Yes I know, I haven’t been adding much to this site lately and I only came into it today to update WordPress and various plugins and such. But I like to keep adding content to the site even if it is only every now and then. It’s one of the first websites we created and one I still enjoy writing for.
So I thought about what to write for this post and decided on discussing what we are doing this year to make money online. It’s been evolving over the years but it has to if we want to continue working online. If you rely on Google, Amazon, Pinterest, Twitter or any other external business in order to make your money then you have to be prepared for them to make changes that could alter your income….sometimes in a big way.
It’s so easy to give up when those changes happen. We could have easily given up when Google hit our review sites hard but it never occurred to us to do so. Neither of us wanted to go back to a regular 9 to 5 job so we just assumed that it would work out in the end.
So after we got hit, we spent a lot of time working on this and that, just managing to hang in there by the skin of our teeth sometimes, but we just kept going and eventually we settled in on creating authority sites. But it wasn’t so much that one day we decided that we should create authority sites – it was more of an evolutionary process as what we really wanted was to be working on something that we had an interest in. We had created all of those Amazon review sites on topics, which for the most part, we really had no interest in so we wanted something we could work on long term that sustained our interest.
What this meant is that we started to build sites based on ‘our interest in the topic’ rather than ‘how good the niche was’. However, we also knew that the we couldn’t just build a website based on our interests if no-one else was interested. Nor could we do so if we couldn’t make any money from it. The reality is that if we want to work online, we not only need to think about what interests us but whether we can generate an income from it.
So we ended up creating a couple of authority sites – but we really only have one that we have been placing most of our focus on lately. It is a craft site and it is something the both of us really enjoy working on. We love the topics we write about and we love the people who follow us. It’s a nice community to be in so it was a good choice for us.
We have been building up a presence on YouTube and that has been a great way to get traffic to our website. Creating videos for YouTube can be a lot of work but we make sure we do the best we can with the equipment we have and we have improved so much since we first started recording for YouTube.
Our main focus this year has been on creating our own products. As many of you know, some years back, we released a manual called the ‘Amazonian Profit Plan’ which provided a step-by-step plan on how to create review sites and make money with Amazon. This was extremely successful and we were amazed at how much money we made from that manual – we honestly weren’t expecting it to do so well. But it taught us that creating your own products is the key to making money online over the long term.
We create downloadable graphics and crafting files as well as full training programs for various topics. We will continue to do this for at least the remainder of this year and probably on into next year.
We have also been selling physical products for over a year now on eBay and although it is doing better than we expected (we are a Top Rated Seller) , we don’t want this to be our main focus. We like the freedom of working online so that we can get up and go at a moments notice if we want. However, eBay doesn’t lend itself to that as you have to be in one location in order to stock and post the items. This is why we have started to reduce the amount of items we have on eBay and eventually we will most likely close up shop.
We still of course use Amazon quite extensively. We link to it wherever we can plus we still make money from the old review sites we have, but we don’t want to have to rely on it exclusively.
So that in a nutshell is what we are doing online now.
So good to hear from yall again! I’ve missed you both! I love that you are able to make it work with your craft site. I thought of resurrecting my craft site too but haven’t been able to find many products to sell with it. It is so much easier to write about what you love though, isn’t it?
Always good to hear from you too Cathy. Miss the old days when all the regulars would come in and comment.
And yes, it’s definitely easier to write for things you are interested in. We enjoy working and that is the key I think. You gotta love what you do!
Glad to see this post notification in my email this morning. I purchased the Amazonian Profit Plan and still have a printed copy to refer to occasionally when I’m stumped by something or just need a little positive inspiration.
I have also changed my focus and reduced my websites from 250 or so to about eight, all of which I am working to turn into authority sites. Only 5 are focused on Amazon these days, but I do see an upturn coming as far as affiliate sites – several years ago, everyone was buying up domains and creating niche sites. Now, there are far less of those thin sites out there, leaving room for the authority sites to garner more traffic and hopefully, earn more income.
Wow, that was a lot of websites you had there. You must feel relieved that you don’t have to look after so many now. At one point, we had close to 30 websites and that was tough going so I can only just imagine 250.
And yes, I agree that those ‘thin’ sites are disappearing, I know that we had a few of those ourselves. Not much substance to them and we have gotten rid of them. They just don’t work.
After working on one site for around two years I have started to work on another site which I started but then stopped working on as I was concentrating on the first site. The second site made some money with only a few posts and no content marketing what so ever. With the first site making a regular income (it could still be higher but this winter should be awesome) I am now expanding the second site so that I will have both a winter and summer site. Well that’s putting it in broad terms anyway.
My eldest son has become a Youtuber so he is uploading a video per day. I’ll monitor it and if it goes well I’ll make up a site to go along with his channel.
Oh the big news is that of next week all of my children will be in school daily for at least 3 hours which means that I can really get stuck into my projects. Happy days!!
You are a rarity! Most people start off with one site and quickly get another and another and another. They never give the first site a chance to succeed. My advice is to always start with one until it is making a decent amount of money…only then should you go on to the second one. Diversifying too soon doesn’t work.
Interesting advice. I have one very successful website and now I’m trying to see if I can revive six blogs at once. I think it’s about not expecting them to be profitable too quickly. I’m giving them six months to make $200 together. We’ll see how that goes though.
Would love to hear the results after the six months. You have the luxury of testing this sort of thing because you already have a successful site.
This is my first visit to your blog, I’m glad about it. Thank you for sharing very informative article. Looking forward to read few more articles of yours.
I totally agree about not giving up when you encounter what I call “a bump in the road” online. My first success online occurred when I discovered SEO… and we all know how volatile Google can be with their algorithm changes,. Needless to say, I have had 5 figure a month sites slapped into never never land. But I have never quit…And today, I still earn a great income online. Quitting was never an option…So thank you for your inspirational post! It refreshing to see real people that speak the truth without it being all fluff.
Learning to evolve is important in this business. It’s not for everyone, but when you have it in your head that you aren’t going to quit, that’s when you know that you have what it takes to work online.
Nice informative article, its really useful for everybody to concentrate online income source in a good way instead of doing time wasting work on daily basis.
I thought this blog was dead really :) Keep posting such great content please.
Hello Wand and Paula,
Thank you for sharing your ideas. The year 2016 is about to end, can you share how well your ideas turned into profit. And I would also like to know how tough creating authority sites is.
Thank you.
I totally agree about not giving up when you encounter what I call “a bump in the road” online.
something or just need a little positive inspiration.
I have also changed my focus and reduced my websites from 250 or so to about eight, all of which I am working to turn into authority sites.
It’s great to hear from you girls again and it’s good to hear you have not given up, because of a bump in the road. It’s part of the reality of internet marketing.
I bought the Amazonian profit plan a couple of years back and it was very helpful for me. Would love it if you released another product again on your successes now.
We probably will at some point Daisy. It’s been in the back of my head for a while now. Just been quite busy with other things but it’s on our list of things to do.
I’m glad you guys still post updates to this blog, even if not very often. I’ve always considered you two among the very few honest marketers out there so I value what you have to say.
What are your favorite ways to promote your authority sites these days? Are they still based around Amazon products? How are your sites different from your old APP sites? Thank you.
We mostly use YouTube these days. We create tutorials and drive traffic from those video tutorials to our blogs. And at the moment we are only working on one blog. We still use Amazon products quite a lot but we are focusing more on creating our own products. Our old affiliate sites still generate income and would probably do even better if we kept working on them but at the moment we are focusing on something we have an interest in. If you want to take a look, just search for Alanda Craft in Google.
Google and youtube are still the top two paid channels if you have your own website and youtube channel. Or if you have a business product that can run ads for it with facebook, I believe it will work.
Hi Paula,
I have been following you and Wanda since 2010, when I began my journey into affiliate marketing. I was one of the lucky few who was able to purchase your Amazonian Profit Plan when you released it in 2011, which was an amazing help that taught me how to make money with Amazon product reviews.
A few months ago, my computer crashed and I lost everything, including your ebook.
Do you know where I can get a new copy?
Thank you,
Ken Weiss
So good to hear from yall again! I’ve missed you both! I love that you are able to make it work with your craft site.
nteresting advice. I have one very successful website and now I’m trying to see if I can revive six blogs at once. I think it’s about not expecting them to be profitable too quickly. I’m giving them six months to make $200 together. We’ll see how that goes though.
Nice one Paula. I have been trying of late to make money with affiliate marketing but none seem to be working quite well for me yet. Any help will be welcomed. Thanks