Journal: Authority + E-commerce
- Thread starter Insaint
- Start date
TL;DR: Branded e-commerce site launched.
Authority:
Still hovering between 300-400 visitors/day. From now on I'll just update this part when something interesting happens.
E-Commerce:
I just launched the brand site. The prices are on average 20% higher than on my first site, but still quite a bit lower than other established brands in the niche. At the moment the site looks a bit bland, so I'm thinking about getting it redesigned. If you've got any suggestions on good people, let me know.
I've also added ~200 word descriptions to all products, which no competitor has at the moment. I'll be testing the effect once I get some traffic going. Right now the site is still indexing.
I've sponsored an international event in my niche that happened to take place fairly close-by. In return for a few products I'll be getting professional photos (easily worth the sponsoring in itself), promotion at the event (flyers) and through social media. All in a niche I've had trouble reaching, so I'm pretty excited to see what it will do. As a bonus I was invited to the afterparty, but unfortunately couldn't attend.
People are now actually contacting me for sponsoring, reviews and whatnot. So either they think I've got my shit together, or they're contacting everyone in this niche and my competitors are not interested (their loss). Either way, it saves me the time to find opportunities on my own.
I'm still negotiating with the manufacturer about packaging/pricing. There's progress, but things are going as fast as I had hoped.
I planned on trying PPC through Amazon, but after signing up I found out that their minimum bid is 3x higher than my Adwords bids and new advertisers are not allowed in the area I wanted to target. So that was a waste of time.
I've just restarted my Adwords campaign, because all but one of the competitors with lower prices have given up on it. Which is just what I expected, because their margins just didn't allow advertising unless their conversion rate was far higher than mine.
Authority:
Still hovering between 300-400 visitors/day. From now on I'll just update this part when something interesting happens.
E-Commerce:
I just launched the brand site. The prices are on average 20% higher than on my first site, but still quite a bit lower than other established brands in the niche. At the moment the site looks a bit bland, so I'm thinking about getting it redesigned. If you've got any suggestions on good people, let me know.
I've also added ~200 word descriptions to all products, which no competitor has at the moment. I'll be testing the effect once I get some traffic going. Right now the site is still indexing.
I've sponsored an international event in my niche that happened to take place fairly close-by. In return for a few products I'll be getting professional photos (easily worth the sponsoring in itself), promotion at the event (flyers) and through social media. All in a niche I've had trouble reaching, so I'm pretty excited to see what it will do. As a bonus I was invited to the afterparty, but unfortunately couldn't attend.
People are now actually contacting me for sponsoring, reviews and whatnot. So either they think I've got my shit together, or they're contacting everyone in this niche and my competitors are not interested (their loss). Either way, it saves me the time to find opportunities on my own.
I'm still negotiating with the manufacturer about packaging/pricing. There's progress, but things are going as fast as I had hoped.
I planned on trying PPC through Amazon, but after signing up I found out that their minimum bid is 3x higher than my Adwords bids and new advertisers are not allowed in the area I wanted to target. So that was a waste of time.
I've just restarted my Adwords campaign, because all but one of the competitors with lower prices have given up on it. Which is just what I expected, because their margins just didn't allow advertising unless their conversion rate was far higher than mine.
Figured I would restart my journal after seeing a few new ones pop up.
Quick recap of what happened since the last update:
- Bought a forum in January that is doing pretty well. Traffic has increased from ~4k visitors a day to ~5k. Still trying to figure out a better way to monetize it without bombarding users with ads.
- Sold my "authority" site for a ~40 multiple back in April. The new owner has been dripping pretty bad content a few times a week, but traffic has still roughly tripled over 6 months. The last penguin update actually boosted the site quite a bit.
- The first (EMD) e-commerce site got blasted by the last penguin update (not that surprising really). The brand site however is getting some traction and is hovering around page 2-3 for the main money terms. Competition has really picked up and despite a higher amount of visitors my profit has been slowly declining.
- Started a new (dropshipping) e-commerce project in the same niche as the site I sold.
E-Commerce:
As my first e-commerce project is taking more and more work to keep competitive in a relatively small market I will no longer be focusing on it. Instead I will focus on the new e-commerce dropshipping project. It is a massive and very competitive niche, but it is a niche I find very interesting and something I will be able to work on long-term.
Goals:
- Profitable by the end of the year.
- $xxx/day profit in 6 months.
Methods:
- Long term: Content and more content. Aiming to write 10k words/month of great content myself and use content writers to add another 20k words/month.
- Long term: Pinterest. Currently I'm at 102 followers (~30 real ones). Already getting some visitors as I'm getting a 50k+ follower account to repin a few images now and then.
- Short term: Adwords/Bing Ads. I will mostly be using it to get some quick info on what parts of the site need work and what are profitable keywords and sub-niches.
Done so far:
- Started a WooCommerce site with a nice premium theme. Made quite a few changes and got some further changes by the theme creator.
- Imported ~2k products at first, but cut that down to just over 1k.
- Added the standard pages: about us, terms, returns, shipping, contact us, etc. Also added some pages to emulate big brands in the niche, USP page and jobs for example.
- Started social media accounts (Pinterest/Facebook/Twitter). My focus will be on Pinterest as that was the most effective on my previous site.
- Got a one month subscription to Shutterstock (25 images/day for €200). Got around 300 high quality images from that. Used 20-30 throughout the site so far and will be using most of the rest in my content.
- Added ~40 pages of content. Roughly 30k words total. Still working on interlinking it all and adding images.
- Got a few nice links to get a base going, but other than that I will keep it as "whitehat" as possible.
To do:
- Speed optimization. The frontpage and shop pages are currently roughly 800kb and load in 1.8-2.2 seconds according to pingdom. Still not fast enough for my liking, but I've reached the limit of what I can do. So I will have to hire someone who can do some further optimization.
- Product descriptions. Currently they are copied straight from the dropshipper. They can be found on other sites and are the reason that only a few of my products are indexed in Google. So I will get all of those rewritten. I'm currently doing a small test to find the best way to get them indexed. This won't be cheap (or fun to do), but from what I have found nobody else is doing this.
Expenses so far:
Theme + plugins: €140
Content: €750
SEO: €170
Misc: €70
Paid Ads: €80
Total: €1210
Income:
None.
I will try to update once a week (probably on Sunday).
Quick recap of what happened since the last update:
- Bought a forum in January that is doing pretty well. Traffic has increased from ~4k visitors a day to ~5k. Still trying to figure out a better way to monetize it without bombarding users with ads.
- Sold my "authority" site for a ~40 multiple back in April. The new owner has been dripping pretty bad content a few times a week, but traffic has still roughly tripled over 6 months. The last penguin update actually boosted the site quite a bit.
- The first (EMD) e-commerce site got blasted by the last penguin update (not that surprising really). The brand site however is getting some traction and is hovering around page 2-3 for the main money terms. Competition has really picked up and despite a higher amount of visitors my profit has been slowly declining.
- Started a new (dropshipping) e-commerce project in the same niche as the site I sold.
E-Commerce:
As my first e-commerce project is taking more and more work to keep competitive in a relatively small market I will no longer be focusing on it. Instead I will focus on the new e-commerce dropshipping project. It is a massive and very competitive niche, but it is a niche I find very interesting and something I will be able to work on long-term.
Goals:
- Profitable by the end of the year.
- $xxx/day profit in 6 months.
Methods:
- Long term: Content and more content. Aiming to write 10k words/month of great content myself and use content writers to add another 20k words/month.
- Long term: Pinterest. Currently I'm at 102 followers (~30 real ones). Already getting some visitors as I'm getting a 50k+ follower account to repin a few images now and then.
- Short term: Adwords/Bing Ads. I will mostly be using it to get some quick info on what parts of the site need work and what are profitable keywords and sub-niches.
Done so far:
- Started a WooCommerce site with a nice premium theme. Made quite a few changes and got some further changes by the theme creator.
- Imported ~2k products at first, but cut that down to just over 1k.
- Added the standard pages: about us, terms, returns, shipping, contact us, etc. Also added some pages to emulate big brands in the niche, USP page and jobs for example.
- Started social media accounts (Pinterest/Facebook/Twitter). My focus will be on Pinterest as that was the most effective on my previous site.
- Got a one month subscription to Shutterstock (25 images/day for €200). Got around 300 high quality images from that. Used 20-30 throughout the site so far and will be using most of the rest in my content.
- Added ~40 pages of content. Roughly 30k words total. Still working on interlinking it all and adding images.
- Got a few nice links to get a base going, but other than that I will keep it as "whitehat" as possible.
To do:
- Speed optimization. The frontpage and shop pages are currently roughly 800kb and load in 1.8-2.2 seconds according to pingdom. Still not fast enough for my liking, but I've reached the limit of what I can do. So I will have to hire someone who can do some further optimization.
- Product descriptions. Currently they are copied straight from the dropshipper. They can be found on other sites and are the reason that only a few of my products are indexed in Google. So I will get all of those rewritten. I'm currently doing a small test to find the best way to get them indexed. This won't be cheap (or fun to do), but from what I have found nobody else is doing this.
Expenses so far:
Theme + plugins: €140
Content: €750
SEO: €170
Misc: €70
Paid Ads: €80
Total: €1210
Income:
None.
I will try to update once a week (probably on Sunday).
Most of my spare time this week was spent on the old e-commerce project as this is the busiest time of the year.
Still got some work done on the new project:
- Added 3 new pages.
- Edited and added 2-3 images to 10 pages.
- Interlinked ~20 pages with some links sprinkled in to shop category pages.
- Added a few images to Pinterest, repinned some popular niche images and followed a few dozen influential people in the niche (doing this every day). Gained 59 followers this week.
- Made a list of content ideas that I will start working on soon.
- Started looking for some expired domains with traffic through Godaddy auctions. Definitely not a cheap option from what I have seen, but it could be a nice way to gain focused visitors without relying on Google/social media.
Still got some work done on the new project:
- Added 3 new pages.
- Edited and added 2-3 images to 10 pages.
- Interlinked ~20 pages with some links sprinkled in to shop category pages.
- Added a few images to Pinterest, repinned some popular niche images and followed a few dozen influential people in the niche (doing this every day). Gained 59 followers this week.
- Made a list of content ideas that I will start working on soon.
- Started looking for some expired domains with traffic through Godaddy auctions. Definitely not a cheap option from what I have seen, but it could be a nice way to gain focused visitors without relying on Google/social media.
Two days late, time flies.
E-Commerce:
- Added 3 more articles.
- Interlinked and added images to the rest of the articles.
- Removed another ~200 products that were too similar or just not right for the site.
- Got rid of a ton of duplicate URLs by taking a good look at the URL structure. Which by the way is utter shit in WooCommerce.
- Gained around 40 Pinterest followers.
- Bought 2 expired domains through GoDaddy. They didn't have a lot of visitors, but it should give me an idea on how good the traffic is before I splurge on higher traffic domains.
Other:
Bought a small site in the health niche for a 16 multiple. It was doing quite well even though it has no interlinking, no images and was pretty slow. By fixing these issues and adding a few good links I should be able to turn this site into a nice earner without too much work.
E-Commerce:
- Added 3 more articles.
- Interlinked and added images to the rest of the articles.
- Removed another ~200 products that were too similar or just not right for the site.
- Got rid of a ton of duplicate URLs by taking a good look at the URL structure. Which by the way is utter shit in WooCommerce.
- Gained around 40 Pinterest followers.
- Bought 2 expired domains through GoDaddy. They didn't have a lot of visitors, but it should give me an idea on how good the traffic is before I splurge on higher traffic domains.
Other:
Bought a small site in the health niche for a 16 multiple. It was doing quite well even though it has no interlinking, no images and was pretty slow. By fixing these issues and adding a few good links I should be able to turn this site into a nice earner without too much work.
E-Commerce:
Bought an expired domain with a nice amount of traffic for just under $1000. Hunting for these domains is pretty fun, but I'll halt further purchases to see how this one turns out first.
There are a few wonky backlinks to the domain so I don't want to 301 it to my main site. Reckon a 302 would be better, but I've heard rumors that a 302 can still pass penalties.
So does anyone have an idea on how to redirect traffic without passing any juice/penalty?
Other:
The new site is doing as expected, no nasty surprises so far.
- Took about a second of the loading speed and halved the download size. Mainly by taking out the obligatory addthis social media madness that was delivering 1-3% of the visitors at best. Minifying/optimizing took care of the rest.
- Checked ~70 articles for errors/grammar/etc.
- Removed some affiliate links and links to other sites of the previous owner.
- Added images to the top pages and interlinked them.
- Got a highly related Wikipedia link to the best performing page.
Todo:
- Find a good related content plugin.
- More interlinking.
- Expand the top content and add outbound links (sources).
- Switch to a better server (to make the transfer easier I bought hosting at the current hoster, but they're not fast enough).
- Add a few quality related links.
- Get a content writer to add a few articles a month to keep things fresh.
After the above it should be mostly on auto-pilot. Except for adding the content I guess.
Bought an expired domain with a nice amount of traffic for just under $1000. Hunting for these domains is pretty fun, but I'll halt further purchases to see how this one turns out first.
There are a few wonky backlinks to the domain so I don't want to 301 it to my main site. Reckon a 302 would be better, but I've heard rumors that a 302 can still pass penalties.
So does anyone have an idea on how to redirect traffic without passing any juice/penalty?
Other:
The new site is doing as expected, no nasty surprises so far.
- Took about a second of the loading speed and halved the download size. Mainly by taking out the obligatory addthis social media madness that was delivering 1-3% of the visitors at best. Minifying/optimizing took care of the rest.
- Checked ~70 articles for errors/grammar/etc.
- Removed some affiliate links and links to other sites of the previous owner.
- Added images to the top pages and interlinked them.
- Got a highly related Wikipedia link to the best performing page.
Todo:
- Find a good related content plugin.
- More interlinking.
- Expand the top content and add outbound links (sources).
- Switch to a better server (to make the transfer easier I bought hosting at the current hoster, but they're not fast enough).
- Add a few quality related links.
- Get a content writer to add a few articles a month to keep things fresh.
After the above it should be mostly on auto-pilot. Except for adding the content I guess.
Missed an update, but didn't get anything done that week due to other commitments. So I figured I would save you a(nother) useless update.
E-Commerce:
The expired domain is not nearly sending the traffic I was expecting. Currently it is maybe 10-15% of what Godaddy claimed. So yeah, back to the drawing board regarding expired domains..
Far better news is that I got accepted by a different wholesaler in the niche. They contacted me last week after rejecting me a few months back, so I guess the site looks decent enough. Anyway, they have a nice selection of products and far better prices. So this week I have been working on pruning and importing their product list.
I also found out my theme was make 8! extra thumbnails of every uploaded image for some image gallery I will never use. So when I uploaded 2k images Woocommerce added 8k thumbnails and my theme added another 16k. So I got rid of all the thumbnails I was not using. This took a while as cPanel nearly crashed when I opened the image folder.
Added a few more articles and working on a proper overview page to tie everything together.
Once I get the new products added I will be restarting my Adwords/Bingads campaigns. Hopefully I will be able to get a piece of the Christmas sales. Pretty excited about it.
Other:
- Switched the new site to a better server.
- Added 3 new articles.
- Expanded the 3 most visited articles, added a few outbound links and an affiliate link to a store that sells related products. No sales yet, so we'll see how it goes.
I should have more time to get shit done this week.
E-Commerce:
The expired domain is not nearly sending the traffic I was expecting. Currently it is maybe 10-15% of what Godaddy claimed. So yeah, back to the drawing board regarding expired domains..
Far better news is that I got accepted by a different wholesaler in the niche. They contacted me last week after rejecting me a few months back, so I guess the site looks decent enough. Anyway, they have a nice selection of products and far better prices. So this week I have been working on pruning and importing their product list.
I also found out my theme was make 8! extra thumbnails of every uploaded image for some image gallery I will never use. So when I uploaded 2k images Woocommerce added 8k thumbnails and my theme added another 16k. So I got rid of all the thumbnails I was not using. This took a while as cPanel nearly crashed when I opened the image folder.
Added a few more articles and working on a proper overview page to tie everything together.
Once I get the new products added I will be restarting my Adwords/Bingads campaigns. Hopefully I will be able to get a piece of the Christmas sales. Pretty excited about it.
Other:
- Switched the new site to a better server.
- Added 3 new articles.
- Expanded the 3 most visited articles, added a few outbound links and an affiliate link to a store that sells related products. No sales yet, so we'll see how it goes.
I should have more time to get shit done this week.
Just a short update (though quite a few hours of work).
E-Commerce:
Removed most of the old products from the site as they are either too expensive or not good enough when compared to the new wholesaler. All of the products should be 301'd to their respective category page.
Added ~90% of the new products. It took quite a bit of time to get everything right, but it was worth it (I hope).
Anyway, the sheer amount of new products has slowed my site considerably (3-5 seconds). I reckon it has to do with the database, because the site is on a VPS and according to the stats it doesn't even break a sweat. Unfortunately I don't know anything about databases. I looked up some stuff and removed some entries from posts that were deleted, removed some transient entries and optimized the tables through phpmyadmin. It helped a little, but not nearly enough so I will have to hire/get help for this. If that is not enough I will have to start removing products.
E-Commerce:
Removed most of the old products from the site as they are either too expensive or not good enough when compared to the new wholesaler. All of the products should be 301'd to their respective category page.
Added ~90% of the new products. It took quite a bit of time to get everything right, but it was worth it (I hope).
Anyway, the sheer amount of new products has slowed my site considerably (3-5 seconds). I reckon it has to do with the database, because the site is on a VPS and according to the stats it doesn't even break a sweat. Unfortunately I don't know anything about databases. I looked up some stuff and removed some entries from posts that were deleted, removed some transient entries and optimized the tables through phpmyadmin. It helped a little, but not nearly enough so I will have to hire/get help for this. If that is not enough I will have to start removing products.
Thanks. Writing 10k words/month is no longer really my goal. I'm using some writers that produce 5-10k words/month now. Mainly because I realized that writing to keep the site fresh is really not my strong point. I'm only redacting at this point and writing an extensive guide now and then. The latter only because I have not yet found a writer that can do this at a price-point I am comfortable with.
Haven't gotten that much done in December. Working on my master's thesis + holidays is not a good combination for getting work done.
E-Commerce:
Removed a ton of products because I could not find/hire someone to take a look at the database and optimize it if necessary. Site is still not as zippy as I want, but it will have to do for now.
Got a nice 1-800 number that is displayed prominently on the website. For now I have only added a standardish voicemail message that I got done through Fiverr. The timezone difference prevents me from taking the calls myself (US market, EU based). Once the project gains some momentum I will either have to sack up or hire someone to take the calls for me.
Played around with newsfeed ads on Facebook to get some Christmas shoppers. Targeting my ideal customer that also liked a large competitors page. The bounce rate was ~50% with an average of 4.5 pages and a session duration of 2 minutes. Not very impressive, but a lot better than what Adwords and Bingads traffic was doing for me. Unfortunately with a CPC of ~$0.63 it was just as expensive as Adwords/Bingads and most likely less ready to buy.
Over the next few weeks I will give Adwords a shot again, but this time far more focused on particular products that I think offer the most (perceived) value for money. Hopefully this will at least get me my first sale, because it is getting a bit depressing.
My old e-commerce site that got blasted by the last penguin update has mostly recovered. I did literally no work on it after it got hit, so who knows why it recovered. Anyway, the keywords for both the old site and the new branded site are hovering on the 2nd and 3rd page. I figured since they still account for ~50% of my profit I would spend some time on them.
I don't want to completely rely on Google if at all possible. So I made a post on the Facebook page of my brand site that I was looking to give some free products to a number of people with a large social media following or those with their own site/blog. Spent $5 to boost it and get the word out. Organic reach is at 500 now (and rising), paid reach around 1500.
I got like 50 responses, because who doesn't like free stuff? Some of these were completely useless, pages with a few hundred likes or pages with 20k+ likes and virtually zero interaction (most likely bought likes). Others however were pretty awesome, people with 5-10k likes on their Facebook page and active on tons of other sites (Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, etc.). Best one so far has 20k+ likes, 10k followers on Instagram and ~70k subs on YouTube. Another one is a presenter in two niche TV-shows and should be giving a few shout-outs.
Anyway, so far I've given free stuff to 15 people and will likely add another 10 or so over the next few weeks as more requests keep coming in. Total cost for the products + shipping will be around €1k. The first packages are arriving now and I'm getting some mentions on Facebook. I've told everyone that further free products depend on how successful their promotion is and given them their personal 5% off coupon code so their followers have an incentive to use their name (and I can track their sales). I'm sure some will flake out or be horrible at promotion, but overall it's worth a shot.
I also made a page with my own 5% coupon (hard to find for the average visitor) so that anyone searching for a coupon will end up using my coupon, rather than finding a random coupon floating around on the internet.
Promotion stats:
Costs: €600
Income: €0
FB likes: +367
Keyword 1: #23 (23 at start)
Keyword 2: #20 (22 at start)
Other:
Seeing a few affiliate sales on the new site I bought and the new year has brought increased traffic as is to be expected for a health site. Too early to tell if this site will stand the years, but the ROI over the last 2 months was 7.5% (total). This includes a few links and some content. Beats the interest rates I guess.
The forum I bought almost a year ago is still going strong. Traffic has increased by 60-70% and with an ROI of 80% in the first year I can't complain. I switched some Adsense ads for a CPM based ad exchange that contacted me a few weeks ago. So far the results are promising and at the current rates I can (and will) drop an Adsense block and still make more.
Anyway, if you got this far: Happy (belated) New Year!
E-Commerce:
Removed a ton of products because I could not find/hire someone to take a look at the database and optimize it if necessary. Site is still not as zippy as I want, but it will have to do for now.
Got a nice 1-800 number that is displayed prominently on the website. For now I have only added a standardish voicemail message that I got done through Fiverr. The timezone difference prevents me from taking the calls myself (US market, EU based). Once the project gains some momentum I will either have to sack up or hire someone to take the calls for me.
Played around with newsfeed ads on Facebook to get some Christmas shoppers. Targeting my ideal customer that also liked a large competitors page. The bounce rate was ~50% with an average of 4.5 pages and a session duration of 2 minutes. Not very impressive, but a lot better than what Adwords and Bingads traffic was doing for me. Unfortunately with a CPC of ~$0.63 it was just as expensive as Adwords/Bingads and most likely less ready to buy.
Over the next few weeks I will give Adwords a shot again, but this time far more focused on particular products that I think offer the most (perceived) value for money. Hopefully this will at least get me my first sale, because it is getting a bit depressing.
My old e-commerce site that got blasted by the last penguin update has mostly recovered. I did literally no work on it after it got hit, so who knows why it recovered. Anyway, the keywords for both the old site and the new branded site are hovering on the 2nd and 3rd page. I figured since they still account for ~50% of my profit I would spend some time on them.
I don't want to completely rely on Google if at all possible. So I made a post on the Facebook page of my brand site that I was looking to give some free products to a number of people with a large social media following or those with their own site/blog. Spent $5 to boost it and get the word out. Organic reach is at 500 now (and rising), paid reach around 1500.
I got like 50 responses, because who doesn't like free stuff? Some of these were completely useless, pages with a few hundred likes or pages with 20k+ likes and virtually zero interaction (most likely bought likes). Others however were pretty awesome, people with 5-10k likes on their Facebook page and active on tons of other sites (Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, etc.). Best one so far has 20k+ likes, 10k followers on Instagram and ~70k subs on YouTube. Another one is a presenter in two niche TV-shows and should be giving a few shout-outs.
Anyway, so far I've given free stuff to 15 people and will likely add another 10 or so over the next few weeks as more requests keep coming in. Total cost for the products + shipping will be around €1k. The first packages are arriving now and I'm getting some mentions on Facebook. I've told everyone that further free products depend on how successful their promotion is and given them their personal 5% off coupon code so their followers have an incentive to use their name (and I can track their sales). I'm sure some will flake out or be horrible at promotion, but overall it's worth a shot.
I also made a page with my own 5% coupon (hard to find for the average visitor) so that anyone searching for a coupon will end up using my coupon, rather than finding a random coupon floating around on the internet.
Promotion stats:
Costs: €600
Income: €0
FB likes: +367
Keyword 1: #23 (23 at start)
Keyword 2: #20 (22 at start)
Other:
Seeing a few affiliate sales on the new site I bought and the new year has brought increased traffic as is to be expected for a health site. Too early to tell if this site will stand the years, but the ROI over the last 2 months was 7.5% (total). This includes a few links and some content. Beats the interest rates I guess.
The forum I bought almost a year ago is still going strong. Traffic has increased by 60-70% and with an ROI of 80% in the first year I can't complain. I switched some Adsense ads for a CPM based ad exchange that contacted me a few weeks ago. So far the results are promising and at the current rates I can (and will) drop an Adsense block and still make more.
Anyway, if you got this far: Happy (belated) New Year!
I read through all your posts in this thread, and it looks like you're heading in a good direction with the e-commerce site, affiliate site, and forum.
Happy belated new year to you too, and best of luck in 2015!
Happy belated new year to you too, and best of luck in 2015!
Just a short update on the promo this time. The last promo products will be shipped tonight. Roughly half has arrived so far, the rest is still underway (worldwide shipping can take some time). The first reviews are trickling in and people seem to be happy with the quality of the product.
Promotion stats:
Costs: €900
Income: €40
FB likes: +1400
Keyword 1: #22 (23 at start)
Keyword 2: #22 (22 at start)
Keywords aren't doing much as expected, but the rest is pretty exciting. Reviews should keep trickling in for a few months, so we'll see how it goes.
Promotion stats:
Costs: €900
Income: €40
FB likes: +1400
Keyword 1: #22 (23 at start)
Keyword 2: #22 (22 at start)
Keywords aren't doing much as expected, but the rest is pretty exciting. Reviews should keep trickling in for a few months, so we'll see how it goes.
E-Commerce:
Promotion stats:
Costs: €900
Income: €100
FB likes: +2400
Keyword 1: #16 (23 at start)
Keyword 2: #22 (22 at start)
After seeing the interest in this product on Facebook I figured I would give advertising another shot. I pooled the emails from people that ordered from both my sites in this niche and was able to create a custom audience. The audience is pretty large (2.2m people), but I should be able to narrow it down over time. It will probably take some time to get profitable, but if/when that happens I should be golden.
I copied the most popular ad I ran a year ago and copied it 50 times in the power editor (a tip from Eliquid's podcast) and set it to optimize for conversions. So far the CTR is 2-5 times higher than my previous best attempts. However, due to some weird bug with the ads the amount of impressions was ridiculously low. According to the Facebook rep I should only put 4-6 adverts in a set. No clue why they allow more if it breaks their system, but whatever. I just made more advert sets with fewer ads and it seems to be working now.
Anyway, no conversions yet, but the CTR is promising at least.
Other:
If your organic traffic takes a nosedive don't automatically assume it is a penalty. Turns out my forum was hacked and was redirecting 50%+ of the search traffic elsewhere. Took me a day to get everything sorted and to improve the security. I should have spent more time on the security at the start, but live and learn I guess.
Promotion stats:
Costs: €900
Income: €100
FB likes: +2400
Keyword 1: #16 (23 at start)
Keyword 2: #22 (22 at start)
After seeing the interest in this product on Facebook I figured I would give advertising another shot. I pooled the emails from people that ordered from both my sites in this niche and was able to create a custom audience. The audience is pretty large (2.2m people), but I should be able to narrow it down over time. It will probably take some time to get profitable, but if/when that happens I should be golden.
I copied the most popular ad I ran a year ago and copied it 50 times in the power editor (a tip from Eliquid's podcast) and set it to optimize for conversions. So far the CTR is 2-5 times higher than my previous best attempts. However, due to some weird bug with the ads the amount of impressions was ridiculously low. According to the Facebook rep I should only put 4-6 adverts in a set. No clue why they allow more if it breaks their system, but whatever. I just made more advert sets with fewer ads and it seems to be working now.
Anyway, no conversions yet, but the CTR is promising at least.
Other:
If your organic traffic takes a nosedive don't automatically assume it is a penalty. Turns out my forum was hacked and was redirecting 50%+ of the search traffic elsewhere. Took me a day to get everything sorted and to improve the security. I should have spent more time on the security at the start, but live and learn I guess.