Spent $5000 on IM but Earned Nothing

How are you getting traffic? Just from SEO, or have you tried pay per click or articles?

How many visitors do you get per day?

Why do your posts not have a call to action? For example, you should end each post explaining why X Clickbank product or Amazon product is so awesome, and that they should check it out.

Also, break up your paragraphs a bit more. People don't like to read long paragraphs- they skim- especially online.

I'm not saying this site is gonna make you rich, but there are a few things you can do to improve it.

Stop spending money on SEO and products, and instead buy traffic or high quality articles.

Internet marketing isn't for everyone.

If you continue to do internet marketing, just know that if you keep doing the same things, you're going to get the same results.

You don't want to spend another $5000 doing the same things that don't work for you.

I had a quick look at your site, and it looks like it's missing a large amount of ways to make money! You need to add more affiliate links, persuade people to click on them and turn your traffic into money.

Damn $5000...that hurts, If you had spent the same
amount on paid traffic you would already have quit your day job...

But seriously dont give up, try to create a product about pregnancy
if it's your domain, and find partners who will bring you buyer leads and
from there you continue marketing them offers such as a membership site for
$19 per month where you show them what to do weeks after weeks and so on....

But seriously it's hard to hear to you spend $5k and you made only
$36 back...in my opinion you didnt follow a proven system long enough
to make it work for you...

Now you can go back search a job but in your mind it should be to
raise some cash to start doing it in an other way....

Good luck.

When you first start out in IM, don't outsource anything. Do it all yourself and learn the basics of the business.

Once you're comfortable with things, and know exactly what you need to succeed, then you can start to outsource things.

This isn't a business that you can just throw money at and expect results, it's a learning process.

More important than traffic is sales conversions.

It is foolish to keep throwing money at something that does not produce revenue...

And unfortunately, this is an all too common mistake.

Have you tried running paid traffic to an opt-in targeted around pregnant mothers? I would suggest doing that and providing them with useful information that you can reference to with your site, and also to mail offers to.

Remember that you can also create small Ebooks, guides, and supplements to sell yourself so that you retain the total profit. The site looks like a solid information site, however how's it ranking in the search engines? Are you paying people to post on pregnancy related forums to drive traffic to your site? Do you take time to interact with blogs and sites in your niche?

These are all things you can be doing that do not involve much money and will help produce a nice upside in due time.

When I heard that you have spend 5k in IM, I guess you have brought many high ticket IM products, 1st of all just stop buying and go back to the high ticket site to see what make you purchase them, learn the strategy in the sale page and apply to your site, this is the only way you can get back the value you have spend.

Only do the work that you familiar with and outsource the one you don't on fiverr

I know a friend use fiverr to do all seo task for him, he spend $75 in total for a site, and now he is getting approx $35 a month from adsense.

You only need $5 service to rank a website (for low competition keyword term), you can buy a fiverr gig for UAW or senuke, then you will be good already.

My approach is similar, but I use robot that I built to replace fiverr outsource. Either way will get result.

Hope this help

The pregnancy site is nice. I don't see any real attempt at monetization though. Great informational site, but not unlike other pregnancy sites. Has potential, but if you want the sale, you've got to ask for it. A banner ad here and there won't really cut it.

The site seems like you've got the basics of a great informational site there. If you now added a writer with current, interesting, up to date pregnancy articles and monetization, it might just make the difference. Add something to it that the other pregnancy sites don't have.

A huge piece of advice, though it seems small:

CHANGE THAT TITLE!

Oh my god, I didn't even want to click on it, it looks so plain, dull, robotic, boring! There's nothing in that title tag that screams "CLICK ME!" Simply put, it's over optimized for engines, under-optimized for users.

- the term "pregnancy guide" appears twice
- the term "pregnancy" appears thrice.

In the sea of search results, titles are the primary lure to get people to click on your links. Doesn't matter if you are in the top 3 position, if your title is boring, nobody's going to click.

This starts a chain of events:

Let's say you get to rank 1, people don't click on your website because your title sucks. Google sees other sites are getting more clicks. You fall in positioning. You see your lowered rank, and you think "Oh no, falling in the SERPS, better optimize more." You stuff more keywords, you add more content (even though your content was already fine!), Google starts to get suspicious, drops you even more into oblivion for OOP.

You see what caused the loss of balance in that exaggerated example? It doesn't matter what position you are, you gotta lure the user!

MAKE A BOLD STATEMENT IN YOUR TITLE!

Say stuff like
"The best Pregnancy Guide for every trimester!"
"Let me guide you through your pregnancy"
"Pregnancy made easy!? Check out this FREE guide!"

Seriously! They all contain Pregnancy and guide, and they all make bold statements that people would want to click on!

You've fallen this far, do something OUTRAGEOUS! You can't go any lower, right? You might experience some success!

Other than that, I really like the actual design and content of this site, the title was my only beef! Well done, and good luck

Check your PM box, sent you an even better gold nugget that would help you tremendously if you pull it off right

I've taken a quick look at your site: you have no content in 'Diets' and 'Complications' so the Search Engines are ignoring those pages. You do have content in 'books'. Your blog is still showing 'Hello World' and 'Ipso Lorem' - the SE's are ignoring that page so I suggest you delete that page until you can think of something to write about regularly.
Why bother with a forum anyway? If you do get any sign-ups you will have to watch this all day long. Delete it is my advice. I'm surprised your SEO people didn't point these out to you.

Hang on - I've just looked at your Home Page. And your keywords are : "home page". Who on earth will search Google for 'Home Page' in the hope that they will find out more about pregnancy? Your keywords for your 'pregnancy complications' page is "pregnancy complication" (without the 's')

This is utter crap. I suggest you demand your money back from your seo people.In fact tell us who they are so we can avoid them - please! Each page needs a main keyword and related keywords.

I agree with others who have commented: before you outsource, learn how to do it yourself. If you have no money left to invest then perhaps your best bet is to sell the site.

However, it's a nice site. It's well laid out. It's just not optimised for the relevant keywords and it needs a few more 'calls to purchase' and probably a lot more backlinks.

If you had $5,000 to throw at this and you've nothing left then, as I said earlier, try to sell it on Digital Point or other website auction site. Alternatively, spend more time on this forum - find someone you think you can trust - and pay them to help you.

I'm really sorry that you've had this experience of Internet Marketing but, because there is so much rubbish promoted as the best/latest/cheapest/most effective/quickest way to make money on the internet, I'm not really surprised.

On the other hand, lots of Warriors are making a lot of money with I.M. but we have probably all gone through the same process as you in one way or another, i.e. spent thousands of dollars before seeing the light!!

So. In my view you have a choice: try to sell the site (but you won't get $5,000 for it) or team up with a mentor from the forum (for which you will have to pay.)

Best Wishes

Joe

The affiliate marketing that you are doing in my opinion and own personal experience will bring you in very little money.

You have probabley heard this before but its something any information marketer should focus most of their efforts on and that's LIST BUILDING.

If you have spent $5,000 on IM stuff then the first thing you should of done was get a profesional and branded squeeze page built for the niche you are wanting to make money in as an affiliate.

I'm not talking about optimise press or anything like that either I mean you should try and stand out from the crowd and have a professional looking branded squeeze page with a FREE giveaway.

You could have someone design and code the site complete with autoresponder integration and write you a great guide along with a powerful autoresponder series.

Then all you need is traffic and my advice there is stick to one source such as adwords or my favourite FaceBook ads.

You should try to target different niches within your main niche as well.

What I mean by this is if your in the pregnancy niche then you could have different guides for each squeeze page such as "healthy eating while pregnant", "weight loss after pregnancy", "how to get pregnant" and so on.

Each squeeze page can be on the same domain name but all have a different autoresponder series promoting affiliate offers once people are on your list.

Then all you need to do is head over to FaceBook and concentrate on the best banner ads that get the most clicks, test different ones and then test how well your email series converts such as open rates, clicks and eventual sales.

Try different ClickBank products if they aren't convering brilliantly or tweak your subject lines to get more opens.

When you filter targeted traffic onto a squeeze page and that traffic joins your autoresponder then you will see sales I guarantee that.

After that like I said its all about testing campaigns and see what best converts visitors into leads and then onto buyers!

If you have the money then I would suggest doing it the way I have said above and to get started with the method I have explained will cost you no more than $600 to $1000, that's if you want the best site built that will convert visitors to leads, a professional small guide and autoresponder series written and an a decent sized ad budget that will get you results.

All the best,
Colin.

I'm sorry this isn't working out for you. You are obviously not doing something right because you should be making more money than that. I looked at your site and it doesn't scream "buy" to me - maybe you should do a little tweaking to it?

Stop buying stuff!! If you think getting a Job makes sense go for it. IM is a business no different than anything else, it takes a lot of dedicated focus and usually more work than a normal job. It's a turbulent time for SEO right now, thanks to google and them breaking everything but still ways to make money if you keep the focus. "the list" as someone mentioned seems to be most guys goto on here, and for good reason, it's effective. Email list lets you send out emails to your consumers anytime you want, vs waiting/hoping they'll come to your site or whatever else. That's probably easiest thing to setup, but many other things you can it's just about picking something and keeping the focus until it's producing. Lot of guys in offline section making good money marketing too, so plenty of ideas there. It's all about selling things though...sounds simple but that's really what it's about selling your time, your services, your products, other peoples products, other peoples offers(CPA) or products or services etc... fiverr is a good example of services done right, relatively simple site, but novel idea that has payed off big.

IM is not a get rich quick scheme, sadly many people make it look that way. It's just like anything in life, it takes hard work and learning a new trade. I dabbled in all that ClickBank and CJ stuff but found my niche/place in this industry with Offline Marketing.
There are many business owners lost and I am gladly giving them direction...for a fee of course.

Dont give up just yet. Are you getting alot of traffic to your site? Have you tweaked your website and tested the changes? What are the primary means of making money with your pregnancy site?

That's too bad that you lost so much money. You should really consider working smarter not harder and set a smaller promotional and operational budget.

Rather than spending $5000 on buying products and SEO, here's how you should have spent it:

- Get a squeeze page made
- Get an eBook written (your front-end) and put it on Clickbank.
- Get graphics and ecovers made
- Pay to get a salesletter written, turn it into a sales video.
- BUY direct banner ads on related sites (consistent, Google-proof traffic).
- Send helpful emails to your list and promote your eBook
- Create a backend product
- Create more products.

That $5000 could have built you a business and you'd have some spare change left.

I'm doing much better offering my services to local business. Maybe offer services and build your business from there.

The site isn't bad, but I'd change your adverts. That spammy CB ebook about choosing your baby's sex has scam written all over it. Plus the "leave" button doesn't work and you get stuck on the site.

And why would somebody be interested in this book when they're already pregnant?

I would work on creating your own product, getting a team of affiliates, get some free targeted traffic. Instead of promoting other peoples products.
Also you could try setting up some services and being the middle man. Offer clients value for money and great customer service and you could very soon have yourself a nice business model.

Keep it up and don't give up yet there is plenty of cash here to be made on the internet.

Don't give up. Keep on "keeping on". As you can see here, the responses you got is enough to turn your website around and make it a success! We're all here to help each other. Your website looks great I'm telling you got this. Make the changes according to the advise you got here. Don't quit...

Don't you dare give up yet

You don't sound like a loser so stop crying into your liquidized pitty shake , wash your face and stop thinking the world let you down.

You make some mistakes thats all , we all do it , before i set up my current business i lost near on 10k (thats english pounds) but i know that i wouldn't be earning what i earn today without it ,The world is a cruel place if you havn't got what it takes to take what you want.

I won't let another person fall victim to the sharks any more so Im gonna help you

FOR FREE , Don't want any money i just want to give something back

Ever heard of pinterest.

Have you got a pinterest account?

If not get one and PM your pinterest login details ,

I am going to switch your IM career around

THEN ITS UP TO YOU OK

content traders,
in internet marketing,
we never give up.

It seems you just have not done
enough traffic driving yet.

Try these out at least before throwing the flag!

Here are some other non- SEO traffic that I have tried and works for me.

1. Article marketing :

By writing articles related to your keywords,

it adds your ranking and creates

many backlinks and clicks to your web,

besides branding you.


Just submit articles to Ezine articles( use it a lot),

and start building traffic.


Oh yeah, you can also get others to write

for you if you are not one for writing.


Something like freelancers.com

should work for you well !


Post as many articles as you can

as fast as you can to get better results.


2. Video marketing :

Make and post videos on youtube with your link!


Make it funny or interesting and soon

viewers will be flocking your site.


As long as the content you give them is good,

youtubers generally will see it.


You can also make videos of you reading

out the articles you have written and posted,

it might be boring but at least it has good info!


3. Blogging :

Frankly, I am still trying it out

and it is not really working for me,

but other bloggers say that it is working for them.


Just post a blog every day or two and

try to put in good content in it.


It seems you can also write it in a diary sorta style,

as long as it is interesting!


Use wordpress.


4. Solo Ads :

Paid traffic that does not guarantee subscribers.

It is a great way to start out when your list is low,

but start out slow.


Test the waters first.


See how many clicks or subscribers you are getting

with them and reevaluate the worth of the solo ads.


Generally, if you can get a certain amount

of subscriptions or sales then,

it is worth investing on.


Really the trial and error system for internet marketing.


5. Classified Ads :

UsFreeAds is the classified ads

strategy I am using right now.


There are actually more targeted people to your niche

by marketing it with classified ads.


Besides it ranks fine on Alexa,

the traffic ranking is 1k++

which is considered not bad.


You might wanna try it out too !


Remember, NEVER GIVE UP!


Hope it helps, good luck !Hoping to hear better news from you soon!

You're doing it wrong mate. You can't purelly do something for money if you don't like it. Throwing money around on first random overhyped thing you read wont make you rich. Find something you like and enjoy doing and then try to monetize it. My very first investment was around 350$ , I got back around 250$ back after 50 days , the money wasn't so great but I learned an amazing amount of new things. So in the end this first investment was $x.xxx worth !

I would suggest you do some reading on different traffic generation methods, copywriting tactics and niche selection right here in the forum for free.

Don't spend another cent as you don't need too.

What you will need to do is a lot of hard work as you implement your chosen strategy yourself until you reach a level of success and then you can build from there.

You can spend an endless amount of $$$'s in any business but unless you are making enough $$$'s to cover the cost then you don't have a business.

Build upon your success and scale it up and again be prepared for a lot of sweat and tears.

I have not included blood in the above sentence because no matter how hard I have worked I have never bled!

Good luck!

Chris Jones

Damn!!!! $5000 and just 1 sale??

Mate, you should change approach. depending on SEO alone for your bread and butter is hell when you don't know the basic!

Build a list first and get a non-SE traffic. It could be solo ads, Twitter, forum, and video. I don't see any optin form in your page. Imnicamail has free account for 1000 subscribers, and it works great. Search engine visitors come and go, but your list will linger - as long as you treat them well.

I do believe that in IM you have to start from zero, using free resources as much as you can -- except your website. In business, you must be careful on your $$ spending.

When I was started I only spent $13, with 100% free traffic. Now it's one of my main income source. The beauty of IM is you don't have to start with insanely high $$. Ebooks and IM training products won't make you rich, ever. They just provide you a map.

Content Trader, I sincerely think you have a beautiful website and she deserves more exposure. Please don't abandon her alone! Get her a free traffic, health forum and 'new mommy' forum can be a good start.

Sorry but the best for you would be to stay away from IM.
Lol if I had $5k to start I would be a billionaire.

you should of spent that $5k on a few large media buyers linking to a solid offer.

What a waste of $5k........

If i had $5K to start my IM career.. i would have generated 10 to 20 times more than my investment but by investing it at right place not just by following someones steps without knowing what i am doing and will it work for me or not..

Remember one thing always, those things which are working for others, it is not necessary that they would work for you as well.

Let me give you one of simple example of how i would have invested those $5k in IM to generate great income. Have you heard money is in the list.
I would have invested that money in List building. There are solo ads provider who sales 1000 click solo ads for $300 to $400 range and a good squeeze page easily converts around 35% to 50% clicks into subscribers. So lets say if you received minimum 350 subs for one thousand click solo ad which will cost you max $400.. So for $4000 you would have generated list of 3500 subscribers and by doing ad-swaps you can keep increasing your list size every day and make money as well via promoting great offers.

So for just $4000 investment .. i would have generated huge mailing list of active subscribers, and made thousands of dollars without doubt.

There are many other options of making money online, i just gave you one example above. So it's not the mistake of IM industry, it's you who invested your money at wrong time and wrong place.

Before doing any investment in any industry you must learn what you are doing, you must test each and every step to check whether its working for you or not and if not why its not working .. remove mistakes and try again until you get success with small investments and when you find that it is working for you then start the investment of actual amount.

I hope that helps and you won't lose money again..

Ajay

Hahaha, Everything doesn't always go the way you wanted.

i like your website. please don't pay for anything again. I also lost $2000 before i made a single dollar online but after intensive research, i make a 5 figure online. learn more about seo, i mean whitehat.

People say content is the king but believe me that traffic is the king.

I have seen people making money out the worst content. You should have tried something like Pay per Install or pay per click i.e lead generating websites. Those need approvals and everyone won't get approvals on CPA networks.

If you need approvals for such networks then PM. Also if you wish to quit internet marketing then you should better sell your site on Flippa. It should sell it for atleast $5000 or more lets see.

What products were you trying to sell ?
and where did you advertise ?

Did you TRY selling here on the WF ???

I recommend you start on the WF and build up the other stuff later !
Send me a PM if you want more help with that.

Yours truly,
Jeff Noyes

Vendor-Lock Software co.

This is tough... I know people are trying to be nice by encouraging you, but sometimes someone has to tell the truth.

You spent $5,000 on products and SEO. You probably didn't build that site, you didn't write the content, and you aren't doing the SEO. so you basically spent $5000 and gained nothing in return not even experience, which is the most important factor.

I don't think you have the right mindset for this business. I am afraid you are a victim of hype. You bought a big product then outsourced everything and expected to get rich. I'm afraid there is probably nobody on this earth who has gotten rich in this industry by doing what you are doing.

You have 2 options.

1. You go through everything you can. Learn as much as you can. Which means learning how to build your own websites, design your websites, learn how to do SEO. EVERYTHING. People don't get rich in this industry by paying other people to do your work. You only do that once you become successful and can afford to do that.

Your other option is..

2. quit and go get a full time job. The truth is this industry requires hard work. If you aren't willing to put in the hard work then you won't be rewarded.

Man that's a huge amount that you have spent on IM! You must by jumping from one method to another before seeing the results.

I spent $8k on IM and have made back around slightly less than $1k.

the one thing I've learned from my "failure" is I need to do a heck lot more research.

I did exactly what you did, buy ton of wso, the WSOs about creating SEO sites seem to click for me, so I went out and spent money outsourcing all the stuffs as instructed in those WSOs,

I managed to get a site to 2000 unique visitors a day, but get only like 1 or 2 sale every 2 weeks (lesson: top ranking and traffic isn't everything)

I think of all the money spent as tuition, just like paying for college.

I've learn something along the way and I found this site with ton of free but super valuable, and applicable info

Affiliatebully.com

I have only several hundreds left in my bank and working full time.

But this time, I'll take more time (like several months) to study and research the market upfront, before I start draining all the money in the bank.

The more research you put in upfront, the less money you have to spend

go to Affiliatebully.com you'll learn a ton there

How long you invested that amount ??
It will take some time to get any result ..
And i also prefer you to not invest more money before getting 50% of your previous investments ..

$5,000 wow...just imagine when you invest it for solo ads
How many lists will you have right now? it will be amazing

You should never buy tools or software without a plan. Tools and software can help you to carry out your plan. They aren't a plan on their own and will not make you money on their "own".

Don't disregard what you have already bought. Simply put them aside for now and make a list of core changes that you can make to increase traffic, conversations and build a list and relationship with those subscribers.

Do your research and find some good products, both digital and physical products. For all your categories.

Get your site visitors interacting with each other on your site and make them feel like a "member".. In a community where your visitors are going through the same experience.

The games far from over but it depends if you're willing to give it a little longer. IM is about trial, error and monitoring subtle changes. It can often be an art form.

Good luck!

To be honest with you, you shouldn't be spending money on SEO... that's why so many people do it. If you spent money on link blast and things like that then your results is not surprising. You should stick to manual link building that you do M-F. Also with 5K you could have had an amazing graphic designer, coder, and shoot even promote on PPC networks.

You need traffic before content, unless you're willing to wait a long long ..........long time !

First thing I would do is step away from Clickbank, these products just convert so badly.

Next step, do solid keyword research. Learn about it or get a tool called Longtailpro that can help you with it.

Next, write content and target each page for 1 keyphrase, pick keywords with a few hundred searches so that they are easy to rank and make sure your main keyword has at least 50K or something searches. From every post that you write link back to your homepage using the anchor txt of your main kw.

After adding enough pages and bookmarking them you should see some ranking increases, if not then help the faith a bit, build nice looking web2.0's, submit video's to sharing sites, submit articles to docsharing sites. Forget about tools like Senukex, AMR, BMD, Xrumer, they won't do any good, not even in tier2.

All this doesn't have to cost you anything yet.

Once your innerpages start to rank at page 1 and start to make some money you will see that your main keyword starts to move up as well cause of the internet linking. Once it reaches page 2 or 3 you can use that money that you made to do some hardcore stuff like a professional press release ($89 at PRweb) and perhaps rent some relevant homepage links. At the buy/sell/swap section of this forum, at the bottom of the mainpage you can find some good deals.

Good luck!

Hey, don't loose hope. Warriors have given enough feedback about your pregnency site. Please work towards correcting those. I don't know on what your $5000 is spent. But I presume atleast some of those purchases should be valuable. Try taking ACTION based on a strategy which you feel would work. ACTION is the answer to your question. Wishing you success very soon! Hope you share your success story here again.

Firstly, ClickBank is a VERY DIFFICULT way to try to earn some money, for a beginner. This should be obvious from the number of newbies who say they've made nothing from it!

Why not try something which is EASY to make money from, I recommend AdSense, which is probably the easiest long-term method.

If you need short-term cash, there are plenty of ways to make money in relevant ways while learning IM, such as outsourcing skills such as writing, on one of the outsource sites like Fiverr, oDesk, Elance etc. Some such things can later be outsourced to other workers, so you are effectively sub-contracting, or using arbritration to make a profit.

Stop spending money, stop trying to do BIG projects, start SMALL, and ONLY when you've found a successful SYSTEM of profit-making, is it worth making it bigger.

Seriously, you'd be surprised at how many new business owners have a system which loses money and then try to make the same system bigger. Think about that for a moment!!!

Once you understand that, you'll see that it makes sense to test a system that you've not PERSONALLY made a profit from (NEVER ever believe claims by others, particularly in IM), and find a way to test that system as quickly and cheaply as you can, ie. keep it as SMALL as you can, and put as little time and money into it as you can until you have found a profitable system.

Many "systems" promoted in IM are just nonsense, and will never make a penny. That's just the way it is. But, you can still learn a few things from each one.

If you want a system which is likely to work, find a system that hundreds of different people on this forum have ALL said they are making some profit from. Examples are AdSense which is probably the easiest to start (yet is still a good system which some people are using to make tens of thousands a month), or Amazon which is a great system, but takes a little bit more skill and understanding.

Once you've found a system which you have a rational reason to believe actually WORKS (ie. ignore all earnings claims, testimonials etc., just read what real people say here when they are not trying to sell anything!), think how you can test it as small, quick, and cheap as you can, then do that. It some parts of the system work but not others, ask for specific advice here on how to improve the system. If it's obviously not working at all, try something different.

My personal recommendation is try AdSense, because it's so easy. Getting a click is VASTLY easier than making a sale, so forget ClickBank or anything else where something has to sell for you to make money, and start with what's simplest.

If you are not making some income from AdSense within a few days of putting up some content with AdSense near it, you are doing something very wrong, so do it, and ask here for how to improve!
a
Chris
(PS. for a COMPLETE guide to AdSense, including content and keyword research done for you, see my Sig!).

Before you do anything else stop and take a deep breath. Please do not spend anymore money until your sure it will give you a ten fold return because right now you're pouring money down the drain. I agree that you monetization methods for the site needs to be reworked and I also think that you could use something you may not see on other sites. Have you thought of opening up a chat like feature once a day/week/month where women/men can ask questions about pregnancy and get a real time answer? That's something that could draw a crowd! Good luck!

Don't spend your money until you know HOW and WHERE to spend. Learn and go THROUGH the process by yourself to know how exactly it works. READ the forum. I would say this forum worth more than 5k if you're implementing the great advices by the gurus.

You will lose that much in a day in Adwords.

Move on, that is the only thing left to do.

Your website looks nice but nice doesn't cut it. Many experienced IMers will tell you many of the things that are wrong with your site. No call to action, no strong keyword competition, no optin form, etc.

If you had all your ducks lined in a row that would be a descent start. Unfortunately in this business you need more than just a descent start.

Many of the successful IMers I see making money each and every single day know how to innovate, stand out from the crowd, and most importantly they know the best ways to pull in traffic and make it convert.

I've also learned my lesson the hard way when I first started that just looking "nice" doesn't cut it. You need to really put foot to gas.

All the best.

I did a little research to see how competitive this niche is. I found 15,966 keywords in my database related to pregnancy.
The second most expensive keyword is 'private health insurance pregnancy cover' pays $23.65 per click, only 16 searches and just 5 competing websites (exact KW phrase in title).
Out of the total 16K keywords there are:
6,138 keywords that have more than 100 searches per month
1,412 keywords that have more than 800 searches per month
4,338 keywords that pay more than $1.00 per click
226 keywords that pay more than $5.00 per click
5,134 keywords that have less than 100 competing websites (allintitle:"")
3,286 keywords that have less than 10 competing websites (Wow pretty cool)
And I found some very weird keywords in my database (don't ask me, lol)

Every month there are 1300 people asking 'can you get pregnant from a dog'
This keyword costs 10 cents per click and has 92 competing websites
'can i get pregnant from a horse' 880 searches and 8 competing websites
'can i get pregnant from a monkey' 210 searches and 2 competing websites

My first big money was spent on a mentor. I would use money for that so someone can take a look at what you are doing and guide you and explain what is important and what not till you feel comfterable moving forward. At least this is what helped me. It was $7000 well spent and I don't regret it.

I have been there and done that too...but not quite $5000. I quite buying stuff and listening to most Guru IM'ers. It's all BS. Trial and error is the way to learn but it takes time and is hard work but at least you will know the truth.

I spent hundreds on backlinks which now are worthless. No more backlinking for me.

If you have an informative website with a lot of content (hundreds of pages or thousands) you will get traffic and traffic is money.

Get a full time job and work part time on IM. It's the only way.

Hi Op,

Honestly I didn't read all the posts in this thread, so forgive me if I am redundant.

I looked over your site VERY quickly. Two things that popped up:

- my SEO sofware tells me you don't have any backlinks built at all. None.

- your content doesn't seem to be targeting and optimized for keywords - especially longtail keywords.

So....

Authority sites totally rock and bring in automatic traffic with little or no SEO IF you are optimizing each post/article for longtail low/no competition KW - which isn't too difficult to do. Also, your content seemed kinda thin and redundant. Personally, I build sites for people but design them for SEO, if that makes sense.

Share high quality content that is targeted to verified longtail KWs and you'll have droves of traffic. You could do this with your existing content simply by doing the research - or paying someone to - and then editing your posts based on the findings.

As for money, I spent around 8K initially on IM on site building and buying and made some of it back and then basically lost it all when my traffic dried up. A real bummer, but a great lesson and all those hours spent taught me a sh*tload.

Persistence and consistency. How much do you want it... that's what I came back to over and ever.

I am a full time IM now, but if for some reason I needed to get a 'regular' job again because I wasn't making enough $$, that would be fine AND I would still do IM on the side because there is SOOO much potential here.

Stick with it my friend ~

Don't give up! Just get out of the buying cycle! Look at "why" you have purchased the products that you have and try to mimick the sales language in your own niche, whether it is pregnancy or something else.

wow... $5000???
I think you should get a mentor and learn about IM.
find a method an follow that method until you success. with lot money, there are many to get money.

Never, ever, ever give up

From the sounds of it, you don't have a business. You are trying to build some kind of website with no real strategy or business other than throwing money at it. (many people make that mistake).

Stop spending money and figure out what you can do to add value to the world and then make a business plan around that and go out and kick some *ss and make it happen.

Ouch! 5k..that sucks, if i had 5,000 to spend on IM, i would be on the road to riches. Have to switch it up when investing, if somethings not working, change it! Try other things until you hit the gold mine.

$5000!! lot of money wasted for none. I will open my own business if have lot of money like that.

Look I know you spent 5gs and thats horrible, don't spend anymore money.

Lets be real. That website .. well, sucks. It serves absolutely no real purpose for pregnant women other than some superficial "guide" to make pregnant women more "comfortable". I'm just not sure you understand pregnant women.

You know how they actually gain comfort? They eat.
But why are you even trying to make them more comfortable?
Do the complete opposite imo.

I just don't think you researched your market at all. Or did you?
You need to test what you do, and come up with better ideas.

Maybe write a guide that talks about all the harmful products/foods/substances that can hurt a pregnant mothers baby. I wouldn't even write about smoke & alcohol, make it about things 90% of mothers don't know.

You need to REALLY put your head inside your market. Stop focusing on the website, focus on YOUR MARKET! You need to first learn what makes them tick, then adapt your website/offer to that. Don't go aimlessly creating websites without a specific mission. This website doesn't seem specific. It seems boring, casual, nonengaging, I just see so many pregnant mothers saying "I don't get it... a guide? What is a "comfort guide" gonna do for ME! I'm PREGNANT dammit! I got ESTRO$GYNES flowin through my blood !!!!!!! GIV ME FUDE NAOW!!!!"

Ok not quite. But you get the idea, you need a STRONG idea to interupt a pattern like that, fear is a great way to break patterns imo.

-Red

Good luck!

While it's true that it takes money to make money, it's important to know HOW it takes money to make money.

My best advice at this point: Stop spending money. Focus more on learning how to make money. Once you're more confident about what to do, start trying to earn money by spending no money, or very little money. Once you've started earning money, scale it up and start spending more money to make more money.

I guess that you don't have knowledge and experience about how to make money on the internet.

You need targeted traffic to make sales on the internet. No traffic = no sales.

5000$? Ouch!

Moral of the story: Never rely on SEO company (not all!) whose catchy sales letter will blow your mind! It's better to hire freelancers from fiverr or Odesk.