by Keith on August 21, 2010
It’s been a while since I posted. Have you been holding your breath?
I know, I ‘m sorry to keep you waiting for so long but I really haven’t had much to say since April 29th.
Psychologically it’s been hard to keep going when sales are in a bit of a slump and you haven’t made the progress that you wanted or predicted. Sometime you can feel like an ass when your public predicitions and goals go wildly wrong. So no more public goals here.
But like the man says, when you’re going through hell, keep going.
The problem? I understimated the amount of backlinking work to be done in order to get high enough in Google and get enough traffic to get enough clicks to make enough sales.
It’s as simple as that really. Oh, and Google reduced my quality scores to 1 so all PPC sales disappeared. I still have OffshoreAlly on board helping me build links.
My strategy has changed slightly since then. Like Sean says, it’s like a a guided missile – you adjust course slightly all the time in order to hit your target.
So I’ve still got my guitar website and my little health niche website and I’m going to ask my link builder to concentrate on 15 or so good keywords to see i f I can get them to number one in Google.
In addition I have started 4 more sites as a bit of an experiment selling physical products from ShareASale and CJ. It’s based on the CWS from the PLRPro guys which is much like the AffiloBlueprint idea but concentrates on low competition product names. Makes sense to me so I’m building out these sites with product posts and using AMA to link to them. I’ve had a few sales already.
I’ve also been formulating and idea for my own product. Sean sent an email about one of his pupils who is doing really well (he’s working his ass off apparantley) and all his sales are coming from his own product.
It might be that it’s the real way forward. It reminds of the Johnny B Truant post on Copyblogger called How To Do 500 Times Better Than Adsense. (For Adsense read Clickbank Affiliate products)
I’ll try to post every week and show income reports. But since I have 5 different affiliate accounts now it might be tricky.
Oh by the way, Sugarrae is doing a series of informative posts at the moment that you might find interesting on Creating a Small Niche Affiliate Site
by Keith on April 29, 2010
Last century – and I mean the one that had dreadful 80s music – there was a secret thing that went on right under our noses. And I’m not talking about Smiley’s People and poisoned umbrella tips.
This was a thing that we all took part in. And we still are.
It’s what the Italian philosopher Gramsci called Cultural Hegemony.
Now I don’t want to get all heavy on economic and social philosophy, mainly because I know very little about it. But I do know about Gramsci and I think you should too.
Gramsci questioned why it was that there had been a revolution against the ruling classes in Russia and yet it had never happened in countries, such as the UK, which had an industrial revolution a long time before Russia.
His answer was that the state in a capitalist society rules through force plus consent. The key here is “consent”.
Let me give you an example.
Here in the UK we have the general election campaign going on so that we can decide who our new prime minister should be. There’s very little difference in policy between all the parties.
Why?
Because most people in our country are pretty comfortable. And that means nobody really wants to rock the boat. Most people are quite happy to hang on to their jobs, watch TV on Saturday night and drink a couple of bottles of wine each week. This is pretty handy for the state.
We ain’t gonna question much as long as we get our comfort. They have our consent to carry on as we are.
We consent to the status quo – because basically we’re all pretty comfortable.
I question this.
Yes, I live a comfortable life, especially compared to a huge majority of this world. But I am not comfortable doing a crappy job that is unfulfilling and, frankly, pointless, for the rest of my days just so that I can afford to invest in the stock market and maybe one day pay off my flat.
Gramsci didn’t make it past the 1930s but in the 1970s, another bunch started questioning the system.
Malcolm Maclaren’s Sex Pistols – which I’m still pretty sure was considered an art project for Mclaren – started a band without permission from anybody and said screw you to the status quo.
In fact, they said screw you to doing what you’re told. And we’re all told to go to school get a job, get a flat and be ‘comfortable’. Most of us do. I did (via music college and a few years in the wilderness). The punks were recognising Gramsci’s hegemony and daring to question it.
And now I feel like questioning it too.
So I went and bought an online course called Question The Rules. I’m going to try and persuade you to buy it too.
My disclaimer is that I’m an affiliate and I’ll get a wee commission if you buy it through my link. But I wouldn’t recommend it to you if I didn’t think you’d enjoy it and get something out of it.
It’s a series of audio conversations with Johnny B Truant and Lee Stranahan. Now I don’t know much about Lee except that he’s a very articulate and smart guy based on what I’ve listened to so far but I do know that Johnny B Truant is a pretty cool WordPress dude who I think you’ll like a lot.
it’s a course about breaking free of the Cultural Hegemony and creating the business and life that you really want.
==> Click Here to Learn More About It
P.S If you buy it before Saturday it’s $97. After that it’s like $397 or something!
Get it now.