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Selasa, 11 Mei 2010

Google Adsense Keywords - Top Paying, Most Expensive

The most expensive Google Adwords keywords are also going to be the most profitable Google Adsense keywords assuming you can get traffic for the phrases. There are a number of sites out there selling lists of the top paying Adsense keywords, and some of these lists are pretty good, and some are just obvious. I've bought a few of these keyword lists myself, and I don't think I wasted my money. But I don't feel like I need a constant update on these keyword phrases.

I'm also not 100% sure that a page I create based around a particular keyword is going to target exactly the phrase that I'm wanting to get the big Google Adsense bucks for. Maybe my page's content will come up 1 word off and I'll cut my Adsense earnings by 50% or something?

Something else to consider is potential volume. Yeah, you might be able to make $2 a click for some obscure keyword phrase, but you might not ever be able to generate more than 10 clicks a day for it. While you might be able to get paid $0.20 for another keyword phrase, and get 10,000 clicks for it. Which would of course mean more money at the end of the month.

(Note to Google: I know I'm not supposed to talk about my earnings and CTR and stuff; this post is just hypothetically speaking.)

Trading Links? How Many Links Are Too Many? Time Frame?

I emailed a webmaster the other day asking him to trade links with me, and he replied that I should check back with him in a few weeks but he was full up on link exchanges right now. So I emailed him back asking if it was because my link directory was showing a PR of 0 in the Google Toolbar (it's a new site, and I wanted to explain to him that it was a high PR page, even though the PR hasn't updated on the toolbar yet.) He explained that he was trying to limit himself to about 10 0r 15 link swaps per month so as to avoid getting put into a penalty box by Google or one of the others for getting too many links too fast.

Bottom line is we're going to trade links in a few weeks.

But it was interesting to me, and I came across a post in the Link Development forum at Webmaster World asking whether or not excessive link-trading can cause penalties. This particular webmaster already has a certain number of link trades but was afraid that he might get kicked out of his positions if he had too many links. The general consensus was that there was no problem having lots of reciprocal links, but he needed to be careful not to get too many too fast, and he should try to get some one way links too, on top of his recip's. Good advice in the thread, and good reading. Slow and steady probably really does win the race at some point.

Digging Adbrite

I've bought ads on Adbrite but I haven't actually run any Adbrite ads on my sites yet. I was pretty pleased and excited about the whole operation though, from the very first time I visited the site.

What I liked most about buying ads on Adbrite was the search and browsing functionality. You can find websites to advertise with a variety of criteria: subject matter, ad type, traffic, Alexa ranking, CPC, and price. The ordering process was easy and my ads went live when they were supposed to. The amount of traffic that was advertised was very similar to the amount of traffic that I received.

I don't know how Adbrite compares with Google Adsense from a publisher perspective, but from an advertiser perspective, they're a pretty doggone good deal, especially if you're advertising for one of the more profitable industries where it's hard to buy advertising, like online gambling.

Another cool fact about Adbrite: The company was founded by the owner of FuckedCompany.com, so that he could get some advertising revenue from that site.

Blogs as Affiliate Marketing Tools

There was a post over at Allan Gardyne's forum about whether or not you can make money as an affiliate using blogs instead of websites. The consensus seems to be that it's not the format of the website that's going to determine whether or not you make money. I'm not 100% sure I agree. The real answer is going to be pretty similar to the answer you'll see to most poker questions, "It depends."

I know one blogger who's the premier blogger in his niche. We spoke last week because he wanted to ask my advice on how to make more money as an affiliate. When I found out what he was actually earning, I was stunned, because I had thought he was making quite a bit more than that. His niche is traditionally a high dollar niche for affiliate sites, and he gets a lot of quality traffic. But the target market he caters to often is already a customer at the affiliate sites he's promoting, so his earnings are limited as a result.

Most of the blog success stories that I've seen are bloggers making a lot of money from Google Adsense. The variety of ads that are available, and the guaranteed revenue from getting a click through, almost guarantee a maximum amount of earnings. My guess would be that if you were going to do well marketing an affiliate product of some kind in a weblog, you would do it by actually promoting the product in a post, and linking to the affiliate code in the post, rather than just running a banner ad across the network of your blog.

That's what would make the most sense to me as an affiliate marketer, anyway. And just as an aside, the initial question of can you make money with a blog as compared to an actual website is a bit of a misleading question, because it assumes that a blog isn't a website. A blog is a website though--it's a frequently updated website that "logs" something, and usually has room for the reader to interact with the blogger.

Adventures in Net Marketing and Affiliate Program Tutorial

I recently came across a wonderful affiliate blog called Adventures in Net Marketing that I just love. It's very much a first person account of someone's experiences as they enter the internet marketing field, and if you're interested in getting your arms around what starting out in web marketing is like, then this site is a good place to start. BJ, the author, is a self-employed netpreneur who hails from Canada.

And as a bonus, here's another great resource I found online over at Allan Gardyne's site: the Affiliate Program Tutorial is as good an introduction to how an ordinary guy can make money with affiliate programs and a website as I've seen. There is a LOT of really good, solid information about how to make money contained in this deceptively short article. There are occasional plugs for other ebooks or products, but the real value in the article are the tips themselves.

Keyword Research Tools - Compare Wordtracker, Overture, Google, Keyword Discovery, and More

If you're not already reading Aaron Wall's SEO blog, then start. Today. Right now. Best blog you could be reading online right now if you're really interested in making money online.

Today you can read a comparision and review of all the major keyword suggestion tools available, including Wordtracker, Overture's Keyword Tool, Google's Keyword Sandbox, Keyword Discovery, and some more that I'd never even heard of. As usual, Aaron divides his reviews up in the format of general comments, positives, and then negatives for each tool. One of the things that I enjoy about Aaron Wall's reviews is that his negatives/criticism sections always seem as if they're aimed at helping people improve, rather than on tearing them down.

Also, I highly recommend Aaron's ebook on SEO. I think it's a bargain at the price he offers it, and it's thought-provoking in unexpected ways. He has a way of approaching material that's less straightforward and more interesting than other writers. His writing tends to have a "learn how to think for yourself" philosophy, which is a lot better than some of the cookie-cutter-here's-how-you-should-do-it approaches I've seen in other ebooks.

Google Toolbar PageRank Update - PR Update in Progress

I LOVE PR updates because I can see in a visible way what kind of effect my linkbuilding efforts have had. I was really excited today when my poker blog had gotten up to PR 6. That's my first PR 6, so I'm pretty excited about it. I still don't do so great in Google with that darn poker blog, but that's probably because I have a few links to some bad neighborhoods over there. If I cleaned those up, I might see the Google gods smiling down on me again.

But if you want to read about the PageRank update, and see what people are saying about it, then here are links to the threads on the major SEO forums that I know of. Enjoy.

Google Toolbar PR Update at WMW

Google Update in Progress at SEOChat

Google PageRank Update Right Now at DigitalPoint

SEO Tip - Absolute Links versus Relative Links

I'm not, by any means, the master of SEO. But one thing I've learned is that absolute linking is better for the search engines than relative linking. Some folks might be wondering what the difference is. (I did when my mentor told me to get rid of all my relative links and move to absolute links.) So here's the scoop:

An absolute link includes the full destination URL in the html code for the link. An example would be hxxp://www.example.com/example-interior-page.htm.

A relative link doesn't include the full destination URL. A relative link looks something like this: ../example-interior-page.htm.

The reason that the absolute link is better than the relative link is because some search engine robots, some of the time, will get confused by relative links, especially if there are a lot of them, and might index your site poorly, or worse yet, rank your site poorly.

Graywolf's Google Adsense Resources

In the "I wish I had though of it first department" today, I bring you Graywolf's list of blogs, forums, and other Google Adsense resources.

This is a short post, but a high value post. (But I would like to point out that conventional affiliate marketing wisdom tells you NOT to send your traffic away from your site unless you're sending them to a vendor.) This post is high value because the list of Adsense resources over at Graywolf's site will help you make more money. And I'll tell you how.

Becaues sometimes only 1 distinction, 1 insight, can change the amount of money you're making by several thousands of dollars. The more places you have to look for those distinctions, the better off you are.

And as far as defying conventional wisdom goes, I do it sometimes just out of orneriness, but mostly because, in this case, sending people to good quality resources will encourage them to bookmark and return to this site, so they can see what other good resources I link to. (There's a moneymaking lesson in that insight too.)

Vaughn's One-Page Summaries

Here is the site of the day: Vaughn's One-Page Summaries

Here's why: Vaughn's One Page Summaries is a fine example of a great website. It's a site with a clear purpose (providing one page summaries on a variety of topics, like Google, time and date, and which businesses suck). It's also a site that provides something unique. I don't know of another site which offers the content that Vaughn offers, or at least not in the form that Vaughn offers it.

What's this got to do with affiliate marketing though? To make money with an affiliate website, you need to know how to make a good website. One of the ways to learn to do something is to look at examples. This is an example of a site that covers a wide range of subject, and it possibly even makes a little bit of Adsense revenue. I got a good laugh out of the "which companies suck according to Google" page. Basically Vaughn did searches for "generic company sucks" in quotes for various companies and tabulated how many pages came up. The theory being that if there are a lot of pages built for that search, the democracy of the web has decided that the company really does suck.

Also, just as an example of some of the success Vaughn has seen, his site ranks #1 in Yahoo for "google ranking factors", "google data centers", and "fresno flowers". I didn't have time to check his Google rankings for anything, and I only checked maybe half a dozen sites to see where they ranked. Anyway, it's a great websites and you could learn a lot from it. I'm having some new ideas myself already.

Getting Backlinks to your Website

Getting people to your site invariably involves getting backlinks to your website, both for the traffic those backlinks bring, and for the better search engine results you'll see from having those backlinks. I've been studying and thinking about linking and link building for quite a while now, and I've got some strategies that I use to get links to my sites that I think are well worth using.

Isssue a press release announcing your site's launch. Naturally you'll include the name of your site and a link to the site in your press release.
Submit to some of the better quality directories on the internet. You can find lists of web directories in a lot of places, but try Strongest Links --they have a solid list of directories available there. Also, be sure to look at the quality of the sites listed in the directory, and don't bother listing with a directory that is obviously listing any site willing to cough up a listing fee.
Write articles and submit them to free articles sites.
Trade links with other quality sites related to your niche.
Join forums related to your niche and include links to your website in your signature line.
Make legitimate comments in blogs related to your niche.

Things not to do in order to get backlinks to your site:

Spam blogs.
Spam forums.
Join link farms or free for all pages.
Trade links with crappy sites with little or not content.
Send blatant form emails to every site and email address you can get your hands on requesting link trades.
Submit to crappy directories who list any site willing to pay their fees.

Any of the above can do a lot more to hurt your search engine rankings and traffic than it will potentially help your SERP's.

One final piece of advice: set goals, create an action plan with specific steps, and work the steps of your plan.

Ken Evoy, Sitesell, and Site Build It

Ken Evoy is the marketing guru behind Site Build It, which is a remarkably hyped and marketed tool for beginning affiliate webmasters to build their own affiliate site. If you're someone who doesn't know html or Frontpage, and you're not sure how to get started, then Site Build It is designed to take all the hard technical work out of the equation through you. Ken Evoy offers a whole range of tools in order to help an affiliate marketer make the most out of her Site Build It website.

Site Build It includes keyword research tools, brainstorming tools, on-page SEO tools, and site-building and hosting tools. The idea behind the Ken Evoy's Site Build It affiliate plan is actually pretty simple, and you don't necessarily need the tool in order to achieve success as an affiliate marketer. James Martell's system works too, and traditional content website design and for that matter blogging will also do the job. But the plan for SBI works like this:

You brainstorm things that you're interested in and might be able to write content about. You then research keywords. Then research affiliate programs related to your keywords. You write your content, then paste it into the Site Built It tool and publish your site to the web. You pay attention to the results you're getting, and then make changes to your strategy based on those results.

I've not personally used Site Built It, and I'm not one of Ken Evoy's affiliates. But I have watched the Site Build It fourm at Associate Programs, and I've seen several example sites. Based on everything I've seen, Site Built It is a product that I would like to try for myself at some point. The only drawback I've seen is that most SBI sites have similar looks and feels, although that's a minor point. After all, most blogs have similar looks and feels, but people still write them, and they still do well.

Site Build It offers an affiliate program that's highly recommended, but I'm trying to minimize the actual number of products that I'm promoting here in the blog, and trying to focus on providing well thought out content that's useful to people. The monetization will happen almost by itself, I think.

Google Search Result Quality Evaluators

This post should be required reading for any webmaster who wants to receive Google traffic over the next few years. It pretty clearly describes in detail what Google search quality evaluators are looking for in a website when determining whether or not it's a quality website. Of course, if you stop to think about it, most of the criteria are common sense and unremarkable: create quality content that adds value to the web experience of the user.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about that concept is that so few webmasters are actually willing to do such a thing. The web is full of low-quality sites full of banner advertising and affiliate links without any original content. I've often said that in the long run, the health and well-being of the web are what's at stake when you launch 1000's of spammy pages. If you destroy the internet user's experience by providing tons of advertising with no useful content, then you'll eventually destroy that entire marketing channel.

White Tank Top Lover

To me, this is a brilliant example of a narrow niche site. An Ode to White Tank Tops

Why is this of interest to me as an affiliate marketer? It's interesting to me because it's as narrow a niche as I've ever seen, and it's probably the definitive resource for that niche. They're not currently running any affiliate advertising that I can see, but they could easily be running affiliate ads for Adult Friend Finder or even one of the other online dating sites that offer "steamy" ads. And of course, they could run Adsense on these pages if they wanted to.

I'm not even sure why this particular person decided to run this on a Geocities site, but I love the concept. It's a site full of picture of beautiful celebs and models wearing white tank tops. (I think there might have been a photo or two that might be considered offensive, so if you're particularly prudish, stay away.

What are you interested in that could turn into a narrow niche site that makes money? Take something general and competitive, and add an adjective or two to narrow down the niche. Maybe you're a professional wrestling fan. But maybe you really LOVE the wrestling figures from the 1970's. Write a website profiling the biggest names in wrestling from the 1970s' and make it the most definitive site on 1970's professional wrestling out there. I guarantee it would make money, and there are probably as many ideas out there as I have readers, and then some.

(Interestingly enough, I did some more looking around on the website, and it turns out that it's run by a woman. Looks like she hasn't done any updates or made any changes in a couple of years.)

Affiliate Quiz: Do You Have What It Takes to be an Affiliate Marketer?

Are you thinking about trying to make money as an affiliate marketer, but you're not sure it's for you? Here's a quick quiz I dreamed up to help you answer the question for yourself. Scoring information after the quiz.

Do you work hard? (Be honest.)
Do you enjoy working?
Do you believe in the slow and steady approach to making money?
Do you save money on a regular basis?
Do you know or are you willing to learn html?
Do you know or are you willing to learn to write well?
If you fail at something, are you willing to try again? And then try again if you fail at the next thing? And then try again if you fail at the next thing again?
Do you have enough money saved to live for six months without an income?
Do you keep a to-do list?
Do you read a lot?

Give yourself 1 point for each "yes" answer and 0 points for each "no" answer. If you score below a "5", then affiliate marketing is probably not for you. If you scored a 6 or 7, then you might make it as an affiliate marketer, but you've got some challenges to overcome. If you scored an 8 or above, then you've probably got what it takes to work as an affiliate webmaster and make some decent money.

About the questions.

Do you work hard? If you're not willing to work hard, then you will not be successful as an affiliate marketer unless you're really good at delegating responsibility and you have a lot of money available to you for outsourcing.
Do you enjoy working? Affiliate marketing is not an easy road to riches, and it's not for people who hate working. You get to set your own hours, but to be successful and stay successful, you absolutely must be willing to work hard and like it.
Do you believe in the slow and steady approach to making money? You might be able to make a quick buck in affiliate marketing if you're the type that doesn't mind spamming blogs and autogenerating tons of bogus content, but those techniques don't work nearly as well as gradually building quality content and links over time and enjoying the benefits of that type of traffic. And if you want to make a lot of money with affiliate programs, the best way to do that is to be a long term success.
Do you save money on a regular basis? If you're an affiliate marketer, you are self-employed. If you can't save money on a regular basis, you won't be able to pay your income taxes or ever retire. Neither are good for a self-employed person.
Do you know or are you willing to learn html? While it's not strictly necessary, knowing html is extremely helpful if you're going to be an affiliate webmaster. The more you know, the more you'll make.
Do you know or are you willing to learn to write well? This is another of those items that you can outsource if you have to, but you'll make a lot more money if you're able to do it yourself.
If you fail at something, are you willing to try again? Not every website will work. Not every affiliate program will make you money. If you quit because something doesn't work, you're not going to make it as an affiliate webmaster unless you're very lucky.
Do you have enough money saved to live for six months without an income? If you don't, you're going to need to keep working a day job, which will cut into the amount of time and energy you'll have to run your affiliate business. It can be done, but it's not easy and it takes more of a toll on you.
Do you keep a to-do list? When you start making money from affiliate websites, you're going to start having ideas about how to make more money. You'll think of content to generate, places to find links, and new niches to explore. If you don't keep a to-do list, you'll forget and/or lose some of these valuable ideas.
Do you read a lot? It's important to keep abreast of what's going on in SEO (search engine optimization) if you're going to succeed as an affiliate webmaster. To be able to do that, you're going to need to read SEO blogs and forums. You'll need to read until your eyes hurt. You should also be reading a daily newspaper, a weekly news magazine, and several monthly magazines that you're interested in, and also various books about subjects that interest you. This will keep you thinking three-dimensional and keep ideas about trends that will affect your marketing flowing.

Keyword Price Index Drops 15%

Marketing Vox keeps a keyword index which measures the average keyword price for online advertising, sortuva stock market type index which measures advertising revenue. According to them, the average keyword price has dropped 15% month over month from April to May. Much of this drop is attributed to changes in the mortgage industry.

This is probably of interest to affiliate marketers for a couple of reasons. I might be an opportunity to pick up some mortgage related keywords at a bargain. Or it might be an indicator that now's not a good time to launch a mortgage related affiliate site.

New SEO Blog from the Folks at OptiLink; Gambling Lawsuit

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Narrow Niche Market or Competitive Keyword Phrase

Traditional wisdom in affiliate marketing is that a new webmaster should target a small niche that doesn't have a lot of competition. Reasons for this probably include the self-confidence that getting quick traffic and revenue brings. It also possibly includes the thinking that a narrow niche is going to convert better and be a lot easier to get market share in. But I question traditional wisdom about everything when I can.

Competitive markets include things like web-hosting, online dating, travel, poker, mortgages, etc. Essentially anything with a high profit margin is generally pretty competitive, especially when it comes to picking up search engine traffic. Traditional wisdom has it that a new affiliate webmaster can't penetrate these markets because of the high levels of competition for them. I have a different opinion about this. I think that the best thing an aspiring webmaster and SEO can do is target the high competition phrases.

Here's why. I cut my teeth in the affiliate marketing business on the gambling industry. Nothing is more competitive than online gambling, online casinos, and online poker. Again, mostly because it's so profitable. But as a result of learning how to get SERP's in such a competitve niche, I'm now a skilled enough amateur SEO that I can pick up good SERP's for almost any keyword phrase I want, especially if it's a fairly non-competitive phrase. And that means money in the bank.

Here's something else to think about. If you want to be a great poker player, or chess player, or golfer, are you going to play constantly against the worst players you can find? Or are you going to get your ass kicked over and over again by playing the best out there? Olympic athletes become Olympic athletes by training hard, not by competing against wimps.

Should you target a non-competitive niche for your first affiliate site? Sure, if you want to. But you should also consider starting a site that targets something really competitive and profitable, just to see what you can learn from the experience.

Mini Site Profits Ebook Review - Phil Wiley

I bought a copy of the Mini Site Profits ebook today from Phil Wiley for $67. One situation I've seen when searching for a review or any discussion of any online marketing ebooks is that they're almost always just sales letters for the ebook rather than an actual review of it. I'm a Clickbank affiliate, but I am not promoting a link to Mini Site Profits. This is an honest review from a real affiliate webmaster in the business.

What I Liked About Mini Site Profits

The strategy outlined in Mini Site Profits is a clear and easily accomplished strategy. I suspect that some of Google Cash's inspiration came from this ebook, and it's entirely possible that with the recent changes in Adwords policies at Google that people are running back to Mini Site Profits for reference in a world where you can no longer buy traffic and send it directly to a merchant.

The core idea of the book is that you can build a mini site in a short period of time and create profits from it, especially if you do a great job of preselling the product. A minisite is defined in this book as a site that sells only one product or promotes only one affiliate program. Wiley sub-divides these mini-sites into micro mini sites, mini themed content sites, and value added mini sites. He gives a formular for creating mini-sites that do a great job of preselling affiliate programs, but I won't go into detail about that here other than to say that it might apply to some products but it could very easily not be appropriate for other products.

What I Would Change About Minisite Profits

Mini Site Profits was apparently published originally in 2001 which makes the ebook almost five years old. Unfortunately, in the affiliate marketing business, information can grow dated very quickly, and that would be my major criticism of this ebook. The information on search engine optimization is clearly dated--in fact there are several references to GoTo.com, which of course no longer exists. There are other references to smaller PPC engines that are no longer in operation.

What was most disappointing were the example sites, the majority of which are no longer online. I understand that ebooks are sometimes a product of when they're written, but when paying $67 for internet marketing information, you hope to find something that's been updated. Some great examples of ebooks that are constantly being updated are Aaron Wall's SEO Book, Planet Ocean's Unfair Advantage, and James Martell's Affiliate Handbook.

There are screenshots of some of the example minisites in both the examples section of the book and in the success stories section of the book, but many of the example websites are no longer online. This makes me question the effectiveness of the Minisite strategy. If it was a strong internet marketing strategy, I'd think most of those sites would be too profitable to let fall by the wayside. Or at least the majority of them would be. (That being said, I can understand that situations change, and a product that would be available and popular at one time might well become unavailable and not-so-popular later.)

Recommendation

To be a really worthwhile value, Mini Site Profits would need to be completely updated with example sites that are still live and with information about search engines that is current and up to date. I do not recommend this book at a price of $67, although if you're a raw beginner, you may find some value within. I think Google Cash would be an ideal value if you did decide to buy this book as a companion volume to it. The synergy of the Google Cash techniques and the Mini Site strategies might make a very good start to an online business for you. But if you have the money to spend, I recommend going with another product like Sitesell, James Martell's book, or even a good seo book and/or a Webmasterworld supporters subscription.

Lifetime Commission Affiliate Program Directory

Lifetime Commissions is a site run by Glennys Faulds, who is an associate of Allan Gardyne's. Glennys also runs Pay Per Click Search Engines, and Allan is well known for Associate Programs. Lifetime commissions is an interesting site because it's a directory of affiliate programs who pay commissions for the life of the customer. It's an interesting and good business model, especially if you're a big fan of ongoing revenue streams.

Lifetime Commissions includes an affiliate tutorial which is well thought out and well written by Allan himself. The directory of affiliate programs that pay lifetime commissions is organized by categories like autoresponders, education, dating, and domain names, to name a few. There's also a category for the top 3 programs, which are listed as Sitesell's Five Pillar Program, the Secrets to Their Success program, and NewWebsite.com.

I'm only peripherally familiar with the first two programs, and I'm not at all familiar with the third program. BUT the 2nd program, Secrets to Their Success sounds really interesting to me as a customer and I might get a subscription to that one. According to the description at Lifetime Commissions, Secrets to Their Success includes archived interviews with mom and pop websites that earn over $100,000 a year through their web businesses. This is the kind of heavy content original website that earns money day-in and day-out on the web. I'll probably check it out and add a review of it here in a couple of days.

Heck--I might even sign up for their affiliate program. They pay $6 a month on all memberships you sign up as long as the membership is still active, which isn't bad.

On a slightly paranthetical note, I've promoted some dating affiliate programs and a couple of adult programs which were monthly-fee membership based that would be considered lifetime commission programs, and I liked promoting them. Most gambling affiliate programs are lifetime commission programs too if you opt to go for the monthly revenue share option instead of the CPA option.

Review of Google Cash by Chris Carpenter

I owe Chris Carpenter and his GoogleCash ebook a great debt. Google Cash was the catalyst that enabled me to leave my day job and become a full time internet marketer. The book was published online in 2004 and has spawned a couple of imitators, but it's also spawned an entire army of people using the Google Cash system to make money online. I'm not sure the Chris Carpenter was entirely aware of the effect he would have on internet marketing.

In brief, here's the Google Cash plan of action: you create Google Adwords promoting companies that have affiliate agreements. You send the traffic directly to your affiliate link, rather than having a link to the affiliate merchant on your website. You track your ROI very closely. You absolutely must know how much you're making per click and how much you're spending per click so that you'll be able to maximize the profitability of your ad campaigns. It's a good system, and on the surface, it seems pretty easy.

But some things have changed in the internet marketing world since the initial publication of Google Cash. One major change is the increased amount of competition on Google for keywords. When GoogleCash was written in 2003, it was fairly easy to find a profitable product to promote where you could get on the first page of Google results paying only a nickel a click. Now that several thousand people have read Carpenter's ebook, your competition for profitable niches has become much higher.

Another major change in the industry is Google's new rule about showing a particular display URL more than once in their sponsored results. At one time, you could find 7 or 8 ads all for the same company in the results of some searches. That's no longer possible, since Google's new policy is to only show each URL once for a search. If multiple ads are running that go to the same URL, the ad with the best click-through ratio times cost per click is the ad that gets shown, and the other ads are not shown.

This is not to say that Google Cash is no longer a workable system. In fact, there is quite a bit of support at Adword Mentor in the discussion forum there. The system definitely requires some tweaking now. For one thing, if you want to make sure that your ad is going to show up, you'll more than likely need enough web knowledge to at least be able to create a landing page for the program that gets high click-through's and conversions. A couple of hours spent reading a basic Frontpage tutorial should be enough to get you through this part.

Another thing to keep in mind is that most profitable niches are extremely competitive, so in order to make money, you really need to focus on creating a huge list of what are called "longtail" keyword phrases. You're going to be much better off and make much more profit with the Google Cash system if you have 1000 longtail phrases picking up 5 clickthrough's a month at a nickel each than you will if have you 10 competitive keyword phrases picking up 500 clickthrough's each at a dollar a click. (Do the math and you'll understand why.)

The only real criticism I have of Google Cash is that they make the same mistake that so many other ebooks make: they make it sound like making money with affiliate programs is super easy and requires little effort. In fact, affiliate marketing can be difficult and frustrating, and it can require a lot of effort in order to be worthwhile. There is less hype surrounding this "get rich quick" mentality with Google Cash, but there are still enough hints of it surrounding the book that it's worth mentioning. I also think that, like most ebooks, it's overpriced at $49, but at the same time, if you learn one distinction or one new technique that you weren't already aware of, you could easily make that $49 back in a day or two.

CAP Spring Break - Miami Beach 2005

I'll be joining some other webmasters at the CAP Spring Break even in Miami this weekend. My wife and I haven't been anywhere together since we got married 3 years ago, so this is sort of like a honeymoon for us. The point is that I won't be blogging quite as much while I'm in sunny Miami. Although I probably will post some pictures and stuff when I get back.

Why I Don't Use Affiliate Links in eBook Reviews

You may have noticed that most of my ebook reviews do NOT include affiliate links to the ebook in question, and you might have wondered why, especially since this is an affiliate marketing blog. The answer is really pretty simple if you think about it: how good a review could it be if the goal were to sell you the product? Doesn't that just make it an "advertorial" instead of an honest-to-goodness review?

My goal with the ebook reviews on this site are to provide other affiliate marketers with authentic and honest recommendations about whether or not to buy certain ebooks. These are of course only my humble opinions, but they are not attempts to sell or shill these ebooks in exchange for a commission. I'm not 100% convinced that there's much money to be made selling affiliate ebooks anyway, although maybe some of the sites that do really well in the SERP's for certain ebook titles do allright with it.

On a slightly parenthetical note, I've been giving some thought to writing an ebook about affiliate marketing. I've read some of the major ones, and I suspect that I might actually be able to add a different perspective. Most affiliate marketing books I've read have been overly promotional and short on actual content. (Although Martell's book and Rosalind Gardner's books are both pretty good on the content side of things.) But I might enjoy writing, and someone might enjoy reading, some content on how to be an affiliate webmaster and be proud of what you're doing because you're adding value to the internet community instead of just getting a quick paycheck.

A friend of mine wrote on an affiliate marketing board I frequent that one of the most common mistakes in affiliate marketing is having too little respect for your visitors and customers, and another is trying to make as much money as you can in a week or else you'll die. (I think I'm paraphrasing a little bit.) How true. That about sums up why I'm not using affiliate links in my ebook reviews--I have too much respect for the readers of this blog, and no need to make as much money as I can in a week. I want to make a lot of money over the next year or two or five instead. And to do that, I need readers who trust me and come back to the site time and again.

And the easiest way to develop trust is to be trustworthy.

Are You Running a Content Site or a Link Farm?

I've done both. And I've decided that not only is running a content site more satisfying, it's also more profitable. How do you know if your site is a content site or an affiliate link farm though? James Martell tells you to build sites with a lot of content pages, but I've seen some of his sites, and honestly, a lot of them are affiliate link farms. Same with a lot of Site Build It! sites.

Here's the difference. The reason for a content site is the content. You might monetize the site by having affiliate links or other paid advertising on the site, but the reason people are there is to read the content. The content is unique. It's useful. It's worth reading, it's worth visiting, and it's worth bookmarking. Search engines will list it highly because users will like it.

An affiliate link farm might have "articles". But a lot of them are just re-hashes of other articles online. Even if you're not using a software like Articlebot, if the only reason your articles exist is to draw traffic to your website so that you can refer your visitor to some affiliate links, then your site is an affiliate link farm, not a content site. Even if you have 300 pages of "articles".

I'm not drawing a moral distinction. I have good friends running affiliate link farms. Some of my own sites are still affiliate link farms. There is room on the internet for advertising, and even sites devoted solely to promoting advertising. Heck, that's why newspapers have classified's sections, and there are newspapers that are made up exclusively of classified's. So there's nothing wrong with having a website made up exclusively of advertising.

Just don't call it a rich content site, because it's not. And if you haven't tried it yet, give a rich content website a try and see if you make any money with it. I think you can, and I think you can make a lot of money with it.

Obviously I'm Not Doing a Lot of Updating Lately...

But I do have a couple of sites to recommend:

The first is Party Riches - Poker Affiliate Programs Discussion - This is Jeremy Enke's site promoting his ebook on how to make a lot of money promoting Party Poker. His ebook is excellent, and there's a lot going on in the affiliate forum. Some of the guys in the affiliate forum are young and inexperienced, and as a result, they have a lot of ideas that they're not afraid to share, which is good stuff. Real grassroots stuff going on here, is how one of my friends put it.

I'd also like to recommend the new Poker Gamer Blog - This is a new online poker blog from my friend Travis. He was kind enough to share my link on his site, and I'm going to do the same for him. He's using one of my favorite templates for his blog, and he's got a lot of good info to share. Entertaining site. He also owns and operates the Texas Holdem Online Strategy Guide. It's a newer site, but very clean and well written. I have a feeling that Travis is going to be very successful as a poker affiliate.

I am now Full Time

I left my day job this morning to work on web marketing and affiliate stuff full time. I've worked for someone for 20 years now, so I'm nervous and scared about making the leap. But I calculated my hourly wage doing web marketing versus my hourly wage doing rat race work, and web marketing won out. I'm excited. So far the main thing that's changed for me is that I have to set priorities and work them now. I've always worked on whatever I felt like working on before, but now I need to step back, take a look at my business as a whole and my websites as a whole, and decide where my priorites are and establish a work routine.

Wish me luck. I hope to remain successful.

How to Market on Forums and Message Boards Without Pissing Anyone Off

Believe it or not, you can market on forums and message boards without pissing anyone off. In fact, not only can you market this way, you SHOULD market this way, and I'll tell you why later in this article. But for now, I'd like to point out that the reason I'm writing this article is because someone on an affiliate forum that I frequent got kicked out of an affiliate program for spamming a message board community. He'd posted his opinion of the affiliate product in the "personal opinions" section of the board, and the moderator of the community reported him to the merchant, who then kicked him out of the affiliate program.

There's a big difference between expressing your opinion and marketing a product. Often the difference can be discerned as easily as discerning the tracking code in an affiliate URL for a product. I moderate at several forums online, and I despise dealing with spammers who think it's okay to blatantly market to my readers without contributing anything of value to my community. So here are my rules for marketing on forums without pissing anyone off.

1- Participate in a forum that allows links to your website in your signature. If the discussion board doesn't allow links in your signature, go find one that does.

2- PARTICIPATE in the forum. Ask pertinent questions. Make pithy observations. Answer others' questions if you know the correct answers. Try to post something daily, maybe more often. Just be sure that you're not just participating to get your link in front of people; participate in the forum in order to add value to the members' experiences there. The rewards in terms of higher click-through's and conversions are well worth it.

3- Include a link to your website in your signature file in a normal sized font.

That's it. That's all there is to it. How does this help your marketing? Well, you should be participating in forums at least partially related or of interest to the people who hang out in a forum. So some of them will click on your signature link just out of interest. And, if you post intelligently and often, you will gradually become recognized as an expert in that area. And that will make you more attractive. You'll begin to get link exchange requests, links, and requests for help from indviduals on the forums. This is when you know your strategy is working.

Marketing on forums and message boards isn't for the faint of heart, or for the lazy spammer. But if you're willing to make appropriate effort, you'll get appropriate returns.

An Update on My Affiliate Goals

I haven't updated this site in a while, but I do need to step forward and publicly update my affiliate goals for the year. I have decided that 100 sites in the next year isn't realistic, so I've changed my goal to be able to quit working in the regular rat race no later than April 1, 2006. I've decided to focus on building content for my existing sites and building them up into big successes, instead of focusing so hard on having multiple websites. I think that having 100 websites at 100 pages each is no better than having 10 websites with 1000 pages each, really.

I've also been looking at taking on some partners. WebLogsInc has a fascinating model where they split ad revenue with the people who write the blogs in their network. I'm working on setting up some similar partnerships and joint ventures with some people. I'm looking for people who are willing to write daily content, and let me publish that content, and then they can split the Adsense revenue with me. (Or whatever other affiliate revenue I might make.) It's certainly easy enough to track where your advertising dollars are coming in from, so actually implementing this business model should be easy.

I've got ideas for blogs on a number of subjects, but I can only write so much content each day without just totally wearing myself out. If anyone is interested in doing a join venture with me of a blog type nature, where you would write the content, and I'll handle the SEO and publishing, then get in touch with me and let me know.

I'm going to start trying to keep this blog updated a little more conscientiously too.

Top 7 Commission Junction Programs

Commission Junction has a search function that affiliates can use to order the available merchants by EPC for the last 3 months, and by EPC for the last 7 days. I ran a search for the last 3 months, because I think 3 months' worth of data is better, and I came up with the following list of what I think are probably the best money-making programs on CJ:

Household Finance Corporation. $329 EPC. They pay $12 per lead. A lead is someone who fills out a loan or rental application online.
Money Search. $221 EPC. They pay between $4 and $20 per lead. A lead is someone who fills out a loan application. Depending on whether or not the client is refinancing a mortgage or consolidating debt, you get a specific dollar amount based on the type of loan that's being applied for.
Ameriquest Mortage. $195 EPC. They pay $20 per lead. A lead is someone who fills out a mortgage application.
Jevene. $171 EPC. They are a cosmetics company who pay a flat $12 per order.
NetMoneyWizard. $170 EPC. They pay $21 for a refinance application and $6 for a new home loan application.
marbles loans. $165 EPC. They pay 10 pounds for a lead. They're a British loan company.
Zurich $159 EPC. They pay 50 pounds for customers who buy insurance from them.

EPC stands for earnings per 100 clicks. All of the programs above average above $1.50 per click. This makes them very competitive indeed. If that average held true for Household Finance for example, $3.20 per click, then to make $100,000 a year with their program, you would only need to send them 90 clicks a day. And looking over the list, it's clear to me that looking at the loan and the insurance sectors might be a good idea for me over the next few months.

The Hypertracker Affiliate Program

Testing and measuring are the two keys to success on the internet when it comes to marketing. (Those are actually the two keys to success to offline marketing too.) Hypertracker is a software that simplifies and enhances your ability to track and measure the results of your ad campaigns. You can learn from the Hypertracker software exactly which ads on which places are productive for you. And once you know this, you can make the important adjustments that are necessary to profit on the internet. But it's not just a cool product; it's also a cool affiliate program to promote.

The Hypertracker affiliate program is a two tiered program that pays lifetime commissions on the customers you refer. The top tier pays 30% and the 2nd tier pays 10%, for as long as your referral continues to pay the monthly fee for the service. Their average payout at the 30% level is about $39, and the average 2nd tier payout is $13 per sale. Their minimum payout requirement is that you've earned no less than $50. The product is marketed through a slightly larger affiliate network called Implix.

Implix offers several other products besides Hypertracker that you can promote. These products include:

GetResponse.com - An autoresponder program that's very well known and has been around since 1998.
WebsiteWizard - An online website builder for people who are just beginners and are looking to get started on the internet.
EbookGold - Ebook creation software for people who want to create and promote their own ebooks.
Bizmint - Expired domain software program. People love to get their hands on great priced expired domains, which are often worth a fortune.
DynamiteCovers - Allows you to add three dimensional virtual covers to the items on your website.

The 30%/10% plan applies to all the programs above, as well as to the Hypertracker associate program. The best part of the program is that you get paid commissions for the life of the customer. That's true residual income right there. Most of their products rebill periodically, either monthly, quarterly, twice a year, or annually, and as long as they keep billing the customer, you keep receiving your commission.

Top Ten Affiliate Programs

Top ten lists are pretty popular on the internet these days, and I'm going to participate in the trend by listing what I think are the top ten affiliate programs. I might change my mind about some of the programs listed here, but right now, I think every single one of these programs is top notch and worth promoting.

Casinoblasters - I reviewed them at great length, but they are IMO one of the top moneymaking opportunities on the internet, and they're very well-run. I recommend the rev share rather than the CPA deal.
Party Poker - Another program I've reviewed, and another extremely profitable, well-run program. The poker industry is very competitive right now, so it's not for the faint of heart. But if you're willing to do the work, you can make some outstanding money promoting Party Poker. I recommend the rev share rather than the CPA deal.
Leading Edge Cash - Another subject of a review on this blog, this outfit is top notch. Great commision percentages and good management here. Lots of support available, including a forum for webmasters promoting their products.
Google Adsense - What can I say about Google Adsense? It's a no-brainer: get paid per click when someone sees an appropriate ad and decides to check it out. And guess what? They're all appropriate ads.
eBay - I didn't believe the stories about the eBay super affiliates making six figures in a month until I decided to try promoting their program via PPC on Google Adwords. Now I'm a believer. eBay is one of the most interesting things to happen on the internet, and their commission program and revenue sharing opportunity is fascinating and more importantly profitable.
Big Church - This is a niche dating site targeting Christians. It's not extremely competitive yet, and you can probably rank pretty high for 'big church', 'bigchurch', and 'big church.com' since there aren't a lot of people targeting those phrases. But my experience with them was that they converted their traffic VERY well.
University of Phoenix - Who hasn't heard of the University of Phoenix online degree program? Their associates program is one of those great programs that offer to pay you even though your customer hasn't spent any money--you get $17 every time someone fills out a form requesting additional information about their online degree programs. If someone only partially fills out the form, you still get $11. Not a bad deal at all.
VMC Satellite - The satellite industry is competitive and tough to get traffic for, but man the commissions are great when you land a sale. VMC Satellite was recommended to me by a good friend of mine, and since it's a two tier program, I'm now in his downline.
Household Finance Corporation - Mortgages are big money. These guys are one of the top programs in Commission Junction, based on their EPC figures.
Match.com - The largest dating program on the net. This is such a big niche that if you could tap into 1/10 of 1% of the niche, you'd never have to work again.

The problem with top ten lists is that they're so subjective. I've seen dozens of affiliate marketing websites listing what they think are their top ten associate programs, and almost all of them offer a completely different list than the others. Not that this is a bad thing. The point is that depending on what you're interested in, and depending on what kind of product you're interested in selling, almost any marketing program can make you money.

Work at Home Ploys

You've probably seen work at home advertising: Take online surveys and make $150/hour. Earn $9000/per month from home working only ten minutes a day. Etc, etc, ad nauseam. And most of these schemes aren't legitimate ways to make a living.

Most of these ads leave out or lie about how many hours you'll have to work. There are often big costs involved with some of these work at home schemes, but of course, they don't tell you about the investment in the sales pitch. A lot of times you have to spend significant amounts of cash buying newspaper ads, making photocopies, or buying postal supplies that you'll need to work from home. The worst tactic is when the company who placed the ad expects you to pay for some kind of tutorial software. Don't waste your money or your energy on most of these scams.

Affiliate marketing is a real work at home opportunity for someone who's willing to do the work. And if you're clever and willing, you can learn to make money online without having to invest a lot of money into it. You can get a free blog from blogspot, write content, run affiliate ads, and get links to your site until you've got good positioning in the SERP's. None of this costs money; all of it requires effort. And a lot of times you won't see rewards for months.

But if you can build a good 100 page website, get some good quality backlinks, and do some intelligent keyword research, then you can pretty well count on making at least $500 a month on that website. And once you have 10 websites that size, you're making $5000 a month. That's not a get rich quick scheme though. Having 10 websites with 100 pages each means you've written 1000 pages of content for the internet. And THAT's a lot of work no matter how you slice it.

But achievable? You bet. In fact, if you work 5 days a week for 50 weeks out of the year, you only have to write 4 pages of content a day to get your 1000 pages done. And then, after a year, you've got a $5000 or more stream of income each month that requires very little maintenance on your part. So if you want to work from home, managing affiliate websites is the way to go, but don't think it's a get rich scheme.