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| Commission Junction Affiliate Network |
Affiliate Links, for those who don't know, are links to a retailers website which contain a special identifying code or ID. If someone clicks on one of the links and then goes on to purchase goods or services from the retailer, the affiliate (me) receives a commission on the sale. Think of it as someone standing outside a shop telling passers by about a great deal to be had inside. For every person they convince to go inside the shop and buy something, they receive a percentage of that sale.
Choosing which affiliate links to add to this blog is the tricky part (I already have accounts set up with most of the large affiliate networks where the merchants and links are found: more on that shortly). Obviously, in an ideal world, I would want to choose the merchant that pays the highest commission and has a hugely popular product. In reality that doesn't often happen. Merchants with hugely popular products don't really need affiliates to send them sales leads. If this blog was about, for example, car insurance, I would choose some of the big insurance companies to affiliate myself with. Financial merchants often pay high commissions for targeted leads, so that would be great. The problem is that most people who visit this blog aren't going to be looking to buy car insurance, and so few (if any) will click on the adverts and then proceed to take out car insurance.
This blog does have something to do with finances and money, so there is perhaps the possibility that I can find a finance merchant that offers budgeting services or financial advice. Maybe I will experiment a bit, fill the four slots with completely different adverts and see which, if any, prove the most popular.
Information about becoming an affiliate of a retail website can sometimes be found on the website itself. In the past, many websites ran their own affiliate programs so you had to apply to each website individually. Nowadays affiliate networks, which contain links to hundreds or thousands of different merchants, do the hard work of assessing new affiliates, collecting statistics and calculating commissions. In most cases, you sign up to the affiliate network, give them details of how you will be promoting their merchants (on a website, in email newsletters, etc.) and then choose the merchants you want to work with. Often the merchant will have to accept or reject you from their program, depending on things like the content of your website or your proposed promotion methods. Some of the biggest affiliate networks are:
Webgains
Affiliate Window
TradeDoubler
Commission Junction
Affiliate Future
This is by no means an exhaustive list. If you want to know more, just Google "Affiliate Networks" and you will be drowned in both networks and information about them.
By this time tomorrow, I hope to have all four of my advertising slots filled with an affiliate advert. Any money they earn before the start of the experiment will not be counted.
Following on from my post about investigating the possibility of setting up a few niche blogs, I have been looking into keyword research. As I have mentioned before, I have a couple of websites and blogs already, so keyword research is something I have come across before. I am by no means an expert, so I have decided to go back to basics and try to find a definitive guide on the subject.
Doing a Google search for Keyword Research returns an impressive 61 million results, but as is usual with searches I think I will stick to page one. A couple of links jump out at me straight away: Seomoz and Wordtracker. Both of these sites are familiar to me and both are very well respected, so they have got to be a good place to start.
- Wordtracker
- Seomoz
Looks like I have a bit of reading to do...
Doing a Google search for Keyword Research returns an impressive 61 million results, but as is usual with searches I think I will stick to page one. A couple of links jump out at me straight away: Seomoz and Wordtracker. Both of these sites are familiar to me and both are very well respected, so they have got to be a good place to start.
- Wordtracker
- Seomoz
Looks like I have a bit of reading to do...
As time ticks down to the start of the Experiment (if you are reading this after the 1st of August 2011, it has already started...) I am frantically trying to get together a list of possible cash generating ideas so that I am ready to go on D-Day (or maybe E-Day?).
One of the first ideas that I had is to start a few niche blogs on various subjects and monetise them with affiliate links or Google Adsense (or both). This is, I think, a good idea for several reasons:
1. Niche blogs cost nothing to set up (if using blogger, etc).
2. Niche blogs are easy to maintain. I only have a few hours a week to spend on this remember...
3. Niche blogs, in theory, can earn money day after day, week after week, for the whole of the experiment.
4. Niche blogs can be sold fairly easily (flipped) to provide a lump sum into the pot.
Now I completely understand that not every blog, niche or otherwise, is guaranteed to make money. In fact the majority probably don't make more than a few Dollars a month. If I don't want to waste my time on blogs that offer no return, I need to make sure that I do everything possible to help them succeed (no, really?).
Niche
For those that don't know, niche blogs or websites are those that target a single, very specific, subject in the hope that they can pick up traffic that gets missed by other, more generic websites. So rather than having a blog about Handbags, a niche blog might target Blue Leather Handbags. There certainly won't be as many searches made for Blue Leather Handbags, but the chances are good that there will also be much less competition.
Ideally I would rather set up some self-hosted blogs rather than blogger hosted ones. I think www.bluewidgets.com looks far more professional than www.bluewidgets.blogspot.com, but hosting and domains cost money and at this point I only have £10. That isn't to say that blogger hosted blogs can't do very well (check out the list at BloggerBuster to see some hugely popular blogger blogs), and besides, it's all i've got to work with at the moment.
Subject Matter
My first problem is finding the subject matter for these niche blogs. Obviously I want to find something which is hugely popular, that gets a lot a of searches and only has minimal competition from other blogs and websites (the holy grail?). This is unlikely to happen unless I am a) very lucky or b) have a lot of time to research subjects. Neither of these things are true... As I see it, I have a couple of options:
A) I find something massively popular and try to pick up a small part of the monthly traffic for that subject.
B) I find something less popular (and therefore less competitive) and go for a bigger chunk of a smaller pie.
The problem I see with A is that going after highly competitive search terms is that, although getting high positions in the serps (search engine results pages) is possible, it would take more time and expertise than I have. So it looks like B is the route to go down...
The next thing I have to do? Keyword Research!
One of the first ideas that I had is to start a few niche blogs on various subjects and monetise them with affiliate links or Google Adsense (or both). This is, I think, a good idea for several reasons:
1. Niche blogs cost nothing to set up (if using blogger, etc).
2. Niche blogs are easy to maintain. I only have a few hours a week to spend on this remember...
3. Niche blogs, in theory, can earn money day after day, week after week, for the whole of the experiment.
4. Niche blogs can be sold fairly easily (flipped) to provide a lump sum into the pot.
Now I completely understand that not every blog, niche or otherwise, is guaranteed to make money. In fact the majority probably don't make more than a few Dollars a month. If I don't want to waste my time on blogs that offer no return, I need to make sure that I do everything possible to help them succeed (no, really?).
Niche
For those that don't know, niche blogs or websites are those that target a single, very specific, subject in the hope that they can pick up traffic that gets missed by other, more generic websites. So rather than having a blog about Handbags, a niche blog might target Blue Leather Handbags. There certainly won't be as many searches made for Blue Leather Handbags, but the chances are good that there will also be much less competition.
Ideally I would rather set up some self-hosted blogs rather than blogger hosted ones. I think www.bluewidgets.com looks far more professional than www.bluewidgets.blogspot.com, but hosting and domains cost money and at this point I only have £10. That isn't to say that blogger hosted blogs can't do very well (check out the list at BloggerBuster to see some hugely popular blogger blogs), and besides, it's all i've got to work with at the moment.
Subject Matter
My first problem is finding the subject matter for these niche blogs. Obviously I want to find something which is hugely popular, that gets a lot a of searches and only has minimal competition from other blogs and websites (the holy grail?). This is unlikely to happen unless I am a) very lucky or b) have a lot of time to research subjects. Neither of these things are true... As I see it, I have a couple of options:
A) I find something massively popular and try to pick up a small part of the monthly traffic for that subject.
B) I find something less popular (and therefore less competitive) and go for a bigger chunk of a smaller pie.
The problem I see with A is that going after highly competitive search terms is that, although getting high positions in the serps (search engine results pages) is possible, it would take more time and expertise than I have. So it looks like B is the route to go down...
The next thing I have to do? Keyword Research!
I have been thinking about doing this experiment on and off for more than five years, but the closer I get to starting it the more problems I start to see. The problem that is currently giving my brain a taxing is averages.
Let me explain. I have posted previously that I need to earn an average of £192.00 per week, every week, if I am to reach the £10k within the year. However, it is very unlikely that I will be earning that £192.00 in the first week, or the second or third or fourth. Indeed it is unlikely I will be able to earn that for a couple of months at the earliest.
So, I either need to be confident enough that I will be able to earn a much higher average per week in the last six to eight months to make up for the slow start, or I need to find a way to start earning more, sooner.
Several of my ideas for ways to contribute towards the £10k are long term, and may not start making any money until perhaps month six. The ideas I have which will hopefully result in quicker returns (buying and selling, online gambling, etc) also bring with them some element of risk. If I build my bankroll up to £100, buy something to sell, and then fail to sell it, the experiment comes to a premature end. If I am too timid, I may not leave myself enough time to catch up.
So you see my problem? Take things slowly and leave myself too much to do at the end, or go for it all guns blazing and risk putting myself out of the game early. I guess if things were too easy, there would be little point to the experiment and even less point blogging about it.
Let me explain. I have posted previously that I need to earn an average of £192.00 per week, every week, if I am to reach the £10k within the year. However, it is very unlikely that I will be earning that £192.00 in the first week, or the second or third or fourth. Indeed it is unlikely I will be able to earn that for a couple of months at the earliest.
So, I either need to be confident enough that I will be able to earn a much higher average per week in the last six to eight months to make up for the slow start, or I need to find a way to start earning more, sooner.
Several of my ideas for ways to contribute towards the £10k are long term, and may not start making any money until perhaps month six. The ideas I have which will hopefully result in quicker returns (buying and selling, online gambling, etc) also bring with them some element of risk. If I build my bankroll up to £100, buy something to sell, and then fail to sell it, the experiment comes to a premature end. If I am too timid, I may not leave myself enough time to catch up.
So you see my problem? Take things slowly and leave myself too much to do at the end, or go for it all guns blazing and risk putting myself out of the game early. I guess if things were too easy, there would be little point to the experiment and even less point blogging about it.
Assuming I only bought and sold things on the Internet and, starting with £10, I doubled my money every week, I would reach my £10k target in just 10 weeks.
£10, £20, £40, £80, £160, £320, £640, £1280, £2560, £5120, £10240
I need to earn an average of £27.39 every single day of the 365 to reach the £10k in time. That works out to just under £192.00 each week or £19.20 for each of the ten hours I intend to spend on the experiment each week.
I could reach the £10k in a year using only advertising revenue if I can rent each of the four ad spaces on this site for £208 a month (any takers?)
£10, £20, £40, £80, £160, £320, £640, £1280, £2560, £5120, £10240
I need to earn an average of £27.39 every single day of the 365 to reach the £10k in time. That works out to just under £192.00 each week or £19.20 for each of the ten hours I intend to spend on the experiment each week.
I could reach the £10k in a year using only advertising revenue if I can rent each of the four ad spaces on this site for £208 a month (any takers?)
As the experiment progresses I hope to rent out the advertising space on the right of this post to anyone who is willing to pay for it. I am not expecting a huge rush of willing advertisers to start with, so initially the spaces will be filled with affiliate adverts. I will explain affiliate advertising (for those who don't know what it is) and my thoughts and experiences of it when the experiment starts properly.
On the offchance that someone wants to get in early and reserve a ad slot, you can email me for details (have a look at the About Me page).
On the offchance that someone wants to get in early and reserve a ad slot, you can email me for details (have a look at the About Me page).
Well, not strictly rules, more like guidelines for myself. All experiments need guidelines to follow and this one is no different. The idea is to earn my ten grand, in my spare time, using the Internet. But what exactly does that mean?
Rule 1: The Internet must be involved somewhere in each money making process.
So it is ok for me to buy some vintage jeans at a car boot sale and sell them on ebay, but not ok for me to buy some vintage jeans at a car boot sale and sell them to a friend. I can't include anything I earn doing freelance for my old publishing contacts (even if the freelance is for a website). If I win a bid to do some freelance on elance.com however (for example), I can include those earnings.
It doesn't always have to be about buying and selling. The idea is to find ways of making money on the Internet, so that could include being paid to complete surveys, playing poker online or flipping websites.
Rule 2: All of the steps to the £10k must be possible for anyone to repeat.
This should be fairly easy to follow as I don't have any very specialised skills I will be using to make the money. Nothing I do will require the average person years of practice and study to emulate, but most things will require at least some investment of time and effort. I won't be building hugely complicated Flash-based websites or writing clever iPhone apps to sell. I don't currently know how to do these things and I don't have time to learn.
Rule 3: I will not spend any money earnt during the experiment, on anything not to do with the experiment.
This could be a tricky one. If all goes well I could have several thousand pounds sitting in a bank account in six months time and the temptation to dip into it for a new laptop or to pay the car insurance will be tough to resist. I need to try to remember that any money I earn will help me earn more (hopefully...), it will be my fund for buying things to sell, it will be my bankroll for online gambling.
Rule 4: The experiment must be done in my spare time.
My idea of the amount of spare time I have each week and my wife's idea of the amount of spare time I have each week differ greatly. However, I have come up with the figure of ten hours per week and I will do my best not to spend more time than this on the experiment. If I start spending 30 hours a week doing this, I might just as well work 30 hours overtime at my day job. The result would be essentially the same (although I might die of boredom if I did work for 30 extra hours at my current job). The idea is to find ways to make extra money that can be repeated year after year, not to devote my entire life to this to the exclusion of my family.
Rule 1: The Internet must be involved somewhere in each money making process.
So it is ok for me to buy some vintage jeans at a car boot sale and sell them on ebay, but not ok for me to buy some vintage jeans at a car boot sale and sell them to a friend. I can't include anything I earn doing freelance for my old publishing contacts (even if the freelance is for a website). If I win a bid to do some freelance on elance.com however (for example), I can include those earnings.
It doesn't always have to be about buying and selling. The idea is to find ways of making money on the Internet, so that could include being paid to complete surveys, playing poker online or flipping websites.
Rule 2: All of the steps to the £10k must be possible for anyone to repeat.
This should be fairly easy to follow as I don't have any very specialised skills I will be using to make the money. Nothing I do will require the average person years of practice and study to emulate, but most things will require at least some investment of time and effort. I won't be building hugely complicated Flash-based websites or writing clever iPhone apps to sell. I don't currently know how to do these things and I don't have time to learn.
Rule 3: I will not spend any money earnt during the experiment, on anything not to do with the experiment.
This could be a tricky one. If all goes well I could have several thousand pounds sitting in a bank account in six months time and the temptation to dip into it for a new laptop or to pay the car insurance will be tough to resist. I need to try to remember that any money I earn will help me earn more (hopefully...), it will be my fund for buying things to sell, it will be my bankroll for online gambling.
Rule 4: The experiment must be done in my spare time.
My idea of the amount of spare time I have each week and my wife's idea of the amount of spare time I have each week differ greatly. However, I have come up with the figure of ten hours per week and I will do my best not to spend more time than this on the experiment. If I start spending 30 hours a week doing this, I might just as well work 30 hours overtime at my day job. The result would be essentially the same (although I might die of boredom if I did work for 30 extra hours at my current job). The idea is to find ways to make extra money that can be repeated year after year, not to devote my entire life to this to the exclusion of my family.
I first thought up the £10k experiment about 5 years ago whilst working as a writer and designer for a small publishing company. But back then it was more of a random stray thought than an idea for a personal experiment and probably more along the lines of "Could I turn £10.00 into £1000.00, in less than 12 months, using only the Internet?"
Let me explain that seemingly random but also fairly succinct thought a little more. At the time I was looking at ways to turn our back-catalogue of printed text into cash-generating online content (via affiliate advertising, google adwords, etc) to give the company a secondary income stream. I spent several weeks researching the above subjects (and many more besides) and had some small success at turning that content into cash. In the end however, that side of the business was abandoned for more traditional publishing methods and, although I found the whole thing enthralling, I thought little more about it for some time.
Fast-forward 5 years and several changes of circumstance and I find myself here: Self Employed, working from my home office, with a bit more spare time on my hands and about to put a much grander "experiment" into action using what I learnt then, what I have learned since and by trial and error.
Ok, but why? And why the blog? (you might be asking...)
The main, overiding reason for the £10k experiment always was, and still is, the £10k. If you earn £200k a year, another 5% isn't going to make much difference. But to me and my family, it would make a huge difference to be able to add that much money to our income without having to work a second job. Originally the figure was £1000 and even that amount would be useful, but it is not going to make that much difference to my life and obviously didn't inspire me much or I would have done it 5 years ago. I settled on £10k (after some thought) because it is an achievable figure, whilst also being much more than I currently earn from the Internet (more on that later...)
The second reason for this experiment is to give myself a challenge, whilst doing something which interests me. And this fits both of those criteria. There are many experienced Internet marketeers and super affiliates who could generate that amount in a month without breaking a sweat, but I am neither of those things. I have some knowledge of building websites, blogging, being an affiliate and selling on ebay amongst other things, but I am by no means an expert and will be learning as I go. If people reading this blog find it interesting and useful, if they decide to try to emulate what I do, then great.
The idea to start a blog about my experiment came when I was brainstorming (can it be called brainstorming when I was the only person in the room?) ways to get started along my path to £10k. There are currently millions of blogs online as I write this, on every conceivable subject and of wildly differing quality. A huge percentage were whims and probably lay dormant with only a few posts (I have added to that figure over the years, I admit). Yet there are others which are hugely successful and generate large sums of money for their owners/creators every year. Now I certainly don't expect to make the $200k+ that the top 1% of blogs are believed to generate, but I do hope that this blog will contribute at least something to the target figure, be that from selling advertising, affiliate links or whatever. The blog also allows people to follow what I am doing, learn from my mistakes and successes and maybe even suggest ways I can try to reach that £10k. Finally, the blog allows me to keep track of what I am doing, it provides a searchable database of ideas and thoughts and it is simply a lot more fun than making notes in a notepad...
Getting Started
The plan is to officially start the experiment on the 31st of February, 2013 and from that date I will give myself exactly 365 days to try to earn the £10k. During those 365 days I will post at least once a day, either with ideas of what to try next, details of what I am currently trying or to shout about my latest massive profits (I hope...) Aside from those posts, I will also post a running total at the end of each week to show how well or badly I am doing. If things are going to plan, I should be showing an increase of at least £193.00 each week (52 x £193 = £10,036). Up until that time I will be getting myself prepared by doing things like opening various accounts (ebay, paypal account and a separate bank account) and getting this blog set up properly.
Fast-forward 5 years and several changes of circumstance and I find myself here: Self Employed, working from my home office, with a bit more spare time on my hands and about to put a much grander "experiment" into action using what I learnt then, what I have learned since and by trial and error.
Ok, but why? And why the blog? (you might be asking...)
The main, overiding reason for the £10k experiment always was, and still is, the £10k. If you earn £200k a year, another 5% isn't going to make much difference. But to me and my family, it would make a huge difference to be able to add that much money to our income without having to work a second job. Originally the figure was £1000 and even that amount would be useful, but it is not going to make that much difference to my life and obviously didn't inspire me much or I would have done it 5 years ago. I settled on £10k (after some thought) because it is an achievable figure, whilst also being much more than I currently earn from the Internet (more on that later...)
The second reason for this experiment is to give myself a challenge, whilst doing something which interests me. And this fits both of those criteria. There are many experienced Internet marketeers and super affiliates who could generate that amount in a month without breaking a sweat, but I am neither of those things. I have some knowledge of building websites, blogging, being an affiliate and selling on ebay amongst other things, but I am by no means an expert and will be learning as I go. If people reading this blog find it interesting and useful, if they decide to try to emulate what I do, then great.
The idea to start a blog about my experiment came when I was brainstorming (can it be called brainstorming when I was the only person in the room?) ways to get started along my path to £10k. There are currently millions of blogs online as I write this, on every conceivable subject and of wildly differing quality. A huge percentage were whims and probably lay dormant with only a few posts (I have added to that figure over the years, I admit). Yet there are others which are hugely successful and generate large sums of money for their owners/creators every year. Now I certainly don't expect to make the $200k+ that the top 1% of blogs are believed to generate, but I do hope that this blog will contribute at least something to the target figure, be that from selling advertising, affiliate links or whatever. The blog also allows people to follow what I am doing, learn from my mistakes and successes and maybe even suggest ways I can try to reach that £10k. Finally, the blog allows me to keep track of what I am doing, it provides a searchable database of ideas and thoughts and it is simply a lot more fun than making notes in a notepad...
Getting Started
The plan is to officially start the experiment on the 31st of February, 2013 and from that date I will give myself exactly 365 days to try to earn the £10k. During those 365 days I will post at least once a day, either with ideas of what to try next, details of what I am currently trying or to shout about my latest massive profits (I hope...) Aside from those posts, I will also post a running total at the end of each week to show how well or badly I am doing. If things are going to plan, I should be showing an increase of at least £193.00 each week (52 x £193 = £10,036). Up until that time I will be getting myself prepared by doing things like opening various accounts (ebay, paypal account and a separate bank account) and getting this blog set up properly.
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