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Archive for 'Affiliate marketing'

A Recap Of 2011 And Best Wishes For 2012

Friday, December 30th, 2011 at 5:22 pm

Comments (27)

The year is almost up and I feel it’s time for a little reflection on all that has transpired over the last 365 days. I started the year with my post Are Your Goals For 2011 Achievable?, the first of 115 posts for the year. That particular post outlined why I believed so many people were failing in their objectives to making an online income and what they should do to maximize their online income potential.

The first money making post for the year goes to How To Make Money Off A Popular Post where I introduced you guys to MediaPass, a site that allows you to turn those popular posts into virtual income generating articles. I am happy to report that there are some who have signed up under me who are doing very well through it adding even more to my source of passive income and for that I must thank you and say keep up the good work

WordPress Plugins Were Popular In 2011

I don’t think anyone would argue that one of the reasons WordPress is a popular blogging platform is because of all the hard work those remarkable guys put into developing plugins that not only make our life as bloggers easier but also help us to add to out blogging income.

WordPress Superman

10 Essential WordPress Plugins For The Smart Blogger list 10 pluginsthat I feel are essential to blogging and yes some of those do help in the money making department.
Put A Firewall Up To Protect Your Blog introduced you guys to another essential plugin, one that secures your blog. That post also outlines why I felt I had to have that plugin.
Five Best WordPress Plugins For Affiliate Marketers lists what I believe to be 5 essential plugins for anyone wanting to be successful in affiliate marketing.
Making Money With Amazon Is It Possible introduced my readers to a free plugin that would increase their Amazon revenue.
A Review Of WP Zon Builder came about because I wanted to see how much a paid plugin differed from the free version. This post shows you why I chose WP Zon Builder
How To Really Improve Your Bounce Rates introduces you to a plugin that apart from improving your bounce rate it also has the potential to earn you some money. I’ll be doing an update on this baby next year

OK, there were other plugins mentioned throughout the year, including several posts on CommentLuv Premium but I reckon those were the main ones. I also expect there to be more next year as I come across other interesting plugins. The problem I will come across then will be which plugins to let go.

How I Made Money In 2011

As my regulars know, I’m the type of blogger that loves to share with his readers my experiences, both good and bad, with online money making ventures.There have been several throughout the year of which these are just a few.

What Affiliates To Promote To Blog For Money gives you those affiliates that I promote successfully on this as well as some of my other blogs.
Put Money In Your Pocket And Generate Traffic For Your Blog introduced you all to Zaparena but unfortunately that particular site, as outlined in this post, is no more.
Be Prepared To Spend Money To Make Money pretty well outlines how it wasn’t until I started investing in my online business that I actually started making money from the products I was promoting.

Naturally there was a lot of other posts, 114 to be exact, that I could link to but that would be a little over the top. Suffice it to say that they covered everything from jokes, poems, inspirational posts to ways of making money online. I’m sure that my topics are so varied that I have managed to secure a dedicated following as well as why my list membership continues to grow.

I’ve also produced more YouTube videos and I’m planning to utilise YouTube as another avenue for making money in 2012. Speaking of YouTube I would really appreciate if you could take the time to give this particular video a little plug, naturally only if you think it is worth it.

All in all I am more than happy with the way things have gone this year, especially with my latest venture, Buy Online Lottery Tickets, and I look forward to 2012 as being a year that holds many possibilities. Of course things will be really different if I win one of the lotteries outlined in this post. I thought what better way to start off the new year than by winning some money which is why I purchased a ticket from a Brazilian, Spanish and Aussie lottery. The size of the jackpot didn’t interest me as much as the fact that they will all be drawn on December 31st.

As this will be the last post for the year I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year and that all your wishes and plans for 2012 come to fruition.

Also, if you’re going to leave a comment I hope it has some content and is more than just good post or Happy New Year as these will just be deleted.

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How I Am Marketing My Online Lottery Niche

Monday, May 30th, 2011 at 11:19 pm

Comments (57)

The trouble with most sites out there is they’re so quick to tell you how easy it is to make money online, usually because they’re trying to sell you something, but they fail to tell you how hard it is to drive traffic to those sites which is so important because if you don’t have traffic you won’t make money. If you’ve been following my posts you know about my latest niche, Buy Online Lotto Tickets, and you know how I came up with the idea for this latest niche. Don’t worry if you haven’t read them yet as I will leave some related links at the end of this post.

Well, coming up with the idea and setting up the niche was by far the easiest part of this latest venture, now comes the hard part, getting the site noticed by the search engines and the myriad of potential online lottery customers. That’s where this post comes into play, I’m going to tell you what I’ve done so far in my marketing plan.

Backlink Strategy.

Getting backlinks is probably the most important thing, apart from providing good content, in marketing because if done correctly it will increase your search engine ranking thereby increasing potential traffic. While I could go out and purchase the links I know most people can’t afford that route so I’m taking the popular free route.

Blog commenting: Commenting on other peoples blogs, especially if they use commentluv and keyword love, is the best way I know of getting backlinks. If you leave good quality comments, ones that stir the readers emotions, you will do more than just get a valuable backlink, you’re also likely to drive traffic from the post you left the comment on.
Leaving a comment in forums is also another way of getting backlinks, it’s the first way I used to do it but it’s taken a back seat to blog commenting. The last comment I left on a forum was this one, another one of my sites.
You could ask to exchange links with other bloggers. I’ve never gone that route because I don’t really like to ask for favours, even though it’s not really a favour, it’s more of a business proposition. Even so I have been getting my links on other blogs but that’s just because I own them.

Zaparena

I’ve done a few posts about Zaparena and before you go telling me how Google frowns on traffic exchange sites I think you should read this post, Will Google Penalise You For Using Zaparena? Still, you never know with Google The beauty about the way I’m utilising Zaparena is I don’t have to have it’s ads on my lotto site and I do this by incorporating it’s ‘teaser’ feature. You see as soon as you send 20 people to Zaparena you’re allowed to post a teaser on their site which to all accounts is an ad. As I have several teasers on offer I decided to use them to promote my online lottery site.

As you can see from my ~~teaser~~ ad there’s no naked ladies and that’s just the way I want it because I am looking for targeted traffic. I’ve also used an accurate description of what I’m promoting so that anyone who clicks on it gets exactly what they are looking for. That ad will take them to How To Create A Online Passive Income which promotes my new lottery niche as well as the MyLotto affiliate. This is important because it may encourage others to try the niche and when they make money so will I.

Squidoo

Image by coreyweb via Flickr

I thought this a great time to create a new Squidoo lens, one called Picking The Right Affiliate. I’ve used Squidoo before with a modicum of success so I thought it would a great way to promote my newest venture. If you’re a Squidoo member I would really appreciate you giving that post a ‘thumbs up’, you know, clicking on that little thumb icon at the bottom of the screen Do that for me and I will return the favour. Leave a comment and I will leave a comment on one of your lenses. In other words you scratch my back and I will scratch yours.

If you haven’t joined Squidoo yet I urge that you consider taking the plunge. You can create your first lens by clicking on this link. Apart from gaining those important backlinks it’s a great way to build your brand and show people how knowledgeable you really are. Once you have joined don’t forget to fill in your bio as it allows you to insert some important links, links that will point others to your sites. Try it and I’m sure you will like it.

Apart from a couple of Tweets thats all I’ve done for the moment. Other tactics I have planned include:

Starting a FaceBook Fan Page
Updating MySpace
Updating Linkedin
A possible YouTube video, if I can work out the right angle
Some new articles for article directories

That’s about it for now but I’m sure that in my excitement to get this post published I’ve missed a hell of a lot out. I’m not worried thought because that’s what I have you guys for and what the comment section is all about. What things would you do to market a new niche and how would you go about it?

The Secret To Online Success Is Passive Income

Monday, May 23rd, 2011 at 8:56 am

Comments (53)

Sure, everyone tells you that the secret to online success is to have a list but a list is absolutely useless unless you have a product or series of products that you can sell. Let’s face facts, one good product just won’t cut it because once you’ve sold it to your list the money just dries up until you find another good product to sell. It’s important that whatever you’re offering your list is of great value to them otherwise your list, the one you took so long to build up, will start to shrink.

They say affiliate marketing is the way to go but once again you’re facing the same problem, you’re forever trying to sell something to people. How many affiliates have you joined where they’ve promised you can make a great income, but more than that you can also earn heaps by signing people up under you. The problem is that everyone is so busy building their downline no-one is making any sales and so no-one is making any money.

This is why the first thing I do is try the ~~product~~ affiliate to see whether or not there is money to be made and once I’ve proven it can be done I write a post to show others how I did it. So you see I’m not selling the downline aspect, I’m showing them how to make money. If they decide to join up under me and follow my example not only will they make money, a percentage of their earnings will find it’s way to me. That is what a passive income is all about.

The trick is to find something that is free to join and isn’t too hard and time consuming and actually has the potential to make money. I’ve found several that works and I’m going to use this post to link to them.

How To Make Money Off A Popular Post: This post describes how you can use MediaPass to turn a post into a passive income machine. As long as your post provides useful content, content that solves a problem or shows others how to do something better, then it can earn you money. I’m happy to report that others have followed my lead and are doing fairly well from it. I’m actually making more from their efforts than from my own. I’m in the process of creating more posts where I can use MediaPass so that I can catch up.

Update On Sponsored Tweets As To It’s Money Making Potential: This post followed up a previous post showing my readers how Sponsored Tweets could be a good money earner and is another nice passive income generator as others who have followed my lead make their own money.

Final Update On Snap Dollars: In case you’re wondering as to the reason I’m linking to updated posts, its because they provide links to all the previous posts thereby giving all the information possible. SnapDollars is one of those sites that could be making me more money if only those who joined under me pulled their finger out and got some work done.

Apart from these and other minor players there is one passive income avenue that I’ve decided to exploit further. When picking a product or service to promote its best to pick one that people need to purchase on a regular basis. One that is earning me an average of $40 a month is Oz Lotteries and all from a few posts I had written. You see, once someone signs up under me I earn a commission every time they purchase a ticket, which they do on a regular basis, and when there’s a jackpot my earnings go up. So I figured what I need is a site dedicated to online lotteries.

Naturally the first thing I needed to do was to find the right domain and to aid me in this I used Market Samurai‘s Domain Feature. I used to do this online by typing one site after another to see if it’s been taken. The problem with this was that I used to forget which ones I had tried.

With Market Samurai I simply typed all the domains I could think of and then asked it to search for the ones that were available. I told it to concentrate just on dot coms and not to come up with any offshoots. Out of the ones it narrowed it down to I chose three that I liked, getonlinelotto, getonlinelottery and buyonlinelottotickets. Not wanting to miss out on any of them I decided to purchase all three using DYNADOT for only $9.75 each. For an extra $2 I could have domain privacy meaning I could hide my personal information cutting back on email spam and the like.Heck I reckon at $5 per month I’ll even use them to host my new site.

Once I had them all parked, for free with the possibility of earning some money while I decide on how to use them, I again turned to Market Samurai but this time I used its SEO Competition feature to see what I was up against using buy online lottery tickets as my keywords. This feature gives you a lot of information about your competitors.

Apart from PR you’re also given;

IC (Index Count): The number of pages on this domain indexed within Google.
BLP (Page Backlinks): The total number of links pointing to a specific URL, not including any links from the website itself.
BLD (Domain Backlinks): The total number of external links pointing to any page on that domain, again not including any from the website itself.
BLEG (Page.edu/.gov Backlinks): The total number of links pointing to a webpage from .gov/.edu sites.
DMOZ (DMOZ Directory): Whether it’s listed on DMOZ.
YAH (Yahoo Directory): Whether it’s listed on Yahoo.
Title (Keyword In Title): Whether the webpage <title> tag contains the keyword
URL (Keyword in URL): Whether the webpage url contains the keywords.
Desc (Keyword in description): Whether the keywords appear in the <meta> description tag.
Head (Keyword in header): Whether the words appear in then <h1>, <h2>, <h3> etc. tags within the page content
CA (Google Cache Age): The number of days since Google last reindexed the page.

You can even add custom urls to see how you stack up against specific websites. I added buyonlinelotterytickets.com as this was the closest one to the domain I had chosen. Comparing the results shows me exactly what I am up against and what I need to do to improve my own future standing.

Naturally I will be using the Flexsqueeze theme as it’s classic features will enable me to produce a great looking site with the minimum of effort. I will also be looking at other lottery sites to promote as the more I can offer my visitors the greater the chance of getting them to join.

Other than lottery sites, what others would you recommend to improve your passive income.

What Affiliates To Promote To Blog For Money

Monday, February 14th, 2011 at 11:27 pm

Comments (70)

If there’s one thing that you’re bound to see on the net it’s people telling you how they can show you ways of making money. Normally it’s a sales pitch to either get you to join a list or it’s via a free eBook that doesn’t really tell you anything other than letting you know you have to actually buy the full version to learn the real secret to financial success. They’ll even spout some crap about how you have to get in now before the offer expires to fool you into a sense of false security because you don’t want to miss out on a golden opportunity. The truth of the matter is you’re better off trying to leave the site because more often than not they will offer you a better deal to get your business.

With this post I want to be a little different in that I am actually going to tell you which affiliates I am promoting that is actually putting money in my pocket. I’m hoping that perhaps it will give you ideas that you can use to increase your blogs earnings.

I think a common mistake is that people just promote any old affiliate by sticking a link or banner on their website hoping for the best. This is what I used to do and it didn’t really make me any money. It’s common knowledge that to make any decent income online you need a product to sell, unfortunately most of us don’t have a product which is why we push other people’s products as affiliates. The problem is that it’s hard pushing something that you’re not truly familiar with. The solution is to buy something you need, that you really want and then tell others of your experience. They are more likely to buy from you if they know you’re using it and that you love it. Don’t bullshit to them because it will bite you in the ass later. In essence you have to spend money to make money, otherwise it’s just like going around a games board looking for something to buy but never getting anywhere.

FlexSqueeze: I used to use free themes because I didn’t want to spend the money, not knowing that I would have a lot more money in my pocket if only I chose a professional theme that had affiliate attached to it. The first theme I bought was the Thesis WordPress Theme but I couldn’t promote it because I didn’t believe in it. All the hype I read from others was just BS as it wasn’t as out of the box easy to use as they made it out to be. I kept looking until I found FlexSqueeze and I haven’t looked back since, it is easily my biggest seller.

Market Samurai: I’ve only just recently purchased this software and it’s already paid for itself in affiliate sales and I’ve only posted about it twice. I’ve been using it on my sexual aids blog. In case you’re wondering why I haven’t done an update yet it’s because I’m waiting for their tech guys to resolve an issue I’m having with it. Even with that I’ve managed to rank no.1 on Yahoo and no2 on Bing for the keywords sexual aids but am still struggling on Google. I think it’s because I’m finding it difficult to get back-links to the blog.

BlueHost: If you’re happy about your hosting company join as an affiliate and tell people about it. Tell them why you joined and what it is you love about them. Be sincere and let your excitement show in your post. Naturally no one is going to believe you if you’re posting from a Blogger or WordPress.com account, likewise if you’re promoting a theme form one of those account. Why would people believe you when you’ve had no experience with the product you’re promoting?

Most of my blogs have a “Proudly Hosted On Name Of Host” link displayed prominently on the blog and each of them have made sales from it. Just one sale would pay for the blog’s hosting for a year with some to spare.

RegNow: This is site that allows people to sell it’s member’s software products on their site. I originally joined them so I could do posts on my Top Software Online blog. It will even allow you to create your own store such as the one I have my blog attached to. The problem is I need to direct traffic there in order to make sales. It wasn’t until I promoted Tweet Whistle on this blog that I started to make some money.

Commission Junction: These guys act as a go between publishers and advertisers. As a member you get to promote products from some of the leading retailers and market groups. A lot of the Hosting companies use CJ as their preferred method of advertising.

ClixGalore and Commission Monster are similar to CJ and while they do not earn me as much they do bring in some money. I use them because they offer me things that are not available on CJ. I’ve used Clickbank but haven’t had much luck with them, probably because I haven’t found a product that I’m comfortable promoting. I’ve also hadsome luck with Cash Burners but that’s limited to my sex aids site as it supplies adult only products.

I hope this has given you some ideas to incorporate on your blog to make it more profitable. If there’s anything else you would like to know you could always leave a comment.

The Good The Bad & The Ugly of Lists & List Building

Monday, December 27th, 2010 at 12:27 am

Comments (30)

These days it doesn’t matter where you go, you always read the same thing, “The Money Is In The List!” Yep, no matter who you talk to they’ll all tell you that the only way to make it online is to have a list. Only the other day I was reading a review that some A Lister did on someone’s blog and he basically told him that he didn’t have a hope in hell of getting anyone to subscribe to his List because he wasn’t offering anything of value that would encourage them to subscribe.

Yep, it seems the only way to suck people into subscribing to your list is to give something away. The problem is that most people haven’t got anything to offer and so they put together some crappy Ebook that promises to reveal their secret to success even though the majority of the time the author is struggling to make a buck himself.

The thing with lists is that just like you need targeted traffic to your blog to increase your chances of a sale, it’s just as important to sign the right kind of people to your list if you expect to sell them anything. Take for example a talented web designer who’s offering free templates to those who subscribe to his list. He may get hundreds of people opting in but he won’t have much success of making a sale if he then tries palming off life insurance. Once he sees that doesn’t work this failed marketer then starts sending out more emails trying to push other affiliates that he’s promoting only to find that instead of making sales his list is actually decreasing.

It’s unfortunate that the ones actually making heaps of money out of lists are the same ones who have attained Pro Blogger status because they have credibility. They will tell you that the only way your going to succeed is if you buy their Ebook, something they offer to you at a price after wetting your appetite with their freebie opt in product, and it’s that very credibility that causes people to buy it. Once they’ve bought it and they find it’s not working for them do you think they will tell others they made a mistake? Nope, instead they rave about how good it is thereby increasing the credibility of the author and hoping to make their own sales as an affiliate.

Keeping this in mind the only real and moral way to make money from a list is to get quality subscribers. This means if you’re going to give them a product, or a teaser that will lead to buying the actual product, it has to be actually worth something to them otherwise they’re not going to buy future products and you’re going to shoot down your credibility all to hell.

Unfortunately this form of list building takes a lot of time and effort to build a sizable list but the positive of this list is that although it’s a lot smaller the potential for conversions is a lot higher.

To summarize, if you’re going to build a list there is one very important thing you should keep in mind…

Do not go for quantity of subscribers, go for quality because the strength of the list is not in the numbers but in selecting those who are interested in what you are promoting.

In my post Why The List Hater Has His Very Own List I wrote about why I started my own list which was quite a shock for my regular readers as they knew how negative I was about having one. I don’t expect to make any money from this list but I’m hoping it will increase this blogs readership.

So if you want to join a list where you will never be spammed and will only receive an email to your inbox when a new post is published then you should definitely join mine. Subscribe To WassupBlog’s New Posts! Who knows, I may even add something personal about myself in some of those emails. I’ll certainly try to make them entertaining and informative. As an incentive to join I will select some posts from my subscribers and include them in the mail out. As the list grows I believe there will be a great potential to send traffic to my loyal subscribers.

Speaking of link luv and promotion if you have a blog that supports commentluv, keywordluv and is dofollow I suggest you head on over to Kimberly’s post Can You Help Me Find The DoFollows! Leave a comment on her blog telling her that you qualify and she will include you in her post listing all these special blogs.

Those of you who are serious about building quality opt in lists may find some of the following reading material to be quite helpful.

Lucrative List Building: How Everyday People Are Building Huge, Highly Profitable Opt-In Email Lists from Scratch to Make Millions Online

List Building Quick Tips – Latest 2010/2011 Version – How To Instantly Triple The Size Of Your Customer Lists Using Opt-Ins

Opt-in List Building For Beginners – The Essential Step-By-Step Guide To Building Your Very Own Responsive Opt-In Mailing List!

Opt-In List Building for Beginners

The Expert Guide To Opt-In List Building

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010The FlexSqueeze Theme gives my blog that professional look. I loved it so much that I bought the developers license. It's the easiest most customizable theme I've come across. See how easy it is to change your theme's appearance! Compare it to Thesis to see how much better it is! Check out some of the latest Latest Updates

I highly recommend you to get your FlexSqueeze copy today!