We’ve had a few requests recently from readers who want to know what we do on a daily basis. This is a really good question although a little difficult to answer because we are often working on different projects at any one time. In the past few weeks for instance, we have been looking at ways of making money without having to rely on Google and we don’t mean writing new ebooks, or joint ventures or coaching or anything like that. We mean actually making money from a website related to a particular niche. We want to see if we can get traffic to that website without having to rely on Google and backlinking.
So we have kind of put all of our usual work on the backburner at least for the next few months to see if this will work. If it does, our newsletter list will be the first to know.
This is kind of how we have been working for a while now. We spend a few months on our niche sites and then suddenly we will have an idea for something and that will take all of our attention and we will be off working on that for a few months. We did a bit too much of that last year and it wasn’t necessarily a good thing. It wasn’t so much that the projects we were working on didn’t work, only that we didn’t give them a chance as we kept moving from one thing to another. It was back to the bad old days when we were trying to make a living from this business and we kept jumping from one method to another….aargh!
But, fortunately we are good at stepping back and seeing if we are heading in the wrong direction and we are finally back on track. So for now, we are focusing on one website and seeing if we can make money from it without Google intervention.
However, getting back to the whole point of this post, I think those who asked what we do on a daily basis were interested in what we do on a daily or weekly basis in relation to our Amazon sites. Mostly, all we really do is backlinking. We no longer write up new reviews or if we do it is very rarely. The reason we don’t is that we have plenty already up on our sites that we can work with. We’ve mentioned this before on numerous posts on this site but we basically look at reviews that are already getting traffic and/or sales and work on those. We work on them by getting more backlinks to them and editing the content until it is the best review it can be.
So this is how our day generally looks. I don’t know how much detail you might want to see here because some of you may not give a flying fig about when we have breakfast or not or whether we exercise but either way it is all here and you can always skip that sort of stuff and move on to what you think are the important bits if you like. So here it is:
Wake Up!
We both generally wake up sometime before 8am. Wanda is an early bird so will usually be up before me but either way whoever is ready to start work first for the day will send an email to the other to say they are ready. The other will respond to say they are also ready and when that happens I will get in my car to drive over to Wanda’s (she only lives a few streets away so it only takes a minute or two). In other words, we don’t really have a set start time, it’s just when both of us are ready to start work for the day but in general it’s probably around 9am.
Exercise or Meditation
The first thing we do (and this isn’t all that consistent) is exercise or meditate depending on the mood we are in. Sometimes we do neither. At the moment we are working on the PACE program (which is excellent by the way), to get us fit for our next overseas trip. So we have been running up hills and working on the treadmill and using the bike and doing a bit of calisthenics. We sometimes do Qi Gong or we might do a mediation. After the exercise we will make up a Better than Coffee drink mixed with MSM and vitamin C – that keeps the post-exercise aches and pains away.
Breakfast
Next is breakfast. Pretty standard stuff here so skip and move on to the next bit….it’s usually scrambled or poached eggs on toast if you really need to know.
Time to Start Work
By this time, it’s usually about 10am and we are ready to start work. We have an office set up in Wanda’s home so it is kept separate from the rest of the house which is always a good thing. It’s nice to be able to close the door at the end of the working day. We have two computers in there and a white board. That’s about it really. Nothing special.
Answering Emails and Comments
The first thing I normally do is answer emails and also comments on this blog and the Affiliate Reviews HQ site. We get a lot of them and some days it can take a while particularly Monday mornings because we don’t usually answer emails on the weekend and they can build up.
Wanda on the other hand will answer the emails and comments from our niche websites.
Once that is done, we close down our email accounts for the day. If we keep them open, the emails keep pouring in and we are tempted to stop to read and answer them.
What’s Next
At this point, we could be working on a number of different things but we will assume for this blog post that we are working on our Amazon sites and I will use the basic plan that we use when we do this.
We will also assume that we are working on two brand new pages that we have already written reviews for and we have found 3 keywords for each page that we want to rank for. We normally only work on two pages at a time when we are backlinking as the less the better. It’s just so much easier to manage.
So our plan for the rest of the day might involve one or more of the following tasks:
1. Find 10 potential guest sites – For this task we would each find 10 related sites that we think might be interested in taking an article from us. We would send each of those sites an email and add each site to a spreadsheet in Google Docs. This allows us to keep track of who we have emailed and when.
This might take an hour or two hours or even three depending on the topic in question. We like to find sites related to our product review in some way so it can take time. But we know that it is worth it because we will end up with very high quality backlinks.
2. Respond to positive emails – If we have received an email from a guest site saying they will take an article then we respond to the email telling them that we will start working on their article.
3. Writing guest articles – Once we have a site that is willing to take an article from us then we start writing. Although to be quite honest nowadays we get someone in Elance to write articles for us but back in the early days we wrote everything ourselves. We’ve written hundreds upon hundreds of articles over time and after a while you get quite good at writing up an article in as little as half an hour.
These guest articles will link back to our 2 product reviews and hence get us backlinks. In each of the reviews we will usually add three links – two to a product review and one to the home page, but sometimes all three to the product review, or 1 to one product review, 1 to a second product review and the third to the home page. In other words, we mix up the links.
4. Writing content for our sites – Again we very rarely write up our own content on our niche sites anymore. So we will generally just spend time in Elance writing up job projects to get 10 articles written at a time. For sites that we are working on we might add one or two articles a week to keep Google happy but we aren’t terribly consistent with this.
5. Commenting on related sites and social networking – We don’t go too crazy with this like we used to but we try and place maybe 5 comments a day or every second day on related blogs. And maybe a bit of social networking and bookmarking. This is really just to diversify our link building efforts – our focus is more on guest blogging than anything else as described in Step 3 above.
Time to Stop Work
At around 3.30 to 4pm we will finish up work for the day. We very rarely go any longer than that unless we have something that we are really enjoying or we have to get done.
So to summarize this might be our plan for the week for the two of us when we are in backlinking mode…
1. Contact 100 sites a week to see if they will accept a guest article.
2. Write up guest articles based on the response you get from step 1.
3. Write one or two informational type articles to add to our site to build up content.
4. Comment on 20 to 30 blogs.
You’ll notice that we don’t allocate time for Facebook, Twitter, reading forums or other peoples blogs. These things are okay if they specifically relate to your business – for example, if you are into Facebook marketing and you make your living this way but if not they should only be a small part of your day. Keep them as a reward at the end of the day after you have already accomplished what you need to do for that day.
We also don’t allocate time for checking stats or our rankings. We used to do this constantly – it’s hard not to when you are starting out – but we really don’t check stats much at all these days. We just get on with the more important things instead of wasting our time worrying about whether we are still ranking for specific keywords or whether our traffic has dropped or not.
What you focus on is what you are going to get in both your daily life and your working life. So our advice is to stop for just a minute today and see where your primary focus is at least in relation to your online business. Ask yourself the following questions and be truly honest with your responses:
- Is your day relaxed or do you feel like you have too much on your plate and you don’t know what to do next?
- Do you feel like you have really accomplished something at the end of the day or do you find that you have spent most of your time reading and contributing to other people’s stuff – forums, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and so on?
- Are you focused on just one project or you do you constantly have multiple projects on the go?
- Are you focused on just one website or are you constantly building more and more websites?
And the final and most important question:
- Do you truly love what you do online or is it simply a means to make money?
You have to love what you are doing more than the money because if you don’t then you may as well forget it, you are never really going to make it and if you do it is going to be short lived. Sure, there are some parts of the process that you aren’t going to enjoy, like backlinking for instance….it’s not one of our most favorite things, but essentially we really love this business and we love it with a passion.
If you enjoy what you do then the money will follow.
UPDATE: Just because someone asked about the blue toy in our office we’ve added a video of what it does.
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Hi Paula and Wanda,
I loved the post and it gave me ideas as to how to set up my day in a more methodical and disciplined way. Backlinking isn’t my favorite activity either but its just got to be done. The challenge for me is when at the end of the month my traffic numbers are down and Amazon sales are less than I was hoping. I guess this is one of the toughest parts of IM and to quote you it’s when I must ask, “Do I truly love what I do online?” My answer is yes and once again I’m inspired by one of your posts. Thanks,
Jerry
You are going to get months that are going to have lower sales and traffic numbers. With us it is a bit of a cycle. It usually goes up around September through to the end of January and then dips in February through to August. So don’t think about those drops – just keep moving forward and keep adding content and keep backlinking.
Hi, Paula:
How do you measure your guest blogging efforts, do you simply look at SERP position? Or how do you gauge your link building via guest blogging.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this.
The best way is to simply check where you are ranked for the keywords your are trying to rank for. If they are moving up in the search engine rankings then you know that the guest blogging is working.
For us, we don’t bother checking anymore because we know that guest blogging works. We just sit back and let it do it’s thing.
Great post. You two are really an inspiration.
I think the hardest part for me is to get myself organized and being consistent in doing the things that I have to do everyday. Sometimes I might be losing track in the middle of my work and ended up doing something else unproductive…(checking facebook, twitter, youtube etc).
Thanks for the post, it is very motivational and I’m going to continue with my work now (^_^)
You’re not alone. We still get sidetracked. How can you not when you have the world at your fingertips. The internet is an amazing place and there is so much to look at. But you can only do your best. When you find yourself on Facebook or any of those things, just immediately log out and tell yourself that you will login later when you have completed what you need to do for the day.
Or you can set yourself a timer and give yourself just 10 minutes on Facebook or whatever you allocate. It forces you to be more productive when you are on there rather than just randomly clicking around.
Hi Paula and Wanda,
Your advices are wise like usual, I like them! Thank you for this post.
I am trying to apply your advices for French readers. I am working on one blog on a daily basis (1-2 hours a day) and will see in some month what the income will be.
Cheers
Cedric
Excellent Cedric. Whenever you focus like that things start to happen.
Absolutely your post is very great and packed with great information about affiliate marketer. You really delay me a lot, because of your good post. It gives me lots of ideas on how to manage it. I will try to look forward and apply your good advises so that to be more productive enough.
Glad we could help Farrel. I like your site. I just ran through the xhtml tutorial on how to display Hello World on the screen…it worked!
Good to know about what you’ve done and visiting my new site. I think this tutorial site is very important to those who want to know about XHTML and for those newbie in social media. I will try to finish all of the content by this week. Thanks for visiting
Loved your post and a wee peek in at Affiliate Marketing HQ. Let’s cut right to the important stuff – who does the blue cuddly toy belong too!
LOL, well that isn’t just any blue cuddly tool. We’ve added a short video in the post above on what it does. It really does lighten up the office if things start to get a bit serious.
Thanks for a great post, Ladies. I do find your newest project extremely interesting as I am also experimenting with not creating any backlinks on my own, as well, on some of my sites. Rather, I am only adding and massaging existing content, making sure each site has proper seo, etc., and allowing backlinks to come naturally. It’s slow but steady going, but I think the sites are heading in the right direction. I will be anxious to see your results – please share them later on!
Are you looking at other sources for traffic or are you relying on natural search? We don’t want to rely on natural search at all so that we don’t have to worry about Google updates.
Hi Paula,
I am working more towards traffic from Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, and now Google+ – and I have done some Facebook paid advertising, as well as Bing paid advertising, over the past year. Advertising on other networks is much cheaper and I get more impressions of my ads.
I think at some point, possibly soon, backlinking done via forums, article directories, etc., will become even less instrumental in determining rankings. And, I really don’t like backlinking, anyways, so I am just no longer creating any that are not completely natural.
My sites are recovering from a penalty, so the going is extremely slow, but I am beginning to see some movement, and two sites have emerged from the penalty completely and are back on pages 1 and 2.
Please do write a post on your results – I have learned an immense amount from the two of you, and from your Amazon affiliate course.
What an amazing post! Thanks for sharing with us your daily schedule.
It’s great that you mentioned Elance, because my business partener and I have got a little bit tired of writing guest articles ourselves so we’re thinking of outsourcing. I was wondering how much you paid for articles on Elance? I’d also like to know whether you do rewrites? if so, how much do you pay for them?
Thanks!
We pay anywhere from $5 to $20 an article. These days we like long well written articles so we find they are around the $20 price range.
We don’t do rewrites.
Hey Guys.. Great post as per usual.. ;)
I wanted to ask.. when you are writing these articles… are they related to the product you want to backlink to?
So say the article could be about “The Benefits of Product X”. Within that article, you would then have your product keyword anchor text back to your product review page?
Is that how it works?
Cheers Guys..
Sean
We very rarely write guest articles about the product itself. Usually they are just related to the main topic. For instance, if we are promoting the XYZ Dog Bed on our site then we wouldn’t write an article about the benefits of that particular dog bed. Instead we might write an article about “The Top 5 Essential Products You Need to Buy For Your Dog”. This might include a dog leash, collar, dog bowl, dog toy and of course a dog bed. When I would write about the dog bed in that article I would then subtly mention the XYZ Dog Bed and link back to our review page from it.
I got ya Paula….
Cheers for that.. ;)
As regards to those months where you have dips in sales and traffic… Are you still making a good income? Or is it a bit of a struggle during those not so good months? Are you still living comfortably on your income between those down months?
Would love to hear what you say about this..
Cheers,
Sean
Yes, we still make a good income in those lower months. If we didn’t we would be back at work but we also save a certain percentage of the money for those leaner periods if we need it. You have to with this business because there is never any real consistency to it like a regular job.
I understand that you need to save money.. its best business practice no matter what business you are in! :)
There are always slow periods in any business.. this is no different really.. right? This is what you are talking about when you use the work consistency?
Sean
Exactly, our income fluctuates constantly but it stays within a general sort of range. We know what the lows will be and account for that.
However, this business is extremely fickle. Google could do another update and we could lose everything. But that’s just part of the game. If that happens we will just pick ourselves up and move on to something else. Diversity is the key which is what we are working on at the moment.
Well.. Thats fair enough.. but you guys seem to do an excellent job of getting good quality backlinks along with great content on your sites. Your providing value in the search results and google needs that!
BTW… have you been hit hard at all over the last couple of years? Since things really took off for you guys?
Thanks,
Sean ;)
No we haven’t been hit by any of the updates. The only time we have been hit was many years ago. We had a website that was ranked on the first page of Google for a number of keywords and was suddenly hit. To this day we still don’t know why.
Thanks for this blog post. I do have one question. How many product reviews do you like to have on each website before you decide to stop and only focus on the backlinking. I know you recommend focusing on 5 at a time. I was just curious how many per website do you shoot for. Also, what type of return do you expect to see from each 5 product reviews? In other words, how much money do you estimate or expect to make with 5 product reviews? I realize this can vary but what type of rule of thumb do you use?
Thanks,
John
Five is enough to start with. There is no point writing more reviews if the first five aren’t making any money. You still need to add content but they don’t have to be reviews. They are just informational type articles like “How to Choose a Dog Bed” for instance.
You can easily make a full time income from just five reviews. In fact, you can make a full time income from just one review. Of course, it will depend on the product you have chosen, the amount of work you put in, the competition and so on but essentially five reviews can be enough.
Great post ladies!
It’s great to hear what a day in the life of a full time IM’er is like.
I am desperately trying to get my business to the level where I can finally quit my 9-5 and work from home full time.
Both of you have really helped me with some great advice over the past year and my business has finally started to take off. I’m still only making 500 a month but steadily increasing all the time and this time next year I should be in a position to work from home.
What do you mean ‘ONLY $500’…that is brilliant Ben. Most people would kill to be making that. If you’ve gotten that far then you will make it. Just don’t lose focus now because if you stick at it this year will be the one for you.
Congratulations, Ben. That’s awesome!
Great post…..thanks for being so candid. How does the 2 screens thing work ? Many people recommend this but I would think it would just make for more distractions.
I love the two screens. It makes things a lot easier especially if you need to have one screen open to work on another. You just simply drag the browser window across and it sits on the other screen. I find it extremely difficult to work on just one screen now.
I personally don’t see it as a distraction.
I always like getting a peek into another IMers work schedule. It’s probably because my schedule is completely different than most other people’s.
I am at home with 3 kids all day long so I can’t simply go into an office and shut the door for 5 hours and work. Instead I work here and there during the day when the kids are playing or during nap time (only 1 naps now though) and then my main working time is at night. Usually I start working around 9pm and finish when I am too tired to concentrate anymore, which is usually around 1am. Then I am up again in the morning, usually around 6 or 7 am with the baby.
Ahhh.. the thing is that I don’t really mind, because I like what I do and I love being able to stay home with my kids.
I don’t think your schedule is that much different to a lot of people who work from home. A good majority of people have young children to look after. Most people who work from home have some sort of challenge to overcome but not everyone has the ability to overcome those challenges. You seem to have done it well however. Three kids is a lot to handle and at the end of the day most people would be too tired by 9pm to start working on their websites.
Nice work ladies. I struggle to keep myself on track a lot of the time, but I do work alone.
I’m wondering if you could attribute a bit of your success and being able to stay focused on the fact that you work with another person by your side?
I reckon it would help tremendously!
Thanks
I think it does help to have someone to work with. You can bounce ideas around with the other person and also have a whinge when things aren’t going so well.
However, most people who make it online are individuals so I don’t think it makes a massive difference to success.
I find it difficult to get response for guest posting. You have mentioned before using techniques like technorati and various guest posting blogs, but for me the response rate has been poor.
How many replies do you normally get out of 100 you sent out a week? Any tips for improving this rate?
It really is a numbers game when it comes to guest blogging. You will be knocked back more often than you will be accepted. You might get 10 responses out of 100. You might get more. It’s dependent on a lot of different factors like how good your site looks, what niche you are working with, how well your email reads. whether you are contacting the right sorts of sites and so on. The more and more you do this, the easier it gets because you start to get a feel for the type of site that will accept an article.
For your site I would be looking for mommy blogger type sites. There are a lot of moms with back pain so writing articles with tips on how to prevent the problem in the first place would work. Or tips on how to relieve it eg. The Top 5 Tips for Relieving Back Pain for New Mothers.
Thank you ladies, this is a very good article. May I post this article on my website?
Why would you want to do that Darin? It would only be duplicate content which Google doesn’t like anyway. You’d do much better by writing a unique article about it and then link back to our article.
Hi Paula and Wanda!
Thanks for encouragement in your posts and replies to comments!
Me as Ben made just 425 last December, the best month but still far from full income. After December it seemed that people weren’t in a buying mood any more even the traffic didn’t change proportionally…so it’s very important to get confirmation that your sites experience something similar.
I’m curious about what you love doing in that business (Amazonian business, not this blog that brings human contacts) and what get you stay motivated (obviously not backlinking).
Blog posting is the most challenging part of IM, I wonder whether it’s possible to outsource that? I’m ready to outsource everything, but sometimes it’s easier and faster to do things by yourself.
Elena
That’s difficult to answer Elena. I think we love it because of what it brings us – the freedom mostly. And that keeps us motivated and willing to do those jobs that we don’t like. I know I don’t want to have to go back to a full time job where I am forced to work set hours, where I have to work around other people when I want to take time off and where I am told what to do and when.
And yes, you can definitely outsource the guest blogging part of it.
I agree with you Paula that the freedom of place and time is what attracts most in IM business, not because someone likes to write and publish their thoughts on Internet ( actually who are interested in our thoughts if they are not useful for another? :))
Hello Paula and Wanda,
What would you do if the 5 reviews that you’ve chosen to build links to with guest blogging, and other 7 methods you have in your ebook is not ranking at all after e.g. 6 to 12 months? Do you still keep building link and continue to believe on them until they rank, or do you choose to jump on another 5 reviews?
If I had gone a full year and none of my 5 reviews were ranking then I would start to think whether I was doing something wrong. At least one should have ranked in that time period.
So I would spend some time reassessing and looking at the products I chose first of all to see whether they met the criteria of quality products. I would then look at what work I did to get backlinks to those pages. How many backlinks did I actually get to those pages? Did those backlinks come from strong sites? I would also think about whether those products were very competitive and go back and look at each keyword and see how competitive they actually are.
I would also consider whether I was working on too many pages at the one time. Sometimes it is better to only work on a couple at a time instead of all five. I would also look at whether I worked on too many keywords at a time. If you try to backlink using many keywords it can take longer to rank.
Hello Paula, thanks for sharing your valuable idea to troubleshoot the problem in my question. It does really make sense that if I choose the product carefully (with a moderate competition), I should be able to rank. I was just afraid that all the work will be in vain, and I can’t get out from the position to re-evaluate my effort…
To be honest, I’m quite surprised by how simple your daily work schedule is. You see, I’ve joined a handful of IM forums like TheKeywordAcademy, Dave’s Zenduck ponds and some backlink forums. Most of them are advocating me to create super sites, satellite sites or even creating a bunch of Web 2.0 properties for each of the product reviews (or money page) that we put online.
That is a super HARD WORK, and I can tell that your life as an aff-marketer is really relaxed when compare to mine… I wake up at 4.30am each morning doing morning chores, start working my websites at 8am, having lunch in front of the PC (reading forums), and I don’t even want to call myself to stop working even it’s already 10pm. Basically, I’ve no life at all being an IM. But it’s not that I dislike working as an IM. I love it so much. The only thing that is pretty stressful is that I’ve to manage so many things (websites, web 2.0 properties, satellite sites, etc.) and pay a lot of monthly subscriptions to services like BMR or private blog network to boost the money page. Still, I don’t earn enough money to cover up all the costs.
Your daily work schedule has really inspired me to start simplifying my workload, and I would really want to have time to exercise and meditate! What’s holding me back right now is the ‘fear’ of letting go what I’ve been managing up until now.
I guess I just have to fight over it and see if I can be as enjoy and relax as you and Wanda. :)
Thanks for the great post, a big inspiration for me!
We know what you are going through Sandy. It’s hard to let go but it really is the answer to your problems.
Just stop for one day and spend the time looking at what you do. If you think about it, this business is extremely simple…create a page of content and get people to that page…that’s all there is to it. Now you probably want to create more than one page but even so, the whole concept is to get people to your pages so that they will buy something.
So during your day off, take a look at the tasks you do to get people to your pages. Write them down on a sheet of paper. Now also write down all the other tasks you do that don’t involve getting people to your pages.
Now all you need to do is stop doing the tasks that DON’T involve getting people to your pages and continue with the tasks that do involve getting people to your pages. Personally I would just stick with guest blogging as the main source of backlinking.
Also, think about how many things you are working on at the moment. The more you work on, the longer it is going to take to get anywhere. Focus on something you enjoy. If you have lots of websites then just pick one that you enjoy working on the most and go with that one.
The last thing I would suggest is to work for no more than 6 to 8 hours a day on your business and start with a mediation or some exercise. And when you have your lunch, have it away from the computer. Just try it for a week. If it doesn’t feel right for you, you can always go back to the 14 hour days but you will find when you make time for yourself you will be more productive.
Best practice of meditation is doing free-meditation practice like doing yoga posture, breathing exercise before meditation. When the body and all the senses are controlled the more we can focus on meditation and chanting the transcendental sound vibration like Gauranga. Meditation is the very important in life. It helps the person to be stress-free, relieve from different kinds of stress and feel happiness, peace and love from with in. When the person attains such condition, the more he is more functional and more focus. So we can work properly.
I agree, meditation is definitely important. It’s a perfect way of quieting an overactive mind which I think most of us suffer from.
I love to read your articles on Amazon marketing. I learn something everytime I visit affiliateblogonline. Consistency is sometimes difficult, but I have learned how important backlinks are. Thank you!
Glad we could help.
I would say that my routine is similar to your but I try to include more “variables” as there might come time for some task that I don’t want to do at that point but there are some other that needs to get done. Instead of pushing myself unproductively working on something I switch to other task instead so the work still continues while keeping myself happy with what I am doing at that moment. :)
That’s actually a really good philosophy Mike. Keeping yourself happy in the moment is a perfect way to live your life.
I also enjoy checking out how others run their online business. I’m impressed with how you stay on target. I set goals and to-do lists, etc., but end up scrambling at the end of the week or moving them onto the next week. Although, after reading your post the reason may be I am trying to do too much in too many directions. Sounds like I need to narrow my focus.
I have to agree Edie. If you are scrambling by the end of the week, you are taking on too much work. Just simplify it a bit and focus in a little more.
What is roughly the number of blog articles that you try to get published for each product review page or keyword before you take a step back to see how they are ranking? How many are you trying to get published for each keyword?
I realize you want to get as many articles published as you can but was curious how you decided when to start writing for another keyword on your list or another product review of your 5.
Also, when you submit an article to one of the Guest Blog Post marketplace sites, how many offers do you accept before you stop accepting more offers with an article? Is there a limit and are you only accepting offers that have the 3 page rank normally?
Thanks,
John
We would start writing for another keyword when the first keyword is ranked in one of the top 3 spots in Google.
And we would start another review when the first review is starting to make regular sales – this could be a sale a day for instance.
But if we felt that review had more potential then we would keep working on it until it made 5 sales a day. And if that happened, we might even continue to work on it because if we can make 5 sales a day we might even be able to make more especially if we had other keywords we hadn’t even started working on yet for that review.
We only ever accept one offer on the guest blog marketplace sites. The articles have to be unique so we only ever give the articles to one website. And we generally only go with sites with a pagerank 3 or up.
Thank you Paula. This is very helpful to me. In the past, I have had a good amount of success getting pages to the first page of google but had a lot more difficulty getting the pages to the 1st 5 spots let alone the top 3. Of course, I had not done guest blog posts in the past either. I am hoping that this extra bit of link building makes the difference.
“We would start writing for another keyword when the first keyword is ranked in one of the top 3 spots in Google.”
I know that there is not a rule of thump as to how many articles one should publish in order to rank ONE specific keyword in the top 3 spots of Google, but can you give us an average number? according to your experience in SEO, or maybe can you just give us a range? It’s REALLY helpful to have a general idea, especially when someone is outsourcing the writing of articles.
I know that there are some keywords that are harder to rank for, especially the general terms, unlike the more specific ones like product related keywords. I’m more interested in the latter.
Thanks :)
It could be one article or it could be hundreds. It depends on the competition and also the sites that your articles go on to. If they are strong sites then you will need less articles.
Avoiding Google and still making money from a site is a really interesting idea. I’ll try to stay tuned and see how that works out.
We will be keeping the email list updated on this Lily so if you are signed up you will get the updates.
I must say BRAVO! I have spent the last two days searching through the Top 100 IM sites on winningtheweb.com and this is the FIRST site I’m going to bookmark and come back to! Excellent post – helps me out far more than you would believe! Thank you!
Well that’s really nice to hear especially since we beat out Problogger, John Chow, Shoemoney and even Matt Cutts to get on your favorites list Gareth!
I do like each of those sites Paula but yours is the best I’ve seen so far. What are your rates for banner ads? I’ve had no success in the past and would rather use a site I enjoy visiting as it gives me two reasons to be here! ; )
Just click on the ‘Advertise Here’ link in the ‘Advertise with us’ section in the sidebar and you will be able to see our advertising rates.
Just purchased a banner ad as I saw a nice little spot where mine can go! If you have any problems with it let me know. Also read up about your Amazonian Profit Plan – this looks far too good to pass up as Amazon is what I’m looking at dominating. Trouble is my monthly budget has gone on banner ads so maybe next month! ; )
Hi Paula,
I notice you mentioned that you outsource the articles for the guest blogs, but you email the websites you want to guest blog on yourselves.
Is there any reason you don’t outsource this task as well? The reason I ask is that I’m currently looking for someone who can do both the emailing and the writing for me.
We have outsourced that task as well and it worked. There’s no reason why you can’t.
Affiliate marketing isn’t a get-rich-quick kind of scheme. It’s true that affiliate marketing is an excellent way of earning an extra income but you won’t achieve success in this field unless you get your hands dirty. Only once you’re kneep-deep into it that you’ll know what works and what doesn’t.
Knowing the basics, however, is key to making money from affiliate marketing before it’s too late.
Thanks for sharing these valuable tips, Paula.
Exactly. I think a lot of people think that the money is just going to flow in. I guess it is because a lot of internet marketers make it sound like you can make money overnight. It’s a business like any other and it requires some time to learn it all let alone for it to all start making money.
excellent post, interesting to read about your daily schedule, it may sound daft but i think energy follows thought, what you think about happens
I definitely agree. What you think about on a regular basis is what you are going to generate in your life.
Hi Paula! I know you from James Martell and I would like to thank you for sharing so many valuable information with us. You seem to be working hard and I believe that’s why you’re successful :)
Hope you have a wonderful new week! All the best,
John Mak
Thanks for visiting John!!
The way you manage your day shows the way to help get a lot of work done. One of the things I really screw up is spending to much time checking email and time on the forums I’m a member of.
It’s so easy it do Jason. That’s why I turn off my email as soon as I have finished answering them in the morning. I no longer feel the need to check it regularly anymore like I used to.
You missed out the constant distractions of skype, msn and cell phone calls, I think as an affiliate marketer you really just need to focus all your energy into achieving as much as possible in as little time possible. Write a list of things that need to be done that day and try and work though the list before a given time, the best way to do this is to write a longer list, the longer the list the harder it is and the quicker you need to complete each task.
I agree that a list is the best way to go. It just keeps you more focused and it also feels good when you can tick things off a list at the end of the day.
As for Skype etc, I personally have Skype turned off pretty much all the time unless I need to use it myself. And my cell phone is only an emergency thing for me really. I love my iPhone but I come from an era when cell phones didn’t even exist so I don’t need to have it permanently attached to my ear.
It is great to hear the advice and even get a work schedule from two people who have been in the business for a while. The last paragraph really is what this is all about. You have to love it! Even if it drives you crazy sometimes, you have to want it. Thank you for the video, funny if not a bit creepy. ;)
LOL, I guess it is a bit creepy.
It is great post, You both are brilliant worker with brilliant timing:) This post took 10 minutes of my time to read but gave me 100 new ideas.
Thank you very much
Can any one please tel me how can we get instant traffic?
If I knew how to get instant traffic, I would probably be living on my own private island somewhere.
But seriously, the only way I know of getting good QUALITY instant traffic is to leave blog comments on high traffic blogs in the same niche. Be the first to leave a comment and make it a good one. People will be intrigued and want to visit your site.
Facebook and Twitter also have the potential to get you some instant traffic….or so they say.
how you stay on targeet is just amazing. I also want to follow your ways. This blog posting will help me to move on
Hey,
Your post is really good and full of information.It will help us to schedule our day properly.
Thanks,
Mohammad
Very inspirative, I hope to have more success with affiliate than with adsense in the future.