Help me make money ?

Hey Daniel
Don't make the mistake of buying internet businesses in the beginning of your IM career.This may prove fatal.

Instead think of creating high value businesses.It's not difficult at all.Once you start doing ,you'll be amazed at the ease.

I call this method "Emergency Cash Method" and it has always worked for me.You need to follow these steps to generate at least $1000 within the next 24 hours.Once you generate enough cash with this method,you can sell that site at 5-10 times the monthly revenue at Website flipping sites.

Here are the steps:

1)Spot a need : Don't use any keyword research software here.Instead visit some forums in the niche you want to create your product.Go through the discussions.See what are problems these people facing.If you provide a solution to these problems,people will eagerly buy your product.

2)Create your product:Create a short 10-15 page report providing the solution.You can find the content at the article directories or through the Google search.
Alternatively you can buy a PLR product ,re-work and re-brand it and you have your own product within hours.Price it at $5-$10.

3)Create your salespage:This is not difficult.Use "$7secrets" script to handle the payments etc.It only costs $7.They also provide you a salesletter template(Though most of it is written in Latin.So you might want to modify some portion of it).To find more templates type "Free salesletter templates" in Google search and download the templates.

4)Drive Traffic:This is the part which is going to make or break your product launch.To cross the $1000 mark within 24 hours you need to drive large amount of targeted traffic to your salespage.I have discussed 15 FREE methods to generate huge amount of traffic in the "Emergency Cash Method" report but it's not possible to discuss all the methods here.Nevertheless I'll discuss some of them:

i)JV and affiliate traffic:This is the people leverage part and going to play huge role in the success of your product.Make some friends at the forums and get some of them to promote your product to their list.Offer 100% commission on the front end product and make money on the One Time Offers and Back-end.

ii)Forum marketing:This can also provide you with targeted traffic.Contact the members you have seen discussing their problems via PM and explain that your product is the perfect solution to their problems.You'll get many buyers this way.

iii)Article marketing:Evergreen method.Write 10-20 targeted articles around the subject of your product and submit them to as many directories as you can.Include a link to your product in the resource.

iv)Video Marketing:Hot trend of the way.You have already written some articles(If not get some PLR articles).Now convert them into live talking videos using :
Turn any article to video with animation, music, graphics, and a full voice-over for just $1!
They also submit your videos to 10+ top video sites.You can use their service Totally FREE for 14 days.
You can also submit your videos using "TubeMogul".Here is a cool trick:
search for the popular videos in your niche.Paste their URLs in the Youtube FREE keyword search tool:
https://ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool
it'll present you with a long list of related keyword suggestions.Save them in a notepad.Use them in the Description and tagging of the video.
By using video marketing you can expect to get large amount of traffic to your site in no time.Now it's time to start calculating the cash.

I have applied the above mentioned strategies in many niches and have always been able to generate more than $1000 in a very short time.

Once you squeeze the maximum possible profits from your site,Sell it at flippa.com for 5-10 times your monthly revenue.

You don't need more than $20 to apply this method.
Best of luck.

Keyword Research Secrets to Explode Your Affiliate Business

You know one of the biggest reasons that so many affiliates are struggling is because what I call clone thinking. That is they do affiliate marketing like they’re following some cookbook recipe.

In particular when it comes to keyword research, they’ll go into a market like dog training. They’ll start by brain storming some possibilities :

dog training

train dog

dog behavior

dog obedience

and maybe a few more

They most likely got these right from the sales letter of the dog training ebook. Then they’ll put these into a keyword tool like wordtracker, and finally throw the results into separate adgroups. After running the campaigns for a few days they’ll discover that the keywords are too expensive and bid them down to the second page.

After optimizing the campaign for 3 months, they’ll think : “Damn! What am I doing wrong, I making 5 sales a day, with 50% ROI. How are these super affiliates making 50 sales a day with 100% ROI?!?”

Well here’s a tip, if you follow the same cookbook recipe to keyword research as everyone else then you’re going to face fierce competition and low profit margins (if any at all).

If you want to be a super affiliate you have to think outside of the box, especially when it comes to keyword research.

Here’s how I would tackle this market:

Dog Breeds
airedale terrier
akita
australian shepherd
basset hound
beagle
bichon frise
bloodhound
boston terrier
boxer
brittany
bulldog
bullmastiff
cairn terrier
cavalier king charles spaniel
chesapeake bay retriever
chihuahua
chinese shar-pei
cocker spaniel
collie
dachshund
doberman pinscher
english springer spaniel
german shepherd
german shorthaired pointer
golden retriever
great dane
great pyrenees
labrador retriever
lhasa apso
maltese
mastiff
minature pinscher
miniature schnauzer
newfoundland
papillons
pekingese
pembroke welsh corgi
pitbull
pomeranian
poodle
pugs
rottweiler
saint bernard
scottish terrier
shetland sheepdog
shih tzu
siberian husky
vizsla
weimaraner
west highland white terrier
yorkshire terrier

Dog Problems
aggression
anger
bark
barking
biting
chewing
crying
digging
flatulence
house break
house breaking
house training
jealousy
jumping
litterbox train
litterbox training
nipping
paper training
potty train
potty training
seperation anxiety
toliet train
toliet training
whining
chasing
begging
leash pulling
leash training
growling

Now the first row is a large list of dog types, including synonyms, such as canine, k9, and of course puppy. The second row is a huge list of all possible dog behaviors.

Multiple the first column by the second column and you have a highly targeted keyword list with broad reach. This is how a super affiliate would approach this market.

This is how a super affiliate makes 50 sales a day and 100% ROI. That is, by not just bidding on more keywords, but a much broader reach of keywords.

By the way all of this is from my presentation at the Affiliate Summit in Miami.

Paul, an affiliate, who saw my presentation at the Affiliate Summit, emailed me the following question:

“I enjoyed your presentation at Affiliate Summit. I have one quick question for you…

When you showed your example of building keyword lists using “dog” and “behavior”, what tool did you use to generate the list of various dog breeds? I tried to replicate your example in the Adwords keyword tool but that didn’t seem to return that same list. Ditto on the keyword “behavior”. Can you help?

Thanks!”

This is a really great question. Here’s what I wrote back to Paul:

“I’m glad you enjoyed my talk.

I would just google search dog breads and find some websites that discuss the different types of breeds. You can do something similar to get all the behavior + use lateral search tools, similar to the one wordtracker offers.

The key is to think outside of the box, don’t strictly rely on keyword research tools.”

Here’s what Paul wrote back:

“OK thanks Amit. From your slide it had the “look” of a keyword tool that had generated the list of breeds and a separate list of words related to “behavior.” I ran a search for dog breeds and wikipedia has a great entry, and searches on “types of behavior” came up with good results too. So from there I guess I would dump the lists into Excel and create the keyword combos. That’s pretty easy to do.

Thanks for the info Amit!”

Paul, you have got it down! I never would have though wikipedia would be a source to dig up keywords!

Kudos.

It’s this time of creative keyword research that separates the men from the boys, and the women from the girls!

Launching an Affiliate Offer: From Zero to Profitability, Part II

Okay at this point, if you’ve followed part I, we have a campaign with a landing page that converts, and we’re bidding on the right keywords, and our campaign is either breaking even, or slightly negative or positive.

Now it time for the fun part, optimization!

Optimization is both an art and a science, the more experience you have doing it the better, and better, you get at it.

I’m going to discuss some techniques and thought processes I use when I optimize my ppc campaigns, but remember the best way to learn how to do this is through spending hours upon hours on one campaign after another optimizing!

Here’s what you need to focus on:

COST PER CONVERSION:

You see this column if you have Google conversion tracking turned on, and it is THE most important metric you need to track. Cost/Conv. tell you how much you need to spend to make 1 sale. So if it’s $5 for your campaign and the payout is $7, then you make $2 profit for each sale.

SPLIT TESTING ADS:

Your first goal is to get the Cost/Conv. of all your high traffic adgroups as low as possible while preferably maintaining your ad position on the first page.

The best way to do this is to split test 2 ads at a time. You’d be amazed at the difference in conversion rate of 2 different ads. Test different headlines, body copy, display urls, etc.

Find the ad with the lowest Cost/Conv., not necessarily the highest conversion rate since you can have a low CTR ad with a high conversion rate but your Cost/Conv may be high since Google will force you to more for click for an ad with low CTR. You need to find an ad the gets a good CTR AND a high conversion rate.

As far as quality score goes (including landing page quality score), please refer to this post. Remember quality score ONLY effects your minimum bids, nothing else.

As far as split testing ads, keep your focus on your top traffic adgroups. Remember the 20/80 principle

EXPANDING & TRACKING KEYWORDS:

A great way increasing your traffic is to go into your top traffic adgroups and use the Google keywords suggestion tool to add keywords directly to your adgroups.

Once you had enough data, start to monitor which keywords are converting to sales and which are not. Adjust bids, at the keyword level, accordingly.

ADJUSTING ADGROUP BIDS:

This is the main method you will use to optimize your campaign. The simple fact is some keywords just convert WAY better than other, and if you have your campaign setup with tightly targeted adgroups then you’ll know exactly what set of keywords convert and which don’t by just tracking the Cost/Conv of each adgroup.

Here’s some tips when adjusting bids, assuming you have an offer paying out $10 per sale, and your goal is 100% ROI, or Cost/Conv. equal to $5.

Lower bids on adgroups by 10% that have a Cost/Conv greater than $10
Raise bids on adgroups that have a Cost/Conv less than $5.
If you have an adgroup where you spend $20 (2X payout) and no sales, pause it.
If you have an adgroup with a Cost/Conv greater than $20, pause it.
Repeat the above steps until you converge onto a Cost/Conv of $5
That’s it, some basic optimization tips you can take to the bank.

WARNING:

If you use these optimization tips, PLEASE wait until you have statistically relevant data. Lose money for a while if you have to, but don’t make rash decision.

Optimizing your campaigns is REALLY easy as long as you can control your emotions and not freak out that you’re losing money.

Don’t be stupid.

Don’t be rash.

Don’t panic.

AND don’t be afraid to lose money while optimizing your campaigns. Losing money in the beginning is PART OF THE PROCESS.

Do you have the emotional toughness to be a super affiliate?

Launching an Affiliate Offer: From Zero to Profitability, Part I

Going from zero to profitability can often be the most frustrating part of launching an affiliate offer.

Now I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty of finding a good offer or testing an offer. I’m going to assume you’ve found a good offer that:

Other affiliates are having success with, I always go with offers with proven track records
That has substantial profit potential, if I can’t potentially make several $1000 a day profit with the offer, I don’t waste my time with it
The next step is to find a good list of keywords using tools such as Wordtracker, Google Keywords Tool, etc. There’s dozens of keyword tools on the market so take your pick!

And no, the secret is NOT in the keyword tool you’re using.

Make sure you do a thorough job with keyword research, read this post of mine to get some insights on how to do that.

Now Once you’ve done your keyword research, & setup your Adwords campaign (tightly targeted Adgroups with relevant adcopy) you have a decision to make:

Do you make a landing page for this offer or do you do Googlecash?

I would strongly recommend making a landing page. However, if you’re still testing the offer, the best way to do that is to buy a domain name and do a framed redirect to the affiliate site.

Google doesn’t allow this, but they won’t catch on for months. It’s just for testing, so no worries.

If you’re serious about the offer then construct a landing page. If you don’t know where to start regarding your landing page design, I would recommend doing a little market research by studying what other affiliates are doing, what elements are similar in their landing pages.

And then construct your own UNIQUE landing page.

I know some of you have a hard time with that part, but trust me, if you only rip people off you’re only cheating yourself-you won’t learn anything and you’ll ultimately limit your own success.

I would recommend using a good split test program to set up a split test url for your Google campaign right off the bad.

Also, make sure you have your affiliate manager install Google conversion tracking and your split test tracking code on the thank page, and if they refuse drop the offer and move on.

You always want to do an A/B split test on your landing page AND use crazyegg to determine how many people are clicking through to the affiliate offer, and what affiliate link they’re clicking on.

Test the colors, headline, graphics, anything you can think of.

TEST!

Once you’ve launched your offer you want to carefully monitor it. The first sign of a healthy launch is if you break even or are just slightly negative right off the bat. Then your job is to optimize your campaign

Now there are several other scenario you can hit:

You’re getting barely any traffic, but the offer is converting! You need to bid on more keywords or increase your bids if your bid position is low.
You’re getting lots of traffic, but no conversions. You’re either bidding on the wrong keywords, or have a poor traffic source (such as some smaller ppc search engines or the Google content network, etc)
You’re getting lots of traffic, have conversion, but your ROI is low. Your either bidding too high, and if that’s not the case then there’s a problem with your landing page, I would revamp your landing page.
No matter what scenario your campaign ends up in the key to success is persistence.

Think about it, if other affiliates are succeeding with the offer, then it’s only matter of getting the right traffic to a landing page(s) that converts.

You have to have the mindset: I’m going to keep testing different landing pages, ads, keywords, and traffic sources until I get this offer profitable.

Once you’re at the point where you’re getting decent traffic and your landing page is converting, albeit you may still be breaking even or slightly negative, then you’re ready to go on to the next step, optimization, which I’ll discuss in the next post.

8 questions and answers for Affiliate Marketing beginners

I quite often get beginners to affiliate marketing asking me questions via MSN, email or on various forums. Now I don’t mind this at all. Here is my top 8 questions and answers that I get asked most often.

1. What is the best affiliate program?
Now how am I supposed to answer this? The “best” affiliate program will differ from site to site. Lets say that my best performing affiliate program right now is William Hill Bingo, because I feature it heavily on my bingo site. Does that mean you should promote it on your blog for digital cameras? Of course not! Instead try asking these questions…”What is the best performing affiliate program in the electrical sector, specifically digital cameras”. Then drill down and ask why, does the program offer a high CPA? Maybe it has a zero reversal policy or just converts damn well. This is the information you need to find out.

2. What is the best affiliate network?
As above, impossible to answer. If I was a finance affiliate for example then I would maybe pick OMG who are pretty much a niche network working in the financial sector. So great if you are in finance, but not so great for my bingo site. Again ask which network is the best for say high street brands, Buy.at is the answer btw. Or maybe the best network for a wide range of smaller merchants and a very proactive staff? Webgains. What about a mix of the above 2? Affiliate Window.

3. What is a good CTR for Google AdWords?
As long as you are making money it doesn’t really matter. Seriously, people obsess about this but at the end of the day if you are making money then that’s what counts. I have some campaigns that have CTR rates at 70% but earn very little, some at 2% that earn me enough for a new car. It doesn’t matter.

4. How many clicks should I send to a merchant to see if they convert?
500. Not 10, not 100 but 500. Some people will argue that it should be lower but I always send at least 500 very targeted clicks via a ppc campaign before I give it a hit/miss.

5. Are there any eBooks I should read to learn about affiliate marketing/PPC/SEO?
No, none. I’ve never read any and don’t know any successful affiliate marketeers who have either. Instead read blogs and forums and most of all, just do it! Nothing beats good old fashioned trial and error.

6. What is the best niche to promote? What makes the most money?
Again, impossible to answer. I operate in a few niches now that are very profitable to me - but only because I have been here for years and have a loyal user base, established sites and good traffic. For a newbie to enter would be very hard and would involve a lot of cash - for ppc. Even then there are no guarantees. Instead, don’t pick a market to promote just because you think you can coin it in. Instead build a site about something you are passionate about and knowledgeable about. Thats all it takes.

7. I don’t know anything about HTML, PHP, coding, web design, graphic design, datafeeds or anything remotely technical. So how can I build a website and make money?
Neither do I! Thanks to Blogger, and Wordpressyou can now have a site up and running in literally minutes. Yes you young ‘uns have it easy. Back in the day, I had to learn how to use MS FrontPage and hard code my sites from scratch.

8. Should I pay for a SEO company to optimise my site?
No. Waste of money in my opinion. I think on-page SEO just isn’t that important at all. Instead trawl the web and find out what makes a site rank well. Learn about link building, directory and article submissions. But more importantly just build a good site that people will *want* to link to. Thats all there is to it.

Anybody got any more questions?

What I’m listening to right now: Prince - “Sometimes it Snows in April” I’m going to see him again tomorrow!

Topics: Affiliate Marketing | 26 comments so far
Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 1:00 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.