Som du måske husker fra min Case 2008 så har jeg et lille website omkring Pet Health Insurance. Dette website er blot et blandt mange, men hele sidste år skrev jeg en række indlæg hvor jeg fortalte om hvad jeg gjorde med sitet, hvorfor og hvordan.

Det helt store mål med hjemmesiden er, at komme op og ligge nummer 1 på Google (hvem vil ikke det) for de 2 søgeord “Pet Insurance” og “Pet Health Insurance”. Begge er stærkt konkurrenceprægede søgeord, så det bliver absolut ikke let (og måske slet ikke muligt).

Klik på billederne for at se dem i stor version

Ovenstående 2 billeder viser den reelle konkurrence. Top 3 har alle en PR5, har mange tusinde backlinks og specielt #1 har hele 11 år på bagen.

Og hvad disse tal ikke viser er, at alle selskaberne er nogle store spillere på markedet, så mon ikke at de har rigeligt med penge til at tæske mig ud af banen hvis de vil (og hvis det overhovedet bliver nødvendigt for dem)? Det er jeg ret sikker på!

Der er et program der hedder IBP eller iBusinessPromoter (ikke aff. link) og det har været på markedet lige så længe jeg kan huske. Personligt har jeg altid kigget på det og syntes at det var lidt dyrt, men da jeg for nylig fik chancen for at få kørt en rapport på mit PetInsurancePro website for søgeordet “Pet Health Insurance”, så kunne jeg alligevel ikke lade være.

Og hvis du heller ikke ejer programmet, så kan det jo være at du også er interesseret i at se hvordan sådan en rapport ser ud?

Du kan hente den rapport jeg fik her: Download IBP Rapport (PDF format)

En af de ting jeg rigtig godt kan lide ved denne rapport er, at den sammenholder mit site med top10 sites i Google og giver mig en melding om hvor mit site afviger fra de 10 bedst placerede og giver så en samlet sandsynlighed/score for sidens mulighed for at placere sig i toppen af søgemaskinen.

Derfor er der naturligvis også en forklaring på at et SEO check kan koste 25.000 kr., men hvis det bygger på et stykke software der gør det samme som IBP og derefter kun kræver lidt tilretninger (måske en oversættelse til dansk), så ville jeg som kunde hellere købe IBP, køre rapporten og så finde en SEO’er der kunne tage rapporten og arbejde ud fra den.

Men hvad synes du? Er rapporten genial, god, midt i mellem eller helt ubrugelig. Lad mig høre din holdning i kommentarerne.

Til de nysgerrige kan jeg oplyse at jeg lige nu er placeret som nummer 21 på søgeordet Pet Health Insurance, så mon ikke der er udsigt til en placering på side 1?

Post from: The Ant Philosophy

IBP rapporten med SEO informationer

Her kommer en video på syv minutter, hvor jeg foklarer lidt mere om hvordan du kan hjælpe mig med casen. Og hjælp det har jeg brug for! Â Affilitate-optimering er jeg meget grøn i, så jeg håber at denne case kan få ekstra megen hjælp fra læserne!Â

Specielt i starten har jeg tænkt mig at læne mig meget tilbage for at lytte og derefter at implementere forslagene fra dig og de andre. Først senere i forløbet bliver det dig der kan læne dig mere tilbage mens jeg trækker læsset.

Her er videoen. Bær over med den – det er min første screencast.

Post from: The Ant Philosophy

Videoopfølgning på Anders’ Case 2009

Min case 2009 starter i dag, og jeg glæder mig meget til komme ud over stepperne!

Anders’ Case 2009 handler om Affiliate Optimering

Min case handler om optimering af affiliate indtjeningen på et sitet proteinpulver.org. Altså vil jeg og min partner, Lasse Kjær, gerne hjælpe nogle virksomheder med at sælge mere proteinpulver til de besøgende.

Vores mål

Vi skal have lavet sitet om, så det virker bedre. Dvs: Det skal være oplysende og nyttigt for folk som skal vælge proteinpulver, og det skal sælge mere proteinpulver til de besøgende end det gør i dag. Sitet er helt nyt og helt uoptimeret, og din opgave er at hjælpe til med ideer, kritik og gode råd, hvis du har noget af den slags, og ellers er du velkommen til bare at læse med for at blive klogere af processen.

Forhistorien

Lasse Kjer og jeg ejer sammen sitet, fitness-blog.dk, hvor Lasse er skribent og redaktør, og jeg tager mig af at være webmaster og seo. Sitet er fra september 2007 og som du kan se her er det stille og roligt gået fremad med trafikken siden da. Vi har nu ca. 35.000 sidevisninger om måneden i følge Analytics. Bloggen er en super god ressource til alt omkring vægttræning og det der ligger op ad, og læserne kan lide den.

Fra starten var det et mål for os at det fede site som vi byggede skulle indtjene penge for os, og derfor lavede vi en række artikler, som var mere produktrettede end fx artikler om træningsprogrammer. Artiklerne var oplysende guides til ting som proteinpulver, træningsudstyr osv, som vores læsere kunne tænkes at få brug for at skulle købe. Disse artikler havde affiliate links i sig helt åbent og ærligt (præcis som du ser det på proteinpulver.org i dens nuværende udgave).

Indtjeningen blev bare aldrig ret stor for de her artikler med affiliate links. Vi fik ret gode placeringer i Google og masser af relevant trafik, men ikke nok endte som købere via vores links.

Ny strategi, tænkte vi så. Vi valgte at skille tingene ad, så bloggen var til artikler og en række nichesites var til produktguides med affiliate links. På den måde ville vi opnå:

• Bedre fokus på affiliate delen, da disse sites ville være selvstændige enheder og ikke en del af bloggen.
• Muligvis endnu bedre søgeresultatplaceringer i Google ved at lægge de enkelte niche sites på søgeordsdomæner, som fx proteinpulver.org og træningsudstyr.org
• Bedre muligheder for at udleje reklameplads, udleje hele sites eller sælge sites fra på et tidspunkt. Købere kan købe de nicher de arbejder i – behøver ikke at købe alt det andet med.

De nye nichesites gik i luften i de sidste dage af februar, og kun hurtigt flot fra start i Google takket være 301 redirects artiklernes tidligere adresser på fitness-blog.

Statistik

Denne case er velsignet af trafik fra starten, så vi kan med det samme se hvad vores ændringer giver i resultaterne. I marts måned (undtagen den sidste dag, i morgen) fik proteinpulver.org 950 visits og 1484 pageviews i følge Google Analytics.

Jeg kan ikke give dig tallene for hvor meget proteinpulver der blev solgt for det ender i pulje med alt det andet fra de andre nichesites, og jeg kan ikke selv få tallene ud af vores leverandører.
Samlet set (altså for alle nichesites) ender vi marts på sølle 3.000 kroner, som Lasse og jeg skal deles om, betale skat af osv.

For at den her case skal virke, skal jeg have sat nogle bedre tal på, det ved jeg godt. Men hvordan gør jeg det lettest og uden for meget besvær og uden at besvære leverandørerne en masse?

Hvad med en måde at spore klik på de enkelte affiliate links via analytics fx – eller hvad gør jeg?

Betingelser

Jeg vil gerne have lov at understrege at alt hvad vi gør i forhold til disse sites bliver ting, som vi kan stå ved offentligt. Ikke nogen smarte tricks. Det skal være helt white hat og langtidsholdbart og med en risikoprofil som den på statsobligationer.

Hvad gør vi nu?

Jeg starter med et helt åbent spørgsmål:
Hvad synes du vi skal gøre ved proteinpulver.org for at opnå vores mål om bedre affiliate indtjening?

Der er frit valg på alle hylder, så skyd bare løs med dine ideer og forslag!

Om Anders: Jeg hedder Anders Saugstrup og arbejder til dagligt med WordPress som CMS og til blogs samt søgemaskineoptimering af begge dele. Du man læse mere om den slags på min hjemmeside.
Jeg har længe læst med her på antphilosophy.com og er helt tosset med den måde der deles ud af viden på og hvordan der udveksles ideer og debatteres. Derfor kunne jeg ikke ønske mig et bedre sted at gå hen med mit projekt. Jeg glæder mig voldsomt meget til at blive klogere på affiliate optimering gennem denne case og med din hjælp, og jeg håber at du vil hygge dig med at følge med i udviklingen og øse ud af din eventuelle viden på området.

Post from: The Ant Philosophy

Anders’ Case 2009 starter nu

Den korte forklaring er, at jeg ikke har holdt det fokus på opgaven som jeg havde i sinde at gøre. Der har været en masse ting som har været spændende undervejs og som har taget en masse af den tid som jeg ellers skulle have brugt på min case 2008. Desværre er det ikke noget jeg har været alene om, da det umiddelbart lyder til at alle de andre deltagere fra case 2008 også har haft få eller mange afstikkere undervejs i deres projekt.

En ting jeg dog har lært af hele denne opgave er, at de perioder hvor jeg er koncentreret og fokuseret, der kommer resultaterne også prompte og de perioder hvor jeg kun har lavet lidt (eller slet ingenting) der er de udeblevet.

På det sidste har jeg haft større fokus på siden og det kan også ses af de resultater du kan læse herunder.

Udviklingen i trafikken

Som du kan se på grafen herunder har trafikken taget et fornuftigt hop i den sidste uge i december. Dette skyldes blandt andet, at jeg valgte et nyt layout som var bedre optimeret, samt at jeg begyndte at skrive artikler og linkbuilde igen. Jeg har en forventning om at dette kommer til at fortsætte igennem januar også.

Stigningen i trafikken fra november er på pæne 28,2% eller et gennemsnit på 145 besøgende om dagen. Som du kan se på kurven så var der et voldsomt dyk i trafikken, men det er alene et udtryk for, at jeg glemte at smide Analytics på det nye design. Tallene er derfor reelt endnu højere og jeg er derfor ganske godt tilfreds med udviklingen.

Hvis jeg kan holde en stigning på 20% om måneden, så vil jeg nå de 1.000 daglige besøgende i november måned og det vil derfor have taget mig næsten to år i stedet for det ene år jeg havde forventet. Hvis det lykkes vil jeg stadig være ganske godt tilfreds.

Inden vi kommer til pengene, så vil jeg også benytte lejligheden til at vise hvordan trafikken har udviklet sig gennem hele året.

Der har været en jævn stigende tendens gennem hele året og på trods af at målet ikke er nået, så er det gået i den rigtige retning hele vejen og det har kun været tiden jeg har regnet forkert på

Placeringen på søgeord

I løbet af december har jeg været heldig at have en dobbelt listning på et af mine søgeord og det at have både 1. og 2. pladsen er naturligvis noget der har kunne ses på trafikken også. Listningen er dog ikke permanent og nogle dage har den været der og andre dage har den ikke. Så jeg arbejder videre på den og ser om ikke det er muligt at kunne få den til at blive der lidt mere fast.

Jeg har hele vejen igennem harf 6 søgeord som har været mit primære fokus. Jeg har ikke været lige aktiv med at få links til hver af de pågældende sider og resultaterne har derfor heller ikke været helt på højde med hvad jeg kunne have håbet på. Derfor vil det også været noget af det jeg kommer til at arbejde mere målrettet med i den kommende tid.

Indtægten med Adsense

Gennem de sidste par måneder er indtægten via Adsense faldet og det har frustreret mig meget, at jeg ikke kunne finde ud af hvad der er sket. Der er stadig ikke dukket nogen løsning op, men nu har jeg entreret med en dygtig Adsense ekspert som forhåbentligt kan hjælpe mig på vej. Jeg forventer ikke mirakler fra den ene dag til den anden, men hvis jeg kan forbedre min CTR og min CPM, så vil der være meget at hente.

Som du måske allerede har opdaget har Google nu gjort det meget nemt at sammenholde dine Adsense indtægter med din Google Analytics konto og i midten af december fik jeg det sat op. Ikke nok med at det fortæller alverden om hvad der sker, så giver det også en unik chance for at kunne optimere sine sider så der kommer flere penge i kassen. Derfor er jeg også meget optimistisk om at min Adsense indtægt kan forøges betydelig efter at den nu har set lidt sørgelige måneder.

Som du kan se på billedet er indtægten efter at jeg fik rettet tingene til begyndt at snige sig op omkring $10 om dagen. Det er stadig ikke en formue, men der er også rigeligt rum for forbedringer i både CTR og CPM. Det var blandt andet også derfor at jeg for nogle dage siden begyndte at tale om konceptet smart pricing som kan skade Adsense indtægten betydeligt hvis man bliver ramt af det.

Jeg tror ikke at det er det jeg er blevet udsat for, men jeg har lært meget om hvor vigtigt det er at optimere sine sider mod specifikke søgeord så man får vist nogle af de helt rigtige (og bedst betalende) reklamer.

Alt i alt nåede december op på $139 så det har ikke været min bedste måned, men det var en fremgang i forhold til november. Fortsætter stimen med ca. $10 om dagen, så kunne januar godt komme til at blive den bedste måned indtil nu.

Hvad skal der ske i 2009

Som du måske har gættet så fortsætter jeg med at arbejde videre på min side og ser om jeg kan nå målet på de 1.000 daglige besøgende og forhåbentligt en væsentligt forbedre indtægt også.

Jeg forventer ikke at komme til at rapportere omkring sitet hver måned, men hvis jeg finder på interessante tiltag som f.eks. flere ghost writers, automatiserede løsninger eller andre ting som jeg mener ville være værd for dig at læse, så kommer det selvfølgelig på bloggen.

Ellers vil jeg blot sige tak til dig for at have fulgt med i case 2008 og jeg håber at du har lært noget undervejs og at du har lyst til at følge med hvis jeg finder på noget lignende i fremtiden.

Mikael

Post from: The Ant Philosophy

Case 2008 afslutter året i fin stil

November har stået i alt andet end dette sites navn, så det er ikke den voldsomme udvikling der er sket. Men til trods for den manglende arbejdsindsats, så er trafikken alligevel steget med næsten 50% (foruden den trafik jeg ikke kan se i Analytics pga. de oversatte sider) og antallet af sidevisninger er steget med næsten 40%.

Lad os starte med trafik tallene

Som sagt er trafikken steget voldsomt og selvom jeg meget gerne ville give jer en forklaring på dette, så må jeg indrømme, at jeg ikke umiddelbart kan gennemskue hvor den kommer fra. Der er ikke nogle af sidens hoved keywords der er begyndt at performe bedre (de fleste er faktisk i nedgang), så mit gæt er at det må være mængden af long tail keywords der begynder at slå igennem. Dette baserer jeg udelukkende på udelukkelsesmetoden

Tallene for november så ud som følger:

Jeg har opgivet at finde ud af hvordan søgemaskinerne vælger at indexerer siderne, så kan kun konstatere, at der er fremgang over det meste af feltet, men at Google er faldet lidt tilbage.

En ting jeg ikke plejer at vise i denne opgørelse er hvor trafikken kommer fra. Ikke at det er specielt overraskende at det meste kommer fra søgemaskinerne (primært Google), men at det næststørste del kommer fra direkte trafik er mig en gåde. Via feedburner kan jeg se at der stort set ikke er nogle RSS subscribers og antallet af tilmeldte til nyhedsbrevet er også meget begrænset. Men ikke desto mindre er det jo rart med lidt direkte trafik.

Trafikken fra “referring sites” er primært fra Ezinearticles og diverse forum signaturer jeg har lagt rundt omkring, men som du kan se udgør det kun 4.66% af den samlede trafik.

Adsense svinger som vinden blæser

Det lader til at jeg bare ikke er særlig klog, for ikke nok med at jeg ikke forstår trafikken, så er Adsense også en kontinuerlig gåde for mig. Den øgede trafik skulle man tro ville give en stigning i indkomsten, men det modsatte har vist sig tilfældet. Jeg må jo desværre ikke vise dig de konkrete tal, men jeg kan vise dig de procentvise ændringer i forhold til sidste måned.

Page Imp: +21%

Clicks: -13%

CTR: -28%

eCPM: -47%

Earnings: -36%

Så alt i alt blev det til sølle $117, hvilket er det laveste siden juli måned. Det er selvfølgelig svært at hamle op med at eCPM falder til næsten det halve og om det er finanskrisen eller noget andet der spiller ind skal jeg ikke kunne sige. Så jeg vil blot glæde mig over at trafikken er stigende.

Hvad skal der så ske i december

Casen er nu gået ind i den sidste måned af forløbet og selvom det længe har været klart at jeg ikke kunne nå mit mål med 1.000 daglige besøgende, så er jeg alligevel godt tilfreds med vækstraterne i trafikken så sent i forløbet. At siden kan opleve stigninger på næsten 50% synes jeg viser, at det ikke er urealistisk at få besøgstallet væsentligt højere op.

En af opgaverne for december bliver at indgå nogle samarbejdsaftaler med andre sider i samme branche. Jeg kan ikke komme nærmere ind på hvad det handler om lige nu, men på sigt skulle det gerne give siden et endnu mere solidt fundament og eventuelt også nogle udvidelsesmuligheder.

Yderligere så vil jeg se om jeg ikke kan få nogle flere af de besøgende til at tilmelde sig nyhedsbrevet. Som det er lige nu er succesraten langt under 1% og det er naturligvis ikke godt nok. Jeg leder dog stadig efter et site i samme branche som har noget der er værd at kopiere. Hvis nogen af jer falder over noget der ser ud til at virke så giv mig lige et praj.

Det var vist det for denne gang og som altid er spørgsmål og kommentarer meget velkomne.

Post from: The Ant Philosophy

Case 2008 afslutter november

Let me start by giving you the stats for October 2008 so you can get an idea of what has happened.

Increase In Traffic for October

From the table below you can see that there has been an increase in traffic of about 19% whereas the increase in page views has been only 8%. This means that people are actually seeing fewer pages that they did in September.

As for indexed pages in Google and Yahoo there has been a significant increase in number of indexed pages which is a result of the translation plugin that I’m using. The increased traffic that comes from these translated pages are not shown in Google Analytics as the translator caches the pages after translation but leaves out the GA code in the cached version (don’t ask me why that is).

Also an Increase in Income from Adsense

I’m glad to say that there has been an increase in the Adsense income this month where September took a dive. The total income from Adsense is $181 which is a 33% increase from last month’s $136.

I’m still not happy with the CTR but I refrain from adding more Adsense boxes at the moment.

What is Currently Going On

I’ve been testing out a few affiliate products but I haven’t had any luck finding a product that would convert. I expect to be testing a few more products to see whether that I can create some sales.

The process of the ebook I want to create is still ongoing and currently we’re testing some banners to see what will get people to click them and then leave a question about pet insurance. Once I have enough questions I’ll compile them into an ebook that I can hopefully sell. At the rate that questions are currently coming in I don’t expect the book to be written in 2008.

In The Next Two Months

I am planning to keep doing my article marketing of the site and luckily I have a lot of articles that I haven’t had time to use. All of these were written last month by a ghostwriter so they are paid for. As for articles on the site I expect to cut down on the posting frequency but instead write the articles myself to make sure that the quality and the topics will draw some high paying Adsense ads.

As you might have noticed this posts is far shorter than the previous ones that I have written so if you feel that there is something that I have left out please let me know in the comments.

Take care,
Mikael

Post from: The Ant Philosophy

Case 2008 ““ The End Is Near

I just have to many other plans, selling WH is not interesting enough anymore, and it sells in small number by itself. I’m satisfied with getting it as passive income, and I reached my goal of selling 200 ebooks. Thats right, it has sold over 200 copies.

The selling sum up

The selling started out pretty good in 2008 with an extraordinary February month of 40 sales of copy. Then it went down to selling around 20 in average over the next month, with August peeking on 25.

Summed up with the 6 sales in October until now brings the sale up to 201 ebooks.

Compared to the first graph I made, it looks like I went over my expectations.

Optimize your selling page

It can really help to optimize your selling page, which I think is the main reason for selling more copies in the last couple of month. Back in June, I tried writing a lot more text to the front page, and summing up what people saves by reading my ebook. I wrote a lot more references from readers of the book, which also gives a trustworthy picture of the ebook.

The stats from the webshop

The webpage did not receive any more visitors during the last three month, than the earlier three month, so I guess it has to do with some sort of optimization, or just plain luck.

July, August and September stats

Unique visitors = 3.045
Page views = 7.275
Search engines = 1.679
Amino.dk = 487
Conversion rate (63 copies sold)
63 copies * 100% / 3.045 visitors = 2% conversion rate

I don’t think my conversion rate is too bad; it could be better, but reading around the internet, that is in the normal range for ebooks.

The small success, or not

I used the affiliate program Partnerads, which resulted in 69 partners, that are trying to sell Webshop Hvordan. That is pretty good, I guess, but the results are missing. It has drawn 657 clicks to my website, but only resulted in 7 sales combined. That is not a success.

Maybe I could have made the program better, or some prettier banners, but all in all those people on Partnerads are not serious enough. Those people making a sales, where those who wrote an article about the ebook.

Preview in a light version

One of the things that was a success, has been the light version of WH. The result has been with over 400 people subscribed to my email list, and probably helped me sell around 25% of all the copies sold.

So one thing you can’t miss out on is creating a free version and letting people get it for your email. The Aweber autoresponder helped me automate the process of following up with people after a couple of days.

Conclusion

Selling over 200 ebooks is in my opinion pretty good. Could I have sold more copies, of course I could. My marketing has not been perfect at all, which is mainly because of engagement and time. I started to focus on another project of mine, together with my WordPress blog design company taking off to another level.

All in all I’m satisfied with the result, and now I have some passive income stream, that creates somewhat between 600$ – 1000$ a month (minus taxes). The next ebook is also coming out very soon, and that is going to rock the online marketing business.

This will probably be the last post in my series of case 2008 – Webshop Hvordan. I will return in 2009 with another project to try and keep my focus on.

Post from: The Ant Philosophy

Case 2008 ““ The goal is achieved

Kontera has been cancelled

Last month was my best month with Kontera ads. They brought in about $30 for about 3,700 pageviews. That is less than 1 cent per pageview. I normally believe that every little things helps but after doing the redesign I found that the many double-underlined Kontera links look spammy and most of them weren’t even related to the topic the site was covering. So I’ve decided to remove those links and I’ll just have to find that income in another way.

Adsense took a dive

Now unfortunately I can’t share all the stats with you due to Google’s TOS but it has, without any doubt, not been beneficial to the CTR that I changed the design and started adding ads to the sidebar.

If you remember last months update I had an Adsense income of $165. That was due to getting about 7 clicks per day in average with an average earning of a little over $5.3 per day.

Since I am now taking some of the visitor’s attention away to go look at the 125×125 ads the daily average income has fallen to $4.5 per day. This may not sound like that much but when I’ll show you the increase in traffic you see that (if you look solely on traffic) there should have been an increase in income and not a decline.

But as I said earlier a drop was to be expected when you make changes like this. When I’ve had the ads up for the next month or so, I’ll evaluate the stats and see whether it was a good decision or not.

Since I’ll still be working on attracting more traffic the jump in Adsense will just be bigger as soon as the ads are removed (I expect). When you are testing things some of them will work and some won’t. It might cost you a little in lost income but if you don’t test you won’t get the possible increase in income either.

Luckily there has been an increase in traffic

Even though Google updated the pagerank last weekend the site still has a pagerank of 2. I am actually quite pleased with that because I’ve seen several of my other sites decrease in PR and only a few increase. So keeping the status quo is great.

For most of September the Alexa pagerank has been at about 450k but over the last few days it dropped to 530k, which is almost the level of June. Now I don’t really care about the Alexa ranking but I track it just in case.

The increase in visitors has been about 13% but that is actually a low figure as September only has 30 days where August has 31 days.

Personally I think that the next thing is due to removing the Kontera ads as well as changing the design. The increase in pageviews has increase by almost 35% which is a huge increase compare to the smaller increase in visitors.

Since I changed a lot of things on the site simultaneously it is hard to what exactly created that increase but hopefully it stay when I look back on October in a months time.

Here is how to stats look in a table:

I won’t go too much into the number of indexed pages but merely point out that there has been an increase in indexed pages in Google of 100%. I’m not sure whether this is due to the additional content, the translated pages or a combination. Let’s just hope it sticks.

Ranking is an important part

Last month I decided to track and share a few more keyword phrases that I would be targeting and luckily I can now say that there has been an improvement in every single one of them. I track about 50 keywords phrases every week and most of these increases has happened within the last week.

I’ve added the main keyword phrase also (pet insurance) to see how I’m ranking on that. I’ll be the ultimate goal to have my site listed in the top 3 for the term “pet insurance”. Currently I’m at page 12.

To be quite honest I haven’t done as much promotional linkbuilding as I could have (and should have) and I believe that the increase in ranking in mainly due to a change in the sites internal linking structure. And as the site grows I expect this “power” to increase even further.

I have however started spending more time on getting external links so I expect to see an increase on most of the phrases (except those where I’m ranked second). Only time will tell. It doesn’t seem like my competitors are doing much work on there sites though.

What will happen in October?

Beside what I have already mentioned about article marketing and testing ads, I’ve begun the process of my product creation. The goal is the create an ebook that I can sell for somewhere between $37 – $67 (I’ll need to test that as well). Currently the site has about 600 pageviews of the front page and if I could just get a conversion rate of 1%, that would be about 6 sales and an income of somewhere between $222 – $402 and the potential will of course be even higher (more traffic / better conversion).

If you have any questions or there is something that you feel I haven’t covered in depth, then please let me know in the comments.

Take care,
Mikael

Post from: The Ant Philosophy

And now for the stats

When I wrote my post last month I had a plan of spending more time on getting links to the site and less on the actual writing part. As you might have guessed this didn’t go as planned due to the problems with the writers.

I did spend some time promoting the site through article marketing and I’ve also started using the free sites like Squidoo to gain extra traffic and incoming links. I haven’t seen any effect of this yet but I will also have to admit that I haven’t spent as much time learning how to use Squidoo as I could have.

When I get to the part where I’ll go through my stats and show you where my different target keywords are ranked you’ll see what the benefit has been from the work I’ve done.

Using free translation

I believe that it was two months ago that I mentioned something about a plug-in that I paid for that could “easily” translate and cache all of my pages and thereby increase the number of languages and pages that would be able to bring in visitors.

After a long back and forth conversation with the developers of the product I finally gave up and switched to a free translator plug-in that works like a charm. The plug-in can use different translation engines but I prefer to use the one that Google provides.

The best thing would have been that the tool automatically translated the pages one by one but that is not the case. The translation will only happen when people click the individual flags. So this is one of the daily (brain dead) tasks that I do when I have some spare time or I’m talking on the phone.

Since the tool translates into about 23 different languages it takes a while to go through every post as there is currently posted about 100 posts and I’m adding a new post every second day.

I still have to find out how these pages are going to rank in the search engines but I’ve seen (from one of my other sites) that they are actually performing rather well when taking into account that this is machine translation and no link building has been done.

Hopefully the traffic will increase from this over the next couple of months but only time will tell. Maybe Google will put the pages in the supplemental index. I hope to be able to provide you with more in depth information in about one month.

Starting to implement affiliate deals

Since I changed the design to something that could hold 125×125 ads I had to give it a try (or was it the other way around?). Think about it”¦ if you make just a few sales per month you could easily add several hundred dollars to your monthly income. Wouldn’t that be sweet?

In order to find out whether these ads are actually performing or not you must remember to track what is happening. How many people are clicking the ads and once they have clicked are they buying?

Let’s say that you have 10,000 visitors that (supposedly) have seen the ad but none of them have clicked. This means that you should test something else. Maybe you’ll need an ad for a different product, maybe you’ll need to add some movement to it or maybe the ad is simply to small to get noticed.

Currently I am running 4 ads of 125x125pixel as well as a large and very noticeable ad. I have an idea that the ads might be taking the focus off my Adsense ads but I need some more time to test.

If the ad isn’t producing any sales there is no need for it to stay on the site. If, on the other hand, the ad is producing more that I can make from Adsense then it will of cause stay. At the time of writing the affiliate deals haven’t produced any sales.

Creating your own product

I’m in the middle of the process of having my own product created. This is a product that will need to have a lot of work put into it and I will be working with some professional copywriters to make sure that the traffic will convert.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about this product yet but I hope to be able to share some more information in one or two months.

Before the final part

Now all that is left if the final breakdown of how petinsurancepro has performed in the month of September in both financial, traffic and ranking measurements. I’m saving these information for the last part of this 3-step post so be sure to check it out (I expect to add it soon).

Take care,
Mikael

Post from: The Ant Philosophy

So what about new things?

Because of the many things that I would like to share with you in this months “issue” of Case 2008 stats, I’ve decided to split the post into smaller posts. I don’t know whether I am the only one but I can sometimes get a little stressed when I see these really long posts in my RSS reader but I only have a few minutes to spare. More that often I find myself clicking “read” without having done so simply to avoid stressing over wanting to read it but not having the time to do so.

So in this post I’m going to cover the following topics that have changed in September for the Case 2008 website:

• Redesigning the website
• Finding and losing ghost writers

A redesign was implemented

I felt that the previous design was limiting the opportunities for the site. Now only was it hard for the readers to find the RSS button to subscribe but the site also lacked a way for me to start using 125×125 ads to see whether I was able to make some addition income through affiliate sales.

The new design is far from finished but here is what it looked like before:

and how it looks now:

I’ve used a standard design and changed it a little bit. There is plenty of room for improvement but I just haven’t gotten around to doing that yet.

I think a logo would give the site a more professional look and a “subscribe to email” newsletter (opt-in form) is badly needed. Right now I am leaving visitors “on the table” and in the end that means I’m leaving money on the table. If you have a website but are not capturing email addresses you should start NOW. An email list is a great way to drive both traffic and sales to your site.

I had a writer

First I thought I had a writer and then he bailed on me because he couldn’t make ends meet. He had to go back to his job in order to pay the bills. So for the first 7-10 days I spend time looking for a writer that would not only be able to write the articles I needed but who could also do the actual posting directly to the blog.

If you’re used to blogging and using WordPress then this might seem like a no-brainer, but what I found was that most of these freelance ghostwriters had now clue whatsoever about how to post on a WordPress blog.

Secondly I have had it with ghostwriters from India or any other country where they have a hard time speaking and writing English. That also meant that I narrowed down the field of people that I could choose from because the price per article still had to be reasonable (to me).

I found a great writer and lost her temporarily

After communicating with a fair bunch of people I finally found someone that sounded like she knew what she was doing. She didn’t know about WordPress but I figured that I could easily teach her what she needed to know.

This would also give me the benefit of having to write an easy-to-follow guide that I could reuse if I were to launch other sites in the future. An after a few emails back and forth I now have a great guide that any future writers can use.

She began posting and I had asked her to post one article per day. She could write them all at once and the pre-schedule them if she wanted to. I gave her a list of keyword as inspiration and she started typing.

After correcting a few layout challenges everything seem to be moving along great. I had a lot more free time because I didn’t have to post but even more importantly I didn’t have to spend time thinking of it. I knew that she were posting daily so I could spend time on other things like building links as well as grow the business as I wanted.

Then it happened. I received an email that she would no longer post because it was taking up to much of her time. I was a bit amazed since she had only been writing for 12 days so I had to ask her what was up (at first I was angry but luckily I waited a day to respond so I could calm down).

It turned out that she had been diagnosed with a disease (I didn’t quite understand what it was) and that she had to focus on that for the time being. She was however glad that I had responded the way I did (phew) and told me that she would be glad to come back and write at a later stage.

So now I am back to ordering chunks of articles and posting them myself. An advice I would like to share with you is to always have some articles lying around for a situation like this. I didn’t have that so I had to wait a about 5 days before I was able to put new content on the site (I didn’t want to write it myself).

The good thing about this “unfortunate incident” is that I have now found another writer that is almost quite as good but for half the price. This fits great into my article marketing strategy that I’ll tell you about in another post.

Damn”¦

I wasn’t really planning on writing this much about these two topics as I have several other topics that I would like to share with you. But I’ll give them to you in my following posts so you’re not going to drown in text. So until next time (which will probably be later today).

Take care,
Mikael

Post from: The Ant Philosophy

What happened in September?