My first $1000 day

[The Bird of Prey]

... is still a long way off I fear.

Today instead was the kind of day that would send many people off to the loony bin.

I'm not going to bore you with a longwinded post of what has gone worng (sic on purpose).

Nor am I going to berate anyone here for letting me down.


I am just going to say that although I am making a little money due to what I've learned here, and although that amount is certainly greater than I had ever made before (granted zero isn't hard to beat). I am not anywhere near where I expected to be much less where I need to be for the effort and expense I've put in over the last 18 months.

Let's just say that things that have worked for others have been a bust for me. Whether it's been PPC, bummage, buying sites, flipping sites, etc. doesn't seem to matter. I've got a grand total of $46 earned so far this month and my PPC bill is half that.

I spent an hour setting up a new promotion today, only to have yahoo decline the ad becuase the end website uses an "exit console" to try and downsell the potential customers before they leave. although this is a new policy, I don't dare raise a stink because my most successful campaign lands on a page using the exact same strategy! and they've never said a thing about it before... and it's been up for more than a year!

I have had my fill of "doing it the right way" and still getting slapped. So I've decided to slap back.

Prior to this moment I have always operated with the utmost integrity, honesty and what some might call an impossible ethical standard. I've never "blackhatted" anything, nor intentionally violated any sites TOS. Yet I find myself "blocked" in so many ways its not funny.

So what I am asking is for the experienced blackhats here to consider taking me under their wing and show me the ropes to the point where I can make a $1000 a week. Consistently, without getting banned, booted, blocked or prosecuted.
If you can do that for me please send a PM.

[Vadym]

I might have an opportunity for you. Contact me on Skype.

[mill123]

blackhattin eh. check out scrapebox its pretty handy!

[bruusk]

Damn dude Bird Of Prey I thought you were making decent income. Misperception probably based on well formulated forum posts.

I myself have been bouncing back and forth between "to BH or not to BH" this month, trying to line my pockets with another roughly 1k p/m for free, risking my 3k per month steady. CB moves in mysterious ways, for me it's hard to distinguish between statistical probabilities and random facts. (see my hysterical CB posts for example)

Speaking of which: as soon as you go BH you will wake up stressed in the morning checking if everything is still in place and all. That's a real downside imo.

But on the other hand: at $46 you have nothing or hardly anything to lose so go gettem I'd say.

I hope you figure out something soon. Good old SEO combined with a decent amount of linkspam hasnt made anyone poorer imo. Not sexy, but still works.

But pretty sure that Vadym has even greener fields to show. I will PM as well.

[SirKhan]

Just set up a good affiliate site in 5 niches, build one major linkwheel around them and linkspam the hell out of these linkwheel para-sites, that way you won't get banned by G but you'll enjoy the power of scrapebox, uaw, xrumer, senuke and all the sweet tools

[The Bird of Prey]

Damn dude Bird Of Prey I thought you were making decent income. Misperception probably based on well formulated forum posts.

appreciate the compliment, and truth be told the first few months looked promising. But since last March its just been one steady decline no matter what I was trying.

I myself have been bouncing back and forth between "to BH or not to BH" this month, trying to line my pockets with another roughly 1k p/m for free, risking my 3k per month steady. CB moves in mysterious ways, for me it's hard to distinguish between statistical probabilities and random facts. (see my hysterical CB posts for example)

I've been cogitating upon this for quite some time (see my ethics post from a while back).

Speaking of which: as soon as you go BH you will wake up stressed in the morning checking if everything is still in place and all. That's a real downside imo.

But on the other hand: at $46 you have nothing or hardly anything to lose so go gettem I'd say.

True, that's one of the reasons I've backed away from this before.

I hope you figure out something soon. Good old SEO combined with a decent amount of linkspam hasnt made anyone poorer imo. Not sexy, but still works.

quite frankly if I can find a way to get away with distributing products of the Hormel company to promo my stuff, I'll probably do that too. I mean I've got my email filter to the nth level and I still see 3 to 4 hundred spams a day. IT must work for someone or they wouldn't keep doing it.

But pretty sure that Vadym has even greener fields to show. I will PM as well.

Vadym is top notch and much appreciated. I look forward to your PM.

[The Bird of Prey]

Just set up a good affiliate site in 5 niches, build one major linkwheel around them and linkspam the hell out of these linkwheel para-sites, that way you won't get banned by G but you'll enjoy the power of scrapebox, uaw, xrumer, senuke and all the sweet tools

currently have 19 sites, 8 of which have 5 spoke wheels, one blog with I have no idea how many para-sites are on it (I've found and or created more than 30). I've thrown as much linkspam as I can at it without all those expensive tools, I've used your bookmarking service on it, I've used other bookmarking tools I can find out there as well. I've built the blogs traffic up from 60 a day to currently 250+ per day... and I'm lucky if I get two sales in 30 days! (which BTW is a far cry from the one a week the owner claimed he got from the 60 visits a day).

As you can tell I've spent the last few months trying to concentrate on one project. and while I have been successful in building it's traffic. 3 months = 3 sales. As my stepson would say "NOT TOO GOOD!"

OH well, another 18 hour day. let's hope for a better one, eh!

[SirKhan]

ARE YOU JOKING? PM SENT! I have the perfect solution for you (me thinks).

[The Bird of Prey]

I've built the blogs traffic up from 60 a day to currently 250+ per day

Based on the statement above, It's been suggested that I could sell the site for $5k based on it's traffic. Even though it has virtually no sales.

So any of you site selling experts agree?

here is a link to the site.

Can I Watch TV Programs On My PC - Satellite TV For PC

Am I better off selling it or is it worth putting the time in to make it convert better?

I think if I truly could get $5k for it that selling would be the way to go. If I can't get that much it would depend on how much I could get for the site. IF it's only *worth* a few hundred, well then I guess I'd better make more lemonade!

One other note, if anyone is familiar with OpenX (like you have used it!) PM me with your thoughts or share them with everyone if you prefer.

Lastly, once again you prove Norb right. YOU guys treat me like family! It is greatly appreciated!

[mill123]

ive got an openx server i setup a while back to serve ads on some of my forums. it's really good! if you are ballsy enough you can approach webmasters and buy their ad spaces and give them the code for your openx campaigns so you dont have to bother them everytime you want to change your creative.

great stuff.

[willyboy104]

If the site is making no money then I highly doubt you will be able to get $5,000 for the site. Although sites are valued on both potential and current income, the balance is generally 90/10 in favour of the current income.

If the current traffic is 250 visitors per day I am not sure why you are not making any sales, the only thing that springs to mind is that the traffic is not targeted but it seems from your efforts that it should be.

I wouldn't think you would get much more than a couple of hundred dollars for a site that makes no income.

[bruusk]

How are you tracking the traffic? Google Analytics, or just AWstats or something similar?

I find it hard to believe that you cant convert 1 a day at least if that traffic is "real" (not bots or other stuff messing with yr stats).

Also the Alexa rank is awfully low for a site that would get 250 visitors daily.

I think the numbers are off to be honest. Not saying you are inflating them, don't get me wrong. Just misinterpreting statistics is my guess.

[The Bird of Prey]

How are you tracking the traffic? Google Analytics, or just AWstats or something similar?

I find it hard to believe that you cant convert 1 a day at least if that traffic is "real" (not bots or other stuff messing with yr stats).

Also the Alexa rank is awfully low for a site that would get 250 visitors daily.

I think the numbers are off to be honest. Not saying you are inflating them, don't get me wrong. Just misinterpreting statistics is my guess.

A valid point to be sure. I am using "just" something similar to AWstats

so I went back through the stats and removed all the obvious bots and anything else that looked "wierd" as well as removing my own visits (which I was already doing). I took that number and multiplied it by 1.05 to take out any additional "messing around" stuff.
All that adds up to ~35 "visitors" a day.
250-35=215

that's still north of 200.

Regarding Alexa rank...
To the best of my knowledge Alexa rank is based on information gathered from those using the Alexa Toolbar. Most users of the Alexa toolbar are webmasters, IM'ers and such. relatively few of the General Public users have the toolbar.
Since I am not of the opinion that Webmasters, IM'ers and such are the "target" demographic for most of the products (like this one) I'm trying to promote, my "advertising" tends not to be in places where they are the dominant force. therefore although the traffic count is (I believe) accurate the alexa rank is low.

To go one step further I have another site which I have not done much work on at all, that *is* targeted at webmasters, IM'ers and such. This site gets around 10 visitors a day yet ranks much higher on Alexa. you can check for yourself. that site is tinyfav.com

I agree that "something" is NOT QUITE RIGHT (to quote Supertramp) regarding conversions for the amount of traffic. To make matters worse the previous owner claimed one sale a week on roughly a third of the traffic I'm getting now. I only began trying to do something with the site after two months of zero sales with the original configuration. Thus the source of much of my frustration.

The bulk of the traffic is coming from the links I've established over the last 3 months, precious little from the SE's directly though that is improving. I would think that a lot of webmasters visiting would have the Alexa rank higher than it is. I've been through the traffic referrers list countless times and I can't find anything that leads me to believe I'm not seeing "real" traffic.
I've double and triple checked all my links, they are set up properly.

One of the reasons I started this thread was in hopes of learning how to drop cookies on every visitor, I'm thinking that might help the conversions a bit.

Enough rambling.

[bruusk]

PressDropper - WordPress Cookie Dropper works like a charm for me when i use it.. still undecided if i get punished by CB for it though. (even though using girlfriend account on her parents address, cleaning cookies, using proxies when logging in). Yeah i'm paranoid. Whenever I turn this thing on with one of my blogs its an extra ~$30 a day in my pocket on that account, but every time it correlates with strange and otherwise inexplicable drops on my main accounts.

And explanation for your lack of sales per visitor could be that the traffic you get is referral from the links you built. Those are often freebie researchers, very unlike from search engine traffic which is way more buying inclined.

I never tried your niche with SEO, for PPC it worked quite good for me when it was allowed (not anymore). But I would second SirKhan's proposal to go crazy on promoting the promoters, build some crazy links to them and see if you can grab some decent search engine traffic.

[SirKhan]

Also add Google Analytics to this site there might be some surprises... It's free and in 3 days you'll know a lot more about your stats.

[jacky8]

Just set up a good affiliate site in 5 niches, build one major linkwheel around them and linkspam the hell out of these linkwheel para-sites, that way you won't get banned by G but you'll enjoy the power of scrapebox, uaw, xrumer, senuke and all the sweet tools

OK guys I second that. It works if done the right way.

Sirkhan already gave away a HUGE hint for free and I highly appreciate that.

I'll add a few more things into it.

That "linkwheel" doesn't have to be exactly a linkwheel. You can have around 50 "fairly unique" article directory posts or web 2.0 sites. Note that you must spin "heavily" and not have duplicate pages.

If you have web 2.0 sites, interlink between them randomly so that the linkjuice passes around in the network. It will make your link network stronger. Now there are certain kind of secret ways that i use to "interlink" between them. There can be another chapter on this. In case of web 2.0 blogs, link randomly. Do it rarely from the homepage, do not have reciprocal links like web 2.0 1st <---> web 2.0 2nd, don't spam or web 2.0s with ban you, interlink in your network using second / third spun posts, etc.

Make sure you don't use a spun article from the same template twice on one web 2.0 blog. For the 2nd post, create and use a new spun template and so on.

Personally I use the spam tools, mostly the automated commenter on the third level (to pages that link to these web 2.0 sites)

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Okay, already gave away too much for free. Cheers!

[JeffT]

I'm a little late here, but that TV site of yours is just really ugly. I was turned off to it the second I landed on it especially with the header. I just think it's terrible. I can see why most of your traffic is probably hitting the back button. There is just way too much going on on your site. Banners, tons of tags, that bookmark and share thing on the bottom, etc. From the perspective of a searcher, I can see why people are leaving and not buying.

I would say to go with a really clean blogging theme like Thesis or something and just casually send people to the merchant site. I'm no pro at SEO at all, but I definitely convert at least 1 out of 100 or so visitors to my sites. Sometimes more sometimes less. Preselling is huge and I'm constantly tweaking my sites.

You've got the traffic which is great! That's something that I struggle with and would kill to have your daily numbers. Most of my older sites get 10 or so visitors per day even on the 1st page of google. That's what poor keyword selection will do to ya :P

My 2 cents

[The Bird of Prey]

Actually Jeff you've caught me in the middle of drastic changes to the site. I'm adding/subtracting and testing different things over the next few weeks to try and improve the conversions.

I appreciate your comments... the header is my biggest problem and top priority. Check back in a few days and let me know what you think.

BTW, as bad as it is now it was worse before!

[Smitten]

Here's what I think is going on:

1) Sorry to burst your bubble, but there's no way that's organic traffic. You're probably using cystats or a similar tracking tool, and those 250UV/day probably 80% bot traffic. Your main keyword is only 1300 search per month; your real traffic must be something like 30-40 UV/day, and that's supposing you're also ranked for many related keywords. Try setting up analytics and see for yourself.

2) I tried promoting this product for a while with some un-targeted traffic I had available, and it converted at 500 hops. If you're not making even one sale per month with targeted traffic, then you must be getting much fewer hops... I'd say you're getting maybe 5-10 actual hops per day. Am I right? If you want people to help you *really* figure out what's going on, post a screen-shot with your past 30 days traffic report, as well as your CB analytics report for this campaign. Put your ego aside and let's deal with facts, here.


If you want to improve conversions....


3) Some of those hoplinks are opening in a new window (not good); all of the website is screaming "BUY DIRECT TV", which is usually a good way to trigger the consumers "hype/spam" radar and turn prospects away. Try focusing on pointing out the benefits of the product, not its features: Don't do the "get access to 3,500 channels.... AMAZING!" angle; try the "you know what? This is much cheaper than cable... and it's better: you can use it anywhere, just as long as you have an available internet connection. After finding I could get this, I didn't hesitate to finally tell my cable company to SCREW OFF... and it felt wonderful!". Don't push or praise the product, just sell the dream being able to a PC or laptop as a satellite TV, almost for free. There's a subtle difference, but it's crucial in terms of conversions.

4) So you're up for some experimentation with the black arts? Try this: start uploading the latest movies to torrent sites, look up on ways to make your torrents popular. Include a simple PDF file (1-2 pages) in each torrent you make with a title such as "LEARN HOW TO GET 3,500 TV channles on your PC for FREE!" and use it to pitch the product. If your torrents get wildly popular and you have plenty going around, that PDF will get hundreds of thousands of eyeballs on it and you will get a bunch of sales. Ta-da!

[The Bird of Prey]

At the risk of reopening a can of worms...

First, I want to thank everyone that made constructive suggestions. I've actually applied many of them and I am pleased with the results. I'd appreciate it if you took another look now that I've "rebuilt" the site, I am sure there are some things that can be done to improve traffic. Conversions are now about 1 in 35-40 hops. I'll go into the rest of the traffic details as I respond to some of your comments, since this may help a few noobs I thought I'd respond to several of the comments specifically.

Yep, this is gonna be one long post, I'll begin with the most recent comment and work my way back. If I don't quote you then I've already responded or deemed the post not in need of response.

Here's what I think is going on:

1) Sorry to burst your bubble, but there's no way that's organic traffic. You're probably using cystats or a similar tracking tool, and those 250UV/day probably 80% bot traffic. Your main keyword is only 1300 search per month; your real traffic must be something like 30-40 UV/day, and that's supposing you're also ranked for many related keywords. Try setting up analytics and see for yourself.

I started running GA on this back at the end of March when I started this thread. I also applied GA to several other sites. I'll mention two observations that I believe are relevant.

• GA definitely reports a much smaller number of visits and visitors than any other tracking system I've ever used.
• there are days when the number of hops exceeds the number of visits reported by GA, this also holds true for PPC traffic as I have on occasion paid for 4 times the number of clicks that GA reported as visits (or visitors).

Based on my detailed review of the actual logs for the site (as well as some of my other sites) I believe GA has a very restricted idea of what is a visitor or visit to the site. However most of the other tools seem to have too few (as in none) restrictions on what constitutes a visitor or visit to the site.
The only accurate (IMHO) way to determine what I am getting in the way of traffic is for me to review the log files myself. Fortunately, since I've been around longer than any of the "statistics" programs like GA, CYstats, AWstats, etc. I know how to read a log file. I am beginning to wonder if any of the creators of these stats programs know how to read one though, because the numbers sure don't come close.

2) I tried promoting this product for a while with some un-targeted traffic I *had available*, and it converted at 500 hops. If you're not making even one sale per month with targeted traffic, then you must be getting much fewer hops... I'd say you're getting maybe 5-10 actual hops per day. Am I right? If you want people to help you *really* figure out what's going on, post a screen-shot with your past 30 days traffic report, as well as your CB analytics report for this campaign. Put your ego aside and let's deal with facts, here.

great job of sneaking a link in there!

Back in march when this started I was only getting 2-3 hops per day on a good day, and there would be intervals of zero hops for 2 or 3 days at a time.
Although the changes (including traffic sources) I've made are recent (2 months), now I'm getting 5 -10 hops a day with only an occasional zero day.

I'm getting roughly 20% of the actual UV to the site clicking throughto the sales site. It's fluctuation currently is all over the place, one day it's 80-90% next day it can be zero or anywhere in between.

My ego is tucked away firmly in my back pocket. However, especially after some of the PM's I got in response to this post in March and the fiasco of another request for assistance here at NC, my "trust" issues are front and center. Perhaps *IF* someone is a skilled GA user and is willing to show me a few tricks that will help I *might* be willing to show them a screenshot. But posting that on the open forum? Ain't happenin'.
As it is though you'll have to take me at my word, as it would do me no good to fabricate the information. After all, the only thing that will pay the bills is money, not an alleged reputation on an IM forum.

If you want to improve conversions....

3) Some of those hoplinks are opening in a new window (not good); all of the website is screaming "BUY DIRECT TV", which is usually a good way to trigger the consumers "hype/spam" radar and turn prospects away. Try focusing on pointing out the benefits of the product, not its features: Don't do the "get access to 3,500 channels.... AMAZING!" angle; try the "you know what? This is much cheaper than cable... and it's better: you can use it anywhere, just as long as you have an available internet connection. After finding I could get this, I didn't hesitate to finally tell my cable company to SCREW OFF... and it felt wonderful!". Don't push or praise the product, just sell the dream being able to a PC or laptop as a satellite TV, almost for free. There's a subtle difference, but it's crucial in terms of conversions.

I've taken this into consideration and rewritten all of the *pages* to not scream "BUY DIRECT TV", I am writing new posts that will reflect more of your recommended tack. Though I won't say never, I probably won't rewrite all of the posts at this time.
Please remember that I am not the world's gift to copywriters, I appreciate this kind of specific copywriting advice.

4) So you're up for some experimentation with the black arts? Try this: start uploading the latest movies to torrent sites, look up on ways to make your torrents popular. Include a simple PDF file (1-2 pages) in each torrent you make with a title such as "LEARN HOW TO GET 3,500 TV channles on your PC for FREE!" and use it to pitch the product. If your torrents get wildly popular and you have plenty going around, that PDF will get hundreds of thousands of eyeballs on it and you will get a bunch of sales. Ta-da!

I must admit than whenI first read this a favorite quote of my father's came to mind. "if a frog had wings he wouldn't bump his ass on the ground."
However, I have been doing some of this "torrent" trafficing with other products. I'm finding that torrent users are getting more sophisitcated and are ignoring torrents that have "extras" in them. The results so far are "mixed", but I seem to get better results when the "torrent" is related to the product I'm trying to sell. for example TV show torrents to promo the Sat TV product.

I'm a little late here, but that TV site of yours is just really ugly. I was turned off to it the second I landed on it especially with the header. I just think it's terrible. I can see why most of your traffic is probably hitting the back button. There is just way too much going on on your site. Banners, tons of tags, that bookmark and share thing on the bottom, etc. From the perspective of a searcher, I can see why people are leaving and not buying.

I would say to go with a really clean blogging theme like Thesis or something and just casually send people to the merchant site. I'm no pro at SEO at all, but I definitely convert at least 1 out of 100 or so visitors to my sites. Sometimes more sometimes less. Preselling is huge and I'm constantly tweaking my sites.

I appreciated this, I've made a number of changes. If you have the time and don't mind taking another look I'd welcome your input

You've got the traffic which is great! That's something that I struggle with and would kill to have your daily numbers. Most of my older sites get 10 or so visitors per day even on the 1st page of google. That's what poor keyword selection will do to ya :P

If you read my traffic comments above, it's really hard to figure out what you get for traffic from GA or any other stats program. I've returned to reading logs again. One thing I'll share with you, when using longtail keys you can get some extra traffic by creating pages/posts/etc. that use secondary and tertiary keywords that are part of the longtail. As an added benefit it increases the strength of your longtail key page.

Just set up a good affiliate site in 5 niches, build one major linkwheel around them and linkspam the hell out of these linkwheel para-sites, that way you won't get banned by G but you'll enjoy the power of scrapebox, uaw, xrumer, senuke and all the sweet tools

OK guys I second that. It works if done the right way.

Sirkhan already gave away a HUGE hint for free and I highly appreciate that.

I'll add a few more things into it.

That "linkwheel" doesn't have to be exactly a linkwheel. You can have around 50 "fairly unique" article directory posts or web 2.0 sites. Note that you must spin "heavily" and not have duplicate pages.

If you have web 2.0 sites, interlink between them randomly so that the linkjuice passes around in the network. It will make your link network stronger. Now there are certain kind of secret ways that i use to "interlink" between them. There can be another chapter on this. In case of web 2.0 blogs, link randomly. Do it rarely from the homepage, do not have reciprocal links like web 2.0 1st <---> web 2.0 2nd, don't spam or web 2.0s with ban you, interlink in your network using second / third spun posts, etc.

Make sure you don't use a spun article from the same template twice on one web 2.0 blog. For the 2nd post, create and use a new spun template and so on.

Personally I use the spam tools, mostly the automated commenter on the third level (to pages that link to these web 2.0 sites)

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Okay, already gave away too much for free. Cheers!

This is an example of what has long been a pet peeve of mine regarding IM. Specifically this "layered" approach concept. for example main site ---->50 article sites ----> dozens of sites linked to the article sites but not the main site and so on and so forth.

Plain and simple, when I bought this Sat TV site the owner claimed to have 60 UV a day, one sale a week and some 300+ links. I was able to find about 200 links of which about 20 or so were articles.

Needless to say after a month of nil traffic and no sales, I embarked on making a linkwheel for the site. I did use some of the links and articles that existed as part of the "loose" linkwheel. Hadn't tried this before and by the time I chose to implement it, the recommendation was that you shouldn't completelty "close" the wheel anymore as that was causing G to drop stuff.

Well two more months went by with still no traffic and no sales, so I returned to my roots and began 'reworking the site'. lo and behold an uptick in traffic and sales.
Things were ok for a while, then began to drop off, at which point I started this thread.

I'm not jumping on anyone in particular here, and if this "layered" approach works for you then I am happy for you.
It's funny, but what is starting to work for me with this site is what worked well a long time ago...

• build an attractive site, one that's clean, neat, easy to read, and easy on the eyeballs.
• fill it with good quality content. lots of text just enough images to tweak a few brain cells. Don't worry about "duplicate content", don't copy someone else word for word, but don't get yourself in a tizz because someone else wrote a sentence the same way you did.
• build one way links to your site, use directories, forums, whatever you like. just try to make most of them relate to your content. for example, get links to your site about dogs from "dog" related sites. links from "cat" sites are ok but they don't do you as much good as the related ones. Don't worry about PR or alexa or crap like that, and you don't need thousands of links either. I've built sites that reached and stay at the #1 spot even though the sites below them have "more" links.

One final note on this, I think Google has done a hugh disservice to IM in general. If you sit back and think about it, how much time is spent trying to figure out how to "get around" their mystical rules? How much time creating a site that meets their QS requirements? And how often have you had to "start over" because the G changed the rules or "slapped" you altogether?
I've had one site, that I haven't updated for years, that has ranked on the first page of G and Bing and Yahoo for a very long time. Yet when I chose to try adwords for it, G gave it a QS of 1! and wanted $5 a click for a .05 per click keyword anywhere else! and for good measure kicked the site out of the Adsense program twice!

In conclusion, I have decided that much of what is called "blackhat" isn't really blackhat, it's just thinking creatively. Secondly, *we*are making this more complicated than it needs to be. Get back to the simple things and let nature take it's course.

Once again I appreciate the help. If you want to take a look and offer any more suggestions the site in question here is Watch TV on PC | Secrets to watching TV on your PC