The Affiliate Journey

The Long Walk to Full-Time Affiliate Marketing Success

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VisitorSpy Quick Update

January 5th, 2010 · General, Make More Money

I’ve decided to not continue to use VisitorSpy. While the concept is neat they are lacking a few features that make it cumbersome to use.

1.) You cannot just look at the visits to an individual page easily unless it’s the only page you have the tracking script on.

2.) The videos are as I thought re-plays of data captured based on mouse movements and clicks NOT ACTUAL VIDEOS then played back by an engine on their site which is on an overlay/screen shot of your page. This data is checked often and stored in a MYsql DB on your server.

3.) The rest of the info they offer can all be done via Google Analytics which is a very powerful piece of software for those who take the time to learn to use it.

I’d suggest using CrazyEgg instead of VisitorSpy which is what I’m doing…

I keep detailed notes each time I make a change or launch a new test on a page of:

# of visits for a set time period

Time spent on that page before test is launched

Click thrus on page before test is launched

I then compare before #’s with after test #’s during the same/similar time frame so I can see if what I’m doing is improving my click thrus and conversions.

Another note I found a free click tracking script called Click heat. It creates a heat map of where visitors are clicking, it’s not as easy to understand and use as Crazy Egg but if someone just wants to frig around with this type of technology without spending a dime this script will do it since it’s open source and free!

Happy Testing!!!

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VisitorSpy Review - Can you Really Spy on your Visitors? .

December 31st, 2009 · General, Make More Money

picture-21For those that aren’t familiar with VisitorSpy.com, it’s a new program launched by Matt Callen (brother I believe to Brad Callen, SEOelite creator) designed to “record” your visitors while their on your web pages to see what it is they’re doing when they visit your site.

A Quick Overview of Why You’d want to Use a Program like this

Few affiliate marketers take the time to split test their landing pages. Myself I’ve started to obsess over it lately since I’ve seen the difference an extra 1-2% in conversion can mean for the bottom line.  A program like VisitorSpy (or CrazyEgg.com another alternative) allows you to see which elements of your web page your visitors are attracted to, click on, fill out etc.

By seeing how actual visitors behave while they’re on your website you can modify & tweak layouts, copy, calls to action and more to enhance the visitor experience and move them closer to a “conversion”, what ever that may be for your site.

Without using a program like VisitorSpy you’re just guessing at what your visitors want and how you can improve your landing pages.

On with the review…

For the past few months I’ve been a user of CrazyEgg.com analytics. It’s more or less the same thing as VisitorSpy, but VisitorSpy promised to offer video playback of each website visitor and how they interact with your website (more on this in a moment).

I was intrigued to say the very least so I decided to give it a try.

My first concern when installing any new analytics or tracking program is “how efficient is it”. You can do more harm then good if you install an app that causes your page load times to lag.

While the install on your actual page for VisitorSpy is just a snippet of JavaScript code, like other trackers including Google Analytics, there is a MYsql database you have to install on your server. I presume this database actually logs the information about your visitors, and then the VisitorSpy website queries your database to gather their analytics data when you want to review your stats.

Installation

I had some troubles getting Visual Spy installed, it was partially because I use a MAC and not a PC, the zip file that I downloaded when I setup my first website wouldn’t open on my MAC so I had to boot up my Virtual machine to Windows and un-zip the file there. This was a pain in the ass, but it ended up working at the end of the day.

I only installed Visual Spy on one site for now as I have other analytics and visitor tracking packages I’m using on other sites. I don’t like to make a blind switch to another program without allowing it to prove itself first.

The Stats

The stats are lagged by a few minutes in Visual Spy, but that isn’t anything new for analytics packages. Both Crazy Egg and even Google Analytics take some time to show the stats of visitors.

It’s pretty detailed, but nothing that you cannot get in Google Analytics. Of course I didn’t try this program out so that I could replace Google Analytics, it’s the best of the best IMHO when it comes to web analytic software.

The reason I did install Visitor Spy was for the so called “visitor spying” that was going on. When a visitor lands on a page you have your tracking code installed on their software supposedly records what the visitor is doing so you can “spy” and playback their actions later on. If you visit the Visitor Spy website you can see an example of how the play back works as well as do an example on your own of recording yourself on their site and playing it back. How does this work? I have my ideas about it below.

Here’s a screen shot of what you see when you log in to take a peek at your websites visits and stats. Notice how it shows the IP address, browser type etc. Next to the IP address there is a small play button. If you click that you will get to see what that visitor did while they were on your site.

Screen shot of my member account with my first visit showing.

Screen shot of my member account with my first visit showing.

How does Visual Spy Record

I had lunch with 3 friends after I first installed Visitor Spy on a site yesterday and I asked them about how this type of script could work. They’re all coders and after some explanation of what this program was doing they explained how they felt it worked.

They first off said, unless there was some sort of software on your visitors website there was nothing “server side” that could record or capture a visitors screen activity. Instead what you can do using Java is log every input of the keyboard and mouse that occurs when a visitor is on your site.

EXAMPLE: for the mouse you can log the X & Y co-ordinates of where the mouse displays on the screen and then also mouse clicks or keyboard strokes.

But that isn’t really video?

Correct, it’s not video, so the marketing behind VisitorSpy is a little bit deceiving, although anyone who doesn’t question the idea or know a bit about coding would understand.

My assumption is that all the logged data from mouse movements & clicks is logged in the database on your server then accessed by the VisitorSpy website to create what looks like a “video” of the visitor on your site. When in actuality what is happening is they are grabbing a screen shot of your sites page the visitor landed on then playing back all the information recorded such as : mouse clicks, mouse movement and keystrokes.

I’ll admit this is a lot nicer then what Crazy Egg shows me, how ever my big concern is that this could be a HUGE DRAG on system resources on your web server, especially if you’re on a shared hosting account.

As mentioned I’ve just installed it and am going to let it run for a couple of days before I make up my mind on whether to switch to Visual Spy for my landing page optimization OR stick with Crazy Egg.

A couple of things I really like

VisitorSpy shows the time the visitor spent on the site which is something CrazyEgg doesn’t share with you in their reports. It’s tough to get that info from Analytics and tie it into your Crazy Egg stats.

Visual Spy also has a solid built in conversion & goal tracker. You can setup conversion goals such as :sales, newsletter signups etc. and then work towards improving the conversion of those goals using their software to improve the call to action, location of key elements and sales copy.

I haven’t yet experimented extensively with the conversion tracking and goal system but it looks good and is a bit easier to setup then Google Analytics package for goals.

In Closing

If you have some time on your hands Google Analytics is a very powerful tool you can use to test and tweak a website to improve conversion, how ever it’s not as straight forward about how to do it. A package like Visitor Spy also adds in the ability to analyze your visitors actions when they land on a page.

Think visitors will click that ORDER NOW button? Maybe not, try changing the test to “GET STARTED” and see if that works better. There are hundreds of elements you can test on your pages to attempt to improve conversion you just need to take action and do the work. Visitor Spy appears to be a solid program to help you do this, of course I’ll report back after a few days of using the program to get a better feeling for how it actually works.

Until then here’s a link to give it a try, this is my affiliate link for VisitorSpy (just wanted full disclosure there ;) Don’t feel you have to click it but if you found some value in my overview of their program please do!

UPDATE: I am no longer using Visitor Spy I’ve gone back to Crazy Egg Find out why here in my Visitor Spy Review Update.

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Affiliate Business Planning for 2010 - A personal rant

December 29th, 2009 · General

The new year is almost upon us. It’s an exciting and also stressful time for those of us who run our own businesses. I love the idea of putting pen to paper to start planning for the new year ahead  of me, but I also know that some of those plans/goals will fall to the way side as I try to improve, grow and re-focus my business.

This year more then ever I find myself asking some serious questions about the focus & structure of my business.

My wife, who LOVEs (hint of sarcasim here) to listen to me talk about affiliate marketing pointed out to me a few weeks ago that my business doesn’t really have a “mission” or “thing” that it does.

I respond with, “yes it does, I market & sell other peoples products”.

Then it hit me, I do market and sell other peoples products but I’m kind of out there trying to hoc what ever seems to be in a good market to make some good money.

There’s nothing wrong with this mentality, how ever as I look to expand my business and reach new heights for revenues and income I no longer feel that being in a bunch of great competitive markets that are full of hungry consumers crying to scratch an itch they have is the way for me to go.

So what am I thinking about doing?

I’m thinking about laser focusing my business to more or less one broad market.

Let me give you an example using my ever famous Golf Market I always refer to on this blog for examples.

Let’s say one of my sites currently does really well selling Golf instruction videos. I enjoy the market because I golf. I use the products so can recommend them confidently because I know their good, and I am adding some really good content to the web by producing my own golf videos and articles to attract buzz, traffic and backlinks to my site(s).

Now let’s also say that I have 5 or 6 other sites that span a bunch of other markets. let’s say:

-Language learning

-Anti aging products

-Backup software

-Anti virus software

-Stretch market creams

Ok so you can see a couple of those are somewhat related…But I’ll admit I can’t use the anti aging products, nor the stretch mark products…. I have used the software and can buy and use the Language learning software but most of these are pretty spread apart… They’re not all closely focused.

This does a couple of things…

1.) It causes me to have to wear several hats and link build & follow several different markets.

2.) There are no economies of scale where by when I find a solid link partner for my language learning site I can also get links for my other sites. The markets just don’t fit.

Now contrast that scenario with this one:

What if instead of having the above 6 sites with my golf instruction video website I setup a few new sites, let’s say:

-Golf club Clone website

-Golf accessory website

-Golf trips website

-A golf Blog about my journey to becoming a better golfer

These sites are all closely related and can swap traffic amongst themselves. It allows me to stay somewhat focused in the golf market and work on my “network” shall we call it.

I fell that this is a business model better then just being an affiliate marketer, I’m a marketer in the “golf sector” and only that. This way I can evaluate new opportunities against this rather then bouncing amongst offers that may make more or convert better.

This is the actual conversation I’m having with myself today… I’m not in the golf market but it is a good example of what I’m trying to work through.

The CONS I’m feeling about this are that I’ll be abadoning the sites I have and just starting something new for the sake of it… Which is something I’ve done in the past. Of course the PROS are that it makes sense, I’m passionate about the over all market and I can provide some really good quality content for the market as well.

This is my deliemma which I’ll work through today and tomorrow but I wanted to present it to you to hopefully get your creative juices flowing and start thinking about planning for 2010.

I hope all had a happy holiday and I wish everyone reading a Happy New Year! See you in 2010

Cheers,

Ian

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How Will Google Sidewiki Change Affiliate Marketing?

December 22nd, 2009 · General

When I first saw Google Sidewiki yesterday when I fired up my browser I had some mixed feelings. For those that aren’t 100% familiar with what it is I’m talking about, Google Sidewiki is basically a collection of comments about a particular webpage stored in the “side bar” wiki.

Here’s a Screen shot of the example screen you see when you first set it up:

Screen Shot of Google Side Wiki

Screen Shot of Google Side Wiki

Of course this isn’t just a free for all. You must have the google toolbar and an google account to post comments. So not every tom, dick and harry will be posting stuff on a sidewiki on your site.

The Potential PROS of Google Sidewiki

I feel this is a nice way to police publishers and affiliates who produce crap content. You can’t get away with fluffy articles and crappy content if the general public can comment on it. Well you can, but you will grab a bit of bad press I think from those that use sidewiki.

Also, it could help produce content ideas. If you have visitors that are interacting using Google Sidewiki and askin questions your content doesn’t cover then you could grab some new article ideas or even improve a sales page & layout with feedback directly from visitors.

The CONS of Google Sidewiki

Of course like everything else the web creates this is open from some serious abuse. How can the spam be monitored?  I see links underneath comments that say “report abuse” but seriously, who’s gonna run around the web policing spammy comments.. Think Blog comment spam.

Also this leaves a door for your competitors to comment directly on a page of yours using the Google Sidewiki functionality. Of course you can report abuse… But what will be deemed abuse.

Final Thoughts.

I don’t know how effective this will be really for all websites. If you have a website about golf and are providing crappy content then you’re probably not selling anything. Of course if some how you are ranked high and are providing poor quality tips or articles you could end up with a comment or two.

Of course who is going to be using this thing has to be asked? The average John Doe or Jane isn’t going to know what the heck Google Sidewiki is, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it. How ever I think it is something to keep on the radar and check on your sites once and a while to see what’s going on.

Could this eventually become some sort of ranking factor?

It’s possible, I see Google wanting to move to a more peer reviewed yet moderated style of SERPs. Of course this isn’t happening anytime soon because of the SPAM and ABUSE factors but the future could hold some weight in something like the Sidewiki tool bar option!

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Exact, Phrase and Broad Match the 3 Stooges of Keyword Research

December 18th, 2009 · SEO

This will be a really quick post, but I wanted to go over something I believe a lot of beginner affiliates, whether doing PPC or SEO, get wrong. That is the difference of keyword matches when using the Google Keyword tool.

FIRST: If you’re not using the Google Keyword tool for all your keyword research I suggest you start. I personally have ZERO paid keyword research tools except for Keyword Spy, but that’s for another post.

OK back to the Google Keyword Tool. I’m going to walk you through a simple example keyword research exercise to explain this. I’m going to use some Golf keywords as they tend to be my favorite for using as examples.

If you’re not familiar with where the tool is you can check it out here: Google Keyword Research Tool

Here’s what the blank screen should look like before you get started.

Screen Shot of Google Keyword Tool

Screen Shot of Google Keyword Tool

Alright, let’s get started. Let’s do a search for “golf swing dvd”.

Just enter the keywords without the quotes around them, and also ensure the small box below is checked for Use Synonyms. This basically will use Googles intelligence to find similar words to Golf Swing DVD that we might be interested in using.

Ok, enter the captcha and let’s see what it found for us!

picture-2

So above you can see that it found some keywords, golf swing dvd being the first in the list. This is showing us the estimated monthly searches as well as the number from last month. Notice also at the very bottom of this there is a related keywords section. This is a list of other related keywords that are likely not directly related to “golf swing dvd” but are in the same market.

Ok, so here’s the interesting thing you may or may not know about. See the 2900 searches, that’s the BROAD number. See in the top right corner of this screen shot there’s a grey box. That box drops down and you can select other types of matches. Let’s try the PHRASE MATCH and see what happens.

picture-3

Note how the number of searches went down for “golf swing dvd”. This is because we’re only looking at the number of searches where “golf swing dvd” appeared in that exact instance with possibly other keywords before or after it.

Let’s go one step further and look at the EXACT MATCH.
picture-4

Notice how much the search numbers for “golf swing dvd” have gone down compared to the first screen shot. How ever this is a real number of searches for that term.

When you’re doing PPC or SEO you want to look at this EXACT MATCH because it’s real data. If you’re going to SEO for a term you want to know how much potential traffic you can get if you had the top ranking for that keyword. If you only went on the 2900 you may get excited and go gang busters to get the ranking and then realize WOW no traffic really up here.

Using the EXACT MATCH for keyword research allows you to get a better picture of what’s really going on and choose your keywords better.

I hope this post sheds some light on the idea of keyword research and the different keyword matches that exist using Googles Keyword Tool.

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5 Tips for Curing Affiliate Analysis Paralysis and Self Doubt

December 16th, 2009 · General, Make More Money

One thing that causes a lot of affiliate marketers to stall and often become paralyzed in their marketing efforts is not knowing if what they’re doing is going to work or make them more money.

We’ve all been there. I call it analysis paralysis and it happens to all of us.

I always think back to a cheesy after school special type quote..

“You miss 100% of the shots you never take”

This is so true with Affiliate Marketing. We often times get so caught up in what if this or that, what if this doesn’t work, what if I don’t do this then this happens.

It’s a forever running & turning wheel that you need to jump the hell off of.

Instead of thinking this way here are 5 tips to keep you on track.

1.) Keep a Journal - Everything you’re doing, ideas you have and testing you do should all be noted in a journal, scribbler persona blog what ever your method. This is important because it gets things out of your head and onto paper so that you’re not carrying around a ton of ideas that can weigh you down.

Don’t believe me that this will work? Give it a shot, if you’re feeling stressed or over whelmed grab a blank piece of paper and do a brain dump. Write down all the personal and business related tasks and ideas floating around in your head.

Trust me once you have it all out there it’ll be a whole lot less weight on your shoulders and you’ll be able to go about your business and day with a much clearer mind. You’ll also be able to start crossing some of those things off as you deal, distribute and cope with what ever the particular item is.

2.) Reduce the Number of Projects You’re Working On - Beginner and sometimes seasoned affiliate marketers get caught up in the idea that more is better. Trust me it usually isn’t unless all of your projects/sites are targeting the same niche/market etc.

I try to keep the number of sites/projects I’m working on down to 5-6 how ever even this often seems like far too many when I’m trying to boost earnings for a particular site. If you feel over whelmed by the number of projects you currently have running try either

a.) Reducing the number you focus on right now and let the others be. They’ll still be there later on, just try to put them out of site out of mind.
b.) Consider selling a few of those sites/projects via Flippa or another forum where you can sell sites and then they’re really gone and you can get down to business with the ones you want to focus on.

3.) Have a Plan - When you sit down to work each morning, evening or when ever you do work have a plan for what it is you’re going to do.

Never just sit down at the computer and turn it on and say “OK let’s get something done”. This is a sure fire method to waste hours of forum browsing, email checking and facebook lurking. Trust me been there done that.

Take 10-15 minutes before you turn your computer on and note what it is you’re working on. If you don’t have a list of current projects you’re working on then maybe step back and take 30-60 minutes to plan out what your current projects are, the tasks and actions that have to happen for each of those projects and order them in terms of importance.

Next create an action, or task list from those projects. This way you can actually DO something rather then browse around aimlessly on the web.

For me I had a hard time embrassing this planning part of the business. I felt like if I wasn’t DOING something I wasn’t going to be improving my bottom line and making more money. How ever this is an important part of owning and running a business (And yes your affiliate marketing efforts are a business). Take time out to do this daily, weekly and monthly. It’ll be time well spent and the performance will show!

4.) Focus on Conversions (that’s where the money is) - For those that didn’t read yesterday’s post on conversions try not to get caught up in the whole idea of more traffic. Think in terms of conversion, that is where your income will sore!

Check out this post for more info on what I mean.

5.) Have Faith - I’m not necessarily telling you to go to church or pray, but you must have faith in yourself. Self confidence is important in this game. You need to know that you know what you’re doing. You’ve made some money doing this and have had successes now it’s time to grow those successes.

Don’t get caught up in the negative self talk. Sitting for a moment to clear your head and think about how you’ve been successful thus far is a great exercise to get your self back on track.

If you believe you can do it you can. Your self conscious mind will find a way!

So put these 5 steps into practice in your business today. They will help you feel calmer and more in control of your efforts. It’s important that you take time away from the computer to refocus often and keep yourself in line. You can grow your business but remember it doesn’t all happen in front of a computer screen.

If you enjoyed this post and would like to receive my future posts either in your RSS reader or via email sign up in the top right corner of the side bar. You’ll get updates as I make new posts.

Stay tuned for my next post on how to really get those CONVERSIONS COOKING!!

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Does Size Matter? Massive Traffic Doesn’t Mean Massive Income with Affiliate Marketing

December 15th, 2009 · Make More Money

I was reading another blog the yesterday and the author was asking for question about how he could help his readers with affiliate marketing. It just happened that I also had a conversation with a blog owner who is getting well over 5000 uniques a week and is making less then $1000 a year in affiliate commissions from the site.

How the heck is this possible is what a lot of beginner affiliate marketers might ask.

I want to let you in one something, once you get this you may very well change your mind set about how to make money with affiliate marketing for ever.

Making money with affiliate programs isn’t about traffic, it’s about conversions.

Let me say part of that again.

Making Money With Affiliate Marketing Isn’t All About Traffic.

Ok some might be saying, hold up, that’s not true without traffic you’ve got nothing. In a sense you are right someone has to come by your site, blog etc. in order for you to convert them into a buyer and of course into your commissions, how ever it’s not a game about how much traffic you can get, the game is …..

How Many Conversions Can You Get

If you learn anything new today try to get this in your head, making more money with affiliate marketing isn’t about more traffic it’s about more conversions. Of course to get more conversions you need traffic and that’s what we’re going to focus on for the rest of this post, but get out of the traffic mind set and put your conversion hat on because that’s where the money is!!!!

What Kinda Traffic Do I Need Then?

Glad you asked :)

To go after more conversions you need more traffic from buyers, or people that are on the verge of buying a solution to their problem, or a cure for their pain, or a scratch for their itch… Getting the picture.

You want qualified traffic not just massive amount of generic traffic for your market.

Let’s do a quick example:

Let’s say you’re selling a golf lesson dvd. It’ a great dvd program that helps improve your swing and can lower your handicap by 7 strokes in 2 months if the user does the exercises and practices.

Now you run a golf blog that talks about everything golf. It posts about golf shoes, new golf gadgets and golf vacations. Of course on the odd note you sometimes post something about a free tip.

In each of those posts about golf tips you make a plug for your golf dvd. You’re getting a few sales but based on the overall number of unique visitors your site gets each day you believe you should be making a ton more money.

STOP HERE FOR A SECOND

Let’s look at this…

Who do we have coming to the site?

We have people that like golf
We have people that are interested in learning new tips, and possibly about new equipment and vacations

However, we don’t necessarily have people willing to whip out their Credit Card to buy a golf swing DVD. We might assume we do, but if you’re not familiar with what ASS U ME did ;).

Ok let’s re-think this golf blog.

Let’s instead of going after the same ol, same ol traffic we’ve been hitting let’s try and target this down so we might get more conversions.

Let’s fire up the Google Keyword tool and look for a few ideas on better converting phrases.

Here are things I’d think about…

Golf DVD (consider other words here also like golf swing dvd, golf instruction dvd, golf tips dvd)

It makes sense that if someone is searching for a dvd that will improve their golf game they might buy what you have to offer which happens to be a golf dvd.

Golf instruction (be careful here to not use the term free in there since lots of people are looking for free golf tips)

People searching for golf instruction may be looking for a company to offer them lessons but you may be able to convert them to buy your dvd offer as well.

Golf Lesson Again, like instruction could be people looking for lessons from an instructor, but they are none the less looking for a way to improve their game. You should be able to convert some of those.

That’s enough to get us started. What I would do is take those root keywords I listed above (golf dvd, golf instruction, golf lesson) and plug them into the google keyword tool. Look for keywords that have 300+ visits a month on EXACT Match (if you’re not sure what exact match is I’ll have a post on this tomorrow) and start writing articles about your offer with that keyword in mind.

Sure you might not get as much traffic as you would from other keywords BUT you’re going to be getting more qualified traffic for the keywords you’re targeting.

There’s a way to ensure all your efforts go towards increasing conversions and I’m going to cover that in a post in the net couple of days. So if you haven’t already, subscribe to my blog with either your favorite RSS reader or via email in the top right hand corner.

Happy converting everyone!!!

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How Many Affiliate Programs Are Your Promoting?

December 14th, 2009 · Content, General, Make More Money

One of the most frequent things I get asked by other affiliates is how they aren’t making any money. They are getting 500, 1000, 10,000 uniques a month their site but aren’t making more then what they feel is chump change.

Each of these webmasters is suffering from one of 2 problems:

  1. Not really selling
  2. Too many programs

I’ll go through each of these one at a time.

Not Really Selling

This is the problem when we see that you have some affiliate links in the side bar of your site, or you have a banner or two setup, but that’s it. You’re hoping for your visitors to notice these banners off to the side, click them and buy something.

Don’t get me wrong I know that does happen, and hopefully if this is you you’ve had some success this way. How ever your results are not as good as they could be.

You want to be passive but in your visitors faces with what you’re trying to market and/or accomplish. If this makes you feel uncomfortable then I’m sorry but you’re probably going to find that affiliate marketing is harder for you then you may have first thought it would be.

Affiliate marketing is sales in a different medium. You need to be mentioning, selling and promoting if you expect to make sales.

Of course if you have a site about how to get out of debt don’t start trying to pimp MP3 download or ring tone offers but if you’re following a niche site business plan then you can probably stand to be a bit more “promotion” like in your content.

Don’t be afraid to recommend, suggest or even ask/tell your visitor to go take action on something.

Too Many Programs

This is the second issue, but it usually goes hand in hand with the first. Someone who has ten different affiliate offers running on their site. It could be banner ads, or it could be choices for products to buy.

I have found my best successes come from promoting just one product from one merchant at a time.

EXAMPLE: You are interested in selling music equipment, and you’re a guitar player. Rather then building a site that tries to promote MusiciansFriend.com or ZZsounds.com all at once think niche.

Build a site or section of your site all about guitar amps, or guitar effects pedals. Then from there build out as you start to get some solid conversions on those products.

Think building a page that reviews or compares products. Articles and content about choosing the right beginner amps, or best effects pedals you have to own. Get creative and find new ways.

Most sites no matter which issue they’re having can be turned around. Sometimes it takes a bit more work but it can be done. Take some time to think about how you can better position your content to suggest people buy, or integrate ads better into the mix to get better exposure.

A little planning goes a long way!

Good luck and happy earning!!

Remember if you have a comment post it below I love to hear your thoughts on myposts.

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When it Comes to Commissions - Size Does Matter, but Conversion is Everything

November 13th, 2009 · Make More Money

It can be easy for us as affiliate marketers to be attracted to shiny new things. For us those shiny new things might be a new method to generate traffic or master PPC, or a great new program that promises HUGE commissions.

I’ve fallen into this trap more then once only to wake up and realize I wasn’t following the path to my goals any more in my business. I’d then have to recognize that I’d wasted some time and I had to get back on track.

Does this ever happen to you? You find a new program that could potentially have huge commissions, so you launch a test PPC campaign for it, or build a mini site or blog to start to promote it? It happens to us all at some point.

This is my opinion but commission size or % is not the most important thing when it comes to matching up with a merchant for your site.

I’m not saying to over look a merchant that could be paying you double what you’re earning from merchant #1. How ever test them, see how the new potential merchant converts. This can be great aummunition to go back to merchant #1’s affiliate manager to request a commission increase. Don’t feel bad is this is denied because you do need to be pushing some volume to qualify for an increase from most merchants, but never ask never receive right.

SO what’s the point of this post?

  1. Stay focused on your affiliate promotions/markets you’re working right now. You want to give every promotion a chance to succeed. Switch if you feel it’s bombing or you have zero interest in it, but don’t switch b/c you get distracted easily or need a new adventure
  2. Within similar markets consider other merchants that come up or offer you a better commission rate of CPA then your current offer. How ever don’t completely dump the first offer because conversion will mean more then commission. Test that new offer and then compare the pay check at the end of the day
  3. Use better conversions or commissions from a potential new merchant as bargining power with your current offer. This could mean a bigger commission increase for you

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Do You Know What You’re Doing Today? To-Do’s & Daily Goal Setting for Affiliate Marketing

October 22nd, 2009 · Make More Money

It’s easy to feel we need to be doing 100 things in a day to feel we’re being productive when affiliate marketing. I know this because I fall into the trap of feeling if I don’t have a to-do list as long as a novel I’m not doing enough.

I want to introduce you all to the concept of doing quality over quantity when it comes to marketing online.

Most of us are so IN IT all the time we miss just how powerful what we’re doing really is.

Let me give you an example:

You’re targeting the word BLUE WIDGETS

That keyword gets about 2000 searches a month, and from your testing you know it converts at about 3%. You make $35 for each conversion (sales, lead, action what ever it is).

Now the way many of us work is we build a site about widgets and just do a LOT of work of submitting articles, adding more content, trading links etc. although not with any real reasoning behind it. It’s a lot of work to continue to write and syndicate content, swap links etc.

WHAT IF you created a better game plan and went about it like this.

You know that if you ranked #1 you could probably get 50% of those 2000 searches for the term BLUE WIDGET. You also know that you convert @ 3% and make $35 bucks a sale.

so simple math tells us that the #1 spot for you here is worth 2000 * 50% * 3% conversion * $35 per sale = $1050 a month.

That’s over $1000 bucks in your jeans if you can just get down to focusing on that one task of getting the #1 rank for Blue Widgets.


So what do you have to do to attain that #1 ranking?

-Build Links
-Syndicate Content
-Press Releases
-Buy Links etc.

There are lots of things you need to do to get that spot, but you can now put your head down and do it knowing what the payoff is going to be.

So what’s my point with this post?

You need to stop throwing a bunch of S^%T against the wall hoping something sticks and trade that mentality for a logical plan of finding keywords that work for your campaigns and then doing what it takes to own those keywords.

Then simple RINSE - WASH - REPEAT

Doing this this way allows you to have a focused and structured TO-DO list of daily goals and tasks that will lead you to your end goal which is likely increased revenues and commissions.

Look at the BIG picture instead of the fast payoff and you’ll start to see some really bright lights at the end of the tunnel.

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