We have just entered our last week with people in the gite, that’s assuming of course that we don’t get any more bookings this year. Not too worried though because we have had some fabulous comments from everyone who has stayed so far and we are already getting bookings for next year.
I think it is fair to assume we won’t get any more bookings for this year as we are now nearing November and have promised Christmas week to some of our children and grandchildren so that we can be together for a week or so.
Really looking forward to that because it seems a long time since we saw them, one of the few downsides of moving to the South of France.
Anyway with the bookings coming to an end for this year we are looking at our other activities, Angie’s web site is now showing on the first page of Google when you search for curtains and cushions and we are getting ready to promote her soft furnishing business with fliers around this area so that we can potentially pick up some work locally. The picture shown is the one we are using as a backdrop to her flier.
Meanwhile I am continuing down the website development route and SEO for those websites, quite nice to see a bit of a reward for the work by getting Angie’s site a good position in the search results, just goes to show it can be done even in the face of some serious competition for those page positions, she is number 6 out of 1,850,000 results (yes nearly 2 million).
Another benefit to getting on the first page is that we immediately started getting a little bit of revenue from the adsense advertisements that are on her pages.
I have also joined Amazon’s affiliate scheme now, they are such a trusted name on the internet it seemed crazy not to go for it. You can see a little search module on the left of the blog now that lets you go and look for things on Amazon, I have also applied to ebay for their affiliate membership and if I get that then I will have two of the biggest names on the internet potentially paying me commission for sending people to their websites plus I already had some other really good affiliate memberships that I use and the adsense links.
I think that will be enough for now, really don’t need any more affiliate options, because I need to concentrate on getting more of a presence with more websites which I can keep optimizing so that there is more traffic to them and I can use the great links out to some of the biggest and most trusted online shops around.
It is hard work though and anyone that tells you otherwise is having you on, you have to put together good quality websites that have decent information in them, ideally with unique content and good links into and out of the website that are relevant to the subject matter or you can forget any decent search engine positions.
Once you have worked out a way of doing that you should be able to apply the same model to each new website and eventually you will start to see the rewards through increased traffic and associated revenue.
I think a good and realistic rule of thumb is to expect to earn about a dollar a day from each website and for a critical mass you should be aiming for at least 150 websites. But $150 a day doesn’t seem too shabby to me especially in the South of France, not the millions that everyone on the internet seems to say they can get you but not a bad income for most people.
Obviously if you keep applying the model you can increase the revenue accordingly, although I am still a way short of the critical mass level myself and need to continue working on the new websites. I will keep you posted on how I get on.
Another realistic target is to produce 3 new quality websites a week, that gives you time to collect information do some research and pull all the information together, but on that basis then in a year you could be potentially earning that $150 dollars a day and be in a position to further increase that revenue, you will need to keep an eye on your websites and tweak them to maintain their rankings by a process of continual improvement, although this is not so labor intensive as putting them together in the first place but will take a little bit of your time.
I am working on an ebook on the sidelines (may turn out to be a hubpage) so that I can document what worked for me and what didn’t might just save you all a bit of time if you want to follow a similar way of earning on the internet. Soon as it is ready I will let you know.
