Journey to 1000$ a month with website

Journey to 1000$ a month with websites -- First step on the raod to a passive income



First, a quick introduction:
I'm living in Barcelona, Spain. Born in Norway. Been living about half and half, give or take, in Norway and the US for the last year or so (GF is from CA), + backpacking around.

I've been in IM since 2010, when I did bum marketing with Clickbank and made micro niche sites monetized with Adsense. Left for a few years. I've always said to myself that I should start again ... now that I have more time and can do it semi-full-time, well, I'm back in the game.

My day job is as a chemical engineer at various oil rigs in the North Sea, so I work a rotation of 2 weeks on the rig and 4 weeks off -- lot's of time for IM an enjoying life.

The goal
My goal in the first place is 1000$ a month, which will be transferred to investments (stocks and IM). My idea for getting rich has always been exponential growth, i.e. investing money over time (1000-2000$ month will be a lot over time invested in stocks), and re-invest the cash-flow.

The plan
I run one website at the moment, in addition to some domains just redirected to affiliate offers and a few more projects in the making. I will work on this site, and figure shit out, before I move on to the other projects. I feel like it is better to run one site properly, than to make tons of sites.

The sites are all WP-based, and I focus on on-site optimization in the first place. The first page is a standard latest posts blog. I am not trying to rank for the big keywords, I am eating the fruit on the ground.

So far I've got close to 20 articles, where 10 or so are KW-targeted, 2 are affiliate reviews, and the rest are shareable infographic and video kind of content. I make new accounts all the time, and comment on my articles to give the author more authority. All acounts have Facebook and Twitter. This has led to other real people joining the discussions, and thanks to Disqus I get a much better views/visitor as people are reading the comment, clicking around etc.

My "research" so far has shown as much better click rate after I added a recent post widget. Contrary to my beliefs. It seems that people are browsing around the site, and then heading back to the offer and clicking the link.

I drive traffic from forums, blog commenting, Twitter, Pinterest -- and I am monetizing with Clickbank -- nothing massive. I am debating whether I should add Adsense on the articles that are not targeting affiliate offers, so I might do that in the coming days. I don't want people to click Adsense instead of buying from CB, but if it's Tumblr/Pinterest/Facebook traffic -- people that aren't buyers but people that are bored -- I can make some $$ of off them before I never see them again.

I am continuously auditing my articles to check rankings. No revelations so far in terms of SERPs-- I hardly get traffic from SE at all. I will, once I have a good amount of content on the site, and it has settled for a while, I will feed it with some 2.0s (original content written by me).

I target high gravity CB products, and long-tails of competitive niches.

Making money as it is now, but it's kind of irregular, no $xx/day consistent. If I target the search engines and add more content, plus Adsense, that will probably give me a more even per day earning, with some boost from CB ... The traffic I get now, is highly targeted, but now that I'm getting some more search engine traffic, Pinterest and other "garbage" traffic I can see that the clicks (hoplinks) per view, earnings per hop etc. are going down (EPH still around 2.5$).

Anyways, no 'method' ... Just a website, copy writing, learning by doing and elbow grease.
_________________________________________________________
January
Website 1:
W1: 243.25
W2: 88.92 (and counting)

Total accumulated (invested in various stocks): $USD 18,355.00

Best of luck with your journey, hope you'll reach your goal!

Good luck with your plans eveneven

The goal
My goal in the first place is 1000$ a month

Click to expand...

Best of luck. Keep us updated.

I'm living in Barcelona, Spain.

Click to expand...

Say hi to iniesta and messi for me

Thanks! Still haven't been on a FC Barca game down here haha (was going to the one on wed).


I think I'll try to stick to weekly updates.
January W2: $178.04 (my 'weeks' are Thursday to Thursday :S)



Today was a good day though, 4 sales (1 sale and 3 add-on-sales) -- totaling $89.12. When it comes to Clickbank, I always try to find a product that either offers me recurring income (subscription kind of sites) or has good up-sales. If someone has opened their wallet once and bought the product, they'll sure hell will do it again. I have about 40% doing this so far. The products that are recurring is even better, because this is in essence passive income.

Furthermore, selecting the right Clickbank product is alfa-omega. My current 'baby' converts about 1-11 /1-12 hops. Another product, which I'm also promoting have converted fuck all after 40 hops. The difference? The last one is really 'salesy'.

So:
// Has to be re-bill or up-sale
// Has to be high gravity and good salespage
// Has to cloak your link or add a cookie. Make sure that your hoplink does not display in the URL, and clikc around the site (i.e. into articles, other pages) and then try to go back and click to get to the order form. If your affiliate ID isn't showing at the bottom, they're basically fucking you over. Also, any sales page that capture email leads is shit, as you won't get credit for these leads if they eventually buy (even though they're 'your' customers)

A lot of people have sent me PMs, but it would be better if you just asked here. All the knowledge I've put to use is from BHW, even old threads that people say 'This is saturated', 'Doesn't work' etc.

I rely heavily on direct traffic (people typing in the url), and referrer. My traffic comes from forum signatures, article marketing, Tumblr, you name it. Anywhere I can place a link, or some text I know someone will read. They delete all your posts with a link? Finish off your posts like this: "John H. jhmarketing.com" -- if you've written a good post, not selling anything ... People will type in your url, because hey: you know what you're talking about. There they will find a site, with even more info. They'll browse around for a bit, and then they'll see a product review of something. Everything else you've written so far is awesome, so if you recommend this, it must be a good product.

This is also why pre-selling is necessary, and why domains simply forwarded to the Clickbank offer generates less monetas. Here we are preselling in 1-2-3-4 or even more (depending on how many pages they'll look at). Your blog post comment, your main site, some info article, another info article ... ohh product review, ohh.. free video presentation (vendor site).

No magic or [method]

Not saying it's the best method, but it's all about taking action really.

Today I've just started to block out my new site, pretty similar to the other one I have. I have set up Genesis with a child theme, and added the usual plugins (XML and HTML sitemaps, email submit, Sociable, Disqus, Jetpack, a plugin to cache, lightbox ...). First page is basically featured posts (like a blog, but I'll only feature my top tier content). I will monetize this one with Adsense and Email capturing.

I've made it look good, and I will get someone at Fiverr to fix me a logo I guess (i'll send them a sketch I did). I will work more on KW research tomorrow, and get some rough ideas for categories and articles.

Good luck on your journey OP.

good luck, I am after the same goal but I have a couple websites!

Thanks.

I will also launch several websites eventually, I just need to get a 'feel' for how everything works; I've been doing CB with bum marketing, and MNS with Adsense, but never had a proper website. Anything from driving traffic, to writing, to blueprinting it, keyword research ...

I think I should be able to make sales consistently with this site within the next couple of weeks (1-2 per day), and then just add an article every once in a while, and focus on off-page. Then I might add more information content to hook long-tails.

Gook Luck Mate
I Wish You success in Your Work

Thanks

Subbed. Best of luck for your journey buddy.

Best of luck my friend! I hope you reach your goals and surpass them by miles to come!
BA,

Haven't been doing any new links to this site this week, so all that you see here is just from old links -- passive. Started working on my new site, Adsense at about 5$ so far, nothing impressive, but haven't started to drive traffic to it. Won't do any promotion until I've added 10 articles.


Also got some more sales for today, so we're looking at a total of 569 USD and 21 sales, and some change from my way back CB days (still 20$ after all the dormant account penalties over the years haha).

I have tweaked the copy on the affiliate page, added more content (1200 words total), more pictures of what you are getting when you buy it (yes, I do buy the products I review ), a picture (which I hot linked) above the fold, more 'examples' in the intro text (questions, and what the product can do) and a stronger call to action.

Yesterday I sat a new recoed on # hops, nearly double what I've had before with no increase in views of that page (though more traffic overall). More unique clients, but so far they've bought less (but numbers are toolow to draw conclusions).

Nice progress man! Glad to see it! Keep it going!
BA,

Hi OP,

I wished you all the best in your CB Sales, good luck.

$$$ All The Way,
Commoner

eveneven said:

Haven't been doing any new links to this site this week, so all that you see here is just from old links -- passive. Started working on my new site, Adsense at about 5$ so far, nothing impressive, but haven't started to drive traffic to it. Won't do any promotion until I've added 10 articles.

View attachment 44580
Also got some more sales for today, so we're looking at a total of 569 USD and 21 sales, and some change from my way back CB days (still 20$ after all the dormant account penalties over the years haha).

I have tweaked the copy on the affiliate page, added more content (1200 words total), more pictures of what you are getting when you buy it (yes, I do buy the products I review ), a picture (which I hot linked) above the fold, more 'examples' in the intro text (questions, and what the product can do) and a stronger call to action.

Yesterday I sat a new recoed on # hops, nearly double what I've had before with no increase in views of that page (though more traffic overall). More unique clients, but so far they've bought less (but numbers are toolow to draw conclusions).

Click to expand...

Its going well or better than others. Best of luck, keep it up and never give up...

This is off topic, but how is Spain? I've always wanted to live/visit there.
---
On topic, I was wondering what service/method you are using to check your article's position in search results?

I've had trouble finding something that gives good info (and doesn't cost an arm and a leg).

Spain is awesome.

I just signed for a new apt in Barcelona a couple of weeks back. Nice and warm weather, cheap and the atmosphere in Barcelona is awesome. Also lots of backpackers passing by, expats living here etc.

I check my SERPS with Google Search and Excel, getting a proper tracking tool is on my to-do list too

Woke up to this, broke some of my planned milestones there D:


No we're looking at 26 sales and 714.23$ for January. Funny that this site is making me money with minimal maintenance. I will spend time on it today, work on the social accounts, make more comments on the blog with some of my gmails etc. Been too busy with my apt stuff ... Selling everything I can't bring to Spain in my Norway apt, packing, filling out forms to get a Spanish social security number ...

Closing in:

January:
28 Sales | Total: $759.32

46$ so far today, but Clickbanks analytics servers have been down for maintenance all day.

Hop servers are working, tried a couple of times.

Think I might try to register for a few smaller forums, build up a bit of authority and slowly drip some links. Have also worked on boosting my twitter. I also used a site called Socialbro to find more about my market, and follow some more influential people, and scheduled some posts and retweets for later.

On my other site I'm still at marketing research. Crawling some forums (it's a niche I'm really passionate about, so I have quite a few aged accounts at forums) and looking at what people are asking about.

Have roughly drafted 10 articles, keywordy, to get the flow. I always do this because all my articles have a meaning behind them, a call to action. Are they evergreen flagship articles which are top-tier and KW targeted to show that I know my shit? Are they simple social shareable infographics or 'fun-facts' ('top x reasons why you're losing money in the stock market')? I mix it up, the latter is easy to write, I can churn out a few in an hour (and schedule them, or save them as drafts for slow times).

I will look into monetizing this site, which is in the travel niche, with CPA and list building. This is a niche where I am an expert -- and I can do offline marketing. By building a list, I will be able to expand my niche sideways, and quickly build an audience for other travel sites (already looking into doing some JVs with other people in the travel industry). But I'll make a separate journey for this site, if it comes to that .... Seems like people here don't care too much about a $1000 journey.

This is why I don't outsource content: I can write shitloads of content with little effort. Also, if I outsource content (which I did when I was doing article marketing), I always have to tweak it, and it takes time. The ROI of writing my own content (and outsourcing SEO and link buildinng if it comes to that) is much better for me.

I receive quite a few PMs, which is always nice, but please post your questions here in this thread instead. I receive many of the same questions.

PS: I'm looking into joining Skype/Facebook groups for affiliate/CPA marketers with some experience. Let me know! Thanks

Will definitely follow this

What the heck. You are going to succeed in your journey in only a few days.