Website Success Progress Update
October 31, 2005
I had a new idea for a business/website and after telling a couple of people about it, they did actually say that is not a bad idea. It is a web marketing site, and unlike my other sites I won’t be relying on Adsense or affiliate programs.
One of the cheapest, reliable hosting services I have found charges $30 a year for hosting and $10 for a domain name. They allow several my-sql databases and email accounts - about all I ever need from a hosting provider.
So before I make the $40 investment I thought I would review some of the success or failure of the sites I have set up.
PR: 6
Approximate Revenue to date: $3500+
I bought this site in April for $3000 and have spent quite a bit of time updating the site. I have not spent anything on advertising the site, relying on backlinks and search engines for traffic. It makes around at least $800 a month from Adsense and affiliate programs. I don’t spend much time these days on the site, but it is my best earner
PR: 0
Approximate Revenue to date: -$100
I thought this was an interesting domain name so I bought it and I thought I could later develop it into some kind of Japan portal. Revenue is still very slim has almost no traffic from search engines and is still in the red. I eventually decided to make a Japan job site and currently has 30 jobs listed.
I spend very little time on the site now. My hope is some recruiting company might be interested in purchasing it sometime in the future.
I have another couple of sites which I will try to do a review of over the coming couple of weeks.
Affiliate Program Addiction
October 29, 2005
I remember the feeling the first time I made a sale after joining an affiliate program. Simply by placing a link on my site and someone clicking on the link or buying the product from the site I made money. I don’t have to worry about shipping, keeping stock or shipping.
For example, I make 5 per cent of hotel bookings from Tokyo website. I find this pretty amazing if you think of the investment of owning and operating a hotel or travel agency, versus me running a simple website with my only cost being $10 a month for hosting.
I have been applying to more and more affiliate programs the last couple of weeks. For some programs the income has become so regular I don’t even bother logging into the site and checking my stats, I just wait for my check to arrive in the mail.
Not every program will make you money, and a program for one site, could be useless for another site. The only real way to test a program is to join, copy the code to your site, optimize the advertisement and wait for the money. If you don’t make a sale within at least a month, it’s probably better to take the code off your site and try another program.
How can you find relevant programs for your site? Here are some suggestions:
- Look at the sites that appear on your site if you are using Google Adsense. Just be sure NOT to click on the ad or you will be banned from the program. Check if the site has an affiliate program to join
- Look at competitor sites and see what programs they are running
- Read sites like problogger.net, webmasterworld.com or sitepoint.com
- Implement a search function on the site and record what people are searching for. This is a great way to research what content your site is lacking.
- Read related newspapers and magazines
Cafepress store
October 26, 2005
It seems like every site out there today is selling T-Shirts with their site logo from Cafepress.
I had a great idea to sell T-Shirts with some Japanese characters. I have seen foreigners in Japan wearing a T-Shirt with “I am looking for a Japanese girl-friend” written in Japanese printed on the shirt.
New Website Partnership
October 24, 2005
I just received an email from World Friends Networks asking me if I want to join their program. Their program looks a lot better than the current dating site I am promoting - friendfinder.com.
I currently make around $100 a month through friendfinder, so this could be a good new source of revenue for my tokyoessentials and dotjapan websites.
Their program enables to make my own branded website, rather than users just clicking on an affiliate link and leaving my site.
Subscription based affiliate programs are some of the more lucrative programs you can make money from. Rather than just a one off purchase from a site like Amazon, subscription programs give you a percentage of the revenue every month the person is a member.
Programs are usually fairly inexpensive and are charged directly to a credit card, so once someone joins the program they usually stay in it for at least a few months. It’s a great way to build residual income and can add great value to your website.
Tokyo Motor Show Picture Gallery
October 22, 2005
I went out to Chiba today to see the 39th Annual Tokyo Motor Show. It’s a mecca for car enthusiasts, but for much of the day I was wondering if it was the cars or the models that were on display.
You can see my picture gallery here: Tokyo Car Show Photo Gallery
Google Alerts
October 21, 2005
If anyone is making Internet sites or blogging on the Internet, I strongly recommend using Google Alerts if you aren’t using them already.
I started using them to collect information for writing articles on my site or blog. Then, when I started a new site, I created a new alert just with the site name. For example, I have an alert “nzproperty” for my site nzproperty.org
Google sends me an email everyday if nzproperty appears anywhere on the web (which isn’t too often yet). It might take a couple of days before the crawler Google finds the information before you receive an email. It is useful because I can find out if anyone has written something about my site, and it also gives me confidence that Google at least knows about my site.
It also works the other way. When I wrote a favourable article on the Viator affiliate program, someone at Viator received an alert and wrote me a friendly email thanking me for the comment.
Chitika MiniMalls
October 20, 2005
I have had Chitika Minimalls ads on a couple of my sites for a little while now. Adsense is still better, but it is at least another source of revenue.
My main site Tokyo Essentials is a travel site and most of the ads in Chitika are for electronic products. Chitika apparently performs better on product review sites, for example an MP3 player review site.
You can join up here: Apply for Chitika affiliate progam
Google PR Update
October 20, 2005
The Google page rank has been updated today. Not much change on any of my sites. At least I didn’t loose any PR. My new sites that have just been setup are still at 0. Definitely just having at least one link from a PR5 site, transfers PR of 4 to the other site.
Tokyo Motor Show
October 19, 2005
The Tokyo Motor Show kicks off this weekend. I can’t wait to check it out. I will be posting some pics on my Tokyo Website after the weekend.
Property Advertisement
October 17, 2005
As I mentioned the other day, I am placing and avertisement in a magazine for my new New Zealand property site. The advertisement will be 1/16 of the page on nice glossy paper and will appear in the business directory of the magazine.
They were kind enough to send me a couple of the magazines and I believe the rates are fairly reasonable. I have no idea as to whether it will be effective or not. Here is a copy of the advertisement:
