When I got back from my honeymoon this week (I was offline 99% of the time) I had an order from my online store, paisleybabies.com. Had I known I would've hired someone to mind the store – basically to email in the order. Then today I got another order. Which means it's being found (must have search engine rankings).
What is surprising about this is that I haven't done anything to promote it besides onsite optimization (incorporating keyword phrases on each page). I put up the site almost a year ago and the only order I got until now was from a friend. I set it up so I could learn the ecommerce solution I was teaching others.
Most of the people I taught never got an order on their online store in the time I worked with them. However, if they applied what I taught and also built links, they probably have started making money by now. The problem is they were led to believe it would happen within 90 days.
My blog took a few years before I made money – not that making money was the purpose. It still isn't, but I was learning affiliate marketing and wanted to test out what I was learning. It worked. I still prefer affiliate marketing because work I did over a year ago is still selling and I don't have to do anything else. No customer service, answering emails, returns, etc. I just refer the orders to someone else and make a commission on every sale.
I also had a check from Google when I got home – another surprise. I always think they're junk mail. The first check (you must make at least $100 before you get paid) took over a year to arrive, this one took months. I don't use much Adsense on my sites, but a little.
It took several months to get 1,000 followers on Twitter but then only a few months later, I'm at over 1,800.
I'm sure I could've make money quicker had showing me or if I outsourced more of the work. I learned by practicing. After some momentum and time (search engine rankings aren't instant) it is now almost effortless. I have a little more flexibility in my life now so I can do more to promote my sites, including a redesign of Newspapergrl.
I think I took over a year to get my first check from Google as well. Now they’re almost monthly. Wahoo!
I got to over $100 pretty quickly, based on valid clicks… and then someone started doing click-fraud (not me or my team). I asked Google what I should do about it, and about three days after I asked they kicked me out of the system.
This is a lifetime “kickout,” and I learned three lessons:
1. if affiliate marketing isn’t your core business, then don’t put much or any time into it, until you get your core business going. I spent WAY too much time on learning google ad stuff, only to get kicked out (which means they “returned” all the money to the advertisers). Losers.
2. If you choose to put google ads on your site, use a different google e-mail address. I had google ads from my one gmail account for about 2 or 3 sites… and they ALL got taken down.
3. If you want to ruin your competitors’ day, just do click fraud (click 1,000 times on one of their ads, or click once every day,… make it look fishy). Or, find some violation (where they ask you to click) and report it to Google.
Google doesn’t respond to any questions about this issue… so just hope you don’t get the black mark – it sucked, but was good in that it made me focus more on my core business.
Jason Alba
CEO – JibberJobber.com
Author – I’m on LinkedIn — Now What???