Well, we're all welcome to our opinions, of course. Yes, I'm sure of what I said. Of course, there are huge numbers of keywords for which I can't outrank EZA too, but I choose to use the ones for which I can. That way I can develop authority sites which produce ongoing income without needing everlasting promotion. One of the great attractions of affiliate marketing, for me, is the complete freedom to choose what you want to promote and how you want to promote it. Outranking EZA can be surprisingly easy. Unless you give your work to EZA before publishing it yourself, of course: that makes it quite impossible. I've never used AdSense on any site or blog I own, nor wanted to, nor do I intend to, so it would be a strange thing for me to be "envious" about, wouldn't it?
@alexa_s : I have seen articles in EZA getting 1000 views per month and there are strategies which can get your CTR to around 50%. I have had few articles getting that. I believe getting similar no.s atleast with the views on your own site is difficult. Also some niches are not that competitive where going your site route is correct but even then if you can get 50% CTR in EZA, adsense goes out of the picture, specially in cases where EZA optimization is much easier. Whats your take on this ? Usually for keywords which have EZA on first page are less competitive keyword so you always prefer the go site route ?
The more experience I get, the less I believe in clickthrough rates, to be honest. In 2009, after some change I made in my articles, my clickthrough rate for October/November was quite a lot lower than it had been for August/September, but I made a lot more sales. I quite like lower CTR's with high viewing figures. For me, that can be a sign that my article's filtering out the "buyers" from the "readers". I think it's tempting for people to assume that a higher CTR will necessarily produce more sales, but my own fexperience proves that, for me, not only doesn't it have to be true, but even the opposite can be true. I'd rather have a 20% CTR and 4 sales than a 40% CTR and 2 sales. I've done that mostly by using much longer articles. I'm losing the people who weren't going to buy anyway, but arousing more interest in some of the "undecideds" and making more sales. It has the additional benefit of getting my work more widely re-published from article directories, because webmasters wanting content for their own sites are often thinking of filling space, and they can prefer a 900-word article to a 300-word one, and it's less work for them to find than three 300-word ones, to fill the same space. So other people are effectively doing some of my off-page SEO and backlinking for me and putting my links in front of targeted traffic. I've chosen my niches and products partly to suit the purpose of gradually building my own authority sites so that I don't have to be indefinitely dependent on third party services like EZA. It's a longer-term view, since it's really essential for me to be able to make a living this way and never have to get a "proper job". So I always lean toward building up my own properties rather than anyone else's. I feel sure it's the right long-term solution, if you want a real business and not just a hobby.
I agree with this. However I have found that setting up a new site then filling it with content takes a long time then I go on back linking sprees trying to rank for certain keywords and then, exhausted, I find I am ranked on the first page of google but not very high and not getting a huge amount of traffic. I know all the theory about SEO on page and off page but just what does it take to make a site rank and be popular even for not terribly competitive keywords?
focus, self-belief, longevity - more soft skills than tech skills if you ask me and ofcourse experience as an acquired tech skill.