This morning I finally decided to join the performics affiliate network. I'm currently waiting for approval. I'll let you know my thoughts about the network as soon as I get in.
Here are a few of the companies I'm Looking forward to promote:
I've been using AdSense channels to track different sites since they were introduced. But, one thing that I found difficult to do was to easily track performance at the page level while still being able to track performance of the site as whole.
Today, I see Google has solved that problem with a new feature called url channels. Using url channels you can now do url based tracking, down to the page level very easily. You can track all pages on a domain, all pages below a specific directory, or just track a specific page. The really cool thing is that you don't have to modify any code on your site to use url channels for tracking. Just login to your Google AdSense account and go to the channels section of the "Ad Setting Tab". You can then add the new urls you want to track. Many of you who never used channels because of all the work needed manually modify your page will really appreciate this.
Like I already said; "This is very cool!" and I've already entered tracking url channels into my account. Unfortunately, the tracking only seems to happen once you have created the channel url. It would have been really nice if we could get results from the past. Knowing Google, I'm sure they have it. Another thing is that, there are only 60 channels available. So you will have to share them between the url channels and the custom channels. Fortunately for us, AdSense for search has its own set of 50 channels. If you have a small site, you can track every single page of your site
On a side note: There are now 5 new languages supported by AdSense for search. They are Czech, Hungarian, Russian, Slovak, and Traditional Chinese.
The AdSense Login page has also been redesigned, it looks cleaner and more refined.
I just noticed something interesting while looking in the log files for my Flat Screen Tvs - Plasma Tvs - LCD Displays and HDTV blog.
I've been getting a lot of traffic from yahoo. But the interesting thing is that my rankings are based on different versions of Yahoo's cache of my site. For instance I may have a top position for a keyword like "Dell LCD" based on Yahoo's cache of my blog on Monday, but at the same time I'm ranking high for "Dell Plasma" on a Wednesday cache of my site.
I had always thought that older cached versions of my site were being replaced with a newer cache, but that's not the case. I'm seeing at least three days worth of my index page in Yahoo's results pages.
This may be old news, but since I haven't heard or read this anywhere, I figured it was worth sharing. There are some very interesting possibilities for yahoo optimization based on this info. But I'll leave it to you to figure that out ;)
I've always been a fan of Dr. Ken Evoy's products and services. It just came to mind that many of you may not have heard of a many of the SiteSell line of products and service. They're all great, and many of them are free. Here's a list of some of the great content you can get for free.
Netwriting Masters Course
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Or from around the block.
Make Your Net Auction Sell!, The Masters Course
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Google's AdSense -- A Revolution in Web Site Monetization
A Tailor-Made Way To Monetize Your Site!...Rarely will a custom-made solution be dropped into your lap (let alone from the Net's smartest company), just begging you to capitalize. Ride Google AdSense for all its worth.
While doing some research today, I found out the maximum bid amount on Google AdWords is now $100. I don't know when this happened since I didn't see any announcements. If anyone of you know when this happened, I'd be interested in knowing.
I hear that recently Overture increased their max bid to $999.99 so this could be a direct result of that. As for me, I really don't now why anyone would be willing to pay $999.99 a click.
I also wonder if this affects AdSense publishers in anyway. Is Google still going to share the same percentage of each bid? This could mean more earnings for some publishers in the correct niche.
Today when I logged into my AdSense account I saw there was a new AdSense Support center being featured. I spent some time going through the site, it's pretty good. If you have any AdSense questions, make sure to check this out before emailing Google. You may find your answer faster.
Google's index has almost doubled to over 8 billion pages. As of today, the message at the bottom of the main page says "Searching 8,058,044,651 web pages". According to the Official Google Blog, this new index includes HTML, PDF, PowerPoint, Flash, PostScript and JavaScript. The part about JavaScript is quite interesting. A lot of experts have been claiming that Google doesn't index JavaScript. But it looks like now they do. I've got to look into this further.
This is great news for all website owners. It means that it's more than likely that any page that you've been trying to get into the Google index is now in there. I wonder if this is a coincidence or good timing for the launch of Microsoft's new Search Engine?
I just saw an interesting post over at the Search Engine Roundtable blog. Apparently, there seems to be a possible link between how much is earned from your adsense ads and your search engine rankings. I haven't checked my sites to see if this is true or not, but it makes sense. You can also read more and discuss the topic here
The cool people over at SEO Inc have released their first-of-its-kind SEO ToolBar. This toolbar is a must have for anyone doing SEO work since it a real time saver. Take a look at some of the featuress it offers:
Features:
A few days ago, I noticed a lot of new cj.com publishers that had a pay out in Euros. At the time, I just though they were doing a big push to sign up new publishers in Europe. The today, I became aware of a new announcement that answered my questions. Apparently, this is a result of CJ's
Global Network Initiative.
They have just launched in the German market, with a fully localized version of the cj.com marketplace. This means a lot to affiliate publishers, because we now have a new market to target. The US market is saturated, and competition for customers is very tough. By promoting foreign programs now, you should be able to compete in a less crowded space. Affiliate marketing is growing in other countries, but right now it's not as big as it is in the US. Take this opportunity to make some relatively easy money promoting programs in other countries.
I was reading Brad Fallon's Blog (Creator of Stomping the Search Engines) and noticed he had a post about an article that discusses the future growth of the Google AdWords program. They predict they'll be adding almost 100,000 new subscribers every year until 2008. There are currently about 280,000 advertisers in the program right now.
What does this mean to you? If you are an advertiser, the growing competition means increasing bid prices, which will reduce ROI. It's going to be harder to get the same results you've been getting. Now is the time to fine tune you campaigns, make sure you are doing everything you can to squeeze the most out of your advertising budget. This also means careful and constant tracking of campaigns, so you can really tell whether you are making or losing money.
For publishers, it means more revenue from AdSense. Higher bid prices and more advertiser, mean that you'll mostly likely be earning more per click over the coming years. This assumes that, Google doesn't change the revenue share percentages over the years. The increase in ads also means better targeting, since there is an increased chance of having ads that target your audience.
Did the video below catch your attention? I bet it did. Now you there's an easy way to put video like this on your web site, and you don't even have to be a geek like me. Instant Video Generator, from Alex Mandossian, Armand Morin, and Rick Raddatz, will be launching later on this month. But there's a special pre-registration offer for the first 800 people that sign up now. You get some really nice bonuses.
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I have 6 free gmail accounts to share and decided to reward buyers of Stomping the Search Engines by Brad Fallon. Just click the link above, and once your purchase is complete, send me an email. My contact info is in my profile.
Stomping the Search Engines is a great SEO package that will teach you everything you need to know to achieve top rankings in the search engines. I've been using Brad's techniques with great success, so I highly recommend you give Stomping the Search Engines a try.
Please note that I only have 6 free gmail accounts to give out so I may run out quickly.
This afternoon I signed up for the PosterSupply.com Affiliate Program. Based on what they offered, it was a very simple decision to decide to promote their program. Some of the highlights include a generous 27%-32% commission on sales. With a typical framed poster costing over $100, it's easy to see how this can become quite lucrative.
They also provide affiliates with multiple linking methods such as textlinks, banners, and a dynamic poster store that will automatically create a store based on your selections. Other programs that offer this feature only provide html output, but with PosterSupply.com, you also get SSI and PHP code.
The really cool feature is the prebuilt, web services driven, Instant PHP store that lets you set up a 200,000 item poster store in 15 minutes or less. Everything is dynamic, so there's no need to change your site once it's set up. The site is based on SOAP, so unlike a datafeed driven site, you never need to keep on downloading huge datafiles whenever they're updated.
A lot of programs that I promote don't pay me until 30 days after the sale, with PosterSupply.com you get paid weekly. This is really great for affiliates who use PPC to drive sales because it means you'll usually get paid before you are billed for you advertising costs. If done right, even affiliates with low cash reserves can successfully start on the path to creating an nice monthly income stream with a self funding PPC campaign.
As always if you need some help getting started, I'm here to help. Once you sign up for the PosterSupply.com Affiliate Program feel free to send me an email. I'll do whatever I can to help you get up and running.
It's been almost 2 weeks since I got accepted in the kanoodle Bright Ads program, and so far it hasn't turned out to be what I expected. My CTR is less than 0.5% compared to my AdSense CTR, it doesn't even com close.
I'm going to tweak things a bit, but I have a feeling the ads are not as targeted as the ones the show up with AdSense. Poorly targeted Ads lead to very low CTR values, and that's what seems to be happening here. The ads are too generic.
If Kanoodle hopes to be able to compete with AdSense for ad real estate space on publishers' sites, then they're going to have to do a LOT of work on their targeting algorithm
Just got accepted for Kanoodle BrightAds
On Friday I applied for a BrightAds account from Kanoodle, just a few minutes ago I got my acceptance email. I've been plating around with the interface and testing it out for the past few minutes. It's very different from Google's AdSense program. There are a few things that I like and some things that need work.
In terms of ad units, they have a nice range of ad sizes to choose from. Take a look at the following list:
Kanoodle has just launched BrightAds, a Sponsored Links program that competes with AdSense. According to Kanoodle, the BrightAds difference is:
As of October 6th, Google is now showing updated PR information on the Google Toolbar. According to some PR watchers/trackers it's been over 100 days since the last update.
This blog is now showing a PR of 2. It's been online for almost two months. Nothing to show off about. Hopefully this will chance as more people link to it. Hint, hint :)
I just became aware of this and knew some of my readers would be interested in this great offer. Globat is offering $1 Web Hosting for the First Three Months! Looks like you have to pay 1 year in advance, but that comes out to only $74.55 for the year. They also give you one Free Year of Domain Registration and a $50 Overture
Advertising Credit. When you consider all of this, it's a great offer. If you are looking to get starting with a new affiliate website, you should really consider this offer.
This offer ends on Monday.
In my readings and research, I've noticed that more and more people are saying AdSense when they mean AdWords and vice versa. Makes things a bit confusing when I'm trying to research the latest happenings in those two areas.
Many years ago when I was first starting to design and develop websites, I found an amazing sited called The Web Style Guide It helped me get up to speed on a lot of web design issues, and I referred to it often. However, as I learned more, I used the site less and less. Just today, I happened to find the site again, and it brought back memories of how useful it was to me. So now I'd like to share the site with you. I hope it's as helpful to you as it was to me.
You can also check out a hard copy version of the site at Amazon.
The preview release of Firefox, has got to be one of the best web browsers I've used. Don't take this lightly, since I've been a heavy supporter and user of IE since version 3.0
It's powerful, full of great new features, and very user friendly. One of my favorite feature is the ability to open up new tabs. I'm a heavy surfer, which means that it's not unusual for me to have 10 plus browser windows open at the same time. Since I've been blogging and reading blogs more often, I also like the integrated RSS reader. This alerts you of a site's RSS feed on the corner of your window. You can then subscript to it and read feeds directly from the browser.
The #1 thing that helped make the switch from IE to Firefox easier was the fact that, during the install, Firefox can import all your favorites, options, cookies, stored passwords from IE. I don't know about you, but over the years, I've collected a nice bunch of favorites and customized my browser to suit my needs. the fact that I didn't have to start all over again was a very big deal.
So what does Firefox have to do with you as an Affiliate Marketer? Over the next few months, you are sure to notice that a lot of your visitors are using the Firefox browser. As I write this post, 1,671,594 copies of Firefox have been downloaded in just 8 days. This number is sure to grow. I recommend you get Firefox, and start testing your pages to make sure they show correctly. Unlike IE, Firefox is stricter about correct HTML code. You won't be able to get away with some of the things you've been able to do in IE. The last thing you want is to lose a sale because your website was incorrectly coded.
Google has changed the AdWords conversion tracker image to a simple block of text. I like the look of this new tracker better since it's less intrusive. On top of that, the background color can now be customized to match your site.
Yesterday I found out about Big Hip, an email marketing service that provides you with powerful tools to manage your email marketing campaigns. I've been with them for less than a day, and I'm already liking their service a lot.
They have some very powerful list management and tracking tools that help you easily manage and track your campaigns. Each subscriber must complete a double opt in process, this makes sure that you only have people who are interested in being on your list.
There's also a cool category feature that lets you define different categorize. New subscribers can then select the categories they are interested in. You can then send mail to only members of a particular category on your list. This feature alone should enable you to target your emails in a way the produce maximum results.
Their statistics are in real time, and you will immediately know how many emails were delivered, and how many people actually opened your email. One feature I really liked, was the geographic statistics. It tells you exactly where your readers are located. You can then even send emails to users in a specific geographic location. Imagine being able to send a special email to only list members located in the UK. Amazing!
Do you want to know which links people are clicking in the emails you send? It's as easy as setting up a custom tracking url. This is built right into the system, and you'll get detailed information on which links were clicked.
Service and support is outstanding. You get unlimited phone and email support. There also a live chat support option. I used it today, and talked to a really helpful rep.
I found out that there some very exciting up coming features just around the corner. First, there's an auto responder feature. This will let you setup automated follow up sequences, based on a schedule you set up. Second, there will soon be a feature that can automatically categorize members based on their behavior over time. I didn't get the full details, but I image that you'll be able to get access to categories such as subscribers that read a certain percentage of your emails.
Finally, if you are familiar with email marketing you know how important it is to get your email delivered. Big Hip is AOL White Listed, and a member of the Bonded Sender Program. This means improved access to over 230 million mailboxes, MSN and hotmail use this program. So if a lot of your list members use MSN or Hotmail, this is an added advantage.
If you are interested in building a list, I highly recommend you take a look Big Hip. The started plan gives you free usage for up to 50 subscribers. You'll be able to send 1,500 a month. This basically means, you'll be able to email a list of 50 people every day of the month without hitting you limit. Other plans with more subscribers range between $19.95 and $249.95 a month.
The holiday season is just around to corner. Are you ready? For many merchants, the holidays mean an increase in sales and business. This in turn, means more opportunities for affiliate to earn more over the next few months. In order to make to most out of the holiday sales period, you must take some time to prepare your websites for holiday buyers.
Things to consider include:
One good habit you can pick up from brick and mortar stores is that, they start their promotions very early. I've been seeing Halloween candy and decorations in store for the past few weeks. The earlier you start, the more time you have to make sale and earn commissions. Of course, you can't always start as early as you want. Your merchants also have to be on board.
I just recently received issue #3 of Revenue Magazine. From what I know, this is the first magazine dedicated to affiliate marketing. I think it's a great addition to any affiliate marketer's reading list. As affiliate marketers, it's always important to keep up to date with the industry. This field is steadily growing, and the competition is getting tougher.
Unfortunately, the magazine is only published quarterly, so don't expect a new issue every month. Issue #4 will be out in October, if you are interested, you should be able to find it at your local newsstand. You can also subscribe online at the revenue website.
Have any of you had a chance to read a copy of Revenue? I'd like to hear your comments.
Today while reviewing my campaigns, I had a feeling to check my destination url for a keyword that was getting a lot of clicks. Imagine my horror when I found out the destination url was not for the item the ad was describing. When creating the ads, I made sure that all links were going to a valid url. However, I think, in between the multiple cut and pastes I over looked this ad. Fortunately, I had a very low bid price for that Ad Group and didn't lose much money.
Take a look at your campaigns and ad groups, if you are getting a lot of clicks but no sales, it could be a sign that your destination url may be wrong.
Here's another Google AdWords tool for you. For those if you familiar with Power Posting, I've designed this tool to help you quickly and easily generate a keyword list in the correct format for power posting. It's pretty straight forward and easy to use.
I spent some hours on this getting the formulas right and everything. If you like it, feel free to leave a donation :)
You can download the file here:
http://www.thebizbank.com/power-post-tool.xls (3.34mb)
It's quite big because I designed it to support up to 4000 keywords. If you are on dial up and want a smaller version of the file let me know.
I've recently started running more PPC advertising campaigns on Google AdWords, and one thing that I always worry about is: "How high can I afford to bid on this keyword?" The last thing I want to do is run a campaign that loses money.
I seen tools that tell you your ROI etc, but I could find something that could tell me the max I could bid before I started losing money. I also wanted to find out what my max bid should be if I wanted to achieve a certain ROI.
With this in mind, I spent the past hour or so creating a tool that would answer my questions. I've uploaded it to one of my servers, and you are free to download an check it out. Please let me know what you think. I checked my math, but if you find an error let me know. I'd also like to know if there are other tools you'd like to see.
You can download the excel file at http://www.thebizbank.com/PPC-Bidding-Tool.xls
I've just become aware of two domain name registration companies that are offering free registrations of .info domain names. I haven't yet registered any names with either company but, if I had to choose, I'd feel more comfortable ordering from NameSecure. They also have a tell a friend form that will send you a 10% discount on their other services and products. Have a friend fill out the form, or email me if you'd like me to send you the discount.
Check out both companies below:
Google just announced that publishers can now have up to 3 ad units per page. This means more opportunities to monetize your content.
The nice people over at Google have published a mini guide to help you improve your AdSense profitability.
Take a look, try and test them, and see how well they work for you. I've already had success using some of the tips on my sites. I'll be giving my thoughts on these tips after you've had some time to read them.
My number one free way to do research for your next website to build is with the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool By spending a few minutes with this tool I can get a good idea of what kind of demand a market has. I also use the View Bids tool to easily see how much other advertisers are willing to pay per click. Usually a high bid price means there's a lot of money being made in that market.
The next step is to build a quality content site focusing on this niche. Because of the competition in this field, it will be tougher to get high rankings on the popular keywords. Focus on creating a large list of related keywords with less competition. Another good tool to try is Wordtracker. Using Wordtracker you can find out which keywords get high search counts, and few results pages in the Search Engines.
The main source of income from this site will come from your affiliate links and AdSense income. You can even run PPC campaigns to get visitors to your site, just make sure you bid low. The income from your AdSense will be enough to cover your advertising.
Online dating is a hot, and growing market. So it's no surprise that there are a lot of opportunities for affiliates to make money in this market. I just recently joined the Match.com Affiliate program, it looks very promising. The payout ranges from $18.71 - $65.70. They provide a lot of banners in many different sizes to choose from, and they're also categorized so you can choose the right one to reach your target audience.
Another cool feature is the fact that they offer direct deposit. I have come to appreciate this feature since there has been more than one occasion when I almost threw out an affiliate check with other junk mail.
In the next few weeks, I'll be building a web site to promote this program. I'm also thinking about documenting my results in a blog of some sort. If you are interested in following along, let me know so I can gauge interest.
Finally, the Match.com Affiliate Program is 2-tier, so you can also build a team of affiliates on a 2nd level. I'll gladly offer any kind of assistance needed to help all members of my team get up and running. To join my team, just use this link, then email me when ever you need help.
It's been over a year since the Google AdSense program was launched for web publishers, and from my experience, it's been one of the best performing program I've been a part of.
The fact of the matter is that not everyone who comes to your web pages is interested in what you have to offer. The majority of times they leave your site, leaving you with no income from your traffic. That's were Google AdSense comes in handy. The ads that show up on your site are chosen to fit closely to your site's content. This creates a situation where your visitor sees ads that they are most likely very interested in.
Many times, I've had situations were the income from AdSense outperforms the income from the affiliate programs I'm promoting on a site. I'm not alone with this observation, and many other affiliate marketers have also shared the same experience. In the coming months, it will be interesting to see how the affiliate marketing world reacts to this.
If you are just getting started building a new website to promote an affiliate program, you should consider integrating AdSense into your site. You may be pleasantly surprised with your results.
Please note that if you don't have an AdSense account, you should hold off on applying for an account before your site is completed. Make sure you have solid content on your site, or you may end up not being approved for the program. If this happens, take some time to beef up your site's content and try again.
Take the Google AdSense Tour for a detailed overview of the program. In the future, I'll be sharing some tips in the future that will help you make the most out of the AdSense program.
I'm sure a lot of people will be very interested in this deal. Gary Ambrose and Co have an interesting offer right now. You'll get a chance chance to win a copy of John Reese's "Traffic Secrets" There's no purchase invloved. check out his site for more details.
I've recently been hearing a lot about Brad Fallon's Stomping the Search Engines package. Apparently, he used SEO techniques to help his 6-month old Website make over $156,037 in Sales. For a new website, that quite an impressive accomplishment. I haven't yet bought the course, but I did check out a sample audio and subscribe to his seven part course titled "The 7 Mistakes Search Engine Optimizers Make" If you click the link you will see the sign up form about 4 screens down the page. It's a great read, so I recommend you check it out. Even if you don't plan on getting the course. I picked up a few good tips, and I consider myself to be quite knowledgeable in the SEO field.
Also if you've tried out the course, I'd like to hear your comments.
There are a lot of affiliate programs that pay big! If you can establish yourself in one of the high paying niches, you will do quite well. The unfortunate thing is that everyone and their dog are also working hard to get high rankings in those niches, so competition is very tough.
One area that pays quite well is the Satellite Market: Check out VMC Satellite and Rapid Satellite, you can make up to $100 per sale.
Sign Up with VMC Satellite - Dish Network
Sign Up with RapidSatellite - DirecTV
If you sign up with the links above, let me know. I'll help you get started so you can make money quickly.
It's quite likely that you've heard a lot about Google AdWords and how great and how easy it is to get targeted customers to your site in minutes. If you've never used Google Adwords to promote your site or other Affiliate programs, I recommend you give it a try. You can usually setup and AdWords account in about 15 minutes. Your ads will display on the Google search results page. If you choose to have your ads syndicated, they will also display on Google Partner sites. In the future I'll provide different tips and techniques that will help you get the most out of Google Adwords.
Also Check out these 2 eBooks on the subject. Perry Marshall and Chris Carpenter are both well respected experts in the field.
Perry Marshall's Definitive Guide to Google AdWords
Chris Carpenter's Google Cash
One of the easiest ways to find new affiliate programs to join is to sign up with one or more of the major affiliate networks. The two that I highly recommend are Commission Junction and LinkShare
. A lot of the major ecommerce web site have their programs administered by either Commission Junction
or LinkShare
.
If you are just getting started, you will appreciate the fact that Commission Junction will combine your earnings from all your merchants. On the other hand Linkshare will not do this. You usually need to have approximately $25 in commissions with a merchant before you get paid.
There are certain disadvantages to being in a large network such as Commission Junction. One of the major concerns has to do with the fact that programs such as Norton Internet Security and Firewall block affiliate links. This means you lose out on commissions on sales that you've made. I've heard that the major affiliate networks are in discussions with Norton to get this issue cleared up. I'll keep you posted on any major updates.
[New: Commission Junction is now serving ads from different domains. I haven't verified this but, it may have solved this issue. I'll do further research into this matter and report back.]
NOTE:
My thanks to Sebastian for pointing this out, I incorrectly stated that linkshare combines payments from different merchants. My entry has been updated to reflect this change.
Welcome to my Affiliate Marketers blog. My aim is to create a resource to assist people make the most out of Affiliate marketing. I'll be posting my own thoughts, tips, links to interesting articles or news that will be of interest to affiliate marketers.
A little info about me: I started out doing web design in 1996 and slowly moved into web development. Around 2000 I developed my own textbooks exchange site and that's when I started experimenting with affiliate marketing. It took me 4 years to finally get things to a point where I was happy with the results of my efforts.
It's my hope that the information you get from this site will speed up the time needed to reach your goals. If you ever have questions or comments, please send them to me. I'm always happy to hear from my readers
