Affiliate Riches

New Ebook

2005-01-20T08:29:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone,

Sorry about my neglect with this blog in recent weeks. I've been busy with a lot of stuff, some marketing related, some not. But since I am not an "internet guru," this blog is more or less a place to share some marketing related ideas when I have a few spare moments.

In that vein, there is a new ebook out that I'm featured in. It's already been promoted by Phil Wiley and Allan Gardyne. Phil Wiley is featured in the ebook, and I personally think his interview alone is worth the asking price.

I'm not trying to sell you anything here, because I don't make a nickle off of sales of the book (or participating in it).

I'm going to offer a link where you can buy the book for a special rate. Yes, this will be an affiliate link but it is not my affiliate link. I'm not interested in making money off of sales for the book. This affiliate link is for one of the co-creators of the book (who also appears in the book itself with his own interview).

Check it out at:

Niche Confessions

Dan

Getting Links

2004-12-10T05:28:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Hope you've all been doing well. I've been busy here on my end, hence the lack of recent posts.

In any case, I wanted to mention a new FREE service from Phil Tanny, regular contributor at the Associateprograms.com discussion forum.

Phil has created a resource that allows you to build link exchanges with other interested webmasters in your site's theme/niche.

As you all know, building up a link exchange is crucial for getting high rankings so I recommend you sign up for Phil's new free service.

There were some kinks in signing up just a couple of days ago with certain browsers, but Phil has fixed those now.

Check it out at: Links for You.

-Dan

One more error

2004-11-16T07:40:00.000-08:00

Bart,

Forgot to mention this as well. Sometimes, on your pages, you are going in for the kill too soon.

What I mean by this is that you are weaving in your affiliate links too soon.

For example, on your ring tones page, the clickable affiliate link is literally right there in the first sentence. Remember: people look at content sites (organic search results) because they want information first and foremost.

You need to presell them.

On my nutritional supplement site, on 90% of the pages, the plug for the products ONLY come near the end. I never put them right at the top before I can presell someone. Remembner that the whole objective of preselling it to warm them up, get them to trust you...and that takes information. It takes reasons. It takes a review of this product against that one. Then, and only then, should you be weaving in your affiliate links.

Other SBI'ers take note if you are also committing this mistake.

The point of preselling is to create a "frame of mind" for your visitors...a frame of mind from suspicious and skeptical, to trusting and receptive to buy.

-Dan

To Bart (and other Site Build Users)

2004-11-16T06:47:00.000-08:00

Bart,

Both of my emails to you last night (from both my accounts) bounced.

Please view the blog response to this message, where I will paste the email bounce message I am getting. For some reason, your ISP doesn't seem to either like AOL emails, or my emails in particular.

I worked on your site last night for 3 hours, redoing the homepage, and I also added a short tier 2 page targeting new keyterms.

I was going to email you on some mistakes and errors I noticed you were making.

However, since I can't seem to email you, I am going to make a post out of it here, because many others use SBI here as well, and they could benefit from this post.

Therefore, if you're not Bart, but use SBI, you might want to read on as well:

1) You are optimizing for too many keyterms. For example, on your homepage, you were optimizing for about 5 or 6 keyterms. That's way too many. Some experts believe that you should only optimize for one keyterm per page. My own experimentation has found that 2 keyterms per page works the best. And, as far as I'm concerned, you should never optimize for more than 3 keyterms per page.

Rule for the future: if you find 5 or 6 keyterms on a related topic, don't clump them all together on the same page. Break them up into 2 or 3 differnet pages. I don't care if it's the same exact topic and that you are going to have similar or somewhat repeating content from one page to the next. It doesn't matter. Remember: most visitors are going to find your site thru a certain page, and many of them will never see another page of your site, as they will both enter and exit thru that one page they found your site by.

Therefore, it comes down to simple math: the more pages you have out there, tightly optimized for keyterms, the more traffic you will tend to get.

2) You are failing to distinguish between the plural and the singular for keyterms. You're probably committing this mistake because SBI manager does not distinguish between the plural and singular, even though there are often vast differences in demand between them. SBI gets its results from Overture, which also doesn't distinguish between the plural and the singular.

Let me give you an example: the term nutritional supplement (singular) and the term nutritional supplements (plural) will have one aggregate demand figure if using SBI manager. However, in reality, the plural (nutritional supplements) is searched for about 90% more than the singular. That means if I had optimized my page for the singular, I would be making a big mistake.

This is why I use wordtracker primarily for keyterm research. Wordtracker is an absolutely indispensible tool. If any of you reading this post don't use it, you are at a huge disadvantage. In fact, anyone who wants to make a living online had better start using wordtracker if they don't already. There's not a doubt in my mind I would be making only a fraction of the money I make if it weren't for wordtracker.

Get Wordtracker

Another keyterm error you committed Bart was to lump your entire website URL into one keyterm. However, there is absolutely no demand for that URL as a keyterm. There are parts of the URL that could be targeted, but not the whole thing.

As you know, the word "cell phone accessory" is part of your URL. However, you will not rank at all for that keyterm because you didn't target "cell phone accessory" as a keyterm...you tried to target the entire URL. Therefore, someone would have to type in your entire URL into a search engine and, as I said, there is no demand for your entire URL as a keyterm.

Also, there is the issue of the singular and the plural again here. The term "cell phone accessory" has a totally different demand than "cell phone accessories" (plural). For example, using wordtracker, I discovered that "cell phone accessories" plural has over 47 times the demand as "cell phone accessory" singular, the latter being the keyterm you were trying to optimize your homepage.

Think about that for a minute. For every 47 times someone is searching for "cell phone accessories" only one search is conducted for "cell phone accessory." As the wordtracker homepage says "Target the wrong keyterms and all your efforts will be in vain." This is a classic point in case.

Anyway, I can't go and change your URL now since it's already been registered. However, I did what I could and reoptimized your homepage for keyterms that there is actually demand for, and removed optimization it for your URL as a keyterm, which there is no demand for. Not only that, but using your URL in the body content was making it read awkwardly. Sometimes you are forced to make a page read awkwardly if that's how people are searching for the term and you want to rank highly for that term. But since nobody is searching for your URL as a keyterm, you were not getting any benefits, AND you were making your content read awkwardly.

3) One major problem you face (at least for the homepage and some of your tier 2's) is that the keyterms are extremely competitive. This is a hyper competitive industry. This means even though I reoptimized your homepage for better keyterms and rewrote it to make it more personal and friendly, you don't stand much of a chance of getting high rankings for any of these keyterms until you create a very significant link exchange program. You need to get your PR up to 6. Keyterm selection and content are only one half of the equation. In a hypercompetitive industry like this one, you absolutely need a large link exchange to get good rankings.

OK...so let's talk about a solution rather than emphasizing the problem. The way you can get around this hypercompetition is to find 200 obscure, small demand and small supply keyterms. Keyterms that other people aren't going for and that you have a good shot at winning. If you can find 200 of these, and build 100 pages each optimized for 2 keyterms, your site will be successful.

In fact, my nutritional supplement site THRIVES off of these kind of keyterms. Each of these small pages will not get much traffic -- and some won't get any at all -- but collectively they will bring a lot of visitors to your site.

This is a good strategy to use in any niche, but in a hypercompetitive niche where the big keyterms are almost impossible to win high rankings for, it becomes absolutely imperative.

That's it for now, Bart.

Please see my response to this blog entry where I will post the email bounce back message I am getting. I will be working on your site again today for 3 hours. Print this message out so that when you take over your site on your own, you know which direction to follow.

-Dan

To Bart

2004-11-15T14:08:00.000-08:00

Bart,

I got your last email regarding Paypal.

I emailed you back to let you know that I received it. I'm hoping you received that email.

I have begun work on your site.

Just respond to this post if you didn't get my email for some reason.

If you do get it, just respond in email. While working on your homepage, I caught some "mistakes" that I need to share with you so you don't make these on any of your future sites.

Dan

To Bart R

2004-11-15T09:16:00.000-08:00

Bart,

I sent you two emails in the last day that have bounced back to me. Don't know why. Perhaps your email box is now full?

To answer your question regarding if the "L" is capitalized or not in my email: it's not.

I tried calling your toll free business number to tell you over the phone, but got an answering machine.

I'll try emailing you again later tonight...but I will be starting tonight on your project.

Dan

Ebook Cover

2004-11-13T17:07:00.000-08:00

Just a short note....

Another John Reese principle works.

The ebook cover (actually ezine cover) I had produced for me has effectively doubled my subscription rate to the ezine.

I am getting about 9-10 sign ups a day, which is a sharp increase from before I had the cover.

I highly recommend killercover, where I had mine done. The work is awesome, the service very professional, and delivered in a timely fashion (5-7 business days). Mine took only 5 business days.

If you publish an ezine or want an ebook cover, this stuff works. It was well worth the 100 dollars or so I spent on it.

Get an Ebook Cover or Ezine Cover

-Dan

PS To Mike Long...I received your email. I tried replying to you a couple of times but my mail kept getting bounced back to me. Don't know why. I put your site in the Zeal directory is what I was telling you in email. I'll get you some more links soon. Good work.

Putting John Reese principles to the Test

2004-11-08T17:13:00.000-08:00

Greetings everyone,

I've been very pressed for time recently, but wanted to fire off a quick post.

After watching the DVD email profits course that I got as a bonus from the John Reese course, I put some strategies to the test. The first one is so obvious I'm embarrassed to admit I had never done it before. Therefore, I will give credit to John for pointing out the obvious to me, and it did work OK.

The "strategy" is merely this: you must SELL everything. Even the free stuff.

For example, a lot of people will have a newsletter sign up on their site that just says something like "Please sign up for our free newsletter" and a little box there.

But Reese says you gotta sell the free stuff too...even your newsletter.

Well, I had avoided publishing a newsletter up till recently, but everyone says the money is in the list, so I broke down and decided to start publishing a newsletter for my nutritional supplements site. I happen to be very passionate about alternative health and nutritional supplements and know quite a bit, but I had procrastinated up till now because of time constraints. Well, procrastination no more. I want to see if it's possible like all the gurus say to be making several thousand dollars a month just from your list after a couple of years.

Anyway, when I first put up the newsletter sign up at my site, I didn't sell it. And I was only getting about 1 subscriber every 3 days or so. (Keep in mind, I only had the sign up on my homepage. I don't want to put it on everypage and distract from my money making links and my google ads even though I know it would increase total sign ups. The opportunity cost would be too great as I'd lose money overall).

SBI requires double-opt in, so even though I was getting high quality subscribers, 1 subsciber every 3 days just wasn't going to cut it. It wouldn't even be worth publishing a newsletter.

So I did what Reese suggested and wrote some bullet pointed copy telling people the kinds of benefits they will receive if they subscribe to my newsletter. Starting almost immediately, the subsciption rate shot up to about 4 people a day. (Again, remember, I'm only offering the sign up box on my homepage, and one Tier 2 link on the lefthand side of the page).

Now that was a big improvement. 4 people a day would give me 120 subscribers a month. Pretty decent, especially for only having it on one page of the site and getting double opt in people. However, it's still nothing huge.

Well, Reese also mentioned that having professional looking covers for whatever it is you're trying to "sell" will boosts clickthru rates and conversions. For example, if you're selling an ebook about building muscle, you should have a professionally created ebook cover that is graphically pleasing, perhaps showing an "ideally" muscular figure on the cover, which will boost click thrus and conversions.

I decided to put this to the test with my free ezine since so many people do not have any graphics for their newsletter and it may therefore differentiate me from the rest.

The graphic took a week to create. I had a service create one for a 100 dollars or so.

I'm very pleased with the result of the graphics and put it up on my site late last night. Now the true test will be the results I get.

I will report back in a couple of weeks if the graphic creation boosts the sign up rate even more for my newsletter.

You can view it at the homepage Nutritional Supplement Info. There is also a larger version viewable on the lefthand side of my site by clicking on the button that says "FREE newsletter."

So, after having put two John Reese principles to the test, the first one worked pretty well, and the second one's results remains to be seen.

-Dan

Doing Joint Ventures

2004-10-31T05:55:00.000-08:00

As promised quite a while ago, I said I would discuss doing Joint Ventures.

Lots of Internet marketers will promote each other's products all the time. John Reese's course was just the latest and most successful example of this.

However, even though he generated a million dollars in sales in one day, keep in mind it certainly wasn't one day's worth of work.

He had to go to all those Internet marketing seminars and befriend many of the folks there.

In short, his one day's triumph cost him time and, of course, those many thousands of dollars he paid to attend all of those seminars.

Not to say this isn't a good way to go about working out Joint Ventures, but since a lot of us don't have this option -- whether being able to get away, or the money to attend high priced seminars -- we need to figure out ways to do it from our homes.

One method that is showing promise for me entails this:

I take a report on a topic and look for complementary but non-competing website owners to use it as a free bonus giveaway.

For example, I have access to a free report on how to lower your cholesterol that besides being informational, also contextually plugs a cholesterol lowering formula.

I then find very popular websites on Google that get a lot of traffic and approach those webmasters about giving it away.

This just takes a bit of commonsense.

For example, as a general rule of thumb, people who are overweight tend to have higher cholesterol. Therefore, finding webmasters that have sites that specialize on weight loss and sell ebooks on how to lose weight presented a perfect pitch.

I offered to rebrand the links for the product in the report to be their own affiliate links.

They can then offer this free report as a bonus to anyone who buys their ebook. Not only may they increase sales of their own ebook because of this bonus; they can make back end money. Again, the report does not directly compete, but complements their own product and theme.

I currently have some JV's lined up using this format and will report in the future how well they do.

If you don't think you can't write a report, go to elance.com or www.freelancewriting.com and pay someone to ghostwrite one for you.

Get a little bit creative. Think how you can make other website owners "offers they can't refuse."

The more popular and highly trafficked a website is, the more you have to sweeten the pot to get them to work with you. These people get pitched probably every day to promote stuff. I get at least 3 or 4 emails a week asking me to JV with them in some fashion.

Most of these deals I'm sorry to say are really lame and non-exciting.

Make sure yours sticks out...and make sure you take the time to carefully explain how you think what you're offering will benefit the person to whom you're writing.

-Dan

PS In this day and age, a lot of us don't give too much weight to emails from strangers. One good thing I learned from the John Reese course is to just pick up the phone and call people. Do a www.whois.sc and find the webmaster's info and give him or her a call. People will listen to you much more if they are talking to a real, living person, as opposed to an email pitch.

This is important for another reason as well: because we are in the Internet marketing business, it's easy for us to isolate ourselves from the world and remain in our comfort zone. But to grow your business, and, indeed, to grow as an individual, you must constantly strive to break out of your comfort zone.

I personally hated the idea of picking up the phone to call people up...but I'm glad I pushed myself to start doing it. I found that people are much more receptive when I said "Hi...I found your website in Google and I got your number from whois.sc...I'm also a webmaster in a similar niche and am calling to see if maybe you'd like to...."

If you have difficulty breaking out of your comfort zone using the phone, I'll even help you. Pick up your phone this week, and give me a call. Just say "Hey Dan, my name's....and I read your blog. I wanted to take you up on your offer, call you up and say Hi." Then, of course, I'll promptly hang up on your face. (Just kidding, of course).

It will be a good exercise. I'll thank you for calling. No need to waste your time. Just do it to say Hi and then I'll let you go. It will help you break out of your comfort zone.

If you don't have the time or the money to attend expensive Internet marketing seminars, using the telephone to set up JV's with other webmasters is a powerful tool. You really need to start doing it.

734-649-3744 (If I'm not around, leave a message so I know you called and I can congratulate you on your effort).

John Reese Course

2004-10-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

Greetings everyone,

It's Saturday...and yep, that means I'm hard at work. That's what happens when you have to take care of kids all day long. You have to get your work done on the weekends.

In any case, the other day I got two DVD's from John Reese on the topic of email profits. That is, how to extract maximize profits from using email -- newsletters, autoresponders, etc.

This was a freebie he gave away as a bonus to those of us who purchased the Traffic Secrets course.

OK, you all know I wasn't particularly a big fan of his Traffic Secrets. Not that I thought it was lousy by any means; just that I didn't believe it warranted a 1,000 dollar price tag.

Well, I am done watching the first DVD of the two on email profits, and I must say I was very pleasantly surprised. I learned a lot of stuff and I think that this is stuff that is going to make me a lot of money over time.

This could be because I didn't know much about email marketing to begin with. For example, I have never published an autoresponder and only just started a newsletter for one of my site's the other month.

So these two email DVD's came at an opportune time for me, and I am glad for them.

I imagine that if you are already experienced with email marketing you might find the material disappointing...I don't know.

I'll update with more thoughts after I watch the second DVD.

Stay tuned,
Dan

Ken Evoy, Site Build It

2004-10-19T19:21:00.000-07:00

Well, I knew I wouldn't get away with my last post...not surprisingly some people actually want some details of my conversaion with Ken. ;)

Of course, we engaged in some small talk, and then discussed SBI and its future.

Ken was under the impression that I was involved in network marketing (MLM), which I'm not. I'm involved in a two tiered structure with respect to Xtend-Life (he did edify me that 4 states consider a two tiered structure MLM, although the vast majority of network marketers, of course, would not consider it such).

In any event, I understand the network marketing model well and have studied various MLM companies, with an eye to eventually getting involved with one -- when I felt it was the right company, right pay plan, right products, right time, etc.

So a large portion of our conversation dealt with SBI and network marketing. Ken belives that the market for SBI in the network marketing arena could be absolutely monstrous, if someone could break into it decisively.

I told him what I thought about this (which was basically agreeing with him). Apparently he really liked the way I expressed myself and saw quickly I understood exactly how SBI could be used for network marketing, so he made me an offer to work with him.

In short, if I do get involved in network marketing eventually and employ SBI successfully for it, we will try to figure out a way to make SBI spread like wildfire in the network marketing community. We shared some ideas how to do this...I won't go into too much of the details since it's very preliminary and I doubt there are many (if any) network marketers here.

We talked a bit more, and Ken shared some stuff that he wanted me to keep confidential. Sorry, I hate to spoil the fun. However, if it's any consolation to my readers, I totally forgot what he wanted me to keep confidential. ;) I was so engrossed in our conversation about network marketing that I forgot what he wanted me to keep hush after we hung up.

I wish I had more to share...but that was about the extent of it. Ken, of course, being a consummate businessman, kept the focus of the conversation pretty tightly focussed on what he (and I) believe to be a large market opportunity for SBI.

-Dan

My conversation with Ken Evoy

2004-10-17T15:00:00.000-07:00

Greetings everyone,

Hope everyone has been well. I am finally feeling 100% back to normal.

Back to net marketing!

On October 12th I had the privilege of speaking to Ken Evoy via telephone for about an hour.

What a rare honor, let me tell you.

Ken Evoy is as close to my idol as I'll ever have online. I told Ken that his SBI was the best product I ever bought hand's down, irrespective of price.

When I think about all the ebooks I've purchased, including $1,000 dollar courses like John Reese's, compared to what you get with a 395 dollar SBI package, none of them come even close.

In any case, we discussed various stuff...and I had a great time talking to the man.

In other news, my mini-site made its first sale a few days ago finally (it also is finally registering a Google PR).

I was also accepted into the SBI certified webmaster program. Even though my time is extremely limited, I hope to work with some select clients and create some killer success stories.

All in all, I feel like I'm back in the swing of things and hope to update this blog more frequently once again.

Hope you've all been doing well. Any war stories to share?

-Dan

Out of commissions

2004-10-08T08:16:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the lack of postings...I've been "out of commissions" so to speak.

Got a case of food poisoning about a week ago, and have been feeling borderline horrible.

I think I'm finally starting to get over it, however.

I could look at the negative side and curse my luck for getting food poisoned -- or I could look at the "bright" side and realize that because of residual commissions, upon I did fall ill, I didn't have to explain myself to a boss and I could take as much time as I wanted/needed to recover. In short, residual commissions protects you when you are "out of commission."

I'm very thankful for that. In this sense, running an internet business is unbeatable.

Hope to be back up and running soon...

PS Anyone ever read the book "Adventure Capitalist" by Jim Rogers? Jim Rogers is an astute investor, co-founder of the Quantum HedgeFund with George Soros. In any case, I'm into investing and economics, not to mention exciting tales of travel, so it was right up my alley. Anyway, in the book, Jim and his wife go around the world for several years. In all of that time, despite eating in some of the poorest, dirtiest places in the world, they never got sick -- except for three times, his wife was afflicted with food poisoning. And all three times were from 5 star restaurants. Thing that make you go hmmmmm...

A privileged post

2004-09-25T07:47:00.000-07:00

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekends...

This morning I had the privilege of having a post I made at Allan Gardyne's forum appear in Ken Evoy's 5P Report (that's the newsletter sent out to affiliates of SBI).

The post, in particular, was the one I had penned on the "How successful is your SBI site" thread.

Ken used it verbatim except for adding some comments of his own (as anyone who knows his style knows he loves to do).

Moreover, Ken emailed me personally and asked if we could speak on the phone in a couple of weeks. Of course I said sure.

How cool would it be to talk one on one with THE MAN Mr. Ken Evoy himself? If there ever was someone who overdelivered on his products, ones that meet all the "hype," it's Ken Evoy and his Site Sell products.

Others may disagree, but the facts in my own case say that dollar for dollar, I have NEVER come even remotely close to getting the same results with anything else I've ever purchased to build my business. To think you can build a sizeable, fun business on just a 395 dollar product is pretty incredible.

As just one analogy, I remember several months ago I was reading an article about franchises...I forget the source, however.

In this article they were talking about an owner of a Subway franchise, some place in New York -- I think it might have been Brooklyn. The owner was making about a $100,000 - $120,000 dollars per year, after paying all franchise fees, employees, and other costs of running the business. The franchise itself had cost him several hundred thousand dollars....I believe, if my memory is correct, it was over $300,000. (Franchise costs vary depending on the location).

Now, consider this for a moment: this man is confined to a certain location. He doesn't like it, he can't really leave unless he sells the business. He has employee headaches, and all sorts of tasks that he needs to personally attend to. And, last but CERTAINLY not least, he had to pay a whopping 300 large to get into this business opportunity, with no guarantee of success. Talk about a headache and a risk!

With SBI, I got to start a business for a few measly hundred bucks that generates as much, and soon to be more, income than this owner of an expensive Subway makes. I have no employees, my business structure is extremely lean, and headache free.

I dictate my own hours, work when I want, and am beholden to noone. And my income isn't capped. To grow significantly, this franchise owner would have to buy other Subways in different locations.

Which route would you choose? To me, it comes down to choosing between: income with freedom, or income that enslaves you.

In any case, sorry for the diversion...I'll report any juicy tidbits Ken might reveal when I finally get a chance to speak with him, unless, of course, he asks me to keep it confidential. ;)

Time to build a page and then go enjoy this crisp, autumn Michigan weekend.

-Dan

PS I assume most of my readers know about or already use SBI. If you don't you definitely should check it out:
Build your Site Build It Business

PPS And, yes, that IS an affiliate link. I use it myself and highly recommend it.

Focus

2004-09-22T18:11:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

Sorry for my lack of posts recently. Sometimes this blog will take a backseat to work I have to get done and other distractions of life.

However, I will always post any big news that happens to me in the world of net marketing, so be diligent and keep checking. What benefits me may also benefit you as well.

For the last few days I've been building like crazy. 4 pages a day. Which is a LOT for me, considering the twins I have. Usually I only get 1 or 2 a day done.

I have been working on JV's and other interesting things as I alluded to earlier as well.

When some of these things come to fruition I will write how they came about, the results achieved, and how you might be able to do the same.

Until then, keep building and stay tuned...

-Dan

Lynn Terry's Forum

2004-09-16T20:09:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

Short note here.

Just wanted to mention a very friendly forum I "discovered" a couple of weeks back.

It's owned by Lynn Terry...she runs a great forum for net marketers at:
SelfStartersWeeklyTips.com.

Check it out. Very helpful advice, and populated by down-to-earth people...not to mention a gracious host. ;)

Lynn also has a blog if you're a blog-o-holic...at Lynn's blog.

-Dan

Joint ventures and other ramblings

2004-09-16T17:18:00.000-07:00

Evening everyone,

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days. Been very busy with some things other than net marketing.

However, I've still been building a page a day and have been working on trying to get some JV's (Joint Ventures) going.

I hope you're all having a productive week.

I'll update more in a day or so...

Keep plugging away. Just because I may not write for a couple of days doesn't mean I'm totally slacking off. ;)

-Dan

Is John Reese a Scam Artist?

2004-09-10T15:56:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

As many of you undoubtedly know, some people have called John Reese anything from a scam artist to a fraud.

First, just in case it wasn't abundantly obvious, I have nothing against John Reese as a person. My comments were only pertinent to his course -- which may change with time, as I have also said, given the kind of support we may get in his new forums and teleconferneces for Traffic Secret owners. My biggest gripe was with getting concrete step-by-step details on some of these strategies. As we all know, the devil is in the details. If I find that the forum and teleconferences make good on helping us apply the details, then the course may well become worth what it cost in time.

Having said this, there are more than just discussions of the course over at Markus Allen's forum, but unfortunate attacks on John's person, character, integrity, you pick.

Some people automatically assume if someone makes a fortune, they must be a "scam artist." Obviously, jealousy and envy can easily raise their ugly heads in people who don't accomplish anything -- or accomplish less. Witness the attacks I endured at Allan Gardyne's forums just a few short weeks ago when I revealed my very successful supplement themed SBI site. All sorts of characters came out of nowhere accusing me of all kinds of ulterior motives.

Well, in light of the recent post on Markus's boards, John Reese wanted to call me up to speak -- to set the record straight, to fill me in on some details that I was missing.

At first, I wasn't available to take the call, but he left a long sincere message, so I called him back. We had a pretty lengthy conversation...I won't go into the details, but the bottomline is: even though I still hardly know John as a person, he seems very sincere, forthright, honest, and, of course, hardworking. I don't begrudge him his success, and to generate a million dollars in sales on the initial launch, well, what else can you say but: Good on you!

I just wanted to clarify this so people don't assume that I think John is somehow a rip off artist because at the moment I don't feel his course warranted a thousand dollar price tag.

By all impressions from our conversation, he's a very upstanding guy.

-Dan

How to improve link popularity

2004-09-10T14:31:00.000-07:00

OK, as promised, let's talk about how to improve link popularity and how to think about linking.

But before I do, I wanted to point out a good (and quite spirited, if not heated) discussion going on at Markus Allen's forums about the John Reese course. Warning: the thread is very long now (and yours truly has left his mark there a few times as well). You can mosey on over to Marketing Ideas Traffic Secrets Discussion if you have some time on your hands.

As I mentioned yesterday, there was some good info given by someone in the audience of the John Reese course. It wasn't groundbreakingly new...and, in fact, I had already thought along similar lines myself. But, I admit, I liked the particular metaphor he used when approaching how to improve link popularity.

First, this post isn't going to tell you how to get more links. Sorry. There are only a few ways you can do that.

You can: look for links yourself and conduct the trades yourself by emailing those webmasters; you can buy various software that will scour out theme related sites to yours and then send those webmasters an email asking for link exhanges; or you can outsource this task entirely by paying someone a set fee to find you a certain amount of links.

Those are the only ways I know of to improve link popularity.

But, a more fundamental question is: how should you think about links?

A very fruitful exercise that I learned from famed affiliate marketer Allan Gardyne of Associate Programs is to think from the perspective of the search engine. If you were designing a quality search engine, what would you want to accomplish?

Well, as we all know, the nature of the web is twofold: to provide visitors with quality information/content and to have a vast, interconnected network of sites/resources (hence the term "web").

However -- and this is where we get to the meat of the matter -- the linking and the information/content should be natural.

What do I mean by natural? I mean anything that doesn't look "fake," "contrived," "artificial," or otherwise done for the sole purpose of manipulating the search engines.

This is why if you stuff too many keyterms on a page, most search engines will drop your page into a bottomless chasm, often never to be found again. Simply because it's NOT natural for a content page to have an inflated keyterm count.

The same applies to links. The John Reese course guest was saying (I'm paraphrasing here): "you have to look at search engines from the standpoint of nature. What would occur in nature? If it wouldn't occur in natural, then it's artificial and will probably be punished or at least devalued, sooner or later."

If you ponder it for a bit, this is just a different way of arriving at the same destination/conclusion that Allan Gardyne does when he says "think like a search engine."

So, let's think about links from the perspective of what would occur "naturally."

First, the most natural manner in which links would show up would be imbedded WITHIN the content itself, right? I mean, read a really good article on any topic, and the author will be making a point, discussing something, and then BOOM, he has a link to something that, for example, expands on or reinforces what he was saying. This is the way the web should be....naturally.

What WOULDN'T happen naturally is sites creating specific "link" directories. Why not? Because a page just chock full of links wouldn't happen "in nature," and, therefore, would seem like an artificial attempt at manipulation.

For example, if you look at my nutritional supplement info site, I am committing a no-no. I have a section for my links at: http://www.nutritional-supplement-info.com/links.html

However, it wouldn't be unnatural for a site such as mine to offer a lot of resources to related sites (again, we're back to the nature of the web itself). Therefore, what I should have done, implies this John Reese guest speaker, is to create a links resources without being blatantly artifical about it.

For example, instead of calling it "www.nutritional-supplement-info.com/links.html" I should have created, say, "www.nutritional-supplement-info.com/supplement-resources.html"

This John Reese guest speaker basically believes that sites that are linking like mine...with a page specifically called "links" are going to be devalued when the search engines get smarter...as they constantly seek to reward what would occur "naturally."

And I think he may be right. What I'm doing right now works. My site has excellent rankings across the board. And I will leave it as it is for now (for various administrative reasons), but when/if the time comes that the search alogorithms get even smarter, and I fall off the face of the earth, I am going to employ these kinds of "natural" strategies.

So, how does this apply to any of you? Well, if you're just starting a site, don't create a section called links.html. Start off by calling it something more natural and that is related to your theme. Also, try your best to incorporate links directly into your content...just as it would happen "naturally."

I personally think it's a wise, logical, and prudent strategy that will not only help improve link popularity...but help ensure you don't take a hit like I may take in the not too distant future.

-Dan

Initial impression of John Reese Course: Not worth the price tag

2004-09-08T18:29:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

Hope you've been having a productive week building your pages, marketing your sites, or whatever you do on the net.

I've gone thru the John Reese course once thus far....just watched it; I haven't really applied any of the strategies yet. More or less thinking the stuff through.

OK, this isn't going to win me any friends, but I have to be honest because this is my blog and I refuse to cave to hype and BS. Mostly, I need to speak my mind freely.

I don't think the John Reese course is worth the thousand dollar price tag.

It's not garbage by any means. But a ton of this stuff I already knew. A fair amount of it I simply can't apply to what I'm doing...but others could, depending on their internet marketing business.

However, I think after I work hard to apply some of the strategies that I can apply, I'll make more than my investment...and possibly many fold my investment back.

But I wouldn't recommend it.

You could probably get just as much, if not more, meat from some of the internet marketing manuals out there that cost only 50 to a 100 bucks.

If you own the John Reese course and think I'm out of my mind, please post your comments/feedback. I'd love to hear why you might disagree with me.

I won't be returning the course since I did buy it through Phil Wiley and got a minisite out of the deal, and I do intend to put some of the strategies to use.

I'll give more thoughts as I move along and go thru the course again and study the workbooks that come with it more closely.

-Dan

How do you find a good Accountant?

2004-09-05T09:11:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I just posted this over at Associateprograms, but wanted to also solicit the feedback from my readers. I would appreciate any insights you may have.
------------

I'm in the market for a good CPA.

I have done my own taxes for my home based internet marketing business up till now.

However, since I am not an accountant, I imagine there are probably some ways that I could be saving myself money, but simply don't know how.

Also, I hate doing taxes, and would much prefer having someone else do it.

Lastly, my business has grown very rapidly so now seems like a good time to aquire the services of a CPA, who will hopefully be able to save me at least as much money as I pay him in fees.

My question to all of you who run your own internet business is:

What factors do I need to consider in deciding if a CPA is good for me?

For example: should I only choose a CPA that is familiar with internet marketing business related details? What is a competitive pay that I should expect when hiring the services of a CPA to handle my taxes for me every quarter?

Those are just two questions that came to mind. I am going to set up interviews with some local CPA's who I found in my local yellow pages: what kinds of questions should I ask them to determine if they are the right CPA for my internet business?

Thanks very much to all replies,
Dan

Short greetings

2004-09-04T18:30:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

Just a short note.

For those in the US, it's the unofficial end of summer and a holiday weekend (Labor day). I have had company over for the last couple of days and for the next few. Therefore, I haven't been able to update the blog with anything new.

However, I've still been building a page a day...and remaining productive by slowing going through the John Reese course -- though I'm spending the majority of my time relaxing. ;)

So, a Happy Labor Day weekend to all my US readers...and if you're not from the US (as I know some of you aren't), then get back to work on your sites. ;)

-Dan

How do you view "failure?"

2004-09-01T19:45:00.000-07:00

Evening folks,

I wanted to touch on a topic that is more philosophical in nature. It was sparked by a couple of emails I've had with a few visitors to this blog.

Some of you reading this blog may end up with the impression that I've lived a charmed life thus far with respect to marketing on the net. After all, I'm a stay at home dad with two toddlers distracting me all day, and, yet, in under 3 year's time, working only part time, I've managed to grow a residual income that now exceed 5 figures a month.

But I'm here to tell you that isn't the case at all....the charmed part, that is.

I went through thousands of dollars...and many endless hours before I discovered a formula for success online.

I had the tenacity to stick to it when most other people would have packed up their bags and headed for the nearest exit, tails between their legs.

Why do some people have more tenacity and fortitude than others?

In my view, it can be boiled down to simply asking yourself this question: how do you view failure?

The person who is ultimately destined to succeed views failure as something to learn from, a challenge to be overcome, not a problem from which to hide or run.

As I write this, I remember a story once told about Edison (the light bulb inventor, among thousands of other patents). He had failed several thousands of times in trying to successful invent a working lightbulb. An interviewer asked him something to the effect of: why do you continue trying given your endless succession of failures?

Edison responded by saying: "I haven't failed several thousands of times. What I've done is succeeded in figuring out a few thousand ways you can't build a working lightbulb....and I'm that much closer to producing a working one because of it."

Pretty profound if you ask me. A total paradigm shift in thinking.

When I first started promoting online about 3 years ago...I knew nothing. Really. CPC, CPM, CPA, opt-in, ezine sponsorship, etc., it was all gibberish to me.

Therefore, my learning curve was huge. I spent many thousands of dollars advertising Xtend-Life's products thru many different online tactics...and I learned as I went. Most of these weren't outright disasters, but they certainly weren't making me rich by any means.

But I didn't give up. I believed in the products and I believed in my ability to eventually succeed.

Then, came a huge coup -- or so I had thought. I was reading an issue of Entrepreneur magazine. There was an article about a lady in there who did FREE work for people. She believed in karma -- give and help people, and it will in turn come back to you.

Anyway, she specialized in writing press releases so I emailed her and told her about what I was promoting. She was bombarded with requests but she eventually got around to writing me a short little press release blurb, which I subsequently issued on some of the Internet PR wires.

Anyway, a salesperson reads it, contacts me back, and gives me info on a company that makes video news releases. (Kind of like a cross between an infomercial and a straight news story). When I visited their website, I saw a bio of a lady who owned her own health TV company, so out of curiousity I went to her website, wrote her an email, and she got back to me in short order.

I won't get into the details, but let me just say that my relationship with her ended up becoming a protracted nightmare, in which I spent and subsequently lost $15,000 dollars in a TV advertising campaign (the cost would be MUCH more inflated if I factored in the tremendous amount of my time I squandered as well).

No, she didn't defraud me. She is a geniune person, but two things happened here that caused a colossal failure: 1)I knew nothing about TV advertising 2) She knew zip about internet advertising. We thought we could figure out how to make it work by combining what we knew. We were wrong. And I lost big at a time when I could barely afford to do so.

At this point, it had been a year into my promoting Xtend-Life, and the set back to me was substantial.

Now, place yourself in this situation: would you have continued or would you have quit?

Answer it truthfully.

Most people, I reckon, would have packed it up right there, if not much much sooner.

But I stuck to it. I knew there was a way to make this thing work. Fortunately, I discovered SBI, SEO optimization, creating content, drawing targeted traffic, etc., and the rest is history.

The lesson here is all about how one views failure. Do you view failure as a lesson to be learned, so that you're that much closer to success, or do you look at it thru the eyes of defeat?

As most of you know, I purchased the $1,000 dollar John Reese marketing course. I just finishing watching the first CD.

In it, John talks about what he calls "backdoor keyterms." This is a very neat and powerful concept, and I want to share it here for my faithful readers.

John would have niche products he wanted to sell, so he looked to using Overture and Google Adwords. However, PPC companies have relevancy rules that prohibit you from bidding on keyterms that are not DIRECTLY relevant to what you are selling.

John would use this example over and over: let's say you're selling an informational product on how to improve your golf game, lower your handicap, etc. He would want to bid on terms that included people looking up different brands of golf clubs, because he knew if they were in the market for a new driver, they would also very likely be interested in learning how to improve their golf game.

However, Overture's relevancy rules would not let him bid on such terms because someone looking for a particular brand of golf driver, they would say, is not necessarily looking to buy an e-book on improving their golf game. He was locked out of the market, in short.

However, he knew it would mean huge profits if he could tap into it somehow.

Rather than just say "Oh well, those are the rules of the PPC's, time to move on" John would not accept failure.

He created the concept of "backdoor keyterms." What he would do is create content landing pages that WERE targeted to those keyterms. For example, a small content site on different golf drivers. This then allowed him to bid on those keyterms. This site, however, was merely a "dummy site" so that he could circumvent the relevancy rules.

Once he pulled the traffic to his site, he then tied in his promotion for his primary product...the informational ebook he was selling to improve your golf game.

Pretty slick, eh?

Anyway, it takes us right back to the overriding point of this post: those destined to be or those who are successful don't see problems; they see challenges.

A so-called failure is just another piece of invaluable education in their endless journey towards achieving what it is they want in life.

So, let me ask all my readers: how do you view failure?

-Dan

Forum down

2004-08-31T14:47:00.000-07:00

Greetings everyone,

Just a short note. As many of you probably have found out by now, the forums have gone down.

There was a hosting problem, is the short answer.

The blog will continue, however.

I am starting to watch the John Reese course now...so I will try to post later tonight.

I have some experiences I'd like to share with the rest of you (that were triggered off by a couple of emails I received from different people).

Also, I will try to get to part two of how I conduct keyterm research hopefully this week.

Stay productive,
Dan

Does your Affiliate Merchant care about you?

2004-08-30T12:12:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

Hope everyone is having a productive day.

Just a short little mid-day rant here.

I've seen a common complaint at various times from various affiliates.

A week or so ago, I saw it raised again on Phil Wiley's message boards.

That complaint is this: some affiliates (or potential affiliates) will email an affiliate merchant with some questions...perhaps regarding the program itself, a question on promoting it, or perhaps just to get some clarification on a hazy issue before they sign up.

Then, if the affiliate merchant doesn't write back, these affiliates will complain about this lack of response. They will often write the affiliate merchant back multiple times. In some cases, they still won't get a response back.

Before I continue, I need to point out a few obvious things. First, it's entirely possible the affiliate merchant just didn't receive your email (caught in a spam filter, etc.); it is also possible that the affiliate asked a dumb question (yes, I hate to say it...a lot of answers to questions are sometimes right there on the sign up page or in a FAQ, etc.). In the latter case, it's simply a matter of a lazy affiliate...and laziness is not a good trait for an affiliate to have.

Having said that, let's assume that you are not a lazy affiliate...you had a legitimate question...and let's assume that they did receive your email but just didn't answer it for whatever reason.

There are a few things you need to understand:

1) You, the affiliate, has the power. Not the affiliate merchant. Believe me, there are A GAZILLION different affiliate programs out there to promote. And while there are also a gazillion affiliates out there, there are NOT an infinite supply of experienced affiliates capable of driving sales. Indeed, perhaps only 2% to 5% of affiliates fit this description.

Never forget this fact: if you are a capable affiliate, the power resides in you. You're the hot, in-demand commodity. Any affiliate merchant with any savvy at all realize this; that is also why the good affiliate program merchants treat their affiliates like gold.

It's the inexperienced or disgruntled affiliate merchant who rolled out an affiliate program expecting the masses to sign up and make them rich. But it doesn't happen like that. It never happens like that. Just like it never happens that you will simply tell a few buddies about your two tiered affiliate program and get rich off of their work.

It's also why most people fail miserably at MLM because they expect to recruit a bunch of people who will go out there and recruit more -- making them rich.

2) Because you hold the power, you should actually be glad if an affiliate merchant doesn't bother answering your legitimate question. I personally use this as a screening mechanism in dedicing if an affiliate merchant actually gives a damn about their affiliates.

After I sign up, if I have a legitimate question on something, I also note how fast they get back to me. I realize people are busy, but I still expect my affiliate merchants to get back to me in a reasonable time. If they get back to me within 24 hours during the week that's a very positive sign. If it's the weekend, I expect to hear from them on Monday.

As you know, I recently started to run some small promotions for a company called Aquasana, which looked like they had an awesome product line, lifetime commissions, and a high payout.

However, after looking over my first sale amount, I noticed the commissions seemed low (so I went to double check their listed commissions rate again). Then I realized that the figure was wrong so I emailed them.

Our exchange follows:
-----------

Hi Aquasana,

I recently signed up for the affiliate program. I just made my first sale today...which notified that I made $36.00 dollars. However, at www.lifetimecommissions.com (where I learned of your program) it says your affiliate program pays 30% on sales.

When I logged in to see what I had sold, it said:
Sale Date Status Process Date Customer ID Sale Amount
8/27/2004 Approved 8/27/2004 8535 -- $411.84

My question is: how are you arriving at the $36.00 figure? At a 30% payout, shouldn't it be $123.30?

Thanks for your help,
Dan
Subj: Re: Question on commissions
Date: 8/30/2004 2:30:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: sales@sunh2o.com
To: DANXtendLife @ aol.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)

That order included a new product that we are testing and have not yet added to the MyAp software, which caused your commission to be calculated incorrectly. Your commission check will reflect the 30% sales commission with 25% on accessories (cartridges and installation kits).

Thanks for visiting www.Aquasana.com, home of the healthiest water on Earth, guaranteed!
-----------------------------

A very fast, curteous response that made sense.

My point? Aqusaana looks like a program serious about their affiliates.

I've also noticed another common denominator...great companies that have affiliate programs tend to be very generous with their payplan -- high commission payouts, and lifetime commissions. Xtend-Life is one such company, and Ken Evoy's SBI is another. Both of these companies are run by top notch people with high integrity. I don't really promote SBI because I am not in the internet marketing niche, but if I were, his products would top my list.

Remember: you are going to spend a lot of your irreplaceable time and effort promoting a company that will make them a lot of money. Choose companies that treat you well, and never forget that you're the one in the position of power.

-Dan

Forum for blog goes live

2004-08-29T15:18:00.000-07:00

Greetings everyone,

Just a short update to let you know that the forum adjunct for this blog has gone live.

The URL is http://web-income-news.com/forum/

Alternatively, you can just click here: Web Income News.

Don't worry, the forum will not supplant this blog; it will serve primarily as a complement to it.

Some of the questions I get on this blog, even after only a week of being in existence, are universally important internet marketing questions.

Take, for example, Mike's comment to me about my keyterm research from my last update. My answer to that question can be applied to any site, and, therefore, would benefit anyone and everyone who intends to get rankings in the search engines.

In the case when the answer to a question is important for a broad audience, as Mike's is, I will post the answer at the Web-Income-News forum. In this fashion, it will not be quickly indexed away by the blog and, as such, will benefit many more viewers over time.

I hope to see all of you over there...

-Dan

Competitive niches

2004-08-29T08:36:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I don't know how many of you "work" on the weekends -- but I almost always do since my wife takes over taking care of the kiddos.

In any case, let's talk a bit about competition.

Personally, I don't think you should necessarily shy away from competitive niches because that's where the money is.

If you expect to make a full-time living online (as I'm sure some of you do, or strive to), sometimes you have to plow headlong into fierce competition.

In this vein, my friend David and I have started a site whose theme is online degrees.

I'm sure you've been bombarded by the spam and email promotions by now -- "rachet up your success by getting your degree online today!" Even when I log online to AOL, I am confronted with their ads right on the homepage, and also on the homepage for the MSN browser. They're everywhere. And they're everywhere for a reason -- because there is a lot of money in this niche.

Don't believe me?

Check out Overture bid tool

Type in a couple of keyterms. Here's a couple just off the top of my head: MBA degree online; law degree online; nursing degree online; etc.

If sponsors are willing to pay that much per click, you can be certain it's highly profitable. Think about it: if a school enrolls just one of these people, they're going to make tens of thousands of dollars. They can afford to pay these outrageous clicks.

Now ponder this: a site displaying targeted ads in this niche stands to make a killing with Google Adsense.

I actually considered doing a site on this theme a while ago (about 8 months ago or so), but I was too busy with other stuff, so I passed.

Well, about a month or so ago, I was logging into my Commissionjunction account and, low and behold, the Mac Daddy of all online universities (the leader in the field, and definitely the most prestigious), the University of Phoenix signed up with an awesome affiliate program -- which pays 17 dollars per qualified lead and even paying 12 dollars for unqualified leads.

What's that mean? That means the person doesn't even have to enroll into one of their degree programs. All they have to do is fill out a very short form requesting more info from the school....and boom, you get paid.

I assume the difference between a qualified lead and one that is unqualifed depends on a few factors, such as: did the person have a valid address, phone number, is located near a University of Phoenix branch, and possibly some other factors.

By the way, branches of these online schools are popping up like mushrooms after a spring shower. A branch of the University of Phoenix just opened this year a few miles from where I live in Michigan.

Back to what this means for us. There are two ways to generate massive revenue from this site concept: an extrememly high pay per click worth per ad, and lead generation , which should have a very high conversion based on how easy it is to fill out a form.

What else do I like about it? Well, the economy has been pretty sluggish, and it's my personal opinion that it's not going to improve much anytime soon...especially after the elections, regardless of who wins. Now, we could argue about this point till we're blue in the face, and I actually hope I'm wrong.

However, we all know that when the economy tanks and people can't get jobs, what do they tend to do? Well, a lot of people go back to school to get more skills and make themselves more employable...in the meantime, the economy will eventually rebound, and these people are primed to grab lucrative and rewarding careers when it does.

In short, a site on online degrees is what I consider a recession-proof business model, and, indeed, may even see a surge in activity if the economy stays in the dumps for a while.

As I said, our SBI site is very new. There are only two pages built. Am I taking a risk in revealing our site without it being established at all? Probably.

But as I said elsewhere, competition is inherent in this game, and with already tons of sites out there already on this niche, I sincerely doubt anything I mention here is going to increase it even as much as a raindrop would the ocean.

You can take a look at what little we have at: Accredited Online University.

I'm sharing this site with all of you, so you get a good notion of some thought process I put into an SBI site before jumping into the fray. I hope it benefits you all in some way.

The site will most likely develop slowly since it is a side project, but I'm pretty confident it will blossom into a pretty solid revenue generator in perhaps 6 to 8 months. It all depends on how much time we can devote to it.

-Dan

Affiliate marketing musings

2004-08-27T17:44:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

It's finally Friday night -- the week seemed interminable to me. I know I promised to reveal the SBI site my friend and I are working on, but it will have to wait for the weekend, as he left for the night and I forgot to discuss it with him first. I'm 99% sure he isn't going to care that I reveal it since he didn't mind me talking about his other sites.

So, instead, tonight will be more or less musings about affiliate marketing.

First, I believe it's imperative that you set goals. This isn't just fluff...it's been shown time and again that setting goals will take you infinitely further than people who just muddle through life.

The more specific, detailed, and vivid the goals, the better....especially if you put pen to paper.

However, even if your goals are only in your mind, they will still benefit you a great deal.

Since this is an internet marketing blog, make sure you pick a doable financial goal. Something that is not entirely unrealistic, but something that isn't so easy that it will happen without arduous effort on your part.

For example, what's my personal goal for my business? To grow my residual internet income to $17,000 to $20,000 per month in one year's time.

Will it be difficult? Yes! Is it out of the realm of possibility. Absolutely not.

So, what's your goal? Make sure you have one. Then envision all the good things that will transpire in your life when you reach it. This will give meaning to the money; after all, money is a means to an end, not the end itself.

One thing I love about internet marketing is that there are so many possible products you can promote. Some people will promote anything and everything under the sun, and I don't have a problem with that. Personally, however, I like to concentrate on products that will either improve someone's health or make them feel better about themselves in some fashion.

As most of you probably know, my biggest promotions are for Xtend-Life, whose products I use everyday myself (including my family).

Now, there are tons of products that fall into the health sphere, so I also look for products that are going to compensate me well since I am running a business too -- large % payout, lifetime commissions, etc.

Recently I found a company that produces really top of the line water filtration systems at Allan Gardyne's Lifetimecommissions.com so I built a few pages to promote them a couple of weeks ago to see what would happen.

You might like a product a lot, but in the end you cannot promote something that doesn't sell, so you always have to test the waters.

Well, a few of my pages promoting this company, Aquasana got indexed and I've send a bit of traffic to their site. Their affiliate program claims their site converts really well. I happened to really like it myself after reading through it, but, in the end, the only thing that matters is your actual conversion rates. Always abide by the numbers.

After sending only 25 visitors over, I made my first sale, which I just got an email confirmation for. I sold a $411 dollar water filtration system. My actual affiliate sale confirmation said:

"Your affiliate account at http://www.aquasana.com has resulted in a sale!
Your commission for this sale is $36.00, and will be included in your next commission check. Keep up the great work!"

That sale confirmation encapsulates everything I love about affiliate marketing. This customer gets a great product that will improve her and her family's health, and I make some money for introducing her to a product she might have never found out about.

Aquasa, by the way, pays lifetime commissions -- these water filtration systems have to have their filters replaced every couple months or so, and whenever the customer buys a new filter, you will get commissioned. Forever.

Did I mention I love lifetime commission programs? They are the only way I know of in this game to grow COMPOUNDING residual income streams. I strongly believe that it is almost impossible to make BIG money in this game unless you are promoting some compounding residual income programs, i.e., lifetime commissions. So, whatever niche/industry you're promoting, SCOUR the internet for lifetime pay programs. It's that important.

You want to know something else? After 3 years, the excitement of seeing "You've made a sale!" or "New Order Confirmation," etc. never fades. It still gives me a jolt of excitement, each and everytime without fail. And everytime I get another one, it just strengthens my convictions and spurs me on to work even harder.

I'm not bringing any of this up to brag. There are plenty of people that make a ton more money than I do online, but I don't look at them with jealousy and envy, but as an inspirational source.

The overriding point here is: if you are new or relatively new to affiliate marketing and still feel "lost"....you must summon the fortitude to keep plowing ahead. Because when the sun does break out from behind the clouds, it is a beautiful sight to behold. It is no exaggeration to say affiliate marketing will add a great deal of fufillment and meaning to your life. It has to mine.

-Dan

PS Have a great weekend.

PPS The Aquasana affiliate program sign up is not available at their main sales site (at least I couldn't find it). If their products sound like something you might be interested in promoting, I would suggest first you take a good look at their site (I personally read thru it in its entirety and was very impressed). Aquasana website.

Their affilite sign up page can be accessed at: Affiliate Sign up

Possible changes

2004-08-27T13:31:00.000-07:00

Greetings everyone,

This is a short mid-day note.

This blog may be undergoing some changes...ultimately, the changes will be based on demand and what kind of interest it takes over the ensuing weeks and months.

First, a message board forum may be set up for this blog so that people who have further, more detailed comments can use the message board to post their thoughts, ask questions, and so forth.

The "comment" feature below each posting will still be available for those who want to use it, however.

If we move ahead with the forum, it will not be administered by me, but by Phil Tanny. Most of you I'm sure know him as a prolific and articulate poster at Allan Gardyne's Associateprograms.com

We are hoping that the forum will generate lively and spirited discussions on how to make money on the net.

This blog may grow through other methods as well, but since those are a bit premature (as they are contingent on some other factors), I will only discuss them when the the time is appropriate.

For me, this blog serves as a place for me to unload my burden after a long day; the process of writing has always been cathardic for me, and if I can help other people out in the process then all the better.

Internet marketing, as I envision it, is about a lifestyle. To me, it is the best vehicle for generating residual income -- income that does not enslave you but sets you free.

I have only been in internet marketing for approximately 3 years but it has given me an enviable lifestyle. I get to see my kids grow up rather than dump them in a daycare, I don't have a boss peering over my shoulder, I don't have a clock to punch; in fact, I could leave on a month long vacation and still come back to finds checks in my mailbox totalling more than $10,000. How many people could claim that working for someone else?

Yes, you have to work it, and the more you work it, the more you will make. Yes you have to be disciplined. No, it's not easy. But it's much better to work and be disciplined on your own terms than on someone else's, as far as I'm concerned.

I hope many of my readers join me in this lifestyle by putting in the consistent effort it takes to get there. I don't want to say it's easy because it's not. But it isn't overly difficult either.

If you have any thoughts, either positive or negative, about the possibility of a forum discussion as an adjunct to this blog, please speak up. Ultimately, this blog is about you as much as it is me.

-Dan
PS Know any friends who are interested in internet marketing, please refer them to this blog. Thanks.

A day of progress

2004-08-26T19:20:00.000-07:00

Greetings everyone,

My day is winding down now, and I feel pretty spent.

I don't want to turn this into a parenting blog, but my twin boys are just starting their "terrible 2's." Meaning: lots of temper tantrums and fits to deal with today, and I think I pretty much had elevated blood pressure throughout the day because of it.

In spite of that, I managed to make it a relatively productive day. I built 2 more pages to the minisite, expunged some typos I found on the pages, and started emailing related sites for link exchanges.

I also finished writing a page for the new joint venture SBI site I'm doing with my friend David in a very competitive niche with a lot of income potential.

I'm sure you want to know what the site is, but since I like suspense, you'll have to wait till tomorrow. ;)

Assuming we are successful with it, I think it could end up generating anywhere from 2 1/2 to 6 thousand per month in commissions -- which will be split down the line between us. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that we pull it off. We are going to try to commit a couple hours per day to the site for the next 6 months or so -- it can't really consume any more of our time than that since we both have a lot of our own individual promotions to run.

I also started looking over the John Reese course stuff today...hopefully this weekend will be spent devouring a chunk of it.

My parting thought for the night is: whenever you have a day that isn't productive, don't fret over it -- but just try to do something everyday to build your business in some fashion. I subscribe to Early to Rise, which is a great free newsletter (although I did join their Charter membership for a very modest fee). Early to Rise is published by a man who goes by the name of Michael Masterson (an assumed name). Michael has built several multimillion dollar businesses in his life and gives great advice in that newsletter everyday.

Anyway, I remember one issue in particular, it was either him, or a guest writer, said the secret to building very successful, million dollar businesses is to make sure you do something that moves you forward every single day. At the end of each day, he would take stock of his actions that day. If he realized that he had done nothing to move his business forward, he would immediately do something, anything, however small, to progress his enterprise.

In this fashion, he had built a multimillion dollar business and he considered it a "secret" even though it seems obvious on the surface. But that's just the way life works sometimes: the "obvious" things are the ones we most often overlook and ignore precisely because we consider them so mundane.

So, I'd like to end where I started: with the title of this post. It was a day of progress.

I hope yours was too.

-Dan
PS Come to think of it, I don't know if I read this tidbit in Early to Rise or somewhere else, but no matter. The moral of the story holds.

Some thoughts on Pay per click

2004-08-25T17:10:00.000-07:00

Greetings one and all,

Hope everyone is having a productive day. I just finished building another page for the mini site and weaving some links within the content. I've also gotten 6 links to it so hopefully it gets indexed quickly.

As promised, I wanted to touch a bit on my experiences thus far with pay per click.

Last year I opened an Overture and Google Adwords account. Most of my experimentation, however, was using Overture.

I tried promoting the Xtend-Life product line using PPC.

Going into it, there were a couple of things I had heard about PPC: 1) bid on a broad range of cheaper keyterms as opposed to a few expensive ones and 2) people can make a lot of money by just sending the visitors to the merchant's site straight from the ad.

So I set out trying to find as many keyterms as I could that were still targeted to the product line. Unfortunately I couldn't seem to find the hundreds, still less thousands, that some other people claim to find.

In any case, I proceeded with what I had....in the final analysis, I don't remember the exact results, but I lost money overall. Nothing huge but enough for me to know I had to pull the plug on the campaign after a couple of months.

My affiliate and friend, creator of Herbal Supplements Guide created a minisite early this year called Healthy Heart Guide.

I personally thought it was a nice little informative site with easy navigation and attractively laid out.

I told him what I knew about Pay per click, and then he read some books on it -- and then he took the plunge. Guess what? He was profitable right from the start!

Now, when you are promoting a lifetime commissions program you can even take a slight loss and still make a ton of money over time as the repeat customers start piling up. But he was making money right from the outset. So, in effect, the initial orders were paying for the campaign and then some. After a month or so, the repeat customers started to come back and the commissions have been growing at a nice clip since then. Who knows how big it can grow if it keeps up like this for a few years.

So, what's the bottomline here?

Well, from my limited experience, it appears that sending visitors to a presell site, to warm them up so to speak, seems to be much more effective than sending them straight to the merchant.

This case lends itself especially well to analysis because the merchant was the same in both cases. I was sending people directly to the Xtend-Life's sales site, and my friend was also representing Xtend-Life with the Healthy Heart Guide, the only difference being he presold them first. If the merchant sites had been different, then the conversions might have been attributable to the differences in the merchant's ability to close the sale.

Suffice it to say, the next time I get into PPC it's going to by preselling them first with a mini-site. I'll try to launch a campaign soon for my Anti-Wrinkle site and see what happens.

Hope this gives everyone some food for thought.

-Dan

PS What have been your experiences with PPC?

Mini Site

2004-08-24T20:30:00.000-07:00

Greetings everyone,

Just a short update.

I worked on my mini-site today and actually built a page myself. *Buffing nails* Fun stuff.

When I had Phil Wiley build the site, I told him to promote a product called Nexiderm, which is clearly evident at my site. They have what appears to be a good affiliate program (he's promoting them too).

Phil left some space for me on the right hand side of each page where he said I could do further promotions. So I did.

You will see what I mean if you look below the small Nexiderm banner on the right hand side of each page. This is actually a text ad plug for a company my friend and I discovered some time ago that actually pays lifetime and has a very high commission rate on top of that.

We ran some test promotions for them on other sites and things went rather well. Each of us generated a few hundred in commissions right from the first month and second month on modest traffic, which is a sign that they have solid potential. Herbal Sensation Product Line if you wanna check them out. I am promoting their skin cream product specifically on my mini-site.

They have a two tiered program for those who may know others that are interested.

Lastly, I am running Google Adsense on the site.

So, in total, there are three potential revenue sources on my minisite: Nexiderm, Google, and an Herbal Sensation skin cream.

I will report in the future which one out of all three generates the best revenue, since I have unique tracking set up for all of them. After some initial data, I'll also tweak things around and see what happens.

Anyway, that's it for today. Been another long day and it's nearing midnight over here.

I hope you all had a productive day with your promotions and businesses.

-Dan
PS Did you build your SBI or minisite page for the day? Yeah, I know, I'm a nag. But I want you to do well and remember, that takes consistent progress.

Mini Site goes Live

2004-08-24T09:30:00.000-07:00

My first mini-site has gone live. I've been tooling around with it this morning and will continue to do so all day.

I'm studying the HTML coding that Phil Wiley has used to write the pages so I can learn how to do my own minisites. It's already been a very educational experience. Thank you to Mr. Wiley for his professionalism.

I will also be adding some other promotions to this site during the course of the day, which I will discuss later tonight in another update.

After I feel I understand the ins and outs of this first site, I plan on doubling the amount of content pages it has before moving on to my next minisite project.

I'm already drawing on partners by getting links to my site as we speak.

I'll report here when this site makes it's first sale, which is always exciting, but that might not be a for some time as it needs to be indexed by the engines first.

I'm sure you're all dying to get a look at the site...you can mosey on over to Anti-Wrinkle Cream to have a peek.

More info later...it's just another exciting day in the life of an internet marketer. ;)

-Dan

SBI on the launching pad and an example of a strategy.

2004-08-23T18:39:00.000-07:00

Well, my friend David returned from his honeymoon and is excited to get started on our joint SBI project.

It's been a looooong day. Did I mention that yet? ;)

Yet despite the craziness of it all...and having twin boys to battle all day long, I managed to get my page of the day built.

Proof?

benefits of chamomile -- my page of the day.

I hope you built yours. I'm not going to nag you everday about this....promise. ;)

A few comments on this page...just to illustrate a strategy I've touched on elsewhere -- namely, in a post at Allan Gardyne's Associateprograms.

I often like to beat the competition by circumventing them entirely. For example, "chamomile" is a keyterm with a good amount of demand/supply. But I'm not interested in being ranked #50 for a decent term. I'd much rather get ranked #1 or #2 for a small, tight term that is laser focused.

Hence, I'm optimized for 'benefits of chamomile.' Chamomile itself isn't even one of the keyterms I entered into my SBI keyterm line. There are two other small keyterms I'm optimized for on this page as well. Build enough pages like these and it will add up into something substantial.

Another strategy: notice I used an image of chamomile on this page. Lots of people search for pictures...I happen to be in a niche where people especially like to look at images. You can pull even more traffic by putting an image up on your page for those picture peekers.

Just go to Google image search. Type in what image you're looking for and viola! Tons of pictures. Many of these jpg's and gif's are in the public domain, and you are free to use them. Just save them to your computer and go to the SBI graphics library to upload them. (If it says it's copyrighted, move on).

Images will make your site more pleasing to the eye AND bring you more traffic. Can't beat that...

-Dan

PS I know you're probably wondering what the SBI we're working on is about. Well, you'll just have to check back and find out.

Busy day: John Reese Course Arrives; Mini Site Foray

2004-08-23T13:14:00.000-07:00

Today has been a busy day in the life of this stay and home dad and net marketer. By the way, any other stay at home dads out there? I know we're a minority so it would be nice if any of you out there could chime in so I don't feel so lonely. ;)

Among the day's events, I just received my John Reese Traffic Secrets course. By the initial looks of it, I won't be done going through all of it for about, oh, 5 years.

I am going to try to apply the strategies I learn to my websites, and I will report on any positive strides I can make.

In other news, mini-site master himself Phil Wiley finished making me a mini-site today. As you may know, Phil put out quite a competitive offer to best the other John Reese affiliates by offering to hand build anyone who bought the Reese course thru his link a mini-site.

This is exciting for me because it's my first foray into mini-sites. I now have to get it up and running and begin promoting it. I'll let you know how I go about doing this and some additional thoughts perhaps later tonight. I did register the domain and get hosting for it at dayana host.

No, that's not an affiliate link. But if they turn out to be a good hosting company, I might recommend them in the future. I spent quite a bit of time with them on the phone today to get everything in order because I couldn't process my order online for some reason. Nothing irks me more than having to wait on hold forever.

The experience just reinforced my appreciation for Site Build It, which has hosting as part of its package.

Before I forget to mention, I am jointly building an SBI site with a friend (who will be back from his honeymoon any day now). We've already started some very basic stuff on it before he left, but once he gets back, we should be going full steam ahead. It's in a very competitive niche, so you can watch here as the site evolves.

That's it for now.

I still have to finish today's commitment of building one SBI page, which I plan on getting to later tonight. Have you built your SBI page today?

-Dan

A Key to SBI success

2004-08-22T12:23:00.000-07:00

Success "secrets" are often mundane things that most people just don't exert the effort to accomplish. Most people lose their way searching for the elusive holy grail.

You want to know one major key to success with Site Build It?

Build one new content page per day.

Shocker, right?

One content page per day would give you a 365 page site in only one year's time. How many Site Build It sites have you seen that have 365 pages of content?

I don't think I've ever seen one.

My site www.nutritional-supplement-info.com gets well over 1,000 unique visitors of day from the search engines, and yet it only has a little over 130 pages of content.

What does this tell you? A little consistency is a major key to success.

I would recommend you put a little piece of paper next to your computer monitor that simply states: "Did you build a new page today?"

Everytime you look at your monitor, it will be a constant reminder to you. Vow to yourself that you will not go to bed that night until you finish at least one content page.

How long does it take to build one page? An hour? Two? I hardly doubt any longer than that.

The best way to organize this chore is to come up with what the page will be about the night before, and find the keyterms you will optimize for -- the next day you will know exactly what you need to do. This will help put an end to those days where you say "Well, I wanted to build a page, but I just had no clue what to do one on."

Each night you will go to bed knowing what the topic of your next content page will be and your subconscious will actually go to work on it while you sleep.

One year = 365 pages of content. One year is all it would take to have a content rich Site Build It site larger than probably 90% of SBI owners. Just think how much free traffic you could get from that.

Here's the page I built today (I did the keyterm research last night and gathered my research materials for it): New content page for the day

So, let me ask all of you Site Build It owners, who are seeking success: did you build your page today?

-Dan

My 5 figure site

2004-08-21T19:19:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

For the benefit of those who were curious to see the SBI site I built that generates close to 5 figures in commissions per month, here is a link to an article I wrote, which was published in Rosalind Gardner's ezine. The article is called "Dan H, Xtend-life and SBI"

Click here for the article

Rosalind is the well known superaffiliate who wrote the book The Super Affiliate Handbook. You can learn about it here: Super Affiliate Handbook.

No, that is not an affiliate link by the way. At times, some of the links I will have on this blog will be affiliate links, but only if I have reviewed the products first myself. I have not reviewed the Super Affiliate Handbook. But I'm offering a link to it anyway for those who may be interested in getting into the pay-per-click game.

By the way, I have a friend who is doing well with his foray into pay-per-click and after we collate some of his data, we'll have it posted here for your benefit.

-Dan
PS As always, thoughts, comments and suggestions are welcome. The viability of this blog will depend on building a thriving discussion/community. I'm not so vain as to just hear myself talk. ;)

Welcome to Affiliate Riches!

2004-08-21T15:20:00.000-07:00

Hello and welcome to Affiliate Riches.

The mission of my blog is simple: to share real world examples of how to make money via affiliate marketing.

I started marketing on the internet about 3 years ago and have tried and continue to try many different strategies. On this blog, I am going to post the good and the ugly so that you might benefit in some small (or big) way in your own online endeavors.

First, you're probably wondering why I'm even writing this blog. The truth is, I enjoy writing and expressing myself -- moreover, I market full time on the internet as a stay at home dad. (Perhaps a different blog in its own right!) This blog, therefore, is going to be a labor of love so I can help struggling (and non-struggling) affiliate marketers who are honestly trying to make a living online, or at least generate a useful income.

In the process, I hope to learn just as much from you guys and gals out there, so please don't be shy. This will be our little science lab where we can share our experiences, and not just on the positive stuff that you will hear from some gurus trying to sell you their latest ebook.

There's little doubt I could be using my time in more profitable ways, but sometimes you have a desire to do something just because it interests you deeply.

As of now, my blog will focus specifically on a couple of things, the first being the actual construction of a new SBI site.

You will watch as I soar to hitherto unseen heights in revenue generation -- or fall flat on my face. :)

Regardless of what happens, we can learn just as much, if not more, from our failures than we can from our successes.

In addition to the building of an SBI site, I am making my foray into the mini-site arena, so I will report on these projects as well.

I will also discuss the results (or lack thereof) from various other forms of net marketing that I and my friends do, such as pay-per-click, ezine advertising, and the like.

To me, everything is about efficiency and streamlining the process. I'm a stay at home dad of twin 2 year old boys, so I don't have as much time as I'd like for promotions. This means I approach things with a laser-like focus and try to build residual streams of income so the profit centers I created can maintain or grow themselves with minimal hand's on effort on my part.

I hope you feel right at home on my blog, and if you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to jump in the fray with your thoughts, either positive or negative.

If you want to just introduce yourself, please step right up to the pulpit, tap the mic, and address the crowd. :)

Your host,
Dan