.

Today I was perusing Google for a site that compares the overdraft fees of different banks. I just assumed that Google would know that I only want results for US banks, since I’d rather not convert my money in to pounds (and flying 12 hours to see a banker in person seems inefficient).

The search that raised the red flag for me was a search for “compare bank overdraft rates“.  Here’s what my results looked like:

compare bank overdraft rates

Why would Google assume that me, a guy in San Diego, would want to see results within the UK?

To be sure that Google knew I was in the US, I did search for “wells fargo” and I was given a result for a bank just down the street from me.  Hence, Google knows where I am.

Has anyone else seen this behavior before?

October was a fairly average affiliate marketing month for me with a few exceptions.  Revenue was up about 15% from just over $900, which I don’t consider to be a significant jump by any means.

Improvements

What IS encouraging is that last month I had 9 days with negative ROI’s (only amounting to about $50), whereas this month that number dropped to 2 days and only $20.  This tells me I’m polishing my current campaigns and plugging the holes.  This is even more apparent when you tally my negative days in the month of August (10 days for a loss of $215)!

Even MORE encouraging is that my affiliate marketing ROI is up from 247% in September to 277% for the month of October.  I attribute this to thinning out my herd of campaigns and terminating paid ads for any that weren’t performing well (or performing at all).

Underachievers

One of the under-performing sites was my Sony Bravia V Series website, which didn’t convert well enough to be a good CPC campaign.  My focus for it now is simply organic traffic, as sparse as it may be.  It does, however, rank fairly well on bing for several terms (#7 on Bing for “sony bravia v series” and #5 for “sony bravia v series reviews”), and I’m seeing several hundred uniques each month.  This month, the site converted 1 46″ Bravia V Series LCD hdtv for a commission of about $45.  Nothing to complain about, but I definitely wouldn’t mind some more conversions.

Non-Affiliate Earnings

My Adsense campaigns are struggling, but I haven’t really given them much attention lately.  I did start blogging more often, but the site is still climbing its way up the search engines at this point.  Time and more quality content should help increase that revenue trickle into a revenue stream (or even better, a revenue river?)

I still plan to start marketing within some ClickBank niches, but I haven’t had time to start that endeavor quite yet (the 9-to-5 is keeping me really busy lately).

Break it Down (dancing optional)

Here’s the breakdown of revenue for this month:

Adsense Revenue (7 sites): $19.18
Amazon Affiliates Revenue: $1,437.14
ClickBank Affiliate Revenue: $0 (nothing done with this account yet)
Shareasale Affiliate Revenue: $0 (nothing done with this account yet)
Commission Junction Revenue: $0 (nothing done with this account yet)
TOTAL Gross Affiliate Revenue: $1,456.32
(Minus) Adwords PPC Spend: $367.75
(Minus) Adcenter PPC Spend: $13.16

Total Net Affiliate Revenue: $1074.24

Nessy the Magical SEO Tool skeptic

I’ve due to attend a meeting today at 1pm with BusinessOnline, which as I was told, has an “SEO tool that predicts what would happen if you change certain things on your site”.

I stared blankly back at the person that presented the information to me, and finally blurted out: “Niiiiiice.  I’ll be at the meeting”.  I probably sounded as skeptical as I feel.

Maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt since I haven’t seen the presentation yet, but here’s my first thought:

How can an SEO tool realistically predict what changes on your site will do?

Can it predict, simultaneously, what will be happening on your competitors’ sites?

Can it predict, simultaneously, what algorithmic changes will happen to Google in the interim?

Needless to say, I’ll be updating this post later after the meeting.  Nessy, you coming to this one?

UPDATE: I retract my previous skepticism of BusinessOnline.  They knew their shit, and for the most part, I think they will add value to our company.  The “magical tools” that were mentioned to me were simply a case of the Telephone Game and some bad information that got passed along.  They’ve got tools, but tools that appear to do manage unweildy websites and the site’s SEO data.