Projections

Time to narrow the focus on my projects down a bit as we come up to June 1st and pre-season for the 30 Day Challenge. If you have read the About Me section you will know that I have Multiple Sclerosis and this can, and does, interfere with how much I can output. As much as I want to go at a million miles an hour, the body/brain need to be frequently rested.

So there is one single goal this weekend and that is to finish the e-Book. That’s it.

My inner voice is yelling out about other stuff like writing some great content for Knewsroom, or finishing off some of the other sites I have, or playing around with the Storestacker app, but I have to tell it to shut up. If I keep going too hard I am going to be in all sorts of trouble physically, and that just won’t do.

On another note I have been flabbergasted as to why Project Supernova has faltered somewhat. The CTR has remained high (20%+) and the cost of a click is down to 32c but these buggers are not buying anything.

Then it struck me, I am only getting 32 visitors starting at whatever time Google considers start of day . So if I get 32 people between midnight and 6am for example, how many of them are really “buyers” and how many are just “lookers”. To test my theory, I have upped my maximum daily spend to $25 which will give me 75 new people a day. If this does not prove to be successful by Sunday night US time then i will close the whole thing down as too costly for this niche (but oh so good for say my ebook niche maybe?)

So don’t worry if you don’t see me saying much on Twitter over the next couple of days, I will probably be enforcing some bed rest with a good book for much of the weekend.

What The Hell Was I Worried About?

This week has so far been a whole heap of “signs” from the universe that I am being silly worrying about product creation. Sure those sign are just my Reticular Activating System (RAS) kicking in and showing me what I want/need to see, but boy does it feel good.

First off was a rash of launches by marketers that lead to a bunch of free stuff being offered as sweeteners to sign up. As discussed in this previous blog post I do not like paying for crap and have been fearful of producing crap myself. So I took the time and read/researched and ripped into some of this free information, and you know what? I can do that!

Next off, seemingly unrelated, by highly relevant to me, was vindication of my writing/analytical skills by my PPC ad campaign Project Super Nova.  After running for 3 days UK vs USA, I decided to test which country was actually buying. Turns out it was the USA. The USA also had a preference of one ad over another. The current figures for that ad are20.89% CTR at position 1.2 @ 33c. I am limiting to a measly $10 a day, but the PPC has certainly bought traffic AND sales up!

Thirdly I have been selected by @SpyJournal as a Geek Girl blogger to interview for a feature on …female geek bloggers. Very flattering and allowed me some reflection time on why I do the things I do.  One of them being that I love to get my “stuff” out there.  Time to get one of my products finished.

Lastly I have been having a fair bit of success on Knewsroom writing articles. I wish I had more time to improve the quality, as $150 a published item is nothing to sneeze at. This has been great fun (but also a time sucker) and got me in the mood to keep going with the product.

Plan is to have it up and on sale by this weekend. I am quite excited!

The other projects are pottering along, guru.com is sending me quotes daily on one of them which also will need to be picked up in earnest next week.

Stay tuned

Project SuperNova - Curing Niche Cancer

When you choose a niche that is based on something that is in vogue you need to be prepared for the inevitable decline in traffic to that niche when the searchers go elsewhere for the next big thing.

Last year, during the Thirty Day Challenge, I picked a niche that I knew would have a limited popular lifespan, but should still live on as minor search term into the future. This niche has done pretty OK for me and I have learned a hell of a lot from it.

This niche generates just about 100% of its traffic from searches in Google Images.  I have  around 5 of the top 10 images,and always #1 image, in several similar search terms (since day 1!). For a while this worried me deeply as it seemed many eggs, one basket. And to be truthful I was (and have been) very, very lazy in creating other traffic generators apart from answering questions in Yedda and the occasional Stumble love.

Now looking at the graph there does not seem to be much of a downward trend, and it could quite possibly be seasonal (northern hemisphere summer means less people thinking about my niche or in front of the computer) or an temporary aberration. It could also be the beginning of the end.

I have no exit strategy for this niche. No plans to sell or close down. What I am going to do is experiment with PPC (pay per click) advertising to see if I can funnel some cashed up people to the site. The plan is to go supernova, burn brightest before winking out of existence.

After watching the StomperNet PPC video (god Andy Jenkins pisses me off, he so does not come across as authentic) I have set up a mini campaign in one country to test out what seems to be pretty common sense stuff. I have avoided PPC like the plague as it all seemed like black magic that could end up costing you an arm and a leg.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained as granny used to say, and so i am dipping my toe in before the Thirty Day Challenge this year, which will also be touching on PPC.

After an hour live the campaign has had 9 impressions with one click. Totally too small to be statistically significant, but at least I know I have set the darn thing up right. I am also happy with the amount I am paying per click, as I knew the landing page is optimised for XXXXXXs and the add campaign is using XXXXXing  as its keyword phrase.

Will continue to update on progress.