Update

Well, I left the original post below so you could see my initial thoughts on this matter but I realized whilst swimming laps that my conclusions were probably incorrect.  I had not taken account of Clicks (Duh!) and on looking these up I found this month is running at 6,000 clicks less than last month which was a real surprise as traffic is usually on the up tick my now.  This did get me thinking though about EPNs desire to eliminate bot clicks etc.  Anyone ever wonder if they’re taking out genuine clicks as a result of their system filters?  I’m beginning to.

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Here’s an interesting piece of information.  Too early yet to draw any conclusions but nevertheless a trend is starting to emerge.  Checking over my EPN stats today and comparing the period Oct 1 – Oct 23 to Nov 1 – Nov 23 shows a difference in eBay fee revenue of just £150 in favor of October but a difference in ACRUS of 3 in favor of November.  One would therefore expect earnings to be pretty similar but already November is £250 down on October and worryingly they are trending lower still as I write this.

To me this clearly demonstrates the ability that the new algo gives eBay to manipulate payments to affiliates.  A similar level of sales to previous month being judged of lower value despite an increase in ACRUS.

Hopefully this is just a blip and I’ll see an increase in earnings over the next week, however, if things remain as they trending I am currently forecasting earnings to fall more than 30% this month compared to the last.

It’s also interesting to compare earnings to November of last year when despite 80% less traffic my earnings for the whole month were approximately the same as they are today for this month.   Not sure I can conclude anything from that as it can go either way i.e. a lot of browsers v buyers (recession effect) – I feel this is most likely.  Or, my traffic is a lot less targeted than last year – seems unlikely but you never know.

I’d love to hear about your experiences so please take time to add a comment.  How are your earnings trending compared to last month?  If we can put together more data we can draw more accurate conclusions.

Ok, so the test site is done.  I will add one more post once the site is indexed add it to Traffic Bug and Link Juicer and thats it.  I’ll do no more promotion at all accept maybe one article to ezinearticles.com but honestly, that shouldn’t be necessary.  Subscribe to the RSS to keep appraised of updates and progress.

Update 23 November – Somewhat amazingly the site has been indexed by BING and occupies position 4 for it’s primary keyword.  I never saw that coming.  The site has been indexed by Google but is not currently ranking which has also surprised me given the minimal level of competition.  Still early days yet.

I’m writing this post to put a bit of pressure on myself.  I  can generally get a site indexed and ranked in Google in 3 days now.  This got me thinking could I build a site and make $1,000 between now and the end of January.  Well, I’ve bought the domain and started to configure Wordpress and now need create the  content.  It will be an interesting experiment and will be either a great success or a spectacular failure.  The keyword is in the domain name and it gets 8,000 searches per month.  It’s a fiercely competitive niche but the competition for the long tail phrase I’m targeting is very low.

I hope to get the content finished by Tuesday and the site indexed by the end of the week.  Now I’ve told you about it I need to get the work done!

With so many places to buy domain names the choice for anyone new to the internet can be overwhelming.  I have no hesitation in recommending GoDaddy as they have never let me down and their prices are excellent.  Actually buying the darn things can be a bit confusing but there domain manager interface is very good.

Now the great thing about GoDaddy is that you can always pick up a discount coupon to buy for a lot less than their advertised prices.  I used to search the web before each purchase or renewal to try and secure the best deal.  However I recently came across a great site that is updated regularly and carries the best promo codes.

Check it out a here and secure yourself some great savings.

And before I forget just buy domain names you can find better value hosting elsewhere and if you intend to build mostly Wordpress sites then HostGator has to be your first port of  call.  If you don’t use HostGator and it all goes wrong don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Testing is one thing that many of us simply do not do.  The make money online niche is so over populated that everybody has a theory and 99% of theories are unproven.  Given the level of misinformation the only way to test whether a strategy is effective or not is to try it for yourself.  Now that might be a pain but until you can find sources of information that you can trust (not at all easy) it’s the only way to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

To that end I conducted a test over the last three months to see once and for all how important it is to have content on your site versus a bunch of eBay/amazon/affiliate links.  This proved very illuminating and also poses somewhat of a dilemma.   How come?  Well I have proven beyond doubt that Google really doesn’t like ranking pages with little or no content.  Build links to content packed page or post and it will rank quite well.  Build links to a page or post which contains say a dozen eBay listings and it will not only affect the page negatively but your whole site.    I have several sites that have more than enough links pointing to them to rank top 10 but they are down in the hundreds.  Google appears to label it an affiliate site (despite links being cloaked) and they really don’t like them anymore.

So where’s the dilemma?  Well I’ve been building sites using wordpress and phpBay.  I can’t get them to rank in Google (without heaps of content) and I cant get them to rank that well in Yahoo (Yahoo doesn’t seem to like wordpress that much) and as for Bing (well Bing is a big improvement on Live but the jury is still out for me).  What’s fascinating is that Yahoo appears to love old style build a niche store sites with little or no content far more than wordpress phpBay.

How much more does it love them?  Massively.  I have 4 stores in particular that are plain BANS.  They have no content, were deindexed by Google more than 18 months ago, have the standard templates and yet they have multiple keywords that rank no. 1-5 and over the last 12 months they have earned over $30,000.  I have similar stores built in Wordpress and phpBay that in comparison have made approx $3,000.  That makes BANS 10 x more effective.

Can you believe that?  And there lies the dilemma.  Do you knock out sophisticated stores that take a huge investment of time and money or do you knock out stores using the standard BANS script?  I haven’t built a standard BANS store since the beginning of the year.  In hindsight that’s looking a big mistake.  The best bet?  Balance build a couple of BANS stores per month and invest the rest of your time in trying to build stuff that Google will love.

There are all sorts of caveats that I could throw at this article but I’m not going to.  You have to prove this stuff for yourself.  BANS sites still take more than 6 months to get indexed properly in Yahoo but after that they do very well if you’ve find the right niche.   They are quick to set up and if you throw them into the 3 Way Links system they will rank.  Yeah Google is going to deindex them after a few weeks but hey $30,000 is a lot of money for little to no work!

Now that was worth reading wasn’t it?