As I mentioned in my previous post Affiliate Marketing is a method by which you can sell (or promote) other peoples products & take a cut or commission of the profits to Earn Money Online. There are a few different types of Affiliate Marketing Models that we are going to have a look at.

You can be rewarded for referring potential buyers in various ways:

Pay Per Click: You are paid for each user that clicks through from your site to the advertisers site. Usually ranging anywhere from $0.01 through to $2+ depending on the advertiser & or product.

Pay Per Lead: You are paid whenever you generate a lead or a sign up, this is more commonly known as a CPA or Cost Per Acquisition model. This can be something as simple as getting a user to sign up to a mailing list or enter a competition. This can range from $0.50 right up to $100+ again depending on the product or service.

Pay Per Sale: You are paid whenever the user your refer generates a sales or purchases the product. This type usually generates the largest commissions, however it’s the hardest type to convert. There’s no range on this type of marketing, it just depends on what commission the advertiser pays & how expensive the product is.

Now lets look at the three types of Affiliate Marketing above. You can notice a distinct pattern.

Pay Per Click; as you can imagine is the easiest type of sale to generate, however it has the least returns. Pay Per Lead is slightly harder to generate with more generous returns & then Pay Per Sale is the toughest but with the most rewarding return.

Now that we’ve grasped the basic types of Affiliate Marketing lets have a look at how you can put these models into practice on your own site, we’ll also have a look at how you can market products without even having your own website to begin with.

Other usefull links:
weight bench
excalibur hotel las vegas
FL Loan
Fish Tank Aquariums
yeast infection cure
construction project management software
numis network review
yorkie breeder

There’s a number of reasons why you’d want to cloak your affiliate links. The first is so that cheap webmasters can’t get the string & buy the product through their own link instead of yours. Secondly, you don’t want to make the links too obvious to your readers as some will just not buy through an affiliate link period.I’m going to look at two fairly easy ways to cloak your affiliate links. The first one involves a redirection script which holds an unlimited amount of URL’s. The second is slightly more time intensive, however it has extra advantages.

Mass Affiliate Link Redirection

This particular method allows you to keep all your affiliate URL’s in one php file. You can assign each URL a name, then call it whenever you want.

Create a .php file & call it redirect.php
Open up the file & insert the following code:

$links = array(
"earnersblog" =>; "http://www.earnersblog.com",
);
header("Location:".$links[$_GET['site']]);
exit;
?>
You can replace Earners Blog & the URL with whatever you want. You can also add as many other URL’s below this one as you want.

To call one of the links you need to call it using the name you’ve described it as. To call the link above we’d use the string:

http://www.yoursite.com/redirect.php?site=earnersblog

And there you have a very simple Mass Affiliate Link redirect script that can hold an unlimited number of URL’s.

Single Affiliate Link Redirection

I use this method to redirect single affiliate links. The advantages of using this method is that if you point enough link juice on the affiliate link you can sometimes get it to rank in MSN. This can mean free commissions from organic clicks. The url structure also looks much cleaner which will attract more clickthroughs.

Say I want to create a file to redirect to Earners Blog. Simply create a file called earnersblog.php

Inside the file place the following code:

header( 'Location: http://www.earnersblog.com' ) ;
?>
Now when you want to call the link just use http://www.yoursite.com/earnersblog.php

As you can see, using this method makes the link look much more like a static page. Therefore your reader is more likely to click & possibly buy. If you’re consistent & use this linking method throughout your site for external affiliate links you may find some of them ranking in MSN. This is generally dependant on the Anchor text you decide to use for the link.

Until next time.

Other usefull links:
weight bench
Excalibur Las Vegas
menapause
Wizards of Waverly Place part 1
FL Mortgage
Fish Tank Aquariums
yeast infection cures
yorkie puppies
blackhead remover

Learning to choose the right Affiliate Program can mean the difference between success & failure in the Affiliate Marketing world. Hype plays a big part in this.

If a product is popular or getting a lot of press then of course you’re going to want to promote it? But, unless you’re quick off the mark chances are you’ll already be out bid or out ranked by experienced affiliate marketers who have already capitalised on it.

The key to choosing the right affiliate programs is experimentation, knowledge & your ability to know when enough is enough.
It really also depends on the methods you’re using to promote the affiliate products. If you’re trying to promote affiliate products on your website you will find it much easier to narrow down the possible affiliate programs, however you won’t have as much choice & possibly may not even find an affiliate program that suits your niche.

For example if you run a website orientated to Mobile Phones you may decide to run some Azoogleads Ringtone Offers, or if you run a Business Forum you might run a program like Goto Meeting.

When choosing an affiliate program I’ll normally look at a few key factors:

Would I buy the Product myself?
Is the product good value for money?
Is there something in this product that they can’t get anywhere else, cheaper?
I’ll then look a bit more indepth & do some research on:

The Competition
The ROI (Return on Investment)
The Landing Page
I’ll also look at affiliate programs that only sell one particular product versus those that allow you to promote multiple products.

An example of an all rounded affiliate program is Adult Friend Finder. I’ve been promoting these guys for a while now & have found a number of things:

Good Conversions
Good Clickthrough Rate (Due to the Geo-IP Location Scripts)
Good Payouts
Again it depends on the type of website you have, but generally you can always find a solid affiliate like Adult Friend Finder that will act as a good source of residual income to your other monetization methods.

The key to mastering the art of choosing affiliate programs is difficult, don’t expect to learn it overnight, it takes experimentation & testing until you get it right. But once you do get it just right, you can sit back & let it become a solid earner for you for years to come. I guess that’s what we all strive for

If any of you guys have had success with a particular affiliate program I’d love to hear from you, I’ve been testing a lot of Commission Junction Advertisers lately & hope to post results soon

Other usefull links:
plano chiropractor
air conditioning plano
patio metal furniture
weight bench
customer satisfaction survey
hotels in las vegas
bellagio hotel
Las Vegas Hotel Reservations
gps chartplotter
Florida ReFi

This method is one that I like to call Walkthrough Marketing. It probably has another name like Call to Action Marketing or something, but this is my blog so I’ll call it whatever I want :p

I find this technique gives me the highest conversion rate out of anything I’ve tried. So it’s worth doing well.

The method relies on “walking” a person through a particular method or technique whilst getting them to unknowingly purchase a product or service through your affiliate link. After all, you’re “helping” them do something they were searching for.
Let give a few examples:

Johnny searches Google for “How to Set Up a Mailing List”

You’ve written an article entitled “How to Set Up a Mailing List”

Johnny comes to the site & starts reading the article.

Now since this is highly targeted, we know the person that visits this page wants to know exactly how to set up their own mailing list. Now all you need to do is walk Johnny Step by Step through the entire process.

So you might use the following line “Ok, in order to get started you’re going to need an account with Aweber. These guys are the icing on the cake when it comes to Mailing Lists, just about every big internet marketer usese these guys. Simply click on the link below to sign up then we can continue showing you how to set up the mailing list.”

Johnny goes & signs up to Aweber. You then walk him through setting up the mailing list with Aweber. You get your commissions & Johnny gets his mailing list.

Why is this technique effective?

You’re giving the person exactly what they want.
You’re showing the person exactly how to do it.
You’re only showing the person ONE way to do it, it’s either do it my way & make me commissions or don’t bother.
You can bring this method to a lot of different areas:

Show someone step by step how to play poker, but get them to sign up to your casino of choice first.
Show someone how to do Arbitrage but show them how to do it with a tool like Keyword Elite & get them to sign up through your 7search Affiliate Link.
Show someone how to use ebay & get them to sign up to Ebay first through your affiliate link.
I can think of hundreds more possibilities, can you? Enjoy

Other usefull links:
male yeast
burn fat build muscle
furniture file cabinets
chiropractor plano
best plano air conditioning
great plano movers
kimono dress
patio metal furniture
http://www.Indy500guide.com
women muslim

I often get asked which kind of sites make the most money & which ones I focus most of my energy on creating. Obviously this depends on the product, market & a number of different factors.

The most consistent method for generating revenue for me has been Dedicated Affiliate Sites. These are sites made for & completely tailored to a specific product or service.

There’s a few reasons why these sites perform quite well:

Very, very targeted
No leakage to other affiliates or advertising
I generally spend more time on SEO for a dedicated site rather than SEOing a particular page for my exisiting site.
You can become an industry leader with new niches very quickly if your content is good.
Domains can be submitted to directories whereas individual pages can’t.
If you’ve got a good domain name you can sometimes leverage typein traffic.
Firstly you need to find the product or service you’re going to promote. I suggest doing plenty of research into this, I blogged about researching saturated markets a few weeks back. If you can get on a product early, perhaps even before it’s launched then this is when Dedicated Affiliate Sites really come into their own league. Having the site ranking before a product generates a hype is one of the things Power Affiliates do better than anyone else.

Once you’ve chosen the product or service that you’re going to promote you now need to pick a domain name. This is where you can reap HUGE benefits if you get in early too.

Say for example I created a site to market my product about Supreme Blogging Tips & I created the domain:

http://www.supremebloggingtips.net

If you were on the ball & fast I would naturally go & register http://www.supremebloggingtips.com. Chances are you’ll get a HEAP of type in traffic piggybacking off the original domain.

Obviously that sort of scenario doesn’t popup too often, so I’d normally at least go & buy a domain with the product title in it as a keyword. So if you’re promoting Keyword Elite you may choose http://www.keywordelitereviews.com or something similar.

Now you have a few choices, this normally depends on the type of product. If i’m promoting a product that is going to get type in traffic I’ll normally fill the whole screen with an Iframe which redirects via my affiliate link to the merchant page.

If not I’ll normally fire up a wordpress blog. Create a custom template & write a few articles about the product. Write some reviews & other linkbait type articles. I’ll slowly release these articles over the course of a few weeks whilst building links in various places.

Normal link building steps include:

Creating a Squidoo Page
Submitting Articles to Digg
Submitting to a few select Directories
Sneaking links into Wikipedia
Leaving comments on blogs related to the topic
Signing up to related forums & having a signature
There’s some more stuff in there that I do but I’ll leave that for some future posts on link building. It’s important to try & choose the right anchor text to rank for. You ideally want to rank for the product name, you also want to rank for buy, order, purchase & reviews of that particular product.

Try to deep link to inner pages of the blog also not just the homepage in order to stop any pages going supplemental. I normally don’t recommend link exchanges.
I will use the plugin sh autolink to link certain trigger keywords to my affiliate ID for the product. As usual I redirect the affiliate link through a PHP Script in the hope it may rank for the keywords too.

Track the progress of your rankings with the Digitalpoint Keyword Tracker & if you’re not ranking well enough then work harder on your link building & link baiting.

Wash, Rinse & Repeat.

If you have the patience to do this you can bang out a new site everyday. Lets say you do 5 sites a week for a whole year & each site on average makes you $50 a month. At the end of the year you’ll have 261 sites making you $50 a month each. Which can work out to an impressive $13,000 a month.

Obviously these are just rough estimates, you may have sites that make you $500 a month, some may do $25. The more you push at it the more month you will make & the better you will become at sourcing out new & exciting affiliate offers.

Other usefull links:
www.episodeevents.com
http://laser-printer-scanner.net
http://islandvacationpackagesinfo.com
homebased business opportunity
multiple streams of internet income
diets to lose weight
inverter welder
construction project management software
blackhead remover
yeast infection cures

When you’re in the realm of internet marketing you often don’t realise the potential to combine it with some real life scenarios. I find you get so locked up in figuring out ways to make cash by making websites that you miss out on opportunities right on your doorstep.

A few years ago, back when the net wasn’t quite as savvy as it is now & I was in uni; I did a few marketing exercises that almost proved to be more profitable from one days work than one website might be in one year. Call it an experiment, I was curious to see what was beyond internet marketing.
Poker, Bingo & Roulette was quite a common occurance where I used to live. They’d throw a tournament every Saturday night. Mostly older people but you’d find the occasional high roller now & then. I noticed that Casinoblasters had a real nice downloadable package that would allow you to burn all their Casino Software onto a CD with your affiliate ID included.

This is back when I was getting on average $200 CPA (Per Player Signup). I was eventually moved to a Rev Share system which incidentally made me more money.

Anyway, I made about 150 CD’s & got them all printed with details of the “free signup bonus” which was around $400. I also made a tactics guide for the various Casino Games. Roulette, Blackjack etc in which I positioned as a training guide.

“Want to become a better player? Then you can play online with a free signup bonus & hone your skills”

Once I’d handed out all 150 (which took more than 1 weekend unfortunately) I waited with baited breath & checked my stats. I thought that the conversions might be low due to the number of older people that played, but I had 27 signups that each made an initial deposit! which qualified me for the CPA of $200. An easy $5400 dollars.

I didn’t stop there, this gave me more ideas about how I could integrate the real world into the internet space. Aswell as integrate the internet space into the real world. You really need to think of ways that you can cater to someone’s needs that will result in them performing an action via one of your affiliates. The more targeted you can be, the higher your conversions will be (as with any form of marketing).

This idea eventually let towards my $200 dollars a day idea.

Have you ever printed 100 stickers, written on your web address then stuck them everywhere you think they’ll be seen? You’d be interested to know the results?

I would love to hear stories from people that have embraced this bridge in the Online & Offline industry with success & remember if you enjoyed this post you can do a Review of my Site (Honest or Dishonest I don’t care)

Other usefull links:
contractremodelingservicesinc.com
http://laser-printer-review.net
www.kauaiwaterfallhome.com/Kauai_Tour.htm
http://great-vacation-deal.com
http://www.episodeevents.com
great weddingshttp://islandvacationpackagesinfo.com
kauai wedding
data-file-recovery.net
exercises to lose weight
adult acne treatments

The two biggest setbacks for anyone who wants to get into affiliate marketing are:

Not enough time to pursue ideas quickly enough
Not enough capital behind you to start new sites or ppc campaigns
One of the other major setbacks is deciding whether to stay in your full time job or not.

I personally am a huge believer in a career that I know will be a solid backup to any affiliate marketing that I do & I also love my job, however it has the disadvantages of point 1. Not being able to spend as much time as I’d like on campaigns or ideas.

There’s always outsourcing but more on that another time.
So, how do you make that transition from working Full Time into Affiliate Marketing full time?

Ebay

I know it sounds stupid but trust me, Ebay was what initally got me into Affiliate Marketing & it still accounts for a good proportion of my online income.

I’ll give you a few reasons as to why marketing on ebay is good:

Automation: You can automate almost every aspect of selling on ebay once you have a product.

Audience: You have a huge audience, don’t have to worry about SEO or Marketing. It kindof falls into the old “Build it & they will come” scenario.

Education: I’ve found that most ebay users & buyers are much less educated than your average Google User so you can sell products that only focus on high level details rather than the nitty gritty stuff.

These three factors alone make ebay the absolute perfect way to market any product you’ve created yourself online.

I’ll quickly give you an overview of what I do to create & market an item on ebay:

Create an informational product in PDF format. Make it as professional looking as I can (spelling, layout & logos). Provide a lot of useful & actionable information, actionable is important if you want to make affiliate sales from within the book.
Lock the PDF file so that people can’t copy & paste the information.
Slightly sprinkle the PDF with cloaked affiliate links, these convert pretty well from ebay sales believe it or not.
Include an opt-in list inside the ebook so that I get them on my mailing list, chances are if they’ve bought the book they’ll buy more from you later. You can use Aweber for this ($19.95/month).
Create a selling page for the item that will entice the user to buy the product (you’ll need to know basic html for this). This should include things like proof of concept, does the product work? Testimonials & even include screenshots of your feedback if it’s all positive. There are tonnes of ebay tricks you can use to get more exposure & get more views however I’ll leave them for another post
Create about 10 listings of the product across a few different categories with varying copy & pricing to split test how it performs. You can easily sell a great book for $20 if the selling page is done right.
Set up Outlook Express or Thunderbird to automatically deliver the ebook to the buyer once the paypal payment notification comes through.
When you send them through the ebook also let them know about other products you’ve got listed, also hit them with the link for the mailing list again.
Once you figure out from testing which copy & categories work best load everything into Turbo Lister & automate the process, you will also need to split test various finishing times for the auctions. I quite like my auctions to finish on Monday morning on Sunday Evening.
If you have a good product & selling page you can easily be shifting 5-10+ copies of it per day automatically & making a nice monthly cheque off any residual affiliate commissions.
Then market a product to the list Bi-Weekly or whenever you find something that you think will interest them. If you’re selling heaps of products at a low price it’s quite easy to use Ebay to build up a quick marketable opt in list.
That’s pretty much it. Each of those steps can be drilled down a bit & streamlined once you get your first product sorted.

Doing this properly you could be pulling in around $2,000+ a month per item.

Once you’ve got the stability & residual income every month you will then have the ability to fire your boss & start working on your other ventures online. It’s all about building your portfolio & diversifying your income streams.

Too many people try to make all their cash from Adsense instead of looking at the bigger picture & really breaking into as many markets as you can.

Other usefull links:
royal caribbean cruise deals
http://www.fctwin.net
body butter
http://www.campingsportinggoods.net
http://feeldagroove.com
http://www.relaxingmassage.org
http://insurancetemp.net
http://data-file-recovery.net
http://www.kauaiwaterfallhome.com
remodeling services

They dub themselves as the “Text Link Revolution” & from a tactical standpoint one could argue that they have entered the marketplace at just the right time. Rather like the recent Netflix & Blockbuster Online Movie saga, can tnx.net really revolutionise the way we buy & sell text links?

We all know that the Text Link market is now a volatile place & in order to survive you need to evolve. So what have TNX done differently to the other networks out there?

Stealth

Is the on site code detectable? In that particular example, a simple Google phrase gives away thousands of publishers. Whilst this is only an example of the code giving errors, TNX have made their code much more versatile, in that is doesn’t give incriminating errors but rather a 404 instead.
You can’t choose which advertisers to buy directly from, instead you pick a certain criteria of what you want (more on this later) & tnx fulfill the order for you. This increases the security for publishers.
The links placed on publisher’s websites aren’t sitewide, therefore there’s less chance of tripping spam filters.
The links can be contained within a paragraph of text, which again draws less attention to them.
Value

The system offers value for publishers, in that you’re not selling sitewide links. Instead you’re selling links on individual pages of your site. This increases the overall “combined link value” of your site. (i.e. would you rather sell 1 sitewide link for $100 or 100 links on individual pages for $250?).
TNX will only take 12.5% of the total commission, leaving you earning 87.5%.
In turn this value is also passed onto advertisers, you can now purchase more links from varied sources (i.e. would you rather spending $100 on 1 sitewide link or $100 on 50 links on individual pages across 50 sites?).
Speed

The speed with which the system works allows you to buy large amounts of links very quickly. You specify your link criteria & the system fulfils your order (within a few days).
Since there’s been a bit of buzz about the service I decided to give you guys a rundown of what I think from two perspectives. The advertiser & the publisher.

In theory, advertisers are signing up to services like this to make money just as much as the publishers are. Except, the advertisers are wanting to increase rankings to sell a service, whereas perhaps the publishers don’t have a service to sell & instead sell the ad space on their websites / blogs.

TNX for Advertisers

I joined TNX about 3 weeks ago & created a few campaigns for some affiliate sites that I just started recently. I deposited $100 via paypal & received around 134,000 tnx points.



I’m currently running about 16 PR2+ links which costs roughly about 14,800 points per month (about $10). I could have chosen a cheap option & went for PR0 pages, but I decided to go with domains that had a high overall backlink count (hence the increase in cost). This is one of the features I like about tnx, things revolve less around Pagerank (which many other link brokers base their system on) & more towards link equity / volume.



Pricing revolves around the amount of points that you have to spend. TNX give a rough indication on the monthly price for an individual link (& when I say rough there’s a disclaimer that points out The Maximum price can be 20 times higher):

PR0: $0.00126
PR1: $0.063
PR2: $0.126
PR3: $0.252
PR4: $0.63
PR5: $1.26
PR6: $3.15
PR7: $6.30
The price seems to increase depending on the overall number of incoming links to the domain. So a PR7 link from a domain that only has 500 total incoming links will be cheaper than a PR7 link to a domain with over 250,000 total incoming links.

Now the fun part starts, you need to decide on the anchor text to use for your links. I recommend the Wordtracker Keyword Researcher for this (no point going for words that won’t get you any traffic), also make sure you read my article on avoiding Google’s Aging Filter (remember just because you can buy hundreds of PR0 links cheap, doesn’t mean you should. Take things slow & steady). Think of getting links as a exponential curve, the older your site gets the more you can acquire without looking suspicious.



Overall TNX is a pretty good deal for Advertisers, it caters easily for those on a small budget as well as those with a much larger budget. Enabling both to cover a wider range of keywords than previously possible (with other brokers). The downside to the system is that you really have no control over which sites your links are put on; other than selecting your criteria. I did have a few links appear on a crack website & a warez forum but you are able to “block” those sites before the links go live. I also noticed that you get charged for the links before they’re even confirmed as active by the TNX spiders. Personally I don’t think an advertiser should be charged until the link is confirmed as active, otherwise you run into potential problems of charging people for something they’re not getting.

If you’re interested in giving their system a whirl you can grab 5000 (PR0) free text link ads courtesy of TNX. Remember though, don’t go overboard.

TNX for Publishers

Publishers are what makes the system work, after all if there are none then there’s no link real estate to occupy. Therefore TNX really needed to come up with a system that’d work well for publishers across a number of verticals.

As I mentioned before, perhaps the biggest selling factor is that you can sell up to 4 links on individual pages on your website. I did a quick calculation using the TNX Income Calculator. For Earners Blog it worked out to be around $250 a month. Mainly due to the fact that Google slapped down on my Pagerank.

For that particular reason, the publisher program wouldn’t be anywhere near as profitable for me as direct ad sales or even affiliate sales for a month.

Sites that I could see it working well for though are ones with a huge number of pages:

Forums
Comparison Shopping Websites
Sites with user generated content
I’d also like to see them move away from “Pagerank” & give pages a value based on the number of inbound links they have. For example, my page about Digg Power Users has around 179 inbound links & is a Page Rank 2. A link on this page is going to be much more valuable than say my post about Gaming Digg, which only has 31 inbound links but is also a Page Rank 2.

TNX also offers a referral / affiliate program to all members. You can earn 13.3% of all TNX points that are generated by any publishers you refer & 5% of any points generated by advertisers you refer. You can use the points to buy links, or you can cash them out. Not as initially appealing; as the $25 per member TLA offers, but could work out better in the long run (i.e. free advertising for you).

Tips to avoid your site getting filtered

Since TNX allows you to buy a large amount of links at once, I recommend being careful. Otherwise you risk your site getting penalised for a short/medium term for specific keywords, follow these tips & you should be fine:

Try to make it look natural, these links work best if you have a natural looking link profile, so don’t overboard on paid links.
If you have a new site try to limit yourself to 5 new links per week for the first month.
Mix up the anchor text as much as possible, don’t buy 100 links with an “affiliate marketing” anchor text.
Link to deep pages within your site, don’t point all the links to your homepage.
Don’t label any links on your site as Sponsored Links, Sponsors or Partners.
Recommendations

There’s a few things I’d like to see TNX implement to make the system a little better:

The ability to filter out WAREZ related sites.
Not charging Advertisers until the links go live.
Time Delay on link fulfillment (i.e. the ability to set a time delay for links to go live).
Email alerts.
Final Thoughts

TNX is still young, so it’s only fair to expect some growing pains. However they offer a very viable solution to all Organic based Affiliate Marketers. The ability to point 30-50 links to your site over a period of time for a mere $10/month is quite nice. Remember, you have to make investments to get returns in this game. If a $10/month investment means an extra $1,000/year from 1 site. Then it’s a small price to pay.

Other usefull links:
laser hair removal at laserhairremovalcost.net
waterman pens at watermanpens.org
florida loan
body language flirting
nintendo nes console at topgraphx.com
royal caribbean cruise deals
http://www.relaxingmassage.org
home inspection
temp insurance
http://contractremodelingservicesinc.com

I get emails from time to time asking about how should someone that works from home structure their day & also what are the best ways to keep focused whilst working from home (we all know how easy it is to just play xbox live all day).

So I’ve put together this guide on what I think is important to help you work from home efficiently & also get the most out of the experience, naturally everyone will be different but I’d also love to hear if you do anything different to increase your productivity or make the whole experience better.

Get up Early & get to Bed Early

Getting into a proper routine can be difficult, especially when working from home. You’ve got no boss to impress but yourself, you don’t have to be anywhere at a specific time, you don’t have anyone telling you what to do. This is generally the first mistake that people make, it’s easy to get up at 1pm then work through to 10pm that night or even 3am the next morning. However your body won’t thank you for it in the long run.

Mornings are the most productive part of our day, so use them to get your most important tasks out of the way.

Get up & go to bed at the same time as if you were going to work, if you stick to this you’ll find that you get more done & you won’t have to work as late.

Get Regular Exercise

Working from home can make us lazy, there’s no real need to leave the house anymore…right? Well, Since you’re waking up at the same time you normally would for your day job; you now have more time to be productive instead of sitting on the train or in peak time traffic for an hour. Use this time in the morning to hit the gym or go for a walk, maybe go out & get some breakfast & unwind.

Don’t forget to Eat

When we lead busy lives it can often get in the way of day to day tasks. Don’t forget to feed yourself. Eating 5 Small meals a day will help keep your metabolism up (especially if you exercise in the morning).

8am – Breakfast
11am – Fruit Snack
1pm – Lunch
4pm – Savoury Snack
6pm – Dinner
Following this routine will ensure that you don’t get hungry throughout the day, it’ll also keep your energy levels up.

Get Showered & Dressed Every Day

Whilst it’s a luxury to sit around in your Pajamas & do work every day it’s not something that is commonly associated with being productive & active. Have a shower & get dressed after breakfast then you’ll feel ready to face the day instead of wanting to get back into bed after an hour of work.

Separate Work from the rest of the House

Having an office or a space that you can work in is imperative, doing all your work whilst sitting on the sofa won’t get you very far. An office helps to keep Distractions to a minimum & also when you walk into your office at the start of the day you feel like “you’re at work.”

Have a Start & Finish Time for Work

Try to treat working from home like a normal job, work starts at 9am & finishes at 5.30pm (if you need to work later later you can). This way you’ll try to get everything you need to get done by the time work is over. If the day is “unlimited” then we tend to waste time reading blogs & forums.

Schedule your Day

Building on the previous point you can schedule your day & write it up on the wall:

7am – Wake up
7.20am – Exercise/Gym
8.20am – Breakfast
8.40am – Shower & Get Ready
9am – Answer & Read Emails
9.30am – Read Blogs, Forums & Catch up on Stats
10am – Work on your Bread & Butter Projects (the ones that ARE making you money)
1pm – Lunch
1.30pm – Test new ideas & tweak campaigns on test campaigns
3pm – Work on Link Building & Promotion techniques for Affiliate Sites
5pm – Research offers & potential programs for following day
5.15pm – Update spreadsheets with yesterdays stats & profits
5.30pm – Finish – Free for all work on whatever you want
Ensure you have Good Communications

You want to have a decent DSL Connection, Phone Line (or Skype), the ability to send & receive fax. You’ll also want to have a decent instant messaging program (like trillian) that lets you log into multiple networks at once.

Be Organised

Organisation is key to making this work.

Record what you spend & earn in Spreadsheets, keep your finances organised (i.e. open a business bank account). Spend money during the month on your credit cards (to earn your points), then pay it off at the end of the month.

Set up all your tabs & folders in Firefox. I use the ‘Open in all Tabs’ feature to instantly check all my stats. Or for example say you run a Credit Card Comparison website & need to update the rates, simply have a folder with all the credit card product pages in it & open them all at once with one click.

Also check this previous post on increasing productivity.

Build a Team

There’s no bigger bottleneck in your whole operation than yourself. If something is working for you then get some friends on board, outsource tasks or form partnerships with other affiliates.

Get a Pet



Sometimes working from home can be lonely. There’s no-one to go out to lunch with or (if you’re in australia) all of the people you normally talk to are asleep. I got a cat & it’s one of the best things I’ve ever bought, it’s there when you wake up in the morning, it’s sits beside you as you work & it seems to remove that feeling that “you’re alone in the house.” Now there’s an idea for a business, the ‘Affiliate marketers Pet Shop – Making you feel wanted since 2008.’

Have Fun

Don’t overdo it, working from home is fun. It’s even more fun when you’re making more money than your old job, don’t let it get in the way of your personal relaxing time & time with your family. You know what they say:

A happy wife = a happy life

Other usefull links:
chapel hill real estate
Marine Radio
Dog Stroller
laser hair removal
watermanpen.org
www.watermanpens.org
fl mortgage rates
body language flirting
good airsoft toys and sniper rifle
nintendo nes store

This post is a follow on from a previous one entitled Building a Lasting Affiliate Network. Whilst many of us may find it easy to starting building an Affiliate Network, I sometimes forget that there’s still those of you who are eager to get started & know the basics. Before going into more detail I thought I’d prepare a post to put the entire scale of Affiliate Marketing into perspective.

A question I often get emailed is

How can I get started in Affiliate Marketing?

Unfortunately there’s no easy answer to this question. It takes hard work, patience & learning A LOT from your mistakes. This post is aimed at those wanting to get started but really, don’t know where to start.

Think of Affiliate Marketing like trying to save money. It’s hard to start, but once you start things seem to get easier. Once you accumulate more money, it’s easier to invest & get better returns. Then eventually your savings are growing at a much larger rate than when you started (think compound interest etc). Affiliate Marketing is fairly similar. One of the biggest hurdles you’ll have to face in this game is competition, but once you learn to embrace your competition & learn from them then you’re already half way there.

I’ve been serious about Affiliate Marketing for about 3 years, sometimes I wonder why I didn’t get into it sooner, sometimes I also think about doing it full time, however as I stated in a previous post I still love the security & challenges of my day job therefore Affiliate Marketing is still very much a passive income for me.

When I first started out I was working my day job & working on my own products & ideas in the evenings & weekends. Probably pulling in 16 hour days & pretty much seeing little to no return. It was pretty demoralising to be honest.

3 years down the track & I’m pulling in a high $x,xxx+ per month maybe working 4 hours in the evenings 2-3 times per week. Life is much better.

So what does it take to get from point A, to point B?

Point A is the beginning, starting with nothing. Point B could be anything, your own milestone of $x,xxx / month or even making enough to quit your day job.

Point A – The beginning

You have 0 Websites
A Few Ideas
No Knowledge
No Web Hosting
No friends in the Industry
No Capital
Time is limited
Limited SEO/SEM Experience
Point B – The Comfort Zone

You have between 1 – x amount of websites
Plenty of ongoing projects
Knowledge of how Affiliate Marketing works
Decent Web Hosting or at least a Dedicated Server
You’ve made friends who you can ask for favours (Programmers, Bloggers etc)
You have capital to invest in PPC, Links & exisiting Websites
You have money to outsource & devote more time to the things that matter
You’ll probably be fairly proficient at PPC & SEO
Now that I’ve put things into perspective you’ll see that Affiliate Marketing isn’t something that you master overnight, all these get rich quick books make it sound ‘too easy’ (but then that’s the point right?). Affiliate Marketing is about much more than firing up a few websites & waiting for people to buy stuff, it’s about:

Thinking outside the Box
Try not to copy everyone else, offer something unique
Building sites that LAST, make it STICK
Don’t give up until you succeed
Affiliate Marketing is a Business Model, so start treating it like one.

Start out small. Then build & keep building, soon things will start to snowball for you. One thing I see all too often is people start out by building websites on “how to make money.” I’m very guilty of this myself, I indeed made one of these sites many years ago & possibly made $750 from it. It was only when I started reacting to the market & getting outside that “make money online” bubble that I started to see returns.

Do not be afraid to go mainstream with your ideas. Do not be afraid to try every niche out there, if you don’t try something then how will you know its potential? Take the Sex Toys industry for example, I currently do a huge amount of promotion online for a client in that industry. It’s HUGE, really huge & somewhat untapped in certain markets.

So here’s what you need to do, the Earners Blog Start your Engine Checklist:

Subscribe to my RSS Feed
Come up with an idea, write it down. Instead of acting on it, start researching your competition
Join an Affiliate Network & master it before moving onto the next. I’d rather be making $5k through one network & get it in one lump sum than 50 small networks. Then you’ll have the money to diversify.
Try to make a site that provides value, shopping comparison websites work well.
Cloak your Affiliate Links from the Search Engines
Read Affiliate Forums & take it all in (don’t waste valuable time though)
Build links to your sites under the radar
Once you have a solid foundation that’s giving you a steady income you can start reinvesting your money in PPC, typically an ROI of 200% is good, but you can get lucky with offers that’ll pull 1000% ROI. More on this later I guess..

Other usefull links:
12 trampoline
learning hypnosis
FL Mortgage
VHF Radio
Dog Stroller
chapel hill houses for sale
chapel hill homes
hot tub chemicals
backyard fireplaces
log siding
laser hair removal at trekstervids.com

Whenever you hit the jackpot on a particular campaign or with a particular method it can be pretty satisfying, especially when the income stream is steady & dependable.

When this situation arises there’s normally two types of affiliates, those that move onto the next idea & those that will try to milk the current system for as much profit as they can.

Let me ask you this, is it easier to make more money from something you already know is making money? or is it easier making money trying to find another system that works?

This fine line separates those who make serious money & those who chase money.

Let start with a few definitions:

System: This is a method, tactic or idea that allows you to generate an income.

Scale: The ability to take this system & duplicate it or increase its profitability. Now just because you duplicate a campaign that does not mean you’ve scaled it x2. In doing so you may have a lower ROI therefore you may have only scaled to 1.5 times your current earnings. But that’s still more money than you were making before.

Profitability = System x Scale – Spend

So what determines how well something can be scaled? For example, it’s much harder to automate a piece of software that has been written by someone else than it is to automate something that you’ve written yourself.

Scaling equates to Volume or Tweaking

Scaling upward allows you to push more & more volume through a given offer or merchant. If you push volume then you become more valuable to that merchant. This allows you negotiate much better rates, increasing your net profit. If you had 20 smaller offers you’d never ever be able to do this.

Tweaking allows you to push your campaigns to create more revenue, which in essence is also a form of scaling.

Look at ways that you can Automate

Can you automate creating Adwords Campaigns?
Can you automate checking your Stats?
Can you automate promotion?
Can you automate the creation of Dynamic Landing Pages?
Can you automate the creation of Wordpress Blogs?
Chances are, that if you can think of doing something. Someone else has already thought of how to do it 1000 times faster.

Time = Money

Look at ways to Squeeze Revenue out of Existing Campaigns & Sites

Can you find more relevant offers to your target audience?
Are you capturing opt-in subscribers?
Can you increase traffic to existing sites?
Can you increase traffic through existing PPC Campaigns you know convert?
Can you optimise campaigns for lower CPCs?
Simple Example of Simple Automation & Scaling

Lets take the example of creating Adwords Campaigns & importing a huge amount of keywords. How many of you manage your keywords in Excel then import them into Adwords Editor using the bulk feature?

Adwords Editor allows you to import keywords using this string:

keyword,exact,1.50,http://www.example.com
Recently I ran a few campaigns related to DVD’s. I wanted to quickly create an adgroup around certain stars. I.e. Chuck Norris DVD’s.

I created an Excel Spreadsheet using the following piece of code:

=B3 & " dvd," & "exact" & "," & C3 & "," & E3 & "?aid=" & D3 & "&kw=" & SUBSTITUTE(B3," ","_")
This would then allow me to create a huge list of stars I wanted to target & the spreadsheet would easily create the code needed to copy & paste into adwords editor.

This particular code above creates something like:

chuck norris dvd,exact,0.50,http://www.example.com/?aid=999&kw=chuck_norris_dvd
Using this syntax I’m able to grab a list of the top 2000 stars, fire them into this spreadsheet & have 2000 keywords all ready to roll within a matter of seconds. All I need to do is write the ad & use Dynamic Keyword Insertion & we’re rolling.

This small example not only allows me to automate the process of creating keyword lists, but it allows me to scale campaigns much quicker.

So if you’re one of those affiliates who likes to chase new ideas without really focusing on the ones that are working for you, take a step back & think about how you can make the most of what you have.

Other usefull links:
weight bench
office space london
rebounders
Bath Shower Curtains
Down Comforter Sets
Boat Building Plans
Shed Plans
trampoline safety net
disneyland paris hotels
http://www.damenundherrenarmbanduhr.de

Our world is becoming more competitive in performing different kinds of business. Business People are fastening their work with good profits by attracting the customers with good website design and front. Now a day's market scenario is seriously concentrating on good landing page to attract the customers by providing all necessary inputs and more valuable bite sized chunks of information in brief and nothing but as direct marketing copy. To do this all you need to do is instant single giving the whole information by webpage or key word search or pay per click, banner ads.

Landing page with good design can convert online searcher into good business leads from the website. Attract the customers; impress them to click on the banner from the search engine. Need not any effort in the business by creating good quality of design in landing page.
A good website or a good designer has to bare in mind while creating Landing page you have to include online forms, attractive trial version for downloads, and other necessary inputs about the products they are search for. A good result of retention rates and conversion of visitors into customers will say you about your business incurred with the attraction of the website.

Some tips while designing Landing page: -

1. Instant click on the banner should automatically link to the require product with whole summary of the product. Instant click with detailed information converts the visitor's rate towards higher figure and get good business lead.

2. Every one surf internet with a short words and concise. So it is always better to give description in short about the products & Services without elaborating or missing any point. While giving description about the product keep in mind that customer should raise any queries or input from us.

3. Landing page is nothing but as a marketing copy of any product to avoid distraction from advertisements or links of other websites. Try to avoid multiple products or services and create separate landing pages, try to focus on one product in single landing page.

4. For better communication and clear understanding, bullets can be used for simple and easy to make understanding of description about the products and service.

5. Attractive pleasing images and product shots with price ranges.

6. Be clear and understandable to the visitors once they decide what they want and go further for purchase. Highlight with bold or clear where to click for download, dill name and address. All the text with good font size, back ground, will make visitors to read text with ease.

7. Provide a clear input about the product, discount, comparison, service providing and the guarantee period.
Many companies are struggling a lot for creating a good landing page to maximize their business.

GreenDIYEnergy
Camping Air Beds
Real Estate Investing Book
niche business
8 lug truck wheels
copiers
compare credit cards
aquabot robotic pool vacuum
keyword research tools
indie songs

When people decide to join an affiliate program to make extra money, or to have a full time job, they often do so with illusions and no idea of how the affiliate program actually works. Read the following top 5 mistakes people make when it comes to choosing an affiliate program and avoid these mistakes at all costs. Then, you will be able to be more effective and make more money for your time, so it is definitely worthwhile to read these warnings and avoid them.

#1 Don’t Compete, Support
Too many affiliate programs compete against their competitors which wastes money and puts affiliates out of business. However, if you are part of an affiliate program the more affiliates the better for getting more information and more money. One of the worst things to do is choose an affiliate program that believes in competing against other affiliates. Instead, choose an affiliate program that agrees with supporting and growing other affiliates to have a larger network and access to more affiliates.

#2 Little Reward
Another mistake people frequently make when choosing affiliate programs is choosing a program that offers little reward for the individual’s hard work. Too many affiliate programs pay too little and as a result affiliates find it difficult to make the money they should be making. Look for an affiliate program that has a good pay rate for your work.

#3 Old Statistics, if Any
You want an affiliate program that offers good, solid, real time statistics, not old statistics or ones that are no longer valid. There are not many affiliate programs out there that provide the kind of statistics an affiliate manager needs, but do your best to find an affiliate program that offers the most.

#4 No Support
Too often affiliates find themselves waiting days for an answer to an e-mail and an important question for their business. You want an affiliate program that guarantees you support round the clock if possible or at least within 24 hours. If not, keep looking for an affiliate program that wants to help you help yourself.

#5 Fresh Ideas, Creatives
Many affiliate programs provide few ideas or creatives to their affiliates and so thousands of web pages end up with the same advertising. However, affiliate programs would have a better success rate if many different ads were made available so affiliates could alternate ads and place different ads on different sites, depending on the products sold.

Commit these five mistakes to memory so you know exactly what you are looking for in an affiliate program, as well as what to avoid. You will be much more successful and happier as well if you do not get caught in these traps!

Olympus Digital Voice Recorder
TX Refinance
Captiva Island Vacation Rentals
info prodigy
Buying Individual Health Insurance
lamp antiques
AZ Refinance
Indy 500 Tickets
http://www.myremotepcaccesssoftware.net/
lubbock marketing

Email is one of those things that has the ability to really zap away much of the precious ‘work’ time that you have during the day. If you’re a compulsive ‘email checker’ then perhaps this tutorial isn’t for you, but if you have to manage a large number of email accounts & addresses all at once then this tutorial will save you so much time & hassle that you’ll never, ever look back.

Since I have a load of different websites with their own mailboxes it’s safe to say that I have a lot of ‘accounts’ in my Thunderbird that send & receive mail from each of the sites. Recently this method was becoming very cumbersome, I was getting increased amounts of spam & I was really finding it difficult to check mail on the go (via squirrelmail).

This called for action, I realised that somehow I:

wanted to consolidate all of my mail into one account, but still be able to utilise all the addresses
be able to read all my mail from the web from one login
eliminate the insane amount of spam I was receiving
still be able to download all my mail via pop to thunderbird
I’ve long used Gmail for my personal email, but never anything website related. But it just so happens that all of the things I’m looking for it handles, not only that but Gmail has perhaps the best spam filter going, you you can say goodbye to spam email forever.

So here’s what we’re going to do:

Forward all existing email addresses to Gmail
Download all the mail from our Existing Inboxes
Delete all of our existing Email Accounts from Thunderbird
Set up Thunderbird to Download all mail from Gmail POP
Set up Outgoing mail in Thunderbird
Set up Outgoing Email Addresses in Gmail
Set up Rules in Gmail
Set up Rules in Thunderbird
By following these steps we’ll now be able to read mail sent to any of our accounts on the web via gmail, reply to any emails from the address it was sent to, download all of the email via pop to our own email client at home (whilst still keeping a copy on gmail) & filter out all the nasty spam in the process.

Step by Step how it’s done:

Forward Existing Email Addresses to Gmail

If you use Cpanel you can do this via the email settings, or if you use squirrelmail the option is there too:



Just set your current address to forward to your new (or existing) gmail address:



You’ll need to do this for all of the email accounts that you use. If you don’t use Cpanel, please refer to your Web Hosting Email admin panel for this feature.

Download Mail from Existing Inboxes

You’ll want to catch all the mail that was sent to your inboxes before you initiated the forwarding. Simply download your mail from your mail client as normal.

I use thunderbird for my POP mail client, but it all depends on personal preference, you may prefer Outlook or Eudora.

Delete Existing Email Accounts from Thunderbird

Since we’ll be downloading all of our mail through Gmail you’ll not need those other POP accounts. You can do this in the account settings area of thunderbird:



Setup Thunderbird to Download all Mail from Gmail via POP

In doing so we can not only read all of our mail online via Gmail but we can also download a hard copy to our Email Client. Log into Gmail & click on setting in the top right hand corner of the screen, next click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP Tab.



Ignore the sections about forwarding & IMAP, instead you can choose to either enable POP for all mail you’ve ever received or just for mail from this point onwards. You can also choose whether to keep a copy in Gmail or not. Choose the setting that suits your needs.

Now we need to set up thunderbird with the Gmail settings.

Incoming Mail

Add a new account in Thunderbird with the following credentials:

Your Name
Your Gmail Email Address
Choose POP
Incoming server is pop.googlemail.com
Incoming username is your Google Email Address
When done select Port Settings
Port 995
Under Security Settings choose SSL


Outgoing Mail

To send outgoing mail through your gmail in Thunderbird use the following settings:

Server Name: smtp.googlemail.com
Port: 25
Username: Your Google Email Address
Use Secure Connection: Choose TLS
Set up Outgoing Mail Addresses in Gmail

One of the unique features in Gmail is that you can respond to all mail from your own personal email addresses. Since we’ve already forwarded our addresses this part will be a cinch.



Goto settings in Gmail again & click on Accounts. Click on add another email address & add all of your personal email addresses. Gmail will send a mail to those addresses to verify you own them. Since they’ve all been forwarded you’ll get the verification emails to your Gmail Account. Verify them all then choose whether you want to always reply from the email address that a mail as been sent to, or you default Gmail Address.

Set up Filters in Gmail & Rules in Thunderbird

You can now set up your rules & filter to organise your mail as you see fit. Naturally you may not want to organise your mail like I do but here some tips:

Gmail

Create Labels to file mail by Website in Gmail
Use filters to delete unwanted mail & report spam/mail you don’t want as you see it
Auto Archive mail that you get frequently (i.e. signup emails etc)
Thunderbird

Create Folders to file mail by website
Use Sub Folders to categorise mail even further
Use the filters to delete unwanted mail (this shouldn’t happen though since you’ve set this up in Gmail already)
Now you can sit back, whether it’s at home on or on move & never worry about spam again.

Other usefull links:
www.usaflowersonline.com
Relationship Counselling
beanbags
solar power benefits
sofa beds
backgammon set
indy 500
online flower shop
AZ Refinance
sql server hosting

If you’re a full time affiliate marketer there’s a very good chance that you probably don’t use internet explorer anymore. There’s a number of reasons most people switch, but the most common, is the lack of plugin functionality & 3rd party integration.

Firefox has really embraced these types of applications & allows you to integrate them seamlessly into your regular workflow, helping you to do tasks or use functions that the original developers didn’t hardcode.

I use quite a number of Firefox Extensions that really make a huge difference to my workflow & productivity, but the aim of this post to be the definitive list of Firefox Plugins for Affiliate Marketers:

Foxmarks



When you have multiple computers & workstations it can become painful to always keep your bookmarks in sync, especially when you’ve got hundreds of websites. Foxmarks will store all of your firefox bookmarks externally & then keep them updated & in sync no matter where you go (provided you have the extension installed on the computer). This means that the bookmarks on all of my computers always match, a massive time saver for me.

Greasemonkey



Greasemonkey is an extension for Firefox that allows you to write or download scripts that change how web pages behave or look. There’s literally thousands of user written scripts that do all sorts of things from Downloading Youtube Videos to removing the annoying parts of Myspace (I thought it was all annoying though? ) or showing you the Link Data in Google’s Webmaster Tools.

Google Global

This extension allows you to view the Google Search Results from different locations around the world, right down to regions, cities & postcodes. Extremely useful if you’re running PPC campaigns outside your Geo Location & also if you want to see what your international competitors are doing.

SEO for Firefox



I’ve talked about how much I like this plugin before but if you’re planning on quickly analysing a particular keyword or niche or any other search results then this plugin is gold. It allows you to quickly see the inbound links to a domain or page, get an idea idea if the page has pagerank & also plenty of other features.

Search Status

Get an quick snapshot of Page Rank & Alexa Rank when viewing a particular page. Good for quickly analysing the popularity of a particular website/page.

Web Developer Extension



This is a very useful extension that allows you to manipulate many of the design related features within a page. You can disable Java, CSS, Referrers & Meta Redirects; Clear Cookies & disable Cookies; Resize pages & elements & also manipulate forms. Very very useful.

User Agent Switcher

Switch between user agents within firefox to see how web pages react. Useful for getting into areas that only allow Googlebot (naughty naughty) & a few other things.

Live HTTP Headers

Display the HTTP Headers from a website in Real Time. This can be used for debugging, to see what cookies are being set & to check for redirects.

Roboform

I use roboform to fill in forms & also fill in signup details for new websites. Saves quite a considerable amount of time if you set it up correctly.

Screengrab

All webmasters need to take screenshots once in a while. I particularly love this extension because you can grab an entire page as a screenshot.

Gspace

Gspace is a great extension that turns your 2GB of space in Gmail into your very own file storage area. Really useful for keeping backups & also transferring files between locations quickly & securely.

Gmail Manager

Manage multiple Gmail accounts from one extension. This extension is particularly useful if you’ve migrated completely to gmail, outlined in one of my previous posts.

XML Password Exporter

If you like to manage all your passwords via Keepass then this tool will allow you to export all your Firefox passwords to xml or csv format which you can then use to import into Keepass. Nifty. Now all we need is an extension for Firefox that integrates with KeePass (hint hint).

Autocopy

Just like in Linux this extension allows you to select any text & have it copied automatically to the clipboard.

Ref Spoof

Fake your referrer easily. This is pretty good if you want to catch someone out who’s cloaking or test/hack other referrer related things.

If you use any other plugins that you feel enhance your productivity or help you with affiliate marketing then let me know about them in the comments & help grow this list.

Other usefull links:

TN Refinance
toddler girls dresses
how to remove spyware
Free Paleo diet recipes
online flower shop
beanbags
www.trekstervids.com
uk bean bags
lubbock seo company
magazine subscription

Is your PPC campaign dull & lacking that oomph? Good, today is the day to take action & turn things around. Follow these simple steps & explode your PPC Campaign:

1. Try to avoid Phrases with less than 3 Words

There’s a huge difference between “affiliate marketing” & “affiliate marketing blog.” The more words contained within a keyphrase the more targeted your keyphrase is likely to be for that query. Put yourself in the shoes of the searcher, people looking for information will type “affiliate marketing” people who specifically want to read an affiliate marketing blog will type the latter.

The same works with all industries. Bidding on “doctor” is very different than bidding on “doctor in melbourne.” Start to think more about what phrases you’re bidding on rather than being lazy.

2. Don’t waste money – Lose the Broad Match

Whilst Broad Match generally generates more traffic you’ll often find that due to Adwords “Extended Broad Matching” that heaps of unrelated terms will sneak in. Unless your researching for more terms (by utilising the Search Query Report) you should not be throwing money away on keywords that you don’t pre-qualify. Don’t be lazy & do thorough keyword research before embarking on any Adwords campaign. My rule of thumb is always go phrase (with negatives) or exact. That way you know what you’re getting for your money.

3. Catch people in the late stages of the buying process

As I mentioned in point 1, there’s certain phrases that people will use when they’re in different stages of searching. Identifying these can mean the difference between paying $15/conversion or $5/conversion.

Helpful bidding ideas:

Bid on Brand Names of Products & Items
Bid on Company Names & Manufacturers
Use buy, compare & purchase keywords
Leverage product reviews
4. Watch the Search & Content Networks

Check your Campaign Settings to see if the Search Network & Content Network are switched on. I always switch off both initially as I don’t trust where the traffic is coming from. Once I get the campaign to a solid CTR, Position & Return I’ll then test the Search Network to see if it adds or removes value.

If you want to run a Content Campaign, I suggest that you run it within its own campaign. Alone.

5. Create Highly Targeted Adgroups

Theme your adgroups around a particular keyword. If that keyword is affiliate marketing blog then the adgroup may contain:

“affiliate marketing blog”

“affiliate marketing blog”

[affiliate marketing blog]

[affiliate marketing blogs]

Doing this allows you to write a highly targeted creative which relates specifically to the keywords that you’re bidding on. Keeping things highly related like this will increase your CTR, reducing your cost in the long run.

6. Use Highly Targeted Creatives

As explained in the previous point you can now write highly targeted creatives based around a small group of keywords.

Using the above ad group example your creative might look like this:

Affiliate Marketing Blog
Become an Affiliate Marketing Gun
with Earners Blog Affiliate Marketing Blog
Earnersblog.com/AffiliateMarketingBlog

Other usefull links:

TN Refinance
electronic chess
The best deals on musical instrument amplifiers and more
Real Estate Business Cards
toddler girls dresses
best spyware removal
Free Paleo recipes
www.flowersbypost.uk.com
The Linden Method
www.usaflowersonline.com
Olympus Digital Voice Recorder

I’ve been following a thread on Wickedfire closely over the past few days that talks about dodgy affiliate networks. I realised that I’d never really covered this topic in any detail on the blog, so here’s my spin on it all.

Dodgy Merchants

It’s inevitable that if you’re trying out hundreds of merchants every month you’ll eventually run into a few dodgy ones. It’s easy to think that everyone in this industry is nice & “looking out for one another” but if you think that then you need a serious reality check.

You’ve got three types of merchants

Those that manage their affiliate program in house with a dedicated team
Those that outsource the management to a network but still approve the leads/purchases themselves
Those that manage the program by themselves (1 man show)
Speaking from experience I’ve had trouble from all three types. But, most of the time it’s from numbers 2 & 3.

So what are the ways that merchants can cheat you out of your well fought after commissions?

Scrubbing Leads – This is unfortunately very common in our industry (especially in the adult space). It happens at the merchant level & at the Network level. This basically means that the merchant or network won’t credit a certain number of your leads, pocketing the profit for themselves & you won’t even know it’s going on.

How to combat – There’s only one real way to combat this & that’s to generate your leads locally, or get friends to generate leads for you & catch the merchant red handed. Bottom line is, if you suspect your merchant is doing this move on….quickly.

Lead Lag - This is quite common in the financial sector & relates to the processing time of applications for loans or credit cards. Make sure that the merchant is regularly approving or declining the leads that you’re sending through.

How to combat – A quick email to your AM or their manager will usually get the ball rolling on this issue. If the leads lag too long just switch merchants & save yourself the headache, their loss.

High Refund Rates – I’ve come across a number of merchants in my time that have a very high refund rate. This is one to be very wary of, especially in the financial space. If it’s your job to provide someone with a “lead” then the merchant should not be entitled to refund it for a failed application, but some merchants just don’t get what the meaning of a lead really is.

How to combat – There’s no way around this, if there’s a high refund rate then call the merchant & ask for an explanation. If it’s not worthing pursing then just move on.

Test Orders – I also get these ones from time to time, it’s possible that the occasional one or two is fine but any more than that & you should start to get worried. Why on earth are you testing so many orders under my affiliate ID, don’t you have a test ID?

How to combat – Ask the question above.

Bidding on their own Brand with an Affiliate Tracking ID – This is one of the ones that pisses me off the most. I can do all the work & presell to the customer but if they decide to go away, think about it & then come back through typing the brand into Google the merchants Cookie will overwrite mine. This is extremely common & is something that I check for before starting any campaign.

How to combat – If you can, outbid the merchant on their own brand & test how many other affiliates they’re ripping off

Non Payment – Perhaps the worst thing is not getting paid for all of your effort & hard work. Remember from time to time merchants can be late with payments or perhaps forget, but there’s a difference between a late payment & not getting one…ever.

How to combat – Email your account manager or affiliate representative first, if there’s no response then try again. If you’re talking to a brick wall then get in touch with a lawyer, they’ll write you up a letter that may provoke a response. Remember to try & research potential merchants as much as possible before you put any serious volume through them & ALWAYS have a backup incase things go belly up.

Dodgy Affiliate Networks

Running In House Campaigns – If you were an affiliate manager who was paid on the performance of their affiliates & you had access to “what was working” would you run your own campaigns? Well, there’s plenty of AM’s out there that do this & you have to cover your tracks to not give away any secrets.

Keeping your campaigns secret not only protect your profits, but they also protect your niche. Ever been bidding on a keyword with 0 competition then almost overnight you’re up again 1 or 2 competitors?

How to Combat -

Use Redirects: PHP redirects generally pass the referrer string right through so you’ll want to use a redirect that doesn’t. Meta Redirects or Javascript redirects normally do this pretty well (remember that some people do turn Javascript off). When I want to keep stuff really hidden I’ll use double redirects to prevent the AM from back tracing the redirect or seeing the real redirect as a referrer.

Encode your SubID’s: If you rely heavily on Sub ID’s don’t go naming them stuff like subid=affiliate_marketing_blog, you may as well give away your top converting keyword list on a plate. It should look something like subid=9954412, if you don’t know how to code then simply put the real subid value in a spreadsheet. If you’re a dab hand at PHP you could create a simple tracking script of your own that will identify the subid with the real search term in your stats.

Stand your Ground: Don’t let the network bully you into revealing your traffic sources once you start killing it with your campaign. If the traffic stands up on the merchants end then they network have nothing to worry about (except you not giving your campaigns away ) Bottom line is that they won’t risk losing you if you’re sending a decent amount of leads.

These are just my experiences over the years, I’ve learnt to become much more secretive about how I do things (especially when it’s PPC). I’d love to hear your experiences & what measures you take to protect your IP. Please don’t name any networks in the comments.

Other usefull links:

TN Refinance
wooden chess
Florida Refi
beds for dogs
Musical Instrument Amplifiers
Herbal Colon Cleanse
Real Estate Business Cards
Marine VHF
serengeti sunglasses
best spyware removal
Olympus Digital Voice Recorder

Here’s a question from Jared:

Do you use an Adwords My Client Center? & if so what are the advantages?

If you’re managing multiple Adwords Accounts upgrading to a Google MCC Account makes perfect sense. You don’t have to log in & out to switch between them & also creating new accounts is a breeze.

I highly recommend making the jump across regardless of whether you have 1 account or several & also especially if you’re spending more than $500 a month.

There’s a few perks to having an Adwords MCC Account:

You can manage multiple accounts from 1 interface
You can split things up much better & assign budgets
You can bill each account seperately
If you spend more than $500 consistently you can take the Adwords Professional Exam
Get your own dedicated Adwords Professional Page
You can qualify for vouchers (only once you’ve completed the Professional Exam)
If you decide to take on clients you’re already set up
If you decide to take the GAP exam (which is valid for 2 years) you’ll be able to show it off on your sites. Not only that but I guarantee it’ll get you a much larger foot in the door if you apply for any SEM related jobs.



Upgrading your account is pretty simple:

Join as a Google Advertising Professional
Input one of your existing Adwords Account
Create a new Google Account to use for the login & you’re done
Now just log in & link any other existing accounts.

As a rule of thumb I normally create 1 account per website that I’m working with, I normally find that this helps me manage spends & budgets much easier.

Other usefull links:

GA Refinance
FL First Time Home Buyer
Florida Refi
backgammon set
printer copiers
TN Refinance
Marine VHF
Moving To Hawaii
Real Estate Business Cards
Herbal Colon Cleanse

So I’ve been pretty busy lately, at lot of my own projects have been brushed aside for the time being. But because I’ve been so pushed for time I’ve been forced to look for easier & quicker ways to grow my affiliate income stream.

I came across an interesting article not long ago about how one affiliate managed to dominate the Australian Ugg Boots market just as they were becoming popular (I can’t find the article off hand but if you know it kindly post it in the comments). I put this theory to the test by searching for similar items that had an international appeal but no-one was capatilising on yet.

Now there’s two ways that you can approach this method:

Look for a product that’s in demand in your own country but no-one is really selling it, then look for someone who’s selling it abroad. You can either set up a relationship with the supplier/distributer or even see if they have an affiliate program. Problems with going down the affiliate route is that the shipping will be a good deal more. I’ve had good success with the affiliate route even though the shipping is pricey provided I’m about 40% cheaper overall than anyone who’s selling the product locally.
Look for a product that’s in demand abroad & is already well established in your country. The above scenario applies to this too & if the product is well established it’ll probably have an affiliate program.
If you’ve done your research correctly you should already know a few things:

What the international competition is like
Whether or not you’re beating their prices
How they format their PPC Ads (I use the Google Global Firefox Extension for this)
You want to make sure that you can provide the same product cheaper than they can get it locally (including shipping). This will be your selling point. For example I sell one product locally that you can only buy in Australia for around $99 (excl shipping), however abroad I can bring it for around $59 (excl shipping). Which one do you think will appeal more in a PPC Ad?

Now create a minisite dedicated to the product, the site should contain general product information (including variations) & most importantly a review about the product.

I now create a very targeted PPC Campaign using branded terms & other very targeted terms I think will convert well. I know the brand terms will convert & the rest of the terms I’ll constantly test (including tweaking the review landing page) until I’m happy I have a set of 10-20 keywords that’ll convert for a minimal spend. The nature of these campaigns will attract a high CTR on the ads (since they’re so targeted) so you should be able to bring the CPC down gradually & maintain a decent position.

I’ll put this example into perspective for you. Take the Iphone, it’s only just being launched in Australia after being around for quite some time. However, tens of thousands of people in Australia “Already have one.” Now imagine getting on that train in the beginning (I admit that is probably a once in a lifetime product). But you get the idea.

Now sit back, monitor & move onto the next one.

Other usefull links:

GA Refinance
CO Refinance
wooden chess
FL First Time Home Buyer
Florida Refi
printer copiers
TN Refinance
Marine VHF
Moving To Hawaii

I normally find that the amount I post is inversely proportional to the amount of money I make therefore when I’m onto something good you might find things quiet around here. Either way, on with the show.

This post is in relation to a question I had a few weeks ago (feel free to ask questions here):

Stuart, I have a website that gets around 3,000 uniques per day (in the celebrity space) but I can’t seem to make more than $6 per day from Adsense. What advice can you give on increasing this?

So lets assume you already have a celebrity site getting a decent amount of traffic (anywhere from 1k+ visitors per day), if you don’t then check out some of my earlier posts on affiliate link building & the 2008 link building guide.

Celebrities can be a tough to crack, but you just have to persist:

There’s plenty of niches to pick, I’m not going to go into details but there’s hundreds if not thousands
Traffic is HUGE, millions of people unfortunately lead boring lives & need their celebrity fix. So you’ll be focusing purely on volume here then figuring out testing the best way to monetise it.
These sites are usually littered with ads, so in other words, they also can’t make enough money from just adsense. We need to be smart about monetisation.


Bread & Butter Monetisation Networks
Celebrity Sites are notorious for offering up low CPC’s with Adsense, there’s a few quick methods to increase your income:

Adsense: I normally run with a 728×90 Adsense above the fold, this is tried & tested for me as being the optimum spot for clickthroughs. I’ve recently been playing with YieldBuild, which automatically tests & rotates combinations of ad sizes & colours then continually tries to optimise for the best eCPM. I’ve seen a 25%-30% increase in about 30 days.

You could also go through & filter out the MFA ads but I’ve not had much luck with that.

Value Click Media: I average about $110 on around 420k Pageviews for one site with Value Click CPM advertising. Not the best, but it’s an addition to Adsense.

Right Media: I also run Right Media & let advertisers fight for my ad space, this generates decent returns but since my overall income is split between 4-5 advertisers I end up getting 4-5 US Cheques (I’m in Australia) which cost me $10 each to cash. Bit of a pain but it’s another income stream.

Zango Cash: This isn’t something I’ve exclusively had time to trial but I’ve had reports from at least 4 or 5 contacts that are making some decent bank from the Javascript Overlay on Celebrity Sites. I wouldn’t plan on using this if you don’t want to annoy your visitors, if you don’t care then you’ll make some decent money here.

Ideal monthly income breakdown by Network:
Adsense: $300-$600+
Valueclick: $150+
Right Media: $200+
Zango: $300-2k+
Others to consider: Tribalfusion, Fastclick, Clicksor & Adbrite (Interstitials)

Use your Analytics to Profit / Understanding your Visitors
I can’t stress enough that making money with these types of sites isn’t about slapping up the banner advertising above & moving onto the next project. Always check your analytics on a daily/weekly basis.

An example of this may be:

You notice that a particular page dedicated to Megan Fox is getting a significant amount of traffic this week from a movie website all drooling over her pictures. Do you A, sit back & watch the Adsense dollars trickle in or B try to find an offer that appeals to fans of Megan Fox, it may be the transformers DVD or it might even be a Megan Fox Poster?

Either way you get the idea here, you can target individual pages with different offers depending on where you’re getting the traction. There’s no point setting up a niche offer on every page until you see the traffic come in.

User Interaction
Interaction is key to monetisation. Ask yourself this question:

Once a visitor leaves your site are they ever going to come back?

If the answer is no then we need to find a why to bring them back over & over again. This can be done in a number of ways:

Email List: Creating an email list that mails people when you update the website. The hard part about this is getting people on the list in the first place, try offering an incentive like a competition or a free giveaway.
Forum: Everyone loves a forum, this is by far & away the best way to keep people coming back again & again.
Social Features: Allow interaction with content & users.
Expand your Network
Are you dominating this niche as much as you can? or are you simply moving onto the next one without first capitalising what you have? Remember, it’s easier to grow what you already have than it is to grow something from scratch.

Think carefully around potential partnerships with similar sites & also unique advertising deals that (if you’re the leader in the niche) no one else can provide.

Research!
How are the other Celebrity websites out there making bank? I normally like to check out the Sitepoint Marketplace to see actual revenue figures & where that revenue is coming from. I’ve seen some bloody ingenious revenue generating schemes/ideas on here so that’s my hot tip for the month.

Other usefull links:

GA Refinance
CO Refinance
FL First Time Home Buyer
menapause
Keller Williams Business Cards
wooden chess set
AZ First Time Home Buyer
keyword research
wheels and tires
alloy wheels
TN Refinance

Apparently now in the UK 1 out of every 200 visits to an online retail site comes from a Voucher/Coupon Code website. As this type of traffic is increasing year on year, your hard earned affiliate commissions could be getting flushed down the drain when your cookie is overwritten by these rogue practices.

How it Works
Many of the big voucher websites have one incredibly sneaky way of overwriting your hard earned cookie (There are legit ones out there that do things by the book, but I’m not naming names here).



So in order to even view the discount codes you first need to click on the button to reveal them, this opens up a popunder which sets a new cookie, overwriting yours. Now this is where it starts to get very very sneaky.

When you have a large database driven site it’s very easy to start creating pages around every merchant / site known to man that has an affiliate program (regardless of whether they have voucher codes or not), some sites have to do this manually others can do it on the fly. They then start optimising the pages for “Merchant Name Vouchers, Discount Codes & Coupons.”

So here’s now a typical scenario:

You send a customer to the merchant via your affiliate redirect
Customer sees a nice shiny laptop & decide to buy
They get to the checkout & see the merchant has a “coupon code field”
Their eyebrows raise ever so slightly & they type “merchant coupon codes” into Google
Up pops one of the Voucher Code sites with a nice shiny button similar to that above
But….low & behold there’s no coupon codes.
The voucher website has STILL overwritten your cookie though.
This is what pisses me off the most, people are ready to buy, ready to commit. Yet you have you sale stolen from you at the last minute (seemingly without any effort).

Networks are turning a blind eye
One of the UK’s large voucher websites last year reported they sent over $250,000,000 worth of sales through to merchants. With this type of volume the networks are turning a blind eye & letting these sites get away with stealing YOUR commissions.

What is the Role of an Affiliate?
It seems this varies considerably, but here’s a few thoughts (I’d like to know yours also):

n
What do you think the role of an Affiliate is?
To presell the product before sending to the merchant
To make as much money as possible
To grab the buyer in the final stages of the buying process & send them to the merchant
To grab the buyer at the coupon stage & steal commissions
To add value to the merchants marketing campaign
To send potential buyers to a merchants website
Add an Answer
View Results
What can be done to combat this problem?
There’s four solutions to this that I can think of:

I look very carefully before promoting some merchants now, if they have a coupon discount field it’s a big RED FLAG for me.
Ban the offending affiliates from Networks
Disable the overwriting of Affiliate Cookies
Credit the Affiliate that sends the consumer to the purchase page before the affiliate that provides the coupon.
What solutions do you see to combat this rising problem?

Other usefull links:

menapause
auction website
chapel hill real estate
GA Refinance
CO Refinance
Plano flowers
Real Estate Business Cards
Safari Roof Rack
Keller Williams Business Cards
computer laptops