All your eggs in 1 basket?

[fish]

I am recently minded that dust can completely halt our airline industry costing business and peoples livelihoods dearly.

It also struck me today that I have / am building out sites using just one affiliate method (EBPN) and this can not really be a good thing if the sh*t hits the fan if goog decides to delist this type of set-up in the serps for instance.

Even more concerning is that I am about to loose my 'proper job' which will (or not if I get another job soon) leave me in a scary situ with regard to paying mortgage/bills/family stuff.

so, back to my original thought for this thread, would you like to share what works for you affiliate wise?

The sites I have are not 'thin sites' indeed they have time and money spent on them vis a vis decent content etc they're based on WP since they are easy to deploy, cost free and have loads of useful plugins.

What works for you in terms of decent returns taking into consideration both initial time and cash outlay? I'm aware there are many variables involved however some folk for instance find storeburst (?) works for them, what else is out there that people are happy with/making successes with?

Care to share?

Cheers

Fish

 

[kendalcottages]

With the day job, I do affiliate marketing for the travel industry. One key group of sites we run got hit by a Google penalty and, if we didn't have other stuff to fall back on (essentially, lots of other travel sites) then it would have been a very difficult time. It took about a year to get the penalty lifted and even then it didn't return to former traffic levels.

Always a good idea not to put all your eggs in one basket as you say...

 

[peacock]

With the day job, I do affiliate marketing for the travel industry. One key group of sites we run got hit by a Google penalty and, if we didn't have other stuff to fall back on (essentially, lots of other travel sites) then it would have been a very difficult time. It took about a year to get the penalty lifted and even then it didn't return to former traffic levels.

Always a good idea not to put all your eggs in one basket as you say...

Care to share what did you do wrong to get that penalty ?

 

[kendalcottages]

I had some direct correspondence with Matt Cutts via Twitter and, as far as I can tell, it boiled down to selling a text link. We thought this was a possible cause ourselves, removed it and submitted a reconsideration request, but these continually fell on deaf ears. It was only through getting direct contact (and that took an awful lot of perserverence) that the penalty was eventually lifted.

 

[peacock]

I am recently minded that dust can completely halt our airline industry costing business and peoples livelihoods dearly.

It also struck me today that I have / am building out sites using just one affiliate method (EBPN) and this can not really be a good thing if the sh*t hits the fan if goog decides to delist this type of set-up in the serps for instance.

Even more concerning is that I am about to loose my 'proper job' which will (or not if I get another job soon) leave me in a scary situ with regard to paying mortgage/bills/family stuff.

so, back to my original thought for this thread, would you like to share what works for you affiliate wise?

The sites I have are not 'thin sites' indeed they have time and money spent on them vis a vis decent content etc they're based on WP since they are easy to deploy, cost free and have loads of useful plugins.

What works for you in terms of decent returns taking into consideration both initial time and cash outlay? I'm aware there are many variables involved however some folk for instance find storeburst (?) works for them, what else is out there that people are happy with/making successes with?

Care to share?

Cheers

Fish

Sorry to hear about your redundancy, same thing happened to me 18 months a go. Still not got my affiliate earnings quite up to original salary but getting there. Worst thing that has happened to me so far was when a merchant went bust and the network didn't pay me the commissions earned. It's unlikely ebay will go bust but I guess they could always ditch their affiliate scheme.

Sounds like you should try and go diverse as possible and try some adsense, various affiliate niches etc but if you are going to have the time how about something more like your own business so you have more control over the situation (i.e "go merchant") ?.

Or Domain Catching / Trading ?!

Best of Luck.

 

[peacock]

I had some direct correspondence with Matt Cutts via Twitter and, as far as I can tell, it boiled down to selling a text link. We thought this was a possible cause ourselves, removed it and submitted a reconsideration request, but these continually fell on deaf ears. It was only through getting direct contact (and that took an awful lot of perserverence) that the penalty was eventually lifted.

Thanks for info !
Interesting story.

 

[doodlebug]

Domain trading if your willing to commit to it ?
Google can never take that away from you.

 

[fish]

Sorry to hear about your redundancy, same thing happened to me 18 months a go. Still not got my affiliate earnings quite up to original salary but getting there. Worst thing that has happened to me so far was when a merchant went bust and the network didn't pay me the commissions earned. It's unlikely ebay will go bust but I guess they could always ditch their affiliate scheme.

Sounds like you should try and go diverse as possible and try some adsense, various affiliate niches etc but if you are going to have the time how about something more like your own business so you have more control over the situation (i.e "go merchant") ?.

Or Domain Catching / Trading ?!

Best of Luck.

Domain trading if your willing to commit to it ?
Google can never take that away from you.

Thanks for the suggestions!

re catching/trading, tbh it's not for me

re merchant, I've a couple of generic product (non tm) type of domains that would suit this, if I could arrange a dropship deal with the manufacturers then this might work ....

 

[accelerator]

Personally I am beginning to focus on just a handful of sites and trying to concentrate on making them really good. I have quite a few sites now, a lot more domains, and you have to realise that you can't do everything. The important bit is identify where the real opportunity lies. Once you've done that, you can begin to work on conversion rates and improving SERPS for longer tail keywords.

Rgds

 

[Skinner]

I make a HUGE % of my income from sites that started out as ads only, then moved to affiliates, then added drop shipping to affiliates, now I actually stock the products, so I'm the merchant. Takes me an hour a day to package the sales, stroll to the post office and send them.

I think the money now is in drop shipping, and selling.

I also have a new venture idea, selling a fully operational business with stock, website and everything, which is backed up with affiliate cross selling and ads. I'm prob doing to either be told I'm been sniffing my week old socks and its sent me funny or I'm about to smash my own lil niche idea into pieces but heres my thoughts.

I am thinking of buying for example 50 Pink Chocolate Fountains (each one gift wrapped and inserted into a delivery box) ready to go, setup a website pinkchocolatefountains.com, build a nice clean simple WP site, then add say chocolatenow affiliate (gotta buy chocolate for the fountain), then add a page full of other pink stuff to cross sell both pink stuff and chocolate. Add an advert box on 1 side bar, a content unit on the other. We now have a fully operational business with website, that I think would make me 3x investment.

This is on my dev list assuming I don't sell the domain along with supplier info and basic plan