Weekly Update #14 (September 1-7)
Wednesday, September 8, 2010 9:07Despite the holiday weekend, I still had a good week – my second best weekly total so far: $312.02. Not too long ago, I was making around that much in a month! Still, I’m also less than half way to my goal of $700 a week ($100/day) and I need to continue working on increasing this amount. Here is how the week breaks down:
AdSense: $104.05
ClickBank : $207.05
Amazon : $0.97
Other Affiliate Sales : $0
Total Earned : $312.02
Some Reflections on Individual Programs:
AdSense: I had a new daily high ($27.37 on Friday) and I had my highest weekly earnings ever as well. This is the second week in a row that my weekly earnings have exceed the $100 mark. I’m not actively building any new AdSense sites right now, but I am working hard on backlinking my existing sites and am seeing some nice movement in the SERPs for several of them. My daily average was $14.86 for the week, and hopefully I can get that up to the $20 level soon.
ClickBank: Still my strongest earner. This week I had eleven sales and one refund. Here is a screenshot from my account:
I’m having pretty solid sales almost daily right now (with occasional gaps). I’m really trying hard to get some new sites up higher on page one. Right now most of my earnings are coming from just two of my sites – with an occasional earning coming in from four or five different sites that are low on page one or on page two. If I can get just a couple of those sites to rank high for their keywords, I should be able to boost my ClickBank income substantially.
Amazon: Only had one small sale this week. However, several new sites I have built in the past few weeks are starting to move up in the SERPs, so hopefully those sites will start bringing in more sales soon. I’m also planning on redoing the design on a few of my more established sites to see if I can increase my conversion rate – which is now a pitiful 1%.
Reflections on Work Productivity
My new VA is great! I am seriously excited about what he is able to accomplish. I now have him trained to build my sites pretty much from the ground up. He creates my hosting account, then configures the WordPress blog the way I want, then writes 5 to 7 pages of content for the site, then adds images and affiliate links and does some final code modification to make it all look pretty. It’s pretty rare (in my experience) to find someone capable of doing both site design and writing good content, and I feel really fortunate to have found him.
Right now he is building around two new sites for me a week, all Amazon product review sites targeting the holiday season traffic. This week he and I were able to get three new Amazon sites up. My other VA is also hard at work building backlinks to more established sites right now, mainly doing UAW and Blog Blueprint posts. I run Sick Submitter on my computer as well at night, creating a few hundred profile links while I sleep. I’m starting to feel like I have a real good routine going now with building and backlinking my sites.
Related posts:
Carrie says:
September 8th, 2010 at 9:29 am
Sounds like you hit gold with that new VA!
Carrie recently posted..Google Revises Search Data
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Michelle Reply:
September 8th, 2010 at 8:47 pm
Yes, I think I did!
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JamestheJust Elance says:
September 8th, 2010 at 11:12 am
Carrie – He’s FILIPINO.
What do you expect?
Represent!!!
He’s probably a half-cousin of mine, with a name that repeats itself. For example, his name might be “Ramon,” like an uncle of mine, but in reality his peeps call him “Dong-Dong.”
Another favorite is the name “Bing Bong.”
And you THINK I’m joking. No. It’s a heritage thing. Filipino nicknames are the 1,079th wonder of the world.
Want to know mine?
JENG JENG.
Jeng freaking Jeng.
My mom would sing this “love” song, calling me that – looking back I cringe, but it’s a fond memory. Holy cow.
Way off track, and TMI. Michelle: i am in AWE. You’re the bomb.
JamestheJust Elance recently posted..The Average Genius Is The Last Honest Bastard
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Michelle Reply:
September 8th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
Jeng Jeng?! Wow, I can’t believed you shared that little golden tidbit of knowledge with us.
Thanks for stopping by James. And yeah, his first and last name DO rhyme…!
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Kidgas says:
September 8th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
Those are some impressive earnings. Also, how much is the VA costing you? That sounds like you are getting a lot done. I could certainly use someone like that to do a lot of work for me. It sure sounds impressive.
Kidgas recently posted..Having Fun Watching Traffic
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Michelle Reply:
September 8th, 2010 at 8:50 pm
Well, I’m paying $400 a month to my new one (who is writing content and building sites) , and $300 to the VA who is doing backlinking work for me (she started at $250, but I’ve since given her a raise). It’s a lot of money for me at this stage, but it certainly is worth it in the long run I would say.
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Anton Reply:
September 10th, 2010 at 5:20 am
Great Michelle!
Imagine you can develop new SEO strategies, and all you need is just tech your VA and that’s it – fully automated work. It’s a lot cheaper than having tons of memberships that just automate some work, but you hve to devote your time to it anyway
Anton recently posted..Income Stats – August 2010
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JamestheJust Elance says:
September 8th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
Wow. I KNEW IT. His name rhymes.
Actually it is an odd inside joke in Filipino circles, one of many, and man alive. Did I just oust myself like that?
I actually wanted to tell you about your pay raise:
WOW. You ROCK Michelle – that’s a HUGE increase, and actually you really DO need to make that e-book/training series…
Talk about motivating your workforce – that’s the way to do it. Kudos, and right on, Michelle – what a rare thing in our circles (sorry to say). I’ll tell you also from a freelancer’s perspective, my best clients are my “best” clients because they’ve paid more than I’ve asked, and NO that’s not a hint – just an observation.
It motivates your team to think above the mind-numbing drivel of rewriting someone else’s already boring topic – hate to say it, but after 70 articles on snoring…I wanted to shoot myself.
JamestheJust Elance recently posted..The Average Genius Is The Last Honest Bastard
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Jennifer says:
September 8th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Wow, great earnings especially for Labor Day and great efforts on continuing to build your income. Letting someone build your websites is easy as pie, I bet. I wish I could do it, I have to build my 5 websites, myself..Poo Poo.. Lol. It will be worth it in the end. Good work, Michelle.
Jennifer recently posted..3 Great Ways To Build Your Passive Empire- I Think
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Michelle Reply:
September 11th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Thanks Jennifer! Well, it’s taken over a year before I’ve gotten to this point, and I had to do a lot of hard work building sites myself first! We’ll see where you are a year from now, though!
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Tiptopcat says:
September 9th, 2010 at 5:31 pm
These are excellent results for the week. Congratulations.
You mentioned that most of your clickbank sales came from a couple of your sites. Roughly how many do you have altogether and did you create each one with the same detailed content as you did your master cleanse site?
Tiptopcat recently posted..Earnings For August 2010
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Michelle Reply:
September 11th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Good question. Right now I have about 18 clickbank sites, but only two generate about 80% of the income. The good performers all have between 15-20 posts on them, and I would say they are comparable to the Master Cleanse site. I do have a few “smaller” CB sites with only 5-10 pages on them that aren’t doing that well, plus several larger sites also languishing in the SERPs. Many of these sites are moving up slowly, however, with a few bringing in a sale here and there. A few of the sites may just not convert into sales for the products I’m targeting, but I think the main issue with my non performing sites is actually traffic – they just aren’t ranking high enough. So I’ll just continue building backlinks to them until they do!
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Ruth - Web Career Girl says:
September 10th, 2010 at 6:42 am
it’s great that your VAs are helping you move ahead so much faster. I love following your progress
Ruth – Web Career Girl recently posted..Started Selling Off My Niche Sites
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Michelle Reply:
September 11th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Thanks Ruth!
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Maria (WriterGig) says:
September 10th, 2010 at 7:10 am
Way to go on the clickbank sales! I am just now building up my clickbank income and it’s been great just to see a few sales a month. The main product I sell there pays $20 per sale. My Amazon sales were high this month (about $170) so I’m hopeful going into the October-December time frame they will be even better.
Maria (WriterGig) recently posted..Work at Home Jobs for Moms 2- Blogging
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Michelle Reply:
September 11th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Thanks Maria. I’m really looking forward to this year’s holiday season too, since last year I really wasn’t prepared for it at all!
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Devin Elder says:
September 10th, 2010 at 8:37 am
That’s awesome your VAs are doing so well! I am hesitant to hire/manage someone full time, but it seems like it’s working out for you.
Back links are the real beast of this whole business in my opinion, very nice you’re able to get that off your plate…
Devin Elder recently posted..Website Update – Week 2
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Michelle Reply:
September 11th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
It’s really worked for me, but everyone has to figure out what’s best for them of course. In my opinion you should start outsourcing as soon as you can, but that just my opinion of course. I definitely agree with you on the backlinks. Some say you should spent up to 90% of your time building backlinks (10% creating content), which I think is very likely true. They are tedious however…
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Tamara @ woody costumes says:
September 15th, 2010 at 1:45 am
Hi Michelle,
That is pretty amazing earnings. It seems that you have found a very reliable assistant. This experience of yours made me realize that we don’t need to do everything in order to earn a bucks. Congratulations for that amazing achievement. Really enjoy reading your post.
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Michelle Reply:
September 15th, 2010 at 7:55 am
Thanks Tamara – glad you stopped by!
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