January 3rd, 2010 Add Your Comments Bookmark and Share

Excuse the language, but what a shit tip of a year. If I never have another year like 2009 again I’ll be a very happy boy. But life goes on, the wheels keep turning and things change all the time, I’m really looking forward to 2010 and all that it brings. Just to make myself feel a bit better (after watching United get dumped out of the FA Cup by dirty Leeds) here are my top 3’s for 2009:-

Top 3 Tools/Resources

1. ConnectContent – Now I know this isn’t for everybody, it’s no fire and forget method but it’s been a revelation for me. In short ConnectContent is a service that allows like minded webmasters to share links. By like minded I mean webmasters who have multiple websites and who realise that placing a couple of relevant one way outbound links won’t kill them. The more you put in the more you get out and the benefits to webmasters in a world where everybody either wants paying or a reciprocal link can be enormous. Google friendly (no link exchange or link farm) and highly effective.

2. 7Search – Just one of the many small search engines that I assumed would be a waste of time. I’m really glad I persisted with 7Search and I’m STILL getting a 300% to 500% ROI on the PPC campaigns I’m running. Sure the traffic levels mean it’s hard to scale a successful campaign but the key with 7Search is not running 1 or 2 huge campaigns but running 10-20 profitable small ones. It’s low risk, easy money.

3. Shoemoney Tools – When I first tried Shoemoney Tools I wasn’t impressed. The whole thing felt a little bit unfinished or maybe perhaps too advanced for me? Either way I gave up for a while. However when I started to see some results with 7Search I decided to go back and try the Shoemoney Tools keyword suggestion tool (I remembered that it seemed to generate a lot of very good long tails). Plugging these extra keywords into 7Search really pushed a few of my campaigns on.

Top 3 Surprise Money Makers For 2009

1. Promoting Bookmakers – I’ve been mullered in the past promoting bookies. Most operate on a profit share basis and I assumed that all worked with a negative rollover. If punters win in a month your loss rolls over, does that make sense? I changed 2 things towards the end of 2009, first of all I stopped promoting any sort of bookmaker on the same page where I tell people of various systems that people use to ensure a good win percentage (school boy error). Secondly I sourced a couple of bookmakers that although they pay out slightly less (25% profit share) have no negative rollover. The result has been some very good months and fingers crossed passive income for life.

2. Ebay Partner Network – With the announced change from CPA to PPC I was expecting my eBay world to fall apart. Shock horror then that I ended up making more money after the change. The CPC I’ve been getting has at least matched Adsense which I just wasn’t expecting at all. Who knows how long it will last but for now I’m happy to just take the money.

3. Adsense – With all the changes that Google have implemented over 2009 I think it was widely accepted that publishers would see massive decreases in earnings. Sure there have been dips but in general my vital stats have held up well. I still think that Adsense is the single easiest way of making some very quick money from a new website and can be an excellent gauge for profitability of a niche.

My Top 3 Mistakes Of 2009

1. Working On Websites That Make Me Little Money Whilst Ignoring Those That Are Top Of Their Game – The title says it all with this one. I do it constantly. It’s like I have some strange affliction where I must challenge myself to push the websites that aren’t doing so well, all the time ignoring the websites that are making me the most money. If there is one thing I have learnt in 2009 it’s that there is always more money to be made from a website – and more to the point it’s easier to make more money from a successful website than waste time on a website that is struggling.

2. Making This Post – My mistake was assuming that people would take the information I gave them and apply it in their own way. Nope. A load of people implemented what I said into the exact markets I mentioned and surprise surprise killed the whole thing. Cue some grumpy e-mails and me wondering why the hell I bother. The thing that pissed me off most was that the method still works if you put in the work and think of your own niches, maybe not quite $100+ a day but nor far off, I’m still making good money with Adsense.

3. Not Writing Enough Software – It’s the whole reason I got involved with computers at the age of 6. It’s the reason I built my first ever website and it’s also the reason why I can afford to be self employed now. I also enjoy it a lot. Yet 2009 has been the year where I’ve written less lines of code than any year in the past 20 years. I blame my obsession with making websites a success (See point 1). I have wasted so much of 2009 on websites that I’ll never make much money from.

And finally, because 2009 was the year where I got CPA to really work for me:-

My Top 3 CPA Networks Of 2009

1. ClickBank – This will come as a big surprise to most people, but in the last 6 months I have fallen in love with the much maligned ClickBank. Of course it has lots of crappy e-book products on there but it also has lots of really good quality products to promote. It is these quality products with real benefits where I have made my money – not e-books. The reason I’ve put ClickBank top is two fold. First of all the variety of products available fits in with what I do much better than the more traditional dental, diet, smiley etc etc offers that the other CPA networks concentrate on. Secondly it’s very rare that products are dropped. Most of my CPA work is done through organic traffic and I don’t care what anybody says, it’s impossible to manage this type of CPA when offers are being dropped and added every few days.

2. Market Leverage – Big network, lots of offers and unlike 1 or 2 of the other BIG networks I’ve used in the past offers from Market Leverage convert. In 2009 I swapped out numerous offers numerous times and consistently it was the offers from Market Leverage that paid out. In fact you switch between the same offers with different network and it would always be Market Leverage that converted best. Strange that.

3. PeerFly – Small network, great customer service and offers that convert. PeerFly were a new addition to the CPA Network scene in 2009 and have grown steadily throughout. I don’t really do a lot with paid traffic but the success I’ve had has been partly down to PeerFly. The big selling points with PeerFly are their welcoming approach to foreign publishers and the fact that they don’t use DirectTrack. I’ve got so much on at the beginning of 2010 but once things settle down I’ll be all over PeerFly.

As I mentioned right at the start 2009 has been a hell of a year. I lost a number of profitable money makers that I’ve relied on for years. It really was the year of change that left me scrambling around more than a couple of times. I’ve managed to keep a steady income but the amount of work I’m doing to earn my money has increased exponentially. It’s easy to blame the economic environment but in reality online advertising spend has increased. There is still a lot of money out there waiting to be made it’s just that we’re all going to have to work harder for it. It’s either that or get a normal 9-5 job, and nobody wants that!

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Paul B