Online Success Story: Peter Lawlor
http://www.WebsiteTemplateReviews.com
I always wanted to find a business I loved. I stumbled on affiliate marketing about 20 months ago and knew I found something I could have a lot of fun doing. I didn’t realize the learning curve would be steep and the number of failures high. Fortunately I like it and keep plugging away.
Website Template Reviews is about website templates with an emphasis on WordPress Themes. It also publishes articles related to small businesses such as marketing tips, small business software, and incorporating a business.
My tagline is “Get Your Business Online” which sums up my site’s theme. My target audience is offline business owners looking to inexpensively market their businesses online…
1. When did you set up your website?
I launched it in May 2010. I only had about 6 articles published on it from May to October 2010. I usually test new websites with a handful of articles to see how it performs. Website Template Reviews tested pretty well and I liked the topic.
Also, I received a purchase offer from someone. I figured if someone else saw value in it, then I should build it up further. I declined the purchase offer in October 2010 and started building it up in earnest. Now it’s my main project.
2. What gave you the idea for this particular niche & website?
I own an offline business serving a local market. I started in this business in 2006. I was doing okay, but wanted to grow it. I decided to focus marketing online to get more clients. At that time I knew nothing about building a website, let alone SEO and online marketing.
From October 2009 to October 2010 I worked like crazy building and promoting my offline business on the Internet doing the following:
- learned how to build websites on a variety of platforms,
- built several websites for my business,
- did tons of SEO, lead generation,
- rolled out 3 E-books (2 free for lead generation and 1 that sells for $47),
- wrote many free mini-reports for lead generation,
- published articles off-site, and
- created and published videos.
At first I built 1 website for my entire offline business. Although it attracted traffic, it wasn’t converting very well. That’s when I decided that I needed separate websites for each service I offer (I offer 3 distinct services). Presently I have 8 websites promoting my offline business and they work very well, growing my offline business 400 percent in 20 months.
I realized that what I had learned would be worth sharing with other business owners on Website Template Reviews. After Website Template Reviews tested well with a few posts, I set out to write dozens of articles on website templates. From there I expanded into writing about marketing offline businesses on the Web.
3. Did you have any experience with online business prior to creating this website?
Yes. I had built and promoted websites for my offline business. I continue being very hands-on with my offline business websites while working on Website Template Reviews on the side.
4. What did you do for work prior to setting up an online business?
I work in a profession serving a local area (i.e. a small local business). I’ve been doing this since 2006 and continue in this profession. Website Template Reviews may turn into a full time endeavor, and that would be great; but I’ll see how things progress.
5. How did you initially promote your website, and if different – how do you promote it now?
I initially promoted Website Template Reviews primarily with organic SEO. I focused on SEO for my offline business sites, and so that is what I knew and did. I do keyword research, write the best content I can, and build backlinks.
Since then, I’ve added article marketing, some video (not as much as I’d like), and I feed my posts to Twitter and Facebook (admittedly I don’t focus too much on social media). I’m working on guest blog posting in the future. The search engines are still my primary traffic source by far.
6. Is your website profitable? Can you share some basic traffic & profit stats with us?
Website Template Reviews has 330 published posts.
It receives 350 to 550 unique daily visitors (10,500 to 16,500 monthly). On weekends traffic dips. I’m working to hit my next goal of 1,500 daily average unique visitors by the end of 2011. I know other sites in my market attract many thousands of daily unique visitors, so the growth potential is excellent.
With respect to profits, Website Template Reviews earns $2,000 to $4,000 per month from affiliate commissions. I promote website templates, WordPress themes, and a variety of small business related products.
I took this site from about $200 per month in October 2010 to an average of $3,000 per month in less than a year. However, I worked quite hard at it adding more than 300 posts during that time. My point is it’s possible to create a decent income with only affiliate marketing relatively quickly.
I love affiliate marketing. In addition to promoting templates and other fixed commission products, I promote a few subscriber-based software services that generate recurring commissions.
If you’re into affiliate marketing, recurring commissions are fantastic. It takes a little while to build up a large number of referred subscribers, but in time you can generate a healthy passive income. My goal is that my recurring commission income matches my fixed commission income in 2 years.
The site earns more than I ever expected when I started it. Now my goals are loftier, but I’m delighted so far.
The following are some things I’ve learned about developing affiliate commission income:
- Choose a niche you like. I know some people say this is hogwash. I’ve created sites on topics I don’t care about. In the end I wasn’t motivated to turn them into profitable projects. The sites I love are the sites end up earning more money. They’re much more fun and provide much more value to readers.I love trying new templates and themes – often buying them just to give them a test drive to see what’s out there. I also love writing about what I’m doing to market my offline business. Hence, Website Template Reviews is a passion project that earns a nice income.
- Promote products you like and use. This way you can write superb reviews and in-depth articles. Write the best reviews you can and show proof with screenshots that you use the product. For example, my best reviews include screenshots of the backend of templates and themes demonstrating its features.
- Do keyword research. Don’t guess. Every published web page is an opportunity to go after a keyword.
- Use buying keywords whenever possible. A buying keyword is a word someone uses to search for something specific they want to buy. For example, people search with the word “buy” in the phrase. The phrase could be “buy WordPress themes.” It’s easy to add buying keywords to your posts and they can convert well.
- Get your affiliate promotion pages on page 1 of the search engines. The bulk of my traffic is from the search engines. I have dozens of blog posts that rank on page 1. These are the pages that generate revenue.
- I focus my backlinking to my “money pages” so they rank. A number 1 listing on a well written preselling article can result in hundreds or thousands of dollars each month in revenue.
- Publish tons of content. I’ve tested micro-niche websites, and they simply don’t convert as well and don’t get as much traffic. Since Website Template Reviews is large and trusted reasonably well by the search engines, I get new posts ranking on page 1 of the search engines within days of publishing (depending on the level of competition for the keyword).
- Promote some recurring commission products/software/membership sites if possible. In the long run you’ll enjoy the truly passive income.
- Avoid promoting products in every post. I used to do this. Now I write more articles with no affiliate links than articles with affiliate links.
- Don’t sound desperate. Point, refer, suggest; don’t sell. As an affiliate marketer, your goal is to presell and get your visitor to click the links. Let the vendors’ websites do the selling.
- Offer options: Some of my most successful posts are product comparison charts where I set out pros, cons, features, pricing, etc. for a group of related products (i.e. premium WordPress themes).
- Make your links noticeable. I tested a website once to determine whether underlined links received more clicks than non-underlined links. The click-through rates for the underlined links more than tripled the links not underlined. Although I avoid selling, I ensure my links are noticeable. I usually place a link at the beginning of an article and then at the end in a large font and underlined.
- Test different types of articles. I don’t restrict my content to reviews. I write tutorials, comparison charts, general information articles, and list articles (i.e. 57 Ways to …).
- Leverage your content. Now that I have more than 300 posts, I constantly link among my posts directing traffic to the preselling articles.
- Be the first in your niche to review and write about a new product. I’ve done this several times with outstanding results. My articles ranked in the top spot in the search engines and still do to this day.
- Expand the range of your product promotion. Website Template Reviews promotes more than just templates. It also promotes all kinds of related products and services.
- For example, I have a portal within the site about incorporating a business. It’s related to small businesses, and so I write about it and promote online incorporation services. I incorporated a company with an online service and it was fantastic. I write about that experience and the options available.
- In any niche you can find related products to promote easily – whether physical, digital, software, or membership sites. The more affiliate links and traffic you get, the more money your site will earn.
- Be patient. Don’t publish 5 articles and expect to get rich. I was this naive once upon a time. Think about and plan your online business in terms of years, not weeks or months. Set short and long-term goals. This tip hit home when I read from a poster on a marketing forum “imagine the type of website you could build if you publish 1 great article every day for 5 years. That site would have 1,825 posts in 5 years.” I’m paraphrasing, but I can tell you that when I read that, I decided that a website with 1,825 posts attracting traffic would be awesome and could be a great earner. That’s my long term goal with Website Template Reviews.
- Write long articles chock full of information. I find my longer articles (1,000 words plus) rank better in the search engines and presell better. That said, don’t write a bunch of filler. My point is to exhaust the topic better than any other article on the web.
My biggest weakness:
Despite decent affiliate marketing success on my site, I don’t have a sizable subscribership for Website Template Reviews … yet. I offer subscribership options through Feedburner and have an opt-in list for various free reports.
Frankly, I’ve had a hard time building a subscribership. I suspect because the site is broad in topic my incentives don’t resonate as acutely as they would on a more focused site.
Although I’ve struggled building a subscribership given the traffic volume, publishing a broad website has advantages such as decent traffic volume, growth potential, and plenty of topics on which to develop content. I like the freedom to write on a variety of topics.
I’m pretty happy with Website Template Reviews so far, but its earnings are a drop in the bucket compared to many other affiliate marketers. Sure, some people exaggerate, but there are affiliate marketers earning thousands of dollars every day with fantastic websites. The sky is the limit with this business model.
Moreover, a website attracting targeted traffic creates business opportunities other than simply earning affiliate commissions. I’m sometimes asked to consult, provide SEO and web design services, and recently was asked to speak at a conference. I never expected being a website publisher would create these opportunities.
7. What are your plans for the site going forward?
- Continue publishing the best content I can to help small business owners reporting my successes and failures marketing my offline business.
- Continue working on building a subscribership.
- I’m considering rolling out affordable website design services, Web hosting, SEO services and web marketing consulting for small businesses.
I love affiliate marketing, but I receive requests every month from readers to assist them, and so I can’t ignore this potential business opportunity. I have teams in place helping me market my offline business, so it’s not a stretch to help other business owners with the systems I use.
8. What ONE piece of advice would you give someone interested in starting their own niche site or blog?
Get as much targeted traffic to your website as possible. Always be building traffic. Without targeted traffic you can’t monetize. SEO is only one way to get traffic; but an excellent source. I use PPC when I need a quick surge of traffic for testing.
Targeted traffic is the be all and end all of building an online business. Everything I do on the site is about attracting targeted traffic and developing loyal readers. Set traffic volume goals and work toward it relentlessly. When you have traffic, you can test offers and monetize.
When I started marketing my offline business on the Web, I focused like crazy on targeted traffic because I needed clients. It worked. It goes without saying to ensure your content is great. All the traffic in the world won’t benefit your website if you publish lousy content.
Peter Lawlor
http://www.websitetemplatereviews.com
-Thank you, Peter and congratulations on your success!
Click Here To Read Online, Comment or Share...
Online Success Story: Dee Bauer