Shane Brown – Affiliate Marketing » General

Domaining – Increasing Domain Sales & Value!

admin — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 07:46:53 +0000

As well as affiliate marketing, I dabble in a bit of domaining. The two kind of go hand in hand, you reg a domain and plan to develop it, but then decide you dont have time to develop it so try and sell the domain.

This post is about a recent experience with one of my domains. I bought the domain after seeing it on a drop list. It was a two word .org.uk domain. The exact match only got around 200 searches per month, however if you swapped the first word for a very similar word (along the lines of “motorcycle” to “motorbike” the number of searches went up to around 3,000 per month. After a quick search, I saw that Google was using the two first words as pretty much meaning the same. If you searched for the one in my domain, the more searched term appeared and vice versa.

After a few months on my “development list”, I decided not to bother developing it and get rid instead. I offered it to several people who where looking to buy similar domains on various forums. Nobody was interested, even at £20. After offering it to a few people I gave up with it and put it on a “drop list”.

As with all of my domains, I had installed wordpress and put up a couple of pages of content when I bought it, but not done any backlinks to it. Last month, I received an email offering £100 for the domain! First thought was to sell it – however I then checked the rankings and saw it was ranking 6th for the exact match term and 13th for the higher searched term. I did a little bit of link building with Article Marketing Robot and within a week I was ranking number 1 for the main term and top 3 for the other term. Now I had a domain which may be worth something! I emailed the person back who made the original offer and asked them to make a new offer – no response!

I then spent a few minutes to pull off contact details for all of the companies using AdWords on both terms and write an email to them all, asking for offers. Within 30 minutes I received an email back saying they where interested! I sent an email back saying open to offers, but I had contacted other companies and would be taking the highest first bid, or the first bid I was happy with. No response again. Again I was starting to get a bit annoyed (even though I had only sent the original emails out less than an hour ago!), so popped out for a take away. Got back to a response from them offering mid £xxx! Great, a domain I couldn’t sell for £20 was now going to sell for mid £xxx. However, before I had chance to reply, another company emailed back asking for a price. I sent them the same email as the previous company and within minutes had a response offering very high £xxx which I immediatly accepted and have now sold!

So a domain which I bought for £7 and had decided wasnt worth the £7 after not being able to sell for £20, suddenly became worth over 100 times more than I paid for it with literally a few minute work (a couple of Article Marketing Robot blasts which could have been outsourced on Fiverr for $10 or so). This is my second big domain sale so far, with a dozen or so smaller sales in between. I have around 70 domains (mixture of extensions), although most are now developed and only around 10-15 are ones I would sell, with my total expenditure on domains so far being around £400. So far from selling domains, I have made over £3k in profit in the last year or so.

Funky Pigeon Review

admin — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 15:24:09 +0000

I dont normally post reviews of non affiliate/seo sites on here, however thought I would share this site here.

Unless you have been living under a rock you will know that personalised cards are being advertised everywhere. First it was Moonpig. I received a code for a free card from them one year so thought I would try it out – however the card never turned up. Suprisingly I never used them again. Since then though, everyone seems to be jumping on the personalised cards idea and sites such as “Funky Pigeon” popping up everywhere.

Anyway, I was away on holiday for two weeks in June this year, which ran over Fathers day. As usual I forgot to buy a Fathers day card! Fortunately I was checking my emails while away on holiday and noticed an email from Funky Pigeon for a free fathers day card. I didn’t have anything to lose even if it didnt turn up as I hadn’t got a card already and had no way of getting one. A few clicks later and I had picked a card from the huge range available, personalised the text on the front and inside and told them to send it straight to my dad – done! I was amazed when I got a text message from my dad on Fathers day saying thanks for the card!

A few weeks later it was my girlfriend’s sisters 18th birthday so I decided to give Funky Pigeon another go, this time using a photo on the card and changing all the text again. This time I had the card sent to me so we could give it her with her presents. The next day the card came! It looked great, the photo was great and everything looked as it should. Everyone at the party commented on the card and it was by far her favourite.

Then today I realised that I hadn’t bought a card for my niece’s Christening. Im not religious at all, I feel like a hypocrite even going to the Christening. When I was looking around the shops, each one had a handful of cards, but they were all very religious – after all its a Christening! I didn’t feel comfortable giving any of them so decided to try Funky Pigeon. I got home, went to the site and searched for “Christening”. 62 cards – perfect! Within a couple of minutes I had picked a card which I liked the look of, wasn’t too religious, added my niece’s name and customised the message inside a little and placed the order.

It is so much easier buying cards online, especially when you are out of the country and need to send a card (Fathers day), you want something a little special (like the 18th birthday card) or when you want the freedom to change the text (the christening card). Add to that the fact the prices are quite reasonable and there always seems to be a discount voucher available and it is not only convenient, but cheap as well. The Fathers day card was free, 18th birthday card was £1.49 and the Christening card was £1.24 – all including free deliver to you or direct to the recipient – which from my experience is the next day!

If you are interested in signing up with Funky Pigeon at http://www.funkypigeon.com then by using my account number (776595) when you sign up, you will automatically get 50% off your first order! On top of this if you preload your account with £10, you get £2.50 free which makes everything even cheaper! Oh and I get £3 account credit if you sign up with my account number.

Incoming search terms:

An Overdue Update…

admin — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:39:57 +0000

So, its been the best part 3 months since my last update – mainly because I have been so busy, but also not really had much to say!

My last posted ended with me saying I was off to see Al Murray. The show was good, but not as good as last year, however the warm up guy (Chris Ramsey) was great. Better than Al Murray! Hopefully we’ll be seeing more of him in the future! Next gig is Russell Howard – centre front row seats. Not sure if that was a brave or stupid purchase!

As some of you know, I am now a full time affiliate! I quit my job and after a few days training my replacement (who has already left) after Christmas, started to settle into life as a self employed full time affiliate. I now have my home office set up, I just need a decent new mouse now and possibly a couple of new monitors. I currently have a 19″ and 17″ which was fine for a few hours a day, however I would now like 2 x 22″ monitors.

Anyway, on with some affiliate stuff! I’ve not built many (any actually!) new sites over the last few months, but I have been making lots of lists of ideas and creating content etc. November was quite good for me, however December was AMAZING! A couple of my sites made loads of sales, making me plenty of money. January has died down a bit, although I’m still earning more than the average for last year.

Several of my sites only sell one product from one retailer. This had worked well for me through the year, however during the first week of December I decided to try something different on one of my sites. I changed the site to list 4 different retailers, with the prices from each one. The next day my sales more than doubled, with plenty of people buying from the more expensive retailers!

On top of that Im finishing off my script which checks prices and stock on websites for my sites. I currently have this running on a few sites, however each site runs a different version of the script and there is no central system. My new script will run from a central domain and check the prices/stock on the products from across all of my sites each day. Each site can then pull their prices from a central database. I have also set up email alerts so if the script can not find the price/product/page for any reason it emails me. This way when products are removed or the websites layout changes I can jump on it straight away and correct the problems.

Anyway…back to work!

Incoming search terms:

First BIG Order!

admin — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 04:13:48 +0000

One of the things I really love about affiliate marketing already is going to bed! Seriously, not only is it the only time my brain stops thinking about it – but when knowing that your websites are working away earning you money through the night is great. Sometime last night, I got a big order from my first affiliate marketing website through Amazon – 26 books and a video game (which is what my website is marketing!), grand total of the order was about £200 which made me about £12 in commission!

Its a pity I dont get orders like that every day, I would have already hit my July target if I did. It gave me a good push though, one website made £12 in one night. If I get my 20 websites up and running and each site makes 1 sale like that per month I will hit my target!

This is also one of the reasons why I prefer Amazon over any other affiliate, their massive range of products. If I had put my video games website through to say Game or Gamestation etc then rather than a £200 order, I would have got a £20 order which is why wherever possibly I will be using Amazon as my main affiliate and possibly use a few others as “backup” or to cover niches where Amazon isnt as competitive or doesnt stock the range of products Im selling.

Affiliate Marketing & Me

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 03:53:16 +0000

So, I finally decided that making websites for other people had so many downsides and risks involved so decided to start thinking about my options. I remembered signing up with Trade Doubler when I was about 14 and making a little bit of money (about £100 if I remember correctly). So, if I could make £100 back then just “messing about” with it, its got to be worth another stab?

So here I am, at the beginning of what will hopefully be a long and successful path in the world of affiliate marketing. By no means am I expecting this to be an easy task, hell I know it wont be, but can you name anything worth having that is?

In the first month as an affiliate marketer I have already had some really good weeks, and some really bad weeks. I started just before Christmas 2009, and within days of my first real affiliate site being up I was ranked at number 1 for my main search term, bringing in a handful of visitors a day and making a sale or two each day! It wasnt much but it was a start. Then Christmas came and went again, and with it, so did my sales. The first two weeks in January made me nothing, zilch! Yeah, thats pretty disheartening. I still dont understand it either – I was getting the same amount of clicks, the same amount clicking through to the merchant (Amazon in this case), but nobody ordering a damn thing!

Anyway, hopefully that time is behind me, for the last week or so I have made a couple of quid a day (from one site), its a start, and something I can build on! I have set myself a few goals and deadlines I would like to hit them in.

July 2010 – At least 20 websites earning commission to a minimum of £10 per day (£3.650 per year) (combined)

December 2010 – At least 40 websites earning commission to a minimum of £50 per day (£18,250 per year) (combined)

I feel they are realistic targets. 20 sites earning 50p per day within 6 months, turned into 40 sites earning £1.25 per day in 12 months – doesnt sound that difficult. I’ve allowed myself a week per site, with a few weeks spare for holidays etc. Obviously if I hit a gem of a website I think can earn more, I will spend more time on it.

The idea of eventually being able to work for myself as an affiliate marketer is the dream which will keep me going through the bad patches and keep me focused when the websites are making some money. The main benefit not even being working for myself, but being working from where ever I want – with just my trusty laptop and an internet connection – as one thing you will soon learn about me – I love the sun! The idea of being able to take off, travel where ever I want and spend a few months at a time in the sun is like heaven.

So theres the intro, who I am, what I want and how Im going to get it, guess I best get on with some work now

Article Marketing Robot.

Bookmarking Demon