Ylliks

It’s been a while since I started with my experiment in online income so it’s time that I share some information on it. This post will consist of 3 topics: how I set up the experiment, the results and especially the things I’ve learned.

The set-up

Increasing my online income consisted of 2 parts: 1) increase my earnings from Squidoo by creating more articles and building better backlinks to them 2) create a new income stream with a blog with affiliate marketing and ads.

The Squidoo part was pretty straight forward: during the last couple of months I’ve created more articles on a number of topics I’m interested in and optimized the ones that already were doing pretty well. Squidoo has a ranking system where a higher rank means a higher share of the ad revenue of the site, so you’re looking to get as high a rank as possible. Also, you’re able to add affiliate marketing to your articles, either by using your own links or by using Squidoo’s own affiliate modules.

The blog had some startup issues. Choosing a topic was pretty easy: it was something I’m passionate about and have quite an extensive knowledge on. So starting a blog on traveling light or one-bag travel seemed only logical. I did my keyword research and it seemed there was an audience and not so much competition. A domain name (lightertraveler.com) and hosting was quickly arranged, but I had some wishes when it came to the theme used on the WordPress backbone. I have to admit that I was a bit cheap when it came to this, because I opted to re-code an existing theme instead of buy one which was tailored (which to be honest, is not that big of an investment). I ran into a few snags when it came to my knowledge of HTML and other WordPress theme related coding, so I asked a friend, who’s a website designer himself, to help me out. He did, but it took more time than I anticipated so the blog took a bit longer to launch on November 1st. By that time however I had created 10-12 articles that could be published and created an accompanying Twitter account and news letter through Mailchimp.

So figuring I was off to a good start, I started further researching the subject (there had to be some things I didn’t know) and publishing weekly updates to the blog and newsletter and daily updates to the Twitter account. The Twitter account gathered some followers pretty soon (+100 in 3 weeks), I started building more backlinks to get higher in my Google rankings which helped and plotted along. Then I ran into a few bumps in the road.

For one I had a following on Twitter, but they weren’t actively engaged with my account, meaning they didn’t share the stories or links I put out there. Also it seemed that I had all the knowledge there was on the subject and there were just a relative few things you could say about it. It was like this: traveling light was to travel what dribbling is to basketball: it’s an (integral) part of it, but once you explained the mechanics, there’s not much more to say. Also, the audience I thought was there really wasn’t. Yes, there was a group of people out there who were as passionate about this way of travel as I was, but it was just a small group. The keywords I used in my initial research were also used for an unrelated topic with a much larger following.

So me running out of topics to write about without rehashing content (something I wasn’t willing to do after just 5 months of running a blog; competition didn’t seem to mind so much), the smaller than anticipated audience and not creating share-worthy content made me reevaluate the blog and I decided to stop with it. As an experiment is was educational (see the things I’ve learned below) but as a revenue generator it wasn’t.

Results

Since this was all about earning/increasing my online income, let’s see how I fared from the months august 2011 to february 2012.

Month:   Squidoo:  Amazon:
Feb-12    24.94        0.04
Jan-12   19.97         49.40
Dec-11   26.11        1.53
Nov-11   11.42        1.20
Oct-11   14.07        0.00
Sep-11   18.42        2.16
Aug-11   18.68        0.41

Totals: 133.61        54.74      

Grand total: $ 188.35     Average per month: $ 31.39

All the income I had was from my Squidoo pages. So not exactly the $100 a month I was aiming for, but all in all not bad from starting from about $5 a month. I still want to reach that goal at some point so there’s need to grow. In conclusion sextupling my income on Squidoo is something I’m pleased about, not getting any revenue from my “money-making” blog of course was something of a letdown.

As for traffic, in the those months my articles on Squidoo had 34.734 visitors with 40.631 pageviews (about 80% of that coming from my top 4 lenses). This has been an increase of 142% over the traffic I had in the 6 months before that, so I’m very pleased about that. The blog had 1042 visitors with 1106 pageviews. One article (a review of my favorite travel bag) had 40% of those visitors. Overall I guess not bad for a blog starting out, but since most of the visitors were gone in a matter of seconds and didn’t interact or read the articles is a telling point. So is the fact that I gained 1 RSS subscriber in 6 months and no subscribers on the newsletter.

What I’ve learned:

So what have I learned from this experiment?

• Research upfront is key: making sure you use the right keywords for your topic, that there’s an audience out there for the topic you want to talk about and you have enough topics to talk about is extremely important. I have to say I erred on that part in my initial research which lead to the demise of the blog. Of course you can always start a blog about something you care about and not worry about visitors, but if, like me, you’re setting out to make money from it there are different parameters.
• Having friends/followers on social networks is fun, but if they’re not engaging with your content or click your links they’re of no use to you. Having 1000 true fans is far better than having a million followers that do nothing to enhance what you try to achieve.
• Even when you optimize your SEO, getting traffic to your site takes time. There are no shortcuts, at least if you want to do it the right way and not use black-hat SEO tricks (which ultimately you will get punished for in your ranking when Google makes an update to their algorithm again). It takes at least half a year to get a) a good ranking in Google and b) build an audience. This may be different for you when you’re already a well-known entity, but when you’re starting from scratch that’s the way it is (although there are ways to increase your exposure such as guest posting)
• Never be cheap on your design. Design attracts your readers, content keeps them there. You may be the best writer in the world, but if your websites turns people off, it will hurt you visitor-wise. Make it user-friendly and nice to look at. If, like me, you’re not a designer, make sure you either buy an attractive theme or have it custom build for you.
• Promoting your content and make sure your readers understand what you want them to do (subscribe to the newsletter or RSS feed, click a link etc. etc) is something I still have much to learn on. Design of the blog can help but tone of writing is more important.

For me this experiment has been partly a success. I haven’t reached my goal of $100 a month, but my online income saw a substantial increase. And as a learning experience it has been very valuable. Since I’m planning to keep on trying to increase my online income, the things I’ve learned here will come in handy once a new project comes around. Maybe that experience is worth more than money.

In june of this year I wrote about my experiment in online income. The experiment is running now and one of the first things I learned is that I need to learn a lot. The experiment itself is a blog and it has been obvious from the start that just providing quality content isn’t enough to attract visitors. And it’s become clear to me now that I’m lacking in knowledge when it comes to attracting visitors.

I think the overall quality of the writing I’ve done so far is good and could be of value to my readers. But I’m lacking in both execution and knowledge when it comes to other subjects:

• SEO: or Search Engine Optimization. Since I’m using WordPress with a theme that has SEO build in, my on-site optimization is pretty good, but far from perfect. I also have to make sure that my content is optimal for both search engines and humans. Off site optimization is non-existent, except for some incoming links I’ve put up. I have a general understanding of the concept now and are applying some of its rules, but that needs to be better.
• Social Media Strategy: I’ve already have some strategy in place with an accompanying Twitter account to the blog, where, besides the posts on the blog, I share things related to its subject. This needs to be build upon further and I especially have to make sure that I use the different channels to their strength.
• Marketing/Promotion: when it comes to marketing/promoting the site there’s still a lot of work to do. Partly this is because I want to make sure that before I start with this I have quality content already up and partly because I still need to learn how to do this effectively.

There’s still a steep learning curve for me here and I know that. I’ve started to learn SEO now and will move to social media strategy after that. Marketing and promotion will be last on the list. I’ve chosen this order because I think it’s the order of most importance.

Since I want this experiment to work, I really don’t mind going about this. I have to admit it’s a bigger challenge then I first anticipated, but that makes it worth while.

In Holland there’s this expression that roughly translates to “You have a no, but you can get a yes”. This means there’s no harm in asking for anything. However Dutch parents often use another expression when children (who are bound to do this alot) ask for something: “Children who ask, will be passed over” (it sounds better in Dutch since it rhymes as well). This of course sends a mixed signal when you grow up so you’re often hesitant to ask for something you want. However it’s much better if you do.

Besides having a great holiday in september, I also did a small experiment: I asked for what I wanted. Whether it’s about some extra perks you can get in the hotel/hostel you’re staying, a more personalized dish in a restaurant or better seats on a flight. There are a lot of possibilities out there which are not willingly advertised, but are feasible nevertheless. And all you have to do is just ask.

It’s also a trick of wording your question just right. When booking a rafting trip I thought the price was a bit high. So I asked him if any type of discount was available. When the answer to that was no, I asked if there were any combination trips available which would lower my price. When it turned out that I could also book a personal driver for a day there, which would help me get from Sanur to Ubud AND look at some sights along the way, which would half the price of the rafting and get a 25% discount on the ride I booked immediately.

I did have one rule though: when the definite answer was no, I didn’t push further. I hate it when people nag about something not being possible (especially when you notice the person you ask is trying to help but just can’t) so it would be wrong for me to do it myself. When something just wasn’t possible I thanked them for trying and let it go.

Asking for what you want is a bit of a trick and for me a change in mindset. You often think that when it’s not advertised it’s not possible, but that proved to be a wrong assumption in some cases. As said, the wording of the question is important and if you do it right the benefits can be great. I know it helped me enjoy my holiday more than I already did.

Over the years I’ve read several stories about people making money with online ventures. Even I have dabbled a bit in that with writing articles on sites where ad revenue is shared (although that’s a single digit monthly payment). Over the last couple of months I’ve become more an more interested in this so I thought it would be a good idea to make it into an experiment. Usually I’ve already done the experiment when I talk about it here, but this post will be more of an announcement.

There are a couple of reasons why I want to try this. a) I’ve been toying with the idea of running a (professional) blog for a while now b) it would give me a chance to learn about running a business and branding c) I could do something with a subject I’m passionate about (travel) d) it seems like fun.

I’ve already done some research to see if there’s a chance of succeeding with the goals I’ve set myself (see those below) and it seems there is. So that’s a good thing. Although my strategy isn’t exactly set in stone right now, it will feature a blog that will be the central hub of it all. I’ve bought the domain name and a friend of mine is now tweaking the theme (my php-skills where just lacking too much). I have some ideas on how to monetize (there are several options like ads, sponsored posts, affiliate marketing, products etc. etc) and promote it (guest posts, article marketing, social media) and I want to have that strategy ready to go by launch date.

As with every experiment there should be some goals. I’m aiming for a August 1st launch and in half a years time (so that’s February 1st 2012) I would like to make 100 euro a month from it. Everything that’s above that is a bonus. Also I would like to create some form of community with people who feel as passionate about the subject as I do. I also want to see if there can be some opportunities that derive from me doing this.

As said, there are still some details to work out on how I’m going to go further with this, but luckily that’s what experimenting is all about. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.