Many months ago I remember someone mentioning how SEO was “broke money.” I couldn’t believe that person said that, but then I realized he was a CPA Network owner who was simply protecting his business. Slow money doesn’t fit in at CPA Networks, then again most CPA Networks have no clue how to utilize SEO and CPA offers, making them work in harmony.

The people who say SEO is “broke money” is always going to be either:

1. Someone who has no clue on how to REALLY make SEO sites rank (much less convert), and…

2. CPA Network owner.

We always hear about how “X” made $20,000 every day for 30 days. That’s awesome. It really is. The problem is — how much money did they spend to make $20,000 every day? I’m guessing $10-$15k per day, if not more. So let’s exaggerate and say that they made $10k per day for 30 days and then the offer they were killing it with was pulled… that’s $300k per month. Excellent money, no doubt!

But there’s still a problem. Most people who suddenly produce these numbers have never been there before and, honestly, got lucky. Most of them will spend that money on douchebag type stuff that is meaningless in life and makes most down to earth confused. We see it all the time, and some people have the balls to admit it on their own blogs (UberAffiliate gets props for that). It’s not easy to make $300k a year, much less a month, so when we see a person hit these numbers we’re all pretty curious about how they did it, and the fact is — most of them talk about it after the money is dried up for them. Campaigns die quickly in the CPA world, that’s just a fact.

So what does this have to do with SEO? A lot, actually. I’ve been a huge SEO advocate for years, but that doesn’t mean I bash paid traffic. Quite the opposite as a matter of fact…

It’s human nature to get worked up over seeing someone say “I made $600k in a month,” right? Of course it is. We’re in this business for that sole reason: money, and lots of it. But how much profit comes from those numbers, and how much money did they make after that? Most likely not much more after it died pretty quickly.

Now what if someone said that their SEO site made $20k per month? Doesn’t really compare to the look of that $600k, I’ll be honest. But let’s take a deeper look at those numbers.

Most SEO sites last for years (in my experience). It’s not hard to rank a site if you’ve been doing it for a while, even in more competitive environments. We don’t always need #1 rankings for keywords like “diet.” In fact, we don’t care about those keywords anyways, but let’s stay on topic (I know it’s just me, but pretend we’re having a conversation so I don’t feel crazy while typing this).

In my experience, most of my SEO sites last for 3-4 years, depending on what they’re about. I try to stay pretty general or very exact. Very rarely do I go in between. I either produce a branded (Authoritative) website or an Exact Match Domain (EMD) for a specific product, service or niche. Now if someone states that they’ve got an SEO website producing $20k per month, that might end up being pretty decent after all. If a website lasted 3 years and produced $20k per month — that comes out to be $720k in those 3 years. Of course, most Affiliates also have more sites, but we’re trying to stick to some basic numbers.

With paid traffic you pay for…well, the traffic. So $600k is RARELY profit for those who brag about those numbers. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but it’s not realistic. $720k for SEO in those 3 years costs…I guess you’d have to say we’re using a Dedicated Server, so we’ll be generous and say $200 per month x 36, which equals $7200. So $720,000 – $7200 is still not bad, right?

Now there’s always going to be people who will still bash SEO and say that these numbers don’t matter, but my point is that SEO is slow traffic, which is not appreciated by those who need fast sales. Those people will always bash SEO, and that’s OK. It creates less competition!

I’ve always told members of Affiliit.com to be diverse with their traffic. Use PPC for their SEO sites if they’re quality sites. I also believe that there’s more to Internet Marketing than building SEO’d sites and running PPC to them. You should always test different traffic sources and offers and find out what’s best for YOU. Not everyone is going to be successful in SEO or PPC or Media Buys or whatever… everyone is different and everyone has their strengths. This post is for those SEO’s in Affiliate Marketing that hear people bash SEO.

Now, to dig a bit deeper — what about other SEO sites that make $500k+ per month? That’s for another post, but that’s real. Don’t let the unknowing make you feel the need to switch before you get moving, prove them wrong and ignore those with an agenda!

Posted by Clint Lenard | 4 Comments »

It’s been a year since my last blog post and I have had little desire to continue posting, but I figured I needed to update it every once in a while…once a year just makes me feel a little too special, and my ego can’t handle that.

This is more of a series of rants…

Over the past year I’ve had to deal with a lot of new stuff. New projects, failed projects, almost shutting down Affiliit.com at one point, jumping in and out – then back in to different Traffic sources. Success, failure and everything in between. I’ve been pretty busy, too busy as a matter of fact, but thankfully I’m starting to become more organized and the stress levels have come down quite a bit.

I have a habit of trusting people too much. It’s a bad habit that I’ve carried around my entire life, but I don’t regret it as I’ve met a lot of good people because of it…unfortunately, I’ve met more bad people than good, but the good seems to over shadow the bad.

One thing I had experience with is that I was nice enough to hand over a bunch of free subscriptions to Affiliit.com when we originally opened. Most of those subs were rarely used, a good portion of those people who did use theirs have been extremely helpful, a few have hit SERIOUS goals (including a Million dollar success story, etc.), but then there’s always a bad apple that you help far too often only to have that person stab you in the back. But I’d do it all over if I had the chance. You always have people who don’t actually do work, yet they want to talk down on your program. Then you have people who NEVER get involved in the program, yet come back to post their success stories (pretty awesome!).

It pretty much averages out across any training program, I’m sure. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a bunch of people through affiliit.com and hope to meet a few offline at some upcoming meetup’s in the near future.

Over the past few years I’ve done a lot of Lead Gen, but over the past 4 months I’ve become more and more involved and have been learning a ton from it. It’s funny that some of my SEO sites never even had email forms on them, and some still don’t. I still have a ton of sites to work on, but I’ve slowly updated most of them over the past few months to make sure I collect as many email addresses as I can (I know, this site doesn’t have anything right now…but it did!).

I’ve learned that people love to criticize tips and tricks without even trying them. “Test everything, assume nothing.” Don’t be an idiot. If someone tells you they’re making $500 a day with a little tip, give it a shot or leave it alone, but why criticize someone for the tip? I see that all the time on various blogs, forums, etc. it drives me crazy.

I’m still amazed by how people freak out when Google Updates their Algo. Really, do we have to do this on every update? If you’d just optimize your sites the right way – you’d NEVER have to worry about the updates as much as most of you do. Leave the tricks alone for important sites.

Why do people think you have to be an expert at everything in this Business? There’s so much stuff involved in Internet Marketing that you could never know enough, much less everything. I’ve made money with every traffic source possible, and I’ve lost money as well…but if someone said they were EXPERTS at every traffic source, I’d stay far, far away from that person. I don’t consider myself an expert on any traffic source, but I have more working-knowledge than most so-called “experts” that you’ll find. I’ve been in this game for a long time and I’ve forgotten more information that I could ever teach.

I got back into PHP this year and learned that I still hate it. At least I was able to brush up on my skills, improve some tools on Affiliit.com and also develop some other tools for myself, along with other useful stuff.

There’s too many Affiliate Programs out there that do everything they can to screw their affiliates out of money…if the affiliates would rise up and walk away, those programs would die, along with the product(s) behind it. I’m not talking about CPA Networks, or even networks at all. I’m referring to private networks for products/services. I have issues with people trying to save a dollar through PayPal Mass Pay and instead want their hard working affiliates to get raped on the charges… stupid. Lazy. Pathetic. If I had more time, I’d create a competing product just to take them out. And I know I could, because I helped them become who they are.

If you really take a look into training programs out there, you’ll suddenly get the feeling that only a few are run by real affiliates who actually do what they teach…

I’m currently brushing up on my design skills (if that’s what you’d call them) so I can create new designs for some of my sites. I actually enjoy designing stuff, and I could never find any good designers that were worth a damn that didn’t charge an arm and a leg for simple shit.

I sometimes get caught up in trying to make things perfect, as if I were going to be criticized for the work I do. I’m not sure why I do it, but I’ve come to the realization that it takes me a lot longer to finish projects because of that. On the other hand, I can’t stand working with people who want to throw up bullshit and think people should be OK with it. “Just get it done quick” is a stupid idea unless it’s done right… it actually caused me to nearly give up on Affiliit at one point. I hate being rushed.

I’m currently in the process of creating multiple projects and have teamed up with someone I actually met through affiliit. I’m hoping things get moving so we can get one of them done within the next few months. I think it will be pretty awesome!

Eh, again, this is really just a bunch of rants. I guess it’s a way to feel like I’m catching up on this blog. I’ve already got some posts in the works, so I’ll be posting them this week.

To that one reader who went through this…thanks, Mom!

Posted by Clint Lenard | No Comments »