Blind Ape Seo

The end of the year is upon us young student and thus the time for reflection has come.  Yes, that is another task for you.

You might have heard me mutter about the Pareto principle every now and then, and that is what we will usw to guide our efforts.

What the Pareto principle is, you are asking?
Well, it is mostly known as the 80/20 principle nowadays and as 80 situps with a 20liter bucket for not paying attention to you.

In broad terms, the Italian economist Pareto discovered that most of the time 20% of a business’ customers account for 80% of it’s profits. Once the rule had been rediscovered by todays economists, it has been cropping up all over the place. Alas, note that it’s reverse is also true, for example: 20% of customers are 80% of the complaints, etc…
You can do a little bit of reading on the Pareto Principle over here.

So with the time of reflection and cleanup on us, let us reflect on this and how this affects us as Affiliate Marketers.

Statistics - of course

Take out your statistics and see what has made you the most money vs. the effort it has taken you.
Kill the underperformers or sell the sites that show no further potential. Rethink the rest.

OK, so much for the condensed version. Some explanations to follow.

The most important factor here is the time/effort ratio.
Yes,this might well mean keeping a site with only small returns if it costs you nothing to maintain.

Yes, it might also mean getting rid of a medium good performer that takes tons of time and effort to get there.

But, first we have to arrive at the numbers.

As an affiliate marketer, you should have the profit (or loss) for each one of your websites at hand, anyway.
If you are prepared, you might even have an effort estimation for each site. Hours worked, for example.
if not, make one up now.
1 = no efort at all, passive income
2 = some effort required
3= major effort

Now you divide your profit by the effort.

Profit / effort = profit per hour

Sort your table by that number.
Look at it.
Decide what to do.

Ah.. a note of caution here:
I am only talking about sites that are making profit. One reason is that the calculations are not working with negative numbers and another that you probably should not hang on to sites that are leaking money.

The sections of the table
The top 20%
You should definitely keep and expand those domains. These are the ones that bring in money and fame.
Some of those might even fall into the “passive income” category. I have one of those, running for four years now. It brings in about 60-70 US dollars every year. With no effort, other than spending 6 hours for the intial setup.
This year, this equals 60$ for 0 hours of work.

But, for this site (and for your sites along this line, if you are lucky enough to have them) it also means I will have to think about expanding them, to get them to full potential.

The middle tier
Look at each one of these sites and decide if you want to keep working on it.
Does the site have potential? Do you feel passion for the site? Do you want to keep it? What amount of work would be required to make it become a star?
Expect to kill about half of the domains in the middle tier.

The good news: These are perfect candidates for selling.

The bottom 20%
Get rid of these sites. Unless you feel really, really passionate about a domain, or if you know you can and want to turn this around in the next months, get rid of it.

When all this is over, you have culled your herd down to a manageable size. And you have also freed up resources to make those sites that made it even better.

Bonus: Do what do you really want to do .. the other use of the 80/20 rule
Armed with this data, you can do even more.

Look at what kind of pages are treating you well.

What are the offers you are promoting?

Is it a shop, selling physical goods?
A PPC email submit?
Adsense income on a blog?

Think about it. Why are you doing well with this type of offer? Do you want to expand it?

Also, think about the sites in the bottom 20%.

Why are they doing badly?
Are they promoting something that goes against your ethics?

Some PPC offers, such as email leads are problematic for a lot of AMs.
Think about getting rid of this type of offer althogether.

This technique will cull your herd of offers down to those that fit your personality, your marketing strategy and your personal code of ethics, again leaving you with more time and resources for the real moneymakers.

With just over the half of the moht gone, I am going to take a few moments to reflect on what I have learned from the WebWriMo challenge so far.

Content is hard work
Generating content - lots of it - is hard work. From thinking up new topics to actually typing the stuff to linking and formatting it nicely - Content providers have new earned repect from me.

A little content can go a long way
While I did not always *ahem* manage to write my 2K words a day, it is incredible how little content is actually needed to keep some sites running. If you look, for example at a typical “fun” blog - for the sake of example, take a look at the funcaptain - you will notice that most post seem to be around 50 words long.

This means that with just 500 words, the site could be kept alive for 10 days. If you have a site like that, write 2000 words one day, pace your posts and be done for over a month of 5 post weeks.

Other sites that would benefit from this are sites that are normally lacking in the content area. Wallpaper sites that benefit from a short description of the pics (20 words each), value that can be added to funny picture or video sites with a caption or description (10-50 words). A lot of times, you only need a bit of content per item.

New workflow
This challenge also meant that I revised my content creation workflow.

Before, I would use the online editor in WordPress. With mass content creation, I use a desktop editor (Notepad++), prepare the images locally and then put the content together in the online editor.

It is much faster for me.

Seperation of Writing and Editing
Although not as beautiful as the separation of church and state, it helps to speed things up if you manage to banish your inner editor and just write write write.

Now I have several articles sitting in draft mode that I can (and will) use at a later date.

Growing a moustache
While this is not an option for me, I have learned that there is a guy who is growing a moustache to promote prostrate cancer awareness. Go Greg!

What about you?
What are your experiences so far? Let me know in the comments.

So, here are the newest numbers and new members in the WebWriMo challenge.

do3boy - 1286 words
argh - 8348 words
Greg, still collecting donations for prostrate cancer at momofosho! - 10000 words (estimate, I need to go and beat the real number out of him)
David Bowley from davidbowley.com - 10072 words
blind ape seo, yours truly - 10287 words
Paul Gannon from the paul gannon blog - 14646 words
DBWebDev - 19561 words
glowleaf from glowleaf.net - 20849 words

and we have a new leader!

InternetAuthor appearing out of nowhere on Wickedfire - 30540 words

regards,

your senile simian sensei

So here is the word count in the WebWriMo challenge so far:

glowleaf - 17665 words - Insane, I say, INSANE!

argh - 8348 words

Paul Gannon - 5682 words

Greg from momofosho has hit 8500 words for movember - donate to cure prostate cancer!

And a new writer, davidbowley has joined the fray with 2545 words so far!

Welcome David, way to go!

the blind ape himself - 5804 words, seems as if I really have to start getting on with this!

A nice welcome to Paul, who is joining us from his SEO BLog at paulgannon.com

Paul is already above 5K words, and looking forward to the rest of the month.

He is also a writer for hire, so if you want to buy a few words from him, that will make his WebWriMo even sweeter.

Thanks for joining us, Paul.

PS: Full update tomorrow.

Ok, time for another update.

glowleaf from glowleaf.net is leaving us all in the dust - 16,307 words!

Greg Harrison feeds his mustache a total of 5,584 words for Movember!

argh is at 3644 words

and the old ape wrote another 755 words for a total of 4578 words, leaving him behind the pack!

This will not stand!

Argh, young grasshopper, get your gear in order, we have to take the lead again!

And to the bystander, come on, join us at WebWriMo for fun and profit!

::senile simian sensei::

Greg Harrison from Mo Mo Fo Sho! has joined the spectacle that is the WebWriMo and has written 1698 words as of this count!

Good start Greg, hang in there!

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce the blog that Greg is writing most of the WebWriMo content for. It is called “Mo Mo Fo Sho” and in it, he reports on his mustache-growing for the month of Movember.

The reason for Greg to grow a moustache is not vanity, but to further Prostate Cancer awareness and collect donations for the Prostrate Cancer Foundation.

In his words:

Did you know:

• Prostate cancer is the most common non-skin cancer in the US with one in six American men developing the disease and more than 28,000 men dying of the disease every year.
• African American men and those with a family history of prostate cancer are twice as likely to develop the disease and should have regular annual testing starting at 45. All other men should commence testing at 50.
• Prostate cancer is 90% curable if detected and treated early.

So what you can and should do is donate to the cause.

Do it by either by heading on over to Mo Mo Fo Sho! - it is not only a good cause but also very funny - OR donate here:

So long,

your senile simian sensei

I actually thought this would happen, and it seems it has.

After the first flurry of activity, the people participating in the webwrimo are hitting their first motivational roadblock.

(all except glowleaf, but even he started to complain in the comments)

I would say that this is a normal part of the process. 50K words are quite a number for a month of writing and the nanowrimo experience shows that only a few dedicated people actually finish the 50K.

But hang in there - this is your business!

So here are the stats so far:

Bo2Fu: 10,000 words in PHP, coding up a storm!

Glowleaf: 5968 words make him the leader in natural language writing.

argh: 2532 words (if I counted that right) on several blogs

and the old ape with yet another slow day and 4023 words so far.

Counting Code

Some questions have arisen if counting code is allowed or not. I would say: YES!

In fact, a part of my yesterday words was in code. And it took the old ape ages, too.

Count code if the result is a web page or AM related. What does not count is copy/paste programming or database content you did not produce yourself.

WebWriMo - want to take part in this madness? Go ahead!

The old ape just found a site with fourty free icon sets for you to use any way you want.

You will find a stylish icon pack for everything from japanese style icons over hand-drawn buttons up to black and white icons and even finance application buttons.

Enjoy.

WebWriMo - See what the fuzz is all about and take part in the content challenge!

As of this post, here is the count:

Glowleaf from glowleaf.net -there is a category for his WebWrimo posts now, and he is putting his tally on top of his blog - way to take up the challenge!

Glowleaf is at 4128 words now, taking the lead.

argh from abuckanight.com has joined us! Welcome!

Argh is at 470 words now.

WebWriMo has also been mentioned at SEO iStyle - thanks for the heads up!

The blind ape is also still at the old count (lazy sunday) with 3801 words.