Starting to get dejected

12 replies
Hi there, this is going to be a fairly lengthy post because I've tried a lot of things, and looked at various strategies for getting traffic to my website.

I know a lot of you are recommending article marketing as a way of attracting traffic to your website. I went ahead and created a Squidoo lens which has been active for about four weeks. I tagged it heavily with my niche keywords and have yet to receive any visitors to it. I have pinged it with pingomatic and added it to various bookmarking websites.

One of my concerns, has been trying to avoid what I consider to be spammy looking articles and lenses.

At this point I'm not sure that I want to write anymore articles until I can get a better idea of what works, and what stays within the boundaries of proper netiquette. Part of me (the greedy part) thinks "rules be damned, I want to get paid!".

I've recently tried the google hot trends autoblog and post to Twitter, and my website just looks like a cheap spam site. Does this actually work?
I know some people are saying they have thousands of hits, I have yet to see it for myself I have got some hits but nowhere in the thousands.

I also have concerns, that my website will be de-indexed by Google for scraping content that isn't mine.

I also played around with pay per click, I had a $100 free credit from Yahoo and ran ads for a few affiliate programs. I think I spent about $60 and made about $26. At that point I turned off the Yahoo search marketing until I could better understand how to best capitalize on it.

There were a few programs I was going to push, one of was a marketing plan from a member of another forum, I was very impressed with her layout of her website, combined with the free information that she was willing to give on her website, however her landing page has a nice little opt in pop up I don't think is fair considering I'm doing all the work driving traffic to her website.

I'm also slightly put off by the amount of people who say they make so much money doing affiliate marketing, whereas it seems their main business is actually selling their "formula for success". I know some of you do have some marketing plans that are probably aboveboard, the main problem i'm finding is separating the wheat from the chaff so to speak. For a lot of pitches I see for making money on the Internet, i'm constantly reminded of the Don Lapre ads that used to run on television. "You can make THOUSANDS of dollars placing tiny classified ads!!"

I'm sorry if this is a fairly negative post it in affiliate marketing forum, I'm very enthusiastic about affiliate marketing, for all intents and purposes you guys are my peer group and I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

I am not giving up just yet, I just want to make sure that my business model is not dependent upon an article directories anti-spam policies. I would hate to spend copious amounts of time writing articles only to have them axed as new anti-spam policies kick in.
#dejected #starting
  • Profile picture of the author Evita
    So, Kuurgen, how long have you been doing internet marketing?

    Evita
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    • Profile picture of the author steveweber
      What niche are you in?

      Forget PPC for now...it will just prove to be a money pit for your at this point.

      "Scraping Content?" ...bad bad idea. You are not on the right track at all with that.

      You need to learn how to identify a good niche, properly research its keywords, understand basic SEO, and then take massive action writing ORIGINAL site and article content.
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  • Profile picture of the author Fernando Veloso
    Steve is right: the time you invest in IM, better do it the right way.
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    People make good money selling to the rich. But the rich got rich selling to the masses.
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  • Profile picture of the author edward_james
    my advice is keep asking questions like you are - and never give up - most business owners fail multiple times before they are successful - I know I did
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  • Profile picture of the author Shane Hale
    PPC is the worst to start out with in the beginning. I suggest use Adwords as a market litmus test look at their landing pages and get some ideas.

    They are the ones paying top dollar. copy the ads come back a week or 2 later see which ones exist. Then start a landing page around the same concept don't copy them but get a decent idea because that is what converts well in that niche.

    They have done all the testing for you. Then start out with cheaper promotion like article/bum marketing on similar keywords in that niche.

    Build a Silo structure to promote the articles and landing page. See what converts then use the organic traffic to keep ramping up the campaign. take some money run a ppc ad at that point making sure you have a decent quality score. But start with Yahoo or Microsoft 1st.

    Then move it to Google. Also, start with the content network if you need to. Do some advertising deals directly with high traffic blogs or forums in your niche.

    Ad a press release or 2 a day.

    This should help if you don't get one sale find another niche or check you adcopy this niche could be dry or landing page is bad.

    Hope this helps
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  • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
    Originally Posted by kuurgen View Post

    For a lot of pitches I see for making money on the Internet, i'm constantly reminded of the Don Lapre ads that used to run on television. "You can make THOUSANDS of dollars placing tiny classified ads!!"
    And you can. What do you think Google AdWords is? It's placing tiny classified ads. Some people are, indeed, making thousands daily by doing exactly that.

    Just because the guy sounds like a con man doesn't mean he is. I've spent a few hundred bucks on Don's courses, myself, and I have never regretted it.
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    "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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  • Profile picture of the author angela99
    Kurgen, from your post you seem discouraged, and I'm sorry. I know that when you're starting out, it's easy to feel that people are blatantly telling lies, and that all the "make money online" pitches are just hype.

    I assure you that while some pitches are indeed hype, most are not. For anyone new to IM however, it's easy to miss the basics -- and it's the basics which ensure that you get paid.

    I may be wrong, since I don't know you, but judging from your post, you're putting the cart (getting paid) before the horse (offering something valuable that gets people reaching for their credit card.)

    Re traffic, here's what's important: you must have something on your site that's worth the visit. Do you have that? Do you have great, wonderful content that keeps people on your site for ten minutes, or even an hour? Do people link to your content?

    If you're selling affiliate products, are you writing in-depth reviews, which cover all the benefits and some of the pitfalls of the products you're promoting? Are you creating bonuses to give to people who sign up with your affiliate link? Have you created a mailing list in your niche, and do you serve your list excellent content?

    Big tip: TRAFFIC COMES LAST.

    Traffic is always the last thing you worry about. Content comes first, always. I have one site which gets around five visitors a day. However, that site sells, even with minimal traffic. Why? because of the content.

    To be honest, I never worry about traffic. A couple of years ago I created a blog as an experiment. I just added content for a month. I ignored promotion completely. At the end of the month, the blog was getting 50 uniques a day. It was indexed in Google, and all the traffic was search engine traffic.

    If you want to make money with IM, focus on content. Create original content, that adds value, and you WILL make sales. Once you've got the content, you can promote it -- but creating content should always come before promotion.

    I wish you much success. There's an enormous amount of info here which will help you. Not to mention fantastic people to guide you, so you're never alone.
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    • Profile picture of the author kuurgen
      Originally Posted by Evita View Post

      So, Kuurgen, how long have you been doing internet marketing?

      Evita
      Hi Evita, I'm just a newbie at this, I would say I've been doing this seriously for the past 3 months.


      Originally Posted by CDarklock View Post

      And you can. What do you think Google AdWords is? It's placing tiny classified ads. Some people are, indeed, making thousands daily by doing exactly that.

      Just because the guy sounds like a con man doesn't mean he is. I've spent a few hundred bucks on Don's courses, myself, and I have never regretted it.
      Point taken and noted!

      Originally Posted by angela99 View Post

      Kurgen, from your post you seem discouraged, and I'm sorry. I know that when you're starting out, it's easy to feel that people are blatantly telling lies, and that all the "make money online" pitches are just hype.

      I assure you that while some pitches are indeed hype, most are not. For anyone new to IM however, it's easy to miss the basics -- and it's the basics which ensure that you get paid.
      Thank you for your kind and inspiring words, it means a lot to me that you folks have taken the time to respond to me regarding this, I just needed a bit of a pick me up and a gentle push in the right direction to keep going.

      The one thing I wanted some clarification on, was content. I have the ability to generate tons of general content for my websites, should all my content be keyword based and aim at selling or should there also be general content that attracts visitors to my websites in general?

      My niche so far has been a marketing course and weight loss.

      I'm not sure if I'm choosing the right affiliate programs, so far it's been CB programs, not sure if CJ might be a better fit for me.

      As a newbie what be the best place to grab affiliate programs from?

      So your consensus is that I should stay away from autoblogging type things like feeding rss into wordpress?

      Thanks again for your replies!
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      • Profile picture of the author Jeremy Kelsall
        Probably the best advice that I can give you is to pick one thing and beat the crap out of it until it starts spitting money at you

        Everything works:

        Article Marketing
        Adsense
        Adwords
        Site Flipping
        Content Creation

        Every single strategy that you have every heard of WORKS, if the conditions are right. By conditions, I'm talking about making sure that you are following a plan of action.

        Figure out which method or model you are the most comfortable with and then start following people that put an emphasis on that particular business model. You don't need to spend any money, just follow what they do, read their posts, blogs, and other written material and you should get enough info to get you going. When you run into questions, ask here and more than likely there are several people in the know that would be willing to help you.
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      • Profile picture of the author timpears
        From one newbie to another, forget about what you have heard on auto blogging. You are highly unlikely to make any money with that, unless you get lucky for a short time.

        You need to find a niche that appeals to you. And as someone responded to me the other day, his passion is delivering a product to someone that is willing to pay for it. Not a direct quote, but as I believe he was alluding to, your passion is to make money.

        So without spending any money, use Google's key word tool and find a niche that appeals to you and has reasonably low competition. I have not figured out the answer to this next part, but you need a KW with traffic and the first page of Google for that word has an average PR of 3 to 4 or so. The amount of sites that are competing for that KW (which Google displays) needs to be modest. I have heard anything from 300K to single figure millions. Who knows?

        Make sure that your content has all the right key words in it, a domain that is key word rich, and title and meta tags similarly. You have to pay attention to the SEO of the site.

        After your site is all done, then work on getting back links. And there is no number of back links that can be too many as far as I can tell.

        With this you should be able to get organic search traffic. How you monetize it is your choice. My goal is to use Adsense. But with this plan, you are not spending any money on your traffic. Of course, time is money, so it doesn't come at no cost. I suck at writing articles, so I am going to outsource that for the content on my site(s), as well as the back links. The trick is to choose the niche and key words that will generate enough traffic and I can overcome the competition to do it. If you can figure that part out, I am all ears. I have some thoughts, but very little confidence to go along with those thoughts.

        Good luck. I hope that I have helped. This is from my reading and studying from my nine or ten months on this forum. My feeble attempts at putting it into practie so far have not been done very well. But I have progressed to the point of this plan, it didn't start out this way. I think I am finally on to something. We shall see.
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        Tim Pears

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  • Just keep refining. What everybody said about content is absolutely true. Offer good content, and it will get found. It goes like this:

    Good content --> good traffic --> good business

    You're still in the content phase. I would recommend against "autoblogging," but putting an rss aggregator showing titles only in your sidebar can help your SEO because it makes your content look like it's refreshing more often than it is.

    Once you get traffic, you'll be able to look at the key phrases and other sites that are bringing people. Tailor your ads and affiliate offerings around that information. If you have a lot of people looking for "easy weight loss," find products that fit.

    I'm still kind of a newb, but this is what's starting to work for me. It takes a long time. There's no "get rich quick" in this or any other real business.
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  • Profile picture of the author rondo
    "pick one thing and beat the crap out of it until it starts spitting money at you "

    Exactly, Jeremy.



    Andrew
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