Posts Tagged ‘affiliate marketing’
Posted on March 28, 2009 - by Kelly Verge
Excellent Video Training Series – Internet Marketing 101
A couple of days ago I stumbled across an excellent training resource for those who are wanting to get started in Internet Marketing. I’ve been working with the creator and have ironed out a pretty amazing discount for my readers.
More on that in a bit.
First, this training is a video-based course that teaches a complete system for Internet Marketing using nothing but free resources. Many “serious” IM’ers would scoff at such a system saying that you have to spend money to make money. However, in my opinion, for those who are just getting started or for those who haven’t been able to make any profit yet, such a system is a real blessing.
This course consists of 30 videos covering every single step of this system in exacting detail. I’ve watched several of the videos, and I’m very impressed with the step-by-step detail of the training. Often video training can be full of fluff just to add to the perceived value. That’s not the case with this course at all. Every single video includes actionable steps that will help you build a business. Below is a sample so you can see the level of detail these videos go into:
This isn’t the only system that advocates the use of free resources. Two other notable and popular courses are Travis Sago’s Bum Marketing and the Thirty Day Challenge. Both are great for what they teach. Quite honestly however, this course takes the best of both of these methods and adds quite a bit more detail to them. In this course all of the blanks are filled in – this isn’t a course that’s being used to sell or push a higher-end product.
It’s not for everyone.
If you’re already making sales (even as few as 1-2 per week), I’d recommend focusing on testing and tracking so that you can ramp up what’s already working for you. If you’re here, you need focus, not another system to try.
On the other hand, if you aren’t making regular sales yet and would really like to get started in affiliate marketing, this course will help build a very solid foundation.
I mentioned a discount.
He sells this 30-part video course for $97. In my opinion, he’s under pricing it at $97 (and I’ve told him so). It’s worth every dime and more for those who need the instruction. However, if you enter the coupon code backlinkage in the small box just under the order button, you’ll be able to grab this course for only $37. There are many (MANY) ebook-based “courses” on basic Internet Marketing for that price if not higher that don’t even cover the material in two or three of these videos.
His sales page isn’t the best I’ve ever seen. However, if you take a look at the list of videos, you’ll get a great feel for exactly what is covered in this course. Each of those topics is covered in depth.
It’s not often that I wholeheartedly recommend a product to the extent that I’m recommending this video course, but if you’re wanting to start making money online and need a boost, you owe it to yourself to take a look.
Click here to visit Internet Marketing 101
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Posted on March 10, 2009 - by Kelly Verge
Review Sites Revisted
I keep getting asked questions about review sites.
I don’t mind answering because I believe that they are a great tool for affiliate marketers.
Review sites make it easy for visitors to make a buying decision. Done right, the site provides honest unbiased information that the visitor can use to decide which product to buy.
These sites also help pull in traffic from the search engines via long-tail keywords. If your review is detailed and comprehensive, you’ll often be ranked for many phrases that you’ve never considered.
The most common question I get is where to find examples or themes or templates for doing clean and professional review sites. These questions usually come from people who have tried to tweak free themes or templates to turn them into what would be needed for a review site.
I know that I’ve been a big proponent of Conduit sites (because they work), but for those who want a more traditional review site, I’ve found another resource.
The Review Site Store offers a very inexpensive ($15 each) selection of pre-built review sites. Each site is pre-filled with content and reviews so that you could just drop in your affiliate link, upload the site, then start building backlinks.
To me, however, the real value of these sites is that you could easily swap out the header graphics and drop in reviews for any products you’re promoting.
The sites are very professional looking and present a clean streamlined look to your visitors. These are important things when you’re trying to get your visitors to take action – limit their options and make the actions easy to find.
$15 is dirt cheap for a template of this caliber, and considering that the sites come with content, it’s a real no-brainer.
Even if you’re capable of designing a site from the ground up, I recommend taking a look at the layouts he uses for inspiration.
Again, here’s the link: http://reviewsitestore.com
Let me know your thoughts!
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Posted on February 4, 2009 - by Kelly Verge
10 Things I Learned From 15 Visitors a Day
I know. We all would like to have thousands of laser-targeted visitors to each of our sites daily.
But you have to start somewhere.
We probably all have sites that are just barely doing anything at all – sites that are part of our “stable” but nothing we’re proud of. This is a slice of the life of one of these sites:
A while back I started a new niche blog. This blog is targeting potential customers for a certain product. I set up a simple blog on Wordpress with a clean-looking template. I dropped an ad for this product in a text block on the sidebar and wrote a soft pre-sell article for the product which I made a sticky (using a plugin that keeps a specific post at the top of the main page).
I wrote 15 blog articles and 20 articles for article directories. I trickled the articles onto the blog at about one per week. I posted 10 of the other articles to Ezinearticles over two weeks, and I spun the remainder using SENuke and used them on Squidoo, Tumblr, Hubpages, Wetpaint, Blogger, Wordpress and a couple of other sites. Also using SENuke, I bookmarked everything.
I could have used more spun articles on all of the article directories built into SENuke (and still might – see below). I also could have turned these articles into Powerpoint videos and posted them to the video sites built into SENuke (I still might).
Since then I have been re-posting the Ezinearticles content one at a time to the blog every few days. Other than that, I haven’t worked on this blog.
Today the blog reached 1500 visitors (averaging 15-20 visitors a day). Not stellar numbers, and fairly low growth, but considering that I haven’t done any link-building beyond posting a few articles and using SENuke, it tells me what I need to know.
Now for what I’ve learned (in no particular order):
1. But I’m No Rembrandt
Don’t be afraid to make your own product image/banner. I wouldn’t recommend creating a unique ecover that doesn’t match what the customer will see on the sales page, but in this case, while the sales page looked good, the ecover was too plain and the banners they provide for affiliate use didn’t really do anything to encourage clickthrough. In 10 minutes I had a nice text banner that had a better chance of getting clicked. You don’t need Photoshop, either. Gimp will do everything you need and doesn’t cost a dime.
2. It’s Insignificant…
0.5% is often thrown out as the worst-case conversion number for affiliate marketing. In other words, if you aren’t getting a sale for every 200 visitors, something big is wrong. Obviously the goal is much higher than that, but 1/2% is a measuring stick for the beginning of the process. However, you can’t make this decision after 200 visitors. 2000 is a better number (statistical significance) . I’m making a change after 1500 – This site is at 0.26% conversion.
3. “But I Love ClickBank!”
Look at more than one marketplace before deciding on a product to promote. Today I found a product that’s a much tighter match with my readers/customers. They offer better much affiliate tools. The gravy is that the product is slightly higher priced and has a higher commission percentage. The end result is that even with the same conversion rate, I’ll make twice as much. If I get 0.5% conversion, I’ll be making four times as much as I did with my first 1500 visitors.
4. Made for Adsense
Adsense is easy, but do the math. In my case, I made $140 with 1500 visitors which comes out to roughly 9 cents per visitor. As poorly as this site is performing, it’s still likely miles ahead of Adsense. Does that mean that in every market it makes more sense to promote an affiliate product? Not necessarily. Does that mean Adsense doesn’t have a place? Absolutely not. Just make sure you run the numbers.
5. “Will You Be My Valentine?”
Don’t fall in love with your sites. If the change in products doesn’t make a significant change to this site’s performance after another 1500+/- visitors, I’ll flip it. With proven traffic and proven sales, it would sell well enough that I’ll get a decent return on my time.
6. *Thud* *Thud* *Thud*
Repeatedly planting your forehead into the wall gets you nowhere. While I completely agree that there is merit to sticking with a project/site full bore, I would rather do a burst of work, wait for actionable results, and then either tweak or dive in with heavy effort. Many believe that you shouldn’t pause like I did/do, but this type of effort just makes sense to me.
7. Still Writing…
Constant and consistent article submissions drives traffic, but it’s not the only free game in town. I’m also pretty sure that today you have to do more than just a bunch of social bookmarking in order to get lasting traffic (although social bookmarking works great for fast indexing). However, the number of visitors I’m seeing to this site is still rising (albeit slowly). A mix of backlinks is likely the key. If this site reaches a decent conversion rate, I’ll start a full blown backlink campaign including more articles (starting with the spun articles above), blog comments, and forum posts.
8. AdWords, Here I Come!
As poorly as this site is doing, it could still be a candidate for PPC. Crazy, I know. If I could get visitors for $.05 each and maintain the $.09 conversion, I’d make $.04 per visitor. Never ignore PPC.
9. http://someproduct.com/?page=sckrbrnevrymin&aff=007_r0f1_abc123_wwjd
Always use redirects for affiliate links. Always. It’s not just about making your links look pretty. It’s not even about cutting down on affiliate theft (Outside of the IM niche, most don’t know what an affiliate link is. Inside the IM niche, a cloaked link won’t stop them.). It’s about making your life much easier when you have to change products.
10. “I guess… I think… I hope…”
Track and analyze. If I hadn’t run the numbers, I might have just deleted the ad for the product I’ve been promoting, dropped in an Adsense block and moved on. If I’d done that, I would have been leaving money at the table, at best. At worst, I could have missed an opportunity of an “almost-there” money maker.
What’s next?
After this site gets another 1500 visitors, I’ll look at the numbers again.
If the conversion is still abysmal, it’s likely that either the crowd isn’t buying (not likely, given the niche) or that I’ve missed the mark with my articles and the pre-sell. In either case, I’ll flip the site and move on.
If the conversion has improved (I’m no oracle, but my best guess is that it will), I’ll post spun articles to a bunch of other article directories and begin creating new content for use on the site and at Ezinearticles. I’ll also begin a backlink campaign, working on both blog comments and forum posts. There are hundreds of other sites where I could build content pages. I’ll use spun content from both my old articles and my new articles to add more of these pages and will bookmark everything. Finally I’ll turn much of this content into videos and post them to multiple sites using SENuke with spun titles and descriptions.
Whew.
If I’m missing anything obvious, please let me know your thoughts below. I’d love to hear your feedback.
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