235 Hours Worked - Zero Dollars Earned
This morning I came across a reference to Caroline Middlebrook’s “Stats & Analysis for October ‘07″ blog post on Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger.net.
In the post, Caroline shows in great detail her blog traffic stats, new RSS subscribers, a breakdown of how she spent her time online during the month and her final earnings for the month.
After reading through her stats and thinking “Wow! Those are awesome results for a 2-month old blog”, I was absolutely shocked to learn that after working 235 hours and getting 11,000 visitors to her site (without PPC) during October, only 259 folks signed up for her feed and despite all that effort, she didn’t earn one red cent.
More shocking still is the fact that Caroline left her job in late September to become a full-time Internet marketer / blogger.
She says..
Money Earned $0
Let’s get one thing straight here… I did not quit my job to launch a successful blog! I quit my job so I could earn a living online! I love that the blog has done well but all it’s doing right now is stroking my ego. A great (unmonetized) blog does not pay the bills! I slipped further into debt this month as I will every month until I am bringing in enough money to cover my living expenses.
Later in the post she analyzes the areas in which her efforts were misdirected and commits to shifting gears in November.
From the perspective of someone who has been working online for almost 10 years and whose blogs and sites earn 100K+ per month, I’ve listed some suggestions below for those who are tempted to head down the same path as Caroline.
- Monetize your site! Maybe I’m blind, but despite linking out to a number of different sites, I couldn’t find Adsense or one affiliate link on Caroline’s site.
- To make money, blog about what you know. Caroline writes very well and shares detailed information along with helpful advice. She is also upfront about the fact that she is ‘blogging out loud’ as she learns how to make money online.
- Less research, more writing. When point #2 above is heeded, a blogger doesn’t need to spend nearly 50% of their time researching material in order to develop content.
- Write to sell. Much of your informational content should be written with a product in mind - i.e. to drive traffic to your product recommendations.
- Avoid time-wasting marketing techniques. I write copious amounts about using pay-per-click search engines and blogging to drive traffic to my (properly monetized) sites as opposed to expounding the virtues of social media marketing.
- Lastly, do not quit your job… just yet! Not unless you have a rich relative who will support you until your business venture is self-sustaining.
I recommend monetizing a new site with Google Adsense until you start earning a sufficient income from your product recommendations to warrant its removal.
So far, so good… so what’s the problem?
Well, as I see it, Caroline doesn’t know her audience. For example, if you had a medical problem, would you seek advice from a student who just started med school 6 weeks ago? NO!! You would go to one or more qualified doctors with experience and follow their recommendations.
Likewise, would you accept a product recommendation for an Internet marketing tool from a blogger who admits to making no money? Probably not until you confirmed its viability with more experienced online marketers whose advice you trust… and they’d earn the commission from the sale.
So, although Caroline’s visitors may read her Internet business learning journal with interest, they will probably go elsewhere to buy until she demonstrates success in her pursuit.
Ultimately, when you work to your strengths and start with a topic you know well, you make money faster.
Here’s a tip.
Before you sit down at your computer to work, pick your topic for the day and create a bullet list of the most important items you want to cover. Then, before you check your email, the latest Google Alerts or your feedreader, open up your text editor and flesh those points into an article. Only then should you open a browser to surf for more information and statistics if required… not before.
Approaching your content development in that manner will save you hours and hours (even days) of time and ultimately results in more content to monetize.
Start with the question, “What product do I want to sell today?” followed by “What problem(s) does that product solve for my readers?”. Answer the question(s) in your article and link to your endorsement.
Depending on the nature of the market and my subscribers, anywhere from 20% to 50% of my articles ultimately link to a product recommendation.
That’s because I’ve found that compared to PPC and blogging, the latter is a huge and on-going waste of time.
I suppose if I had a free weekend, I could spend it Digging my own articles or trying to make a bunch of MySpace or Facebook ‘friends’ whose primary objective is to sell me something. (I especially appreciate the ads - a.k.a. ‘comments’ - that promise to help me ‘get rich quick’ or sell me ‘legal bud’ … NOT.)
While I do make time to comment on the occassional blog post that I find interesting, intelligent and unique, I don’t consider blog commenting a marketing technique - unlike the 2362 webmasters who tried to post comments to my blog today.
To me it makes much more sense to spend an hour building a PPC campaign that targets customers with fat wallets who want to buy dating service memberships, travel gear and the other stuff I sell on my affiliate sites, than giving free advice on other webmasters’ forums (that what my blog is for) just for the sake of a few backlinks.
Furthermore, that hour invested in a PPC campaign has a long term payoff. I have campaigns and keywords that have been in place since 1999 that just keep sending my sites traffic and resulting in sales.
Wait until your sites have more than replaced your current income. Although I too invested anywhere from 50 to 80 hours per week when I started my online business, I quit my job only after my sites were netting 10K per month, which was double my gross earnings as an air traffic controller.
When you quit too soon, you run the risk of making rash business decisions based on desperation and fear rather than knowledge and confidence acquired through experience.
To summarize, although a blogger’s primary objective should be to inform and/or entertain his or her readers with quality information, the ultimate goal of any business is to make money. While hobby blogs or journals can be monetized to a certain extent, you have to gain your visitors’ trust if you want to make serious coin.
You can read Carolines full post at “Stats & Analysis for October ‘07“.
So… any thoughts? What could Caroline do differently at this point to monetize her current site? Should she invest more time blogging about blogging, or concentrate on building another site? What do you think? Lemme know! 
Popularity: 16% [?]
Most Affiliates Get this ALL Wrong
What’s your biggest concern as an affiliate marketer?
If your approach is anything like the hundreds - no, thousands - of affiliates whose questions I’ve fielded over the years, your primary concern is probably how to get more traffic to your site.
What I’ve discovered while reviewing their sites however, is that these affiliate marketers are putting the cart WAY before the horse.
All it takes is a quick spin around the site to know that even if they did get gobs of traffic every day, these affiliates probably wouldn’t earn enough to buy their daily Starbucks double tall non-fat no whip mocha.
What the heck are they doing wrong?
Well, more traffic won’t help the affiliate whose copy couldn’t sell air to a drowning man.
In other words, they’ve neglected to address what should be their first objective - turning browsers into buyers, or sales conversions.
Affiliates shouldn’t really try to sell products, however. That’s the merchant’s job.
What affiliates need to learn is what Ken Evoy of SiteSell refers to as pre-selling.
I consider what I do as ‘selling WITHOUT selling‘. Almost exclusive use of that technique is the reason my merchant partners tell me that I’m their top affiliate or have the ‘best conversion rates‘ they’ve ever seen… often both.
Furthermore, I spend far more time trying to get the message just right than on traffic generation.
When you focus on conversion rates first and foremost, any and all traffic to your site becomes more valuable. Furthermore, that focus is absolutely essential to get a satisfactory ROI (return on investment) when using pay per click (PPC) marketing.
If your affiliate site doesn’t convert at least 2 percent of your visitors into buyers or if you want to improve your conversion rate, you need to read my short article ‘How to Sell WITHOUT Selling‘.
Ken Evoy offers MYCPS! (Make Your Content PreSell) as a FREE download.
Ken says “There are actually two ways to build a Web site online. The first way is all about “keeping it real.” Add to the Web. Write, and write well, about what you know and love. Overdeliver great content to please visitors and make the Search Engines love you at the same time.”
What he says is absolutely correct. Furthermore, preselling is about writing to communicate and it is skill that you can learn through this book.
Download MYCPS! (Make Your Content PreSell) now.
Popularity: 3% [?]
How Not to do Business on eBay… or Anywhere Else
I like sharing ‘learn from the mistakes of others’ stories for the valuable business lessons they provide, as well as the fact that they may save you from suffering through a similar ordeal on the customer side.
What follows is a timeline account of some of the worst customer service I’ve experienced to date on eBay - or anywhere else for that matter.
(The people in this story should have availed themselves of “The Insider Secrets to Selling on eBay” by Derek Gehl and the Internet Marketing Center’s Advanced eBay Mentoring Team.
To set the scene - the cell for my saltwater pool gave up the ghost in late June. With 100 degree temperatures and no cell, we were pouring chemicals into our pool like there was no tomorrow. Simply cleaning the rapid algae growth took a LOT of time, not to mention made for a high YUCK factor. Read more
Popularity: 10% [?]
Online Shoppers Want MORE Information and Follow-Up
A survey sponsored by RightNow Technologies (NASDAQ: RNOW) and conducted by Harris Interactive(R) underscores a significant opportunity for online retailers. Nearly 50 percent of consumers (48%) say they have increased shopping online “a great deal” or “somewhat” in the past five years. With a continued influx of shoppers moving to the Internet, retailers need to develop new strategies to meet the unique needs of online shoppers.
According to the Online Retail Report, turning browsers into buyers requires immediate access to information throughout the entire purchase process. When customers can quickly and easily find answers to their questions, their satisfaction goes up and retailer’s costs go down. 42 percent of consumers said they would prefer to be able to find the answers they need online by themselves if they had a question or needed help during an online shopping experience.
The Online Retail Report also reveals that segmented and tailored e-mail messages can be a key driver for sales and personalized follow up can turn a one-time customer into a loyal repeat customer. 68 percent of consumers said they were prompted to browse a Web site after receiving an email from a retailer. 73 percent of consumers said they would appreciate any post-purchase follow up.
“Providing shoppers with easy access to relevant information is critical to the success of any online retailer,” said Greg Gianforte CEO of RightNow. “RightNow helps retailers provide consistently exceptional customer experiences and drive conversion rates by delivering tailored messages to the right shoppers at the right time.”
A complete copy of the Online Retail Report can be found at Online Retail Report.
Popularity: 24% [?]
So…What Did You Think?
You can learn a lot about marketing from other marketers’ messages and their delivery.
In that vein, I’d like to know what you thought of the Affiliate Marketing Sham report [find out why this link was removed].
Did you find it interesting and informative or piled high with hype? Did the report leave you concerned about the future of affiliate marketing and affiliate[link removed] marketers? Or, did you think ‘X’ was too dramatic in his assessment?
What tactics does X use to build desire for his product? Does ‘X’s’ approach build trust and make you ‘hungry’ to learn more? Why or why not? What do you think of this marketing approach? Would you use it to promote your own or other people’s products?
If you haven’t already done so, take a critical look at the Affiliate Marketing Sham [link removed], then post a Comment with your answers to the above questions.
When enough comments have been posted, I’ll post a follow-up with my own thoughts on the subject.
Popularity: 16% [?]
