Any links to products on this page are not affiliate based – I do not get paid a commission if you buy any product that I recommend. If you would like to know why this is the case, check out my article: Why I Am NOT Trying To Make Money From This Blog.
I have only been in this business for three months, but in that short time there has been something lacking when I have sought advice from others – a detailed account of how they first got started. A lot of “make money online” blogs start from a fixed point where the protagonist is already experiencing a healthy level of success online.
That is why I was, and am, so excited about Leaving Work Behind. I believe that I have a lot to offer to the market that isn’t already there. I am laying the most solid foundations possible. One of the things I am very excited to do is reveal a blow by blow account of my internet marketing journey, from the very first day.
Below you can read a detailed account of my first four months in internet marketing. The account is long, but I hope it will be revealing to those of you who are perhaps just starting out, and perhaps curious to know what exactly I have done to get to where I am so far (which, for the record, is earning around £2.50 ($4) per day). And for those of you who are more experienced – perhaps you’ll get a kick out of it! 😉
I will look to publish a journal like this for every month from now on, so you can expect the next one at the beginning of October. And on Friday, you can expect my very first income report, which will cover the months of May, June, July and August. In the future, my monthly journals and income reports will be combined.
So, without further ado…
May 2011
At the beginning of May, I was taking a long look at my finances. I had all my savings tucked away in a tax-free savings account, and was living month to month on my pay cheque. Although my earnings were set to increase due to the continued success of my father’s business (which I work in), I was eager to do more for myself. I decided to look into opening up an alternative income stream – one that could function alongside my full time job.
So I started looking into my options. I considered wholesaling, and checked out eBay to see what I could pick up in bulk and sell individually for a margin. I quickly learned that the margins are incredibly tight, and the market is very competitive. I researched online wholesalers but didn’t get very far. I even looked through sites where people advertised old junk that you could take off their hands free of charge, but I didn’t see anything that offered me a low-maintenance return.
On the 20th, I came back to something I had dwelled upon briefly in the past – making money from blogs. I was rather skeptical of the whole concept, but decided to do a bit of research nonetheless. I Googled “making money from blogs”, and came across this article: 3 Tweaks that Helped Double My Blog Traffic Almost Overnight. That post referenced Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income blog. Huge thanks go to Onibalusi Bamidele for introducing me to Pat Flynn’s site – I do not hesitate in saying that I would not have got this far without it.
I devoured Pat’s content. I was especially intrigued by his niche site dual and read it back to back. Then I read it all again. I came across Joseph Archibald’s 40 Day Challenge at the Warrior Forum. I read that (huge) post. Then I downloaded Market Samurai and started playing.
On 23rd May, I got into work at 7:30am and started researching keywords. I looked at all sorts – checking Amazon bestsellers and eHow articles for inspiration, amongst other things. Eventually I went off instinct, and finally game up with Modeling For Kids. I set up the blog and bought the domain name that morning. In the evening I started writing content, and from that week onwards I started producing three unique articles per week. It was around this time that I started to dream about making money online being a full time occupation in the future.
June 2011
At the start of June I purchased a 7 day trial of The Best Spinner and a month’s subscription to Unique Article Wizard and started building up sites as per Pat Flynn’s article, “THE Backlinking Strategy That Works”. I proceeded to build up a link wheel and blast the outer ring of sites with mass article submissions.
Modeling For Kids started to jump around a bit in the rankings. After a whole 7 days without movement, I started to panic. I was rather excitable and naïve back then ;). I emailed Pat Flynn seeking advice – he told me to hold tight and be patient. So I did, and I was.
By 22nd June I had reached 17th in Google for my primary keyword, ‘modeling for kids’. I expanded my backlinking strategy to blog commenting, forum commenting, social bookmarking, and many other things. However, I got complacent after a while, assuming that my rank would continue to climb without much further effort.
On 27th June, after a couple of weeks of work on the design and content, I launched Leaving Work Behind with 5 articles. One of those articles was “Why I Am NOT Trying To Make Money From This Blog”, which was an introduction to my ambitions for the blog. Three new articles have been added every single week since the launch (on Monday, Wednesday and Friday), without fail.
July 2011
Modeling For Kids was wobbling around in the rankings, but not in too exciting a manner. In all my wisdom I proposed to Corbett Barr of Think Traffic that he help me with my niche site in some kind of webinar. He very politely declined, and rightly so!
In my Leaving Work Behind newsletter-only niche site update, I wrote the following:
I see no obvious reason as to why the blog shouldn’t be ranking no. 1 – I have the existing no. 1 site beaten in terms of backlinks, relevant content, and onsite optimisation. The only areas in which I am being beaten is Page Rank, domain age, and Yahoo/DMOZ directory listings (which I can do little or nothing about).
I have a theory that Google might be acting conservatively when it comes to moving my site up the rankings. I think it may see a brand new site, albeit with great optimisation and content, then weigh that up against poorly-optimised sites with relatively minimal relevant content, but consider the fact that they have been around for years, and have fairly high Page Ranks. I think it is time to play the waiting game – at some point, Google will realise that I am not going away, and I will continue to move me up the rankings accordingly.
I turned out to be right – I just needed to be patient!
On 17th July, I wrote the following in my newsletter-only niche site update:
If you read my latest niche site update on the blog then you will know that my ranking had crept up from 13 to 11, which was most encouraging. However, since that article was published, the site has unfortunately slipped back down to 13!
This is of course most irritating, but to deal with the situation in a subjective manner will not help me. To better my chances of success with the site, I must try to remain objective in my analysis.
Luckily enough, common sense was prevailing, and I continued to work hard at my backlinking strategy. Finally, on 22nd June, after a month of frustration in which I had flitted around between 17 – 11 in Google, I finally hit 10th spot, and more importantly, the 1st page!
August 2011
Modeling For Kids continued to flirt with Google at the beginning of August, with the site slipping between 7th and 9th place. I wrote the following in my newsletter-only niche site update:
Something rather unusual happened yesterday evening – I had an email from the BBC. They were reporting on a 10 year old girl who had featured on the cover of French Vogue and were looking for a reaction from me, because of my site. This came as quite a shock! Anyway, I rang them up and gave my opinion, but I never heard back. That is of no real surprise as I am sure they sent out a whole bunch of emails, but it was still exciting to note that my site is getting some proper exposure.
On another positive note, I also received an email from a fashion modeling scout, saying that she enjoyed my site and would be pointing people in my direction. This really backs up my belief that you should produce quality content – you can then build a base of visitors that is not entirely reliant upon Google.
Although I still wasn’t 1st in Google, there were quite a lot of things going on to keep me interested!
By mid-August the penny finally dropped and I realised that I should try to rank for more than one keyword. So, I set up a rank tracker for ‘child models’ – a pretty high traffic and high competition keyword, and saw that I was already ranked 22nd.
On 18th August, I finally jumped from 9th to 1st place for my primary keyword in just a few days – finally, success! Modeling For Kids hasn’t budged from the top spot in Google for its primary keyword since.
However, I quickly became concerned with the level of traffic from my number 1 ranking – it was (and is) nowhere near Market Samurai’s projections. However, I took heart from the fact that I had other high-traffic keywords I was working towards ranking for.
On 28th August I wrote the following in my newsletter-only niche site update:
I am now ranked #1 in Google for the keywords ‘modeling for kids’, and ‘child models’. Those combined, according to Google’s estimates, should bring me over 700 visitors per day. I am also ranked #3 for both ‘child modeling’ and ‘child model’. Additionally, I show up in people’s search results for literally hundreds of long tail keyword results.
And yet, over the last seven days, my average daily traffic has been just 187 visitors. The keyword ‘modeling for kids’ has returned me an average of 11 daily visitors (as opposed to the estimate of 33). Since I have been at #1 for ‘child models’ (which has an estimated daily visitor count of 685), I have received just 67 daily visitors.
So, it would be fair to say that, on initial statistics only, Google’s estimates are way off. What does this mean for me? Well, obviously it means that I will make a lot less money than I originally envisaged. But these things happen – I now need to re-evaluate my goals and proceed accordingly. I do still think that there is a lot of potential in the site.
Final Thoughts
Well, these four months have been quite a ride. There have been plenty of sleepless nights spent dreaming up new methods to improve my efforts. I have been doubtful and deflated at times by my perceived lack of progress. And on a few occasions, I have found myself jumping up and down with excitement! It has been worth it and I am looking forward to the next month and what it may bring.
I think that September will be all about testing new systems for income generation. I am very interested in exploring how I can use a virtual assistant to take on all of the ‘donkey work’ that is involved in research, SEO and backlinking, so that I can perhaps focus on starting another project. I am keen to make sure that cost control is tight, and that my income and expenditure projections are suitably conservative.
We shall see how it goes!
Photo courtesy of …Vincent…