Told you it was an exciting week!

After a few months in the trenches really focusing on our affiliate sites we have now hit a monthly income to reach the $100K a year mark – all done in our very spare time.!

It’s now time to come up for air, take stock and reflect on things here on the blog which has been neglected for a few months.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, but 100,000 article views and reaching the monthly target to hit $100,000 does have a nice ring about it

Here’s a screenshot of the last 30 days from our main paypal account.

That’s nearly $7K and does not include affiliate income that gets get paid directly into the bank from other affiliate programs.

The goods news is that our income has increased month on month and we are on target to surpass our $15k per month by next March. And if you’re wondering, this is all affiliate income from our niche sites using free or very cheap SEO strategies.

It’s amazing, to think only a few years ago we didn’t know what an affiliate was and html was a foreign language!

After a year messing around wondering if you can really make money of the internet, we knuckled down and soaked up as much info as possible, and then took direct action on what we had learned – working a few evenings per week. Don’t get me wrong, we have made many mistakes and failed trying numerous money making methods but each time we have gained valuable experience and knowledge.

Failing towards success has probably been the best way for us to learn!

However we are not resting on our laurels - This is just the beginning of the next phase…

We will continue to refine our systems and processes so that we can outsource the majority of the tasks then rinse and repeat what works!! We don’t want to be working in our business, we want to work on our business.

We still have a lot of testing to complete. We rarely build niche lists! I know, I know – the money is in the list! Well we have done ok so far without one, but JJ will be testing a number of list strategies with one or two of our sites over the next year and we will report back on our progress.

We also want to tighten up on our analytics and tracking, so this will be another priority to increase the bottom line and extract maximum $s for minimum efforts. We then may be able to persuade our wives to let us give up our corporate jobs

And we will also make a commitment to you. To keep you updated via the blog and our list (which we will begin to build ) of our progress and share with you the methods that we are using.

In the short term, probably the best advice we can give you is to try and match your skills with a system, take action and test a method or two. Learn what works for you. If you can afford it or when you build up some funds, buy a system or get some coaching and take more targeted action and learn from others mistakes.

The biggest influences so far in making us a success are:

Chris Rempel – The lazy super affiliate – his direct language, simplistic overview and insight to affiliate marketing was excellent which complimented our own ideas. he has since brought out numerous products but the two that we liked best was the original super lazy affilaite and VIP confessions series containing the conduit method.

Niche Ninja Nick Madison – his grasp of tools, software, structure, how to manage a network of websites and experience if amazing and we had the pleasure of spending a weekend with him and a select few.

Alex Jeffreys – Alex has an infectious manner, his enthusiasm and commitment to his coaching members is unmatched. He helped us with setting up goals, business structure, mindset, and is a master of relationship building (which we will be putting to the test).

To also help you we will hopefully be shooting some video’s over the next few months that illustrates our complete niche marketing process and we would love hear your thoughts on this or any questions you have.

To your success

Well I told you we had some exciting news for you all!

For anybody trying to make a living online, without traffic (visitors to your website) you have no business, period. Now, there are MANY WAYS to get traffic, we discussed these earlier in a previous post. Article marketing is just one!

As a part of our overall SEO strategy, we use articles to:-

- a) generate good solid links to our web pages with good anchor text

- b) get an initial burst of traffic to our website while the site ages, gains trust and get links to climb the SERPS.

- c) Generates content to be re-used and distributed around the web for valuable backlinks.

Anyway, the point is that while recently checking stats in our ezinearticle account, we tipped the 100,000 views. It’s not a million but it seems like one of those milestones you should celebrate.

Not only that we had an overall massive CTR (click through rate) of 30%.

That’s over 31,000 direct visitors to our sites and the pages of our choice.

How much would that cost in PPC?

Considering we also use this account for all our testing, we are very pleased with the results.

So, what’s the secret to article marketing? I hear you shout.

It’s actually a combination of several things:

Keyword research – don’t underestimate this element, its critical. We are still improving every time we do it, through experience and testing. Ask yourself this, WHY is someone searching using this keyword - to buy a solution or just to get some information?

Article Title – give them a reason to click your link. Identify their pain and offer an outcome within the title.

Article content – if you think you can just type any old rubbish and maintain a high CTR , then forget it. Peopel searching the internet are getting more savvy all the time. If you do not know your subject through research (this doesn’t take long) or passionate about a subject, hire someone who is.

Call to action – this can change in every niche, but again, give them a reason to click your link. What BENEFIT will it give them to click through to your chosen destination and not hit the back button and find something more RELEVANT elsewhere.

Article marketing still works GREAT, even if you outsource your content like us, and your website converts at a standard 1%, it will make you money!!!

Remember, any website needs targeted traffic and there are many ways to generate it, we currently get around 30,000 visitors per month through various traffic methods to our affiliate sites and its growing steadily.

To your success

Long time no updates. Jason and I have buried ourselves in our niche markets for the last several months to really push on with our online business and to reach our goals we set last year.

Well things have been hectic to say the least, we have get much more organised and got systems and people in place that are truly amazing.

Our number of websites keep expanding, all aging and at different stages of promotion. The one thing that is constant is the number of visitors and income keeps growing.

We have exciting things to share with you very very soon.

To your success