enough about my sad and depressing life… Time to get back to work!
July 19th, 2010 at 7:31 am
Hi folks,
I have also been feeling frustrated with the whole spinning/submitting content backlinking strategy. When I get back from the Philippines in December im thinking of going back to work full time for a while. It will mean that I will be able to invest in outsourcing to writers/spinners and top up the savings too. My content is good quality but im a bit of a perfectionist so it takes me ages to write and spin articles. Better to leave it to the experts I reckon.
Forum/blog commenting/bookmarking works well but I also like to get lots of deep dofollow links for the search engines as well.
Its all about patience and consistent promotion over time.
July 19th, 2010 at 11:44 am
@Rodderz, Yeah, outsourcing can help a lot, but it does take some time to get your workers trained.
PS: How’s the Philippines?
July 19th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
Spinning / article marketing doesn’t work that well IMO. What I try and do is simple to say and difficult to pull off:
Write content that people want to link to.
How can you do this?
1. Something that is truly breaking news
2. Something that is very unique
3. Something that offers a lot of value
Without getting into complete specifics, I’ve used this strategy to get links from some of the top blogs in the world and old media style websites.
And no – these links weren’t for a blog in the business / make money online niche either.
July 20th, 2010 at 10:56 am
@Chris, Thanks for the tip. So you just let people link to you naturally for the most part? You’re right that is very difficult. I’ve written content for some of my niche sites that I personally thought was very unique and valuable, yet I still don’t get many organic links. I guess I need to promote my sites more though social media to spread the word, huh?
July 21st, 2010 at 9:41 pm
Hi Clayton,
I have been following your journey for a while. I am also an Affilorama member.
You mentioned that you get 1500 visitors/month just from forum posting and blog commenting. Have you thought about starting to build a list?
You could start without spend much time by just offering blog updates to begin with. Later you could add a “bribe” like a detailed report of your journey that people wouldn’t find in your blog posts or how you plan your SEO strategy, etc.
Just an idea.
Cheers,
Antonio
ps.: thanks for sharing your journey with us it is really inspiring.
July 21st, 2010 at 11:19 pm
@Antonio, Maybe. I’m considering the future of this blog as I start to near 52 weeks. I think I’m going to start diversifying it to be about more than strictly IM. I plan on traveling a lot and I think this could be a good way for me to start working my way into a travel and maybe personal development sphere. I’m not really 100% sure yet. It’s all up in the air. Honestly, monetizing this blog isn’t my biggest priority right now. I set it up to primarily meet other people and keep myself from becoming too socially isolated as I slaved away on websites.
July 23rd, 2010 at 1:05 am
Hey Clayton,
Just as a suggestion. Don’t stop your updates keep it monthly instead. They are really inspiring.
If talking about travel and personal development is something that you enjoying doing I would say go for it. The monetizing bit you can add as you go.
As you mentioned on the AffiloJetpack review that you haven’t qualified for a free review copy because you don’t have a list. I think would be a good idea to start one. When Mark Ling releases his next new product you will have enough people on your list to get a review copy.
I think you mentioned before that you are using aweber to other websites so you could just add a sign up box here which will send updates whenever you post something new. I think aweber has this feature.
Anyway it was just an idea.
Talk soon.
Cheers,
Antonio
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:04 am
@Antonio, Yeah, I actually plan on shifting down to monthly updates. I probably have like 20 “daft” posts saved here that are on topics and ideas I’d like to cover in the future. LOL! I guess there are just too many ideas to keep up with these days.
I’m actually getting so excited about where I want to take this blog in the future that I’m having trouble concentrating on what I need to do…
July 23rd, 2010 at 4:48 pm
Hi Clayton,
I am looking forward to see the new posts.
All the best mate!
Cheers,
Antonio
August 13th, 2010 at 5:08 am
I’ve written a few articles (for Ezine and Articledashboard etc), but have never gone big with it either.
I do most of my backlinking via web 2.0 properties like Squidoo and Hubpages.
It’s interesting how many different ways there are to backlink a site, isn’t it? I too am thinking of branching out, just so I am not reliant on any one method.