Kelly McCausey has been talking a lot lately about examining and improving your existing business. Basically the idea kicked off around the start of the new year and instead of coming up with all sorts of new ideas for your business to expand it…you just knuckle down and an examine and improve what you already have.
While I do have some ideas and plans for NEW stuff I have also been starting to really examine ways to improve what I already have going for me. I started with my naturemoms.com site. I have been going through the site page by page…adding content, tweaking Adsense, examining the Adsense activity with Adpsy Tracker, adding new affiliate promotions, chucking affiliate promotions that didn’t perform very well last year, and generally just improving each page. Oh…and I added a nifty script to the footer that will keep my copyright date current. Thanks Lynette!
I had quite a few slap on the forehead moments when I realized that I was ignoring some prime affiliate promotion opportunities and I had tough decisions to make about dropping certain products and promotions. For instance, I had a quite a few banners promoting Earth Mama Angel Baby products but yet my last check from them was only $9.00….blah. So I decided to give up that real estate to a new product and test the waters.
I worked on that throughout January and still have 1/3 of the pages left to do but I am already seeing results. My Adsense revenue jumped $80 from the previous month and that particular site became my top Adsense earner. Amazon sales jumped about that much too and since I am switching out my Amazon tracking IDs I am better able to see where the sales are coming from. As suspected, one site dominates. So when I focus on my other big content site next month I will step up the Amazon promotions.
I am also “improving” my attitude about outsourcing. I am very much a control freak and I like to be able to everything myself. With the exception of a few tiny things I do EVERYTHING myself… BUT last month I made the leap and signed a 2 month contract to outsource some things that were weighing on me. Already I can see that it will be well worth the expense.
Here is to mining for the gold you already had!
Tiffany, isn’t it a great feeling knowing that you are making what you have better and better?
It’s like realizing that you’ve been leaving money on the table day after day… and never doing that again! LOL!
Good for you, Tiffany! It’s going to be an exciting year for us MM’ers!
That’s awesome to hear Tiffany, and I’m looking forward to reading more about your improvements and the results. Oh, and thanks for sharing the link to Lynette’s script, it’ll be one less thing to do!
Glad the little script helps. Like Melissa says one less thing to do. Especially when you have tons of sites it gets tedious.
Look at you girlfriend. Very exciting to hear about these ‘upgrades’ and the check upgrades they bring.
Oooh you are going to be kicking yourself for not working that AdSpy Tracker sooner!! Mine paid for itself in about two weeks after I bought it.
It seems a lot of us at MM are on the same page this year. It’s cool.
I had similar results with Earth Mama Angel Baby, and I *think* it was because the links all went to the home page. I only recently figured that out. Duh! I was spending time recommending a specific product but sending traffic to the home page. I emailed the affiliate manager and she told me to change the url to the product page, so I’m going to test that out.
If I don’t start seeing bigger checks though, I’ll switch those links out to Amazon.com links… they sell the EMAB line. And my intuition tells me they’ll convert better. Whatcha think?
I would switch to the Amazon product Carrie. I find people are more willing to buy from a company they already know and like and where they can get other stuff at the same time.
I sell probably 700+ items a month via Amazon and 1/2 of that is stuff I suspect people decide to pick up while they are purchasing the stuff I recommended. Cause I know I didn’t recommend a 50 inch plasma TV!
I am big on Amazon lately. They are buying me a new laptop this month
Yeah, I’m moving my links. I had put that off for a few weeks now but it’s on the agenda for “examine and improve” my natural baby site.
Thanks for the nudge. Maybe Amazon could become to me what it is for you and Google to you what it is for me. LOL We’ll both get a nice raise.