Targets

Today is really tough. I have people chasing me for payments left right and centre and I don't have the cash to pay them.

I have stopped all my paid advertising, moved half the sales people onto comission only and I'm just trying to do leadgen from my existing database.

I'd love to walk away right now as this is like pulling teeth but I have responsibilities to try and finish this in the best way possible.

OK, so enough mellow drama. Onto positive matters.

I am treating this job like a sales job and setting targets for myself. Right now the most important thing I need is targetted traffic. The way I am measuring this is by using googles predicted searches as a value. Then for all first page rankings I achieve I add these numbers together.

So, for instance:

Blue widgets - 13,000 searches/mo
Red widgets - 7,000 searches/mo

If I ranked on first page for both of these terms I would give myself 20,000 towards my target.

My 3 months target is 300,000 search value ranked on first page.

This would hopefully mean:

300,000 searches = 6,000 clicks (2% CTR) = 300 conversions (5% conversion rate) = £6,000/mo profit (with avg. sale value at £20).

That all sounds rosey but there are many risks involved, which are:

1. I might not get rankings in 3 months (I should be able to but you never know)
2. I might not get 2% CTR. Google's traffic estimator works on a basis of 0.5% for top 1-3 paid advertisers. I know with good page titles I can beat this so I am hoping 2% is a good number.
3. I might not get 5% conversion rate. 5% conversion rate is high for a clickbank affiliate product, and even some CPA offers, but it can be done. What I am hoping will save this figure is that I will be doing leadgen for offline companies where with a good landing page I know I can get 10%+ conversion rate and also sell the lead to more than one company.

So, for instance lets say I get a 0.5% CTR and a 2% conversion rate. The above formula would look like this:

300,000 searches = 1,500 clicks (0.5% CTR) = 30 conversions (2% conversion rate) = £600/mo profit (with avg. sale value at £20).

Now if that happens it won't even cover my setup costs as I am planning to spend around £2,000/mo on articles, domains, hosting & link building services. I may also need to hire a VA on top.

Over the 3 months I will try to optimise around 600 keywords, with an estimated total search value of over 1 million searches, so I am aiming for a 30% success rate within 3 months.

The thing that might save me is that I am sure to see a healthy amount of traffic from long tails that I am not specifically targeting. On my existing sites, that target competitive phrases, long tail keywords make up around 10% of my traffic.

By optimising so many keywords in such a short space of time, I am hoping that almost all of my sites will generate some longtail keyword traffic which will act as a bit of a safety barrier for my figures.

Truth be told I have never optimised keywords on anywhere near this scale in such a short space of time. If you had asked me a year ago I would have said it was impossible. It is only now my system is perfected and the new services available that I can make this happen.

I wrote down my whole optimisation process at the weekend and it is pretty fool proof as it uses a lot of automated systems for generating one way links.

I am taking a big risk with this. I do not have the money to do this so I am having to borrow it from my family. I know it may sound a little foolish to some but I have a good feeling about it and I believe that if I manage to hit my targets then the payoff will be worth it.

I have had enough of demanding customers/clients and high overheads. I want my monthly wage on autopilot so I can take some time out to travel around the world. I am 27 right now and I have been a workaholic since I was 19. It's time for me to reap some rewards from my experience.

Thnks for everyone who is being supportive. Shit hasn't really hit the fan yet so I am going to need it over the next few months.