Case study #1 update: Kelli talks turkey

I'm happy to welcome Kelli back for a guest post here at Skip the Scams! She has been busy ever since being our first case study subject a while back. I was remiss in checking up on her sooner so my readers could see how it was going. But better late than never, right?

Take it away, Kelli!

Hi everyone, Kelli here, with an update of my first year of affiliate marketing after being Laura’s case study for her affiliate marketing course back in May of 2010. My first year had me learning so much, as well as changing the direction of my blog.

When I originally went with the name FightTheCellulite.com, I thought it would be a good niche for affiliate marketing as well as a problem that needed solving. Over time, I began to see that the majority of cellulite products available weren’t necessarily all they were made out to be. I will not promote or pre-sell a product that I don’t believe in, or that people that I know don’t believe in because of trying a product or treatment themselves.

Because of this, it grew increasingly difficult for me to want to write just about cellulite and cellulite products. I also realized that I began writing more about healthier eating, beauty, simple exercises, and challenges women working from home often face regarding their fitness and dietary lifestyle.

A Couple Big Challenges I Faced

1. Being a California resident, my Amazon Affiliate Contract was terminated due to the state’s new Internet tax law for consumers and California-based marketing affiliates. I have been messing around with the Skimlinks affiliate program to see how that will convert for me on my Amazon links.

2. The second was trying to decide and figure out if I should change the direction of my blog. I needed to figure out if it would be possible to change the domain name, how to go about it, and do a redesign of the layout of my blog. After figuring out it was possible, Laura (such a doll as always), helped me streamline the process through Host Gator.

My Successes

I’m finally calling myself an affiliate marketer because at the eleven-month mark, I made my first commission and continue to do, so albeit in small amounts. Although the amounts have been trickling in, it’s awesome nonetheless.

My traffic also continues to increase each month, and I’ve ranked on page 1 and 2 in Google for all of my keywords! I recently had a skin-care line approach me about reviewing their product in which I’m delighted about – it will be perfect for the direction I’m taking my blog

My New Blog Name

After much thought as well as some rework of what keywords I’m going to target and which ones I still wanted to maintain targeting, I renamed it – WorkAtHomeBeauty.com!  I’m excited about the direction of it not only as a blogger but as an affiliate marketer!

Since beginning this journey, I’ve started two other niche blogs as well. They are on the back burner but ready and waiting for me when time permits. In the meanwhile, they are aging quite nicely and receiving some traffic.

I am also currently working on a fourth site, and soon a fifth site which will be service- and content-provider-type sites. During the past 14 months, I vamped up my writing services to ghostwrite and to provide blog management and content, to “pay the bills,” and because I enjoy researching and writing. I realize the journey to passive income is rarely a quick one!

To this day, I refer to the Affiliate Marketing Schoolbook and am still amazed how jam-packed full of truly solid information it has. This course is 253-plus pages of step-by-step action for you to take in your journey into affiliate marketing and I can't recommend it enough. This entire experience has opened up a whole new world for me. I'm extremely pleased with all that I've learned and accomplished.

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Laura's comments: I'm very proud of how Kelli has stuck with it in spite of some ups and downs common to almost every affiliate marketer. There were no doubt times it had to be on the back burner, either because life happens or because she was focusing on more immediate methods of making an income, but she didn't give up. That way her affiliate marketing income could slowly be growing in the background rather than lying completely dormant.

I asked Kelli how much social media marketing, article marketing, and guest posting she'd been doing, since those are three of my favorite ways to publicize my sites, get backlinks, and network with others. She said she hasn't done any guest posting yet (until today, that is ), and that she hasn't actively done the other two methods in the past few months.

So she is getting the majority of her traffic from search engine traffic, but that's great, because those are likely buyers looking to buy, but overall, she would no doubt get more traffic and more money rolling in if she were able to do more off-site promotion, which she said she is planning to do. If a new affiliate marketer is able to spend some serious time on that off-page search engine optimization, they would see commissions much sooner than 11 months. And Kelli gave me permission to say that — I didn't want her thinking I think she's a slacker! I just wanted readers to know exactly what factors were or weren't in play in Kelli's situation.

She is planning on setting up a Facebook page soon and is working on a free report as well in order to begin building her mailing list. So she's definitely still chugging along on the right track and getting better all the time! Thanks, Kelli, for the update — and y'all come back soon, now, ya hear?

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Tagged as: affiliate marketing, california affiliates, Case study, domain change, domain name, perseverance