Affiliate Marketing and Your Expectations
Affiliate Marketing can be one way in which you can have a business online. However, sometimes the expectations of those that enter into this business believe, falsely, that it is an easy business to begin. It's
not.
In fact, you really have to become acquainted with every facet of advertising, as well as, constructing your website and the landing page on which your products will reside. If you're new to working online, expect to take some time to learn on the job. Yes, you'll make mistakes, but trust me, you'll learn. In fact, you're learn because it has either cost you money and time, or it was a dead-end way of getting your website noticed and traffic to your site. And revenue, it will grow as you learn.
Please note, affiliate marketing is not a "get rich quick" way of making money, at least for most people. It is a true business, that you will have to commit time and energy too, to see it grow.
I've written an article "Affiliate Marketing Expectations" it gives you insight into starting an affiliate site and some of the things you'll have to consider if you want to venture into this business. I hope this gives you a quick, honest view of what to expect with affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Marketing Expectations
Is affiliate marketing for you? Many people want a presence online, but many do not fully realize that an online business is just like a brick and mortar business. Translated, you have to work at it. There are many avenues to having a business online, and many, I included, decided to create an affiliate business. So what is an affiliate business and what do you really need to know before putting your toes into the arena of affiliate marketing.
Read more....
Showing posts with label Affiliate Marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Affiliate Marketing. Show all posts
Friday, May 14, 2010
Monday, August 17, 2009
Stats you can Take to the Bank
Alright - time to play a little catch up here.
If you are trying to make money online then ya' might want to pay attention. This is especially true if you are one of the thousands out there dabbling in the MMO niche itself or affiliate marketing in general.
First off - the Make Money Online niche.
As many of you know this plain old Blogger blog pretty much owns the niche at this particular point in time. The vast majority of my traffic stems from Google and let me share some stats.
Search visitors per month - approximately 150,000
How many keywords do I receive traffic for? Between 5000 and 6000 different terms.
The top 5 keywords account for 95% of all traffic.
The term "make money online" is not the top drawing keyword... surprise! It comes in second. I am not going to tell you what the other 4 are cuz that would just be stupid but next time you are using a keyword analysis tool - including Google's - just keep in mind that none of them are really all that accurate. Not by a long shot. I get a lot of emails from people targeting keywords that are "supposed" to have 200 or so searches a day and when they rank number 1 for the term they find out that they get next to no traffic or none at all. The reason is simple - the estimates are wrong.
If you want to find the keywords that have traffic then write agonizingly loooooong posts full of terms related to your chosen topic. Then rustle up backlinks for all the terms you think are the main keywords and point them at the post. Rinse and repeat for every post you write. Google will eventually show you what keywords are really being searched for in the form of search visitors. Track those terms and rustle up more backlinks anchored appropriately and soon you will not only have a list of what people really search for but you should be ranking on top for them as well.
Now - what's the point of having a top ranking site in the Money Making niche if I don't know what kind of money it can make selling affiliate products?
Apparently my readers don't want to know how much money can be made or what kind of conversions a top ranking site has in this niche. I base this on the reaction I got from my dear "readers" when I decided to find out...
Sorry folks - I DID want to know and unfortunately the only way I could find out is by slapping up some affiliate courses (Court's) and affiliate products (Vic's Niche Devil). I didn't spend 3 years targeting this niche just to NOT make money or Not learn what kind of conversions could be made with a highly targeted SEARCH audience. So for those of you who were upset and feel that I shouldn't have bothered to find out please skip the following bit of info... (BTW - I have said countless times - if in doubt ask me about something you see on my site. I always give an honest answer. If I had said this on the posts it would have kinda killed the results???)
So - without further ado...
Adsense - after 2.5 years worth of results - maxed out at about $120.00 per day. Some spikes upwards of $200 per day but not an average.
All other CPC that I tried - maybe $20 - $30 a day. I can't get an MSN or Yahoo account so they haven't been tested but every other network like Bidvertiser, Chitika etc don't come close to Adsense.
Alright - Court's Keyword Crash Course.
I picked this course for a number of reason's; it is hand's down the best investment a beginner can make online if they want to learn how to make money online. Court teaches what I do - simple as that. I do SEO and if you don't know what that is just ask yourself how you found my site in the first place? I had no problem sleeping at night sending people to Court - he is as legitimate as they come online and I have yet to hear otherwise.
I added a link to his site above the fold with a short blurb. I still had Adsense up there as well. The results? Dismal at best. Hmmmm... what to do. Maybe pull the Adsense off. I did. The results improved immediately - from a few people a day to a few dozen a day clicking through to Court.
An aside... my first day without Adsense I did $350.00 (approx) in affiliate sales on the site. This has tailed off to between $250 - $300 per day on average ever since and why Adsense is no longer here. I have always said to focus on one form of monetization. It turns out that the 300 - 400 people who would click ads daily are also the ones who buy affiliate products. Adsense, in effect was sending all my potential buyers elsewhere...
Back to Court.
To really see what kind of boost I could give him I decided to do a full blown post about the Keyword Academy and the crash course in particular - see original post Keyword Crash Course The results were immediate and pretty decent. I left the post up for 2 full months - roughly 300,000 visitors saw it. How many clicked through to Court's site? Just over 10,000. Yup - just 3%. How many of the 10,000 signed up? Just under 400 or 3.84% to be exact.
Many of you may find the totals shockingly low but let me tell you a little secret - 3% is a pretty standard conversion rate in the affiliate marketing world. I have seen this over and over again in many niches for many different products. And this rate is what I come to expect from products that convert well. What isn't a secret and what I have told many of you over the years - you need traffic, a lot of traffic actually to turn a decent profit and the reason many of you can't make money selling online is that you 1) don't have targeted traffic and 2) you don't have a niche that can produce the kind of volume necessary to make a consistent income. The answer of course is to just build more niche sites and make money through sheer volume.
Vic's Niche Devil
I have mentioned over the years that I have made some pretty decent income using short term strategies. The basic gist is to get in early, cash in and move on. I have done this with blackhat programs like Voodoo Blogger way back when you could slap up hundreds of sites and rank them all for a short time using various linking techniques that worked at the time. Invariably G shut the door on every trick that the black hats could come up with but - and this is the important part - I made a lot of cash while they worked and not once did I say - gee... maybe I shouldn't have done that because it didn't last. Never once did I say oh man - I only made $15,000 gaming technorati but now they don't let me anymore so it was a waste of time...
Folks - I'm not telling you to do or not do anything. I'm just presenting things that have worked for me and what you do with the info is up to you. I knew Niche Devil was going to cause a stir but I couldn't really get into details on who should use it or how it should be used - unfortunately this site is to widely known now for me to elaborate. I had hoped that my regulars would just simply leave the post alone and those who are inclined to the dark arts would find a use for Vic's site builder but it wasn't to be. The comments basically killed the post and once I got Splorked it was dead. I can't give you any meaningful stats regarding sales, conversions etc but I can confirm that my sight is read by people who don't want programs like Niche Devil used - I'll let you figure out who that might be. Needless to say I will stick to Terry's Secret Society for any future discussions regarding the dark side.
Backlink Solutions
I have talked about this program at length over the years and the post was for one reason only - to pass on info to those who have read my detailed instructions on how to use link networks. (On the private forum) The 32 spots sold out within the day and if you are one of the members don't be noobs - use it correctly and you will see results. nuff said.
Now let's talk about Problogger.
It seems many of my readers think I'm a blogger. From the bitchin' and whining I've seen in my comments and emails and on Ben's post Make Money Online with Work and Lissie's post Making Money with an Online Goldrush or Allyn's post Niche Devil (although he doesn't spell it that way - lol - btw - watch Allyn's Video's if you want to see how entertaining a video blogger can be!) I seem to have picked up a lot of readers who think this site is built for readers. It ain't! I built this site for search visitors first and foremost and guess what? I also built this site to "gulp" Make Money. I love my readers - don't get me wrong - but you guys don't pay the bills. By all means follow along and you will learn how I make money online but will you please keep in mind that I am using this site to test and experiment different forms of monetization. I have thousands of search visitors rolling through here each day and some of you seem to think I should ignore them and post fluff like Darren Rowse does? Really? Would you? I didn't think so...
When you are wondering what I'm up too why not look at what I'm doing and learn from that as I can't come out and tell you or it will kind of destroy my results. You will see a lot of strange things on here in the future so please let it go. I am always targeting search terms. Or funneling traffic. Or testing monetization. Or reinforcing previous posts for double indexing or keyword authority. (Like this post) Or helping friends with links and traffic - yes even sales if I can. (I know - how terrible!) If you want to learn things from me you have to let me do stuff to learn it myself. It is my intention to use the Make Money Online with Griz blog to answer your questions and provide results while I use this site to run my tests and make money. That said - can we please call a truce on the whining and complaining - if you don't like something just let it be or maybe stop and use your noodle and figure out what I am up to. Please just keep in mind that readers make up a small portion of my traffic. I know you tend to think I am writing for you exclusively but I'm not. I try and include you but my target is the search traffic. As for Problogger - keep something in mind; yes he seems like a nice guy and probably is but he tells you to just write good content as a blogger and the money will come. This is untrue and he knows it. He will never tell people that backlinks are the true source of making money online because he may fall out of favor with G. Yet - check out his main sponsors - the people who pay his bills. Yup - text link ads... people who sell backlinks.
Oh - one more aside. Every time I write a long post like the Problogger article (or this one) and engage readers my affiliate sales crap out big time. Less than a third of normal sales. Straight affiliate marketing posts like Niche Devil don't effect my sales at all. Why? Posts that are more Reader friendly send people hither and yon due to links etc and are time consuming to read. They (the search visitors) just don't end up on my money links. Short posts flogging something are either read quickly or ignored by search visitors and they either click out on the product's money link or one of the convenient links up top should they ignore the post. Keep this in mind if you are trying to sell something and using a typical blog post to do it. The more you engage your readers and the more links you have splashed about your post the less likely you will see results as far as sales go. This assumes that your readers are from the search engines. If they are just social bloggers then you'll fail regardless of what you try.
Let's wrap this up with a short message regarding my comments. This site produces a startling amount of email and comments - upwards of 5000 some weeks. Yes you read that correctly. Insane. Most of it is spam. I get 20 - 30 comments every hour from anonymous posters trying to get a link on my site for some product they are promoting. Not the usual Viagra and sex spam most of you are familiar with but from other MMO bloggers who hour after hour send the same crap. They find my site on top of their niche and assume I'm stupid I guess. Needless to say I delete them all but I tend to delete some real comments by accident from those of you who use the anonymous option while leaving your name in the actual comment. I try and skim all the comments quickly to find the real ones but at times there is just too many so my apologies if you get axed by mistake.
Okey Dokey... I have been busy with several projects but I think I'll get into them on the Griz blog in due course. Right now I have to work on my Golf game since it appears Tiger Woods is beatable after all. Y.E. Yang just handed Tiger his biggest upset at the PGA Championship at Hazeltine and millions of us hackers are smiling this morning knowing that Tiger is human after all!
Cheers
Griz
If you are trying to make money online then ya' might want to pay attention. This is especially true if you are one of the thousands out there dabbling in the MMO niche itself or affiliate marketing in general.
First off - the Make Money Online niche.
As many of you know this plain old Blogger blog pretty much owns the niche at this particular point in time. The vast majority of my traffic stems from Google and let me share some stats.
Search visitors per month - approximately 150,000
How many keywords do I receive traffic for? Between 5000 and 6000 different terms.
The top 5 keywords account for 95% of all traffic.
The term "make money online" is not the top drawing keyword... surprise! It comes in second. I am not going to tell you what the other 4 are cuz that would just be stupid but next time you are using a keyword analysis tool - including Google's - just keep in mind that none of them are really all that accurate. Not by a long shot. I get a lot of emails from people targeting keywords that are "supposed" to have 200 or so searches a day and when they rank number 1 for the term they find out that they get next to no traffic or none at all. The reason is simple - the estimates are wrong.
If you want to find the keywords that have traffic then write agonizingly loooooong posts full of terms related to your chosen topic. Then rustle up backlinks for all the terms you think are the main keywords and point them at the post. Rinse and repeat for every post you write. Google will eventually show you what keywords are really being searched for in the form of search visitors. Track those terms and rustle up more backlinks anchored appropriately and soon you will not only have a list of what people really search for but you should be ranking on top for them as well.
Now - what's the point of having a top ranking site in the Money Making niche if I don't know what kind of money it can make selling affiliate products?
Apparently my readers don't want to know how much money can be made or what kind of conversions a top ranking site has in this niche. I base this on the reaction I got from my dear "readers" when I decided to find out...
Sorry folks - I DID want to know and unfortunately the only way I could find out is by slapping up some affiliate courses (Court's) and affiliate products (Vic's Niche Devil). I didn't spend 3 years targeting this niche just to NOT make money or Not learn what kind of conversions could be made with a highly targeted SEARCH audience. So for those of you who were upset and feel that I shouldn't have bothered to find out please skip the following bit of info... (BTW - I have said countless times - if in doubt ask me about something you see on my site. I always give an honest answer. If I had said this on the posts it would have kinda killed the results???)
So - without further ado...
Adsense - after 2.5 years worth of results - maxed out at about $120.00 per day. Some spikes upwards of $200 per day but not an average.
All other CPC that I tried - maybe $20 - $30 a day. I can't get an MSN or Yahoo account so they haven't been tested but every other network like Bidvertiser, Chitika etc don't come close to Adsense.
Alright - Court's Keyword Crash Course.
I picked this course for a number of reason's; it is hand's down the best investment a beginner can make online if they want to learn how to make money online. Court teaches what I do - simple as that. I do SEO and if you don't know what that is just ask yourself how you found my site in the first place? I had no problem sleeping at night sending people to Court - he is as legitimate as they come online and I have yet to hear otherwise.
I added a link to his site above the fold with a short blurb. I still had Adsense up there as well. The results? Dismal at best. Hmmmm... what to do. Maybe pull the Adsense off. I did. The results improved immediately - from a few people a day to a few dozen a day clicking through to Court.
An aside... my first day without Adsense I did $350.00 (approx) in affiliate sales on the site. This has tailed off to between $250 - $300 per day on average ever since and why Adsense is no longer here. I have always said to focus on one form of monetization. It turns out that the 300 - 400 people who would click ads daily are also the ones who buy affiliate products. Adsense, in effect was sending all my potential buyers elsewhere...
Back to Court.
To really see what kind of boost I could give him I decided to do a full blown post about the Keyword Academy and the crash course in particular - see original post Keyword Crash Course The results were immediate and pretty decent. I left the post up for 2 full months - roughly 300,000 visitors saw it. How many clicked through to Court's site? Just over 10,000. Yup - just 3%. How many of the 10,000 signed up? Just under 400 or 3.84% to be exact.
Many of you may find the totals shockingly low but let me tell you a little secret - 3% is a pretty standard conversion rate in the affiliate marketing world. I have seen this over and over again in many niches for many different products. And this rate is what I come to expect from products that convert well. What isn't a secret and what I have told many of you over the years - you need traffic, a lot of traffic actually to turn a decent profit and the reason many of you can't make money selling online is that you 1) don't have targeted traffic and 2) you don't have a niche that can produce the kind of volume necessary to make a consistent income. The answer of course is to just build more niche sites and make money through sheer volume.
Vic's Niche Devil
I have mentioned over the years that I have made some pretty decent income using short term strategies. The basic gist is to get in early, cash in and move on. I have done this with blackhat programs like Voodoo Blogger way back when you could slap up hundreds of sites and rank them all for a short time using various linking techniques that worked at the time. Invariably G shut the door on every trick that the black hats could come up with but - and this is the important part - I made a lot of cash while they worked and not once did I say - gee... maybe I shouldn't have done that because it didn't last. Never once did I say oh man - I only made $15,000 gaming technorati but now they don't let me anymore so it was a waste of time...
Folks - I'm not telling you to do or not do anything. I'm just presenting things that have worked for me and what you do with the info is up to you. I knew Niche Devil was going to cause a stir but I couldn't really get into details on who should use it or how it should be used - unfortunately this site is to widely known now for me to elaborate. I had hoped that my regulars would just simply leave the post alone and those who are inclined to the dark arts would find a use for Vic's site builder but it wasn't to be. The comments basically killed the post and once I got Splorked it was dead. I can't give you any meaningful stats regarding sales, conversions etc but I can confirm that my sight is read by people who don't want programs like Niche Devil used - I'll let you figure out who that might be. Needless to say I will stick to Terry's Secret Society for any future discussions regarding the dark side.
Backlink Solutions
I have talked about this program at length over the years and the post was for one reason only - to pass on info to those who have read my detailed instructions on how to use link networks. (On the private forum) The 32 spots sold out within the day and if you are one of the members don't be noobs - use it correctly and you will see results. nuff said.
Now let's talk about Problogger.
It seems many of my readers think I'm a blogger. From the bitchin' and whining I've seen in my comments and emails and on Ben's post Make Money Online with Work and Lissie's post Making Money with an Online Goldrush or Allyn's post Niche Devil (although he doesn't spell it that way - lol - btw - watch Allyn's Video's if you want to see how entertaining a video blogger can be!) I seem to have picked up a lot of readers who think this site is built for readers. It ain't! I built this site for search visitors first and foremost and guess what? I also built this site to "gulp" Make Money. I love my readers - don't get me wrong - but you guys don't pay the bills. By all means follow along and you will learn how I make money online but will you please keep in mind that I am using this site to test and experiment different forms of monetization. I have thousands of search visitors rolling through here each day and some of you seem to think I should ignore them and post fluff like Darren Rowse does? Really? Would you? I didn't think so...
When you are wondering what I'm up too why not look at what I'm doing and learn from that as I can't come out and tell you or it will kind of destroy my results. You will see a lot of strange things on here in the future so please let it go. I am always targeting search terms. Or funneling traffic. Or testing monetization. Or reinforcing previous posts for double indexing or keyword authority. (Like this post) Or helping friends with links and traffic - yes even sales if I can. (I know - how terrible!) If you want to learn things from me you have to let me do stuff to learn it myself. It is my intention to use the Make Money Online with Griz blog to answer your questions and provide results while I use this site to run my tests and make money. That said - can we please call a truce on the whining and complaining - if you don't like something just let it be or maybe stop and use your noodle and figure out what I am up to. Please just keep in mind that readers make up a small portion of my traffic. I know you tend to think I am writing for you exclusively but I'm not. I try and include you but my target is the search traffic. As for Problogger - keep something in mind; yes he seems like a nice guy and probably is but he tells you to just write good content as a blogger and the money will come. This is untrue and he knows it. He will never tell people that backlinks are the true source of making money online because he may fall out of favor with G. Yet - check out his main sponsors - the people who pay his bills. Yup - text link ads... people who sell backlinks.
Oh - one more aside. Every time I write a long post like the Problogger article (or this one) and engage readers my affiliate sales crap out big time. Less than a third of normal sales. Straight affiliate marketing posts like Niche Devil don't effect my sales at all. Why? Posts that are more Reader friendly send people hither and yon due to links etc and are time consuming to read. They (the search visitors) just don't end up on my money links. Short posts flogging something are either read quickly or ignored by search visitors and they either click out on the product's money link or one of the convenient links up top should they ignore the post. Keep this in mind if you are trying to sell something and using a typical blog post to do it. The more you engage your readers and the more links you have splashed about your post the less likely you will see results as far as sales go. This assumes that your readers are from the search engines. If they are just social bloggers then you'll fail regardless of what you try.
Let's wrap this up with a short message regarding my comments. This site produces a startling amount of email and comments - upwards of 5000 some weeks. Yes you read that correctly. Insane. Most of it is spam. I get 20 - 30 comments every hour from anonymous posters trying to get a link on my site for some product they are promoting. Not the usual Viagra and sex spam most of you are familiar with but from other MMO bloggers who hour after hour send the same crap. They find my site on top of their niche and assume I'm stupid I guess. Needless to say I delete them all but I tend to delete some real comments by accident from those of you who use the anonymous option while leaving your name in the actual comment. I try and skim all the comments quickly to find the real ones but at times there is just too many so my apologies if you get axed by mistake.
Okey Dokey... I have been busy with several projects but I think I'll get into them on the Griz blog in due course. Right now I have to work on my Golf game since it appears Tiger Woods is beatable after all. Y.E. Yang just handed Tiger his biggest upset at the PGA Championship at Hazeltine and millions of us hackers are smiling this morning knowing that Tiger is human after all!
Cheers
Griz
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Making Money with Affiliate Marketing
Let me start by apologizing ahead of time for being a manipulative bastard. I've just finished a set of tests on this blog and now I want to explain a few things to you about the world of Internet marketing. Some of this you will have heard before but even you seasoned readers should read on.
I just convinced several hundred people to download a firefox add-on that apparently doesn't work and only Paul from Internet Marketing Product Reviews dared mention that Brad Callen's products tend to be crap. After having a few PPC friends check their own ads with the PPC Web Spy tool - we found out that it didn't bring up their keywords. In fact it looks like the tool simply digs out the relevant keywords and CPC much like keyword elite does from the same source - Google. It doesn't appear to show the advertisers individual keywords or bids after all. If any of you use PPC then please check your own ads and let me know if the tool is working.
Why do so many people trust the word of others (yes even me) and never bother to check things out for themselves?
This is the X factor.
Do you know who really succeeds online? The people who think for themselves, the people who take everything with a grain of salt and verify things on their own. The people who know how to separate the bullshit from legitimate information.
I shouldn't have to tell you folks to verify the things I say. You should be doing it on your own. Now I realize many of you wouldn't call bullshit on me in the comments out of friendship or respect but no one did it quietly in an email either. I can list on one hand people who have taken me to task in the past - Fiar from Political Humor, Gary from Everything Everywhere, Frank at How to Earn Money Online and a few others. I love these guys and can tell you they will be successful. They sniff out the bullshit and think for themselves. (I don't want too many links but Terry, Trent, RT, Splork all belong in this category as well). Considering the amount of readers I have the list is small. I'm not trying to insult anyone or show a lack of respect - I truly value all the friends I've made with this blog but I am trying to point out one of the biggest factors when in comes to being successful online or elsewhere.
Think for yourself.
Why do the A-List have such large fan bases? Because the majority of people trying to make money online don't think or verify anything. They just follow along doing whatever the so-called expert tells them to do. They are a gold mine for anyone who wants to manipulate them. I can just imagine how much money I would have made if I had told everyone that PPC Web Spy was a great affiliate product and buy the upgrade!
I joke all the time about how I am just setting my readers up in order to scam you all big time one of these days. The scary thing is I probably could. (I won't but I'll keep threatening)
Now there is a point to this other than being a jerk. A recurring theme in my emails is "Please talk more about internet marketing". The emails aren't asking for advice on selling "Oil Filters" - the people all have MMO blogs of one kind or another and they want in on the whole "selling IM products to Bloggers and IMer's" niche. Now instead of me telling you how broke you will be following that path I set up this little experiment to show you results instead. I'm not pulling the PPC Web Spy banner down just yet. My readers have had a crack at it and now I will see what kind of response I get from my search traffic.
Here are some stats.
9156 visitors have seen the banner.
218 people downloaded it with my link. No idea how many may have downloaded it without the link.
No one paid for an upgrade. (Thankfully)
So you want to sell to internet marketers huh?
I only got a 4.2% conversion for a "free" download. And not a single sale.
Remember I have a lot of targeted traffic, I'm seen (I think) as reasonably honest and this is all I could pull off.
How well do you think you are going to do selling to other Internet marketers?
One of the biggest problems with this whole online biz is assumptions. People assume a site with 5000 visitors a day must make a killing selling things. People see someone with 50,000 feed readers and assume they get 50,000 visitors a day - not. Do you really think Darren Rowse makes a killing everyday selling the crap in his banners? No. He makes money selling ads to others who put up the banners and they make nothing from his traffic. The assumptions stem from the fact that no one who has a large traffic base is willing to tell people just how few affiliate sales are made in the IM niche. Rowse won't admit it or he wouldn't get advertisers willing to pay big bucks to put their ads on his site.
One of the reasons for me adding that banner is to gauge my own CTR when it comes to selling advertising space on top of my blog. I have run a few different banners just to see what an advertiser might expect. The results are woeful. In fact after this episode I don't think I will offer the ad spot. My Adsense revenue takes a beating (a loss of about 30% ctr every time I've added a banner). This means charging an advertiser at least $50 a day for the ad. Unfortunately the advertiser won't get their money's worth and that bugs me. I know others would just sell the spot and don't care about the results but I don't want my name dragged through the mud for ripping people off.
You have all heard the saying that there is no money in selling to other bloggers. With the exception of the developers and their handful of super-affiliates this is true. Even then the return is small. Callen may make a few grand from his latest venture but he won't retire on it. In a month he will be flogging something else. He has too to keep a steady income coming in.
But Griz - you're in the MMO niche so there must be money in it... right. Yup - using Adsense there is. Selling products? Nope. ( Yes alright - with my targeted search traffic I could probably sleaze out a living scamming beginners but would you want to do that?)
Think on this. If I put through 9000 people in two days on my shoe site how many affiliate sales (or leads) do you think I would have compared to the IM crowd? Actually it's not as high as you think but still a world away from IM. On average my conversions are in the 8-12% range and sometimes a lot higher when a hot seller comes along. Strangely enough I still tend to do better with Adsense than affiliate sales. The thing is, civilians buy and click. IMer's don't and while you are tired of hearing this I thought some hard numbers might get the point across. If I can't make a good buck selling crap to bloggers do you really think you will with a fraction of the traffic?
I'm sorry if I sound harsh and that I have avoided answering all the emails asking for help in this area. The fact is I don't want to encourage any of you to follow the IM path. I'm not hogging it for myself. It just isn't a profitable business model and especially for beginners. Learn SEO and get non - IM niches to the top of the serp's first. Once there you can experiment and flog whatever you like but at least you will have traffic to flog it too. And there is always Adsense if nothing else pans out.
Most importantly - learn to question everything and everyone. I don't mean that you should become a cynical bugger - just have a healthy skepticism about what you hear and learn how to verify the claims you come across for yourselves.
I just want to mention this - a congrats of sorts. While I was typing this up Lane left a comment on the PPC Web Spy post.
Here is part of it.
Finally someone actually used the tool and realized something fishy is going on with it. Well done Lane. The answer to your questions btw - it's a piece of crap.
Again sorry for misleading everyone with this download - I just had to make a point.
Don't believe everything you read online - check it out yourselves. I don't mind people calling bullshit on me. It means you are thinking things out.
I hope you will all forgive me but I imagine the old feedburner cancellations will start about a minute after posting. I hope not as my intentions were honest.
I will provide the search stats for the banner in a few days.... and then it will be gone.
Cheers,
Griz
I just convinced several hundred people to download a firefox add-on that apparently doesn't work and only Paul from Internet Marketing Product Reviews dared mention that Brad Callen's products tend to be crap. After having a few PPC friends check their own ads with the PPC Web Spy tool - we found out that it didn't bring up their keywords. In fact it looks like the tool simply digs out the relevant keywords and CPC much like keyword elite does from the same source - Google. It doesn't appear to show the advertisers individual keywords or bids after all. If any of you use PPC then please check your own ads and let me know if the tool is working.
Why do so many people trust the word of others (yes even me) and never bother to check things out for themselves?
This is the X factor.
Do you know who really succeeds online? The people who think for themselves, the people who take everything with a grain of salt and verify things on their own. The people who know how to separate the bullshit from legitimate information.
I shouldn't have to tell you folks to verify the things I say. You should be doing it on your own. Now I realize many of you wouldn't call bullshit on me in the comments out of friendship or respect but no one did it quietly in an email either. I can list on one hand people who have taken me to task in the past - Fiar from Political Humor, Gary from Everything Everywhere, Frank at How to Earn Money Online and a few others. I love these guys and can tell you they will be successful. They sniff out the bullshit and think for themselves. (I don't want too many links but Terry, Trent, RT, Splork all belong in this category as well). Considering the amount of readers I have the list is small. I'm not trying to insult anyone or show a lack of respect - I truly value all the friends I've made with this blog but I am trying to point out one of the biggest factors when in comes to being successful online or elsewhere.
Think for yourself.
Why do the A-List have such large fan bases? Because the majority of people trying to make money online don't think or verify anything. They just follow along doing whatever the so-called expert tells them to do. They are a gold mine for anyone who wants to manipulate them. I can just imagine how much money I would have made if I had told everyone that PPC Web Spy was a great affiliate product and buy the upgrade!
I joke all the time about how I am just setting my readers up in order to scam you all big time one of these days. The scary thing is I probably could. (I won't but I'll keep threatening)
Now there is a point to this other than being a jerk. A recurring theme in my emails is "Please talk more about internet marketing". The emails aren't asking for advice on selling "Oil Filters" - the people all have MMO blogs of one kind or another and they want in on the whole "selling IM products to Bloggers and IMer's" niche. Now instead of me telling you how broke you will be following that path I set up this little experiment to show you results instead. I'm not pulling the PPC Web Spy banner down just yet. My readers have had a crack at it and now I will see what kind of response I get from my search traffic.
Here are some stats.
9156 visitors have seen the banner.
218 people downloaded it with my link. No idea how many may have downloaded it without the link.
No one paid for an upgrade. (Thankfully)
So you want to sell to internet marketers huh?
I only got a 4.2% conversion for a "free" download. And not a single sale.
Remember I have a lot of targeted traffic, I'm seen (I think) as reasonably honest and this is all I could pull off.
How well do you think you are going to do selling to other Internet marketers?
One of the biggest problems with this whole online biz is assumptions. People assume a site with 5000 visitors a day must make a killing selling things. People see someone with 50,000 feed readers and assume they get 50,000 visitors a day - not. Do you really think Darren Rowse makes a killing everyday selling the crap in his banners? No. He makes money selling ads to others who put up the banners and they make nothing from his traffic. The assumptions stem from the fact that no one who has a large traffic base is willing to tell people just how few affiliate sales are made in the IM niche. Rowse won't admit it or he wouldn't get advertisers willing to pay big bucks to put their ads on his site.
One of the reasons for me adding that banner is to gauge my own CTR when it comes to selling advertising space on top of my blog. I have run a few different banners just to see what an advertiser might expect. The results are woeful. In fact after this episode I don't think I will offer the ad spot. My Adsense revenue takes a beating (a loss of about 30% ctr every time I've added a banner). This means charging an advertiser at least $50 a day for the ad. Unfortunately the advertiser won't get their money's worth and that bugs me. I know others would just sell the spot and don't care about the results but I don't want my name dragged through the mud for ripping people off.
You have all heard the saying that there is no money in selling to other bloggers. With the exception of the developers and their handful of super-affiliates this is true. Even then the return is small. Callen may make a few grand from his latest venture but he won't retire on it. In a month he will be flogging something else. He has too to keep a steady income coming in.
But Griz - you're in the MMO niche so there must be money in it... right. Yup - using Adsense there is. Selling products? Nope. ( Yes alright - with my targeted search traffic I could probably sleaze out a living scamming beginners but would you want to do that?)
Think on this. If I put through 9000 people in two days on my shoe site how many affiliate sales (or leads) do you think I would have compared to the IM crowd? Actually it's not as high as you think but still a world away from IM. On average my conversions are in the 8-12% range and sometimes a lot higher when a hot seller comes along. Strangely enough I still tend to do better with Adsense than affiliate sales. The thing is, civilians buy and click. IMer's don't and while you are tired of hearing this I thought some hard numbers might get the point across. If I can't make a good buck selling crap to bloggers do you really think you will with a fraction of the traffic?
I'm sorry if I sound harsh and that I have avoided answering all the emails asking for help in this area. The fact is I don't want to encourage any of you to follow the IM path. I'm not hogging it for myself. It just isn't a profitable business model and especially for beginners. Learn SEO and get non - IM niches to the top of the serp's first. Once there you can experiment and flog whatever you like but at least you will have traffic to flog it too. And there is always Adsense if nothing else pans out.
Most importantly - learn to question everything and everyone. I don't mean that you should become a cynical bugger - just have a healthy skepticism about what you hear and learn how to verify the claims you come across for yourselves.
I just want to mention this - a congrats of sorts. While I was typing this up Lane left a comment on the PPC Web Spy post.
Here is part of it.
(1) When I click on each of the advertisers, they don't necessarily have the specific keyword that I queried for on their list. For instance, I just typed in the keyword phrase: buy perfume. The top advertisers are clearly looking for people looking to buy perfume, as their ad reads "Buy Perfume at Sephora" However when I click the "View Keywords" button, NONE of their ads listed are about perfime -- they, like several of the other advertisers listed show ads about other things liked shaving cream and acne.
Why don't I see the keyword that I was searching for?
(2) Sort of related to the previous question... Since I don't see the keyword that I am looking for, how can I tell which advertisers are the lower priced one that I would want to eliminate?
Finally someone actually used the tool and realized something fishy is going on with it. Well done Lane. The answer to your questions btw - it's a piece of crap.
Again sorry for misleading everyone with this download - I just had to make a point.
Don't believe everything you read online - check it out yourselves. I don't mind people calling bullshit on me. It means you are thinking things out.
I hope you will all forgive me but I imagine the old feedburner cancellations will start about a minute after posting. I hope not as my intentions were honest.
I will provide the search stats for the banner in a few days.... and then it will be gone.
Cheers,
Griz
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Blinkweb
Blinkweb Website Design Software
I have been showing you one of my step by step methods for making money online. In this case I have detailed a process I use to either sell affiliate products or generate leads to sell to others. You can read the first two posts here: Blinkweb Tutorial Part 1 and Blinkweb Tutorial Part 2. So far I have discussed finding a product, service or someone in need of leads and how to create a quick blog properly optimized for the niche. This system is designed for new products or anything that has little competition - ie. a product that has no affiliates (Leads).
The basic concept is simple. All newly released products have no authority sites ranking for the keyword in the serp's. If you are quick, use properly SEO'd blogs and can generate proper backlinks (meaning keyword optimized anchor links) then you should be able to make page 1 of the serp's for the product and do it quickly.
I also mentioned that you shouldn't just settle for 1 of the top 10 positions on the page 1 listings. This is really the key to how I make money with affiliate products and generating leads - I usually occupy several spots on the page 1 serp listings. This dramatically increases your traffic and an increase in traffic means an increase in sales.
I chose Blinkweb, a new software program by Brad and Matt Callen in order to show you my system promoting a product that is likely to have a lot of competition. Brad Callen is well known in Internet Marketing circles primarily because of the success of two previous products; SEO Elite and Keyword Elite - both now considered standard issue for any serious marketer. The point being that if I can dominate this product then you will see how effective this can be with less competitive products and especially for generating leads.
I want to use this post to simply update those of you following this tutorial on my progress. The following screenshots will show you my rankings in the serp's for all the main keywords associated with Blinkweb. Remember I said the key is to occupy as many of the page 1 spots as you can...
Keep in mind that the serp's are still pretty fluid and are changing constantly so results may have changed at the time you read this and depending on your data center. However it is a good sign when you see your site or sites all bouncing on and off page 1.
All highighted entries in the following images either directly or indirectly lead the reader back to my Blinkweb Blog. (Click all images to enlarge)
Here is the current rankings for the term Blinkweb
3 out of 10 spots.
Here is the current rankings for the term Blinkweb Review
3 out of 10 spots.
Here is the current rankings for the term Blinkweb News
3 out of 10 spots.
Here is the current rankings for the term Blinkweb Demo
5 out of 10 spots.
And finally the current rankings for the term Blinkweb Video
Again, 5 out of 10 spots.
As you can see I have managed to put my blog in a position to gather a lot more traffic than my competition. While I will continue to get better placement it should be noted that while position 1 is always best you can still pick up a lot of traffic with affiliate products even ranked lower down the page. Unlike people who search for "car rentals" and just click the top listing, people searching for information about a product - especially a new IM product tend to read several listings and not just the first one they see.
I apologize for boring my regular readers with this tutorial but I have received numerous emails and comments asking me to show you how I approach affiliate marketing. I have now shown you. I don't know if there will be an opportunity to make money with Blinkweb as the information we have so far is that the program is to be free. However these "free" programs usually have a not so free aspect to them and if it does I will be in position to collect affiliate sign ups and commissions for a brand new product that is likely to generate a lot of interest. If it turns out to be a dud - big deal - I'm out a couple of hours work in the short term but long term I will have another indexed blog with decent PR. Remember the Asia'h Epperson demonstration? In the short term that experiment didn't pan out - I couldn't get decent Adsense ads with it and the star attraction got voted off the show early on. Was it a waste of time? Nope - for those of you who haven't checked the blog is a PR4 these days and serves me for links...
The Asia'h blog is only 4 months old for those of you who think it takes a long time to build up a stable of decent PR blogs. If you are interested in the Asia'h experiment you can read about it here; Asia'h Epperson and American Idol - The Aftermath
That's it for this Blinkweb Update. I hope I have shown you just how simple things can be if you do things right.
oh BTW... if anyone is interested in a good review of the Blinkweb program check out Frank's post at OpTempo - Blinkweb Review
or catch some of Brad Callen's comments on Steve's blog Noovy Blinkweb Update from Brad Callen
Cheers,
Griz
I have been showing you one of my step by step methods for making money online. In this case I have detailed a process I use to either sell affiliate products or generate leads to sell to others. You can read the first two posts here: Blinkweb Tutorial Part 1 and Blinkweb Tutorial Part 2. So far I have discussed finding a product, service or someone in need of leads and how to create a quick blog properly optimized for the niche. This system is designed for new products or anything that has little competition - ie. a product that has no affiliates (Leads).
The basic concept is simple. All newly released products have no authority sites ranking for the keyword in the serp's. If you are quick, use properly SEO'd blogs and can generate proper backlinks (meaning keyword optimized anchor links) then you should be able to make page 1 of the serp's for the product and do it quickly.
I also mentioned that you shouldn't just settle for 1 of the top 10 positions on the page 1 listings. This is really the key to how I make money with affiliate products and generating leads - I usually occupy several spots on the page 1 serp listings. This dramatically increases your traffic and an increase in traffic means an increase in sales.
I chose Blinkweb, a new software program by Brad and Matt Callen in order to show you my system promoting a product that is likely to have a lot of competition. Brad Callen is well known in Internet Marketing circles primarily because of the success of two previous products; SEO Elite and Keyword Elite - both now considered standard issue for any serious marketer. The point being that if I can dominate this product then you will see how effective this can be with less competitive products and especially for generating leads.
I want to use this post to simply update those of you following this tutorial on my progress. The following screenshots will show you my rankings in the serp's for all the main keywords associated with Blinkweb. Remember I said the key is to occupy as many of the page 1 spots as you can...
Keep in mind that the serp's are still pretty fluid and are changing constantly so results may have changed at the time you read this and depending on your data center. However it is a good sign when you see your site or sites all bouncing on and off page 1.
All highighted entries in the following images either directly or indirectly lead the reader back to my Blinkweb Blog. (Click all images to enlarge)
Here is the current rankings for the term Blinkweb
3 out of 10 spots.
Here is the current rankings for the term Blinkweb Review
3 out of 10 spots.
Here is the current rankings for the term Blinkweb News
3 out of 10 spots.
Here is the current rankings for the term Blinkweb Demo
5 out of 10 spots.
And finally the current rankings for the term Blinkweb Video
Again, 5 out of 10 spots.
As you can see I have managed to put my blog in a position to gather a lot more traffic than my competition. While I will continue to get better placement it should be noted that while position 1 is always best you can still pick up a lot of traffic with affiliate products even ranked lower down the page. Unlike people who search for "car rentals" and just click the top listing, people searching for information about a product - especially a new IM product tend to read several listings and not just the first one they see.
I apologize for boring my regular readers with this tutorial but I have received numerous emails and comments asking me to show you how I approach affiliate marketing. I have now shown you. I don't know if there will be an opportunity to make money with Blinkweb as the information we have so far is that the program is to be free. However these "free" programs usually have a not so free aspect to them and if it does I will be in position to collect affiliate sign ups and commissions for a brand new product that is likely to generate a lot of interest. If it turns out to be a dud - big deal - I'm out a couple of hours work in the short term but long term I will have another indexed blog with decent PR. Remember the Asia'h Epperson demonstration? In the short term that experiment didn't pan out - I couldn't get decent Adsense ads with it and the star attraction got voted off the show early on. Was it a waste of time? Nope - for those of you who haven't checked the blog is a PR4 these days and serves me for links...
The Asia'h blog is only 4 months old for those of you who think it takes a long time to build up a stable of decent PR blogs. If you are interested in the Asia'h experiment you can read about it here; Asia'h Epperson and American Idol - The Aftermath
That's it for this Blinkweb Update. I hope I have shown you just how simple things can be if you do things right.
oh BTW... if anyone is interested in a good review of the Blinkweb program check out Frank's post at OpTempo - Blinkweb Review
or catch some of Brad Callen's comments on Steve's blog Noovy Blinkweb Update from Brad Callen
Cheers,
Griz
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Blinkweb - Make Money Online Tutorial - Step 2
In my last post I talked about setting up an affiliate blog targeting a product or service of your choice. I have chosen Brad Callen's soon to be released website creation tool called Blinkweb. If you look at how I set up the blog called Blinkweb by Brad Callen you should be able to see which keywords I have optimized the posts and blog for.
In fact I am optimizing this post for the exact same keywords and I will explain why in a moment.
In step 1 I simply created a quick blog and posted a short article in order to get it live and indexed by Google. To speed up the indexing process I linked this blog to the new blog using the term Blinkweb in the anchor text of the link. Google crawls this blog frequently and follows all my do-follow links. The new blog showed up in the index on the same day. Now while it was in the index it wasn't showing in the serp's for any of the keywords I had optimized it for - most notably the term "Blinkweb". The only term it did show up for was it's URL name. http://callensblinkweb.blogspot.com/. (see image below)
Click to enlarge all images.
This confuses some of you still. You can be indexed and in the sandbox at the same time. The easiest way to understand this is to realize that while Google will acknowledge that it knows you exist - ie. indexing your URL - it won't necessarily index you in the serp's for related keywords - something known as being in Google's sandbox. This means that you can find your blog on Google by searching for your URL but not by using keywords. If you are sandboxed Google will de-list your blog from any of the keyword serp listings while it may or may not list your URL.
When Google has determined that your blog is legitimate and offers relevant content for certain terms it will suddenly release you from the sandbox and your blog will begin to appear in the keyword listings. These are the listings that you would like to rank number 1 for.
My new blog showed up in the keyword serp's on day two. It went from not-indexed for the term "Blinkweb" to number 3 in the serp's. (see below)
Over the next two days it dropped back to 5th and then today it has disappeared from the listings altogether. Does this sound familiar to any of you. I get a lot of comments from readers asking why they show up on the serp's and then suddenly disappear. The answer is that this has become the new normal with the current Google algorithm. I would love to give you an expert answer as to what is happening but I don't know myself - I can only tell you what "seems" to be happening from my own observations.
What seems to be happening is that fresh content plays a larger roll in serp rankings - at least for "busy" keywords - topics that suddenly get a lot of keyword hits. This means that when something new like Blinkwebs comes along there is a sudden fleury of blogs using that keyword. When someone queries the term on Google, it proceeds to build the list. Since there are no old established authority sites for the term everyone gets to play on an even field - at least for a while. In this situation the bot has it easy and simply lists sites based on it's on-page SEO (Is the keyword in the blog's URL? - in the blog's Title? - in the Post Title? - in the post's Text?) This coupled with fresh relevant posts will get your site on top of the index - at least at first. When fresh content slows down and G begins collecting more and more data regarding the keyword other factors begin having an effect on the listings - PR and backlinks come into play. Within a short time Google begins to re-order the list and in time it will settle down to the point that the page 1 listings will remain fairly stable. The back page listings are rarely stable and rankings can bounce around constantly. At least this is how Google has behaved in the past.
At present I have noticed a prolonged shake up in the serp's for old established niches like "Make Money Online" and the page 1 listings for these older niches have been in a state of constant change for several weeks now. This has all transpired at the same time as G introduced the "Personalized Results" serp's which no doubt has some bearing on all this. The end result however, is that it has become normal to get indexed, rank well in the serp's for your keywords, suddenly find yourself de-indexed, then a few days later suddenly appear back in the serp's but usually not ranking as well as you did in the beginning.
I guess I am trying to tell you to not panic if this happens to you. As long as you have a legitimate site then you will re-appear in the serp's but you may go through the disappearing act a few times before settling down. Just be patient and more importantly keep posting and securing backlinks.
Case in point.
This blog took 2nd spot in the serp's for the term "Blinkweb" the day after I posted my last article. It hung around page 1 for the better part of two days and then disappeared back to page 3 or more. Today it is back on page 1 in 4th spot. Now that it is back on page 1 my new blog has left the index. When it returns I hope to get it back on the first page along with this blog and anything else pointing to my site that I can. What I am going to explain now is something that I never see others doing and often wonder why.
Who says you can only have 1 spot on page 1?
I have touched on this in the past - if you are targeting a term then why not increase your traffic by simply ranking as many sites as you can on page 1 - this is especially true for affiliate marketing and when collecting leads. In most of my niches I usually have 3-4 different sites pointing to my money site in the top 10 on the serp's. I have had as many as 8 sites at once on the page and I have several with 6 sites. (Note: - don't do this with Adsense sites)
The reason for doing this is obvious - you will increase your traffic and ultimately your sales.
Since Blinkweb is a new program, page 1 on Google is up for grabs. The most relevant 10 sites will be chosen by relevancy, age, PR and most importantly who has the most relevant keyword anchored backlinks. You can assume the real Blinkweb site owned by the Callen's will probably be one of the top 10 sites but don't assume that they will be number 1. They should eventually as they will get the most anchored links in time but their site is new as well and can be outranked by older authority sites with better links - at least in the beginning.
Now what exactly am I babbling about? I am going to show you why backlinks are the key to everything when it comes to ranking well in the serp's.
Let's think about this logically. In time Google will run out of fresh content for a keyword like "Blinkweb". This is because there is only so much that can be written about it. In fact most of the 400 pages already indexed for the term have pretty much the same content. Every post reads much like mine - this is because the program hasn't been released yet and there has been no new info given about it from the designers. When Google runs out of fresh content it will start to rank the sites based on 1 factor - who are the authority sites? They determine this based on who has the most keyword authority which in turn is determined by who has the most links pointing to them with the keyword used in the link. Those who get links from higher PR sites will have an advantage over those who have low PR links but both will outrank all the other competitors that don't have relevant backlinks.
Knowing that this "Niche" is new also tells me that I don't need a lot of backlinks to rank well and even less if I was to procur high PR backlinks.
So...
I was fortunate to get 4 links to my last post in which 3 of the 4 links used the term "Blinkweb" in the link. One of the links came from a PR4 blog and another link came from a PR5 blog. Apparently 2 high PR links with keyword relevant links is enough for 4th spot at the moment.
The new blog Blinkweb by Brad Callen was fortunate to get 9 Blinkweb links. Several are from high PR blogs and all the links have keyword relevant anchor text. When it re-appears it should rank well. If you clicked the last link above you would have landed on the new blog's Technorati page - currently a no-PR page. It now has a PR4 keyword relevant link pointing at it. If I was fortunate to get a few more high PR links pointing at it then there is a good chance that it might make page 1 of the serp's as well. That makes 3 sites possible.
While we are at it - I mentioned that I have 4-5 high PR sites sending this blog and the new blog backlinks already. What if those blogs were to get a few high PR, keyword relevant backlinks of their own? They could conceivably make page 1 as well - hell that would make 9...
This isn't likely to happen but what will happen is that I will have stronger backlinks all the way down the line which will increase the strength of the keyword authority for the 2 sites that are the ultimate recipients of all this strong link juice - this blog and the new blog. If you get both blogs double indexed then you can easily occupy 4 of the 10 spots on page 1. You will get more than your share of traffic.
This is how I mount a campaign for every niche I target if it is a new topic.
Yes - most of you are not "Fortunate" enough to get 4-5 high PR backlinks. I realize this but want to mention that very few of your competitors are that fortunate either. If you were to create hubpages and lenses and post several articles and send links from some of your existing blogs then you would find that 4-5 low PR links using the proper keyword in the anchor text would get you ranked well compared to most of your competitors who have few links and even less using the keyword.
I noticed a surge of hubpages and lenses created in the last few days for "Blinkweb". I suspect a few of my readers have decided to jump on this niche and good for them. Most are using the hubs and lenses to send links back to their money site which is good but don't forget to build links to those hubs and lenses as well. Don't just get links for your main site - get them for all the sites linking to your main site - spend more time building keyword authority and you won't need as many links to rank well. Your competition will be busy getting hundreds of PR0 non keyword relevant links from do-follow blogs and low link juice bookmarks.
Don't panic if you aren't on page 1 in a week. Be patient and build authority. This isn't short term blogging. If your product or service is a winner it will produce sales for a while albeit usually more when new. If it takes a month to rank on top you will still have a decent run. If you keep building links you will hit page 1 - after an initial burst most of your competition will stop getting links - they either give up or they make page 1 and don't think they need to do any more work.
I have yet to find a product that I couldn't get on page 1 for. Some took longer but in the end every one made page 1 simply because I never stop getting backlinks and backlinks for my backlinks and backlinks for those backlinks as well. My main money site in any given niche may only have a dozen or so quality links but each one of those links has a dozen quality links of its own and so on. I hope you get the picture. If you build a hubpage to send link juice to your money site then build two more to send link juice to the first hubpage. Don't be surprised to one day find all three hubs on page 1 for your keyword.
Ok, a long post to tell you to work smarter and not harder. You don't need thousands of links - you just need a small number of really good links. You can get them by building up several interlinking sites from different venues - hubpages, articles, squidoo, technorati, social sites etc. Any page that links to your money site should be strengthened with keyword relevant links of their own. This pays off by ensuring your main site makes top ranking and more often than not you will rank several of the support sites as well. I do this all the time and have seen the difference in traffic when I get 3-4 sites on page 1. Btw, once you get 1 authority site on page 1 it makes it easy to get other sites on the page as well. Use it to link to new sites.
Keywords
If you read the two blog posts on the new blog you will notice some of the keywords I used. Aside from "Blinkweb" I used the term "Review", "News" and "Video" in the blog description and posts along with "Brad and Matt Callen". Experience has shown me that the quickest way to get traffic is to use "Review", "News" or "Video" in a blog post. When people can't remember the product name they will use names they remember like "Brad Callen". I don't just want to rank well for the term "Blinkweb". I also want to rank well for the term "Blinkweb Review", "Blinkweb News" and "Blinkweb Video". These are terms that will be searched for in addition to the main keyword.
In fact...
The screenshot above is from my statcounter stats and lists the keywords used to find my new blog. Notice what long tails were used?
I normally write really long posts in order to get as many long tails indexed as possible. In a case like Blinkweb I don't have to. It is an affiliate product and as such there will be a limited variety of keywords used when searching for it. A term like making money online may have hundreds of related long tails used in queries but a term like "Blinkweb" is never going to be searched for using more than half a dozen terms. It doesn't require a long post to optimize half a dozen keywords.
At the time my Blinkweb blog was ranked number 1 for "Blinkweb Review", Number 2 for "Blinkweb News" and in the top 3 for "Blinkweb". Not bad for a two day old blog.
The more keywords you rank for the more traffic so don't just target the obvious main keyword.
There you have it. I told you internet marketing is a numbers game. The more traffic you get the more money you make. The best way to increase your traffic is to rank as many sites as you can on page 1 and target all the relevant keywords - not just the main one - with each site. Remember this is possible when dealing with a new product because there are no pre-established authority sites. You can become the authority site if you are fast, SEO properly and most of all build links faster and better than every one else. Yup - it is work but more importantly - it does work.
That's enough for today. I will be adding some pure SEO posts over the next few days which won't teach you a thing. I need a real "Blinkweb" post and a few other pages so just ignore them if you are a regular reader. I will continue this tutorial in a few days after the serp's hopefully settle out a bit.
Till then,
Cheers
Griz
In fact I am optimizing this post for the exact same keywords and I will explain why in a moment.
In step 1 I simply created a quick blog and posted a short article in order to get it live and indexed by Google. To speed up the indexing process I linked this blog to the new blog using the term Blinkweb in the anchor text of the link. Google crawls this blog frequently and follows all my do-follow links. The new blog showed up in the index on the same day. Now while it was in the index it wasn't showing in the serp's for any of the keywords I had optimized it for - most notably the term "Blinkweb". The only term it did show up for was it's URL name. http://callensblinkweb.blogspot.com/. (see image below)
Click to enlarge all images.
This confuses some of you still. You can be indexed and in the sandbox at the same time. The easiest way to understand this is to realize that while Google will acknowledge that it knows you exist - ie. indexing your URL - it won't necessarily index you in the serp's for related keywords - something known as being in Google's sandbox. This means that you can find your blog on Google by searching for your URL but not by using keywords. If you are sandboxed Google will de-list your blog from any of the keyword serp listings while it may or may not list your URL.
When Google has determined that your blog is legitimate and offers relevant content for certain terms it will suddenly release you from the sandbox and your blog will begin to appear in the keyword listings. These are the listings that you would like to rank number 1 for.
My new blog showed up in the keyword serp's on day two. It went from not-indexed for the term "Blinkweb" to number 3 in the serp's. (see below)
Over the next two days it dropped back to 5th and then today it has disappeared from the listings altogether. Does this sound familiar to any of you. I get a lot of comments from readers asking why they show up on the serp's and then suddenly disappear. The answer is that this has become the new normal with the current Google algorithm. I would love to give you an expert answer as to what is happening but I don't know myself - I can only tell you what "seems" to be happening from my own observations.
What seems to be happening is that fresh content plays a larger roll in serp rankings - at least for "busy" keywords - topics that suddenly get a lot of keyword hits. This means that when something new like Blinkwebs comes along there is a sudden fleury of blogs using that keyword. When someone queries the term on Google, it proceeds to build the list. Since there are no old established authority sites for the term everyone gets to play on an even field - at least for a while. In this situation the bot has it easy and simply lists sites based on it's on-page SEO (Is the keyword in the blog's URL? - in the blog's Title? - in the Post Title? - in the post's Text?) This coupled with fresh relevant posts will get your site on top of the index - at least at first. When fresh content slows down and G begins collecting more and more data regarding the keyword other factors begin having an effect on the listings - PR and backlinks come into play. Within a short time Google begins to re-order the list and in time it will settle down to the point that the page 1 listings will remain fairly stable. The back page listings are rarely stable and rankings can bounce around constantly. At least this is how Google has behaved in the past.
At present I have noticed a prolonged shake up in the serp's for old established niches like "Make Money Online" and the page 1 listings for these older niches have been in a state of constant change for several weeks now. This has all transpired at the same time as G introduced the "Personalized Results" serp's which no doubt has some bearing on all this. The end result however, is that it has become normal to get indexed, rank well in the serp's for your keywords, suddenly find yourself de-indexed, then a few days later suddenly appear back in the serp's but usually not ranking as well as you did in the beginning.
I guess I am trying to tell you to not panic if this happens to you. As long as you have a legitimate site then you will re-appear in the serp's but you may go through the disappearing act a few times before settling down. Just be patient and more importantly keep posting and securing backlinks.
Case in point.
This blog took 2nd spot in the serp's for the term "Blinkweb" the day after I posted my last article. It hung around page 1 for the better part of two days and then disappeared back to page 3 or more. Today it is back on page 1 in 4th spot. Now that it is back on page 1 my new blog has left the index. When it returns I hope to get it back on the first page along with this blog and anything else pointing to my site that I can. What I am going to explain now is something that I never see others doing and often wonder why.
Who says you can only have 1 spot on page 1?
I have touched on this in the past - if you are targeting a term then why not increase your traffic by simply ranking as many sites as you can on page 1 - this is especially true for affiliate marketing and when collecting leads. In most of my niches I usually have 3-4 different sites pointing to my money site in the top 10 on the serp's. I have had as many as 8 sites at once on the page and I have several with 6 sites. (Note: - don't do this with Adsense sites)
The reason for doing this is obvious - you will increase your traffic and ultimately your sales.
Since Blinkweb is a new program, page 1 on Google is up for grabs. The most relevant 10 sites will be chosen by relevancy, age, PR and most importantly who has the most relevant keyword anchored backlinks. You can assume the real Blinkweb site owned by the Callen's will probably be one of the top 10 sites but don't assume that they will be number 1. They should eventually as they will get the most anchored links in time but their site is new as well and can be outranked by older authority sites with better links - at least in the beginning.
Now what exactly am I babbling about? I am going to show you why backlinks are the key to everything when it comes to ranking well in the serp's.
Let's think about this logically. In time Google will run out of fresh content for a keyword like "Blinkweb". This is because there is only so much that can be written about it. In fact most of the 400 pages already indexed for the term have pretty much the same content. Every post reads much like mine - this is because the program hasn't been released yet and there has been no new info given about it from the designers. When Google runs out of fresh content it will start to rank the sites based on 1 factor - who are the authority sites? They determine this based on who has the most keyword authority which in turn is determined by who has the most links pointing to them with the keyword used in the link. Those who get links from higher PR sites will have an advantage over those who have low PR links but both will outrank all the other competitors that don't have relevant backlinks.
Knowing that this "Niche" is new also tells me that I don't need a lot of backlinks to rank well and even less if I was to procur high PR backlinks.
So...
I was fortunate to get 4 links to my last post in which 3 of the 4 links used the term "Blinkweb" in the link. One of the links came from a PR4 blog and another link came from a PR5 blog. Apparently 2 high PR links with keyword relevant links is enough for 4th spot at the moment.
The new blog Blinkweb by Brad Callen was fortunate to get 9 Blinkweb links. Several are from high PR blogs and all the links have keyword relevant anchor text. When it re-appears it should rank well. If you clicked the last link above you would have landed on the new blog's Technorati page - currently a no-PR page. It now has a PR4 keyword relevant link pointing at it. If I was fortunate to get a few more high PR links pointing at it then there is a good chance that it might make page 1 of the serp's as well. That makes 3 sites possible.
While we are at it - I mentioned that I have 4-5 high PR sites sending this blog and the new blog backlinks already. What if those blogs were to get a few high PR, keyword relevant backlinks of their own? They could conceivably make page 1 as well - hell that would make 9...
This isn't likely to happen but what will happen is that I will have stronger backlinks all the way down the line which will increase the strength of the keyword authority for the 2 sites that are the ultimate recipients of all this strong link juice - this blog and the new blog. If you get both blogs double indexed then you can easily occupy 4 of the 10 spots on page 1. You will get more than your share of traffic.
This is how I mount a campaign for every niche I target if it is a new topic.
Yes - most of you are not "Fortunate" enough to get 4-5 high PR backlinks. I realize this but want to mention that very few of your competitors are that fortunate either. If you were to create hubpages and lenses and post several articles and send links from some of your existing blogs then you would find that 4-5 low PR links using the proper keyword in the anchor text would get you ranked well compared to most of your competitors who have few links and even less using the keyword.
I noticed a surge of hubpages and lenses created in the last few days for "Blinkweb". I suspect a few of my readers have decided to jump on this niche and good for them. Most are using the hubs and lenses to send links back to their money site which is good but don't forget to build links to those hubs and lenses as well. Don't just get links for your main site - get them for all the sites linking to your main site - spend more time building keyword authority and you won't need as many links to rank well. Your competition will be busy getting hundreds of PR0 non keyword relevant links from do-follow blogs and low link juice bookmarks.
Don't panic if you aren't on page 1 in a week. Be patient and build authority. This isn't short term blogging. If your product or service is a winner it will produce sales for a while albeit usually more when new. If it takes a month to rank on top you will still have a decent run. If you keep building links you will hit page 1 - after an initial burst most of your competition will stop getting links - they either give up or they make page 1 and don't think they need to do any more work.
I have yet to find a product that I couldn't get on page 1 for. Some took longer but in the end every one made page 1 simply because I never stop getting backlinks and backlinks for my backlinks and backlinks for those backlinks as well. My main money site in any given niche may only have a dozen or so quality links but each one of those links has a dozen quality links of its own and so on. I hope you get the picture. If you build a hubpage to send link juice to your money site then build two more to send link juice to the first hubpage. Don't be surprised to one day find all three hubs on page 1 for your keyword.
Ok, a long post to tell you to work smarter and not harder. You don't need thousands of links - you just need a small number of really good links. You can get them by building up several interlinking sites from different venues - hubpages, articles, squidoo, technorati, social sites etc. Any page that links to your money site should be strengthened with keyword relevant links of their own. This pays off by ensuring your main site makes top ranking and more often than not you will rank several of the support sites as well. I do this all the time and have seen the difference in traffic when I get 3-4 sites on page 1. Btw, once you get 1 authority site on page 1 it makes it easy to get other sites on the page as well. Use it to link to new sites.
Keywords
If you read the two blog posts on the new blog you will notice some of the keywords I used. Aside from "Blinkweb" I used the term "Review", "News" and "Video" in the blog description and posts along with "Brad and Matt Callen". Experience has shown me that the quickest way to get traffic is to use "Review", "News" or "Video" in a blog post. When people can't remember the product name they will use names they remember like "Brad Callen". I don't just want to rank well for the term "Blinkweb". I also want to rank well for the term "Blinkweb Review", "Blinkweb News" and "Blinkweb Video". These are terms that will be searched for in addition to the main keyword.
In fact...
The screenshot above is from my statcounter stats and lists the keywords used to find my new blog. Notice what long tails were used?
I normally write really long posts in order to get as many long tails indexed as possible. In a case like Blinkweb I don't have to. It is an affiliate product and as such there will be a limited variety of keywords used when searching for it. A term like making money online may have hundreds of related long tails used in queries but a term like "Blinkweb" is never going to be searched for using more than half a dozen terms. It doesn't require a long post to optimize half a dozen keywords.
At the time my Blinkweb blog was ranked number 1 for "Blinkweb Review", Number 2 for "Blinkweb News" and in the top 3 for "Blinkweb". Not bad for a two day old blog.
The more keywords you rank for the more traffic so don't just target the obvious main keyword.
There you have it. I told you internet marketing is a numbers game. The more traffic you get the more money you make. The best way to increase your traffic is to rank as many sites as you can on page 1 and target all the relevant keywords - not just the main one - with each site. Remember this is possible when dealing with a new product because there are no pre-established authority sites. You can become the authority site if you are fast, SEO properly and most of all build links faster and better than every one else. Yup - it is work but more importantly - it does work.
That's enough for today. I will be adding some pure SEO posts over the next few days which won't teach you a thing. I need a real "Blinkweb" post and a few other pages so just ignore them if you are a regular reader. I will continue this tutorial in a few days after the serp's hopefully settle out a bit.
Till then,
Cheers
Griz
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Make Money Online Tutorial - Step 1
I am going to take you through a complete start to finish tutorial on how I make money online. As my regular readers know I took a month long hiatus recently and aside from doing a lot of much needed maintenance on my blog network I spent a fair amount of time surfing the MMO/Blogging niches including most of my friends and readers. One thing struck me time and again - most bloggers can whip up a fancy looking site and in most cases fill their blogs with good, original and even interesting posts. A lot of you have even come to grips with the basics of SEO and have produced Google friendly pages. The only thing that was almost universally missing from the hundreds of sites I visited was the Money Maker - meaning that most of you haven't focused on how you intend to earn money with your efforts. The exception are those who have built Adsense sites.
This tutorial will not focus on Adsense. I have covered this enough for everybody to know the basics by now. I want to look at affiliate marketing and more specifically at lead generation.
Because of the impulse to produce Social friendly blogs I think a good many of you get sidetracked and lose focus. I see countless blogs that have built up PR and alexa ranking and even some search traffic for their MMO blogs but fail miserably at converting visitors into buyers. This is because just about all of you built a social site first and then slapped up a bunch of 125's as an afterthought. How many times have you seen the same "Bidvertiser" ad?, "Text Link Ads" Ad? or "SEO Book" ad? Never mind the countless "Hosting" ads. The point is that your social traffic isn't buying (hell they have the same ads on their own site) and the search traffic that you get is not targeted to your ads and they too, have seen the same stuff on every site they visit.
To make money you really have to reverse the current thinking process. You don't build a site and then figure out what to sell. You figure out what to sell first and then build the site to achieve those sales and only those sales. You must concentrate on the product and resist the urge to slap up more than one type of monetization. If you are selling an affiliate product or generating leads for others then that is what the blog is for. Period.
How do you find a product that isn't saturated? This can be tough to do but I tend to only sell "new" products or programs or stuff that has nobody else selling it (more on this shortly). You find them by subscribing to all the IM gurus who flog crap weekly - once in a while they actually come up with something decent - not often though. This is the obvious answer but not the best. Quit looking for IM products to sell to other IMer's. Join all the hobby forums. Keep abreast of new products, books, calendars, how to's etc in all the other niches online that gather traffic from the mom and pop civilian crowd. Pay special attention to what the teenage crowd is currently raving about. Use the social networks for what they were meant to do - disseminate information. You are looking for anything new that will tweak the public's interest.
Once you find something interesting the next step is to find a method to monetize it. Most of you will see if the product uses affiliates. If it doesn't you pass and move on... that is a mistake. I look for things that don't have affiliates. I don't want anybody else selling what I'm selling. I prefer to make money selling leads rather than affiliate sales - there is less competition and you can set your price if you are good at it.
An example.
I found a company that sells batteries for 2 wheeled golf carts. This is like a pull cart but has a small electric motor attached so that the golfer can control the cart with a remote hand held controller. I first noticed these being used by a lot of the elderly golfers at a golf club I belong too. The batteries only last a few years and then need replacing. I asked a couple of gents where they got the replacements. Turns out a couple of local firms carried them but didn't produce them. I found a manufacturer and several dealers in several major centers and guess what - none of them knew the slightest thing about SEO although they all had websites. I quickly created several perfectly optimized blogs targeting each of the major local niches and not surprisingly ranked on top of the serp's in short order. This brought in a steady if not large stream of traffic.
Now, I had nothing to sell. Just information about the carts and batteries. So how do you make money doing this. Yes you could slap up Adsense but there wasn't much for advertisers. What I did was simple. I picked a dealer in each city and linked to the dealers site. I left the link up for a week. I tracked the traffic that I sent to the dealer - about 20-30 people a day. (You can use feedburner to give you exit stats if you are using a free Blogger blog - no cost, no hassle)
After I removed the link I sent an email to the dealer and basically told them who I was and what I did. I mentioned that I had sent them a couple of hundred visitors and politely asked if they would like me to continue to do so. They all thanked me and said yes. I asked if the increase in sales could justify a weekly fee for the traffic - I suggested $25 per week to the first dealer. They agreed. I suggested $35 to the second and eventually raised it to $50 a week with the final dealer. (They are all paying $50 per week now during peak season (summer) and $15 per week off season. Yes I had to explain PayPal to all of them but they caught on quickly. One dealer did try to lower the fee stating that his sales weren't high enough from my traffic. I responded that I would send the traffic to his competition and see how they converted. He said he thought he might just keep paying me the $50 a week. I said fine...
That is lead generation in a nutshell. No competition and if you find a product or service with a high end ticket price you can ask for a high end fee. One thing I have learned is that very few of us can generate traffic but everyone is trying to sell something. Give them the traffic to sell too and they will kiss your ass... and pay you. If they don't the competition usually does.
I am going to keep these posts short because I want those of you who are interested to work along with me as I go. I have picked a product to promote and will walk you through the whole process in the upcoming posts. I have picked Brad and Matt Callen's soon to be released Blinkweb software that is designed for total non-techies to use in order to build websites and blogs without needing any coding experience at all. Or at least that's what they claim. They have released a short intro video about Blinkweb but that's about it. I have no idea if it's a piece of crap or not but I am hoping that it isn't. Brad Callen has created two excellent programs in the past - SEO Elite and Keyword Elite. Matt Callen's HyperVRE was/is a piece of shit though so it's a toss up as to what we will get. In the event that it turns out to be a winner I want in early and have already set up the blog. You can see it here. Blinkweb.
I have not done anything to get it ranked yet - just a link from this blog in order to get the new site indexed. Google indexed it yesterday about an hour after I added the link on this site. That is why you should all have a flagship blog at your disposal. I will be getting links shortly in order to climb the serp's but thought I would wait for the rest of you and show you that process as well.
When I say "wait for the rest of you" I mean to say - get off your butts and find a product or business that sells something and go to Blogger and set up the site just like I have done. (yes you can spend money and use self hosting but remember I like to set up dozens of these types of sites knowing that most will fail - that's why Blogger is ideal - no cost)
Note: Our friend Frank at OpTempo has built a nice plain SEO friendly theme for wordpress that is similar to this Blogger Minima theme. (Actually it's way uglier) You can learn more here Boring Memo Wordpress Theme or Download the Boring Memo Wordpress Theme or view the Demo of Boring Memo Wordpress Theme
Don't worry if the product or business has an affiliate program. Just find something that can be sold either by you or a business that needs traffic. We aren't trying to make money at this stage. We are trying to find a traffic source so keep that in mind. Find something that you believe will entice a decent amount of traffic. Once we get traffic we will worry about how to convert it - there is almost aways some kind of buyer.
A couple of don'ts
- don't email me asking what I think of your product idea. Just pick one - if it fails big deal. Find another one. I have shown some traffic stats in the past for my affiliate sites - lots of them were duds and a few were winners. This is a numbers game. Just learn how to set up these types of sites properly and then start mass producing them for everything you can think of. There is no cost other than time if you use a free host. Affiliate marketing is a numbers game. Period.
- don't pick a highly competitive niche. It will take forever to get the traffic.
- don't pick a topic that is taboo. No sex, drugs or rock n roll... G frowns on those.
Do pay attention to local niches especially for leads. Who in your town is selling something and would pay you for the traffic?
Ok - if you have been paying attention to my SEO methods then you should be able to see what I'm targeting on the Blinkweb blog and then set up your blog and first post in the same manner.
If you don't have an authority blog to use in order to get indexed send me your URL and Keyword and I'll find a link for you.
Next post we will look at getting the backlinks necessary for top serp ranking.
Cheers,
Griz
On a side note;
One of the problems I have when doing these little example blogs is that I usually end up ranking better with this blog for the keyword than the example blog does. Google indexed this post within a few minutes of publishing it and traffic showed up just shortly after that. They were searching for "Blinkweb" and sure enough this blog is on page two already - with no links and no optimization for the term. See below,
This is a good sign though - it means there isn't much competition for the top spot. This is usually the case for new products so it pays to jump on them early.
And the next day...
I'm sitting at number 2...lol
This tutorial will not focus on Adsense. I have covered this enough for everybody to know the basics by now. I want to look at affiliate marketing and more specifically at lead generation.
Because of the impulse to produce Social friendly blogs I think a good many of you get sidetracked and lose focus. I see countless blogs that have built up PR and alexa ranking and even some search traffic for their MMO blogs but fail miserably at converting visitors into buyers. This is because just about all of you built a social site first and then slapped up a bunch of 125's as an afterthought. How many times have you seen the same "Bidvertiser" ad?, "Text Link Ads" Ad? or "SEO Book" ad? Never mind the countless "Hosting" ads. The point is that your social traffic isn't buying (hell they have the same ads on their own site) and the search traffic that you get is not targeted to your ads and they too, have seen the same stuff on every site they visit.
To make money you really have to reverse the current thinking process. You don't build a site and then figure out what to sell. You figure out what to sell first and then build the site to achieve those sales and only those sales. You must concentrate on the product and resist the urge to slap up more than one type of monetization. If you are selling an affiliate product or generating leads for others then that is what the blog is for. Period.
How do you find a product that isn't saturated? This can be tough to do but I tend to only sell "new" products or programs or stuff that has nobody else selling it (more on this shortly). You find them by subscribing to all the IM gurus who flog crap weekly - once in a while they actually come up with something decent - not often though. This is the obvious answer but not the best. Quit looking for IM products to sell to other IMer's. Join all the hobby forums. Keep abreast of new products, books, calendars, how to's etc in all the other niches online that gather traffic from the mom and pop civilian crowd. Pay special attention to what the teenage crowd is currently raving about. Use the social networks for what they were meant to do - disseminate information. You are looking for anything new that will tweak the public's interest.
Once you find something interesting the next step is to find a method to monetize it. Most of you will see if the product uses affiliates. If it doesn't you pass and move on... that is a mistake. I look for things that don't have affiliates. I don't want anybody else selling what I'm selling. I prefer to make money selling leads rather than affiliate sales - there is less competition and you can set your price if you are good at it.
An example.
I found a company that sells batteries for 2 wheeled golf carts. This is like a pull cart but has a small electric motor attached so that the golfer can control the cart with a remote hand held controller. I first noticed these being used by a lot of the elderly golfers at a golf club I belong too. The batteries only last a few years and then need replacing. I asked a couple of gents where they got the replacements. Turns out a couple of local firms carried them but didn't produce them. I found a manufacturer and several dealers in several major centers and guess what - none of them knew the slightest thing about SEO although they all had websites. I quickly created several perfectly optimized blogs targeting each of the major local niches and not surprisingly ranked on top of the serp's in short order. This brought in a steady if not large stream of traffic.
Now, I had nothing to sell. Just information about the carts and batteries. So how do you make money doing this. Yes you could slap up Adsense but there wasn't much for advertisers. What I did was simple. I picked a dealer in each city and linked to the dealers site. I left the link up for a week. I tracked the traffic that I sent to the dealer - about 20-30 people a day. (You can use feedburner to give you exit stats if you are using a free Blogger blog - no cost, no hassle)
After I removed the link I sent an email to the dealer and basically told them who I was and what I did. I mentioned that I had sent them a couple of hundred visitors and politely asked if they would like me to continue to do so. They all thanked me and said yes. I asked if the increase in sales could justify a weekly fee for the traffic - I suggested $25 per week to the first dealer. They agreed. I suggested $35 to the second and eventually raised it to $50 a week with the final dealer. (They are all paying $50 per week now during peak season (summer) and $15 per week off season. Yes I had to explain PayPal to all of them but they caught on quickly. One dealer did try to lower the fee stating that his sales weren't high enough from my traffic. I responded that I would send the traffic to his competition and see how they converted. He said he thought he might just keep paying me the $50 a week. I said fine...
That is lead generation in a nutshell. No competition and if you find a product or service with a high end ticket price you can ask for a high end fee. One thing I have learned is that very few of us can generate traffic but everyone is trying to sell something. Give them the traffic to sell too and they will kiss your ass... and pay you. If they don't the competition usually does.
I am going to keep these posts short because I want those of you who are interested to work along with me as I go. I have picked a product to promote and will walk you through the whole process in the upcoming posts. I have picked Brad and Matt Callen's soon to be released Blinkweb software that is designed for total non-techies to use in order to build websites and blogs without needing any coding experience at all. Or at least that's what they claim. They have released a short intro video about Blinkweb but that's about it. I have no idea if it's a piece of crap or not but I am hoping that it isn't. Brad Callen has created two excellent programs in the past - SEO Elite and Keyword Elite. Matt Callen's HyperVRE was/is a piece of shit though so it's a toss up as to what we will get. In the event that it turns out to be a winner I want in early and have already set up the blog. You can see it here. Blinkweb.
I have not done anything to get it ranked yet - just a link from this blog in order to get the new site indexed. Google indexed it yesterday about an hour after I added the link on this site. That is why you should all have a flagship blog at your disposal. I will be getting links shortly in order to climb the serp's but thought I would wait for the rest of you and show you that process as well.
When I say "wait for the rest of you" I mean to say - get off your butts and find a product or business that sells something and go to Blogger and set up the site just like I have done. (yes you can spend money and use self hosting but remember I like to set up dozens of these types of sites knowing that most will fail - that's why Blogger is ideal - no cost)
Note: Our friend Frank at OpTempo has built a nice plain SEO friendly theme for wordpress that is similar to this Blogger Minima theme. (Actually it's way uglier) You can learn more here Boring Memo Wordpress Theme or Download the Boring Memo Wordpress Theme or view the Demo of Boring Memo Wordpress Theme
Don't worry if the product or business has an affiliate program. Just find something that can be sold either by you or a business that needs traffic. We aren't trying to make money at this stage. We are trying to find a traffic source so keep that in mind. Find something that you believe will entice a decent amount of traffic. Once we get traffic we will worry about how to convert it - there is almost aways some kind of buyer.
A couple of don'ts
- don't email me asking what I think of your product idea. Just pick one - if it fails big deal. Find another one. I have shown some traffic stats in the past for my affiliate sites - lots of them were duds and a few were winners. This is a numbers game. Just learn how to set up these types of sites properly and then start mass producing them for everything you can think of. There is no cost other than time if you use a free host. Affiliate marketing is a numbers game. Period.
- don't pick a highly competitive niche. It will take forever to get the traffic.
- don't pick a topic that is taboo. No sex, drugs or rock n roll... G frowns on those.
Do pay attention to local niches especially for leads. Who in your town is selling something and would pay you for the traffic?
Ok - if you have been paying attention to my SEO methods then you should be able to see what I'm targeting on the Blinkweb blog and then set up your blog and first post in the same manner.
If you don't have an authority blog to use in order to get indexed send me your URL and Keyword and I'll find a link for you.
Next post we will look at getting the backlinks necessary for top serp ranking.
Cheers,
Griz
On a side note;
One of the problems I have when doing these little example blogs is that I usually end up ranking better with this blog for the keyword than the example blog does. Google indexed this post within a few minutes of publishing it and traffic showed up just shortly after that. They were searching for "Blinkweb" and sure enough this blog is on page two already - with no links and no optimization for the term. See below,
This is a good sign though - it means there isn't much competition for the top spot. This is usually the case for new products so it pays to jump on them early.
And the next day...
I'm sitting at number 2...lol
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Internet Marketing isn't Blogging
Bloggers don't make money online - Internet Marketers do. It has taken me a while to understand why so many of my readers just don't get it. Bloggers want to make money but they want to do it blogging. They have integrity. They want to be recognized by other bloggers. They want to be famous. They think the A-list makes the most money online.
Internet Marketers only want to make money. They use blogs but they don't blog. You have never heard of them. They make a lot more money than the A-list.
I have been telling bloggers for some time now how to make money online and it isn't working. You can only make money by getting large volumes of traffic and it has to be traffic that will spend money on something they want or will click ads in pursuit of something they want. Bloggers spend all their time trying to get other bloggers to read their blogs. Bloggers don't spend money and even if they did there are not enough of them to make a living on. Internet Marketers spend all their time optimizing pages for the search engines and getting backlinks.
You have heard me say all this before and yet you still chase bloggers.
A little perspective
The blog you are reading now averages about 2000 visitors a day - 3/4 of the traffic comes from Google. The rest are bloggers. Adsense earnings average about $100/day. Affiliate sales are sporadic at best and earn me maybe $500 a month. This is not an affiliate sales site however and could do a lot better if I concentrated my efforts on the search traffic. I also make about $100 a week selling leads (Project Payday).
Most of you would think this is a pretty good income and you will continue to build up your blog in hopes of achieving a similar income. Most of you will never achieve it because you will never get the search traffic. You will try and get more readers.
The screenshot below is of one of my statcounter accounts. The stats you see are for all the affiliate sites I have built over the past three months. Most are for products on clickbank, CJ and ROI Rocket. Affiliate products have a decent return for about three months and then interest drops off drastically. A few products like SEO Elite and Keyword Elite stand the test of time but they are an exception - they are different from all the rest because they are actually useful. Most products are crap.
I optimize affiliate sales blogs just like my Adsense blogs. I pre-sell the product and direct the visitor to my affiliate link. You will see that I have as many failures as successes. Every site on the list is or was on page 1 of the serp's but some don't generate interest, others get sandboxed and some generate a lot of traffic. This past month I generated about 300,000 page views. 1% clicked through to the sales page. About 3000 visitors. 10% of these actually bought a product - approx 300 sales (289 to be exact). My average commission is $23 for a total of just under $6700. I spent a grand total of nothing on hosting or domains. I spent nothing on PPC. The only expense I have is buying backlinks - about $750 this month but this should be divided equally between all several hundred sites that I manage - about $3.26 per site.
Click all images to enlarge.
Remember the Asia'h Epperson blog I created?
I spent less than an hour on the blog - creating it, writing 5 posts and collecting 20 backlinks. I haven't touched it in a month.
It has generated almost 10,000 page views.
It still ranks number 5. It outranks lots of older established PR sites.
Why?
I want you folks to think about everything you think you know about making money online.
Do you need an aged site?
Do you need a site with tons of quality content?
Do you need a fancy wordpress blog or website?
Do you need web 2.0?
Do you need stumblers and diggers?
Let's see who has been paying attention.
You tell me why I can create free blogs for Adsense or Affiliate sales and rank on top of the serp's with little content and do it all in a matter of days and create a steady stream of hundreds of thousands of visitors.
Oh, in case I still don't have your attention...
The best answer will get $500 from me - yup - straight to your paypal account.
There is a catch though - the best answer will be the person who shows me and not tells me - the money goes to the first person who outranks my Asia'h blog for the term "Asia'h Epperson". ( I will not do a thing to keep my ranking ) If any of you are serious about making money online then prove it.
I am serious - I really want to know if anybody has learned a thing or if I am just wasting my time with this blog. I can make a lot more money turning it into an affiliate sales page like all the other sites in the "make money online" niche.
Cheers,
Griz
Internet Marketers only want to make money. They use blogs but they don't blog. You have never heard of them. They make a lot more money than the A-list.
I have been telling bloggers for some time now how to make money online and it isn't working. You can only make money by getting large volumes of traffic and it has to be traffic that will spend money on something they want or will click ads in pursuit of something they want. Bloggers spend all their time trying to get other bloggers to read their blogs. Bloggers don't spend money and even if they did there are not enough of them to make a living on. Internet Marketers spend all their time optimizing pages for the search engines and getting backlinks.
You have heard me say all this before and yet you still chase bloggers.
A little perspective
The blog you are reading now averages about 2000 visitors a day - 3/4 of the traffic comes from Google. The rest are bloggers. Adsense earnings average about $100/day. Affiliate sales are sporadic at best and earn me maybe $500 a month. This is not an affiliate sales site however and could do a lot better if I concentrated my efforts on the search traffic. I also make about $100 a week selling leads (Project Payday).
Most of you would think this is a pretty good income and you will continue to build up your blog in hopes of achieving a similar income. Most of you will never achieve it because you will never get the search traffic. You will try and get more readers.
The screenshot below is of one of my statcounter accounts. The stats you see are for all the affiliate sites I have built over the past three months. Most are for products on clickbank, CJ and ROI Rocket. Affiliate products have a decent return for about three months and then interest drops off drastically. A few products like SEO Elite and Keyword Elite stand the test of time but they are an exception - they are different from all the rest because they are actually useful. Most products are crap.
I optimize affiliate sales blogs just like my Adsense blogs. I pre-sell the product and direct the visitor to my affiliate link. You will see that I have as many failures as successes. Every site on the list is or was on page 1 of the serp's but some don't generate interest, others get sandboxed and some generate a lot of traffic. This past month I generated about 300,000 page views. 1% clicked through to the sales page. About 3000 visitors. 10% of these actually bought a product - approx 300 sales (289 to be exact). My average commission is $23 for a total of just under $6700. I spent a grand total of nothing on hosting or domains. I spent nothing on PPC. The only expense I have is buying backlinks - about $750 this month but this should be divided equally between all several hundred sites that I manage - about $3.26 per site.
Click all images to enlarge.
Remember the Asia'h Epperson blog I created?
I spent less than an hour on the blog - creating it, writing 5 posts and collecting 20 backlinks. I haven't touched it in a month.
It has generated almost 10,000 page views.
It still ranks number 5. It outranks lots of older established PR sites.
Why?
I want you folks to think about everything you think you know about making money online.
Do you need an aged site?
Do you need a site with tons of quality content?
Do you need a fancy wordpress blog or website?
Do you need web 2.0?
Do you need stumblers and diggers?
Let's see who has been paying attention.
You tell me why I can create free blogs for Adsense or Affiliate sales and rank on top of the serp's with little content and do it all in a matter of days and create a steady stream of hundreds of thousands of visitors.
Oh, in case I still don't have your attention...
The best answer will get $500 from me - yup - straight to your paypal account.
There is a catch though - the best answer will be the person who shows me and not tells me - the money goes to the first person who outranks my Asia'h blog for the term "Asia'h Epperson". ( I will not do a thing to keep my ranking ) If any of you are serious about making money online then prove it.
I am serious - I really want to know if anybody has learned a thing or if I am just wasting my time with this blog. I can make a lot more money turning it into an affiliate sales page like all the other sites in the "make money online" niche.
Cheers,
Griz
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
MLM is not Affiliate Marketing-Really?
I thought I would include this information about MLM and Pyramid-just so you have an idea of the difference, and to prevent you from �well, being side-swiped into a pyramid deal. I have always had to remind myself that when a good deal comes along, you have to say to yourself, �Is this too good to be true?� And if you hear yourself answer � �Yeah!� Then forget it-something may definitely not be working in your favor. The one thing that drives many people forward with MLM is the hype and the money possibilities. But always, always look at the total picture and what they have to offer, and what you have to do and give to gain their claim to "easy money".
And I should emphasize, that there are some legitimate MLM programs, as a matter of fact, I know some one in my area who partakes in the party promotions. She does have to work rather hard- and getting new people is always a challenge.
MLM or Pyramid-What�s the difference?
First let me say MLM is not Affiliate Marketing. Sure you sign up for the program. They even give you a nice website and possibility some free leads to help you promote their products. So what is MLM-the good and bad.
What is MLM
MLM stands for Multi-Level Marketing. It is the selling of products by using independent distributors, who in turn, try to recruit others on their downline.
(downline defined: people that are below you)
As a distributor, you must persuade 5, 6, or 10 people that the product you are selling is great. Thus, getting them in your downline. Though MLM is legal, it does skirt within the gray areas of the law. So knowing the difference between a legitimate MLM program and a pyramid scheme is important.
Legitimate MLM offers:
1. An income can be earned solely on the sale of services or products.
2. Offers commission from people under you
3. New people that come aboard may have to pay for their own training, training material and may have to buy a significant amount of products in the MLM program to stay active.
4. MLM follows the 70% rule. You have to sell 70% of the inventory you purchased before buying more. This prevents inventory loading-and the claiming of additional bonuses.
So, when does the MLM begin to look like a pyramid scheme?
When does MLM become a pyramid scheme?
MLM slides into a pyramid scheme when the salespeople become more concerned with recruiting a downline; or buying more product than they will ever sell, just to get the bonuses or to reach the next level. Here are some factors to consider before outlaying a good sum of money and your time.
1. If the product is so good, why aren�t they selling it through the traditional marketing system?
2. Why is it okay to have no experience? And you will hear: �Anybody can make this work!� It�s an opportunity of a lifetime!� (Boy, is that an understatement to losing your money).
3. Sales people � the more sales people there are, the quicker the saturation of the product. What�s left? With any product, over time there has to be at least partial saturation.
4. Who�s making the money?
5. Are they selling you�re a dream of �easy money�? With this one, you will have to step back, stop salivating at the thought of big bucks-and take a good hard look at what they are saying.
6. Are they more interested in having you get people in your downline.
7. They don�t put a threshold on the ratio of how many products you buy to the the number of products you sell.
8. If you get a bad taste in your mouth or a gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach, that may be your first unconscious clue that maybe something is not quite right with this opportunity.
Yes, MLM programs or party planning programs are legal and sustainable- but the legality of these programs hit the gray area of the law. The biggest question you have to ask yourself is this, �What will be my end benefit?� And if you step back and look objectively at your situation, and if all your hard work is only benefiting the people above you, then it might be a pyramid.
How MLM and Affiliate Marketing 2-Tier Is Different
Some affiliate programs give you two ways to earn a commission: 1) if a customer buys the actual product or service; and 2) through the promotion of the business�s affiliate program to others. The additional income is a small residual income from sales made by your downline, and I might add, it doesn�t cut into the commission that is being made by your affiliates. �Well, this is just like MLM,� you say. No, not really. Why?
1) You don�t have to encourage others to join their affiliate program-it is your option to choose to do so.
2) You don�t have to buy the product-just sell it.
However, if you elect to encourage others to join their affiliate program, I would suggest that you make sure that the program pays. If they pay you on time without question, then and only then promote the 2-tier program. This helps to keep your creditability intact, and prevent others from feeling your pain of loss income.To conclude, MLM is not an affiliate program. However, MLM can be either a legitimate undertaking or a pyramid. That is where you need to know the difference, as well as, what you want in a home business.
About the Author:
Vickie J Scanlon -- Visit her site at: My Affiliate Place for free tools,
articles, ebooks, how to info, travel and tech accessories, software, computers for personal or affiliate business use. Looking for weekly articles-sign up to my blog to get the latest articles in your email or through rss.
And I should emphasize, that there are some legitimate MLM programs, as a matter of fact, I know some one in my area who partakes in the party promotions. She does have to work rather hard- and getting new people is always a challenge.
MLM or Pyramid-What�s the difference?
First let me say MLM is not Affiliate Marketing. Sure you sign up for the program. They even give you a nice website and possibility some free leads to help you promote their products. So what is MLM-the good and bad.
What is MLM
MLM stands for Multi-Level Marketing. It is the selling of products by using independent distributors, who in turn, try to recruit others on their downline.
(downline defined: people that are below you)
As a distributor, you must persuade 5, 6, or 10 people that the product you are selling is great. Thus, getting them in your downline. Though MLM is legal, it does skirt within the gray areas of the law. So knowing the difference between a legitimate MLM program and a pyramid scheme is important.
Legitimate MLM offers:
1. An income can be earned solely on the sale of services or products.
2. Offers commission from people under you
3. New people that come aboard may have to pay for their own training, training material and may have to buy a significant amount of products in the MLM program to stay active.
4. MLM follows the 70% rule. You have to sell 70% of the inventory you purchased before buying more. This prevents inventory loading-and the claiming of additional bonuses.
So, when does the MLM begin to look like a pyramid scheme?
When does MLM become a pyramid scheme?
MLM slides into a pyramid scheme when the salespeople become more concerned with recruiting a downline; or buying more product than they will ever sell, just to get the bonuses or to reach the next level. Here are some factors to consider before outlaying a good sum of money and your time.
1. If the product is so good, why aren�t they selling it through the traditional marketing system?
2. Why is it okay to have no experience? And you will hear: �Anybody can make this work!� It�s an opportunity of a lifetime!� (Boy, is that an understatement to losing your money).
3. Sales people � the more sales people there are, the quicker the saturation of the product. What�s left? With any product, over time there has to be at least partial saturation.
4. Who�s making the money?
5. Are they selling you�re a dream of �easy money�? With this one, you will have to step back, stop salivating at the thought of big bucks-and take a good hard look at what they are saying.
6. Are they more interested in having you get people in your downline.
7. They don�t put a threshold on the ratio of how many products you buy to the the number of products you sell.
8. If you get a bad taste in your mouth or a gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach, that may be your first unconscious clue that maybe something is not quite right with this opportunity.
Yes, MLM programs or party planning programs are legal and sustainable- but the legality of these programs hit the gray area of the law. The biggest question you have to ask yourself is this, �What will be my end benefit?� And if you step back and look objectively at your situation, and if all your hard work is only benefiting the people above you, then it might be a pyramid.
How MLM and Affiliate Marketing 2-Tier Is Different
Some affiliate programs give you two ways to earn a commission: 1) if a customer buys the actual product or service; and 2) through the promotion of the business�s affiliate program to others. The additional income is a small residual income from sales made by your downline, and I might add, it doesn�t cut into the commission that is being made by your affiliates. �Well, this is just like MLM,� you say. No, not really. Why?
1) You don�t have to encourage others to join their affiliate program-it is your option to choose to do so.
2) You don�t have to buy the product-just sell it.
However, if you elect to encourage others to join their affiliate program, I would suggest that you make sure that the program pays. If they pay you on time without question, then and only then promote the 2-tier program. This helps to keep your creditability intact, and prevent others from feeling your pain of loss income.To conclude, MLM is not an affiliate program. However, MLM can be either a legitimate undertaking or a pyramid. That is where you need to know the difference, as well as, what you want in a home business.
About the Author:
Vickie J Scanlon -- Visit her site at: My Affiliate Place for free tools,
articles, ebooks, how to info, travel and tech accessories, software, computers for personal or affiliate business use. Looking for weekly articles-sign up to my blog to get the latest articles in your email or through rss.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Answers to your Questions
I have been attempting to catch up on some of my mail and thought I would post a few letters here which encompass topics I get a lot of questions on.
Hey,
Thanks for your blog on making money online. It has
been very helpful. I originally found it because I was
searching for a review on project payday. I never
bought the book, and I've made a few hundred dollars
from that system and I have a plan to make much more
from it.
I appreciate your honesty and good information on how
to make money. I finish college this year, and I don't
want to go out and get a job because I want to do some
traveling and other things. I've had some success
with MLM, but I don't know if I can get a big enough
business built before I graduate. I wanted to ask you
what kind of income you think is possible from online
marketing and how much you make from the blogs you
run.
I've got some time I can put into researching and
learning about different methods. Would you recommend
that I put my time into learning blogs, adsense, etc.
and then selling products from a website I make? Or
what?
Any suggestions or advice you have would be
appreciated. Also, is online marketing all you do?
Thanks. I'm sure this is a stereotypical message you
get from beginners, but I appreciate your openness to
helping out.
Daniel
Thanks for the email Daniel.
First off, let me say to everyone that you can make money online and some of you can even earn a living doing this... but
There are a few things that need to be understood before you get your hopes up. The biggest hurdle you will have is your own patience, or lack thereof. One thing that I have found is that unless you have your own product to sell and even then it has to be somewhat unique and have mass appeal, you will not make a lot of money quickly. This fact alone will cause a huge percentage of marketers to try for a while and then give up. Having said that I am not suggesting that this is the only way to earn a living online, it's not - it's just one of the fastest ways to make cash online and sometimes a lot of it.
Now, given that most of us don't have our own product we have to look at other methods and accept the fact that it will take longer and the money will flow in slower. People like me have turned to the publishing side and basically make money by selling other peoples stuff. To do this successfully you need to put in a fair amount of time researching your chosen method, ie using Adwords to sell Affiliate products, adsense or squeeze pages/landing pages. If not Adwords then you need to look at websites/blogs and learn how to master SEO techniques in order to attract traffic. This method (which I primarily use) takes time and in truth allow yourself 6 months to start seeing anything approaching results. Eventually you will combine both methods - SEO and PPC for even better results.
I get a lot of emails from people who are in many ways "Desperate" and need to make money online as a way out of the job they hate or the mountain of debt they have accumulated. They are inasmuch saying that they need money now and can't wait 6 months to start making money and even if they did the money made wouldn't be enough. For these people I tell them the truth - online marketing is not the answer. There are online jobs though for those that can't or won't look for a new job in the "real" world. Project Payday is a job. Type at Home jobs, call centers, online writing jobs, web site design, software development are all available and the list goes on. You won't get rich in most cases but you will earn money and you can start right now. That said - these kind of jobs are probably not what most of you want - am I right?
We all have a dream - I want to turn on my computer for an hour a day - push a few buttons - watch my bank account balance balloon to obscene proportions and then saunter over to the first Tee box at the golf course located next to my 80 room Mansion. Oh and I want this daily.
While the details may differ I bet a lot of you have the same dream. And why not - it's the dream of "Freedom", real freedom of everything we hate; having a boss, having a schedule, worrying over money.
Of course some of you aren't as greedy and only want to make a few bucks to help out. You aren't looking to quit your job and you aren't desperate for a quick fix. I mention you folks for a reason. You are the ones that will most likely make a decent living online.
Why?
Simple really. People like you will stick with your online business long enough to see results, albeit a little at a time. Each time you succeed you will move to the next step, expand your knowledge, try more things, get more results and the cycle will keep repeating itself. As time goes on you will find yourself making a decent income, realizing that it didn't happen overnight and that a lot of work actually went into it.
Before any of you do anything else ask yourself which type of person are you? Desperate? A get rich quick Dreamer? Or a stable, patient and hard working person with a real interest in the online world?
If you are desperate or dreaming of getting rich quick - quit now. I really mean that but I know you wont. You will eventually but not until you have wasted enough money and time that your optimism turns south and then and only then will you join the legions of bitter and cynical ex-internet marketers. By the way, along the way you will fill the pockets of the people who are successful at this game. They thank you and really don't want you to quit yet.
I hope I am not being to hard but I have learned that short of being born with a rare and special gift we have to work for what we want and need the patience to see it through. Actually the super talented people have to work hard too. Any successful person has too and does. So will you.
Daniel asked, "what kind of income you think is possible from online marketing and how much you make from the blogs you run."
There is no single answer to how much you can make simply because your own abilities are the measure of your limitations. One of the biggest marketing ploys is to hype products with the "Anybody can make money with this or that" pitch. This really isn't true in most cases. Let's face it - the smarter you are (whatever that really means) , the more knowledgeable you are, the harder working you are, the more persistent you are, the length you are willing to go and the boundaries you are willing to cross all play a huge factor in your chances of succeeding online.
I could say that if you do everything I've done you should be making such and such amount per month in 6 months. I wont say this because even if you followed my every step I can think of one thing that will affect the outcome adversely for some and beneficially for others. To make money online you have to sell things and to sell things you have to be able to convince people to buy. To do this you have to use words - written or on video - and the fact is - the better the writer you are the better you will do. If you can't write then you are doomed or you will spend a lot of money having other people do it for you.
read this
"Hi, i've read your articles, pretty nice. actually i found your website from goarticles, when you have the havads articles. i kind of interesting with this internet marketing stuff, i read lots of ebooks - which i get it for free :) , ... but the more i read, the more i get confused.
i have to admit i haven't read all of your articles, too much information. i really need to know what to start, i not feel i can write articles, i mean my english is not good gramatically, so i guess blogging? is difficult. i don't live in uk,can or us so i cannot use that payday project thing. so i really need help .. thanks"
These types of emails always break my heart. I have no answer for this person other than to tell the writer to stick to marketing in his/her own language - or if English is his/her language then they should look for something else. I don't mean to sound harsh - I'm definitely empathetic to the writer but reality says they will not succeed.
I know most of you shy away from writing - those of you that have asked me to critique your websites or blogs know that most of my advice centers around your writing and presentation. The online world is not unlike the real world - you have to be able to communicate well to succeed. This is very important.
Do you spend money on sites that are poorly written?
No.
Ok, I hear all you non-writers groaning out there. All is not lost. I mention writing primarily because, one way or another, that is how I make most of my money online and I know that most of the top money earners online all share an affinity for writing. If you are not somebody who loves to write or are simply lousy at it then you should not waste your time with websites and blogs.
PPC campaigns and affiliate marketing is where you should concentrate your energies. Make no mistake the people who do this well make a lot of money - but you have to spend a lot of money as well. And you have to do your research, lots and lots of research before you set up your campaigns. The successful Adwords user has spent years honing skills like writing compelling ads and landing pages and this is great - because you don't have to. You just have to copy them - they have done the hard work for you. This doesn't mean that you don't have to put in a lot of time researching, you do. You have to learn who is making money before you copy anyone.
I've discussed adwords elsewhere and have made recommendations on where to start so I wont get into it now. My point in all this is that all of you have to figure out your strengths and narrow your focus down to the type of online marketing you want to do and moreover what your own abilities allow you to do.
If you just need money then try an online job.
I should mention that in my case a pleasant way to make money just fell into my lap unexpectedly one day when I received an email from someone asking me to write an article for them. I had never even thought of this as a means to make money. I said sure and charged a small fee. As time has gone on I now charge a much larger fee and actually earn some decent money from it. I mention this because I have met a lot of you who are quite good at writing and you might be interested in exploring this avenue. There are plenty of sites that cater to this niche and you can join several services and sell your writing skills. Just from Daniel's letter I can see someone who knows how to write well and suggest he/she (sorry Daniel you have a gender neutral name) look into this. I love it because I just need my laptop and can work from any golf cart on the planet.
In getting back to Daniel's letter I get asked how much I make often. I can't give you an exact amount because it changes frequently. Suffice to say that my little blogging empire has generally made me about a hundred bucks a day with adsense for some time now. I use SEO and Adwords to get traffic. Lately I have been experimenting with my own ads ( Havads ) and affiliate landing pages and have been achieving some decent results.
I also have a number of strictly Adwords/Clickbank Campaigns and several mature websites in highly targeted niches that get decent amounts of free search engine traffic.
I have had weeks where I have made $3000 on adsense and as much selling affiliate products but this is by no means typical. I am always experimenting with different things so my sales are all over the place but over the last 2 months I have earned (net) about $15,000 from various projects. Keep in mind that this is not typical as I made a lot of that money from a single project that I am still refining.
If I was to give you a realistic estimate of what you could earn, given a similar set of abilities as me, then I'll use the blogs as an example. I have only been using blogs for about a year now and I have built them up to a point that they make me on average about $3000 a month. I will be honest with you though - I have a few secrets that I have not divulged to you yet and maybe never will. The reason is not so much greed as it is the fact that if everyone used my little tricks their effectiveness would be severely hampered. The good news is that while my tricks are helpful and give me a slight advantage for some things, overall they don't contribute that much more to my bottom line. (I have tested blogs using white hat and black hat techniques and while black hat is quicker at making money fast it is only temporary and then gone. White hat takes longer but once established it keeps money rolling in month after month.)
My websites are much older than my blogs and they are indexed nicely and produce a small but steady stream of income comprised of adsense and affiliate sales. They are all white hat and over time they are producing better and better results. Keep in mind that I use blogs to promote the websites and used in conjunction with each other, both perform better together than apart.
I don't use mailing lists. Most do but I don't for a couple of reasons. First of all I am not an "Internet Marketing" marketer - meaning that I am not interested in selling to the internet marketing crowd. People like you to be precise. Secondly - I'm no salesman and hate the thought of bombarding people with hyped up sales come-ons'. Just not my style but good for you if you can do this effectively.
Mailing lists are big in this niche and can be used in other venues as well but they don't really help in most of my niches. It's a battle to get people to sign up on a site that contains info on UGG boots or one that sells CROC sandals. The only IM blogs I have are like this one and I started this blog to test out my blogging techniques. I wanted to see how long it would take to conquer a large niche - and Internet Marketing is huge. By conquer I mean get my blog on page 1 of Google. If I can get there then I figure my system will get me to the top of any niche. I may not achieve my goal but that doesn't stop me from trying. Experimentation is the key and I love to experiment.
Is online marketing all you do? asked Daniel.
No.
I own my own business in the real world. It has nothing to do with the internet - I'm in the Hospitality/Tourism field. I am successful enough that any money I make online is spent on Golf Vacations. My business is seasonal and having half the year off allows me to dabble at my hobbies - this being one of them. I started playing around on the net just for something to do. I became interested in how to build my own website and everything has spiraled from there. Several years later I am still playing around with it and find myself making money doing it. I stuck with it because I could and wanted to. Time and patience. This is the only secret you really need to know about making money online.
Oh... a little luck always helps as well.
I mention luck because I have found that a lot of my "epiphany" moments online have come about because of luck and then knowing how to take advantage of the situation. Without giving away the farm I have been experimenting with a system that combines blogging with the power of social bookmarking. (By the way - the more you experiment the luckier you get.) Most of you wont know what I am talking about but you have probably seen those buttons for Digg, Delicious, Technorati, Sphere and many others in your travels. Get educated on them quick because these social bookmarks are quickly proving to be a great way to get traffic. If you use them correctly you can just about get all the traffic you want on demand - but only for short periods of time.
I was experimenting with social bookmarking "tags" when I got lucky with a subject matter that suddenly produced 1000's of hits to my blogs in a matter of minutes - yes thousands of people suddenly showed up at my site and I didn't know what to do with them. In they came and out they went - and I only made a few dollars on adsense. I quickly figured out what ads got the most clicks and changed a few keywords to get more quality ads and my adsense profits started to soar. Then it dawned on me that the advertisers were making more than me so I got rid of the ads and put up my own ads selling the same products. Bingo. The money started flowing in - and then bang. Interest in the subject matter dried up and I was done.
Now I'm waiting for another subject to come along with mass appeal and I will work the system all over again. Luckily there is always another subject coming along. At the moment there are only a small handful of people who know about the system I am talking about and we are all keeping quite - it's greatest weakness is that it won't work very well if everybody tries it. It only works because there is no competition.
Interestingly enough, because of a little luck and experimentation I discovered the concept of using my own ads which I am now using on my websites and some blogs instead of adsense. I have always known what ads performed best on my sites but traffic was never high enough to get me thinking outside the box. It was only when I suddenly got thousands of hits to a site that I stopped to realize that I was wasting traffic - ie, not profiting from it.
If 20 people come to your site a day and you make a buck with adsense you think - hey not bad, I just need a hundred more sites to do the same and I can make some money.
When 10,000 people show up and you make $2.00 on adsense you do not say - hey not bad. You say - holy crap - all those people and I made a stinkin' $2.00! You quickly look for ways to convert those people into dollars. I found a way with my own ads and then it dawned on me that I should do the same with the sites that have low traffic as well.
If I only get 5 clicks a day then why not have the person go to my salespage through my ad instead of to someone else's salespage. One sale makes a lot more money than what I lose not getting the adsense clicks.
I'm not telling you this to get you to do what I do but rather to get you to think the way I do. Nothing is written in stone so experiment - keep trying different things. Keep what works and add it to other stuff that you find that works. Don't stop experimenting just because you find one way to make money online. In time you will find yourself at the helm of a ever changing but successful online business.
In summation, each person must define their own goals and match them to their abilities. Find your strong suit and stick to it until you are competent in your field - websites - blogs - Adwords - affiliate marketing - MLM and so on. When you have mastered one area then try combining it with other fields and master each in turn or until your abilities won't allow you to go further. And remember - research, experimentation, discipline and copying what already works are all the tools you really need to succeed.
One last thing, develop an online network of friends - use the forums to start - nobody is good at everything and nobody knows everything - the more friends you make the more areas of expertise you tap into. Help others and you will help yourself.
And if you want my help just ask.
Good luck,
Griz
Hey,
Thanks for your blog on making money online. It has
been very helpful. I originally found it because I was
searching for a review on project payday. I never
bought the book, and I've made a few hundred dollars
from that system and I have a plan to make much more
from it.
I appreciate your honesty and good information on how
to make money. I finish college this year, and I don't
want to go out and get a job because I want to do some
traveling and other things. I've had some success
with MLM, but I don't know if I can get a big enough
business built before I graduate. I wanted to ask you
what kind of income you think is possible from online
marketing and how much you make from the blogs you
run.
I've got some time I can put into researching and
learning about different methods. Would you recommend
that I put my time into learning blogs, adsense, etc.
and then selling products from a website I make? Or
what?
Any suggestions or advice you have would be
appreciated. Also, is online marketing all you do?
Thanks. I'm sure this is a stereotypical message you
get from beginners, but I appreciate your openness to
helping out.
Daniel
Thanks for the email Daniel.
First off, let me say to everyone that you can make money online and some of you can even earn a living doing this... but
There are a few things that need to be understood before you get your hopes up. The biggest hurdle you will have is your own patience, or lack thereof. One thing that I have found is that unless you have your own product to sell and even then it has to be somewhat unique and have mass appeal, you will not make a lot of money quickly. This fact alone will cause a huge percentage of marketers to try for a while and then give up. Having said that I am not suggesting that this is the only way to earn a living online, it's not - it's just one of the fastest ways to make cash online and sometimes a lot of it.
Now, given that most of us don't have our own product we have to look at other methods and accept the fact that it will take longer and the money will flow in slower. People like me have turned to the publishing side and basically make money by selling other peoples stuff. To do this successfully you need to put in a fair amount of time researching your chosen method, ie using Adwords to sell Affiliate products, adsense or squeeze pages/landing pages. If not Adwords then you need to look at websites/blogs and learn how to master SEO techniques in order to attract traffic. This method (which I primarily use) takes time and in truth allow yourself 6 months to start seeing anything approaching results. Eventually you will combine both methods - SEO and PPC for even better results.
I get a lot of emails from people who are in many ways "Desperate" and need to make money online as a way out of the job they hate or the mountain of debt they have accumulated. They are inasmuch saying that they need money now and can't wait 6 months to start making money and even if they did the money made wouldn't be enough. For these people I tell them the truth - online marketing is not the answer. There are online jobs though for those that can't or won't look for a new job in the "real" world. Project Payday is a job. Type at Home jobs, call centers, online writing jobs, web site design, software development are all available and the list goes on. You won't get rich in most cases but you will earn money and you can start right now. That said - these kind of jobs are probably not what most of you want - am I right?
We all have a dream - I want to turn on my computer for an hour a day - push a few buttons - watch my bank account balance balloon to obscene proportions and then saunter over to the first Tee box at the golf course located next to my 80 room Mansion. Oh and I want this daily.
While the details may differ I bet a lot of you have the same dream. And why not - it's the dream of "Freedom", real freedom of everything we hate; having a boss, having a schedule, worrying over money.
Of course some of you aren't as greedy and only want to make a few bucks to help out. You aren't looking to quit your job and you aren't desperate for a quick fix. I mention you folks for a reason. You are the ones that will most likely make a decent living online.
Why?
Simple really. People like you will stick with your online business long enough to see results, albeit a little at a time. Each time you succeed you will move to the next step, expand your knowledge, try more things, get more results and the cycle will keep repeating itself. As time goes on you will find yourself making a decent income, realizing that it didn't happen overnight and that a lot of work actually went into it.
Before any of you do anything else ask yourself which type of person are you? Desperate? A get rich quick Dreamer? Or a stable, patient and hard working person with a real interest in the online world?
If you are desperate or dreaming of getting rich quick - quit now. I really mean that but I know you wont. You will eventually but not until you have wasted enough money and time that your optimism turns south and then and only then will you join the legions of bitter and cynical ex-internet marketers. By the way, along the way you will fill the pockets of the people who are successful at this game. They thank you and really don't want you to quit yet.
I hope I am not being to hard but I have learned that short of being born with a rare and special gift we have to work for what we want and need the patience to see it through. Actually the super talented people have to work hard too. Any successful person has too and does. So will you.
Daniel asked, "what kind of income you think is possible from online marketing and how much you make from the blogs you run."
There is no single answer to how much you can make simply because your own abilities are the measure of your limitations. One of the biggest marketing ploys is to hype products with the "Anybody can make money with this or that" pitch. This really isn't true in most cases. Let's face it - the smarter you are (whatever that really means) , the more knowledgeable you are, the harder working you are, the more persistent you are, the length you are willing to go and the boundaries you are willing to cross all play a huge factor in your chances of succeeding online.
I could say that if you do everything I've done you should be making such and such amount per month in 6 months. I wont say this because even if you followed my every step I can think of one thing that will affect the outcome adversely for some and beneficially for others. To make money online you have to sell things and to sell things you have to be able to convince people to buy. To do this you have to use words - written or on video - and the fact is - the better the writer you are the better you will do. If you can't write then you are doomed or you will spend a lot of money having other people do it for you.
read this
"Hi, i've read your articles, pretty nice. actually i found your website from goarticles, when you have the havads articles. i kind of interesting with this internet marketing stuff, i read lots of ebooks - which i get it for free :) , ... but the more i read, the more i get confused.
i have to admit i haven't read all of your articles, too much information. i really need to know what to start, i not feel i can write articles, i mean my english is not good gramatically, so i guess blogging? is difficult. i don't live in uk,can or us so i cannot use that payday project thing. so i really need help .. thanks"
These types of emails always break my heart. I have no answer for this person other than to tell the writer to stick to marketing in his/her own language - or if English is his/her language then they should look for something else. I don't mean to sound harsh - I'm definitely empathetic to the writer but reality says they will not succeed.
I know most of you shy away from writing - those of you that have asked me to critique your websites or blogs know that most of my advice centers around your writing and presentation. The online world is not unlike the real world - you have to be able to communicate well to succeed. This is very important.
Do you spend money on sites that are poorly written?
No.
Ok, I hear all you non-writers groaning out there. All is not lost. I mention writing primarily because, one way or another, that is how I make most of my money online and I know that most of the top money earners online all share an affinity for writing. If you are not somebody who loves to write or are simply lousy at it then you should not waste your time with websites and blogs.
PPC campaigns and affiliate marketing is where you should concentrate your energies. Make no mistake the people who do this well make a lot of money - but you have to spend a lot of money as well. And you have to do your research, lots and lots of research before you set up your campaigns. The successful Adwords user has spent years honing skills like writing compelling ads and landing pages and this is great - because you don't have to. You just have to copy them - they have done the hard work for you. This doesn't mean that you don't have to put in a lot of time researching, you do. You have to learn who is making money before you copy anyone.
I've discussed adwords elsewhere and have made recommendations on where to start so I wont get into it now. My point in all this is that all of you have to figure out your strengths and narrow your focus down to the type of online marketing you want to do and moreover what your own abilities allow you to do.
If you just need money then try an online job.
I should mention that in my case a pleasant way to make money just fell into my lap unexpectedly one day when I received an email from someone asking me to write an article for them. I had never even thought of this as a means to make money. I said sure and charged a small fee. As time has gone on I now charge a much larger fee and actually earn some decent money from it. I mention this because I have met a lot of you who are quite good at writing and you might be interested in exploring this avenue. There are plenty of sites that cater to this niche and you can join several services and sell your writing skills. Just from Daniel's letter I can see someone who knows how to write well and suggest he/she (sorry Daniel you have a gender neutral name) look into this. I love it because I just need my laptop and can work from any golf cart on the planet.
In getting back to Daniel's letter I get asked how much I make often. I can't give you an exact amount because it changes frequently. Suffice to say that my little blogging empire has generally made me about a hundred bucks a day with adsense for some time now. I use SEO and Adwords to get traffic. Lately I have been experimenting with my own ads ( Havads ) and affiliate landing pages and have been achieving some decent results.
I also have a number of strictly Adwords/Clickbank Campaigns and several mature websites in highly targeted niches that get decent amounts of free search engine traffic.
I have had weeks where I have made $3000 on adsense and as much selling affiliate products but this is by no means typical. I am always experimenting with different things so my sales are all over the place but over the last 2 months I have earned (net) about $15,000 from various projects. Keep in mind that this is not typical as I made a lot of that money from a single project that I am still refining.
If I was to give you a realistic estimate of what you could earn, given a similar set of abilities as me, then I'll use the blogs as an example. I have only been using blogs for about a year now and I have built them up to a point that they make me on average about $3000 a month. I will be honest with you though - I have a few secrets that I have not divulged to you yet and maybe never will. The reason is not so much greed as it is the fact that if everyone used my little tricks their effectiveness would be severely hampered. The good news is that while my tricks are helpful and give me a slight advantage for some things, overall they don't contribute that much more to my bottom line. (I have tested blogs using white hat and black hat techniques and while black hat is quicker at making money fast it is only temporary and then gone. White hat takes longer but once established it keeps money rolling in month after month.)
My websites are much older than my blogs and they are indexed nicely and produce a small but steady stream of income comprised of adsense and affiliate sales. They are all white hat and over time they are producing better and better results. Keep in mind that I use blogs to promote the websites and used in conjunction with each other, both perform better together than apart.
I don't use mailing lists. Most do but I don't for a couple of reasons. First of all I am not an "Internet Marketing" marketer - meaning that I am not interested in selling to the internet marketing crowd. People like you to be precise. Secondly - I'm no salesman and hate the thought of bombarding people with hyped up sales come-ons'. Just not my style but good for you if you can do this effectively.
Mailing lists are big in this niche and can be used in other venues as well but they don't really help in most of my niches. It's a battle to get people to sign up on a site that contains info on UGG boots or one that sells CROC sandals. The only IM blogs I have are like this one and I started this blog to test out my blogging techniques. I wanted to see how long it would take to conquer a large niche - and Internet Marketing is huge. By conquer I mean get my blog on page 1 of Google. If I can get there then I figure my system will get me to the top of any niche. I may not achieve my goal but that doesn't stop me from trying. Experimentation is the key and I love to experiment.
Is online marketing all you do? asked Daniel.
No.
I own my own business in the real world. It has nothing to do with the internet - I'm in the Hospitality/Tourism field. I am successful enough that any money I make online is spent on Golf Vacations. My business is seasonal and having half the year off allows me to dabble at my hobbies - this being one of them. I started playing around on the net just for something to do. I became interested in how to build my own website and everything has spiraled from there. Several years later I am still playing around with it and find myself making money doing it. I stuck with it because I could and wanted to. Time and patience. This is the only secret you really need to know about making money online.
Oh... a little luck always helps as well.
I mention luck because I have found that a lot of my "epiphany" moments online have come about because of luck and then knowing how to take advantage of the situation. Without giving away the farm I have been experimenting with a system that combines blogging with the power of social bookmarking. (By the way - the more you experiment the luckier you get.) Most of you wont know what I am talking about but you have probably seen those buttons for Digg, Delicious, Technorati, Sphere and many others in your travels. Get educated on them quick because these social bookmarks are quickly proving to be a great way to get traffic. If you use them correctly you can just about get all the traffic you want on demand - but only for short periods of time.
I was experimenting with social bookmarking "tags" when I got lucky with a subject matter that suddenly produced 1000's of hits to my blogs in a matter of minutes - yes thousands of people suddenly showed up at my site and I didn't know what to do with them. In they came and out they went - and I only made a few dollars on adsense. I quickly figured out what ads got the most clicks and changed a few keywords to get more quality ads and my adsense profits started to soar. Then it dawned on me that the advertisers were making more than me so I got rid of the ads and put up my own ads selling the same products. Bingo. The money started flowing in - and then bang. Interest in the subject matter dried up and I was done.
Now I'm waiting for another subject to come along with mass appeal and I will work the system all over again. Luckily there is always another subject coming along. At the moment there are only a small handful of people who know about the system I am talking about and we are all keeping quite - it's greatest weakness is that it won't work very well if everybody tries it. It only works because there is no competition.
Interestingly enough, because of a little luck and experimentation I discovered the concept of using my own ads which I am now using on my websites and some blogs instead of adsense. I have always known what ads performed best on my sites but traffic was never high enough to get me thinking outside the box. It was only when I suddenly got thousands of hits to a site that I stopped to realize that I was wasting traffic - ie, not profiting from it.
If 20 people come to your site a day and you make a buck with adsense you think - hey not bad, I just need a hundred more sites to do the same and I can make some money.
When 10,000 people show up and you make $2.00 on adsense you do not say - hey not bad. You say - holy crap - all those people and I made a stinkin' $2.00! You quickly look for ways to convert those people into dollars. I found a way with my own ads and then it dawned on me that I should do the same with the sites that have low traffic as well.
If I only get 5 clicks a day then why not have the person go to my salespage through my ad instead of to someone else's salespage. One sale makes a lot more money than what I lose not getting the adsense clicks.
I'm not telling you this to get you to do what I do but rather to get you to think the way I do. Nothing is written in stone so experiment - keep trying different things. Keep what works and add it to other stuff that you find that works. Don't stop experimenting just because you find one way to make money online. In time you will find yourself at the helm of a ever changing but successful online business.
In summation, each person must define their own goals and match them to their abilities. Find your strong suit and stick to it until you are competent in your field - websites - blogs - Adwords - affiliate marketing - MLM and so on. When you have mastered one area then try combining it with other fields and master each in turn or until your abilities won't allow you to go further. And remember - research, experimentation, discipline and copying what already works are all the tools you really need to succeed.
One last thing, develop an online network of friends - use the forums to start - nobody is good at everything and nobody knows everything - the more friends you make the more areas of expertise you tap into. Help others and you will help yourself.
And if you want my help just ask.
Good luck,
Griz
Friday, May 11, 2007
Affiliate Marketing for the Newbie
I've written an article that revisits affiliate marketing for the newbie. Some things have changed, being that it's a little more difficult not to have a website or some type of presence on the web because of the new rules that Google put into place. And as we all know, in most cases, what Google does, it soon is followed by the other search engines.
And, one other note -- this is not a get rich quick -- way of making money online. It's like any other business, you have to work at it, and learn -- and if you are learning by trial and error -- you'll learn for every failure you have, you're closer to success. I put this small statement in, not to deflate your expectations, but to make you realize that just because you are going online, does not mean you can sit back and do nothing. I received an email asking if affiliate marketing can make her a lot of money fast. I tried to be as gentle as possible with my response, but I don't think the response she received were within her expectations.
With that being said, here is my article "Affiliate Marketing-Getting Started". It's a quick read, and will give all an idea what you need to do to get started in affiliate marketing, especially if your pockets are not very deep.
Affiliate Marketing --Getting Started
By Vickie J Scanlon
Affiliate Marketing-why are people doing it? To make money, of course. When people come online, they first assume that they can make money by typing or completing surveys. I don't know how it happens, but it's the first one-two sucker punches that a newbie gets. They end up finding themselves placing ads on FFA sites and making peanuts or completing so many surveys with long hours and little or no money in return. Why does it happen? It's a play on the person's desire to make money. So how can you make money? If you're not looking for a get rich fast track, but a long-term venture, then affiliate marketing can be a way to make money.
Granted, affiliate marketing is not an easy row to get into, but it can be rewarding-once you start making money. That's the catch-if you are new to the world of affiliate marketing, there is a learning curve. But what new job doesn't have a learning curve? As to the learning curve, you can either do the trial and error-learn as you go approach, or enlist the aid of a consultant to help you. In either case, you still have to learn the affiliate business. So let us begin.
First, I'm going to go into the no expense, except your time. Even though time is an expense-it doesn't empty your pockets right away.
How to Get Started Free
SEO: To get the search engines to notice you, you must learn something about SEO. This will be a work in progress-always, because the search engines algorithms change and adapt. It takes time and it's doable. However, if you have the money, you can enlist in the services of someone that is experienced in the ways of SEO. But be warned - make sure you check out their credentials and look at some of their past successes.
Web Design: If you are tackling this alone, you will learn, as I. You may have to experiment with your site, until you get the style you want. And if you are misfortunate as I -- with my beginning ugly baby website -- you will want to experiment to reach an approachable website with consistent web pages.
Article Marketing -- If you have a writing talent, article marketing is more labor intensive, but can produce targeted traffic. You can write the articles and submit the articles yourself to article directories, or you can use a submission service. (Article Marketer is a reasonable service to try).
Adsense -- Adsense is a way to make a passive income, but again it's a learning curve to putting the ads out on your site - choosing the position, the color, the size of the ads to fit your site. End result, experimentation is necessary.
Linking -- As time goes by, you will be asked to exchange links with complimentary websites. Or you may ask for an exchange yourself. However, let me emphasize, if you are a new website, don't anticipate many partners wanting to link to you yet. Why?
1) If you are less than 6 months old, they may be skittish because of the many bogus sites that spring up and then vanish within the 6 month timespan. 2) If you are not indexed by any of the search engines, such as: Google, Yahoo, MSN. 3) In most cases, linking partners look to equal or greater page rank, when choosing mutual links. 4) And if you are wanting a blog exchange -- make sure you are updating your blog on a regular basis. Bloggers don't want to send their visitors to blogs that are not updated (lost creditability).
Newsletter -- Get a newsletter out as soon as you feel comfortable about the info you are supplying to your visitors. Why a newsletter? You need to build a list.
Paying for Advertising
You can consider PPC (pay per click marketing)-this may be a little expensive at first if your pockets are lean. And again, you need to learn how to put the ads together to see a profit. If you know nothing about Google Adwords look at Google Profits for a great starter in Adwords.
Getting A Website
Things continue to change, some fads become standards, while other fade away. But one thing is now becoming more obvious -- you do need a presence on the web. In the past, companies would give you a link to advertise without a website. But with the changes that Google has put into place -- trying to eliminate duplicate content-it could be more difficult to make money without a blog or website. Did you notice that I said blog. If you're unsure of what you want to do, try getting your feet wet with a blog.
As you can see, there is a lot too putting up an affiliate site. I hope I didn't put too many realities into the mix and scared you off. Affiliate marketing is a rewarding venture. So fight back your fear and baptize yourself into the online environment and your own affiliate business.
About the Author:
Vickie J Scanlon -- Visit her site at: My Affiliate Place for tools, how to info of affiliate marketing/internet marketing, tech accessories, security software and computers for the online business.
And, one other note -- this is not a get rich quick -- way of making money online. It's like any other business, you have to work at it, and learn -- and if you are learning by trial and error -- you'll learn for every failure you have, you're closer to success. I put this small statement in, not to deflate your expectations, but to make you realize that just because you are going online, does not mean you can sit back and do nothing. I received an email asking if affiliate marketing can make her a lot of money fast. I tried to be as gentle as possible with my response, but I don't think the response she received were within her expectations.
With that being said, here is my article "Affiliate Marketing-Getting Started". It's a quick read, and will give all an idea what you need to do to get started in affiliate marketing, especially if your pockets are not very deep.
Affiliate Marketing --Getting Started
By Vickie J Scanlon
Affiliate Marketing-why are people doing it? To make money, of course. When people come online, they first assume that they can make money by typing or completing surveys. I don't know how it happens, but it's the first one-two sucker punches that a newbie gets. They end up finding themselves placing ads on FFA sites and making peanuts or completing so many surveys with long hours and little or no money in return. Why does it happen? It's a play on the person's desire to make money. So how can you make money? If you're not looking for a get rich fast track, but a long-term venture, then affiliate marketing can be a way to make money.
Granted, affiliate marketing is not an easy row to get into, but it can be rewarding-once you start making money. That's the catch-if you are new to the world of affiliate marketing, there is a learning curve. But what new job doesn't have a learning curve? As to the learning curve, you can either do the trial and error-learn as you go approach, or enlist the aid of a consultant to help you. In either case, you still have to learn the affiliate business. So let us begin.
First, I'm going to go into the no expense, except your time. Even though time is an expense-it doesn't empty your pockets right away.
How to Get Started Free
SEO: To get the search engines to notice you, you must learn something about SEO. This will be a work in progress-always, because the search engines algorithms change and adapt. It takes time and it's doable. However, if you have the money, you can enlist in the services of someone that is experienced in the ways of SEO. But be warned - make sure you check out their credentials and look at some of their past successes.
Web Design: If you are tackling this alone, you will learn, as I. You may have to experiment with your site, until you get the style you want. And if you are misfortunate as I -- with my beginning ugly baby website -- you will want to experiment to reach an approachable website with consistent web pages.
Article Marketing -- If you have a writing talent, article marketing is more labor intensive, but can produce targeted traffic. You can write the articles and submit the articles yourself to article directories, or you can use a submission service. (Article Marketer is a reasonable service to try).
Adsense -- Adsense is a way to make a passive income, but again it's a learning curve to putting the ads out on your site - choosing the position, the color, the size of the ads to fit your site. End result, experimentation is necessary.
Linking -- As time goes by, you will be asked to exchange links with complimentary websites. Or you may ask for an exchange yourself. However, let me emphasize, if you are a new website, don't anticipate many partners wanting to link to you yet. Why?
1) If you are less than 6 months old, they may be skittish because of the many bogus sites that spring up and then vanish within the 6 month timespan. 2) If you are not indexed by any of the search engines, such as: Google, Yahoo, MSN. 3) In most cases, linking partners look to equal or greater page rank, when choosing mutual links. 4) And if you are wanting a blog exchange -- make sure you are updating your blog on a regular basis. Bloggers don't want to send their visitors to blogs that are not updated (lost creditability).
Newsletter -- Get a newsletter out as soon as you feel comfortable about the info you are supplying to your visitors. Why a newsletter? You need to build a list.
Paying for Advertising
You can consider PPC (pay per click marketing)-this may be a little expensive at first if your pockets are lean. And again, you need to learn how to put the ads together to see a profit. If you know nothing about Google Adwords look at Google Profits for a great starter in Adwords.
Getting A Website
Things continue to change, some fads become standards, while other fade away. But one thing is now becoming more obvious -- you do need a presence on the web. In the past, companies would give you a link to advertise without a website. But with the changes that Google has put into place -- trying to eliminate duplicate content-it could be more difficult to make money without a blog or website. Did you notice that I said blog. If you're unsure of what you want to do, try getting your feet wet with a blog.
As you can see, there is a lot too putting up an affiliate site. I hope I didn't put too many realities into the mix and scared you off. Affiliate marketing is a rewarding venture. So fight back your fear and baptize yourself into the online environment and your own affiliate business.
About the Author:
Vickie J Scanlon -- Visit her site at: My Affiliate Place for tools, how to info of affiliate marketing/internet marketing, tech accessories, security software and computers for the online business.
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