David Fiske Affiliate Marketing & Web Development

It is just about time to do another Progress Report.

In summary, Compare Sat Nav has nearly been completed from a design perspective, and is now awaiting content.

However, I do need to create a robust set of goals for the remainder of this year.
 
The site is technically (nearly) sound. From a Standards perspective, most pages validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. There is a problem with some of the product pages as they contain rogue special characters I have tried to remove when creating the feeds.

The Price Tapestry script has been installed and heavily customised to produce a stylish Satellite Navigation Price Comparison site.

I have also crafted a mod for Price Tapestry that allows side-by-side product comparison though this is currently running with 9 product descriptions out of a possible 403. That's 2% of the way! I am hoping that some of the 403 products turn out to be duplicates!

I have had 352 visitors to Compare Sat Nav in 15 days which isn't a lot but these have mostly come from search engines - which is good. Compare Sat Nav entered Google after just 9 days of being live, which I put down to the oversight that resulted in me utilising the DBFCS server rather than the Compare Sat Nav for the price comparison as originally intended.

At the moment, the stats shown traffic from Google and Yahoo focusing just on search engines.

Oh, and 65.72% of traffic is UK based which is the target market I am aiming for.

From a financial aspect, I have currently invested in the Price Tapestry script (£55 - though the script has now increased to £79), the website hosting from Supanames at £32.88 and the extra domain name from 1&1 at a cost of £4.68 - a cumulative total of just £92.56 initial outlay. I have already had one sale through the site so I only need to make £89.58 to break even.

I have also invested in Multiple Streams of Internet Income: How Ordinary People Make Extraordinary Money Online at £11.89.

As you can see, I like to do things cheaply. At this stage in the project, I do not want to splash a lot of cash with no guarantee of a return. PPC advertising is also risky at the moment (mainly as I have never done it before) so that could prove expensive.

So, to move the project forward, I need some concrete objectives.

1. Complete the navigation building on Compare Sat Nav as a matter of urgency
2. Investigate SEO techniques further and implement techniques to help boost search engine rankings
3. Increase awareness of Compare Sat Nav
4. Implement a mailing list feature on Compare Sat Nav

As for timescale, the quicker the better! I am starting to get to the stage whereby I need to concentrate a lot of my efforts in developing SEO tactics.

In terms of www.davidfiske.com, I would like to set the following aims:

1. Create several in-depth articles with the following content:
   1. AdSense techniques
   2. Affiliate revenue tactics
   3. SEO tutorials
2. Provide detailed analysis of the pros and cons for all the software and books I have used throughout.
3. Answer more reader questions. Submit a question to David Fiske here.
4. Help as many struggling entrepreneurs develop their virtual real estate (VRE) and develop a business based upon passive income.