Goals and Progress

The plan to focus on 4 sites and get them to decent income status is still on track. I can say this - linkbuilding is boring. I'm not a fan of it, I'd much rather be creating new products and sites. However, the lack of link building is what has lead me into trouble in the past.

I have added a new site to the 4 and replaced one that looked as though it may not work out. This new site is one that was bringing in a majority of my revenue last year during the PPC days. I'm going to create at least one product in this area but I'm not sure if I should do it sooner or later.

As for my goals for April, I want to hit $69/day profit. That is essentially $34/day from my main site with my products on it, $10/day from my 3 other focus sites, and $5/day from the site that was replaced.

Traffic is going up but very slowly. Additionally, I'm not getting many sign ups at all for my autoresponder. I've had one since I started this strategy, however, that individual did convert to a sale so that's a good sign.

That's all for now!

Seeing Some Progress...

...Trafficwise. I'll be the first to say it - I'm not a fan of SEO. It is slow and the results come only after a long time of working at it. It's like throwing energy and effort into a black box and hoping that the output on the otherside is worth it.

Well, I'm starting to see a few inklings of traffic from my efforts. Only a handful of people but its traffic. I've even had 2 people sign up for one of my newsletters. Ooooooo, 2 people=) Even so, I still believe that this will work.

Ironically, just because you go the SEO route, it doesn't mean it's going to be free. No way. I ran the numbers and for the promotion SEO work that I'm doing for the 4 focus sites, I'm looking at a total maintenance cost of about $800/month. A big chunk of that goes toward software and my VA. I'm not sure about the software, but the VA is going to be worth her weight in gold once she gets the hang of building Web 2.0 properties.

I also re-ran my own numbers. $175 profit per day. That is the new magic number. That's the special coordinate that sends Sam Beckett home. At $175 profit per day, I can quit my job. That is only $43.75 profit per day per site. My first focus site with my product is already doing almost that in gross revenue. I just need to ramp things up and get more profit out of it.

Finally, when you hear a bunch of those top marketers ( I HATE the "G" word) saying to "build a buyer's list" and to "have an upsell" - just listen to them! Don't whine and complain and make up excuses for why it won't work for you. It will, I promise. I did all of the whining and complaining too and for nearly 4 years I resisted doing what they said. Then one day I sent a single email to my small (because I had only just started to automate the process of building it) buyer's list. That one email made more with my small list of 60-70 buyers than it did when I sent the same email to the other 6,000 people on my normal list.

Let me say that again - 60 buyers gave me more money than 6,000 non-buyers who received the EXACT SAME PROMO. I SHIT YOU NOT! If you have a product, you better be building a buyer's list!

Oh, on the upsell... Yeah. This is another one where I whined and complained about not having an upsell. Plus I was afraid that adding another step to the process would make me lose sales. Finally, on 2/13 I added an upsell to my main product that allowed people to get my second product for an extra $40. You can imagine my surprise when that very day someone bought the upsell package for a full $87! After nearly a month of running the upsell, I'm averaging a 30% conversion on the upsell.

That's right - 30% of the people who buy the product willingly give me an extra $40 to get the upsell package! That's without any optimization or anything yet. That's just me throwing up a makeshift page that says "Get X for only $40 More! Click the Add to Cart Button".

AMAZING!!