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Contest Site Update and Related News

1 September 2009 10 Comments

The first full month for my first N1Way Guide site is now in the books and it’s time to take a brief look at the performance of the Golf Putter Guide site. I also want to mention that although my plan was to shut down entries into the site contest on August 31st, I have decided to leave it open, right up until the night before the winner is chosen! I do have a reason for this… which I just cannot share at this point. Trust me.. :-)

What Were My 30-Day Goals

My ONLY goals for the first 30 days of the site resolved around getting the content indexed in search and starting to see a trickle of traffic to the site. I truly had no revenue goals, or even ranking goals in the first 30… since I realize that a new website takes time to gain foothold on the web. If you recall, the 5 guides and 25 product reviews are part of the launch of the site, so they really cannot be counted as completed goals.

Following along with the N1Way Guide, I really shouldn’t even be looking at, or changing anything at this point except forward and backwards referencing. Aside from checking stats once a week, updates to the site should be left to the 90 day point. When I originally launched the site, I only published 3 guides and 35+ reviews… so I will go ahead and make active the remainder of the guides and reviews this week. Just to be clear, there was no technical purpose for my method… other than adding my own twist on the guides method, and trickling in an update every now and again, but changing NOTHING else.

bansguide468

Per the Guide: “Over Advertising or Constant Tinkering will Cost You in the Long Run”

Goals -

  • Have site fully Indexed
  • Begin to see trickle traffic on longer phrases

First Full Month Site Metrics

Data is reported from Google Analytics, Google site:domain.com search, cPanel, ePN, and

  • 61 Indexed Pages - this includes ALL guides, categories, reviews and supplementary pages like Contact, About, etc.
  • 2345 Total Unique Visitors – this is skewed by the referrals from here, forums, and other places I have discussed the site.
  • 3330 Visits - Average 107/day
  • 12,713 Total Pageviews – Average 410/day
  • 3.81 Pages per Visit

Since these numbers are skewed by referrals from here and other inbound linked sites, the real numbers I am going to look at are the search generated metrics.

  • 6329 – Search Engine Driven Pageviews - These come from Google (71%), Ask (11%), Yahoo (9%), AOL MSN/Bing/Live (6%) and various others (3%)
  • 587 KeyPhrases made up 329 different words.
  • 31% of ALL search generated traffic came from 10 different, 2-3 word phrases! :-)
  • 42% Overall bounce rate (That’s good)
  • 41% bounce from search traffic (That’s good!)

I REFUSE to post anything about how the site ranks in search for specific phrases, been there, done that, already been spanked by search engines for it in the past! But you are all welcome to go to the site and check the various categories for yourself. :-)

Now for the nuts and bolts of why we do this… earnings broke down at roughly 60/40, with 60% coming from banners, 40% from ePN. Keep in mind, that a single banner transaction can earn quite a bit more, in this case, $15-$30, versus smaller amounts for purchases through ePN.  Also remember that ALL of these ePN numbers are skewed due to clicks from here, forums, and other referral links that were non-shopper visits.

  • $69.86 – ePN Earnings (New EPC is only .06, I assume due to all the stray clicks, as all but one purchase has been right on target!)
  • $93.40 – (3) Separate Site Banners
  • Total: $163.26

Expectations – Plans for the next 45-60 Days

As long as I continue with my forward and backwards marketing as mentioned in the N1Way Guide, the site should easily continue to earn steadily. However, I also realize that looking at the Google insight Trends for “Putters”, demand in the market itself is at the exact point of dropping very sharply, and continuing to do for the next 60-90 days. In other words… search demand is about to fall off, until golfing season again!

I will go back into the site over the next 2-3 weeks and add the remaining reviews I have set in the system, as well as publishing a few timely guides I have planned.

Replicating the Process Across 9 More Sites

In the first 30 days of this being live, I have also launched 3 others of my own. I am working toward eliminating some of the sites that I just don’t feel are going to perform well in the new ePN Quality Click Pricing model, as is evident by the early trends I see. More on that in a future post…

In the next 3-4 weeks, I have 4 additional sites in various stages planning, building and launching, and once again… I will share more about that with you all very soon!

How Is Your First Build Going?

10 Comments »

  • Jake said:

    Mark.. give your experience with trends and seasonal items… is there a “better” time to launch a site by looking at those trends?

    For instance if you know that the demand for “Putters” will fall off soon.. is this the best time to have launched the putter site or would there have been a better time? Or does it even matter?

    Reply – Quote
    Post Comment #1, 2 September 2009 at 9:16 am
  • Ben said:

    Mark
    My first site is launched! (YEAH!)
    I could NOT have done it without your great help and advice.
    I now need to add a banner – especially since you seem to be generating some decent revenue from yours :-)
    You’ve probably already answered this somewhere else, but do you use Google Adsense for your banners, or an affiliate site, or both?

    Hoping that I have a similar revenue outcome (I’ll be using the Launch Package from Alex as well) by the end of the month to offset the upfront costs for content, domains, etc.

    Thanks again for your great service to the N1WAY group – keep ‘em coming!!!

    Reply – Quote
    Post Comment #2, 2 September 2009 at 9:46 am
  • Mark (author) said:

    @Jake – I really don’t pay much attention to trends, EXCEPT for when I look at post content opportunities, review content to add etc. I think you got one of those personal emails from me last week… in regard to halloween planning on a different site. :-)

    As far as the overall site though, it is a 6-12 month period before a site is truly valuable. Over that time, you will cycle through MANY trends.

    @Ben – Congrats! I do use adsense on alot of sites Ben. If I need [banners], I just use the image only version of adsense.

    On this site, I used a combination of:

    1 – Clickbank product
    2 – CJ Partner
    3 – NeverBlue

    Mark

    Reply – Quote
    Post Comment #3, 2 September 2009 at 9:51 am
  • Caroline said:

    Hi Mark,

    Wow, it looks like the Golf Putter Site is on it’s way to being a nice little money maker – you’ve almost recouped all of your initial costs in the first month! :)

    Other than Alex’s launch package – did you do any additional link building, article marketing to achieve the page indexing?

    Caro

    Reply – Quote
    Post Comment #4, 2 September 2009 at 5:48 pm
  • Mark (author) said:

    @Caroline – Other than some very relevant blog comments, several backward referencing links, and my daily email to authority sites… nothing else.

    At this point, there are 41 referral links out there.

    M

    Reply – Quote
    Post Comment #5, 2 September 2009 at 6:14 pm
  • Ben said:

    Hi Mark
    Were your backward referencing links all inbound links (links to the site you placed with others)? I only assume because I don’t see a Links page on the Golf Putter site for outbound links.

    Thanks!

    Reply – Quote
    Post Comment #6, 3 September 2009 at 6:00 pm
  • Mark (author) said:

    @Ben – Don’t know why the link was gone from the site footer, but on the sitemap page, you will see a page referenced as “Sites we Like”, which is a resource page of related websites.

    They are categorized by the type of info they share.

    In addition to these, I have also started providing links on the reviews themselves, to the manufacturers, and other authority review sites to the same putter reviews.

    Mark

    Reply – Quote
    Post Comment #7, 3 September 2009 at 7:11 pm
  • Matt said:

    Mark, with all this eBay Partner Network QCP stuff going on, I am curious to know what kind of EPC the golf putter site is getting in your “QCP Preview” report. Mind sharing?

    As for the QCP system I am excited because it looks like I will be making more under the new QCP program. I am a little worried though because the EPC for one of my sites is low and according to This FAQ put out by eBay: http://tinyurl.com/m4skq3 , low EPC accounts could be suspended. I am thinking about ditching that specific site. I hate to because it was my first BANS site!

    Matt

    Reply – Quote
    Post Comment #8, 9 September 2009 at 1:03 am
  • Mark (author) said:

    @Matt – Its actually what I would consider low at .11, which is why I didn’t provide the report on it. :-)

    My feeling after looking through the transaction downloads is that it is skewed by the large number of people who come and go from this site and several others where its being promoted, who are there just to “Look and See” how it all works.

    95% of ALL purchases have been right on target with the traffic though!! The untargeted clicking from here and there is drawing the number lower…

    Mark

    Reply – Quote
    Post Comment #9, 9 September 2009 at 3:01 pm
  • cherie said:

    Hi Mark

    Just wondering how this site’s doing now we are into October? Care to share?

    Reply – Quote
    Post Comment #10, 8 October 2009 at 10:24 am

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