Wow what a roller coaster of a month.  Come the end of September I was interested to see what changes might result following the introduction of QCP from 1 October 2009.   The QCP Preview reports had consistently shown my earnings 30% higher so I was optimistically expecting a nice earnings boost.  By 10 October my optimism had soured as actual earnings were 50% lower than the previous month.  It prompted me to start looking for a part time job as I was convinced the end was nigh.  Then, without warning  everything turned around.   Since the 10th my EPC has risen dramatically along with daily earnings.

As I write this there is one day of earnings to be reported but this month will be my 3rd best ever and is comfortably 20% ahead of normal.  Rather than joy I’d say I was relieved.  For a while there I was fearing the worst.  Hopefully I can hold the EPC and kick on in November.

So in the end I did make more money this month but the mysterious eBay algo remains just that.  I gotta be honest and say if I was just starting off in this business I’d really have to consider whether EPN is the way to go anymore.  I have started to diversify more and include different monetization options.  After all, if you control the traffic there are often many alternatives available and as Mark (over at thenichestorebuilder.com)  aptly demonstrated you can swap EPN for Adsense and make more money!  Makes you stop and think doesn’t it.

As I mentioned at the end of December I am not proposing to post specific numbers any longer.  I started this site as a permanent record as much for myself as the many others who now read the blog whenever I make a post.    It was to document my internet marketing journey from hopeless newb to super success lol.   I thought it would take a couple of years to generate an income sufficient for my needs (actually I’m not even sure I thought it was possible) but, in the last two months, I have generated more than I ever made as a senior manager in full time employment (and that is after expenses).

So I have become living proof that anyone can make the transition from interent dummy to success in a pretty short space of time.  It took me 12 months from the day I started researching to get to where I am today.  I settled on BANS as the most likely way I could make money at the end of March2008  generating £7,000 from my endeavours in December.  Didn’t do quite so well in January but I doubt many did.  It was still pretty good though (acutally it was very good).

I’ve launched a coaching program which aint cheap at £999 for 6 1 hour sessions  (I am a qualified coach by the way) to cut through the crap and accelerate the speed that those struggling to make it can succeed.  The program is full  so if you’d be interested in using the service let me know and I’ll add you to the waiting list.   The next slot will probably be available towards the end of the month but maybe the middle of March.

I remain concerned that I only have the niche store model generating most of my income and I have explored some other money making models but I haven’t found much I can get excited about yet.   If you know of any worth looking at let me know.

This year I have been trying to optimize my working week so I can focus on what makes the biggest difference.  I had built a number of new stores but I have decided to freeze development for a month or so whilst I revamp my existing stock.  I have a large number of poorly performing stores and should be able to dramatically increase earnings by focusing on some off page seo stuff which I am allocating 2-3 days per week to.   Yeah I know I outlined a different routine in my last post but they say internet marketing moves fast right?  Obviously I provide an update on how things progress in this regard.

That said, I have been making extensive use of the need-an-article.net service which I can highly recommend.  Unique articles cost just $5.52 each and are just wonderful for submitting to article directories.  It takes me about an hour to write one of these so if I charged for my time the cost of me producing one would be about $45.  To paraphrase Brian Tracy, if you want to earn $45 per hour don’t waste your time performing $5.52 per hour tasks!

Having had an article produced you need to submit it to as many article directories as possible.  Again, this is a truly thankless task which needs to be automated.  I currently use Article Marketer and after a sticky start with them I now distribute all of my stuff via them and am happy to recommend them to anyone.  Try them out using the free account option but the paid service gives much wider distribution.

Let me start off by wishing all readers of this blog a Happy New Year.   I have some lofty goals for 2009 and I’m looking forward to getting back down to business on Monday.

I launched this blog back in April 2008 for a couple of reasons:

1. To help inspire others – if I could get this to work then anyone could.
2. To document my own journey.
3. To learn more about wordpress.

I haven’t had time to write as much as I’d like and I’ve got so much more to share that I feel guilty for not making the time.  However, as I have stated before my first goal was to replace my income which I lost as a result of redundancy and I am getting closer to that every passing day.

In December I earnt more than I ever have in a single month and if the trend continues 2009 promises to be an unbelievable year.  I am cautiously optimistic that this may happen but recognise that with the holidays out of the way traffic may fall off .  One also has to keep fingers crossed that changes to search engine algorithms do not have a negative impact but this is not something that should be dwelt on.

The earnings boost has enabled me to up my outsource spend and I have budgeted $1000 per month for 2009 so I would hope to see some excellent returns on investment as the year progresses.  Now if you’re thinking bloody hell I could never afford $1,000 per month remember this.  In July my earnings were only $500 yet by October they had risen to $2000  in November $3750.

But that’s not the whole story is it?  Nope, because in December I made an unbelievable $8,250. That’s a near 400% increase on October.  Sure, some of this can be attributed to seasonal effects but the evidence suggests it is more likely the coming to fruition of all the work I’d undertaken throughout the year on seo and promotion.

Looking back I realize that you’ve gotta have faith.  When you start out on this internet marketing road you work your butt off day after day for next to nothing.   I was working 60 hours per week and didn’t even know if I was doing things properly!  After 6 months of work I was beginning to think it just wasn’t going to happen and look where I stand now at the end of 2009.

For those of you out there that are still struggling know that it is possible to make money online still.  The challenge really has to be finding the time.  If if took me 12 months of 60 hour weeks (from the point I started researching and learning) do not forget this when measuring your own level of success.  If you can only invest 6 hours per week it’s going to take you 10 years to get to where I am today.

I am not saying this to  be negative but rather to impress upon you that it takes a lot of work and if you only have a limited amount of time available you will need to be very, very patient.  If you have a day job I really recommend you set aside an amount each month to invest in outsourcing to help you reach your goals in the shortest amount of time possible.  Too many people want to do things on the cheap and you really can’t cheapen your way to success.

I’ve reached the point now where there doesn’t seem any further benefit in posting earnings updates (in hard numbers anyway).  In some ways it makes me feel bad now that I am able to earn a decent full time income (if it lasts LMAO).  I think there is more value in reporting the number of sites I run, how many new sites I build and what I have done on a montly basis to increase earnings.

That said there isn’t anything new to add in one way.  It’s a system – rinse and repeat as I’m sure you’ve read before.   I do have a yearning to put what I’ve learned down in an ebook though as I think this could help people immeasurably.  Now all I’ve got to do is find the time to write it!  Good luck everybody and have a great 2009.

Well well well who’d have believed it.  Back in August I wrote a post bemoaning the effort I had put forth for a minimal return.  For anyone new reading this blog I had spent 5 months working 60 hours plus per week and was generating just $600 per month.  My sites had started being dropped by Google at a pace which quickened month on month leaving me with just 5.  Google traffic died and I couldn’t get ranked in MSN Live for love nor money.   Things were not looking good.

Yahoo appeared my only savior so I put forth a little effort and a month or so later my Yahoo rankings started to improve.  Now come the end of November Yahoo accounts for 90% of the traffic to my sites and my earnings for November have been a phenomenal $3,750.  Yep, you read that right month on month my earnings have risen and this month my traffic doubled in the last 10 days of November resulting in a record day (I think there were actually 4 this month).    Yesterday my sites generated $360 which was a great performance.

The odds were stacked in my favor this month the holiday season being in full flow and November comprising 5 weekends so I reckon I’ll struggle to top these figures for the next couple of months but heck I’m still going to celebrate.  Do I qualify as an expert now?  You most be joking.  I am however very proud to have reached the level where I can start living again.  I knew nothing about internet marketing as of Jan 2008 and started to dabble at the end of that month.  I made next to nothing for 3 months discovering BANS in the middle of March.

The funny thing is that had I realized the work involved in BANS I’d probably never have bought it.  I didn’t know where to start and it was Mark Hansen over at thenichestorebuilder.com that taught me what I needed to know and got me through it.  I’ve bought him a couple of beers but I think I owe him a crate.  Mark you are a superstar and I can’t thank you enough.

So what next? Is it just a case of keeping on doing what’s working and getting better and better results?  Well that’s not as easy a question to answer as it might sound.  I am acutely aware that the web evolves at a frightening speed.  What works today can easily stop working tomorrow and watching the majority of your websites get thrown out of the index by Google is pretty unsettling.

I fully intend to diversify next year.  I am able to outsource more work now and in addition to my super sites which use phpBay pro I will continue to build BANS sits for Yahoo and move in to a couple of new areas.  I good do with selling a few Clickbank products as I’ve got about $800 tied up with them that they won’t release so maybe a bit of PPC is in order.  Who knows?  I’ll leave that until January though.

So if anyone doubts you can make money online don’t.  If anyone thinks you can do it quickly stop deluding yourself.  I had no choice.  I’d lost my job and couldn’t get another without relocating.  My wife had a good job herself and wanted to stick with it.  As a result I had to make this work.  Todays result is a culmination of 9 months of 60 hour weeks.  This time next year I hope to report that figure is $10,000 per month but I also have to prepared for the fact it might be $1000 or less.

On a separate note I’ve learnt that much now about SEO & SEM that I even have my first paying client for consulting services.  Wish me luck.

If anyone has any questions then please leave a comment and I promise I’ll reply in person.

Well another month flies by!  Life continues to be most interesting in niche store building circles.  Google really hates BANS now and I mean really.  I created two blogs (with little content admittedly) which were indexed quickly, ranked very well compared to BANS vanilla stores but have since been deindexed.

This proves beyond doubt to me that there is no point wasting time and effort setting up niche stores using Build a Niche Store if you want to rank well in Google.  That is not to say you can’t make good money elsewhere.

This months income was another record coming in at what would have been $2600.  Unfortunately the £ took a major battering against the dollar depreciating 25% in a week which has meant adjusted earnings of approx $2000.  I’m deilighted with this though and now have some great keywords ranking high in Yahoo and improving all the time as I continue link building.

A couple of my no hope older sites have also started to earn after doing nothing for 6 months.  I think this reflects the fact that the keyword competition was very strong e.g. home gym equipment but I now have a couple of top ten keyword rankings for gym related terms which are starting to get some traffic.  This surprised me as I had more or less written the sites off.

I am confident that Yahoo earnings will continue to rise.  I still have probably 20 sites or so that don’t rank well currently but are moving up the order with regular link building.  I don’t spend long on this probably an hour a day, so it will take some time yet.

So good old Yahoo is paying the bills but I am not happy at being reliant on this one search engine.  As I said Google hates BANS and I really have no idea what it takes to get ranked with Live.  All my sites are indexed (many just a couple of pages) but nothing I do seems to make a difference.  I treat all the sites the same yet I have one recent addition that is fully indexed, ranked for keywords and performing well.  It’s a shame I have no idea why.

So back to Google.  To make big money, in my opinion you have to rank well in Google.  For this reason I have abadoned BANS and all  my new sites are developed with Wordpress, Revolution Themes and a mixture of PHPbay, popshops and other monetization tools.  I wish I’d made the transition sooner but then I was still learning and still am.

The big difference is that I have had to bite the bullet and focus much more on content.  The problem with this strategy is that it is much more time consuming and there is a limit to the number of sites you can run.  I reckon 5.  This is a far cry from my 75 BANS stores. 

 Indeed I have only just launched one of the new style sites.  I have another in development but it will be another week before it is ready to launch.  These sites are not sales focused yet and until I have 20 pages or so indexed I will not be adding any monetization.  As I add content I wil l begin to add stores so each site will, over time, become a super site on a theme and have the equivalent of 10-20 BANS stores.

Because the stores are themed e.g sports they can serve multiple niches in one place.  Easier to maintain but requiring a different link building strategy as there is a need to deep link to the store pages.  The aim is two fold to get traffic from people interested in the content and to get traffic from people wanting to buy.  It therefore has dual appeal and will hopefully, in time, form the foundation for an authority site.

So there you have it.  A record month, hopefully another record month to come (first couple of days look good) and a radical change in strategy.

For this reason the focus of the blog will change to cater to a wider niche store building audience.  Hopefully I will retain my existing readers.  One day, when I’m making 10k per month I’ll put it all together in an ebook and it will be a lot better than most of the crap out there given some of my recent purchases!