12 Tips to Become a Successful Affiliate Marketer

Affiliate marketing is one of the first steps for anyone seeking to make money online due to the little amount of money needed to get started. Sad to say, many people don’t succeed as they lack fundamental advice that can help guide them along the right path.

Here are some tips you need to keep in mind and put to use in order to succeed with affiliate marketing.

1. Set financial goals. Before you dive into affiliate marketing, it’s absolutely essential that you set some goals and objectives. How much money do you want to make with affiliate marketing? Make sure you write down your financial goals and review them often. Begin with a reasonable amount that you can realistically achieve and increase it over time. Once you begin affiliate marketing you will then have a clear destination that you can work towards.

2. Follow your heart. If you’re just starting out in affiliate marketing then it’s really advised that you stick to niches that match your hobbies and interests. While more experienced Internet marketers have more flexibility in this regard, beginners simply lose motivation if they are promoting a product or service that doesn’t appeal to them.

3. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Once you find a market that interests you, make sure that it is one that is profitable. This may seem obvious, but many people end up focusing on niches that lack in profitability. Nearly any niche can be monetized, but for the majority of the time if you don’t see other affiliates promoting that particular product or niche then you should seriously think twice.

4. Ensure credibility. Make sure the affiliate program you decide on is managed by someone with a good reputation. This is to guarantee that the product not only sells well, but also that customers will be satisfied and not ask for refunds. Remember, a refund sale means no income for you so don’t waste your time on dishonest products and services.

5. Understand your audience. Prior to promoting the product or service you’ve chosen, take some time out to study those interested in the particular niche. By doing so you’ll be able to engage the people in a way better than others since you will be able to relate to them and understand their needs.

6. Provide value. When you launch your website to promote the affiliate product or service, make sure it is helpful, motivating, and rich in content. People will feel more likely to follow through and purchase the offer you’re advertising if you over deliver on value due to the feeling of trust you’ve established.

7. Optimize your site. Along with strong content, make sure you choose the best keywords and use them properly to increase your ranking in the search engines. If your site can’t be seen in the search engines then you’re going to have a hard time driving traffic to it.

8. Build backlinks. There are many different types of backlinks and your site needs a variety of them to increase in ranking. When building backlinks, be sure to include your top keywords in the anchor text of the link so that you rank higher for these keywords in the search engines.

9. Track your traffic. Use quality tracking software so that you know exactly how people are reaching your site, what they’re doing once they reach it, and where they end up going afterward. An excellent, free solution to tracking is Google Analytics.

10. Do article marketing. Make article marketing a strategic part of your overall affiliate marketing plan. Writing and distributing articles for free on various article directories, such as EzineArticles and ArticlesBase, still proves to be one of the best ways to generate traffic to your site. It’s also a fantastic way to put the reader into the buying mood.

11. Diversify affiliate programs. Never put all of your hopes in one product or service. If something goes wrong and you don’t receive payment from the merchant or the product simply isn’t selling as well as it once did then you will still have other programs to fall back on.

12. Don’t give up. Affiliate marketing is not about instant results. This business requires consistency so don’t be easily discouraged if some time passes before you see sales.

Melissa Tamura Writes about Accredited Online Colleges for Zen College Life. She most recently wrote about the best online psychology schools.

The Right Team to Take you from Zero to $5,000,000 in Four Years

If there’s one adage every successful entrepreneur will agree upon, it’s “hire the best people you can afford.” No entrepreneur is an island – or a business– unto themselves. Even the most successful entrepreneurs are generally really good at only one or two things. Their secret to successfully making money online with business after business is bringing on board others who are really good at everything else.

“Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it… Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.”

— David Ogilvy

So who are the most important people to bring on board your team? What is the one weakness or gap in your knowledge that, if filled, would immediately result in a doubling or tripling of your income online.

For many first time internet entrepreneurs, the answer is bringing on board someone who’s “been there, done that.” When I started my first online business, it took months before I felt like I was finally getting down to business.

In the meantime, there was a flood of millions of small details to figure out: everything from corporate structure to accounting methodology to legal risks to a reliable hosting provider to pricing my products.

“If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings—and put compensation as a carrier behind it—you almost don’t have to manage them.”

— Jack Welch

How much easier would that process have been if I had someone experienced at my side that I could just turn to and say — “Hey Steve, how much should I price a product like this?”

That kind of advice, multiplied by the hundreds of such small questions that pop up in the course of establishing your online business, acts like an accelerant for your business growth. Mistakes that would have cost thousands can be avoided, and month-long research projects can be compressed into a few hours.

“The shortest and best way to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their interests to promote yours.”
- Jean de La Bruyère

How to Find your Five Million Dollar Team:

Don’t think that just because your business is small, there’s no way for you to bring experienced advisors on board your team. If you’re just getting started building your online business empire, you don’t need to hire a Fortune 500 Exec as a full-time employee (or even Board Member). There are plenty of other ways to get that same kind of quality advice without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in salary:

1. Hire Steve Peirce and the IncomeElite Team for Less than 5 Bucks!
   
   Bringing the folks of IncomeElite on to your team just may be the next best thing to being Richard Branson’s favorite nephew: you get tons of personalized advice, answers to nearly all the questions that will come up in the course of ramping up your online business, and access to the website templates, marketing plans, and sales techniques that the Income Elite team members have used to build businesses generating over $20,000,000 in profits. The best part is that (unlike Richard Branson) Steve Peirce and the rest of the income elite team are specialized in exactly the kind of online businesses that you can build from your home computer in your spare time – lean, mean, cash-generating machines built upon time-tested online marketing techniques, not some “secret system” that Google will shut down after a month or two. Membership in IncomeElite (which is required to access all of the how-tos, resources, and Q&A from Steve and the team) usually costs $97 per month, but they’re currently running a promotion where you can try it out for 5 days for $4.95!
2. Other Options
   
   Even 5 Bucks is too much for you to pay right now to get some quality people to join your team? Depending upon your situation, you may have other options as well. The Service Core of Retired Executives (SCORE) is one such option. SCORE provides qualifying small businesses with volunteer advisors experienced in that area of business. http://www.score.org/how_score_works.html If SCORE is not for you or you’re based outside of the US, you may have luck finding a retired exec who would be willing to provide similar mentorship on a more informal basis. Angel investors and other former entrepreneurs are often willing to help foster the next generation of entrepreneurs. Generally you’ll give up a small portion of equity (ownership) in your company in exchange for this advice, but it can be well worth it!

“Success has many fathers. Failure is an orphan.”

- Unknown

Work Less, Earn More. Using the 80/20 Rule to Increase Productivity and Profit!

I don’t know about you, but for me as a child grow up I would look at successful businesses and think:

I would love to be the person who owns this business!

Notice that I didn’t want to work for the business, or even run the business. My whole goal was to own the business – because then I would be making a heap of money, and have everyone else doing all the work for me.

I’m not sure if that appeals to you, but to me as a young guy about the enter the workforce – this sounded like a dream!

That Was Over 10 Years Ago Now…

And I did go down the business road. I started out at University studying a ‘Bachelor of Business’ because I wanted to be that business owner, but found that they wanted to teach me how to work in one of those businesses (not run it) – so I quit after a year.

After that I decided that I needed to start building a big business if I was going to one day be able to live in my massive house and take one call a day to check how things were going (while living the dream).

That Started Long String Of Business Failures…

When I stopped to think of all the business ideas that I have had and the ones that I did and failed – I was surprised by the quantity.

Here is an abridged version:

• A Flyer Design Business
• Sourcing Properties for Real Estate Investors
• Website Design
• Online Golf Reservation Website
• Importing/Ebay Business
• Website Design (again)
• Product Marketing For A Architecture Firm
• Import/Distribution Of New Iced Tea Brand

I am sure there are a lot more, but that is enough to make me depressed at the bucket loads of potential that I let slip by.

Looking back, each one of these business could have been successful in their own right, but being the person I am – I gave up before the idea had the chance to flourish. You see, I am an ideas person. I thrive on creativity and find that processes and hard work seem to be incredibly large hurdles for me to pass.

Ideas Are A Dime A Dozen…

I remember frequently visiting entrepreneur forums discussing the latest ideas and seeing what everyone else was doing around the world, and every so often there would be one person who would say that they were ‘working on something that was going to be huge, but they didn’t want to say anything about it because people might steal their idea.’

This seemed logical to me until someone replied saying, ‘Everyone else is working on their own thing, and if anyone did copy you, the chances of them having the same drive and passion that you have for your project is incredibly small. It’s not the idea that counts – it is the effort that you put in to make that idea a reality!’

That is entirely true, and I knew that I couldn’t legitimately call myself an entrepreneur until I not only have a creative business idea, but I also followed it through to success.

I Turned My Attention To The Internet…

Now I know if you look through my list of business failures, you will see a lot of internet orientated ideas. However,  these were all targeted at bricks and mortar businesses and everyday golfers.

In my time scouring those entrepreneur forums I came across the concept of ‘making money online’. The whole idea was that you get people to visit your website, get people to click through to affiliate websites and then when they buy – you get paid. Seemed like a simple concept, so I decided to give it go!

I started blogging, had a great time and for once – stuck something out for long enough to see some success. In about 18 months, I was able to grow my blog from nothing to over 1,500 subscribers and was starting to gain a lot of influence withing my niche. The problem was, that I was working crazy hours (like most entrepreneurs) – but was not making very much money (I think my best month was just $400).

I spent all my time focusing on relationships and writing what I thought my readers wanted to hear – but my readers were not the ones that were making me any money. In fact it was the complete opposite. while my commentators were making my blog look incredibly active and successful, it was actually the older posts that were getting a little search engine traffic that were making the sales!

Then I Discovered The 80/20 Rule!

If you haven’t heard of the 80/20 rule before, it;s really just an incredibly simple productivity guide that states:

’80% of the results come from 20% of the effort’

So in my case, 80% (or more) of my profits, came from 20% (or less) of my efforts. You see, I wasn’t focusing on search engine optimization (SEO)  in the slightest. Yet it was what was making me money.

So, all I had to do to make more money, was to put more of my focus onto SEO.

What Is The 20% For You?

The 80/20 rule is evident in all aspects of life and all businesses and can be seen in countless different forms.

80% of the complaints, comes from 20% of the clients.

80% of your traffic, comes from 20% of your sources.

20% of your staff will do 80% of your work.

Once you start to realize this – and look out for it. You will be able to fine tune your business to a productivity machine.

You can either optimize you business so that the 20% is fine tuned and the 80% is maintained, or you can drop the 80% altogether and put 100% of your effort into the 20% that is getting all the results (and freeing up a whole heap of time!)

Over the last 6 months, I have been working on the second option, and really ‘trimming the fat’ so to speak and fine tuning my online assets. This has allowed me to systematize the process that is working for me, even to the degree where I am outsourcing a lot of the work  (making that dream I had as a kid of being the business owner – and not just the worker or boss, a much closer reality).

Tom is an Australian blogger that is currently researching and trialing the opportunity created by outsourcing jobs overseas. You can download his latest free ebook GEO Arbitrage, which explains it all in an easy to read format.

Quick Tip – Where Not To Display Adsense Ads

Today’s Making Money Online “Quick Tip” is going to real quick. When selling your own product or promoting affiliate products, DON’T put ads for your competition on the same pages you are trying to promote those products on.

I purchased a course online today, and I was having some issues downloading the product in the membership area… so I sent the merchant a support ticket. Well I have been interested in buying some type of Support Ticket Software for the last few months, but have never really done much research yet. The software the merchant was using seemed to work pretty well, so I decided to check it out… so I clicked on the referral link on the bottom of the page.

When I got to the Support Ticket Software site and read the features, it had all the functions that I desired, and they offered a FREE 30 Day Trial Version… which I liked. Once the 30 day trial was over it would cost $39.95 to purchase it, which I found pretty reasonable for this type of software.

I actually liked everything about the website; the design and graphics looked very professional, the sales copy and features were great… it just contained one “SALES LOSING” feature. It had Adsense ads across the top and down the right side of their sales page which displayed links to a lot of their competitors. Every single ad was for some other Support Software. To me, that tells me that these guys don’t really believe in their product, so why should I? I was planning on mentioning the company here, but I really don’t want to give them negative publicity, as their product does seem pretty good. I did however send them an email telling them why I did not purchase their software, and it will be interesting to see if they make any changes.

I have seen lots of people that are selling stuff online do this over the years, and it just doesn’t seem very smart. Sure, they are making a little bit of money if someone clicks on those ads, but they are losing the potential of so much more. Not only are they going to probably lose a sale, but they are also going to lose the ability to sell that person anything else in the future… which everyone knows is where the real money is at.

So my making money online tip is…. Don’t display Adsense or similar type ads on pages or posts where you are trying to sell a particular product, as you are just promoting the competition.

Pareto Principle: The Idea of Getting More through Less Effort

We have been taught, trained and possibly ‘brainwashed’ with the concept of in order to get what we want, we have to do more than the day before. For example, to get huge incomes through Internet, there are a lot of tips and advice… especially through ‘make money online‘ blogs’ authors who consider themselves as experts, are also telling us the same thing.

However, there is one question for you – are those advice and tips are absolutely accurate?

I do always believe that there are always alternatives in everything that exist in this world as long as we keep looking for those alternatives and keep pushing ourselves to think outside our box.

There are always two sides for a coin, right?

What is Pareto Principle?

For me, there is an alternative for the idea of  ‘work more to earn more’. This alternative is called Pareto’s principle – a principle that was first introduced in 1906 by Vilfredo Pareto. This principle has also been called other various names such as; the Law of Vital Few, the 80/20 rule and the Factor of Sparsity.

Pareto invented this principle as the result of his simple observation – 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of population and vice versa. Through this, he realized that X amounts of efforts will not necessarily create X amount of good results – the result can be more than the X value or lesser than what we expected. He discovered there is the existence of imbalance element between the input and output equation and this element existed in the observations that he carried out in other countries through different situations.

The key of this principle is there is existence of imbalance element in the ‘input and output’ equation and if we can identify for the 20% portion of input that will create 80% of the output portion, we will able to work in more effective and efficient way. This is because we will not waste most of our time for the 80% portion of input that will only create 20% output portion.

However, the accuracy of the percentage is not the main idea – the imbalance element that matters. The portion can be turned to 1% into 80% or 40% into to 60%.

How can you integrate this principle into your site?

The first step that you must take is to install and integrate in any statistic plugin or toll that will help you to identify the efforts that generate the most returns in terms of incoming traffics or sales. The tools that I recommend are Google Analytics for incoming traffic statistic and MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate for affiliate sales tracking.

Through these tools, you will able to track the performance of your site.

My case study - Huzzer Magazine: WordPress Seems So Easy!

I have also integrated into the idea of this principle. This is because I know that only the small portion of my contents will attract huge traffic and due to this reason, I have used a few ways to push the articles that belongs to the ’20%’ portion of input that will create ’80%’ of output i.e. traffics for my blog to gain more exposure especially for the first time visitors. These are the steps that I have taken:

• Put up Most Popular Posts widget at the sidebar as this widget will help to push the best content of my blog as only the articles that most of people read will appear.
• I installed Yet Another Related Posts plugin and put it at the end of each articles as this will ensure that other articles that are less popular will get notified by my blog visitors and not just ‘died’.
• I will only focus in limited number of social networking buttons such as Twitter and Facebook which give me the most incoming links by putting their buttons in the beginning and end of my contents. By putting a lot of buttons, they definitely don’t have the amount of time to hit all of the buttons. We are asking for them for a favor – so let it be quick and easy!
• I use minimalist design approach for my site as it will help to retain readers’ attention. With ‘messy’ design, it will keep distracting our visitors as there are a lot of things to be seen rather than only our contents. Let our blog have proper structured so that our readers can read the article first, then see related articles that they may find interesting, hit the social networking buttons and finally leave comments. It is better if we do not change this standard flow.
• I have only minimal amount of sidebar widgets in my blog’s sidebar which are value added to the visitors. Our visitors’ main intention to come to our blog is to read the content that they are interested in – not to know what is our blog’s Alexa ranking or amount of spam that we have captured.

Pareto’s principle is a very flexible concept as it can be applied with anything and at anywhere. The most important thing that we must know is there is imbalance element in this world and if we can identify the factor that contribute to us more, we will able to earn more with less effort as we will know and possibly stop doing the stuff that consumes most of our time, but brings less returns.

I believe that great life comes not necessarily through a lot of effort. It comes when we take the right actions and consistently focusing on them.

This guest post is written by Helmi Asyraf Abdullah, the author of Huzzer Magazine – WordPress Seems So Easy! He believes that there are always two sides of a coin which is the main reason he is supporting DoFollow commenting movement.

At the moment, he is offering 5 internet marketing tools and special gifts through his collaboration with Obox Design, premium themes developer for those who subscribe with Huzzer Magazine.

What is Article Marketing and Why Should You Be Doing It?

One of the key ingredients to making money online is to generate quality traffic to your website or blog… and there are many ways to achieve this. You have to work on getting traffic to your site both directly and indirectly, and you should work on building your reputation within your niche at the same time. One method that can help you accomplish these goals is article marketing. When used correctly, article marketing can be an extremely powerful method of traffic generation, and the best part is it is FREE. Well it’s free if you write the articles yourself.

Article marketing is the actual process of first writing an original article(s) and then submitting it to a variety of online directories, databases, and magazines, but most everyone I know usually just submit their articles to article directory sites like; EzineArticles, GoArticles, ArticleBase, etc….

Once your article has been accepted by a directory (or directories) it is then added to their large database of articles and it will then become accessible for anyone to copy and paste into their newsletters, blogs, magazines, etc…. The more directories you add your article to the better, as you are exposing your articles to potentially thousands and thousands of people with each directory you submit them to. At the bare minimum you want to submit each article to the top 3 to 5 directories for sure!

The person using your article must display the article EXACTLY how you wrote it, and they must also include your resource box at the end of the article which contains all the information about you and your site, but we will get more into that in a minute. The key to understand here is once you submit your article (and if it is well written on a fairly hot topic)… there is a good chance many people will take your article and share it with all their readers. If lots of people do the same thing… your article could easily be viewed by thousands and thousands of people in a very short period. Plus your article will stay in the database for many years, so there is a good chance it could be viewed for many years to come and hopefully continue making you money online.

Now getting back to the actually writing of the article… generally you write articles that are relevant to the nature of your website. You can’t directly promote your site, and you wouldn’t want to anyway because it would just turn people off and that is the last thing you want to do.

Instead, you want to provide valuable, worthwhile information that can help solve a problem, answer a question or teach them something new. In doing so you will be proving yourself as somewhat an expert in your field, and hopefully people will begin to trust and respect your opinion. In this way you can make a name for yourself within your niche, and your reputation will grow.

While that’s great (and important), what’s even better is that every time you write and submit an article you get to include some information about yourself with a link or two in the resource box at the bottom of the article. These links can lead back directly to your site, targeting whichever pages you choose. Additionally, since you are the one creating the link, you get to decide the exact anchor text you want to use. This provides an opportunity to build up a bunch of highly targeted, highly valuable one-way links leading back to your website or blog.

By doing this, you will be increasing your site’s value in the search engines like Google, and hopefully you will start getting ranked higher for your desired keywords. This is because incoming links leading to your site are one of the largest factors for determining your site’s Google PageRank. Not all links are created equally however, and you want to go after links that really provide a good amount of value. Links from the best article directories are extremely valuable because they are from high ranking sites, and they are one-way links that you didn’t have to pay or exchange for. Additionally, you can control the anchor text and destination page, so the links have the potential to be very powerful.

Therefore, with article marketing you are indirectly boosting your traffic and your online presence by raising your search engine ranking. Additionally, you will also directly see an increase to your website’s traffic when people read your articles and then click on your links to follow through to your page. The more valuable and original your articles are, the more people will click through to your site, and the more interested these prospects will already be about your ideas, products and services.

Article marketing brings along many different benefits. By providing high quality articles you can help build up your reputation, both within your community and within the search engines. You will see an increase to your site traffic and you will end up finding more prospects for your website and online business. If you aren’t article marketing yet, you are leaving a valuable opportunity sitting on the table.

So if you are serious about making money online… go and write an article right now and get the ball rolling.

Increase Affiliate Sales Conversions Dramatically

This week’s making money online “Quick Tip” can help give you a much higher conversion rate when promoting affiliate products.

If you read my 2 previous posts on how to “Cloak” affiliate links (The Ultimate WP Affiliate Sales Tool and Simple Affiliate Cloaking Method) you know I am a big fan of cloaking affiliate links as you get a much higher conversion rate than leaving those big ugly URL’s that have your affiliate ID code displayed in them.

What works even better than those two methods at converting sales is registering a domain name for the sole purpose of promoting one particular affiliate product and forwarding the domain to your affiliate link.

Here is how it basically works. Let’s use one of my own domains for example. There is a product for making money online called Camera Dollars that has a really good conversion rate, and pays a whopping 75% commission. You earn $26.98 on each sale. They claim that 1 out of 10 people that visit their site purchases the course… which is incredible! The product is a course on how to make money with your camera by taking pictures and selling them online. You can imagine how popular this is nowadays with practically everyone owning a digital camera. Even though I have not tried selling any photos yet, I have purchased the course and it is really good. Someday I am sure I will try and sell some photos… but I am getting off track on what this post is actually about.

Since CameraDollars is a Clickbank product… it has a typical affiliate link (Hoplink) which takes visitors to the merchant site while tracking your affiliate id. Here is the hoplink for Camera Dollars:

http://YourClickBankNickName.camera.hop.clickbank.net.

So if I were promoting that particular product (which I am) I have a few options:

1. I could just use my hoplink which would be http://dotspro.camera.hop.clickbank.net. It is not the prettiest link in the world, but it works.
2. I could cloak the URL using one of the methods at the beginning of this post and it would end up looking something like: www.MakingMoneyOnline.com/cameradollars/ which is much nicer looking URL.
3. But an even better way would be to register a domain and redirect it to my affiliate link (hoplink). So what I did was register the domain PhotoRiches.com and redirected the domain to my affiliate hoplink. So anytime someone goes to www.photoriches.com they are taken directly to my affiliate link, and if they make a purchase I make $26.98.

Now of the 3 methods above, the 3^rd would obviously be the most expensive to implement, as you would have to register a new domain, as well pay for hosting for that domain. Now if you followed one of my earlier posts on “Never Pay for Premium Hosting Again” and implemented those strategies you would not worry about having to pay for hosting each time you register a new domain name. Also, as I mentioned before… this method definitely has a higher conversion rate than the other two and one sale would actually pay for the domain and hosting for year on a lot of sites.

Another cool thing about this method is it is much easier from a marketing standpoint online and off. Checkout this simple banner I just created to the right. A lot of affiliate banners that merchant’s offer for promotions have the merchants URL displayed right on the banner. Instead of clicking the banner, I know many people just type in the URL and they bypass the affiliate link resulting in no referral fee if they end up purchasing the product. With this banner… if a visitor clicks on it they will be taken to my affiliate link destination, as well as if they type in the URL. There is really no way to bypass my affiliate link as they do not know what the merchants URL actually is.

Imagine how great this will work for offline promotions as well. I could easily run inexpensive ads in newspapers, magazines, fliers, etc… that are extremely short and to the point. Here are just a couple examples of some simple ads:

————————————————————
Get Rich Taking Photos!
www.PhotoRiches.com
————————————————————
Got a Digital Camera? Learn How to
Make Money Taking Simple Photos!
www.PhotoRiches.com
————————————————————

I think you get the point. Those same ads could be run online in places like; Craigslist, Free Online Classifieds, etc…, as well as in your signature file on forums, in your emails, etc…. The more places you display it, the more chances you have of making money.

Now this post wasn’t designed to promote CameraDollars (even though it is a great product), it is to teach you another way to promote affiliate programs in general, and hopefully get much better conversions.

There are lots of big Internet Marketers that use this method and I notice most of them when registering a domain name usually choose something that is close to the merchants actual URL. An example would be if the merchant’s URL for their particular product is MagicalCashDonkey.com (which is a totally made up name)… you might want to register one of the following domains or something similar:

MagicalCashDonkey.net/org/biz/info/etc…
TheMagicalCashDonkey.com
GetMagicalCashDonkey.com
MagicalCashDonkeys.com

As you can see… they are all very close to what the original URL is, so when a potential customer uses one of those links, they probably wouldn’t even notice that the URL is slightly different than the one they are redirected to.

As for my domain PhotoRiches.com, it is actually quite a bit different than the product I am marketing, but the sales page is so good… it doesn’t really seem to make a difference to people.

So if there is an affiliate product (or several) out there that you really want to promote the heck out of… you might want to consider registering a domain specifically for promoting each product and redirect each domain to your affiliate link(s).

Please Tell Me When I Have Something Hanging From My Nose

Be honest… did the title of this post intrigue you a little? I am sure it is not the best title to help drive search engine traffic to a site about making money online though. But I do think it is the perfect title for this post, as it is about helping out your fellow blogger, or anybody for that matter and that is what today’s “Quick Tip” is about.

Have you ever had something hanging from your nose, or maybe a little ranch dressing (from whatever you ate earlier) dried up on your chin and no one tells you about it? I know I have. Usually, the only way you find out is when you are going to the restroom and see yourself in the mirror. You think… “How embarrassing, how come no one told me about it?”

Of course you do have those certain friends that will give you a little nudge, point to where it is on their own face and then whisper in your ear… “Hey, you got a little something right there”, and you thank them, grab a tissue or napkin and give it a little wipe and that would be that. I really appreciate those types of friends, and that is the kind of friend I try to be.

So where am I going with this post? Well like the “there’s something hanging from my nose” analogy, I really appreciate it when someone tells me when something is wrong with one of my websites, or they think something can be done better. Three times in the last week I have had people tell me that something wasn’t working correctly with this site.

First Lax from over at Tech Zoom In emailed me to let me know that in my Feedburner Emails, at the bottom it was showing the word “Array” nine times in list format for no apparent reason. I did a little investigating and found out it was a simple setting in my DamnSexyBookmarks that was causing the problem and with a simple uncheck of a button the problem was solved. I am sure other readers probably noticed this for weeks, but no one ever let me know before Lax, so I never knew to fix it before then. Thanks Lax!

Also, in regards to my Email RSS Feed, not only was it not displaying correctly to the subscribers I already had, but the subscription form on the homepage was not working either. Alfredo over at Asswass.com contacted me last week to let me know about that. We probably lost a bunch of subscribers in the last few weeks because that was not working. We won’t lose them anymore. Thanks Alfredo!

Then just yesterday, Jared over at The Money Cult let me know about a problem that was happening with the comment editing plugin that we were using. When you clicked the edit your comment link, it opened up someone else’s comment, which was not good. So I ended up deactivating that until I get it fixed. Thanks Jared!

As for me, I am notorious for letting people know when something is wrong with their site, or if I think doing something another way might be beneficial to them. I honestly just like to help people out, and I probably overstep my boundaries sometimes, but no one has ever complained (at least to my face) about it. If you read my post “2 Simple Fixes that Could Increase Comments on Your Blog” you know I am NOT a big fan of Captcha in the comments sections of blogs, and from reading all the comments, most other readers are not either. So whenever that I am surfing the net reading blogs and leaving comments… if a person is using Captcha in their comments section (after I write my comment) I usually mention to them that they might get more comments if the get rid of it.

Now that is just one example of things I do. I also send out emails if I notice something doesn’t look right with someone’s site in my browser or if a link is not working correctly. You name it… if I see something wrong, I usually try to let the owner know. Now I am definitely not trying to brag here that I am this great guy, because that is not what I am trying to do at all… even though you would probably say that is you met me.

What I want you to get out of this post is we are all just one big giant family on this planet, and the Internet has brought us a lot closer together. We all need to help each other out and if you see something hanging from the nose (you know what I mean) of one of your fellow bloggers or website owners, let them know about it, as I am sure they will appreciate it. Remember, what goes around comes around, so the nicer you are… the nicer people will be to you!

I also read a great post the other day from Liane over at Better Blogging for Bloggers where she talks about how friendly most people are on the Internet. I have found in general that usually is the case.

So how about you guys? Do you go out of your way to help your fellow bloggers or website owners out? If not, maybe you should!

Beta Testing New Traffic Monetization Program

First off… I want to apologize for not getting this post out earlier, but I was busy playing around all day with what I am about to show you, and I just couldn’t find the time to write anything.

One of the good things, as well as one of the bad things that happens when you run a business (online or off) is you get contacted by all sorts of people trying to sell you on something… either a must have product or service of some kind.

Well yesterday I was contacted by this guy offering me to beta test their new traffic monetization system. To be honest I really wasn’t too interested, but I checked them out anyway. Since this site is about making money online, I figured I should test out as many different ways as I can to make money online and report back to you guys if they work or not.

The program is basically an advertising revenue sharing program, similar to Adsense, but with a cool twist. With this you place keyword text links that you choose right on your website. You can choose high paying keywords if you like, but for my test I chose keywords I know my readers are actually searching for. When a visitor clicks on one of the text links, relevant ads are then displayed right on your website. The site owner then earns money each time a user clicks onto an advertiser’s link.

When I was asked to test this program, the guy was hoping I was going to test it on MakingMoneyOnline.com, but this site is very new and not much traffic comes from search engines. It gets some, but not a lot and I know programs like Adsense get a lot more clicks from people coming from search engines. I think the reason is they are already in a clicking mood, but I am not sure. I just know that is the way it works.

Now on the other hand, we do have a site that gets a majority of it’s traffic from search engines. That would be our community website MiraMesa.com. You can see in that pie chart that over 82% of the traffic comes directly from search engines… which seems like the perfect site to test this traffic monetization program.

Now implementing the program was pretty simple. Once you sign-up you have to list the sites that you plan to use it on. Since I originally wasn’t planning on testing it on MiraMesa.com I had to wait a couple hours until it was approved.

Once approved it was fairly easy to set up. You need to create your text links for whatever search terms you like. I just went into my Google Analytics and I looked for what keywords people were using to find our site and I used several of those, and then I threw in some more that I knew people would be interested in… like Mira Mesa Real Estate, Apartments, etc…

That’s a screenshot of the text links that we are using on MiraMesa.com. I have them displayed right on the top of our sidebar so it is one of the first things people see when they go to the site, so we are hoping they get a lot of action, but we will have to wait and see.

The one other thing you have to do to make the system work is create a search results page. Unfortunately it is not setup to work with WordPress yet, so I created a simple html page with basically just a header and then inserted the code that they provided and uploaded to my server. That was it. It is not beautiful or anything, as I just wanted to get it up, but it will work for this test. If it ends up being profitable I will make it look much better. You can see what the results page looks like below.

So does it make any money? I have no idea as I just installed it… but I will let you know in a couple of weeks. I can definitely see it having potential, and I have a few niche sites in mind that I think this will do awesome. I am not sure if it is the perfect fit for all blogs… but I will know more after I run my test.

He did show me some examples of other sites that are testing it and they are actually what sold me on trying it.

• http://workathomecommunity.com (keywords right under the header)
• http://www.totalhair.net (keywords in top left navbar)
• http://www.backyardchickens.com (keywords above the Adsense ads in footer)

If you are interested in testing this out too, send me an email and I will put you in touch with the owner. To be accepted your site needs to be getting a pretty good amount of traffic, otherwise they will probably not accept you. It is still in the beta testing stage so they are not ready for the whole world to sign-up just yet.

So what do you guys think of this? If it ends up paying well, do you think it is something you would consider adding to your site?

*** UPDATE AFTER READING FIRST FEW COMMENTS – PLEASE HELP *** One thing I have found from people not living in the US is that very few ads appear and more often no ads appear at all when someone clicks on a text link. Can you do me a favor and test a couple for me and let me know in the comments section what Country you live in, and if any ads displayed. You can just click on these 2 keywords… Make Money from Home and Mira Mesa Real Estate. I would think Make Money from Home should produce results for everyone as that it has worldwide interest… so I am interested to see your results. I do not want you to click on the ads… I just want to know if people outside the US can see the ads.

THANKS!

I Used to Be a Dotcom Millionaire, Well at Least On Paper!

When I first started out online back in the late 90′s I got caught up in the big Domain Goldrush that was going on online. The big news back then was when some guy sold Business.com for millions of dollars and next thing you knew… domain speculators were buying up every domain name they could create, and I was one of them. At one point in early 2000 I owned over 3000 domain names. Yep… over 3000! I know that sounds crazy, and thinking back it probably was.

Actually the first 2 domains I ever registered were MakingMoneyOnline.com and MakeMoneyOnline.com. Then about a week after I registered them, some guy offered me $1000 for MakingMoneyOnline.com… but I turned him down. For the next week this guy kept bugging me about buying the domain, actually even calling me on my home phone leaving me messages. His final offer was for $35,000, which you can see by this site… I ended up not taking. In hindsight I probably should have taken it and used the money to finance my other domains, but oh well… at least I still have it now. Of course I made sure my wife was on board with me not taking the money… and she was

As for the rest of my domain collection… for a year or so everything was awesome… domains were easy to flip for a HEFTY PROFIT. I was selling several domains a week, many for between $1000 – $2000 each, and some for even more… which was a nice little profit. I believe the best place to sell domains back then was Afternic.com, which is still in business today, but with different owners.

One of the most popular parts of the site was their Domain Appraisal section, where I spent several hours each day. It was a free service where once you registered a domain name you could post it there and then other people would appraise your name for you. In all honesty… it was an absolute joke, as most of the people doing the appraisals were other domain owners, and everybody would give each other overinflated appraisals as they wanted you to do the same for their domains. I cannot tell you how many domains I owned back then, where people appraised them at $100K each. I remember one day I added up the averages of all my domain’s appraised values, and on paper I was worth about 8 million dollars. You can imagine how excited I was at the time… but unfortunately those millions never became a reality.

As I mentioned above… everything was awesome for about a year or so. People were spending crazy amounts of money on domain names to create all these startup businesses ventures with no real business plans, and the venture capitalist kept forking out the cash. At the time I was doing pretty well with my little domain reselling business.

Well as most of you know, those Free-Spending Days came to a sudden halt with the much publicized Dotcom Bust, and next thing you knew it was hard to get $100 for a premium domain name. Well those new darker times went on for quite some time and in the next few years my domain collection dwindled down significantly. Some I sold, and many I ended up letting expire as I did not want to keep paying the renewal fees. To be honest, a large percentage of the domains I originally registered were not really that great, but back then I just registered everything that popped in my head. Out of the original 3000 or so domains that I owned, after selling some and letting others expire… I ended up keeping a little over 400 domain names, and today I am down to just under 300.

So how is the domain reselling business doing in general nowadays? As for me, I have not really been trying to do much reselling lately. I have done an occasional flip here and there, but nothing much to speak of. As from my post last week you can see that I tried to test and see if I could sell a complete website via a post on Making Money Online Dot Com, but have not had much luck with that so far. I am actually thinking of adding a “Domains for Sale” section to our site and try and shrink my collection to a more reasonable amount, but we will see.

As for domain reselling around the world… it seems to be doing great. I am a HUGE fan of the website DNJournal.com, as they always have good articles about the industry, as well as great interviews with top domain resellers. But the main reason I check them out each week is they list many of the top domain name sales from the previous week, plus they keep a running total of the biggest sales for the entire year. Checkout some of the domains that sold last week and what they sold for:

Brazil.com – $500,000

Payment.com – $250,000

ChinaTours.com – $200,000

Payments.com – $150,000

Grafikkarte.de (“graphic card” in German) – $73,828

BookHotels.com – $70,500

iPal.com – $59,000

CouponNetwork.com – $59,000

LMK.com – $58,500

DomainAppraisal.com – $52,000

And if you think those were some crazy prices, checkout the top 10 sales so far for 2009

Toys.com – $5,100,000

Candy.com – $3,000,000

Fly.com – $1,760,000

Auction.com – $1,700,000

Webcam.com – $1,020,000

Server.com – $770,000

Brazil.com – $500,000

Talk.com – $500,000

Top.com – $464,750

Body.com – $400,000

So as you can see, even with this bad economy… there are still people and businesses spending BIG MONEY on premium domain names. Unfortunately, it is a little late to try and get into the game unless you know what you are doing and have a lot of money. But it is not impossible.

One option would be is if you could snag (register) yourself a great domain name that relates to a new industry that is just starting to develop. That might be worth a lot of money to you. One of my good buddies who I have done some domain reselling with over the years (who actually bought MakeMoneyOnline.com from me years back) registered the domain MyBlog.com. He registered it back when blogging just started becoming known. Well he ended up selling that domain a year or so later for $400,000. Now that was a pretty good return on his investment. So there is definitely possibilities out there, you just need to stay on top of the next new and greatest thing.

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