Another Site Sold!

Things are going in the right direction=)

Lead Generation
The site is making progress in the SERPS. It is currently #17 for it's main keyword after only having been up for a month or so. I credit the press release that I bought at the Warrior Forum for the 17 spot jump. Hopefully soon the leads will start flowing in.


Infoproducts
The MSN campaign for my main product was a wash. I think that because it is not a desperate niche, people are less motivated to opt-in for a free report. The optin rate was in the single digit percentages so I cut the campaign.

For the relationship campaign, I have cut all but around 10 keywords. My spending is much much lower now and sales still come in from time to time. The biggest issue is volume. MSN just doesn't have the traffic volumes that Google does.

I've taken all of my employees off of other projects and they are focused on SEO for the relationship site. After an evaluation, I found that there were already several pages that were placing between #7 and #60 on Google without decent SEO work having ever been provided to those pages. So far, I have worked my way through 12 articles to redo all of the on-page SEO work. Meanwhile, my employees are focused on the off-page factors. I also noticed that the pages did a very poor job selling my product, if they were monetized at all. So I worked on updating the presell copy. I think it is still weak but it is better than what was there before.

In all, there are 24 pages that need to either be retooled in this manner and 7 that need to be created in order to get real traffic in this niche. By my estimates, getting in the top 3 for the existing 24 pages would equate to several thousand unique visitors to the site per day.

Sounds good to me=)

Site Flipping
I sold another site this week for $97. After a bit of a hiccup with PayPal, things ran smoothly. I did learn a lesson, though. Don't set an auction up in the morning because that means that it will also end in the morning. I actually missed the end of the auction because I overslept but lucked out because the buyer chose the Buy It Now price. Another lesson is that shorter is better for the auctions. I think I will keep my auctions to about 2-3 days from now on. This is long enough to get people's attention but not so long that their scarcity trigger fades. This last site that sold was not nearly as good as the previous one, however, I think that it was the shorter auction that made people jump on it.

I'll set up two more auctions later today.

The Power of Tithing

Hey, here is a quick update on how things are going.

Lead Gen
The site is currently doing the Google Dance but is #30 on Yahoo. I need to check in and see how things are going with the press releases. I also may have one of my employees focus on building backlinks for the site and the main Clickbank product page.

Infoproducts
I set up an MSN campaign with an OTO a few days a go and I had my first OTO purchase last night! I'm pretty excited about that!

Site Flipping
A few months ago, I made a series of sites that were built for the purpose of being sold. The first one sold this weekend for $80! The auction failed to reach my reserve but after negotiations with the top bidder, we were able to come to an agreement.

After fees, the profit was about $56. I have a few more that I can list. I think I will list them one by one. A lesson I learned from this one is that I should probably keep the auctions length to between 3 and 4 days. I set it up for 8 and I think that was way too long.

The Power of Tithing
I don't know what your beliefs are and I'm certainly not going to try to push mine on you. However, I would like to tell a story about them because it relates directly to my business.

I was raised a Christian and was taught about the importance of tithing. In the past, I had been relatively good about it but I stopped going to church for several years and stopped tithing as much as I felt I should. I still believed in God but had issues with the mentality of people in the church. I still set up a bank account and put 10% of my job earnings into it each month to give to the church but...

I rarely went to church to give the amount I had saved...

...And I rarely put business earnings in the account.

After quitting my job and going full time, I will be the first to admit that things are tight. My girlfriend and I are living off of student loans and my business income. As such, I pretty much stopped tithing altogether.

Essentially, my perspective was that I didn't have enough money to pay bills, let alone give money away. It is a selfish perspective, it's not how I was raised, and, more importantly, it shows a lack of faith in my beliefs.

Since we have been here in FL, Natasha and I have found a church that we both really like. Absent is the self-righteousness that had turned me away from going to church. In one sermon, the pastor talked about having faith in God to provide what you need. He gave the example of Jesus being tempted by the Devil to turn stones into bread.

Prior to this sermon, I never understood why it would have been a bad for Jesus to turn the stones into bread. However, the pastor explained that by giving into His hunger and trying to make food for Himself, Jesus would have been showing that He didn't have faith that God would provide for all of His needs. He further explained that we do the same thing. We worry about how to pay our bills when we should have faith that God will provide us with what we need, when we need it. It may not be exactly when we want it but it will be when we need it.

That hit home.

I wasn't tithing specifically because I was trying to make bread for myself rather than trusting that God would provide. So, that day I started tithing. Immediately things started happening!

I heard from my property manager that the last unit of my duplex had a renter...
A guy from the UK wanted me to work on his YouTube videos...
I received a random check from my old employer...
And several other things that immediately put more in my pocket than I had given by a factor of 3 or 4!

I was good about tithing for a little while after that but fell off of the wagon...

Then last week, I started again and things have been incredible since!

I have wandered in the wilderness of this business for 7 years (next month), never really making much progress. Could it be that my lack of faith is why I have not achieved many of my goals?

I don't know. What I do know is that I'm going to let go. I'm not going to try to control the situation any more. I'm going to do the work that I know needs to be done and I'm going to give my tithes as I always should. If I do that, I'm confident that I will see incredible results=)

Slow Progress

Lead Gen
The site is ranked at the top of the 4th page right now. I ordered a set of press releases that should be finished soon. I think that the press releases will do some good.

Info Products
I ran a short PPC campaign for one of my product that I've left on the back burner, however, I was only able to get 3 optins after spending over $30. Maybe that market is not the optin type. Either way, that product has returned to the back burner.

I have started a PPC campaign for my main product site. I created 2 new optin pages for it, a new "lead magnet" report, and a one-time offer. We will see how that goes.

That same product had been sliding down the first page for the past month or so. The other day I realized that the version of the page that was up did not have the on-page SEO changes that I made about a year ago. Somewhere along the way I had posted the older version that had a keyword density of only 0.7%. I spent some time bumping the keyword density up to 1.5% and only 2 days later, the page is back in the top 5 listing for the main keyword. This is after falling all the way to the top portion of page 2. My theory is that the page started to fall simply because the keyword density was no longer enough for Google to warrant placing it high in the results - nevermind the fact that the page had nearly 5 years worth of backlinks built for it!

Don't let anyone tell you that keyword density doesn't matter anymore. It obviously still does!

2012

It's already 5 days into the New Year. I think this year is going to go by faster than last year.

Don't ask me why but I'm pretty optimistic about how things are going to turn out for the Business. The priorities are still the same for the most part, with a couple of twists.

Lead Gen
The site is almost ready for prime time. I'm only waiting for my employee to finish one of the promo videos. From there, I plan to do a press release and see how that affects its rankings. I need to hit it with more social bookmarks and backlinks, as well. One of my employees is already working on the backlinks part of that equation.

Once the video is ready, I'm considering testing the site's form with PPC.

As long as the quality is good, I should be able to sell the leads for $90 each. At the average national value of a customer in this market, even if the client only converts 5% into customers they will still make over 100% ROI over what they pay me for the leads.

Info Products
While my primary income generator from the Business will definitely be lead generation this year, I think that completely moving from info products would be a mistake.

Unbeknownst to me, my 3rd product in the health niche has started making sales. Imagine my surprise when I received a check from Clickbank on a product I haven't promoted in over a year.

I've already retooled an old autoresponder campaign and should be able to launch a PPC campaign today. All that needs to be done are landing page creation and ad creation.

FOREX
Once money is flowing from those two areas in sufficient amounts, I will be taking the excess and trading FOREX. I've already started learning the curriculum and will have it finished by Feb 1. On that day, I will start demo trading.