Shocking, I made a sale!

[rob6188]

Haven't really done anything online in over a year. This weekend I decided I needed to get the ball rolling again. Put up a website, wrote two articles and submitted them to ezine and goarticles. Each article was a review of a laptop and a netbook. Put links back to my site in the author info. My site has links to the laptops/netbooks on buy.com (cj affiliate).

You can imagine my shock when I checked my stats yesterday and made a sale! $379 sale, made $11 commission.

Right now, my site has 2 articles, and 3 other pages with just rss feeds from buy.com. I can only imagine if I had been writing articles everyday for the past year instead of watching TV for hours on end.

Anyway, I'm not really a newbie, but I got excited and wanted to share with everyone how quickly I got a sale. Also, my ezine article appears on the first page of google for the model number of the laptop already. Old bum marketing technique still works.

[SiteFlipRemix]

That's awesome. I have also just recently decided to give affiliate marketing a good run, I am just building a foundation right now. It's great to see that it's possible to make sales quickly with affiliate marketing.

[mill123]

nice work mate. always good to see surprise sales!

[rob6188]

Originally Posted by TMG Enterprises

Was this a typo or is this actually the right amount for your commission? Only asking because if you can sell something with that bit of work you've done, you would make a killing with higher commission products.

Tina G

Yes, that's correct. Laptops (electronics) generally have very thin margins to begin with, so they pay very low commissions.

[rob6188]

I've never really been into collecting emails and upselling. I know many have great success with that formula. I'm thinking of setting up a user review type thing like cnet does since I have some php skills and can add it to my site. that way I can capture emails if the user chooses to give it. Maybe setup a capture page in that mix.

Anyway, I'm finally home now and wanted to elaborate a bit what led up to the sale. I have a pretty good grip on computers and electronics, so I started with that as an area of interest.

First I did a little research on google via google insights. I looked in the laptop/netbook keywords and found that netbooks have seen a large spike in searches the last 2 months. Also, when I look at all the local stores like best buy and such, they are popping up everywhere. Also, there was an article earlier this year in the mainstream news media about laptops have now outsold desktops. I now have 3 indicators that laptop/netbooks are gaining some serious momentum in the consumer market.

Then I remember the old bum marketing technique of using articles to get on the first page of google. So I skimmed the latest rss feeds from buy.com and picked two products - a laptop and a netbook. I picked the laptop with the premise that I could sell it as "better than a netbook for the same price." I picked the netbook for being "better than all other current netbooks with the power of a laptop."

I used the model numbers and manufacturing name with the word "review" in front of them as the article title. hence the article title was "Review: Acme Netbook xyz-1234us1". I created my website with the reviews on them putting the same keywords in the filename, in the page title, h2 title, and sprinkled throughout the article itself. Basic SEO. I also added a simple tracker from addfreestats.com

I then setup my google adwords account using the model number as the keyword. However no love from google. Simply too poor a quality score to even show. Total waste of time and very disappointed.

I then submitted my articles to goarticles and ezinearticles. The next day I found google already index my article in goarticles. However, it didn't rank on the first couple of pages for the model number keyword. Sunday however, ezine finally posted my article and it was indexed the same day by google and ranking on the first page for the keyword phrase "review acme netbook xyr-1234us1".

Not sure where exactly the entry point of the buyer was, either google to ezine or ezine directly, but they read the article, went to my site from the author link, went to the same review on my site, then clicked on the "buy it now" link at the bottom of that page.

Pretty amazing the buyer went through several pages and clicks before even getting to the buy.com site where they had to go through even more pages and clicks before a final purchase.

of course, laptops are not a purchase on a whim product, so somehow I caught this buyer in their final stages of the purchasing decision. Just lucky I guess.

[freudianslip27]

Ezinearticles rules, there's no doubt about that.

You have a niche where people are willing to spend money. Use that to your advantage! Is there any way you could build a list so you could market to them repeatedly?

Matt

[RichardYoung]

awesome nice job on the sale man

[Dean Shainin]

Congratulations!

I think the keyword here is 'review' types of articles and sites like conduit work great because it seams more unbiased when in an article and or review type of site.

Cheers,
Dean

[tush]

Congrats. I know how the first sale feels. keep at it and make lots of money. But the truth is you worked hard... look at all the steps you went through...
Tush

[adorton]

Good job! Now keep it going and write some more articles and turn it in to 10 sales and then 100 and then...

[lacraiger]

congrats man. keep at it and do a follow up on the results.

[Trieu]

very nice work! perhaps you should try promoting a clickbank product, $11 from a high priced products seems very little

[Mr_Julian_S]

Congratulations...................

Its quiet good to know that you have earned a commission with 3 page site with 2 articles in it.

Continue with the good work and keep updating your site regularly

Regards

[Daveone]

Good job, man. Congratulations. I felt great when I made my first sale too. Keep writing articles and keep making more sales.

[Ivancho]

congratulations their, but a sale for $300 and only make $11 comission it sucks...

Why don't you try to sell digital items ?

Such as ebooks ...

[rcraig12]

congratulations

[rafaelapolinario]

Congratulations, man! Now you really should get your back working hard now. You can also try putting affiliates which has higher commission rates to increase your future earnings. Best of luck, man! Go! Go! Go!

Rafael

[Emmanuel Betinis]

Originally Posted by rob6188

I created my website with the reviews on them putting the same keywords in the filename, in the page title, h2 title, and sprinkled throughout the article itself. Basic SEO.

What about the <H1> tag?

[rob6188]

Originally Posted by anapest

What about the <H1> tag?

The only reason I don't use it is that I always felt the h1 tag is just too big. I was never really satisfied with how the paged looked with that huge title on top or wherever.

However, if there is some empirical evidence that h1 has a significant impact on seo, that would probably change my mind.

[P.Sharma]

Great now scale it up man

[Emmanuel Betinis]

Originally Posted by rob6188

The only reason I don't use it is that I always felt the h1 tag is just too big.

The <H1> tag can be resized just as easy as any other text on the page.

Originally Posted by rob6188

...if there is some empirical evidence that h1 has a significant impact on seo, that would probably change my mind.

Well, the first reason above should...but to elaborate even more, speaking from personal experience, I believe the best way to discover & create empirical evidence with SEO is to just try it yourself if you're ever in doubt of a certain tactic/method.

People can tell you "do this, don't do that - this will work, this will not work" but if you REALLY want to be sure, a great way to check this is to simply try it yourself and see.

With that being said, as far as the <H1> tag having a SIGNIFICANT impact on SEO is concerned, OFFpage optimization factors will always win over ONpage optimization factors in the long-run (Chapter 8 for proof). However, each and every ONpage factor you take advantage of that your competitors are NOT doing will be to your benefit. So, in some cases, using an <H1> tag CAN make the difference in being #1 or not being #1 for a certain keyphrase.