Making money using what I learned on the 30DC...

[annesamoilov]

This past week I've been celebrating some consistent sales for an affiliate product I've been promoting. Yay! I finally see how the lessons of 30DC come together!

I was literally ready to close down shop when sales started coming through every single night for the past week from one particular product.

I wanted to share what it took to finally start seeing these results.

1. Consistency - giving that market, that product attention every single day
2. Micro-Niche or Focused-Niche: Be honest with yourself...is the niche micro enough for you to get traffic in quickly? Use Market Samurai or the Google free keyword tool to really decide if your niche is worth it. I'm the worst with giving up the ghost, even when I'm struggling to get traffic. Even now, that non micro-niche site I chose to do for the 30DC is still the one that is finally giving me traffic and sales. Even though the traffic is low, the conversion rate is high because I focused the type of product and content on the site.
3. Emotionally Invested - I'm passionate about this market - it is something I genuinely care about and have gotten results on my own. I have no problem telling my own story and when I do it's obviously an honest account of how this program has affected me personally. I'm using my and personal and story over and over again to hammer in the point. I care about this product and the person who developed it...AND know first hand it is a good product.
4. I had to test a few different products. At first, I did use the PPC methods using Google and Facebook and did get some good traffic, but no one was buying...I haven't used it for awhile though and am probably going to do a test this weekend. At this point, I don't want to spend a lot to test. I want to find free ways to test.
5. The first product I got a commission on the last day of the 30dc was a book from Amazon for a VERY SMALL niche...I didn't push it that hard either...I just had it on a very specific site for a specific group of people.

Now, a little account of the whole process...

I haven't spent a lot of time in the forums - mostly because I've been so busy just getting the 30dc material moving - testing a few different markets - and teaching a lot of pilates! It took me almost the whole last month to really nail down the key steps that were working for me.

During the 30 DC in August, I chose a niche...one that was not micro enough. I still managed to get on first page in a about the 4th spot quite often, but it just wasn't a small enough focus to stay there, plus it is a very competitive market, so staying there was tough... A few different keywords started to emerge that improved my traffic, so I focused on those a bit more.

I also applied all of the Thirty Day Challenge lessons on article writing, link building, etc. to 2 other websites/blogs that I've been writing on for awhile without much success. I even started putting a sale offer on one of those pages.

One of these websites - a blogger blog actually - got me my very first sale. It's funny, I really did make exactly $1.00 during the first 30 days. This was an amazon book for my micro niche. It was a cool victory and it showed me something about how I'd been spending my time.

Now, I'll admit that I've been all over the place - I have been so busy writing articles and getting backlinks that I almost forgot about evaluating the sites as go or no go. I was so busy just plodding along and trying to get all these different things going...and wasn't making much head way because of it. I recommend analyzing the amount of time you are putting in to your sites and if that work is actually yielding results in the form of traffic or sales...

I know the above account is very general. If I was specific, I'd be writing this all day. Just take it from me, the main guiding principle to my current success has been focus. Until I focused on one site, really spent my energy on testing and promoting product for that site, there were no results. The results came from web 2.0 sites like squidoo and scribd, and hubpages. The traffic came from my backlinks, my category keywords, from links posted on Twitter and my Facebook pages.

That said, it took some time to hone in on something that people actually wanted. Funny thing is...I wanted the product too...so that was why I was able to put more passion and honesty into everything I wrote. I didn't have to come up with effective copy or try to do the best sales letter... it was already there for me to share with people from my own interest.

Here are my Immediate Next Steps:

1. Focusing on only 2 affiliate products that I actually use and love. Period. I'm not going to surf for niches. These 2 work and I know people can benefit from them.

2. Building my actual business with a stronger website - in progress as of today! Since I know how to drive traffic there, I need to make sure the "there" is actually worth the trip.

3. Continuing to grow my mailing list by providing valuable information for free. Yes Free.

4. Figuring out how to sell 1 of the websites that I built during 30dc...Flippa here I come!

Thanks for reading...I hope this is of some value to someone. I am really a newbie here but I have learned so much in the last 2 months it's unreal. Thank you Thirty Day Challenge!

Thanks for reading

Anne

[David E Frank]

Hey Anne,
Good for you. Keep up the good work, and stay focused. I found that you learn so much more when you review the training videos after working a site or two.

Keep it up,

Dave

[annesamoilov]

Thanks Dave. I'm doing exactly that...like going back through the setup of Goggle PPC and Adsense to make sure I have everything correctly there...

Looking forward to learning more and more in the 30dc+ too!

[dorimt]

Hello Anne

Lately i was reading the forum posts for increasing my traffic as it is very low and no backlinks after a few months. And your post inspired me but couldnt understand all of it as i m still on day 18 of the 30DC.
I was suggested to write more articles....any site in particular?

In your post you said "A few different keywords started to emerge that improved my traffic, so I focused on those a bit more" - what does that really mean?

"One of these websites - a blogger blog actually - got me my very first sale" - was it through a backlink or a sale offer on blogger?

I am sometimes disheartened about the niche.

Thank you in advance