I've got an idea for you BlackInkers
Submitted by kmore on Wed, 05/07/2008 - 06:46.
I wonder if this would be valuable.
I have a site I built, my first attempt at affiliate marketing, made last year, it's the one I began learning what to do and what not to do based on reading the eBook - Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate.
I put some serious blood sweat and tears into the site and while it's made me a few thousand dollars over the past year, I can't help but chuckle when I look at it now, so many mistakes, so much wasted potential, such poor writing...:)
Anyway, if as an add-on to BlackInk, some of you just starting out want to use it as an example of what not to do, i'd be willing to open it up for dissection.
Interesting at all?
k
Idea for Black Inkers
Hi k,
Thanks for offering to do that - we all learn by discovering what not to do as well as what to do right...and you must be doing something right for the site to be profitable...so it's not a total wash!
Elise
Re: I wonder if this would be valuable.
You bet it would. Anytime someone can shed light on "what not to do" is priceless.
Thanks!
Dan
That would be great...
k,
If you were willing to share that info I'm sure it would benefit a lot of people, including myself. Would you be willing to point out what the mistakes were, and what you learned from them?
I ask because to someone just learning, they may not look like mistakes at all.
-Carl
do you twitter? i do!
http://twitter.com/htxb
Good idea!
Yes, it would be a good idea. Examples are always helpful to those who are learning. Both good examples and not so good ones. Most people will be considerate when reviewing.
chopper
Hey K, That sure would be a
Hey K,
That sure would be a great share! It would be interesting to see what you did wrong and it STILL made money and it'll be fun to brainstorm on improving it. Thanks!
Please Do
Hey -- If you are willing then please share what you did wrong in the past -- the less time we waste the sooner all of us black inkers can get to where we would like to be !
Sounds like a great idea
I think opening your website would be a great learning experience for all of us who
are brand new to affiliate marketing.
K, thanks for sharing the info
I am sure many people, including my self, will be benefit to your experience over the past year. By the way, like Elise said, you made a few thousands last year so it's not a total wash. We can't learn from anything if we don't make mistakes.
Mike
Ok then, lets do this
Hmm okay i'd that's enough of a response to show some interest.
Ok so i'm wondering now the best way to do this, should I post the URL then just let folks pick at the site from a visual and content standpoint, then we can discuss things before delving deeper?
Or should we structure this more and have a time to meet online and discuss together?
Thoughts?
The site is http://www.repair-xp.com and as of today is still the 3rd result on Google for keywords like "windows xp registry repair", "registry repair xp" etc. etc.
k
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Yet another guy learning the ropes.
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Twitter Me: http://www.twitter.com/kmore
I've been thinking about this more
Perhaps it would be best too pose a series of questions, then I could go through the answers and pull out relevant ones to showcase to the group.?
k
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Yet another guy learning the ropes.
{url removed}
Twitter Me: http://www.twitter.com/kmore
Could we use this as a case study
Could we use this as a case study and go over everything from the beginning. The more experienced BIPers can snooze in the beginning but it will be great for us newbies. Thanks for doing this.
Why are you so embarassed?
Hi k,
What's so bad about your site? Is it still making money?
I'm fairly sure that many folks on this forum would be glad to have a site that made "a few thousand" over the last year.
I don't see why you think the writing's so bad.
The only thing I might have changed would be to put more emphasis on the 'Free Scan' aspect - if you can get visitors to download the free software, that's your job done, right?
Maybe you should tell us what you actually did, rather than what you shouldn't have done!
regards
Derrick
No hey don't get me wrong
I'm not doing a big woe is me thing, I meant more that if I knew now, what I knew then I think I could have had a solid performer as opposed to a site that took forever to get ranked well, had very little traffic for the longest time and whose revenue isn't making me jump for joy.
I think we could use it as a case study for sure, talk about the good, the bad and the ugly..I don't mind telling folks every little detail if it'll help.
k
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Yet another guy learning the ropes.
{url removed}
Twitter Me: http://www.twitter.com/kmore
So What's Wrong with It?
I see nothing wrong with it from a newbie standpoint. It looks good to me. Maybe you can tell us what you think is wrong or what you would do different now. Did you build the site yourself? What program did you use to build it? What type of marketing did you use to get your "few thousand dollars" and great search ranking? Would love to know:)
Shirley "ShirleyPearl" Muhammad
{url removed}
I'm on twitter - http://twitter.com/shirleypearl
Very clever marketing
You did a very clever job of getting people to check out your site. I teach a business success workshop, and one of the marketing ideas I teach is called the "Damsel in distress tactic". You did a great job of using that tactic. Whether planned or by accident, you used it and it works. Some people by nature want to look at an accident, and others want to help at the scene. When you stated what a screw up your site was, and then requested help and feedback you peaked the interest of both groups. This tactic works great for large audiences.
Billy R. Williams, Ph.D.
Business Mentor
{url removed}
Oh god
I hope y'all didn't think i was posting for traffic or sales, "damsel in distress" tactic or not.
I naturally assumed telling people learning affiliate sales about an affiliate site would mean no one would get suckered in.
However now that you've brought it up, do tell me more...;)
k
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Yet another guy learning the ropes.
{url removed}
Twitter Me: http://www.twitter.com/kmore
Hi kmore! I'm sure nobody
Hi kmore!
I'm sure nobody assumed you were posting for traffic or sales.
I'm not, nor want to be a forum moderator, but I'm sure if you move your thread to here with another post on this topic to : http://www.quityourdayjob.com/forum/39 [Site Reviews]
You can accomplish what you started and not have your url whacked.
I'm sure Jeremy meant no harm, just trying to keep this forum from turning into a huge billboard . (Thanks JP)
You were on a roll, and heck, I never got to check out your site.
Good Luck
Barry
$%$%$%$%$%$%$%$
Go'in Deep This Time Up!!
Web Site Help
Hi all I am David Murray a regular guy who has been concerned about building a decent web site for years for PPC landing pages, I have bought the books, read this that and the other etc, I think its a great idea for us all to get a handle on really helping each other, I have SERIF the web design package for example, I also have the first edition of Xsite Pro but although I try my sites never look that great, surely between us all we could get an ideas basket together and a help basket to teach us all the ropes.
Kmore how about a history lesson
Kmore how about a history lesson. What I mean by this is, simply make a list of what you did and the results and how you fixed the problem. Example:
1- Add "articles" page and my click thru rate increased by 25%
2- Moved the "Software Reviews" from the right to the left and my click thru rate increased by 30%
etc...
I realize you will not be able to remember every little detail but whatever you can share would be help full.
Thanks
Dan
Thanks for showing the site
Hello,
Good idea on letting us look at your site. As someone that has been going at this about a year I think you're doing well but that's my opinion. I'm familiar with the ebook you talked about so I see where you got the idea. I never had the time to get into this niche. I was busy making no money in another niche. LOL
I have my site posted with questions in another thread. It's a little different because I'm trying to make a site work that wasn't originally intended to be an affiliate site. But that's another story and I don't want to take away from your thread. Because I think what you're doing here could help a lot of newbies. Especially when some of the experienced affiliates start giving pointers on the different stages of your development. This thread could be pure gold.
Thanks,
Gary
Hey Gary
Where is the thread with the link to your site? I'd like to take a look and see what you're doing.
k
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Yet another guy learning the ropes.
{url removed}
Twitter Me: http://www.twitter.com/kmore
Wher
K, a few things came to mind
K, a few things came to mind after a cursory glance:
(1) Emblems of authority/credibility: you should consider putting a couple of icons on the site to convey that your site is legitimate (e.g. BBB, Verisign, etc.). Consumers are increasingly suspicious of "review" sites, and your target market (geeks) is probably even more suspicious.
Also, your tagline mentions "industry experts", but why should I believe that without further explanation from you?
(2) Social proof: can you say something about your site to indicate that it's popular/has been used by X number of people? This would make people more comfortable to explore the site ("if others are using the site, it must be good")
(3) Make it personal: how about including a real-life picture of you on the homepage, to convey that there's a real person behind the site? As it stands, the site is well laid out, but feels a bit impersonal to me.
(4) Reduce the size of the intro paragraph. Not many people will take the time to read that much text.
(5) Reduce the number of columns on the homepage. You effectively have a three-column design. Research suggests that the ideal number of columns for a web page is one (two at most). I'd consider taking out the "Articles" column.
Moe
Research Link?
Hi Moe,
"Reduce the number of columns on the homepage. You effectively have a three-column design. Research suggests that the ideal number of columns for a web page is one (two at most). I'd consider taking out the "Articles" column."
Hmm. I haven't seen this research. Might you have a link? Thanks!
Best regards,
Judith
www.twitter.com/judithstephens
Hi Judith - it's in the
Hi Judith - it's in the Marketing Sherpa Landing Page Handbook. Let me know if you need more info.
Moe
Thanks!
This is great advice.
It's given me soem ideas on how to revamp.
Didn't even think about the signs of authorities. Verisign, ect.
Strangely enough, when I see some sites with too many or 'made up' emblems or what looks like made up ones, I shy away. It makes me wonder what they're trying to hide.
So I'd keep it to one or two well known ones. I personally like BBB. It makes me feel comfortable.
Nikki
Wow, you have a nice looking
Wow, you have a nice looking site K, thanks for sharing it.
I think that if it was your first AM congratulations are in order and this should be more of a case study on what to do RIGHT not wrong :)
May I ask how long was it before it started making money and how did you promote it?
oops sorry that was me above
oops sorry that was me above :)
Ok folks
I'm crazy busy over here, but i'll write up a post about how this site came to be, how it was built, where the content came from etc. Then proceed to how I marketed it and how long it took for traffic, sales etc.
Give me a day and I can kick this off.
Oh and I am a moderator and suppose we could move this thread if need be.
k
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Yet another guy learning the ropes.
{url removed}
Twitter Me: http://www.twitter.com/kmore
kmore Indeed, your site is
kmore
Indeed, your site is not as nice as the original in Lazy super affiliate, but it is decent. And I doubt the quality of writing has much influence for this kind of subject (except for the 'sale pages' of course)
From what I can see, your site has only little (or very little ?) traffic and that may be your main problem. Did you follow 'exactly' the recommendations of LSA (in particular a couple high PR links) ? Have you run some tests to optimize your conversion rate ? Have you tried to run PPC campaigns ?
Hey
Traffic isn't huge, couple hundred uniques a day, didn't follow exactly, but did pretty close, cheated for a couple of high PR links, which were eventually bounced, but do have links from some higher ranked social media sites.
I have not run tests to try and optimize conversions, which have always been low and no never done any PPC - on any of my sites, that is something i'm hoping to get into soon.
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Yet another guy learning the ropes.
Visit my charity site: http://www.showsomecare.com
Twitter Me: http://www.twitter.com/kmore
Ok i'm writing up the history of the site now
Try and get it out this afternoon, post BIP session.
k
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Yet another guy learning the ropes.
Visit my charity site: http://www.showsomecare.com
Twitter Me: http://www.twitter.com/kmore
Ok here are my initial ramblings
I apologize for spelling and or grammar errors. I did this very quickly.
Ok so I originally read the Lazy Super Affiliate Guide at the beginning of 2007 and it was my first introduction into the world of affiliate sales. Having worked in the online world for nearly a dozen years, I was floored by how little I knew about the "pimping" of Google and how the little guy could make a good living by selling other peoples goods.
So I read the guide a few times over and felt like I had a rough blueprint on how to go about doing all this, it was time to get moving. Quick sidenote: Jeremy has already been more informative on the subject so far, so no need to rush out to buy the Lazy Super Affiliate Guide.
Being new to the affiliate sales world I decided to use the exact same product that the guide talked about, Windows registry cleaning software, which had a wide variety of products, a number of which had affiliate programs on Clickbank ( http://www.clickbank.com - not aff ) and seemed to me at the time like a unique niche.
Ok so first things first, i had a product, i had some keywords from the eBook and though I didn't truly understand how the keywords worked, I wanted to get started, so I needed a website. Now I know my way around Photoshop and Fireworks, I know a lot about web usability and web tech but I am no web designer and as I didn't want to spend any money on this, i went looking for templates. There are a pile of sites all selling the same templates, most of which are dirt cheap, but these guys - http://www.templateworld.com/ ( not aff link ) offer up 6 months of unlimited downloads for $50, which seemed like a good deal to me. Now loads of these templates are crap, lets be honest, but if you weed through you can find some shells that with a little work can be customized enough to use.
So now I had a design and the html / css to go with it. I spent maybe 2 days mapping out what I thought i'd need page wise and went about customizing the graphics to the title / content of my site, which I had decided would be "The best windows xp registry repair information" - now two things about this title / keyword combination. First as I know now, the more niche and focused the better, last year it was blind luck that I used the title "Windows XP" instead of just "Windows", subtle yes, but this is the kind of thing that makes a difference and the length meant long tail as opposed to fighting for traffic with every other Windows product site out there.
Ok so site mostly setup, now it's time to add content. I knew I wanted to build what looked like an informational site that funneled people into downloading the affiliates software so I set out to write 7-10 articles that I would put into my site and submit to the article marketing companies to start my traffic building. Well here was the first issue, which Jeremy has stressed over and over already in BlackInk...do something you know or love...I knew nothing about Windows registry repair, i'm a Mac guy and despise Windows, so it literally took me weeks of pulling other articles, doing research, re-writes etc. to get a half dozen articles, talk about wasting time. I'll be honest I borrowed a lot of content, made minor edits to copy from the product websites, anything to get this thing up ( this is before i truly understood Google's desire for freshness ) and I definitely believe that it has hurt me in the long run.
Ok so site built, content created, affiliate links in, time to get some traffic.
This is when things came to a screeching halt. I was submitting articles to anywhere and everywhere that would take them, i created a couple of squidoo lens, i submitted my site map to google, i did some digg submissions, created a facebook page....etc. and nothing, almost zero traffic and definitely no sales.
Couple things at this point, i know now that I was doing things far to varied, using multiple keywords instead of focusing on one or two sets, i was marketing all sorts of pages from the site as opposed to focusing efforts on the landing page, i did zero split testing on said landing page and again zero PPC to get some initial links and traffic.
So what did I do to change things around to a degree, it's not the easy answer that people want to hear, but I busted my ass. I spent days and days, 10hr stretches, 12hr stretches on my laptop hustling for links. I begged, i pleaded, I did some minor comment spam ( i actually wrote comments, but it wasn't always for related sites ), i posted in forums, i answered dozens upon dozens of questions in Yahoo Answers, i used a couple of link share networks ( do not do this if you can help it ) and i continued to add new content to the site.
My first came sale 3 months after I started all this, just when i was getting really discouraged and it was for a whopping $20.03 and then 3 days later another and five days later I had two in one day. Now we're not talking big money, but it was something and everyone has to start somewhere.
So that's kind of the history of how the www.repair-xp.com site came to be, from here lets get the community to start asking some more questions and we can get into what is working about the site, what isn't and what people thing could be done to fix it. Again, I don't want people to think i'm doing this to benefit my sales, so maybe we could do something to give back...any thoughts. I'm certainly open to donating sales to something if we do use this as a true case study and make improvements to it.
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Yet another guy learning the ropes.
Visit my charity site: http://www.showsomecare.com
Twitter Me: http://www.twitter.com/kmore
Are you open to using PPC to
Are you open to using PPC to drive traffic to the site? Or do you want to stay strictly on the "organic" path?
Moe
Definitely open to PPC
For sure i'm open to PPC, I just don't know much about the process...or better yet I don't yet feel totally comfortable in knowing enough to be successful with PPC.
But i'm working on it as I see PPC being critical for long term success.
k
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Yet another guy learning the ropes.
Visit my charity site: http://www.showsomecare.com
Twitter Me: http://www.twitter.com/kmore
Hey whats up guys. I'll move
Hey whats up guys. I'll move this prior post to the bottom here so it gets noticed.
I had mentioned earlier - Hi kmore!
I'm sure nobody assumed you were posting for traffic or sales.
I'm not, nor want to be a forum moderator, but I'm sure if you move your thread to here with another post on this topic to : http://www.quityourdayjob.com/forum/39 [Site Reviews]
You can accomplish what you started and not have your url whacked.
I'm sure Jeremy meant no harm, just trying to keep this forum from turning into a huge billboard . (Thanks JP)
You were on a roll, and heck, I never got to check out your site.
Good Luck
Barry
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Maybe a forum moderator or Jeremy could move this entire thread to the SITE REVIEW area so the relevant urls don't get confused as in appropriate sig url's, and get whacked as they have been above.
Barry
Thread has been moved
It is now in site reviews as many people pointed out it should be.
Continue on people.
k
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Yet another guy learning the ropes.
Visit my charity site: http://www.showsomecare.com
Twitter Me: http://www.twitter.com/kmore