Nana Gilbert-Baffoe's blog about affiliate marketing and related topics that will be of interest to affiliate marketers.

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

8 Ways to boost your AdSense profitability and Income

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.

Monday, August 30, 2004

Keyword Research Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool and more

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.

My contact info

For any one who needs to contact me, my contact info is now in my profile.

Another High Paying Affiliate program

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.

Sunday, August 29, 2004

Consider Google AdSense

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.

Friday, August 27, 2004

John Reese's "Traffic Secrets" ... Free?

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.

Brad Fallon's Stomping the Search Engines

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.

Tuesday, August 24, 2004

High Payout Affiliate Programs - VMC Satellite and Rapid Satellite

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.

Google Adwords

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

Monday, August 23, 2004

A look at the Major Affiliate Networks

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.


Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Introduction: Affiliate Marketers blog

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