Kelli's update:
Wow. It's hard to believe my journey into learning affiliate marketing for beginners is coming to a close. It was an honor being the first of many completed case studies to come for Laura's course. I realize I'm still a "beginner," but at least I'm not a total super newbie anymore! It's been a roller coaster of a ride and I've enjoyed the heck out of it.
Wrapping it up has brought me to Lessons 53 to 55 (the last lesson). Lesson 53's "A Few More Things" had me typing in site:fightthecellulite.com to see what from my site has been indexed. I was happy to see that pages were finally indexed. Four of the seventeen pages that had been indexed were actually my Privacy, About, Disclaimers, and Contact pages which brought me to another place in the lesson about adding "nofollow tags" to these internal links.
Another part of Lesson 53 was finding out exactly where I ranked for page rank in the SERPS. I tried using Web CEO to check the rankings; however, the file had become corrupt and I had to reinstall it. After reinstalling it, it still doesn't work so I'm now waiting for feedback from their support center. Oh well - so much for smooth sailing, hahaha!
I'm nowhere to be found in the Google hemisphere yet for any of my keywords or keyword phrases. However, I was excited to see that when I typed in one of my keywords - "fighting cellulite" doing an allintitle search, I come in on Page 5 at the #2 Position out of 1,036 results! Teeny victory - but I shall take it! It gives me hope! Also, for the month of August, at day 10, I've had 96 Unique Visitors compared to that of 90 total Unique Visitors during the entire month of July! That makes me smile too!
I've been working on promoting my site with more ideas for getting traffic from Lesson 54. In the lesson, Laura suggested doing a giveaway of some sort, so I've got my thinking cap on for that one!
I'm also still working on my Squidoo Lens, and I've submitted my site to some web site directories and working on articles to submit to article directories.
Something that has been hard for me to do is finding blogs or articles to comment on that are related to my niche. I still have the Google Alerts set up with my keywords to find relevant sites, but the problem I'm finding is everything that comes up is so disappointing. Maybe because this niche I chose is so spammy, but most of the articles or posts I read are the same exact things just posted different places. Some of it totally looks like it came from a content spinner or something like that - they don't flow, the grammar is awful and some of the sentences don't even make sense. It's hard for me to believe that these are Google Alert-worthy. Some are even ranked high on in the SERPS and I'm like - what?! Frustrating for sure. Also, the beauty/health forums I registered with awhile ago don't allow signatures or anything like that in their forums. Soooo.....I'll have to find another route or strategy or different forums.
The skills I've learned through the Affiliate Marketing Schoolbook are catalysts for me into this topsy-turvy world of affiliate marketing. I'm so confident with what I'm equipped with now that, as I mentioned a while back, I already have ideas for 3 more domains and the beginning of "building my empire" - in the last lesson, Lesson 55. I'm still trying to target in on keywords, but I've narrowed down domain names for purchase, so in the next couple days when my cash flow opens up, I'll be doing that!
I'm excited to see where Fight The Cellulite will be at my 6-month mark, and then at my 1-year mark. I know my hard work will pay off. To quote Laura from her course - "Affiliate marketers who are wildly successful are not necessarily the ones who buy expensive courses, software, or coaching programs, but they're the ones that didn't give up. Your hard work will pay off, and you'll be glad you didn't throw in the towel during the first few months." I firmly believe this to be true, and I'd love to come back from time to time to share some of my successes.
Kelli
Laura's comments:
Where did the time go? We're at the end of this first official case study at Skip the Scams. Kelli has done a fantastic job, don't you agree?
I like that she recognizes even small victories for what they are: evidence that this does work, and that, given enough time, she will be seeing larger and larger victories.
It's also clear that she knows she has to get out there and promote her site, and she's doing that by writing articles for article directories, looking for related blogs and forums, and doing a Squidoo Lens. That will help her site climb the rankings.
Speaking of rankings, at my request Kelli sent me a list of a dozen of her primary keywords, and here's what I found: She is on the first page of Yahoo for 3 of them and in the top 34 for 3 more. She has one keyword ranking in Google but it's not in the top 100 yet. Keep in mind, though, that she only made her site visible to the search engines a couple of weeks ago, so she has made great strides in a short time.
She's probably right that she can't find many good blogs about cellulite because it is a niche heavily populated with spammers. This makes her site stand out that much more, though; just looking at it you can see that it's full of original content that you won't find elsewhere. Especially over the long run, this will help her immensely. In the meantime, she could branch out a little and just find some good weight loss or exercise forums. True, those are spammy niches as well, but there are some excellent blogs and forums out there.
She mentioned another problem with these forums: Many don't allow you to even have a signature link so that people can check out your site. This is likely due to the fact that the privilege has been abused by so many people who only join to blanket everyone there with spam. But usually you can have your site link in your profile, which someone can access by clicking on your avatar or username. You won't get as much traffic that way, but if you provide helpful info in your forum posts that are not blatantly self-promotional, some will check out your profile.
Here's a final screenshot of Kelli's site as it appears today:
I also wanted to include a screenshot of her ranking in Yahoo that I mentioned last week (it has changed slightly and she is now at the top of page 2 for "how to fight cellulite" because rankings bounce around a lot for the first few months):
Kelli, thank you so much for being our first case study subject! You set the bar high for the next one! And you are welcome to come back anytime and give us an update on your progress. Don't be a stranger!
I LOVE my “job.” Affiliate marketing takes work, but it doesn’t feel like work.
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