Losing everything & recycling old blog posts

Month #2: I lose all the money I made from my blog.

I was sitting on the couch one night and decided to have a look through my Google Analytics account on another site I own. For some reason, I decided to have a look at my affiliate site to see if the posts had any traction.

If fully expected to see nothing but, people had actually visited!

Immediately I am having flash backs to 10 years ago when I ran a successful discount voucher codes and deals website in the UK.

That site was very successful until the Google MayDay update which flattened it over night.

I didn’t have the will to raise it from the dead so I walked away. In hindsight that was probably a silly thing to do and had I persisted with trying to get back in google’s good books I might have been more successful earlier than now.

Moral of that story (which is also key to this project)?

Never give up! Write, publish, write, publish repeat.

Anyway, the traffic on the site reminded me that when you write good quality, unique content you can attract visitors.

So, I wrote another blog post.

New posts in month 2 = 1

Recycling old blog posts and reviews

I had an eCommerce site I had shut down a few years earlier. I was selling high ticket items and the fraud I was experiencing wore me out.

On that site, I had done a bunch of reviews on products so I went back to the old website database and got the reviews posts and reposted them to my new site.

I did a 301 redirect from the old domain name to the new one and got a little link juice.

When one idea dies don’t throw it away, you might be able to use the old parts to build a new rocketship.

Total new posts from old site to new site: 12

Losing all my money

In my post from Month 1 you may have noticed I made a whopping $10.80.

In month 2, I lost it all.

Lesson to learn? If you are part of an affiliate program, especially Amazons affiliate program you have to expect returns.

The Amazon return policy is so generous people will buy stuff just to see what it’s like and then return it.

This is why Amazon won’t pay you out for 2 months. They are budgeting on returns reducing your affiliate earnings.

Monetisation – AdSense?

I still have a strange belief that I don’t want a cluttered site with loads of ads ruining the experience of my high quality visitors.

So I’m not willing to do ads yet. Maybe later. Naive? Maybe.

The thing that makes Adsense really successful is truck loads of traffic. At the moment I would be lucky to earn a $1 for the month so there is little reason to put in ugly adverts when they will earn almost zero income.

I have put some thought in to where to put ads when I eventually commit to them, if I eventually commit to them. Might start with a side page column skyscraper and dabble with a top of content dynamic square advert.

Side Million. Income report – Month #2

Lost all my money. It won’t be the first set back on this journey of blogging to make money.

Side Million. Traffic Report – Month #2

So, on to Month #3 next and we’ll see how things have improved.