David Fiske A subtle blend of affiliate marketing and web development

There are a few people who have contacted me recently loving the stuff that's here. That's good because I'm not doing it for me. I make £0 from this site despite the blatant advertising that surrounds it! Infact, it costs me money in hosting.

Having said that, it's a great feeling knowing I am helping others.

In the last lecture, I looked at the state of my portfolio. This lecture is more of an evaluation of the project so far and what you can learn from it.
 
I set up Compare Sat Nav as the main site I was going to make money from. I researched a niche and found that it was good to chase.

What I did not consider was the amount of revenue I could earn - very little! Each sale will bring in around £2.50 to £5 depending upon where the customer buys from. That means that at the current 0.3% conversion rate, I would need (using £2.50 as an average sale) 4,000,000 visitors per year to make £30,000 a year. I'm on track to get 20,000. That equates to £150 a year (using £2.50 as an average sale). That's Christmas shopping for my partner taken care of but what about the other £29,850?!

There are solutions here. Either drop the site and move onto something more profitable or put more effort into it.

You see, affiliate marketing works like this - You only get back what you put in. Put in 1 hour a week and that's the equivalent of what you'll get back. Put in 40 hours a week and you get more back.

In a panic (OK, more of a concern), I set up a couple of other sites. This is known as the 'throw and stick' method of affiliate marketing. Throw up a lot of websites and see which stick. Those that do will probably earn some income but not a lot. Those that don't will flop and you'll move onto something else.

That is a guaranteed formula for failure. If success were that easy, everyone would be doing it!

So I have so far proved that having one website is not enough. From an interest perspective, I can get bored very easily and one website will do that. Plus, you'll go mad working on one site day in day out!

I have also proved that setting up sites using the 'throw and stick' methodology is bound to fail.

Another thing I've proved is that you need to have sites that interest you. Make Us Happy is about credit cards, loans, mortgages, and so forth. Yawn!

The only thing exciting about a loan is paying it off. The same goes for mortgages and the like.

So to push this project further, the next slant I will take is developing a site that really interests me. For that, I need to go back to the early lectures and re-examine what I neglected back then and why.

I will also now treat Compare Sat Nav and Gifts of Crystal as my primary shopping sites and probably Computer Chooser as the 'interests me' site.

I will upload a clearer plan soon!