« Losing all your tabs ... | Main | Adsense vs. Affiliate Links »
50 Affiliate Sites - Lessons Learned
September 13, 2006
I know it's not the end of September yet, so my personal 50 Affiliate Sites Challenge isn't technically over, but as of now I am declaring quits to that particular challenge.
Where am I at? 37 sites, 13 shy of reaching the 50. But I really need the time right now to load up on affiliate pages for a bunch of my already-established affiliate sites.
Not to mention that from where I stand right now, reaching that goal is not the end-all be-all. As in, it's definitely not something that will catapult me into the 5-digits-per-month income club any time soon.
So okay, here are my lessons learned:
1. It is a lot harder to build lots of affiliate sites than it is to build Adsense sites (not that we're supposed to build made-for-Adsense sites ... I know, I know. Like no-one does, right?)
2. As always, it's not a case of "build it, and they will come". It's more like, "build it, and make a to-do list of all the stuff you've got to do first in order to get them to come".
3. Datafeed sites reign supreme over regular affiliate sites when you want to get pages up fast.
4.This is not the type of challenge I'm likely to ever think about repeating again.
And here's where I figure I stand:
1. I've now got a bunch of sites out there that are indexed but other than that, not doing much in terms of getting traffic.
2. With time and work (aka getting inbound links) some of them will pay off.
3. Some of them won't.
4. This time next year I will probably be seeing some action from some of these sites.
As of now, the jury is still out as to whether the datafeed sites wins over the regular sites. My plan is to start on link building and adding more pages after the Christmas shopping season is over. And then keep an eye on the stats so that I can pinpoint the ones that are doing better, and focus more on them.
In the meantime, I've got tons of work to do on some existing sites that are perking up in terms of traffic and conversion rates.
I've decided to just go with the flow and work on the sites that are doing well now. This is my downstream story - no more upstream struggle!
Bookmark this: BlinkList | del.icio.us | Digg it | Furl | reddit | Yahoo MyWeb
Posted by BJ at 11:33 PM in 50 Affiliate Sites Challenge | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341e372b53ef00d834b41a7b53ef
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference 50 Affiliate Sites - Lessons Learned:
Comments
Nice, I cannot wait to get back to focusing on the sites I have either - I'm sure this challenge will pay off in the long run, but whew! I'm sure glad it's almost over for me!
Posted by: Jen | Sep 14, 2006 3:54:34 PM
At least you're not throwing in the towel early like me, Jen! But it does feel good. I spent all day yesterday getting up pages for existing sites that are doing well, and I KNOW those pages will make me money.
Next year should be good for the ones I've just put up these past few months, I hope!
Posted by: BJ | Sep 15, 2006 10:16:02 AM
I love this point (below) it seems to be something peeps miss, many people build a site and seem to think thats the end of it... strange concept but many fall for it
2. As always, it's not a case of "build it, and they will come". It's more like, "build it, and make a to-do list of all the stuff you've got to do first in order to get them to come".
Posted by: John | Sep 16, 2006 1:20:02 PM
That is so true, John. And when I started on the challenge, I knew that I had to do more than just build the sites. I had some sort of a mininet linking scheme in mind, but haven't really implemented it. And it's a lot of work getting inbound links - I'm up for it, but with sales perking up from existing, established sites, I just was not wanting to work on these new ones anymore!
Posted by: BJ | Sep 18, 2006 11:29:59 PM
