30 Day Secret Experiment - Day 14: Rotating Ads and a New Email Article

This post is part of a 30 Day Secret Experiment. Be sure to read the previous posts to follow my progress.

I didn’t get to work on the site much today as this weekend I’m seeing five films showing in the Philadelphia Film Festival over the course of today and tomorrow. (Today was two, tomorrow will be three.) That said, I did get to do a few things to the website.

First of all, I installed the WordPress sidebar widget plugin to allow me to install the ad rotator plugin. This allows me to rotate two (or more, but for now, two) different ads along the sidebar under “Featured Programs.”

Up until today, I was only running James Arthur Ray’s The Science of Success ad. Today, I decided to start promoting the Jack Canfield and Bob Proctor Science of Getting Rich program as well.

I’m only a basic affiliate of the SGR program. (You can be, too.) I haven’t actually purchased the program. But I thought I’d promote the product more extensively on this site. So I created an ad using the graphics from the main site in Adobe Photoshop and Image Ready and then placed my affiliate link along the side. The ad rotator plugin makes it simple to rotate as many ads as you’d like - no coding necessary.

I also finished up article #6 of my 10-day “Mindset of Attraction” ecourse. Four more articles to go! The good news is that people seem receptive to the content. I got my first “thank you” email today - it makes me smile to know that I’m encouraging others to succeed!

I was somewhat concerned yesterday about sending out the ecourse to those that had subscribed to the newsletter last week - would they be receptive to an ecourse they hadn’t signed up for. So far, I haven’t gotten any unsubscribes, and it looks like I’m getting about 50-55% open rates for each, which isn’t bad.

The best part about today, though, was I made my first affiliate sale. Someone bought the James Arthur Ray’s The Science of Success course, which means I get 20%, or $39! That means my site profit so far is:

Adsense: $5.23
Amazon: $0
Affiliates: $39
= $44.23

So far, my spending is:

Adwords: $15.80
Findology: $5.10
ExactSearch: $3/month ($36 total for year)
= $23.90 this month

Woohoo - that means I’m in the black! A big thank you to whoever purchased from my affiliate link!!!

Some other numbers:

Visits: 405
Pageviews: 1441
People view on average 3.56 pages per visit.
83% are first time visitors.
Email subscribers: 25

I mentioned that yesterday, I joined the Easter JV Gifts 2007 giveaway. That seems to have gotten me 6 new subscribers in the last 24 hours. I’ve got 10 more who haven’t verified their subscription. I maintain a double opt in list, which means that people fill out their name and email address to subscribe. Aweber then sends an email asking them to confirm their subscription. When they click the link, they’re added to the mailing list and receive the freebies. Those who don’t confirm never receive the freebies. So, it’s interesting that so many have not yet confirmed. Perhaps they will over the course of the next few days.

Tomorrow makes Day 15 - the half way point. Right now, I’m nowhere near my goal of $30/day - but at least I’m in the black Even a small amount of profit is better than nothing!