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What I Learned in 2005
January 04, 2006
Over the holidays, someone very near and dear to me - in other words, someone who should have known better - was trying to explain to his mother the whole concept of making money online. I listened with horror when he said, "So you can work three days, and then sit back and the money rolls in."
Naturally, I jumped in to clarify things a bit. I'm sure most of you have already discovered that online marketing doesn't have much to do with "get rich quick". And the thing is, there's a difference between "passive income" and "get rich quick". One is doable. The other is questionable.
And yes, yes, I'm sure there are lots of stories you can all post in the comments about people who HAVE gotten rich quick on the Internet, but hey, they probably all involve using Adwords ... :)
At any rate, this leads me to my first post of the new year (and most of you are probably not very surprised that, being my usual slightly-behind, sort-of-procrastinating self, my first post is actually being made on January 4. What can I say? January 4 is actually a very special day for me. Really.
Here's what I've learned about affiliate marketing and Internet marketing in 2005:
1. You definitely can make a living online. Because a lot of people ask me this question via email - somehow, I must give the impression that I'm doing this full-time - I thought I'd give a quick answer here: No, I do not make my entire living online. Right now, I make a nce part-time income online, but it's not enough for me to fold up my offline business, although I've started turning down more work.
My goal this year is to be able to have my online stuff make the lion's share of the money around here, and have my offline stuff make a comfortable part-time income. Well, no, actually, my goal is to make my living online, period.
And I know it can be done. Trust me, the knowing is a huge help.
2. It takes work. Right up there with the "get rich quick" pitches is the implication that affiliate marketing and Internet marketing don't take any work at all. You spend three minutes, make a million bucks, right?
Well, I certainly don't see that happening around here. It does take work, just like any other business. The thing to keep in mind, when your motivation is lagging, is not that it "only takes a few minutes", but rather, every minute you spend on your business has the potential to keep making you money. In other words, passive income.
If you're particularly anal about it all, or need some motivation to help you start on the journey away from your day job, try thinking of it this way: if you were being paid an hourly rate for the work you put into your sites, the rate you get paid for any particular hour of work has the potential to always be increasing. So if it took you an hour to put up a page of content, the first day that page is live, you might have made negative (-) $50.00 for your hour of work. But three months from now, you might be up to $10.00 for that hour. And in a year, that same hour might actually have netted you $500 overall. And hopefully, it doesn't stop there.
3. It takes time. Unless you're buying traffic through Adwords or some other source, it's all going to take time. I'd say that if people pitching Internet marketing products would just snip out that "quick" in their "get rich" spiel, they'd be much closer to the truth.
It takes time for a site to start getting results. And the more mature a site is, the better the results you'll see, usually. Everything in the search engine world takes time. It doesn't mean you did it all wrong if after two months you're getting 1.3 visitors per day. It just takes time (and links).
So if you're sitting there right now like I am, hoping to ditch your offline work, it's a good idea NOT to be saying to yourself, "I'm going to make enough to pay my mortgage next month". Give yourself some breathing room, and make longer-term goals, because it does take time.
4. Just do it. Don't put too much angst into what site you're going to do first. The main thing is to get something out there, and keep the spiders coming back as you're growing the site by regularly adding content.
You don't want to worry too much about picking the "perfect niche" because it really doesn't make sense to aim for a "one-site empire". All you have to do is visit the various webmaster forums the day after Google or Yahoo implement a major algo change to see why this isn't the best thing in the world. (Unless, of course, you're using Adwords or otherwise buying traffic, in which case, none of what I learned in 2005 will really make much difference to you.)
Once you've gotten into the rhythm of adding a bit of content regularly to your site, start the next one. And then the next one. And so on.
5. Don't wait for perfection. Okay, here I might be bucking conventional wisdom. I know that when I was first starting to get into all of this, there was tons of advice in the forums about making sure your site had X number of pages first before you upload it, make sure it's the best that you can get it before you make it live, don't throw up a "under construction" sign because it's simply Not a Good Thing.
I never followed this advice: I simply didn't have the patience to do stuff like that, and anyway, part of the fun was watching to see when the spiders came. And, for me, it just seemed like the sooner I got the site live, the sooner any sandbox time starts, which means the sooner it will leap out of the sandbox. I still have problems with how a site LOOKS - I've got to shove away that part of me that says, oh, yuck, that's a horrible header and/or tamplate. (Oh, and you don't have to throw up an "under construction" sign, even when you've got lots more pages to come. No-one will know you're still under construction unless you tell them.)
The fact of the matter is, you're not likely going to be getting hordes of visitors stampeding to check out your glorious 300 page site the day you make it live (unless you've got an advertising/networking/PR plan in place, in which case you probably already have the staff to go with it, and none of what I learned in 2005 will really make much difference to you anyway.) So it just makes sense to me to think of any sandboxing time as leisurely time to plump up a site and make it perfect. Since this could be anywhere from six weeks to (hopefully not more than) six months, you've got ample time.
At least, that's the way I've been approaching things, and it seems to work fine.
6. It's good to meet other online marketers/bloggers. In other words, networking. I'm the world's worst networker - I'm the one who decides to make the best of things at business receptions by plonking myself beside the smoked salmon and happily trying everything the caterers are dishing out. So if I can network online, I figure most people can.
It's actually easy to meet some really nice people online. I met my friend Gail because I had been following her posts at a forum I frequented, and finally she posted something that I absolutely had to send her a private message about. I did, she wrote back and the rest is history.
I met my other marketing pal, Chrissie, through this blog. She would drop by, comment, I'd comment back ... and sometimes we'd find ourselves having a long conversation entirely through the comments of a particular post. Going from there to being friends wasn't very hard at all.
So why network, aside from finding people you can chat to about affiliate marketing? Well, take my experience, for example. I'm blogging regularly for Darren Rowse now because I was a regular reader of Problogger, and when he asked for volunteers to help out while he took a month long vacation last summer, I emailed him and offered my meagre blogging abilities. Somehow things worked out really well, and now I've had the huge benefit of learning an immense amount about problogging from a wonderful mentor - and making money doing it at the same time.
But it's not just about making more money. I treasure my online marketing friends because I can talk to them about my sites, about getting spidered, about ranking, about PR, and they don't look at me like I'm crazy, or yawn seven times during the conversation. I like that. Plus they keep me motivated.
7. Pick at least one site to constantly update. Once you have the search engine spiders coming regularly to a site - which they will do if you keep adding content - you'll be able to get new sites and new pages spidered quickly and easily.
Which means you'll save lots of money, since you won't be inclined to pull out your credit card every time you see a product that promises to help you get your sites spidered and indexed "in minutes".
Getting spidered and indexed really isn't the hard thing. What's much harder is getting good search rankings. Which you can only do by having good on-page optimization and a nice set of incoming links. But it's nice to be able to get your new sites spidered quickly, since that IS the first part of the equation.
So that's the bulk of what I learned about affiliate marketing and Internet marketing in 2005. Hopefully this time next year I'll be writing my "what I learned" list from the perspective of someone who makes a full-time income online, not just part time!
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Posted by BJ at 09:32 PM in Affiliate Marketing , Web Publisher's Life | Permalink
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Comments
Very nice post, and very well said. I hope next year we all can write what we learned from the perspective of someone who makes a full-time income online! :P
Posted by: Brandon | Jan 5, 2006 1:16:51 AM
Well said indeed BJ. I think you've it affiliate marketing right on the head. Everything takes time, if it was really easy to make money online, then everyone would be doing it. :) All the best for 2006!
Posted by: Empress | Jan 5, 2006 11:42:30 AM
I couldn't have said it better myself, all newbies should read your post ;)
Networking is a beautiful thing (when done properly) but that would be an entirely new topic lol
Posted by: Chrissie | Jan 5, 2006 12:49:02 PM
Very interesting article thanks
Posted by: Mark | Jan 10, 2006 2:54:40 AM
