I've been an affiliate marketer for two years, promoting mainly Clickbank products. I have numerous mini websites and have pomoted them mainly with Adwords. Very simple, very fast results. My husband and I do all of our own writing. Our landing pages are converting pretty well. We both have full-time jobs and do affiliate marketing in the a.m., p.m., and weekends. While we're not getting rich, up to this point it has provided a nice little supplement -- $800 to $1,000 a month net. The problem is that I committed the ultimate sin and had all of my eggs in one basket -- depended heavily on Adwords. With the recent crackdown, one of our sites got slapped which caused a significant decrease in sales. The rest of our sites are still showing good quality scores but from everything I'm reading, I'm expecting any day to wake up and find that our quality scores have tanked and we're completely out of business. We've tried Yahoo and Bing but the traffic is miniscule compared to Adwords -- and the cost is twice as much. For that reason, I'm trying to build something that's a little more sustainable and have chosen a Wordpress blog platform. I'm trying to generate traffic and build backlinks using mainly article directories at this point. I'm posting two to three times a week, as well as building backlinks to each post. I am a very private person and I absolutely HATE videos -- don't have the patience to listen to them and definitely don't want my face on one. I'm very picky about the products I promote and I have a genuine concern about people when it comes to recommending a product to someone, but I just want to do things quietly behind the scenes. And trying to generate traffic to my site by interacting in forums and the like really doesn't appeal to me. I have no problem investing in the tools I need, such as hosting and auto responders and the like. My husband and I are both getting a little worn down, but we're determined to make this work for us and hopefully someday be able to generate an income that will significantly affect the quality of our lives. I just would like to have some hope that our efforts will pay off down the road, because they definitely are not paying off yet -- but the blog has only been up for two weeks. (I'm a little spoiled by the fast results I got from a mini site and Adwords.) With everything I've told you about myself, do you think trying to build a Wordpress blog is a wise choice -- or do I just not have the right personality to be successful at blogging? Thanks
Many people have been in exactly your position. I think you're doing exactly the right thing. Be persistent and patient. Try to write longer articles of such high quality that webmasters will re-publish your content and links on their own sites. This really does happen (especially if you use Ezine Articles) and in the long run it makes a huge difference. Good luck!
yeah I think this is a better option for you, create tons of articles based on different long tail keywords for a choosen product and make a blogger blog landing page. I;ve had success with this system and it should give you some long term income. If you need any assistance just PM me !!
Lynda, For video marketing, please go to http://www.articlevideorobot.com/ - you can convert your review text, images, and sound clip and distribute to video social media sites using tubemogul.com - In the description of your video, please add your affiliate link. I know plenty of people hate using video and even putting themselves in front of it. I mean, what if you're camera shy or have a badly burned face? Stuttering problem or speech disorder? Privacy issue? In that case for video marketing, you can use articlevideorobot.com As for using a Wordpress blog -- it's better than to put it on your own domain.com -- Wordpress is easy to use once you get the hang of it. You can have subscribers, build your own email list, have targeted traffic based on SEO, and tons more. In fact, two years ago, it would've been better to start off with your own blog site and even PPC on the side or supplement.
Guys - are we all talking at cross-purposes here? I understood from Lynda's original post that she already has a self-hosted Wordpress blog (it won't be hosted at wordpress.com, with its affiliate-links, will it?) and is doing that?
Yes, I have my Wordpress blog hosted with Hostgator. Wordpress is proving to be quite a challenge for me. Not as simple as Homestead's Sitebuilder. I've got it up and going though. I just found my home page on page five of search results when I searched the name of the book I'm promoting. It's a static page with a review of the book. I know it won't do me much good on page five, but maybe I can get it bumped up with more backlinks??? Honestly, I was just kind of happy to even see it. Not seeing any of my blog posts though. Hopefully with a little more time. Thanks for all the help. Lynda
Good move - well done. Glad I'm not the only one. You're doing better than me, anyway, because you're persisting with it. (I abandoned it and switched to something easier for technopobic incompetents like me who found it too difficult ). Then you're doing well. Not so far to go. I'm sure there's no "maybe" about it. Just keep going.
yeah. have great articles and backlinks linking to your site and eventually, you'll get there. no short cut im afraid but hang on in there. you'll be ok.