Here are the rankings for 5/25 and 6/5…

The site is averaging around 25 visitors per day. Visitors are clicking on things, but I’m not seeing any conversions at all. It’s worth noting here that this site is focused on physical products, not information products. I put in Amazon links while I waited for approval in a few more targeted affiliate programs that would likely do well on the site. I’ve never had trouble getting approved for affiliate programs before, but it seems I picked a difficult space to get into. I’ve been rejected twice by each program, even after I contacted the program manager personally to request a review for inclusion.

So now I’m not sure what I want to do. I can stick with Amazon links and maybe add Adsense or put up some sort of targeted advertising program, or I can flip the site to someone who is already approved for the affiliate programs that would likely convert better. Not sure what to do in this particular situation…

I’m still not confident it’s even worth my time to create pages on Squidoo. The traffic from search engines still hasn’t recovered and Amazon sales via lenses is at an all time low.

Earlier this month Squidoo HQ was complaining about incoming links to lenses and saying lenses they felt had too many “low quality” links would be flagged/locked/deleted. The updates and notices they send out to lensmasters are often ridiculously vague and I just don’t have time to keep up with their constant changes and requests.

You can read the vague blog post about low quality links here. Lensmasters began reporting lenses being locked for “having multiple nofollow links” and similar messages. Considering Squidoo itself makes all outgoing links nofollow, using nofollow as a basis for locking a lens is dumb. Yes, I said it’s dumb. This is the second or third time “nofollow” has been mentioned on the HQ blog and I just keep thinking, “You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

The end of May has been all about “getting personal” with product lenses. And again, the community of writers is frustrated and annoyed by favoritism, finger pointing, mixed signals, confusing definitions, and unclear guidelines.

Squidoo isn’t fun for me right now, so I’m just not even looking at it. That’s really all there is to it.

It’s not even about the traffic or the earnings – those things are nice, but Squidoo was a place where I could have fun and still feel like I accomplished something. It’s not doing that for me right now, so I haven’t even looked at my account very much this month. I’ve logged into my dashboard there maybe three or four times this month, I used to check it daily.

I momentarily considered selling all my Squidoo lenses and just crossing it off my list permanently, but they’ve turned off the ability to transfer lenses so I can’t even do that.

Squidoo just feels like negative energy to me lately, and I have a ton of other things to focus my energy on in a positive way.

I have my niche sites to work on. I have my cross stitch site to work on, which always makes me happy. We’ve been working on getting things active over at VA Helper Blog and Podcast, and that has been especially rewarding for me. I’ve spent a lot of time working on a course to help virtual assistants that will be coming out soon.

I’ve been making a very conscious effort to spend more time offline. I was getting a little too wrapped in being online and I was working to the point of burnout, it just wasn’t good. So I’ve been spending all day Saturday offline – every Saturday – even if I have to force myself to leave the house and turn off my phone in order to avoid the temptation of jumping online to do “just one more thing.”

I haven’t done a lot of work on this site other than the initial set up and link building so I’m happy with these results so far…

Okay, I need to go run reports on my other sites now

How are your niche projects coming along?

My career in Affiliate Marketing dates back to the year 1999 at least. In that time I’ve been involved in many niches from pets to gadgets to geeky stuff and more. Prior to Affiliate Marketing I had my own private labeled products that I stocked and sold. At some point I was burnt out on the pet niche and sold most of my sites or let them lay dormant.

Yesterday, though, a new pet niche turned from a spark of an idea into a domain purchase and a list of new ideas. Basically, I found myself coming full circle once again. Timing is a funny thing, I was just about to dissolve my corporation but instead I ordered a certificate of standing which I need for the bank and wholesalers and tax reasons. So, here we go again!

Below are five tips I’ve learned and employed over the years for marketing my niche site and taking it to the next level. I will be using them again on this new niche…

Educate and/or entertain

Catering to a specific niche is easy in the sense that you have a specific audience and with that you need to know what your intention is. Is the purpose of your site to make people laugh and to entertain them? For instance a blog that consists of funny pets and the things they get into? Or is your goal to educate and write posts that are helpful to pet owners. This is just one working example and you can of course use a combination of both but one should be more prominent.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC is helpful with niche sites. My website host, Host Gator regularly sends me $100 gift cards if I spend $25. It may not sound like much but it’s a good and free start to see if PPC is a good way to market your niche.

Blogging

Educating or entertaining doesn’t matter a blog is a necessary platform for engaging with your readers and customers. The blog should be updated regularly so that your visitors have a reason to return on a regularly and they will. Blogs that haven’t been updated in a long time sends a negative impression no matter how much good content you have posted. Most importantly, regular posts lead to improved search engine results and new readers that will find you when searching within your niche.

Freebies

A great way to get people to engage on your site is to host contests and give away freebies. As your site becomes well known you might even find that other sites and brands, relative to your niche will offer you products or services that you can then use as a freebie on your own site. For instance, I have a pet company that continually sent me new dog toys and treats to try out and after doing so I used them for a contest giveaway to get new Twitter followers and newsletter signups.

Leave Room to Expand

Having a niche is great, but you should also leave enough room to expand within your chosen niche after you have established your site. So, if you have a site that focuses on dog treats you might want to add grooming supplies. But you could also consider adding a complimentary niche, say cats because they do go together relatively speaking.

The take home message is this: be consistent, engage with your audience, leave room to grow but most importantly whether you are engaging or entertaining or both it should be something you love, even a little bit so that you pass it along to your readers.

Chrissie Cole is a freelance writer for various blogs, including Speedy Incorporation Service, which helps new small business owners incorporate online as well as offering advice and information about running their new business successfully via their small business tips blog.
– Follow Chrissie on Twitter.

This backlink report was generated using the free service at ahrefs.com.

So at this point if you chose a niche that is super focused, the course mentions that you might find yourself on page one of Google for some of your longtail keyword phrases already. I’m on page two for a handful of terms with this particular site. I’m going to sprinkle in a few stronger links and see what happens over the next two weeks.

I’m also adding additional content Site A a little each week. I know that wasn’t really part of the Forever Affiliate model, but I actually enjoy the site and the topic quite a bit so I’m leaning towards growing it out instead of having it be just a mini site. I did refer a sale with this site already, but it was an Amazon sale and the shopper didn’t buy the product I recommended. Still counts, still get a commission, but I don’t consider that a successful conversion because it wasn’t at all related to the site’s topic.

Site B is stuck around 34 referring domains, but I think by next weekend it will have that milestone of 50. This one will definitely stay a mini site, but I do have about 5 more pages of content that I would like to add, it will wind up being around 15 pages of actual content plus the standard about/contact/disclosure and all that jazz. Not a lot going on for Site B, it’s got a few terms on page two of search results, not enough traffic happening on it yet to really make a judgment of how I’m doing with it.

Site C and Site D …. yeah, I still haven’t decided what I want to do. I have a list of ideas, but I really want to go back through my keyword research and make a focused decision.

Need a little help getting started with content for this site? EasyPLR.com has a fresh new pack of 5 articles ready to go on this topic that you can pick up and start publishing content with today.

• Planning Ahead: You Can’t Just Run Away from Home
• Maintaining an Income: Internet Jobs You Can Do Anywhere
• World Traveler or American Expatriot: Choosing Where to Live
• Dealing with the Details: Paying Bills and Banking from Abroad
• Uncle Sam Still Wants YOU: Tax Concerns for ExPats

These topics would be great for a new website about the internet marketing lifestyle, an existing site or podcast about creating financial freedom to do the things you want in life, a fun spin on things for a travel website to talk about the reasons why people might travel frequently, etc….

Meet Chip Cooper, Esq… he represents Internet, software, and SaaS clients in the areas of website legal compliance, Internet marketing, intellectual property, and licensing and distribution transactions. In his presentation for the NAMS community this week he went over his “score card” to help you determine if you should be concerned about your legal liabilities. Looking at those score cards has been seriously eye-opening stuff for everyone.

==> Click here to check out the presentation, grab the score card and learn how the FTC can shut down your business if you’re not careful.

When I looked at my search traffic I realized that Google is not really loving Squidoo while it’s working on things, which is perfectly normal when a site is in a transition period like this.

After I fixed what needed fixing, I decided the best thing to do was just wait while all the changes were going on at Squidoo and let the site settle back down to normal. I did some content tweaking on existing pages here and there throughout the month, because when I was looking over my older pages I realized that some of them from way back when were kind of crappy. I even deleted a few older pages that were no longer relevant and didn’t receive traffic anymore. Basically I did some online spring cleaning.

Ultimately that means I didn’t make any new lenses during the month. I did however earn purple stars on my existing content. The lens pictured here about my Blue Snowball Microphone was a purple star winner the first week of April.

I also received a purple star on Free Cross Stitch Patterns and Knotted Hearts Free Cross Stitch Pattern.

The cool thing about winning purple stars is that you receive a special quest for each one that allows you to nominate another page for purple star consideration. It’s like a secret mission to reward someone who isn’t expecting it, and that’s always fun to do.

Site A Update: (this is the one that’s in a gardening niche area)
I didn’t add any content this week, just letting the links settle in. Had my virtual assistant work on the link building because I was pinched for time all week. ahrefs.com reports Site A to have a whole bunch of backlinks with 27 referring domains. Traffic looks to be steady between 5 and 10 unique visitors per day right now and the rankings seem to improve gradually a little each day. Clicks on product links, but no earnings yet.

Site B Update: (this one is in a general technology electronics niche area)
I had to change things up from the original plan that Forever Affiliate follows, but now links are starting to build out. ahrefs.com shows Site B at about 100 backlinks and 21 referring domains. Current traffic only averaging 2 unique visitors per day. Again, clicks on products but no sales at this time. Rankings are finally starting to kick in for this one so hopefully I’ll see more traffic in the next week or two.

Site C Update: Well, I had planned on starting a third site, but I haven’t picked the niche or product yet. I’m not really stuck so much as I just have other things going on at the moment. I have a shortlist of ideas that I need to do some more research on.

Told you it was a boring update this weekend. I’m okay with slow progress as long as there is progress being made, so this is all totally good. Hopefully this time next week I’ll have something a little more interesting to report (like some earnings and sales)…

Having been served one of those “you can’t have that in your domain name” notices and almost losing my affiliate status with a big network once upon a time, I recommend never messing with brand names or exact product names in the top level URL. I used the name of a branded product in a URL once, huge mistake. As soon as the site started doing well and getting traffic a notice showed up in my inbox.

Sometimes you’ll go under the radar, but it’s really not worth the risk.

Go with something more general or even better, go with something catchy and fun. Think of all the popular domains that aren’t even real words like Google and Squidoo, or put a funny word next to the broad term, like SurveyMonkey, MailChimp, LimeLizard, so on and so forth. Exact match isn’t really important these days, because honestly it doesn’t win you any points in the search engines.

All that said, it is nice to have a broadly related term in the URL just so that your site name makes sense. If you want some help brainstorming a domain name or if you’re stuck, feel free to drop me a note and I’ll do my best to help get you out of your rut.

Need a Domain Name?

I prefer using Namecheap for my domains. (Better prices and better customer service than other registrars that I’ve used in the past.)

Then I use Reliable Webs for hosting those websites.
Read my review of Reliable Webs and why I’m a happy customer.