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I need some help here ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. I’m looking to broaden my affiliate marketing horizons and I’m after a bit of good old fashioned honest feedback. Here’s some background:-
This was something that I’ve been wondering about for a while, I know I make a lot of typos, the question is does typing too quickly come at a cost?
Just like many an old internet marketer I’ve got a few “aged” websites that just hang around not doing much, they tend to stay where they are in the rankings paying for themselves but little else. What they are good for though is experiments, I like experiments!
So I decided to take one of these static websites (6 pages of embarrassingly bad HTML) and go through correcting my typos that had just been forgotten about. I was hoping that using the Queens English would benefit my affiliate conversions if nothing else (isn’t it really annoying when somebody is trying to sell you something but can’t even be bothered to use the correct grammar and correct obvious typos? It gives a really bad impression from the start).
Four weeks down the line it has actually turned out to be quit a productive little exercise. A jump of 28 places in the search engines and more affiliate sales in one month than the previous six. Of course the increase in affiliate sales could be down to the increased traffic from the better search results. And the better SERPs position could be down to Google treating it as new content (there were a lot of mistakes to correct!) but overall for half an hours work I have no complaints.
It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of a new “Make Money” idea that results in a rushed job, I’m as guilty of this as anybody. Having seen how taking your time can return better results I think from now on I’m going to give that extra time and be more considered in my approach. If nothing else running your content through MS Word’s spellchecker should help a bit!
With a new year comes new impetus for most of us, this means getting of our back-sides and reviewing what we’ve done whilst making plans to help us do better. During my review of last year I realised that from about September onwards I’d started to stand still and was actually investing very little back into my online plans. Sure the time was there but in terms of pumping some money back in I just wasn’t doing it, the problem with standing still is that in reality and relative to inflation you’re not still but going backwards. Time for a change, so this year in order to try and boost my earnings to the next level I’m starting with a shot at PPC affiliate marketing. It’s very important for me to never lose site of my overall goal here, financial freedom. I’m not fussed about being a millionaire or any other sort of status tag, just to earn enough online to be financially free.
What I’m trying to do here is promote affiliate deals (the sort of offers you find on Commission Junction, Never Blue Ads and ClickBank) by paying for clicks through the various PPC networks. To get things of to a good start and with the idea that I don’t mind losing a bit of money I’ve jumped straight in with Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsofts AdCenter and FaceBook. Whilst I’ve run these types of campaigns for clients before I’ve never used this method at all in order to create an income for myself so it’s all new to me.
Having some amount of common sense I did decide to read up quite heavily before I started, a couple of the blogs I regularly read are very into this type of marketing. MSDanielle, GoogleLady and Zac Johnson are all big experts on this type of affiliate marketing so who better to learn from? If you’re also considering giving this a go then I suggest you go and read through their archives before spending any money. Even so I’m well aware that I’m bound to lose until I get my feet properly wet.
So how does this all differ from what I’ve done in the past, I’ve made money from affiliate deals before? Up until now I’ve made all my money promoting affiliate deals using free traffic. In order to do this I create a website, pour out new content and then when an affiliate deal matches I use that website to promote it. All the traffic is coming from the search engines natural results so any sales I make are all profit. The problem with doing things this way is attracting enough people to make large (or even decent) amounts of money, at best natural search traffic is only going to be partially targeted so conversion rates are traditionally quite low. PPC is different, you can absolutely target your affiliate offer to the exact phrases that you think people will be searching for, you can also use GEO targeting to make sure you’re only getting your offer in front of eligible eye balls. The downside is that you have to pay for this traffic, because of this it’s all about maths and percentages.
Say for example I decide to bid $0.10 on a keyword and that $0.10 is how much each click costs me (in reality your bid price and what you pay will most likely be different), in 1 month that keyword attracts 10,000 clicks on Adwords. My Adwords spend for that month is $1000. I’m promoting an affiliate deal that pays me $25 for each new member I get, in order to cover my costs I need to sell 40 memberships. Lets say my campaign receives an average conversion rate of 1%, so out of the 10,000 people that clicked on my advert 100 will convert, this gives me a total income for the month of $2500, or put another way $1500 profit. Nice, if only it was that simple. What happens if my bid of 0.10 isn’t actually high enough anymore, other marketers have discovered my niche and now I’ve got competition. In order to get the same ad position I’m now bidding $0.30, my monthly spend on Adwords has now gone up to $3000 and I’ve lost money ($500). Go back to my original 0.10 bid scenario, what happens if the conversion rate changes? The market is now full of my offer and so conversion rates have dropped, my conversion rate for that keyword has gone from 1% to 0.65%, instead of 100 new memberships a month I’m now getting only 65 or $1625 of income ($625 profit). As long as it doesn’t drop below 0.40% then I’m still covering costs but is it really worth all the hours for $625?
The way I see it
if (Income – Expense >= Time And Effort) then I’m onto a winner.
The above is a very simplified example of just what PPC affiliate marketing is all about involving only 1 keyword, in the real world for each product you would ideally have several campaigns with each campaign containing multiple keywords. It’s quite a robotic way of making money online and requires a lot of discipline and some amount of money to get started but for those masters of it the rewards can be huge. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a month can be made by those with the right approach, for me my goal is to be able to make $3000 a month profit using this method by the end of June. As it stands I’m 5 days in and about $70 down for the month, looks like I need to do some more reading!
This is a great little tip for anybody looking at improving their affiliate earnings, there’s nothing black hat or nasty about this it’s just a genuine way of getting more referrals.
It’s a well known fact amongst internet marketers that visitors do not like clicking on referral/affiliate URL’s and that’s why so many people go to great lengths to hide them. Perhaps the most common way of disguising these links is to use a 301 redirect from a PHP file, if you look closely you’ll see that I use that tactic several times on this blog. However whilst that is fine for many average users what happens if you want to use an affiliate URL on forums and blog comments etc. Webmasters hate the idea of anybody other than them profiting from “their” traffic. Most webmasters can spot an affiliate link from a mile away and will simply delete your post or comment. It’s a damn shame because this is a great way of getting your link in front of thousands of visitors without having to go to the trouble of actually attracting them yourself. What if I could tell you a way of being able to use your affiliate link on whatever forum/blog/publically editable content you like?
This is so simple that a lot of people are just about to start kicking themselves….use a domain name as your referral link. Buy a domain name that relates to what you’re promoting and create a 301 redirect to your affiliate URL. No forum moderator or blog owner is going to suspect that the link to http://www.myfavouriteholidays.com in your signature is an affiliate URL (unless they read this!) and it gives you much more license to spread your link around the web. It’s even a way of getting your link past some of those fussy CPC networks.
I’ve got several domains setup like this and it is a tactic that works very well, if you want a quick example of what I mean try typing in www.widget-bucks.com and see what you get (That ones not mine by the way)?
Everybody knows that a newsletter is a great way of further pushing your brand, putting across affiliate deals and perhaps most of all making some extra money (Well if you didn’t you do now). Creating a newsletter itself isn’t that difficult, the problem is managing the list of people you’re going to e-mail your newsletter to, you’ll need some sort of authenticated sign up process, the ability to unsubscribe and of course a mechanism for actually sending out your e-mail newsletters. Up until recently I’d been using a service called Zookoda for all of this, however somebody mentioned Constant Contact so I thought I’d give them a go. Here’s how I found the 2 services.
Zookoda
Zookoda is primarily a service for delivering RSS content via e-mail (very similar to what FeedBurner now offers). However it is easily possible to setup a newsletter style broadcast by ignoring the feed option and creating your newsletter content manually. The first thing you’ll notice about Zookoda is how easy to use it is. The top menu flows from left to right and if you follow the instructions you’ll have no problems at all. The first thing to do is create a name for you mailing list (the list that contains the e-mail addresses). The next option allows you to create a subscription form where people can sign up for your newsletter, there are not a huge number to choose from but they all quite neutrally coloured so it shouldn’t be a problem to find one to suite your template. You can also import an existing list of e-mails if you are migrating from a different system. You then move on to creating your actual e-mail, this can be sourced from an RSS feed or in our case manually created. Again the number of templates to choose from is quite limited but you can edit the source opening up many more options (there is no reason why you couldn’t link to your own images and create a completely new style template). The final step in the process is to schedule your broadcast, this can either be a 1 off or recurring, obviously if you’ve created you e-mail manually you only want it to be sent once, the recurring options are much more suited to RSS feed delivery. In order for your mail to be sent you’ll need to provide and authenticate a sending e-mail address but again with Zookoda this is a very quick process.
So that’s just about all there is to it, your e-mail gets sent and you then have the option of viewing the stats to see how many people opened it, followed your links etc Zookoda will handle your subscription, un-subscription process completely behind the scenes. I suppose Zookoda has many good points but the best of which being that it’s totally free. Template options for both the subscription form and the emails themselves are limited but it’s still possible to get a high quality newsletter out with Zookoda.
Constant Contact
I took up Constant Contacts 60 day free trial offer just so that I could compare them with Zookoda. My first impressions were not that great, gone was the nice easy to follow process flow and here was a nice looking web page but one that gave me no clue as to where to start. I eventually found the link to an introduction video, it’s a good job too because I was lost before I’d even started. For example the first option you should use to create a mailing list is actually hidden under the 4th menu option, Contacts. A list is essentially a group of contacts that you want to send your e-mail to. Once you have created your list you’ll probably want to give people a way of signing up? Again, rather than being easy to find this option is actually hidden away in the My Settings main menu, crazy! Once you do manage to find the Site Visitor Signup option the process is actually quite straight forward. Now you’ve got your list and your way of signing up you’ll want to create your first e-mail. At this point Constant Contact jumps ahead of Zookoda leaps and bounds, there are hundreds of very specific templates to select from. This and the fact that Contsant Contact is designed as an e-mail marketing platform and not primarily for RSS feed delivery makes the actual creation process much simpler. In no time at all you’ll have your first newsletter ready for sending out. Constant contact also provide you with all sorts of reporting options but I didn’t spend too much time delving into the Constant Contact in my opinion is not that cheap, starting from $15 a month (depending on your number of subscribers) but it does offer a more focused newsletter/e-mail marketing delivery platform. I just wonder how many people will be put off by the stupid menu layout?
What Would I Use?
Now this is the question. I suppose it all depends on what you’re doing. If you’re just planning on sending out a monthly social newsletter with little in the way of advertising then Zookoda is great (and free). If on the other hand you want to come across as a professional e-mail marketer then it would be very hard to beat Constant Contact. Even so I think I’d probably start with Zookoda and then if you see your newsletters generating an income consider switching to a more professional look with Constant Contact. If you can see the $15+ a month as just a small dent in the profits your newsletters are generating then that is the perfect situation.
Clickbank, to affiliate marketing what the God Channel is to the Christian faith. Love it or hate it there are people out there who claim to be mega rich through nothing more than being a Clickbank affiliate, so what I’d like to know is where am I going wrong?
My main problem with Clickbank is that a lot of the products for sale seem to be about making money from the internet, 90%+ of these come down to selling the same e-product you just bought (Great, now I feel like an even bigger sucker!) Even worse the landing page for these products tend to be sick inducing insults to the actual words “web page”. BIG text, black on a yellow background and the sort of marketing blurb that could only possibly appeal to mentalists all feature heavily on most Clickbank product landing pages. The other question I’d have is that if the seller genuinely believes for 1 minute that they have a product worth $60-$100 why are they prepared to give up a 75% cut on average to an affiliate? Commission Junction this is not.
Maybe I’m not evil enough to promote Clickbank products properly, or maybe I care too much about what people think but there are people out there claiming a six figure monthly salary from Clickbank? Don’t get me wrong, when I find something that I think people will find genuinely useful I’m not shy of including a Clickbank link (like my list of Surveys for example) and I’ve even made the odd sale. If I hadn’t made money from Clickbank I wouldn’t even be mentioning it here, I just wish people wouldn’t push the sort of crap they’d never buy themselves.
So these are my top 3 tips to being an honest yet poor Clickbank affiliate:-
If it’s a product for a price at which you’d buy it and you don’t feel dirty promoting it then please go ahead. I normally manage 3-4 Clickbank sales a month bringing in around $100. Far from impressive but I have no guilt about the products I’m promoting if that counts for anything?
One final thing, people buying might be turned off by seeing a Clickbank affiliate link, it is normally recommended that you disguise the link (it will also stop people from stealing your commission). If you’re not techy minded then the following tools may help (these can also be used for lots of other affiliate schemes):-
There’s no better time than the present to be thinking about sports betting. The greatest football (soccer to all you Americans) league in the world gets under way tomorrow with the Charity Shield between Man Utd and Chelsea. I used to work at an online bookmaker and I know just how popular betting on football is with punters all around the world, I also got to see first hand just how very few people actually make any money over the long term. A poor bookmaker, you must be joking! This was the whole reason I signed up for the Bet365 affiliate scheme, it was one of the first affiliate schemes I joined, I was sure I’d make good money from it and I have.
The reason I went with Bet365 above any other bookmaker is reputation, Bet365 has a huge reputation, you’ll find them sponsoring a lot of sporting events and advertising offline all over the place. I figured then when you talk about gambling, that placing bets with a trusted bookmaker would be very important. The other good thing about the affiliate scheme at Bet365 is that they don’t pay out a single lump sum but rather pay out a percentage over the lifetime of your referred customer. Having worked at a bookie this is what I wanted, a piece of the long term action, a whopping 30% piece! The fact is most punters lose over time, once you’ve got your referral then the money just keeps on building.
Although I concentrate on promoting the sports betting side of things Bet365 also have a Casino and Bookmaker wing, the great thing is that if your referral goes on to play those games as well then you’ll still get a 30% commission of whatever they lose. So in summary the Bet365 affiliate scheme offers you this:-
My average monthly earnings with Bet365 are around £90, not a huge amount but a good return from a scheme that is relatively easy to promote. It’s also building all the time. You can sign up for their affiliate scheme at Bet365 Affiliates or alternatively if you feel like you want to try your luck and damage my monthly earnings you can sign up to play here.
When it comes to making your fortune online there are plenty of people who’ll tell you that you “don’t even need a website”. What they are talking about here is PPC affiliate marketing. You pay for clicks using an advertising network such as Google’s Adwords and then redirect the potential lead onto the website of the person selling the product you’re promoting. Sounds easy right? Well I’ve made money that way, but it also comes with it a big risk, you’ve got to spend money to make money, and for beginners I think there is a better way.
If you want a low risk way of making money online then you’ve got to be looking at having at least 1 website or blog. I look at this way, a website is a bought domain with paid for hosting. A blog (what I’m talking about), is a free account on somebody else’s domain e.g. Blogger or WordPress. I know that’s not technically right but from here on in that’s what I mean when I talk about Blogs or websites. Your Blog could be your website (like this site) but that just confuses things
The way in which I decide how to publish my content comes down to 2 factors, how much do I know about the subject and how much money do I think it will make? If I don’t know a huge amount about a subject then I go down the website route. It’s not hard to put together 6-7 pages of content to act as a base site and then maybe add a new page every few weeks when I’ve got something original and new to say. Because I’m not updating every day it’s not a big hassle to add extra content to a static website in this way. But to do this I need to think about roughly how money I’m going to make, a domain name costs me around $7 a year, a basic hosting account on which store my website costs me around $20 a year. Other than my time that’s my total outlay for my new website (I know people who’ve lost 50 times that much on their first day of PPC affiliate marketing). As long as my new website can make more than $27 a year then I’m in profit and making money online, woo hoo! To date I’ve set up 15 websites like this and they all make a profit, some much more than others but they all cover themselves and then some.
If you decide that you know a lot about a subject then a blog could very well be the way to go. A blog is like an online diary, or more specifically a list of published articles stored in chronological order. The thing with a blog is that you need to update it on a regular basis. People read a blog just like a diary, they expect to see something new on a regular basis, people view a website as something less personal and much more static. The main advantage a blog has is return visitors, if you can write a compelling blog your visitors will come back again and again. This is much harder to achieve with a static website. The other advantage is that you’ll find plenty of services that will host your blog for free, and you can’t beat free! Whilst you may not be able to customise every option of your blog there are still plenty of ways to monetise a blog on the Blogger or WordPress systems.
For my money I see a better return from creating websites rather than Blogs, but the potential is there to make serious amounts of cash from blogging, you’ll just need to have plenty to say, update daily and put in the work.