Archive for September, 2008
Sep
Momentum is one of the hardest things to gain in SEM if you’re starting with nothing. You have no sister sites to uplink with, nor any other networks you can drop a link on. You’re forced to do everything manually (or pay someone else obviously) without any head start what so ever. How exactly should [...]
Momentum is one of the hardest things to gain in SEM if you’re starting with nothing. You have no sister sites to uplink with, nor any other networks you can drop a link on. You’re forced to do everything manually (or pay someone else obviously) without any head start what so ever. How exactly should you get started? What should your first move be? How can you keep it going?
There’s a few things you can do. Let’s start on the free (and legal) side.
- Submit your site to Social Bookmarking sites
- Submit your site to Directories.
- Find sites to request a link for, this takes a lot of time usually.
- Write or obtain a free tool to link spam with
- Spam sites yourself.
- Leave comments on blogs and/or forums.
Now on the slightly paid side, I highly highly suggest the following:
- Social Bookmarking submissions (Personally I use Red_Virus) Price: 100 submits / ~$25
- Directory Submissions (same) Price: 500 submits/~$35 – 1000 submits/~$65
- Blog Commenting
- Purchasing Stumbles
- Purchasing Diggs
- etc…
Each of these can help you get started on your momentum, but let’s talk about how this will help you in the future once you start rollin’ down the hill.
The whole goal of getting the momentum going is that when you have your first site that achieves what I call “eagle eye” is when you start spreading it out. Eagle eye is a term that I use when I can go to a site or blog, post some content and in about 30 minutes it’s already updated on the Google index. The term derived from the fact that Google watches your site like an eagle to his prey.
The best way to get a site started on it’s journey is to do the linking properly. Usually I drop a link to my new site from Stumble & Digg. That alone should get it indexed (main page) within 24 hours, and if you have a lot of dynamic pages make sure you have a sitemap configured to have it be respidered every day or every week. I have another theory that this will help for another reason, but we’ll get to that another day.
The linking should get you indexed, but now you need some good strong backlinks. Go out and find some places to leave comments. Make sure you don’t BS them … write a good constructive comment and leave your URL with your name as the anchor you want to rank for.
The main thing you need to do is set yourself goals and set a plan of attack for outranking your competition. Start with gauging what their typical increase in links is per day. If they get 150 links a month roughly and you have a base of 500 links right now and you’d like to catch them in 2 months, you need more than 800 links within those two months. Always get a goal is a tad bit out of reach so that you push yourself to excel above and beyond what you think you’ll achieve.
Setting yourself a goal for top 5 is great, but trying for top 5 and achieving 2nd place is a whole other ballgame. I know that personally I set myself a goal of increasing my profit per month by 20%. So far I’ve hit it every time, and some months even gotten 300% extra. It’s all about momentum. If done properly you’ll not only surprise yourself but push yourself higher than ever before. Always keep yourself focused on a goal and then don’t just try to meet it, but exceed it.
Always try to surprise yourself and hit goals you never hit before. That’s how you’ll get to the place you’re going, except much faster.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ...Sep
Niche Ideas – 9/17/08
Little behind on these, so heres a few extras for you.
Ashtrays
Khakis
Lip Gloss (or general beauty)
Microphones
Black Pearls
Video Cards
Air Mattress
Coffee Mug
Digital Cameras
Fiber Optic Lighting
Mouse Traps
Barbie Jeep
AA Batteries
Butane
Rock Climbing Shoes
Bobbleheads
Tents
Camping Equipment in general
Shoe Horn
Wedding Invitations
Sundials
Ski Pants
Key Chains
Maglights
Scarecrow Sprinkler <– The BEST for last!!
Hope this makes up for the missed posts. Happy SEMing!
Little behind on these, so heres a few extras for you.
- Ashtrays
- Khakis
- Lip Gloss (or general beauty)
- Microphones
- Black Pearls
- Video Cards
- Air Mattress
- Coffee Mug
- Digital Cameras
- Fiber Optic Lighting
- Mouse Traps
- Barbie Jeep
- AA Batteries
- Butane
- Rock Climbing Shoes
- Bobbleheads
- Tents
- Camping Equipment in general
- Shoe Horn
- Wedding Invitations
- Sundials
- Ski Pants
- Key Chains
- Maglights
- Scarecrow Sprinkler <– The BEST for last!!
Hope this makes up for the missed posts. Happy SEMing!
(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5) Loading ...Sep
I know on a daily basis I talk to individuals that are interested in getting into the industry. They all usually have the same expectations which is they want to make more money. Hell, who doesn’t? The problem is some will come in and hear about mister so and so or misses so and so [...]
I know on a daily basis I talk to individuals that are interested in getting into the industry. They all usually have the same expectations which is they want to make more money. Hell, who doesn’t? The problem is some will come in and hear about mister so and so or misses so and so making xx,xxx or even xxx,xxx a month that tells them how easy it is to get started and get it going. After a while, it all seems simple to the person operating the system – however beginners will be faced with a very harsh reality once they actually look for results. The problem is not only on one side however, but both sides set the expectations so high.
From the Users Perspective
- High talk of “MAD MONEY!” (xx,xxx – xxx,xxx/month.
- Almost never a mention of the work it took to get there
- There is almost never any “step by step” on how to get to the top. DUH!
- Most will get sucked into make money online ebooks and get pissed, and quit.
From the Industry Perspective
- Newbies are usually annoying and want the world for a dollar.
- They want you to give away your keyword lists, instantly turning them into a millionaire.
- They don’t consider the fact that time spent on them, means less time on your work.
- Newbies want to make millions by tomorrow, which is the bottom line.
Don’t get me wrong – I got into the game thinking the same things. I wanted to make millions upon millions of dollars, drive lambos or corvetts (you know, depending on the day) and fly across the country “just because” whenever I feel like it. What peple need to really realize is that every dollar counts when it comes to Affiliate Marketing. Some people try AM and spend $500 on PPC and only make $600 back, which results in $100 profit. That’s not enough and they think they wasted their time, which causes them to halt persuing affiliate marketing.
Guess what boys and girls, that $100 is still a phone bill. Maybe it’s an insurance payment, or part of your utilities. My goal for starting out was simple: pay off one bill per 3 months and move my way up carefully. If you talk to Slightly Shady at any point and ask him about my “careful growth method” he’ll probably laugh his ass off. That’s because I live by the “go hard or go home” theory on a project-by-project basis which I was stupidly talking about dropping 30,000 links to a site “just so I can see what it would do”. He helped me work on throttling my want to “go hard” and focus more on safe and more life expectancy per site.
Now I understand completely. A few of my EPN sites are penalized in the Google SERPs but are still bringing me some money. This of course gets me interested because it’s long term revenue. Long term in the realm of blackhat SEO isn’t years but merely months, but that’s plenty of more time to get more sites up to roll over the revenue stream and pick up the pieces.
The whole goal of Affiliate Marketing (in my opinion) is to be able to help you lighten your bills up until you have enough consistently coming in to stop a Full Time Job (a 9 to 5). Heck, even downing your 9 to 5 to a part time or contractual basis is a whole other ball game. To be honest, I would do AM just to be able to sleep in until 10 AM every day instead of waking up at 6 AM to go see my boss and put on a fake smile.
The point is that don’t be weary of a slow first month, or even year. Most normal people won’t catch on the make decent coin until after the first year and a half to two years. That’s just how it works to learn your way around and do your deed. Let’s really think about how many dollars you’d have to earn to make a difference in your life – I bet you don’t even realise how small of an amount it really is (especially with all of these “I MADE xxx,xxx WITH THIS EBOOK” types out there):
- 10 Dollars: A few meals at McDonalds
- 20 Dollars: 1 or even 2 pairs of jeans
-
50 Dollars: That’s a cell phone bill *MILESTONE*
- 100 Dollars: That’s an insurance payment
- 300 Dollars: Most monthly car payments *MILESTONE*
- 500 Dollars: All of the above. Talk about a massive load off your shoulders.
- 1500 Dollars: Most mortgage payments *MILESTONE*
- 4000 Dollars: Consider quitting your 9 to 5. This is what I call, the *PAYOFF*
Most people won’t really see it in that perspective. The stupid “make money online” ebook kiddies keep spamming useless tag lines to create buzz such as “I made xxx,xxx in 34 minutes using these 3 techniques” which I will give to you for just $77.77! Hey, just FYI, if they could make xxx,xxx in 34 minutes why would they need your $77.77? I can’t believe some people don’t just put two and two together when it comes to this.
I hope that this helps some people re-think how they’re doing in the industry. You dont have to have life changing numbers to change your life with Affiliate Marketing. Good luck guys, it’s a liquid industry!
(6 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Sep
EPN & Blackhat
A lot of people often correspond the Ebay Partner Network and Blackhat as being a cookie stuffer. That’s true in some cases, but not in mine.
I’ve been doing some smaller studies and seeing what kind of damage I can do with EPN, and now that I’ve hit $1000 I figure I should report how I [...]
A lot of people often correspond the Ebay Partner Network and Blackhat as being a cookie stuffer. That’s true in some cases, but not in mine.
I’ve been doing some smaller studies and seeing what kind of damage I can do with EPN, and now that I’ve hit $1000 I figure I should report how I did it and more importantly, my response to the “random terminations” that EPN has been doing (in my opinion).
As of right now here are my stats “all time” and I will round to the closest logical number to make it easier to understand.
Clicks: ~13100
EPC: ~$7.95
Earnings: ~$1000
These are not exact results obviously, but here’s the funny thing. I hold a high EPC, I don’t cookie stuff what-so-ever and all of my visitors go to the products that they’re looking for. That’s my whole reasoning for me not being terminated from EPN so far. There were some days where I had 300-400 uniques a day, per site and I was running maybe 3-4 sites. I’m about to scale this out to about 700 and see what kind of numbers I can run with that. We’ll call that the “followup EPN & Blackhat casestudy”. This is not using any link spam what-so-ever and also no cloaking. The methods for the content itself is actually whitehat so it’s very hard to consider this blackhat at all. The only reason I am, is due to the fact that the sites DO get penalized due to … I’m assuming “lack of good quality content”.
There’s a good detail to that, though. They may be penalized, but instead of pulling 300-400 uniques a day they still pull 30-50 uniques a day per domain. So my assumption is that with 700 of them running, even when penalized, I’ll be able to keep up with around 21,000 uniques/day lowball and 35,000 highball. Obviously this is a goal to shoot for, but the actual reasoning behind dictates probably higher penalties and problems trying to scale. I guess we’ll find out just how much it will, assuming I don’t kick the crap out of my server and send it into a million pieces and/or start a datacenter fire.
My costs for this case study were low. A total of $50 was spent. Yes, you heard me right, $50 was spent and over $1000 return. The timeframe for this was really thrown off, I would work a little on it then let it sit. Total time invested in this was about 4-5 hours. 5 hours and $1000 later, that’s not bad for $200 an hour. A total of 4 domains were used, and I have 7 sitting which I’m going to use for this next test.
The method behind this is obviously a win/win situation.
For EPN
- I provide high-converting traffic
- I don’t cookie stuff
- I provide volume
- I provide sales
- There’s no reason for them to terminate me.
For Me
- Low Time Invested
- Low Money Invested
- Big Profit Potential When Scaled
Now, to address the “random EPN terminations” I believe that they have an algorithm on the backend that runs every now and again (like the Google slaps) that calculates both your EPC, conversions, and more importantly in/out keyword purchase ratio. Every time I read about someone that got terminated they were doing whitehat and legit things (with the exception of a few, obviously). What I think happens is that EPN tracks the keyword that the user came in on, and compares that with what they buy. If the user buys something later on that isn’t related to that product (to be safe lets say the same product category) – you get flagged. This will not happen due to one person of course, but lets say if 40%+ of your ’sales’ are from unrelated searches, you get a ‘termination’.
This is just my take on it, but it does explain why I can keep on with my account and consistently provide traffic and make money – and some white hats have been terminated. But of course, this is my opinion and I can’t confirm it what so ever. 
Hope you enjoyed the read.
(6 votes, average: 4.83 out of 5) Loading ...
