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What sort of initial investment did you make?

by lukedidit
9 replies
I am kind of at a crossroads as to what to do.

I now have 3 main sites launched and 2 others on the back burner. One is adsense based, two are Amazon affiliate based. Each one does not have that great a competition and the keywords will pull in a decent amount of search each month (based on 'exact' match and local numbers) when I am up in ranks.

I know article submissions, blog comments, forum sigs and web 2.0 , social media as means for improving SERPS, but realistically to get a decent front page ranking I think I need homepage contextual backlinks and the only way to get these is with cold hard cash.

One I am looking at is build my rank, a very good clean means of getting quality ranks, but here is the thing:

So far my sites have not made to much money at all (due to ranking) and being new (each one is a few days over one month old) I don't expect that to be the case when they are up there (but I won't really know until then).

So with that in mind and with me being right on the edge of subscribing to BMR, I am now questioning - Is it daft to start paying out nearly $60 a month when I don't have any ROI yet?
#initial #investment #make #sort
  • Profile picture of the author SamuelUherek
    Hey Luke,

    I wouldn't invest in BMR. I personally don't like the service and didn't see big results with it either. I would suggest you two things.

    If you want to invest in some service that would be very good - I mean contextual backlinks. I would go for Traffic Kaboom. This is an amazing service and I've had very good results with them. They really care about the content they publish and go through every single article to see if the grammar is good and it's never been used before in the network. They have also some high PR domains in the network. It's $147/3 months, but worth it.

    The second option is to use web 2.0 sites and publish unique content there. Then blast those articles with many backlinks. This would build higher PR for the articles and for your website too. I would never build crappy links to my money site, especially not in this environment, but it doesn't hurt your articles on web 2.0 sites.

    In my opinion, BMR is not the right service. Hope it helps
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  • Profile picture of the author twotoofs
    I haven't had any success with BMR either. I could raise a site a couple positions with an article posted to 10 of the higher quality article directories but dozens of BMR posts wouldn't move it. There may be something to be gained with hundreds of BMR posts but this will, most likely, cost you more money. I have seen some limited success with UAW and 2.0 links blasted with social bookmarks and fiverr gigs.
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  • Profile picture of the author shawoon98
    Originally Posted by lukedidit View Post

    One I am looking at is build my rank, a very good clean means of getting quality ranks, but here is the thing:

    So far my sites have not made to much money at all (due to ranking)
    Rank and Ranking are two different thing. If your sites are not making money due to ranking (as you think), how could rank building help you? Or, do you have any specific reason for building rank?
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    • Profile picture of the author aaaa33030
      Originally Posted by shawoon98 View Post

      Rank and Ranking are two different thing. If your sites are not making money due to ranking (as you think), how could rank building help you? Or, do you have any specific reason for building rank?

      I would think that rank building would raise the page rank number which would in turn raise the amount of visitors coming from the search engines which possibly might mean more sales
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by lukedidit View Post

    Is it daft to start paying out nearly $60 a month when I don't have any ROI yet?
    On anything to do with SEO ... yes, in my opinion, it's about as daft as you can get.

    The more you spend on SEO, in the early stages, the more you become committed (even if this isn't your initial intention) to a business model which depends on Google for its primary traffic. And that immediately stacks the deck really firmly against you (and even makes it hard for you to learn anything else). As so many Warriors found out during 2011 - some to their great cost - a business model that depends on Google for its primary traffic can only ever be one algorithm-change away from a potential disaster.

    Originally Posted by lukedidit View Post

    What sort of initial investment did you make?
    About $50/$60, as I remember.

    I had no idea what I was doing, and ended up spending another $100 or so a few months later.

    I probably didn't have to spend most of that money, really ... but at the start one has no judgement, no experience, and often no information either, because a lot of what one thinks is "information" actually turns out not to be.

    In general, it's a mistake to spend money when you're not sure what you're doing. And it isn't necessary at all, for most people. You need hosting and a domain-name or two. This is typically all.

    You'll need an autoresponder, too, probably - and not a free one! - but those cost very little and both the two "main" ones give you something very close to a "free start" anyway, each in its own way.
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    • Profile picture of the author harrydog
      Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

      On anything to do with SEO ... yes, in my opinion, it's about as daft as you can get.

      The more you spend on SEO, in the early stages, the more you become committed (even if this isn't your initial intention) to a business model which depends on Google for its primary traffic. And that immediately stacks the deck really firmly against you (and even makes it hard for you to learn anything else). As so many Warriors found out during 2011 - some to their great cost - a business model that depends on Google for its primary traffic can only ever be one algorithm-change away from a potential disaster.



      About $50/$60, as I remember.

      I had no idea what I was doing, and ended up spending another $100 or so a few months later.

      I probably didn't have to spend most of that money, really ... but at the start one has no judgement, no experience, and often no information either, because a lot of what one thinks is "information" actually turns out not to be.

      In general, it's a mistake to spend money when you're not sure what you're doing. And it isn't necessary at all, for most people. You need hosting and a domain-name or two. This is typically all.

      You'll need an autoresponder, too, probably - and not a free one! - but those cost very little and both the two "main" ones give you something very close to a "free start" anyway, each in its own way.
      Alexa
      I understand your point about not relying on google and not concentrating on SEO but what methods would you then propose to the OP.
      Where would you suggest he focus his efforts on driving the traffic from.
      having hosting and a domain is obviously mandatory to having a website in the first place and having a good quality autoresponder is good advice
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        Originally Posted by harrydog View Post

        Alexa
        I understand your point about not relying on google and not concentrating on SEO but what methods would you then propose to the OP.
        Where would you suggest he focus his efforts on driving the traffic from.
        having hosting and a domain is obviously mandatory to having a website in the first place and having a good quality autoresponder is good advice
        Mark, SEO is not a sure thing and often takes significant time. If I had to start over, I would not focus on 'driving' traffic. I'd spend my time looking for ways to 'borrow' it.

        Article (and content in general) syndication is one way to do that.

        Swapping an endorsement, solo ad or link on a popular site for ad space on a list's thank you page could be another.

        Without writing a book in a forum post, the idea is to look for ways to create win/win deals with people who already have significant targeted traffic while building one's own traffic streams.

        If I had any kind of regular ad budget, I'd look to the Google content network and use site- and even page-targeting to put my offer (my list-builder incentive) in front of extremely targeted traffic. I'd look for similar opportunities on places like Facebook or other sites that let you pick a target with a rifle site as opposed to a shotgun.
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        • Profile picture of the author timtheman
          Personally, I try to invest as little money as possible in my sites. I'd rather spend hours writing articles and submitting them, then paying someone to do. That way, I have sites that are instantly profitable. And once they start making money, I will then reinvest that money into the website by paying someone to write article, etc.

          But that's just me...
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  • Profile picture of the author Anthony Flatt
    I would say NO and wait till you have earned some money out of these sites to
    reinvest in rank building.

    Maybe get some opt-ins going and build a list of subscribers and send them some hand picked WSO offers. It might not be a bunch of money but a few hundred bucks a month would help.
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