As Long As I’m Here….

I noticed that I hadn’t posted in a year! And I figured as long as I’m here I might as well say something, other than the review I put up I mean.

Everything is still going along great in life except that I haven’t had any time, (as usual), to get anything done on my affiliate business. I’m now running the non-profit that I mentioned before, but thankfully that’s only until the end-of-the-year and then my schedule should go back to something “normal”, whatever that is.

Not that I don’t enjoy running things and being the Big Kahuna, (except for all the stress and strife), but it feels like my life is on hold since it’s been totally dedicated to this for the last few years. I’ll be glad when I have the time to turn to other pursuits. It’s all about balance.  =)

Anyway, that’s why there’s been no income reports because I’ve pretty much done nothing affiliate-wise in a year. I did write an article today and a review of a WSO that I bought, but that’s been it for some time.

As always, I’ll try to do better but it’s definitely going to be hit or miss until next January. My goal is to write 100 “sales” pages before Dec 31st. Today I wrote two. Only 98 to go.

Of course, it’s not really a big deal since I don’t have any traffic yet.  =)

A Truthful Review of The IM Goofball’s Guide

First of all, let me tell you that I bought this WSO. I didn’t get a review copy, and I have no affiliation with the product creator. I just liked the idea of the product and so I bought it to find out more. I did like it enough that I will include an affiliate link at the end of the review, but not until I’ve explained to you what it’s about and given you enough info to judge for yourself if it’s worth buying.

The premise is making money by providing services to marketers. Particularly email swipes. According to the author, marketers are in “desperate need” of people to write their email swipes for them. Now, I don’t know if that is actually true or not, but I do know that marketers need services as much as the next guy. I’m pretty sure most of them don’t write everything themselves, especially the big guys.

So, what do you get for $9.97? (at the time of this writing).

You get an 86 page pdf that explains three different methods you can use to provide value to marketers. The first, of course, is the email copy swipe method. Mark goes in-depth with this method as learning to craft excellent emails is not only very lucrative, (according to him), but also the foundation needed to write copy that converts. And writing copy is what you will be doing in two of the three methods. There are a few free resources that he talks about that for me were worth the price of admission. (hint – think headline generator). All of the email module is also covered in a youtube video in case you prefer watching the information, and it’s all covered step-by-step to where it certainly seems like a feasible way to make money. He claims you can learn the skills in a weekend, but I highly doubt that, unless you already have some skill at writing.

Buy Welcome to The IM Goofball’s Guide To $51 $74 Per Hour Now!

The second method is similar to the first, many of the skills you just learned in the email swipe section will be used here as well, or if you start here then you will need to learn them before continuing on. Once again, everything is step-by-step and another video walk through is supplied. And once again this one requires you to have, (or be willing to gain), some skills in writing.

The third and last method does not require any writing, and is pitched as being “well suited to those for whom English is a second language”. It’s more technically inclined, and involves setting up some stuff for the marketer on their backend. Personally, I think this method is the weakest of the three and I can’t imagine any marketer needing this service since they’d either do it themselves or they’d already have a team in place that does it. But the author says it will work…. Of course, he doesn’t spend very much time on this method so I have to wonder if it was just thrown in to give something for the people who don’t want to write.

Overall I believe the first two methods taught will work, although I haven’t put them into practice yet. I may not, at least not for paying clients. I mostly bought this wso for myself as I’m trying to create some email swipes for one of my sites and I thought it might help me write better copy. Considering the step-by-step nature of the method I know I’ll be better when I get done implementing it.

As far as OTO’s go, there’s one that’s supposed to make things quicker and easier, particularly for non-native English speakers. It’s $37. I didn’t buy it. Then there’s a downsell for $17. It has everything in the $37 offer except some wordpress video plr. I didn’t really take a good look at it. My philosophy is a product should give value without the OTO’s, and this one did.

So, who’s this WSO for? Obviously if you like to write and want to learn about providing email swipes for marketers then it’s a must buy. It’s also pretty good if you’re working on your own set of email swipes for your list and you’re struggling. Just follow Mark’s advice and put in some practice time and you should be up and running soon enough. If you buy it let me know what you think in the comments below.

Buy Welcome to The IM Goofball’s Guide To $51 $74 Per Hour Now!

June and July 2014 Income Report

Although I also have income, (and expenses!), from my web design and maintenance services, I will not be including them here. This income report is specifically for my affiliate endeavors. If you’ve read my About Me page, you’ll know that I’ve had success in my business selling SEO and web design services, but now I’m trying to make a passive income through affiliate marketing. As such, I want to keep all income and expenses as separate as possible to see how well this branch of the business does on its own.

Time Period
This report covers June 1st, 2014 to July 31st , 2014

Income
I’m still a slacker, I haven’t created any new content or done much of anything, at least not on the affiliate sites. I have done a bit of paid web design and maintenance, but mostly life is just keeping me busy with work, family, and so many other things.

Here’s the stats from the last two months:

EFPS_June_2014

EFPS_July_2014

I don’t know if it’s because it’s summertime, or if it’s just the natural progression of things since I haven’t done anything to site #1, but it continues to drop in traffic and earnings. The only bright spot is that #4 has once again basically doubled its traffic. Looks like the SEO I used on that one was worth it. You can see the original article on that here.

Total Affiliate Income Earned (both months): $16.97
Total Affiliate Income Earned (this year): $44.61

Expenses
Unfortunately, there’s always expenses….

June
Hosting: $24.95
Fiverr: $5
MarkethingMe: $7
Long-tail Pro (monthly fee): $17
Total Expenses: $53.95

July
Hosting: $24.95
Annual Renewal of The Best Spinner: $47
WSO’s (I still buy ‘em lol): $9.20
Long-tail Pro (monthly fee): $17
Total Expenses: $98.15

Total Expenses both months: $152.10

Grand Total – last two months (Income minus Expenses): -$135.13
Grand Total – this year (Income minus Expenses): -$723.69

Unfortunately, I forgot about the auto-renewal on the best spinner, or I would not have wasted the money. It’s a tool I no longer use, although it probably is the best at what it does.

Only 5 more months left this year. Guess I’d better get cracking. =)

SEO For The EFPS Sites – Update July 2014

Here’s a quick update on the EFPS sites and how the SEO I did last month appears to have affected them.

EFPS Site 1
No SEO was done, and it has definitely decreased in page views. Of course, it’s summer time and since I haven’t added any new content in months, it’s probably just a normal decrease in rankings over time.

EFPS Site #2
For this site I used the free IMtalk website submitter and posted to the top 100 sites. It went from 16 views in April, to 4 views in May, and now to 10 in June. Conclusion: It doesn’t seem to have helped or hurt it.

EFPS Site #3
For this site I bought a fiverr gig that will create 60 high PR links. It went from 4 views in April, to 6 views in May, and now to 0 in June. Conclusion: Although there is hardly enough volume to base any conclusions on, it does seem to have hurt it. I’ve had bad luck with fiverr gigs in the past so I think I will take this as proof that these types of gigs just don’t work. But maybe I’ll test another one in the future.  =)

EFPS SIte #4
For this site I used a new paid tool created by the guy at IMtalk, it’s called Markething.me and it’s a social signal tool. It went from 4 views in April, to 11 views in May, and now to 47 in June. Conclusion: Increased traffic by about 400%. I’d say it helped! The best part is that it was also the cheapest of all the paid tests.

EFPS Site #5
For this site I used SocialAdr, a bookmarking service that also does Facebook likes. I bought 50 bookmarks and 50 likes. It went from 7 views in April, to 13 views in May, and now to 18 in June. Conclusion: It doesn’t seem to have helped or hurt it.

I realize that this isn’t an extremely accurate test, I’m not checking rankings for specific keywords, I’m just judging success based on traffic numbers. But isn’t traffic what we really care about? More traffic generally equals more money regardless of which keyword brings it in.

Using this criteria my conclusions are:
1. It’s a waste of money to spend on fiverr gigs or Social Adr.
2. The IMTalk submitter tool is probably good for indexing a new site but not all that helpful after it’s already been indexed.
3. The new Markething.me tool appears to have worked well.

I’ll need to run some more tests using the Markething.me tool and see how they come out.

Anyone else used any of these tools?

SEO for the EFPS Sites – June 2014

As you may remember from my previous income report, EFPS Site #1 has broken the threshold of profitability, unfortunately the others haven’t. Since I can’t really lose anything but a few bucks, I thought I would purchase different SEO packages for them and compare how they do. Last night I bought four different packages, one for each website.

EFPS Site #2

For this site I used the free IMtalk website submitter and posted to the top 100 sites. 97 backlinks were created. Cost – free. Time frame – all built immediately and pinged.

EFPS Site #3

For this site I bought a fiverr gig that will create 60 high PR links. http://www.fiverr.com/melonybacklinks/manually-create-60-pr9-inbound-links-from-established-websites. Cost – $5. Time frame – 1 day.

EFPS SIte #4

For this site I used a new paid tool created by the guy at IMtalk, it’s called Markething.me and it’s a social signal tool. You get Facebook likes and shares, tweets, and Google + shares. I bought 100 social signals. Cost – $2.50. Time frame – built over 10 days.

EFPS Site #5

For this site I used SocialAdr, a bookmarking service that also does Facebook likes. I bought 50 bookmarks and 50 likes. Cost – $7.50. Time frame – Not sure. 32 Bookmarks have been built in about 15 hours so far, but not a single FB like. I’m guessing the bookmarks will all be created within 24 hours, but no idea on the length of time for the likes.

All told, I spent $15. Hopefully, it will help boost these other sites to the point where they are at least breaking even and bringing in $10 or so each month. I’ll let you know how they are doing at the end of the month.  =)

* Edit *

I forgot to mention that I checked all 5 sites using ahrefs.com and no backlinks were detected on any sites, however, I know that site #1, the only actual performing site did have a backlink from an autoblog at one point, (I did not create it). I also indexed site #1 with a tool like the IMT submitter, although I don’t remember what it was. I think I did that back in Feb.

I’m planning on writing a couple of good content articles for site #1 to see if I can increase earnings for next month. Depending on if any of these SEO tests pan out, I’ll then use the winner on the new content.