You Don't Need a New Basket Until You Have Your First Egg
Published: Fri, 12/16/11
There's a lot of talk in this business about making sure you don't put all your eggs in one basket. That's sound advice. When you've worked hard for your money, you don't want to lose it, right? So, we take that advice very seriously and we start launching a number of sites and we latch on to the latest new way to make money online and we think doing more and spreading our efforts around is just a smart move.
The problem is - if you don't have your first egg, you don't really need to worry about another basket.
One project. One site. Just one until you think it's making enough money to be considered an egg and THEN worry about expanding beyond that one project.
It's coming on that time of year when we make our resolutions - our promises for improvement in the new year. We analyze what we've done the past twelve months and how we want to take advantage of the next twelve months.
What a perfect time to commit to one project for the beginning of 2012.
The problem is - if you don't have your first egg, you don't really need to worry about another basket.
One project. One site. Just one until you think it's making enough money to be considered an egg and THEN worry about expanding beyond that one project.
It's coming on that time of year when we make our resolutions - our promises for improvement in the new year. We analyze what we've done the past twelve months and how we want to take advantage of the next twelve months.
What a perfect time to commit to one project for the beginning of 2012.
EASY REVIEW WRITING SYSTEM
The feedback on my latest product, Reviewer's Edge, has been overwhelmingly positive and, in fact, the WSO thread alone has some additional nuggets of information such as how to handle discussion of any negatives about the product you're reviewing. Dean's comments about the benefit of the reviews being that they are "thorough", not just long, was perfectly on target. I love the comments from those who tried the product, too, and confirmed that it made things much easier on them.
The feedback on my latest product, Reviewer's Edge, has been overwhelmingly positive and, in fact, the WSO thread alone has some additional nuggets of information such as how to handle discussion of any negatives about the product you're reviewing. Dean's comments about the benefit of the reviews being that they are "thorough", not just long, was perfectly on target. I love the comments from those who tried the product, too, and confirmed that it made things much easier on them.
MY CONTENT PUBLISHING ROUTINE
Melissa asked me a great question a few weeks ago. She wanted to know if I added all of my reviews first and then worked on backlinks or did I backlink as I went along?
Here's what I do:
After I post a review, I go to ping.fm and submit the link. (Extreme Review tells you how I've set up my ping.fm network.) I just use the status update feature - not a full blog post. I write what really amounts to a Twitter status update like this:
Then I bookmark the post at about 10 bookmarking sites.
After every 5 reviews, I then do the article part of Extreme Review where I submit the article to ezinearticles.com. Once the article is live in ezinearticles.com, I submit the same article to 20 other article directores.
Next, I write another 5 reviews and repeat the cycle - ping.fm after each post goes live, bookmarks after each post goes live, and then articles after each five reviews are live.
Once those 10 reviews are live and the article stuff has been done, I assess where each of those reviews sits in terms of rankings and which are getting the most traffic. From there, I pick the best performing post that is not yet #1 in Google for the phrase "(product name) review" and I start building more backlinks to just that one review. I'll build a Squidoo lens to point to it, a Hubpage, do more bookmarking, create a few other web 2.0 pages pointing to it, etc.
I next add one or two informational articles to the site.
Then it's time to repeat the cycle - write 5 reviews, ping.fm after each one, bookmark each one, do the article directories after each 5, and get 10 new reviews up in total. Then choose one to focus on for more backlinking, etc.
Before you know it, you'll have built up quite a bit of traffic from all that work! Nothing fancy, nothing expensive. Just writing, submitting, and backlinking.
DOUBLE YOUR AMAZON COMMISSIONS
December Amazon commissions are the most lovely numbers of the year, aren't they? They can be as much as double what you saw in November. If you analyze your stats, you'd most likely find that while traffic was up, it was an increase in your conversion rate that drove most of the higher sales.
My Unique Visitors to Amazon Novmeber 1-15th, 2011, was 12,084 with a conversion rate of 4.45%. For December 1-15th, 2011, the number of Unique Visitors was 9.98%. I didn't have more traffic but more of the traffic I did have was buying.
Melissa asked me a great question a few weeks ago. She wanted to know if I added all of my reviews first and then worked on backlinks or did I backlink as I went along?
Here's what I do:
After I post a review, I go to ping.fm and submit the link. (Extreme Review tells you how I've set up my ping.fm network.) I just use the status update feature - not a full blog post. I write what really amounts to a Twitter status update like this:
Just found this cool portable space heater: See the Lasko 754200 Ceramic Heater review: http:// mysite.com /lasko-754200-ceramic-heater-review
Then I bookmark the post at about 10 bookmarking sites.
After every 5 reviews, I then do the article part of Extreme Review where I submit the article to ezinearticles.com. Once the article is live in ezinearticles.com, I submit the same article to 20 other article directores.
Next, I write another 5 reviews and repeat the cycle - ping.fm after each post goes live, bookmarks after each post goes live, and then articles after each five reviews are live.
Once those 10 reviews are live and the article stuff has been done, I assess where each of those reviews sits in terms of rankings and which are getting the most traffic. From there, I pick the best performing post that is not yet #1 in Google for the phrase "(product name) review" and I start building more backlinks to just that one review. I'll build a Squidoo lens to point to it, a Hubpage, do more bookmarking, create a few other web 2.0 pages pointing to it, etc.
I next add one or two informational articles to the site.
Then it's time to repeat the cycle - write 5 reviews, ping.fm after each one, bookmark each one, do the article directories after each 5, and get 10 new reviews up in total. Then choose one to focus on for more backlinking, etc.
Before you know it, you'll have built up quite a bit of traffic from all that work! Nothing fancy, nothing expensive. Just writing, submitting, and backlinking.
DOUBLE YOUR AMAZON COMMISSIONS
December Amazon commissions are the most lovely numbers of the year, aren't they? They can be as much as double what you saw in November. If you analyze your stats, you'd most likely find that while traffic was up, it was an increase in your conversion rate that drove most of the higher sales.
My Unique Visitors to Amazon Novmeber 1-15th, 2011, was 12,084 with a conversion rate of 4.45%. For December 1-15th, 2011, the number of Unique Visitors was 9.98%. I didn't have more traffic but more of the traffic I did have was buying.
What those numbers tell me is that I might not be able to improve the conversion rate the rest of the year BUT if I doubled my traffic, I'd double my commissions. That gives me my new traffic goal for 2012. I want to double the Amazon uniques I had in December in order to work towards getting December-like commissions the rest of the year.
With that, it's time to turn my head towards Christmas. I have some hand-made ornaments from my 8 year old that need a special place of honor in the house somewhere, cookies to make, and some Christmas music to play.
With that, it's time to turn my head towards Christmas. I have some hand-made ornaments from my 8 year old that need a special place of honor in the house somewhere, cookies to make, and some Christmas music to play.
I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy New Year.
Sincerely,
Erica Stone
Sincerely,
Erica Stone
erica@extremereviewer.com