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.

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!

Comment Spam Detective Trick

Today’s “Quick Tip” should be pretty quick, but I think beneficial to many of you bloggers out there. I HATE Spammers and I am sure most of you out there do as well. One of our many goals is to try and keep spam out of our comments section of our blogs. To help with that goal… many (if not most) WordPress bloggers use a plugin called Akismet which is designed to filter out spam comments. For the most part it does an AMAZING job of catching a large percentage of the spam that comes through each day. But it is not 100% perfect, so you need to occasionally check  the spam folder and make sure no legitimate comments got put in there. I usually find at least a few comments every few days that mistakenly got pushed into the spam folder… so I just need to go in and approve the legitimate comments.

Not only does legitimate comments get wrongly put in the spam folder, but occasionally a few spam comments make it into the “Pending Approval” folder where you decide if you want to approve the comments or not.

So how do you tell if a comment is spam or if it is a legitimate comment? No one wants to lose a potential regular visitor to their blog and if someone writes a legitimate comment and you do not approve it… there is a good chance they may never come back.

Well there is no exact science to this, but some spam comments are much more obvious than others and they are usually very easy to spot. But what about the ones that aren’t so obvious?

Many times you will see comments like these:

“Great post. You really know what you are talking about!”

“Interesting concept. I have never thought about that before. Thanks for the great advice.”

“Hi, good post. I have been wondering about this issue, so thanks for writing. I’ll definitely be subscribing to your blog.”

Would you approve any of those comments above from someone who has never left a comment on your blog before? I definitely would not. I have one #1 RULE when it comes to approving someone to be able to comment on any of our blogs…

“I need to know that you read the post by something you say in your comments!”

Those 3 comments above are so generic that they could be used in almost any post on any subject, and you have no idea if they read the post at all.

Well I came up for the idea of this post tonight when I saw a Pending Comment in my WordPress admin. As soon as I read it, I knew it was SPAM, but it didn’t get filtered into my spam folder… and I wondered how many of you out there would approve the comment. I know there are some, as I will show you in a minute.

The image below is a copy of the comment that is in my Pending Approval folder. Here is what the comment says:

“Thanks! You made some good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog. It will greatly help me in my activities. Thanks though, I’m glad some people share good stuff like this! It will greatly help me in my activities this is one of the most extensive articles I’ve read on the subject of making money from blogging”

Let’s be honest… if we didn’t know any better, that actually sounds like a pretty good comment, wouldn’t you agree? I definitely think so. The one problem is… it is in direct violation of my #1 Rule, and I will not break that rule.

So just for fun, and to prove to YOU that it definitely was a SPAM comment I performed a simple test. I took the text from the comment below and highlighted it and copied it…

and then I pasted the text into Google’s search box and clicked the “Search” button. Below is an image of the results.

I found pages and pages of the exact same comments on dozens (if not hundreds) of blogs. That just shows you that not everyone knows what to look for when it comes to SPAM.

Hopefully this simple little test can help you too!

Adding Videos Can Liven Up Your Site

Adding video to your website or blog can be a challenge, but it can also take your site to the next level. We tried to modify one of our popular features from one of our other websites by adding video content. Easier said than done, if you ask me. Although I don’t think our first effort will be winning any major awards anytime soon, we did learn a few things:

1. Not everyone should be in a video. I learned this from watching other videos, and people have often told me that I have a great face for radio (that’s the joke, get it?) I still like to talk to people, and don’t have a problem facing the camera. Remember the music artist Rick Astley? Never gonna give you up? He sold tons of records before people actually saw what he looked like (the face just didn’t match his amazing soulful voice) and his career hit the skids. Point well taken.


2. You may have a lot of information to get across, but remember to use the K.I.S.S. method when doing your presentation: Keep It Simple Stupid. If you can’t get your message across in a few words, give up (anti-Rick Astley reference).
3. Make it entertaining and you will get a positive response. My first video was packed with information, and one of my personal friends (and supporter of the website) sent me the most helpful response: You Suck.  The video didn’t capture my humorous nature, or as she put it “You weren’t yourself”.  By all means, be yourself, just don’t suck.
4. Keep it short. We tried to do a 30 second spot, and it took several hours and several takes/editing sessions to get it down to 30 seconds. Our goal is to have a continuing segment that keeps  things brief, funny, informative and worth waiting for each week.  If you build it, they will come but if you make it funny they will bring their friends too!

Have you made a video and posted it to your website/blog? There are many different ways to add video content  for free (youtube, vimeo, etc. ) or you can upgrade to premium packages that include HD (we chose to upgrade our Vimeo package and are happy with the results.)

We also use Sony Vegas Pro 8 to edit our raw footage (shot with my HD Flip Video Camera which is all too easy to transfer. I love my Flip Video! ) This sounds like another topic I can exploit in the near future, so I will just share with you what we use.  What about you? Are there some must use applications or software that you can recommend? Extreme John always has video worth watching, so hey big guy, what do you use? You don’t have to have his advertising budget to get your images out there, and that is what we want to share today.

Make Your Blog More Interactive

Today’s “Quick Tip” is another simple way to increase commenting on your blog, as well as make it much more interactive. Again, this post is not for everyone, as lots of you are already doing it… but MANY blogs I visit do not, and I am not sure why they don’t.

From what I have noticed on this site, as well as on other blogs that I visit is… you get many more comments, and COMMENT INTERACTION if your blog allows for “Threaded Comments”. That is where you can “Reply” to individual comments in the comment section and your comment will appear right below the comment you replied to.

If a site doesn’t have this feature and you want to reply to someone that may have left a comment at the very top of the comment section, you have to get the commentor’s attention somehow to let them know you are replying to what they wrote. A lot of times I see people do this by writing something like “@THEIR NAME – ” and then leave their reply comment. I am sure if a particular post receives a lot of comments, there is a good chance the commentor may never even see that reply and there will be no more interaction between the two of them on that post.

So here are a couple of reasons I think blogs should use, “Threaded Comments”:

1. Much more organized comment section – Allowing nested comments makes reading the comment section much easier, as comments and replies are grouped together in a nice organized fashion. That also allows readers the ability to easily skip over reply conversations that do not interest them.
2. Encourages more interaction with your readers – This is probably the most important reason to do it. It allows readers to comment on your blog, and then allows you or other readers to comment directly to what they have to say. Without nested comments those replies could get lost in the mix and the person (or persons) you are replying to may never see your reply and the conversation dies. With threaded comments your readers can carry on their own conversation and you and/or other readers can easily jump into that conversation making your blog much more interactive, which I know we want with this blog.

So how do you allow for threaded comments in your Blog? Well over the last few years there have been several plugins that have come out that allows you to accomplish this. But now you don’t even need a plugin anymore, as WordPress has added this functionality right into their latest versions. You just need to go in and adjust your settings… which can be done in your WordPress admin (wp-admin/options-discussion.php).

Not only can you activate and adjust the threaded comments there, but you can also choose if you want the comments to display the newest or the oldest comments first, as well as… you can break the comments up into pages allowing a maximum amount of comments per page. You can read more about these functions on the WordPress website. One note though: Some older themes or custom themes may have to be updated for this feature to work.

So what about you guys, do you think Threaded Comments encourages more commenting? Also, we don’t do this, but do you think it is better to show the newest comments at the top of the page or the oldest comments first?

How to Create a Gravatar

Today’s “Quick Tip” was inspired by a funny post I read over at Misc Bytes. As I was reading the post it reminded me of the Gravatar I am using and where I got it. When I first started leaving comments on blogs I never used a Gravatar, as I never even thought about it.

But when we started Making Money Online we decided we needed some cool Gravatars so people could relate the name to a face. Well I have always liked those cartoon looking cariactures I have seen around the net, so I searched around for different companies that created them. I ended up finding an AWESOME company that not only does a great job, but they only charge around $5 to create one for you. The company is called CartoonMe, and not only do they do a great job, but they have a fast turnaround time (less than 72 hours) as well.

I have actually used them several times now, but when I first ordered one… I didn’t have any recent photos of me or Mark that I liked. I did have this photo of us from several years ago on St. Patrick’s Day (when our wives use to let us party) at one of our favorite bars. So I scanned it and here is the original photo. (I am on the left and Mark on the right)

Then I cropped each head and made them their own image, as CartoonMe will only do one face at a time. The ordering process is beyond simple. You give them your email address, select the photo you want to use, crop the photo right there online and make your payment. Then within 72 hours (but we got them back much faster) you are emailed your cartoon.  Here are the results from our first order…

As I mentioned that photo was from several years ago (I think around 7) and I have probably gained 20 to 30lbs since then.  So I have been using that as my Gravatar… since it is a more flattering image of me. I am planning on losing weight by the end of the year, so I will update my Gravatar then . You can see a more recent image of us on our About Us page if you like.

So, if you are looking to get a fun cartoon-type image for your Gravatar, or just want to have one for something else, I suggest you give CartoonMe a try.

And for any of you Graphic Designers out there… since our site is about making money online, you might want to consider developing this skill yourself and offering this service. It could be a good lead-in to offering your clients other services you provide.

Now if anybody decides to get one, please let us know… as we would love to see the finished product!

How to Twitter?

This week’s “Quick Tip” of the week is really not teaching you anything, as we are hoping to learn from you.

As many of you know we are still very new at this Twitter thing, and to be honest we still really don’t know what we are doing when it comes to utilizing Twitter.

Since we added our Twitter account we have tweeted several of our posts, as well as tweeted many blog posts that we have read on other sites. But beyond that, we are a little lost and would love some help so we can catch up with you 21^st century movers and shakers. I am sure there has to be some of our readers that are in the same shape as us, but are just afraid to ask for help.

I honestly have no idea what the best way to actually check for new tweets is? Do most of you have your Twitter account hooked up to your phone or do you just post and check your tweets from Twitter’s home page? I am worried if I connect it to my phone that I will be bombarded with tweets that I can not keep up with, as well as go over my monthly airtime usage on my phone.

Also, as of me writing this… we are only following 35 people. How do you possibly keep up with tweets if you are following hundreds or even thousands of people? I just don’t get it. How often do you check your account… every few minutes, every half an hour, every hour?

How about posting on Twitter? How often do you post and is it usually business related, or do you tell people when you are eating and sleeping as well? If so, do people really want to know that stuff?

I just don’t know what is the best way to utilize Twitter?

Can you please give us some pointers in the comment section below? (The more comments the better)

How to Get More Comments

Today’s weekly quick tip on Making Money Online Dot Com is not for everyone, but it could help you in the future. As you probably know I love comments and I also love to comment on other bogs. One thing I like to do to help build our online presence is to leave comments on the blogs of the people that comment on our site. I also like to visit the sites of the people who comment on their blogs as well and leave comments. The reason is simple… you already know these people leave comments on blogs, so there is a good chance if you leave a comment on their site, they might return the favor and comment on yours. Even though this is a “Great Tip”, this is not the tip of the week.

One thing I have noticed when following commentors (which is not a real word, but should be) to their sites is that some people use the URL to their main site versus their blog and wonder why they are not getting more comments. A good example of this was my buddy Brian Bell. He was leaving lots of great comments on our site and I wanted to return the favor, so when I would click on his URL… it would take me to his BlogEngage site, which at the time I had NO IDEA what it was, so I would usually just leave.

Then one day Brian left a comment on our site on the post “Hey Bloggers, Scratch Our Blog and We’ll Scratch Yours” saying that he should try that method, as he wasn’t getting any comments on his blog. So I suggested that he use his Blog URL in the comment box instead of BlogEngage… which he started doing and is still doing today.

After he made that SIMPLE change I personally started visiting and commenting on his site all the time. Not only because he was commenting on our site, but because SEOMkt.com is a GREAT BLOG and has lots of great information on getting more high quality traffic to your site. Also from reading his blog I actually learned what his BlogEngage site is actually about and I started submitting my blog posts regularly to it. I even added his BlogEngage Voting widget to our blog so readers can actually vote for our posts right on our site. It is an awesome tool and I suggest everyone gets it for their blog.

Okay… so we have learned that making that simple change (using his blog address versus using his main website address) that he has at least received a lot more comments from me personally. But did it make any difference to his overall commenting results? Well I decided to ask him 24 days later…

As you can see the answer is an overwhelming success! Now I am not saying everyone is going to experience these kinds of results, as everyone’s business models are set-up differently. I do think though… that there is a much better chance of getting more comments on your blog if you send people directly to your blog versus to another section of your site (or a completely other site like Brian was doing) and making the visitor have to search for your blog.