I’m still recovering from all that traffic you guys sent my way. Though traffic is falling off sharply, I peaked at 250 uniques. Before I didn’t know your traffic stats, I would have said “maybe 250 uniques is no big deal to some of you“. However, now I realize it is a big deal for any one blogger.

Thank you!

I am trying to not be lazy and hyperlink your name every time I mention you. Hopefully, you see howtobepoor.com once in a while among linking sites in your stat logs.

I’ve read up on the concept of affiliate marketing. I then realized that by placing this Crap Car link onto my site, I’ve become sort of an affiliate marketer. I’ve also read a blog or two about the idea, and came to my very own conslusions.

For those totally clueless, AM happens when you sell other people’s stuff. Kind of like a virtual “door-to-door” gig, but with more dignity. You set up a site/blog, and start pushing a product or traffic any way you can.

• It’s ballbreaking labor! It does seem like a lot of work, folks. You seek out decent products/ads/links, you research/write, follow up, write some more, promote, go to forums, promote, go to related sites, post comments, get to know people … Requires hellacious commitment and concentration, not to mention organizational skills to keep all those affiliate logins, passwords, html code neat and organized.
• It takes forever for projects to take off! Some say it’s going to be a few years before a site/blog is making above $6-10 per day, which is considered normal. That’s not just two years of “oh, ok … I just created eighty three blogs and now I’m just going to wait a couple of years to clear between $498 and $830 per day“. It’s two years of a near-daily grind, as in “you set up a site or two, go to work, check your sites during lunch (cause you’re excited), come home, and work some more“.
  
• It helps to be … good, as in “interesting”, “thought-provoking”, “dialogue-inspiring”, “creative”, “technically proficient”. However, if you grind it out long enough, you don’t even have to be good. After three years of writing about similar topics, you’ll have enough keywords on your site to choke a mule.

Just like with anything, consistency pays off. So far I didn’t put that much thought into expanding my affiliations, but my Mercedes site already brought in one person who bought a Carfax report, which netted me a few bucks. Also, one guy from Linkworth got interested in this site and requested a link, which I placed on the homepage (under Partners). I attribute that to being very cheap ($5.00 for a homepage mention).

AdSense is working out OK, too. Though I’m twice banned from placing AdSense on howtobepoor.com, the traffic blitz helped in a way I didn’t expect – a bunch of people visited my diesel Mercedes site (now with videos). I expected none of them to come back due to an extreme niche-iness of the blog, but then the unexpected happened – people started clicking on “used Mercedes”, “new Mercedes”, “cheap Mercedes” AdSense text links, pushing up my AdSense revenue for the day. Coupled with already high cost-per-click, The Mercedes Effect netted me around ten bucks for that one day.

That got me thinking about reconsidering the requirements for a successful web project. Now you shouldn’t care how niche your project is. All you have to do is pick one of your more expensive hobbies, estimate its reasonable popularity, whip up a site, line up some affiliate ads, and start posting! Sooner or later, if you grind it out, you’ll start making money; it’s just a numbers game.