South West eCommerce

Well after a couple of whining, moaning months, it’s about time for a positive, isn’t it?  It’s been a much better month and after feeling like things were on the improve, it was a joy to sit down at month’s end and actually do the numbers.

Overall we expected to have a better month.  Some of our sites are quite seasonal, and if we have a target date in a given month, we expect a spike for them.  The spike came through, but that only accounts for some of our improvement.  Even without significant impact from those sites, our totals would have been up by just under 30%.

One good month doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods, things have grown more slowly than we had hoped until now and there have been some backward steps, but if this improvement is sustainable, we’re headed to where the business will support us.

So site by site, how did it go.

Site A – No sales.  Nothing last month either but things may be changing.  We’ve thought through some other products and the way we treat them, and figure there might be some movement in that.  We also have made progress on the adsense thing, and though nothing has flowed through yet, there is some reason to expect next month to be better.  No income.

Site B – A restart.  We were making most of our cash here through adsense, and the account problems we had hurt us.  Got the account going in the last days of the month and now need to do the hard early yards, no matter, we’re back.  Have some ideas in mind for commercialising the site, and it’s actually quite good fun.  Money negligible, hopes high.

Site - Massive relief, up from zero.  This site was one of our main earners, and is now back running again.  Working from a datafeed from the original merchant was allowing us to run a really good site and see some conversions, but when the datafeed died, we found that for several days we actually paid for clicks that took the client to nowhere.  We actually lost money, rather than just not making it.  Anyway, some time into the month, we finally got the feed working again and sales began to flow.  This is a summer product, we should be in our darkest time so this is a positive result for us and we’d hope to see improvements when the Australian spring arrives.  About 7% of a BoM.

Site D - Up 45%.  This is a seasonal site and one of our target dates fell in the month.  A rise of 45% in the month may be short lived, or it may be the start of an upward trend, we’re hopeful that it’s ongoing, even though we acknowledge some bonus from the date. There is still work to be done on the SEO of the site.  While it’s seasonal, you can’t help but smile at a lift in that kind of magnitude.  About 18% of a BoM.

Site E - Up 100%.  Also seasonal, but a product with a few more target dates in the year.  We’re sure some of it is from the same target date, but we also think that a 100% spike suggests that we’re getting some progress from underlying growth.  15% of a BoM.

Site F – Up from zero.  In a similar market to something else we’re doing, and sitting a little idle for us.  While it is earning a little, it’s aging the domain and when we decide how to work it, things are going to be that little bit stronger.  Numbers are quite low but headed in the right direction and at present it’s not hard work.  It’s easier to like a site when you’ve picked a market that you know will pay if you work it right.  About half a percent of a BoM.

Site G – Down about 70%.  The site we really don’t like.  It’s a market that should work and we’re trying a new product, which we think is going to improve things, meanwhile we had a few chargebacks from the last months sales and our result hurts from that.  Time will tell with this, and it’s a healthy marketplace, but we haven’t locked a great product into place yet.  At some point we may even get to like this stuff.  About half a percent of a BoM.

Site H – No sales, just square.  Philosophically, we like this product.  It’s going to be part of our way forward in terms of treating the planet well.  We’ll always have a spot for it and maybe it’ll fire up at some point, meanwhile if it doesn’t splutter into life soon, it’ll wind up in the junk league.  No sales.

Site I – No sales. Good demonstration of the risks of this game.  High value product, low competition marketplace, product which seemed OK.  It seems that it’s also a product where actually holding the item in your hand before you buy it might be essential, so traffic but no sales.  This has gone to the junk league.  No money.

Site J – No sales.  This site is doing its job well but we’re using a drop shipping model, and the vendor is leaving things on their site that aren’t in stock.  We’re finding that sales are there to be made but we’re leaving the money on the table.  We’re inclined to persist with them, it’s a different model and it shows we’re getting something right.  If a better merchant was to come along, we’d almost certainly jump ship.  No cash.

Site K – Up from zero.  We’ve actually swapped the domain for this.  We had gotten the name wrong and while it’s possibly a good niche to be in, we weren’t able to finish the deal.  Realising our mistake, we changed to a more useful domain and started the SEO process from there.  We’ve made one sale, that might be lucky or it might be the start of something good.  Stand by to see how it travels next month, money negligible.

Site L – Up 120%.  This isn’t seasonal.  The site is doing well, and could do better.  It’s the same originating merchant as site J, and we do lose some sales with product being out of stock.  It’s also the site that had us hit with fake buyers from Africa.  The banks are hitting us hard for chargeback fees, and it’s not worth leaving the site available to Africa, so we’ve cut an entire continent out of our marketplace.  Just the same, it’s showing us that this model works with the right product and merchant.  About 3.5% of a BoM. 

Site M – Up 250%.  Yeeeeeehaaa.  This is a great site for internet marketers.  It’s an information product, so it’s perfectly suited to what we do and it doesn’t go out of stock.  It is good for the client, so we feel we’re doing the right thing at an ethical level.  It is already attractive to baby boomers and gen x populations, and overall we’re happy to be part of it.  There is growth left in this market and we expect to keep our share growing.  There are only so many of these but we’ll keep an eye out and we’ll work them into our system whenever we find one.  7% of a BoM

Site N – Down 70%.  This is about what we would have expected.  Another summer product and a newish site.  Last month we made some sales that weren’t expected so the drop is no surprise.  Market Samurai suggests that there isn’t a great deal of opportunity to get big traffic via SEO and we are doing it through PPC.  The up side is that this is a big merchant who is rolling out a new system and there are some markets that’ll absolutely work for us.  This site will make a little and is absolutely an investment in market development, call it politics.  Money negligible.

Site O – Up a smidgin.  This site might actually be an underperformer for the month, in that it’s up a little but we had a target date in there.  Can’t complain about making the cash, but the spike should have been better than that.  Just gotta do what we can.  3% of a BoM.

Site P – A site in the junk league.  One significant sale, good this month and we wouldn’t expect it to repeat next month.  Clearly worth having on the roster and after link juice etc, not worth complaining about as it takes no resource to keep it.  2% of a BoM.

So there you have it.  May was about 60% better than April.  Even taking some spikes out for seasonal issues, we’re up about 30% for the month.  We can’t guarantee ongoing progress like this all the time, but regular growth will get us to the two and a half BoM mark in time.

We’re still kinda busy.  There are others out there who run more sites than us, but at present we’re building the ones up that we have.  As the sites in hand climb the search engine rankings, we can do a little less for them and still draw cash.  Then we can start a few more and climb into more comfortable territory.  It feels like a long time, but objectively, we only decided to be serious about affiliate marketing in December 2009.  This month we saw affiliate profits of more than half a wage.  Still a faster way to freedom than another degree, and that would fit us for another job.  We are doing this for freedom. 

Our commitment to the few tools we use, including a suite of things from Noble Samurai and others from Commmission Blueprint is paying off and we’re slowly but steadily growing.  Some more learning and analysis this month will keep us moving onward.