DealerDan

Back in February of this year I wrote my first blog entry about the site BuyDVDsForSale.com which I was working on. I had initially expected to do reports on a monthly basis, however there really wasn't that much to write about so I decided to hold off for a few months.

For those who don't recall, I was doing this as a project for a marketing professor, to show what is involved in internet marketing, what you do on a day to day basis, what is involved in starting up a site, what you're doing 6 months down the road, data you analyze - basically all the boring stuff that makes internet marketing so great - because most people can't be bothered doing it, thus less competition for us

Lets take this by sections:

Current Status: I started the site in early January 2009. Since that time, I have not ran any ad campaigns. I have not purchased any links, or did any link exchanges. I have did no article submissions, no directory submissions - nothing. I have almost no backlinks, no Digg etc submissions. I wanted to rely solely on regular content to examine the results of that. And it was as I expected, which I'll explain in the next section.

Content/Traffic: Content has been added on a regular basis. I initially tried to do 5 updates per day however that was too much. There was a few weeks where I only did a couple of updates, however I've been doing regularly daily updates for the last two months. As of this writing, there is 195 articles on the site, all focused on DVD Deals.

Unfortunately due to the lack of marketing, the traffic has been minimal at best. Google will usually bring in 1-3 hits a day, with a maximum of 10. This just goes to show that you really need your website to have at lease some outside links. Content is very important, but if no other websites "care" about the site, then why should Google. Now that's not to say you need to always plan up marketing and links in advance - if you are creating a website that you believe will go viral, then you have no need to work on article submissions, links, press releases etc. For a recent example look at DeadMichaelJacksonJokes.com - I'm sure the webmaster of that hasn't spent one penny on marketing, yet it's linked in many, many places(and most likely made the webmaster a pretty penny).

I should add that we did have the Google Sandbox effect, and are just slowly getting out of the Sandbox.

Thankfully it's not all bleak, as we look at:

Conversions: When I talk about conversions, I don't just mean people that go to Amazon and buy a product. That is too broad a term. By conversions, I mean that the visitors is doing something - ANYTHING - other than just closing off the website. This is probably one of the biggest weaknesses I see in so many websites out there - the lack of ability to convert. Believe me I'm the same way - this is a topic I have been studying indepth over the last two years, and looking back at some of my earlier websites I laugh at how poorly constructed they are in regard to converting the visitor.

My conversion ratio is 90%. By that, I mean that 90% of my visitors or doing something that I want them to do. You know the only thing I don't want them to do? Hit the "X" on their browser. That's it. Everything else I want them to do, because long term or short term, I have the ability to make money off that visitor. Whether they are buying DVDs via my links, or visiting ebay via my links, subscribing to the mailing list, subscribing to the RSS Feed, subscribing to Twitter, searching for a DVD and not finding it then using the request a DVD deal form - all of that, I consider a success on my part. Even if the visitor just spends time browsing your site - that is a success. Why is it a success? Because by browsing your site after the initial entry page, it shows that the visitor likes what they sees, and trusts the content and website enough to read more.

Try and spend one month in 2009 just reading up about conversions and calls to actions, and figuring out how you can better that on your website. Look at every page on your website. Understand the different types of calls to action, and how best to implement them. To use a gambling site as an example, on one of my sites, Poker Affiliate Bible - I have one very clear call to action - the visitor has to submit a username and e-mail address to get e-mail updates. For all new visitors, 70% of them do that. Also, silly as it sounds, since adding the "Username" option there I've seen the ratio of conversions increase - it's almost like it personalizes it for people, so they are more than just an e-mail address.

Twitter: In May, I launched a Twitter account. I won't write too much about Twitter here but really you need to take the time to understand Twitter, and how you can make money from it. And it's the same way you make money from anything - by providing a service. PTC has a good thread on Twitter Tips you should read to get you started. Anyway, the Twitter account has been a great success, and is one of the top search results in google for the likes of "Daily DVD Deals". You can see the Twitter here: Daily DVD Deals Twitter

Finances etc: Finally we get to the good stuff - how much money is the site making, and what other successes are we having? The below income is from ebay, all amazons, and any other affiliate programs I promote:

January: $9.84
February: $26.17
March: $13.15
April: $35.19
May: $90.15.
June: $238.12.

As you can see, there was quite a jump from April to May. This was for two reasons. One was due to including ebay links on some articles, see Sprys PHP Bay Tutorial for more information on that plugin. The second reason was the Twitter account, which brought in many purchases. June was even better, due to the death of Michael Jackson. I immediately created a page with "Michael Jackson best DVD Deals", and that helped bump up Junes income big time. A lesson that can obviously be learned from that is how important it is to capitalize on current events. I don't just mean big things like Michael Jackson either - with all the NASA, Moon Landing and apollo stuff going on this week, you know there's going to be some added interest in movies like Apollo 13.

Summary: Things are going very well thus far. Everything I expected is happening - without backlinks the site struggles in search engines, however conversions are extremely strong for the visitors we do get, and Twitter is an obvious goldmine - I didn't expect the Twitter results to be as strong as they have but they have me earning more than I expected and I'll be focusing on Twitter even more. I've also recently hired a content writer who will be making minimum 1 post per day, but will aim for about 100-200 articles per month. He has been hired for $1 per post. This is something I do with all my sites(and I have in-house content writers but decided to outsource this one for the purpose of this project) as it allows me to focus on other areas, which will be discussed in.....

The Future: The next 6 months are going to be key for the site and the project. I'm hoping to get the project extended to two years so I don't have to rush through everything just for the sake of it. In the coming months, I will be focusing more on Twitter marketing and PPC. Now I don't have to deal with the content every day, I can focus on other avenues like this. I have started the PPC campaign this week and already I can see it is going to be a success. There are many other methods of marketing I want to get into down the road, although for education purposes it will be later rather than sooner. Those include offline marketing, article/directory submission, getting backlinks, social networking submissions and applications, Iphone and Blackberry apps, mobile updates and a variety of other things. I'd also like to down the road get a different domain name, as the phrase "Deals" is a lot better then "sales" as I have learnt, and redirect everything there.

Hopefully this wasn't too boring for everyone, and I apologize if it's a bit all over the place - it's Friday night and I'm not of sound mind If there's anything else you wish me to discuss in detail let me know and I can maybe do that in a future article on either here or DealerDan.com, otherwise I'll see you guys with another blog update in late August.