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Creating a Small Website to Earn Passive Income: Second Attempt

sparklewise.com

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Re: Creating a Small Website to Earn Passive Income: Second Attempt

#21

Post by Tichy »

chopsueyar wrote: post #17

Good luck to you. In my personal experience, many Clickbank products are simply garbage. I had an Adwords account banned because of a Clickbank product. What was this controversial product? Instructions for building a chicken coop. There are more "legitimate" affiliate companies you may want to try. Amazon, Commission Junction, etc. I am no longer able to use Adwords...ever. [UPDATE] I have also had Facebook Advertis…

I don't know Clickbank, but in general it seems very difficult to make money with affiliate sales - unless you earn a lot with every sale.

That is just my impression. On the other hand, AdWords just keep chugging away, getting better and better. Especially for this beauty/health related site there could be expensive keywords. There will probably be ads for silly fat burner things, cosmetic surgery, and so on. I suppose the more scammy the ad, the more expensive.

Re: Creating a Small Website to Earn Passive Income: Second Attempt

#22

Post by roel_v »

toumhi wrote: post #5
roel_v wrote: post #2

What's your background - software or design? Did you do the design yourself?

Hey roel, I'm a software developer. I outsourced the design through Odesk (for something like 200 euros). You have to test a few designers to find one you like but it's so worth it not to spend tons of time myself to end with a crappy design anyway :-)

I was just wondering because it looks quite OK, but I saw some small graphical quirks that made me think 'professional design with modifications by a programmer' (no offense, I have the worst taste and no skills in design myself, but I've been studying design basics lately and I'm starting to notice things like the wrong color green box on the right on the 'IMC Femme' page which sticks out like a sore thumb).

Also the 'main' box where you enter height and weight can I think be made much nicer looking with a few small modifications, I think it's important for you if you want others to put your widget on their site. The numbers in the stars are too big and not properly centered, the stars themselves are too big, the alignment of all elements is off (text not centered, button not aligned to other elements, no padding in the box title, bottom padding too big or not in balance with other padding).

All of this from somebody who doesn't know anything about design so I may just be talking out of my ass here.

I have mixed experiences with getting design off odesk/elance-like sites, and I'm a cheapskate and afraid to spend money on my own products without being sure that it will pay itself back. Which is a self-fulfilling prophecy because crappy looking things will sell badly, too.

Anyway I'm quite impressed how you're coming up with multiple ways to spin such a basic thing like a BMI calculator. I hope you will find ways to make this work and make money for you.

Re: Creating a Small Website to Earn Passive Income: Second Attempt

#23

Post by roel_v »

p4bl0 wrote: post #12
toumhi wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey roel, I'm a software developer. I outsourced the design through Odesk (for something like 200 euros). You have to test a few designers to find one you like but it's so worth it not to spend tons of time myself to end with a crappy design anyway :-)

This also means that you have to invest 200€ in addition to the time spent coding it and to the hosting+domain fees in order to get things started. Considering the goal you expressed (making passive money), why was this your choice compared to spend less money at first, code it and just make it functional (not beautiful), and only if it works or show signs that it will, then spend the 200€ (or even more then) on the…

Apart from having a landing page and trying to get it ranked for certain terms, I don't think you can validate an idea without being able to show/tell people what it will look like. The quality of the product will be judged upon what it looks like, if I made a 1995's style white page with just two form fields and a 'submit' button, that couldn't be used to validate the idea with.

In my mostly-unqualified-to-comment-opinion, that is.

Re: Creating a Small Website to Earn Passive Income: Second Attempt

#24

Post by euroclydon »

Shenglong wrote: post #11

Passive income is a funny phrase... I've tried it before too, but always end up pouring more time and energy into it than I first intend. At first it's "I need to put time into this to get it started, then it'll be all good." When it's generating income, the question becomes "can this be scaled to make even more money?" Then we adapt, A/B test, work promotion channels, obsess over page rank, refine analytics... ugh.…

Yeah, I've spent 80 hours solid hours on my little micro-web-business, and with ~1500 monthly visitors and 15 sales over three months, I've only made $206.

Re: Creating a Small Website to Earn Passive Income: Second Attempt

#26

Post by grecy »

toumhi wrote: post #13
somedude1234abc wrote: post #7

You should look up some more seo tricks to get your site more popular!

SEO is hard, what tricks do you have in mind? For now my SEO strategy is to contact people who have fitness related blogs and fitness related link lists and get my site in there. Also I could build more content with a blog for example. But tricks? :-)

spend a few hours reading around reddit.com/r/seo In the last few days I have learnt a lot.

Re: Creating a Small Website to Earn Passive Income: Second Attempt

#27

Post by chopsueyar »

Tichy wrote: post #21
chopsueyar wrote: post #17

Good luck to you. In my personal experience, many Clickbank products are simply garbage. I had an Adwords account banned because of a Clickbank product. What was this controversial product? Instructions for building a chicken coop. There are more "legitimate" affiliate companies you may want to try. Amazon, Commission Junction, etc. I am no longer able to use Adwords...ever. [UPDATE] I have also had Facebook Advertis…

I don't know Clickbank, but in general it seems very difficult to make money with affiliate sales - unless you earn a lot with every sale. That is just my impression. On the other hand, AdWords just keep chugging away, getting better and better. Especially for this beauty/health related site there could be expensive keywords. There will probably be ads for silly fat burner things, cosmetic surgery, and so on. I suppo…

I actually had advertised on Facebook Ads, a Clickbank product that was converting 1 in 20 (5%). But the ad was suspended by Facebook after 1 day because of the product, not the ad.

Also, do you mean Adsense?

I still have my Adsense account and generate enough for some beer money each month.

But if I wanted to pay Google to advertise a site through PPC, I am banned for life.

Stange that Google won't take my money, but is happy to write me checks.

Re: Creating a Small Website to Earn Passive Income: Second Attempt

#28

Post by huetsch »

chopsueyar wrote: post #17

Good luck to you. In my personal experience, many Clickbank products are simply garbage. I had an Adwords account banned because of a Clickbank product. What was this controversial product? Instructions for building a chicken coop. There are more "legitimate" affiliate companies you may want to try. Amazon, Commission Junction, etc. I am no longer able to use Adwords...ever. [UPDATE] I have also had Facebook Advertis…

It sounds like you were trying to do click arbitrage. Is that forbidden by Google / FB ads? I don't really understand why it would be, but I guess I could understand that being a more reasonable cause for a ban than the fact that you were advertising a chicken coop.

Re: Creating a Small Website to Earn Passive Income: Second Attempt

#29

Post by chopsueyar »

I was looking at flippa.com for recent sales, and I saw a site that had sold, claiming to make over $3,000 per month in Adsense revenue.

What is the site about?

Outback Steakhouse Coupons.

It did rank number 1 in Google search results, so I believe it to be possible.

Did it offer coupons of any kind?

Nope.

It seems the less complex the idea, the more profitable it is.

Re: Creating a Small Website to Earn Passive Income: Second Attempt

#30

Post by chopsueyar »

huetsch wrote: post #28
chopsueyar wrote: post #17

Good luck to you. In my personal experience, many Clickbank products are simply garbage. I had an Adwords account banned because of a Clickbank product. What was this controversial product? Instructions for building a chicken coop. There are more "legitimate" affiliate companies you may want to try. Amazon, Commission Junction, etc. I am no longer able to use Adwords...ever. [UPDATE] I have also had Facebook Advertis…

It sounds like you were trying to do click arbitrage. Is that forbidden by Google / FB ads? I don't really understand why it would be, but I guess I could understand that being a more reasonable cause for a ban than the fact that you were advertising a chicken coop.

No arbitrage, just advertising Clickbank products through Facebook and Adwords.

I was told by Adwords staff, that if I change the content of the Chicken Coop site to conform to Google's policies, the account ban would be lifted.

Unfortunately, as an affiliate, I have no control over the content of the Clickbank site I am promoting, nor any warning as to when it went into 'non-compliance'.

I did not think the Chicken Coop site was insidious.

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