Almost

PPC4 is essentially finished aside from putting in the affiliate links. I am also waiting to hear from the affiliate manager on whether or not they frown upon newsletters. They make a big deal about no spam and I want to make sure that they differentiate between spam and a verified opt-in newsletter. If they say it is good to go, I will add a section for newsletter sign-up.

That's right, though. I am taking the leap into building a list. Thinking back on it, not having an autoresponder was stupid. Especially considering the fact that I pay for my traffic. While my PPCs are essentially one time products, hitting the visitor more than once may help convert more people than just hitting them once with adcopy. Thinking about the original 3 sites, in the very least HTAR and #3 would do well with a list.

Evaporation ROI =)

Finally back from the weekend. I went to go see my little brother graduate from high school. Just before I left for the weekend, I checked my sites and things looked good. Practically 100% ROI for the two programs. I come back and check only to find that my ROI has evaporated. Negligence on my part for not keeping up with the cost of my ads. I desperately need that laptop so I can work while I am out of town.

Good news! PPC4 is almost finished. The sales copy is finished and so are the graphics. There is only one more element that I need to finish before I put in the affiliate links and create my ad campaign. Tomorrow is the last day of the month, I may just make it after all=)

The sales copy for this site is completely different than any that I have before. This time I disguised it a bit by presenting it from the perspective of someone who is actually researching the product. This character narrates and discusses the reasons why they are in need of the product. During the course of the discussion, items that the real customer would be concerned with are addressed. By the final paragraph the decision seems simple. At least that is what I am hoping.

It's Not Happening

Things are looking bleak in terms of getting PPC4 finished by month's end. I was not able to make as much progress today as I had hoped. I was able to come up with a basic design for the site while I was at work but actually creating it has been slow. This is especially true for the header. Anyway, enough griping.

PPC1 is looking pretty good this month so far. PPC3 is showing hints of its potential and I seriously believe that changing the site a bit to make it look more like the direction of PPC4 will help. After PPC4 is up, I will mess with PPC3 to see what I can pull off.

Well, I need to pack.

Making Headway

I went back to work on PPC4 today. I had to purchase some images to get things rolling but it is looking better, slowly but surely. I'm having my doubts about whether I will get this one up by month's end. My little brother graduates from high school this weekend and since it's a holiday, I will be out of town and way from my computer for several days. It seems that it is definitely time to get a laptop and guess what? The Business has made enough for me to get one=)

Anyway, back to the work. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that better site design maybe needed for PPC3 and 4 than my previous sites. Those of you who have followed this blog for awhile know about the Universal Template I created in order to make content sites quickly. I've been using that template for the PPC sites as well but I'm starting to think that it is not conducive to this type of activity. It was originally developed to get high click-thru rates with Adsense (double digit ctr's are the standard), but this is a different game. Maybe I need to devote time into making another template devoted to PPC sites. I've thought about buying a template...yes, I actually did say that. It would be so much faster to just buy one but I am concerned that commercial templates are designed more for aesthetics than sales performance.

Stupid Spurs

I added 5 new products to PPC1 and cut a couple non-performers today before going to watch the game.

Over the weekend I added several products to PPC3.

My hopes for a back-to-back NBA championship dashed, I retire to bed.

PPC4 - Slowly Progressing

As some of you may be aware I am a huge Spurs fan. As such, I did all of my work before heading out to watch the game last night. It was a great game if you missed it.

Anyway, I am slowly making progress on PPC4. I have a basic design but the exact execution and how to present the benefits of the product are still being worked out. This area has an incredible amount of competition but mostly from newbie affiliates trying to go SEO. PPC in this area seems to be for the ballers and big dogs. My experience with PPC2 when it worked showed me that it is possible to break into these arenas and doing so can be very lucrative. Let's put it this way, back in March when I had my first great month PPC2 grossed $816.07. I posted this in the results for that month. What I may not have said is that $664.71 of that was made in the first 8 days of that month. Like I said, lucrative. Don't fear the big dogs.

Working on PPC4

I've finished the initial keyword research. I didn't come up with nearly as many keywords as I thought I would. Of course, I still have to hit Wordtracker to pick up some extras and ideas for new keywords.

I bought the domain name and signed up for the merchant last night. I am having an unexpectedly hard time building the landing page for this site. I don't know what the deal is but it's been rough going so far.

That's it for now.

Reenter the PPC3

PPC3 is back up and running with the 20 product pages. It looks like I have sorted out the problems with the affiliate links. At least I hope so=) PPC3 is the site that gave me my first $100+ grossing day so the potential is there. We will see if the new design, promotions, and products have a positive effect and can produce income consistently. Don't get me wrong, this site is no magic bullet to get me to $100/day single-handedly. That was PPC2 and we have seen what happens when you put all of your eggs in one basket. If you don't know what happens when you do that, just check my post from yesterday.

I am worried about summer. PPC1 is at a fraction of what it was last month, and that was very small to begin with. I've heard that summer is the worst time of year for affiliate marketing, what have the rest of you experienced so far?

I will let PPC3 run for 3 days and then I will evaluate its performance and make adjustments.
Tomorrow work begins on PPC4.

Happy Belated B-Day HTAR!

I was so concerned about remembering that I inevitably forgot. Yesterday was the 1 year mark for my very first website. It primarily makes its money through Adsense but I love it anyway.

Now for the bad news. As promised, here are the numbers from Tragic April.

Adsense: $68.34
I'll have to go back and check but this was my lowest month since November.

PPCs
Earnings: $230.03
Expenses: $345.12
Profit: -$115.09
There were a number of factors that contributed to this decline. No excuses though, I just have to keep going.

Total: -$46.75

Little Longer Than Expected

The 20 product pages for PPC3 are finished. It took longer than I had anticipated because I found that NVU was changing the code in the affiliate links. Bad affiliate links mean no money so I had to go back through each page and redo all of the links. Since I spent the night doing that, I did not get a chance to start work on the ad campaign. That's the goal for tomorrow.

I am hoping to get PPC3 running by Thursday. Once that is complete, I started PPC4 which is currently a single landing page. We will see if more will be needed for that program or not.

I will try to get last month's numbers up tomorrow. They are terrible so you guys haven't been missing anything.

A Few Pages More

I knocked out a few more product pages today. It looks like I will be able to get the program running by the weekend.

I'd like to thank everyone for the support. It has been over a year since I started on this path and the anniversary of my first site is coming up in the next few days. It doesn't seem like it's been that long but at the same time it feels like a lifetime ago. Anyway, I will continue to chip away until I make a breakthrough.

9 More Product Pages to Go

I knocked out a few more product pages for PPC3 today. The creation of these pages isn't quite streamlined but it is much faster than the initial build of the site. I let a friend take a look and she remarked that, "This one is much easier on the eyes." That's not to say that the original was ugly, it wasn't pretty but it wasn't ugly either. This one has much of the white space in the background turned to a different color. Looking at the page you don't feel like your eyes are being blasted by a blinding, white screen. I really want to get PPC3 back online and into the test phase.

Toward Jean-Rene and Empress's Comments:
The reason for not focusing on one program is because that is what got me into this predicament. Rather than having multiple programs running, I only had 2 and one of those was a small time money maker. Once the big one was shut down, my months' worth of work became essentially useless. Empress was definitely on the right track with her statement. I am trying to avoid being in this situation again.

With my plan to test two in one month and make a program profitable the next, I will hopefully be able to do just that. This way a program will have a month to show whether or not it has potential. If it does, then I will use the following month to get it to meet that potential. Then I test two more.

It's hard not to be discouraged when I look at the progress Burke has made. My stuff has had only momentary glimmers of brilliance but nothing that has sustained itself. Don't get me wrong, I am extremely happy with his progress. It's phenomenal and he is almost at the $100/day goal. I just want to be there, too. =)

Oh, the Irony

Only days after I went on my rant about the unstable nature of relying on a job, I got cut from the merchant I was using for PPC2. Trust that the irony is not lost on me. It's not as big of a deal as losing one's job but it is frustrating. I can find another merchant, the problem lies in that another merchant may not allow me to use this form I've been working on since August. That and they do not pay nearly as well. Alas.

The lesson in this is to diversify. If I had more than 2 programs running, this would not be much of an obstacle. Unfortunately, that is not and now the program I had been banking on to be my "big money maker" is down for the count.

To answer for this shift in the Universe, I am going to try to either test 2 big programs a month or make a single program profitable (after testing of course). An alternating schedule of test 2 one month, make a successful one more profitable the next should help me diversify quickly and actually make some progress.

I've already dusted off PPC3 and have 8 product pages revamped. 20 product pages and we go live again. PPC1 from the holidays is back up and running. It is not as profitable as it was in December but it is bringing in a little bit at a time. PPC4 has been decided upon and will go into production after PPC3 goes live. Meanwhile, I will search for a new merchant and get PPC2 back online. I want at least 5 profitable programs by year's end. That's not too much to ask, right?