Live Case Study - Follow me to $50 per day in 50 days

[russell]

I am going to be doing a live case study to test a marketing method before teaching it to my students.

I will be choosing a choosing a niche, doing keyword research, buying a domain, creating a site, and marketing a few products to a niche with a goal of making $50 per day at the end of my 50 day case study. I will also be only spending 30 minutes per day on the project.

I will be showing you the steps I take and decisions I make to reach my goal.

I will try to update this thread daily, or at least multiple times per week to report status, and decisions that need to be made to reach my goal.

I'm doing this also to prove to people that it doesnt take that much work on a consistent basis to make a significant change in your income, and also to make myself follow all of the steps I will be teaching new and existing student to take with their own business.

Your feedback will be appreciated, and I hope to answer any questions promptly, as well as consider new methods and techniques into this live case study.

[Engage]

Looking forward to this Russell. Go for it.

Great title, great idea for a thread. The "real deal let's do it" thread. Thumbs up from here.

[Leslie]

Great way to help. I think those of us who struggle with making a consistent income will love the road map. It is sometimes hard to believe it can be done with so little time each day.

[gutsygirl]

Will be following and looking forward to it.

[deniseoberry]

Go for it Russell. Looking forward to watching.

[russell]

I looking forward to starting the first steps. Later today I will be going through the niche selection process, and finding a theme for the new site, as well as products to sell.

[GoodCooker]

I ;am going to love following this....I get "lost" in the shuffle......I learn and then do some..but not all..then get sidetracked. I need to foloow thru to completion.

thanks for sharing the process with us.

we can then apply to our own niches or businesses.

gretchen

[Faith]

I've mainly been only an occasional lurker in this forum, but you certainly have my attention now!

[KathleenMN]

I will be watching with great interest as well!! :)

[russell]

My actions for today will be to find a Niche.

First I have though of hobbies and interests that I have, or that close friends and family have that would be willing to give their expert input when aked for.

When listing hobbies of friends, these need to be your interests as well. You dont want to choose something you have no interest in. Although something you have no interest in can be profitable, and may be ok to start with, just to get to know things, you're really better off having a genuine interest in the subject to keep your online money making more of a paying hobby, than a dreaded job.

So I did some brain storming and came up with the following

My Hobbies / Interests

Internet
Computers
Gadgets
Traveling
Flying
Realestate
Teaching
Business

Interests / Hobbies of people close to me

Hunting / Guiding - Friends / Father
Fly Fishing - Friend
Photography - Sister / Friends / Personal Interest
Guitar / Music - Friends

THis was a broad list of my interests, and interests of people close to me that could be used as my expert in that field

After jotting down my list, I will go into amazon's top sellers and started looking around (www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers)

I will also dive into google's SKtool to dive into niches to see if anything stands out.

Both of these places are great to sort of surf around, and gather ideas, as well as see how popular things are.

I am looking for an item that is selling for more than $100 (for decent affiliate commissions). I also wanted the buyers in this niche to be passionate about their hobby, and would have a burning desire to buy this product.

I will post back later today with my results, and go a little further into the process.

[russell]

So after drilling into the amazon top selling pages, I came across Game Cameras

I am familiar with the hunting community, have been part of it, and have friends and family that are very involved in the community.

The Game cameras have a high sales price (over $100), and hunters are very passionate about their gear, and preparing for hunting. Also people wanting to see what is sneaking around their house in rural areas use these cameras. Its always interesting to see what is sneaking around after dark.

Next, I will check out the traffic, and competition for this niche.

[Engage]

So after drilling into the amazon top selling pages

Could you elaborate a bit on this? Thanks.

[gailjrichardson]

Russell,Thanks for sharing this with us.It will be great to watch this come together.I like the way you have laid out how you will find your niche.Looking forward to see what you pick out.

[wade_watson]

Neat idea, Russell. I will watch this thread with considerable interest.

I like your starting focus: first pick a hobby-related interest, then find a potentially profitable product within it and focus on that. I suppose there is a range of products associated with that camera-- different brands and models. That also sounds like the type of item people might download a PDF on for tips on using it (or am I jumping ahead of things there?).

Wade Watson

[russell]

Could you elaborate a bit on this? Thanks.

I used the Amazon Top Sellers page to drill into many categories of interest, that were previously listed, and basically looked for well selling items that were prices above $100.

Some pages also provide info on how long the item has been on the top seller list. For this project, I want an evergreen product, that has likely been on the list a long time, indicating that its not just a hot or seasonal item.

There were other items I could have promoted, like the beach body Insanity workout for $140, but something like that belongs to a very competitive niche, so I stayed away, and it didnt really meet my criteria, since I didnt specify health/excercise on my Interests list.

This page gives you an idea of what the top sellers are in each niche.

www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers


For instance Binoculars seem to sell well on Amazon, and are in teh same hunting category, but binoculars come in many prices, and sizes, and arent specific to any niche. So choosing something like that, may get people looking for $2.00 kids binoculars, or $39.00 opera binoculars.

With the game cameras, there are pretty specific uses for them, and the price range on most of them will give me a pretty good commission.

[Engage]

Thank you Russell, very informative!

Hmm... Perhaps I'm being dense. Are the categories listed on that page the only best seller categories available?

The categories I see are:

Electronics
Toys & Games
Camera & Photo
Movies & TV
Music

Thanks again, interesting thread.

[russell]

You will see on the top that you are in the best sellers tab, and on the left are all of the categories of best sellers.

Im seeing about 20 categories, in which you can drill down into, and go into sub categories

[Engage]

Oh dear, sorry bout that, I was being dense. Ok, I'm up to speed now, thanks.

[judykelly]

What an awesome thing to follow. Some of us :p have been working at this for more than a year without much coming in but still some going out. I'm sure this will be helpful to many including me! Thanks.

[russell]

Today seemed like I didn't really make much progress, but I guess I did still get some work done.

I was able to get into google and do some research on the niche. I used the google keyword tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) to see how much traffic there is for game cameras, and it looks like there is about 135k searches per month on that term, so I went to google to do a phrase match on that term, and found 239000 results. This is a lot of results, but for that amount of traffic, its really not bad at all. So I will be using this as my overall niche, but not really targeting "game camera" as a keyword, at least in the beginning. I did find a really good keyword though "hunting camera" that gets 33k searches per month, and only returns 24k results in google. So this will be a good one to go after.

The niche has plenty of traffic, so I should be able to meet the goal I ma going after, and on the down side, the big dogs are competing here too, like amazon, walmart, and cabelas.

Amazon does a great job of having a ton of related content on its pages, that google just gobbles up, but there are rarely any external links pointing to these pages. And the same applies with walmart, and the others, so I think I do have a chance at getting up in the top 3 with them after some time.

So I have basically found products and a niche in Amazon that appeal to me, and I went to google to see if the traffic and competition make sense, which they do.

I build a small spreadsheet to track the numbers and keywords, and I consider having more that 10k searches, and less than 50k results a good number for this project.

If I was going after a smaller niche, and not as big of a goal in mind (at least for physical products) then I would consider a lot less search traffic.

Next I will be finding keywords for the individual products I will be selling, and working them in with my overall niche keyword scheme.

Also, forgot to mention that I found affiliate programs that I can use. Amazon will be my #1, but I also have a couple of backup programs, that I can use, and may even include, since most other programs pay less, but do offer 30-90 day cookies.

[Leslie]

Russell,
Keep the content coming and good luck on this. You are helping a ton of people.

[jkgourmet]

Today seemed like I didn't really make much progress, but I guess I did still get some work done.

I was able to get into google and do some research on the niche. I used the google keyword tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) to see how much traffic there is for game cameras, and it looks like there is about 135k searches per month on that term, so I went to google to do a phrase match on that term, and found 239000 results. This is a lot of results, but for that amount of traffic, its really not bad at all. So I will be using this as my overall niche, but not really targeting "game camera" as a keyword, at least in the beginning. I did find a really good keyword though "hunting camera" that gets 33k searches per month, and only returns 24k results in google. So this will be a good one to go after.

The niche has plenty of traffic, so I should be able to meet the goal I ma going after, and on the down side, the big dogs are competing here too, like amazon, walmart, and cabelas.

Amazon does a great job of having a ton of related content on its pages, that google just gobbles up, but there are rarely any external links pointing to these pages. And the same applies with walmart, and the others, so I think I do have a chance at getting up in the top 3 with them after some time.

So I have basically found products and a niche in Amazon that appeal to me, and I went to google to see if the traffic and competition make sense, which they do.

I build a small spreadsheet to track the numbers and keywords, and I consider having more that 10k searches, and less than 50k results a good number for this project.

If I was going after a smaller niche, and not as big of a goal in mind (at least for physical products) then I would consider a lot less search traffic.

Next I will be finding keywords for the individual products I will be selling, and working them in with my overall niche keyword scheme.

Also, forgot to mention that I found affiliate programs that I can use. Amazon will be my #1, but I also have a couple of backup programs, that I can use, and may even include, since most other programs pay less, but do offer 30-90 day cookies.

Russell, thanks so much for this thread. It's a great benefit to all of us.

Question: Are you using exact match, phrase match or broad match for these results from google adwords?

Thought: the term 'game camera' would include other things I would think - like people looking for cameras to use for football games, taking photos of their kids at soccer games, etc. For all I know, there some Xbox game that has the word camera in it, or the need for a camera. I like the narrowing down that you've done to 'hunting camera.' It occurs to me that you might want to also look to 'safari camera' but consider that some (many?) of those folks will be offended at the idea of hunting. But the type of camera would be much the same, yes?

[russell]

Good questions Jeanette,

I use broad for judging the search traffic in the google keyword tool, and then a phrase match for search results.

I build a table as i go which would look something like this

keyword Searches (broad) Results (phrase)
keyword 1 25000 12500

There are a million ways you could run the numbers, and is very easy to get hung up while running the numbers. I think though if you run them the same each time, it will give you something reletave to your results in the past.

And part of it is really a gut feeling. You have to get a broad look at the numbers, take a glance at the competition, and press forward. I could easily spend an entire week looking at numbers, but at the end of the day, you really cant tell until you start recievng results back.

I will kind of be using a shotgun strategy, and throwing a bunch of qualified keywords out there, and see where I get feedback, and then direct more attention to where im seeing results.

As for the inclusion of the keyword Game Camera, there are others that could get in there, but from judging the results I get in google, and the keyword tool, the majority are for the hunting related scouting camera.

And to qualify my niche, hunters are very passionate about their hobby, and will spend money on various items to get an advantage.

[chickblogger]

Excellent tutorial, Russell. Looking forward to the ongoing results and process exchange.

Boo! on the hunting cameras though. (I'm a veghead)

Quick question for you. Are you currently making $50 per day on other sites of yours? Or will this be your first.

[Engage]

Boo! on the hunting cameras though. (I'm a veghead)

Another rabbit lettuce muncher here.


Quick question for you. Are you currently making $50 per day on other sites of yours? Or will this be your first.

Was wondering this also. In either case, I'm already learning useful stuff from your tutorial.

[kdbbiz]

I was just thinking about getting something like this started after reading a few reports recently by some warriors.

I am looking forward to how this progresses for you and hope I can gather enough input from you to try successfully on my own. I have a few ideas for niche and product as well.

keep up the good work.

[lisamariemary]

This is a very interesting thread, for sure! I love to watch the exact processes people go through like this - thanks for doing this!

[latarahamying]

Love that you are doing this as I am really trying to get into affiliate marketing. You are basically creating map for folks like me who have a hard time wrapping their head around the whole kit and kaboodle of affiliate marketing.

[russell]

Excellent tutorial, Russell. Looking forward to the ongoing results and process exchange.

Boo! on the hunting cameras though. (I'm a veghead)

Quick question for you. Are you currently making $50 per day on other sites of yours? Or will this be your first.

At the moment I dont have any one site that makes $50 per day. I do have a few sites that make between $5 -$20 per day though.

But the sites I have done in the past were never laid out well, and I just sorta pieced things together, and didnt really follow a strategy.

This time, I have mapped everything out in a mind map, and amd actually in the process of writing an ebook on the exact action steps it takes to go through the entire process.

This case study will accomplish a few things. One, to prove that my methods actually work when implemented correctly, two, get a site making $50 per day, and I will also be including this case study as a supplement to my ebook.

And its great getting feedback on the processes that im using. I have been teaching people how to build websites and niche sites for a while now, but never really did it in the public. Its very rewarding to see that people are learning from this.

[judykelly]

I'm anxious to see if anyone else follows along doing the same process and what their results are. I actually have started looking for a niche but have some more research to do. I think that is the hardest part of the process altogether. You could add those studies to your book too if anyone else gets theirs done successfully.

[russell]

I'm anxious to see if anyone else follows along doing the same process and what their results are. I actually have started looking for a niche but have some more research to do. I think that is the hardest part of the process altogether. You could add those studies to your book too if anyone else gets theirs done successfully.

Cool, good luck on the niche.

Would be great to include someone elses results

[russell]

Today I concentrated on a couple things.

I dug around and found the most popular items in the Game Camera market, and decided I will promote all of them, about 12 in total. I will list them all on my site, but will only work on getting traffic on a few models to start with, then expand out from there. This will give the site promotion a phased approach.

So I have 12 products, and im looking for 3 keyword phrases for each item. This should give me a little diversity for the site, and for each product. This will be like putting feelers in many directions to see what is out there.

So I went to google's keyword tool, and put in my product, then chose the top 3 keywords, and entered them into my spreadsheet along with the searches per month, and results on google (phrase matched).

Unfortunately there weren't that many specific keywords per item, so I kind of had to just take 3, and not really run the numbers. Normally I would look for the largest number of searches with the least amount of results.

I found that some of my keyword phrases showed funky results too, so this threw me off a little, but will press forward.

With a couple keyword phrases they had less search results as a broad match (without quotes) than they did as phrase match. I didn't really know what to think of it, so I just pressed on.

Now I have a list of my keywords. So next I will need to throw my main site keywords in where possible, or where it makes sense as a variation. This will take us toward two goals at once.

If my main keyword is Game Camera, and I have products with keywords like Cuddeback Noflash Game Camera, I will get some results for the long phrase, and also give some power to Game Camera, as well as Cuddeback Noflash.

Cuddeback Noflash should be quite a bit easier to rank for, since there is considerably less competition, but over time, I will be slowly building power toward the main keyword.

The goal at some point would be to shift gears after my longer phrase keywords are ranking well. The promotion would then shift toward the more competitive Game Camera keyword by itself.

I also skipped ahead a little, and ordered an article for my main page. This will be 1100 words about game cameras, and will be placed on the main page of the site.

I plan og registering a domain, and setting up wordpress soon, and since im under the gun, I will post the main content to begin with, and give google something to look at while im preparing the rest of the site.


PS, a birdie mentioned today that this public area may be going away very soon....if this happens I will be continuing this thread in the Private area.....if you aren't an elite member, there is a lot more if this in the elite area, and you wont be disappointed.

[Leslie]

"With a couple keyword phrases they had less search results as a broad match (without quotes) than they did as phrase match. I didn't really know what to think of it, so I just pressed on."


Yes, I noticed that to. Does anyone have any idea what is going on with these type of "backward" results?

[russell]

the only thing I could think, it that the non phrase it the relevant results, as opposed to phrase which is giving you everyting, even if its not relevant.

[Leslie]

Not sure I quite understand that...

[russell]

Not sure I quite understand that...

Google's mission is to provide you with the most relevant results. THey want people to find what they are looking for, so they will come back again and again to use the search engine.

What im thinking is that when doing a search for something and only being returened 25000 results, google believes those are the only relevant results to your search terms.

But, when doing a Phrase search (in quotes) it is telling google to bring back anything with that exact phrase. The number may be 50000.

In this example (which is totally just a speculative thought) the extra 25000 results wouldnt really fit googles terms for being relitive to the search, but since you requested everything (phrase match) it gave it to you, and hence a difference in results.

This is just a wild guess at why, and could be totally wrong, but makes sense in my head...lol

[Leslie]

Thanks Russell, that makes sense in my head too....lol

[sonatanna88]

Hi Russel
I am following in your steps and caught up to the stage where you are now.
But have got the 3 keywords for my niche and got my content back from the the place where i outsourced them and the contents are on my blog already. Awaitng your next few steps. Have also outsourced my content for articles and keeping things ready as you move along.
Sona

[sonatanna88]

Hi Russel

Of course i am in a more competetive niche than you are in but have picked up KWs where i can stand a chance to rank for. Just want to the action on your part and follow it blindly especially after the submission of your content , your baclinking strategy
Awaitng your action
Very interesting thread.
Well if you slow i am already thinking of digging into a second niche and follow your footsteps as you move along with both the sites


Sona

Sona

[russell]

Hi Russel

Of course i am in a more competetive niche than you are in but have picked up KWs where i can stand a chance to rank for. Just want to the action on your part and follow it blindly especially after the submission of your content , your baclinking strategy
Awaitng your action
Very interesting thread.
Well if you slow i am already thinking of digging into a second niche and follow your footsteps as you move along with both the sites


Sona

Sona

Cool, I hope to start doing some promotion of the site fairly soon, although I have a few things that have to be done first.

[russell]

Over the weekend, I was able to do a little work to continue forward, but not as much as I intended due to nice weather , and an assortment of social engagements, and outdoor projects.

So I ended up up with a table of keywords for all of the product I will be promoting.

Since I have a decent amount of keywords, I will be starting with just promoting a few of them, and roll out a few more each week. This will keep the site from being spread too thin as far as promotion goes.

I alse received my first article back from my writer. THis will be the first page on the site to be active, and will give google an idea about the site, and will give the search engines a little at a time, instead of everything at once.

Over the weekend I found a couple affiliate programs I can promote as well as Amazon. They dont pay as well, but the other programs offer tracking cookies, which amazon doesnt offer.

I also listed the commissions of the products on my spreadsheet. I will need to sell 3-6 items per day to reach my $50 per day goal.

I did some searching around for a domain name, and was able to find a pretty decent domain for the site. I wont list the domain name here yet, but probably will a little later on. I use namecheap for my domain registration because they have competitive pricing, and are simple to use and manipulate my domains. And the don't put you through upsell hell like some other registrars do.

I installed wordpress on a hostgator account that I already have, and used fantastico to do the install, so that took about 20 seconds.

I will probably be using the arclite theme on wordpress. This theme is pretty lightweight, offers a limited theme customization area, and I can modify the code without having to worry about to many complications.

There are nice pay themes out there, but I find that while the more advanced ones have so many options to them, that doing some manual work under the hood turns into an ugly mess.

I installed the theme, some plugins, and created a couple pages like the about me page, and the contact me page. I did thes cause they were easy, and I think google will like the fact that I have them when they initiall crawl the site.

For tonight I will do some minor customization to the theme. I wont get too far into this yet, because people arent waiting to come to the site yet. Phase 1 will be for google, then for the people. I want google to know about the site very soon, so I can start doing some link building.

I will be ordering some more articles today or tomorrow for the product pages, and also start working on product images, and sketching out my site layout.

[russell]

I have ordered the first 2 articles from my writer for posting on ezine, and other article directories.

I have also started doing some tweaking on the website to get ready to put up my product pages.

I also did a sketch of what each product page will look like. I used myweddingfavors.com for a reference, since this site makes a ton of money, and has been thoroughly split tested many times.

Next I need to start working on the page template. Since it will contain at elast one table I may make the page in something like Dreamweaver or NVU, then put it into my wordpress page.

I also need to change the default header, and will probably hire someone to do this on Digital Point.

At this point I really just want to get to promoting the site, but this stuff needs to be done before the masses start arriving.

[KathleenGageSpeaker]

I'm watching with great interest!

[russell]

Thanks for the feedback and encouragement everyone!

Yesterday I worked on creating images for my product pages. Since i dont use photoshop that often, it took me quite a while to get back into it. I got pretty close to finishing the first image right before bed, and should be able to finishe it up today.

The first one is the hardest, but after the template is in place, it should be pretty much swapping out the images with new ones.

So today I plan on finishing my first 2 product images, and also getting a good start at the product page. This will end up bing a template for the rest of the product pages, so will take a little more time for me in the beginning, but if I do it right, it will be supre simple to add another product page later, which I will be doing.

[sonatanna88]

Hi Russel

Could you elaborate on split testing if you dont mind

Sona

[russell]

Hi Russel

Could you elaborate on split testing if you dont mind

Sona

Sure,

Myweddingfavors.com was built by Any Jenkins of Stompernet, and they use this site as part of their proof for selling products, since the site makes like 10 Mil a year.

During some seminar they did (think it was Mass Control) they talked about some of the split testing that they had done on the website, and what kind of changes it resulted in.

Split testing is a way of testing different things on a website to see what works better. There are many aspects of a website to test, but the testing requires real traffic, so its hard to do on a smaller website with less traffic.

To do a split test we would want to make just one change to a page on the website, then send traffic to that one instead of the old one, and track the results.

After getting xxx visitors to the website, see if we have made more or less sales than the old revision did.

So after a split test we should be able to see if a change made any difference in our sales or whatever we wanted people to do.

[Kimmoy]

I'm watching with interest too Russell, in fact, I'm implementing along side you so this should be quite the adventure. I'm wondering why are you creating product images though? Doesn't Amazon provide images already or is this for something else?

Keep up the good work!

[russell]

I'm watching with interest too Russell, in fact, I'm implementing along side you so this should be quite the adventure. I'm wondering why are you creating product images though? Doesn't Amazon provide images already or is this for something else?

Keep up the good work!

Will be cool to see you outcome as well.

I am adding a little flash to the images, making them a little more appealing.

[jkgourmet]

Will be cool to see you outcome as well.

I am adding a little flash to the images, making them a little more appealing.

flash??? I find that Flash sites do not work properly on my itouch which would make me wonder if this is a good idea considering the increased interest in mobil sites. . .

[russell]

flash??? I find that Flash sites do not work properly on my itouch which would make me wonder if this is a good idea considering the increased interest in mobil sites. . .\

Not actual flash, but just making them flashier. Basically adding a border to them, maybe a drop shadow, and putting some text on them like "on sale" and a "click here" button to give people an action to take.

[russell]

I have finally turned the site live, and submitted an article to ezine.

There is still work that needs to be done to the site, but it took me way too long to get the site up and going to begin with. I will continue tweaking and adding features as time progresses.

For now though, I have a couple active items, and at least one way for people to find the site, and something for them to buy when tey get there.

I will continue to add more pages to the site, and add more items. Each item will be getting one ezine atricle to get some initial traffic.

I will be using twitter and some other promotion methods also to get traffic to the site.

I will probably put in the next order for ezine articles, and I still need to get a decent header image for the site.

It has a ways to go, but things are starting to come together.

[jkgourmet]

I have finally turned the site live, and submitted an article to ezine.


For now though, I have a couple active items, and at least one way for people to find the site, and something for them to buy when tey get there.




good to hear, and congratulations on getting this all accomplished (it never moves as quickly as we want, does it? :) )

One question: is that "at least one way for people to find the site" that you referred to your ezine article? If not, would you mind sharing a little about that?

[russell]

I had an article written to post on ezine that tells the user a little bit about the product, and hopefully entices them to my site.

I like ezine as a source of traffic because there is a ton of ezine traffic, and the articles often rank very well in google, plus the visitors are pretty qualified. If they make it through my article, then come to the site, you know they are looking for something close to what you are offering.

Is that what you were looking for Jeanette?

[jkgourmet]

yep, I just wasn't sure that you hadn't done something else to generate traffic besides teh ezine article.

[Suzi]

Hi Russell. Have I missed the url for the site somewhere?
Or are we not allowed to look at it yet?

Suzi

[russell]

I haven't published the URL yet. Maybe toward the end of next week. Its pretty bare bones, and un-impressive right now.

[russell]

Good luck Russell
You can do it !!!

Im trying, at a frustrating part at the moment.

Trying to get the site finished, and starting the groundwork to get traffic to the site.

At an initial glance, some of my methods seem like they arent goign to work as I though. After getting frustrated, I decided to still go forward with my plans though, and hopefully I can start building traffic soon.

[AlexNewell]

"At an initial glance, some of my methods seem like they arent goign to work as I though"

Anything you care to discuss?

[russell]

"At an initial glance, some of my methods seem like they arent goign to work as I though"

Anything you care to discuss?

I was planning on holding a photo contest or something with a $50 prize to attract people to the site, and get people to sign up as a member to the site. I was planning on going to hunting forums and plugging the contest, but after looking at some of the forums, it may be hard to plug my site, or even a URL. The spammers have kind of ruined forums by spamming away at forums constantly, making forum owners put in strict url posting rules.

I will still go forward with the method, since I think its a good way to get engaged with my nich community, but may be harder than I though to tell people about the contest.

Also, I had found a great plugin to hold a photo contest, but it doesnt seem to like working with the theme im using. So, i need to figure out what to do about that also.

[AlexNewell]

Any other places these folks hang out?

Start a new Twitter account for this?

Facebook page?

[russell]

Any other places these folks hang out?

Start a new Twitter account for this?

Facebook page?

I did open a twitter account. I was going to do a facebook account, but really havent marketed through facebook, so I dont have a strategy for attracting users there.

Its something I need to get into though.

[Forest]

Good luck, looking forward to following.

[AlexNewell]

In that case forget FAcebook!

Russell it may be best then to go back to the forums and provided you can use a url in your profile just join it. Even if there's no sig file your profile will get a lot of views after a good post.

Hunters can follow a trail...

[russell]

Thanks for the input everyone!

I wanted to give an updated on the status of the project.

So I have a couple products live at the moment, and should have a few more live by the end of the week.

I will also have a couple other pages for the site done by then, and should start looking good or better in the eyes of google for a content prospective.

I have two articles live on ezine, which need some backlinks created for, since they arent getting much traffic.

I have an order in for another four ezine articles, which will be for the next four products.

One of my ideas to really drive traffic to the site was to hold some sort of contest where people could submit pictures or a hunting story and the winner would get $$. I had found a wordpress plugin to hold the photo contest, but found that it doesnt work with the theme I am using. An option would be to switch to another theme, but I have already put in some effort with the current one, and am not in the mood to change gears again. Plus, im not sure how well the plugin really works, and may run into complications in the future. And, I was going to use the contest as a way into a bunch of hunting forums, and with all of the spammers that have made forum owners crack down on posting links, it makes things harder. So I am holding off on the contest for the moment.

I have started some promotion, and will be really kicking it up a couple notches soon. I will be registering on 10-15 of the top hunting forums to get the word out and start interacting with my niche. I have started a twitter account which still needs a little customization, will be diving into building backlinks shortly.

I also plan on doing some youtube videos soon to capture some traffic from there.

So thats where im at right now.

[russell]

Update:

I have been continuing to work on the site, and am starting to make some progress. I have the site layout pretty much complete. I do still need to add a couple things, and touch up a couple others, but the site looks pretty good, and potential customres can visit the site, get information, and click through to amazon.

I have been promoting the site as well. I have a few articles on ezine, which are bringing in some traffic. I will be giving these articles some link love soon to try to bring them up in the ranks.

I have also put up a youtube video, and plan on putting up a few more by the end of the week.

I can start to see traffic coming in, and would expect to see a sale soon.

I am also concentrating on building angelas links, along with some article marketing.

I hope to also have another couple products up on the site by the end of the week so I can start promoting all of my pages.

After getting links for each page out there, I will start looking at how things are doing SEO wise, and aim toward the ones that are getting more love from google.

As soon as I do a couple more things to the site, I plan on letting you take a peek at it too.

[AlexNewell]

Thanks for the update Russell, great to get your progress reports!

:-)

[jkgourmet]

Update:


I have been promoting the site as well. I have a few articles on ezine, which are bringing in some traffic. I will be giving these articles some link love soon to try to bring them up in the ranks.

I can start to see traffic coming in, and would expect to see a sale soon.

I am also concentrating on building angelas links, along with some article
marketing.

As soon as I do a couple more things to the site, I plan on letting you take a peek at it too.

Russell, thanks again for all your work on this thread. Two questions:

why do links to your ezine articles? Isn't part of the point of ezine articles to develop links for YOUR site? Why work on links for ezine?

And what are angelas links?

[russell]

Russell, thanks again for all your work on this thread. Two questions:

why do links to your ezine articles? Isn't part of the point of ezine articles to develop links for YOUR site? Why work on links for ezine?

And what are angelas links?

The ezine articles get picked up quickly by google, and can often make it to page one without doing anything, bu i have found that giving those articles a little love, they can rank very well for a while in google. I am seeing one of my articles ranking at number 10 in google already.

Angelas links are from a monthly packet angela ___ from warrior forum puts out. These are usually links on high ranking forums, and other sites that are decent for using as backlinks.

Also, and update, One of my product keywords is ranking at 11 in google.

[russell]

Back again with an update.

I have been getting about 10 visitors pre day this week, and climbing, so thats encouraging. The traffic is coming from mixed places, some ezine, some twitter, and some google. I also have a decent amount of people clicking through to Amazon. I havent had any sales yet, but hope to soon.

I am still trying to get some more pages put up on the site, and should have a couple more done by the end of the week, with an ezine article for each.

I have also been using social media to promote the site a little.

The site also needs a little more tweaking done to it, but im going to give you the address of the site I have been working on, even though it will mess up my traffic stats a little.

The website is http://game-camera.com

Take a look, and let me know your thoughts. I am always up for any questions or input.

[BrittMalka]

Great idea to make a challenge to yourself like that, and to write about it.

Do you still only spend 30 minutes per day on the project?

[jkgourmet]

Russell, the site looks great. Very very easy to read (in fact, I must admit I just looked at the CSS code to see what size and font you were using on the body.) You made the Arclite theme look MUCH better than I ever could - stripped it of a lot of it's cutesy pretty stuff which I could never figure out how to do.

I didn't spend a lot of time reading the content (I'm sure that it's good - you write well), but I wanted to say it looks great and thank you again for taking us along with you for the ride.

[gailjrichardson]

Russell, The site looks really great. I like the colors a lot. Thanks for letting us tag along. This has been a very good learning experience.

[Baggs]

Russell

This is a great series of posts, well done! The site looks good as well, but I could not see a link from the sub pages back to the home page. Is this intentional, because i would have thought there is potential for lots of internal on target keywords from your own pages that you are missing.

[russell]

Great idea to make a challenge to yourself like that, and to write about it.

Do you still only spend 30 minutes per day on the project?

I probably average about 30 per day on the site, but I have not been able to consistently spend 30 minutes per day on it. Some evenings are just shot, so I will make up the time another night.


Russell, the site looks great. Very very easy to read (in fact, I must admit I just looked at the CSS code to see what size and font you were using on the body.) You made the Arclite theme look MUCH better than I ever could - stripped it of a lot of it's cutesy pretty stuff which I could never figure out how to do.

I didn't spend a lot of time reading the content (I'm sure that it's good - you write well), but I wanted to say it looks great and thank you again for taking us along with you for the ride.

Thanks for the input, I started with liking the arclite theme because of some of the features built in, but after spending way to much time tweaking little things, i dont like it as much anymore, and may look at something different next time.

Russell

This is a great series of posts, well done! The site looks good as well, but I could not see a link from the sub pages back to the home page. Is this intentional, because i would have thought there is potential for lots of internal on target keywords from your own pages that you are missing.

Good observation, I am still working on doing on-page linking, and still need to change the footer of the site, which will include a link to the home page and other pages.

[jkgourmet]

Russell, that's exactly why I gave up on Arclite. I'm using Suffusion now, and quite happy with it. Great support from the developers forum, well worth a donation. Suffusion also has a large number of page templates (including a magazine template)which makes it MUCh easier on html and css challenged folks like me.

[ChrisGuthrie]

How close are you to the income goal? It looks like you've got only 10 days left or so right?

[russell]

Russell, that's exactly why I gave up on Arclite. I'm using Suffusion now, and quite happy with it. Great support from the developers forum, well worth a donation. Suffusion also has a large number of page templates (including a magazine template)which makes it MUCh easier on html and css challenged folks like me.

Thanks Jeanette,

I will take a look at suffusion on the next project. It does look pretty nice.

One of the main reasons for liking arclite, is because of the css area in the admin panel which let me add a few lines of css to make changes on the site. My goal was to be able to tell someone else how to set up the site, put in those css values, and create the site for me, instead of sorting through 3000 lines of css doing manual changes, and changes that you dont remember where they were at.

With the arclite css box you know exactly what changes were made, and it in one place, and you don't have to be a coder to implement those rules.

Well, that was the theory, but I wasn't able to make all of the changes I wanted through there, and had to go into the css file to hard code the changes.

If i have to go into the css file itself, there isn't much reason to stick with arclite.

Anyway, those were my intentions, but now im off to look for something new for the next project..........unless ins a carbon copy on the current site

[russell]

How close are you to the income goal? It looks like you've got only 10 days left or so right?

Well, I am less than 10 days away from the goal, and am not there yet. BUT....traffic is increasing, and I can see people clicking through to amazon. I can also see a big increase in my rankings on google for my target keywords.

It will only take a couple sales in a day to make my goal, which is still possible. I am not at the point I hoped to be at though.

When stating the goal, I wanted it to be something that anyone could do basically, and its hard to say you cant devote 30 minutes per day to a site. But, I think the 30 minutes per day is really to keep things running, and traffic increasing. o get the site up and running, it does take loner, as that is where most of the work really is. After the site is up and running, spending time getting traffic is the easy part.

I had hoped to be done with the site by now, and strictly promoting, bu I am still working on some pages, and need to tidy things up.

Im still crossing my fingers though......

[ChrisGuthrie]

Ok sweet that sounds great. Best of luck to you I hope you make it :)

[russell]

Thanks.....

[jkgourmet]

If I understand what you were trying to accomplish with Arclite (and that's a big IF, Russell) Suffusion would be able to do the same thing. It has a custom CSS area that allows you to make changes, but still does not interfere with theme or WP upgrades. Atahualpa had one also, but I'm finding that Suffusion really allows me to make more customized adjustments than I ever imagined being able to do without coding.

And all those templates really make things almost too fun. . .

[Scootek]

sounds awesome im gonna have to keep track of this

[russell]

Well, good news, I got my first sale from the site on Friday. It was for one of the camera's I am selling on the site, and the initial commission amout is $8, which isnt too bad. If im able to get another 6 sales by the end of the month that commission will be $12.

I am still working of bringing more traffic to the site. I have need to make some more youtube videos, and continue with the link buliding and article submittions, as well as get involved more with twitter.

Its not the $50 per day that I was hoping for, but it is a start. Most of the daily work for the site will be just promotion from now on also.

[AlexNewell]

Congrats Russell - it's a good start!!

[GoodCooker]

I am so happy for you...It sure is an inspiration to a new person like myself to see this happening step by step....and getting a sale so quick!

Hurray

gretchen

[Baggs]

The first sale on a new site always feels good, and $8 a sale is not too bad (I have sites where I get a lot less :( per transaction )

[russell]

I created a couple types of videos. One video was with the actual product, so I took my video camera, and showed some of the features of the product. This one was pretty simple to make, as I didnt edit it or anything, just recorded and uploaded.

The other type of video I did with camtasia and powerpoint. I created a few powerpoint slides with features and benefits of the camera, and went through the presentation while recording it with camtasia.

[BrittMalka]

Do you know which of the two videos that made the sale?

[sonatanna88]

Hi Russel

Do you use Angela's link for linking your articles in Ezine? If i am not mistaken she suggests to linking your articles which are on GOA which are faster for linking purpose?

Sona

[russell]

Do you know which of the two videos that made the sale?

I dont know if it was one of the videos, or other links that made the first sale. I am not tracking to that detail, since its a real pain when using amazon.


Hi Russel

Do you use Angela's link for linking your articles in Ezine? If i am not mistaken she suggests to linking your articles which are on GOA which are faster for linking purpose?

Sona

I cant remember if I have made any angelas links pointing to ezine articles yet, but it is on the list. I know I meant to, because it can really help get the ezine articles ranking well in google, and keep them there for a while.

I am going to add that step to my mindmap now though.

I will be putting together a mindmap that I used for this project, as well as a step by step guide on everything I did to get the site up and running and making sales

[AlexNewell]

"Can we scrape reviews from sites and use it for our own affiliate sites?"

If you can it will be explicitly allowed in the Affiliate center and in the TOS. If not - then you'd be stepping on uncertain ground!

I heard that this is OK for Amazon but you'd need to check for yourself.

:-)

[russell]

Yes, i did pull the reviews from Cabelas. My original paln was to be a cabelas affiliate as well as amazon, but cabelas just didnt pay enough, and amazon didnt have enough reviews for the items I am selling.

[shortstack]

Hey Russell,

What are you using for your auto responder? And since Amazon is the supplier, how will you be able to alert subscribers to deals?

[russell]

I am using aweber as my auto responder service. I am sending out an email about once a week as a broadcast, and its just something related to the niche. I also plan on promoting some other vendors through the auto-responder too.

[fvraymond]

Hi Russell

I just discovered this thread and your website today. This is extremely interesting. Congratulations on what you have achieved thus far!

I was wondering if, once you're satisfied with the site's content, you plan to run this website with regular new content on a regular basis, or rather if you plan to update it only when some new important product can be added to it, and just stick to promoting it with articles, in forums and with your newsletter on an ongoing basis.

Are you planning to promote it with advertising such as adwords, or just through rather organic traffc?

[Lady T]

Great information and very inspiring! Thanks for sharing.