Entries tagged " affiliate marketing "  

Quickly and Easily Harvest Google Search Result URL's

Harvesting URL's is very useful when doing PPC marking on Google AdWords Content Network (placements) or Cost Per View marketing. Basically you provide the advertising networks what pages you specifically want your ad to appear on.

Obviously placing your ads on the pages (especially the first few pages) of organic search results will result in your ads being displayed to highly targeted traffic. So I put together this quick video that shows you how to do it.

Here are some pages from the video:

Get Grease Monkey Here

Get Google URL Harvester here

Watch video on Cost Per View advertising here

3 Hours of PPC Training Here

Targeted Web Traffic For Only 2 Cents Per Visitor

Your Internet Marketing War Chest

So you heard all the hype about striking it rich on the internet huh? Probably ran across a website or two telling you how you can make $50,000 next week and how you can "get rich quick" by becoming an affiliate marketer. Unfortunately, that's not realistic. It's crazy how many people still haven't learned that if it's too good to be true, it probably is.

Now for the good news. You really can earn a great living online and even get rich — just not as quick as we'd all like. If you want to make a living online you will need to learn a lot about internet marketing. There are many tools and services that you will need to get familiar with. So with that in mind I present you with...

The Only Internet Marketing Resource List You'll Ever Need!

Sorry for the cheesy sub-headline above, but as you learn more about marketing, you'll learn that cheese often sells. I will not go into great detail about each of these services below as that is not the scope of this post, I will however give a brief description of what the service is and why it's useful. And here we go.

Web Hosting

JumpLaunch - You gotta have a place for your website to "live" and JumpLaunch has excellent service. I highly recommend them. Use coupon code "petersanchez" at checkout for 20% off :)

Advertising

Now that your website is up and running, you gotta let the world know. There are many methods but in the internet marketing world, none are more rapid than PPC advertising.

Google Adwords - The big daddy of all PPC advertising. Highest volume, which usually means the best result but it also means it's the most expensive to master. Might be smart to start with Yahoo and MSN (see below) and work up to Google.

Yahoo SM - Yahoo is the second in over all search volume. Their user interface is pretty limited but it's not difficult to get setup and running. Usually less expensive than Google as well.

MSN AdCenter - MSN AdCenter is the little brother to Google & Yahoo. While it's volume is much lower there still is a lot of potential here. Think more bang for your buck.

Facebook Ads - Facebook is a huge social network. It's recently launched PPC platform has excellent demographic targeting and is relatively inexpensive to run ads here.

Customer Retention / Up Selling

In marketing, creating a "funnel" of sales is so important. Offering an upsell, affiliate offer or freebie is a huge way to keep someone as a customer. A huge number of your customers are likely to be repeat buyers as long as they were happy with the original product they purchased. So here are some tools used to keep and up sell your customers.

SmartJabber - Interactive and intelligent artificial chat agent. Gives the appearance of a live person helping the visitors to your website. Low monthly fee to use this tool. This really helps build a level of trust for your visitors. It literally pays for itself.

AWeber - Email marketing is so important in the world of internet business. AWeber is an email list manager that lets you capture your customer's information for future use. It's totally opt-in so your users can remove themselves from your list at any time. With this, you can put any offer in front of your users via email, 24/7! This may be the most important "tool" in making a living online.

Affiliate Networks

Affiliate networks are an excellent resource. Basically affiliate marketing works like so. You refer a person to company XYZ. If the person you referred makes a purchase with XYZ, you get a commission. Commissions can range form small to very large, depending on the product/offer. So say you sell a gardening book on your website and you want to recommend other books to them. Email them a list of books, using your affiliate offer link, and you create a triple win situation. Your customers are happy with the recommendation, company XYZ is happy for the sale and you are happy for the commission. Here are some of the affiliate networks I recommend.

Azoogle Ads - Great team, excellent affiliate managers.

NeverBlu Ads - Very helpful staff. Excellent starting point for newbies.

Commission Junction - Very big market place. Offers for anything you can imagine! Good customer service.

LinkShare - The first affiliate network. Very big market place as well.

Payment Processors

At some point, you are probably going to be charging your customers for either your product or service. Here are a few options you have in doing just that.

Paypal - You've probably already heard of this company. They are easy to use and very popular. I personally don't like some of their resolution policies.

Google Checkout - Google's attempt at payment processing. I have used this service and highly recommend it. Their resolution policy is one of the best around! Fair to both merchant and buyer.

2Checkout - Popular payment processor. Low fees and website integration.

Power Pay - Power Pay is an authorize.net reseller. They will set you up with a merchant account so you can process credit cards from your own site. This is for the more hardcore but is definitely the correct way to go once you start bringing in a higher sales volume.

Secure Download Providers

If you are selling digital products via your website (ie, ebooks, spreadsheets, etc.) than you will be smart to protect your digital goods. What these services do is guard your digital products and only allow paid customers to download the media.

Clickbank - This is more of a market place where you can list your product and they will handle the payment processing, downloads, returns, etc. for you. It does cost $49 (one time fee) to have your product listed in their market place. Largest of it's kind and worth the small one time fee.

E-Junkie - Awesome tool. Cost starts at $5/mo which is the base plan, and probably more than enough to meet your needs. E-Junkie also has a shopping cart, affiliate management and multiple payment options. All are included with your plan and the best part, there are NO per sale fees!

PayDotCom - PayDotCom is similar to E-Junkie above but more expensive. Also includes other tools like a mailing list manager, etc.

Affiliate Management

Usually you can use outside services to handle your affiliates for you. In some cases you will need to run your own affiliate management software. In this situation you will need to deploy your own software that helps you manage your affiliates (payments, etc.) Here you go..

iDevAffiliate - The best software I have used for personally managing affiliates. I currently use this software on 2 sites and it does a great job of keeping the tedious task of affiliate management as simple as possible.

Conclusion

As you can see you have many options to look into and decide upon. Research and test to find out your best collection and then put it to use. It's like Bobby D said in Ronin, "I don't know.. It's a tool box. I use the best tool for the job!"

Bookmark this page as this resource list will be updated when I have more stuff to add.

Disclosure: Most, if not all, of the links I show here are affiliate links. I am affiliated with, or own, some of the companies listed above.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, business, internet marketing, list, make money online, marketing, resource

Weak US Dollar = Opportunity

It's no secret that the US economy is slowing down. Oil (gas) prices, defaulting mortgage loans and employer cutbacks are causing Americans to stop and think before they go splurge on some new eBook (or whatever) online.

How can you take advantage of the weak dollar? There are several ways. For example, the export business isn't doing so bad. Because foreign money now gets them more for the the same, they are ordering more than ever. Ports along the west coast have a 6 week wait for container space!

But since we all want to make our money online, lets look at another angle.

An easy way to earn extra income is by promoting affiliate products in countries where the currency is more valuable. For instance, England.

AzoogleAds is my favorite affiliate network (right now) and they offer many programs from various European countries where the currency is more valuable than ours here in the USA. You can use Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing to target traffic directly in whatever country you are promoting to.

If you make a few bucks with this, make sure to send me my cut ;)

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, business, internet marketing, opportunity, weak dollar

How To Kill Your Affiliate Manager

Ever wanted to take out an affiliate manager you do business with? If you've done any sort of affiliate marketing, I'm sure you have. While we don't want to actually kill (murder, rub out, smoke, ice, put down, etc.) the person, we can get pretty frustrated with them and the company they represent. This post is about a real gripe I have with a real affiliate manager. That's right... I'm calling out names.

WebHostingPad.com

I was contacted by Ben Hong (ben@webhostingpad.com) a few months back. He is the affiliate manager for webhostingpad.com, a new web hosting company that has launched recently. Apparently the company is a spawn of Omnis Network of web hosting companies. I have a website that does a lot of web hosting promotion and so Ben wanted placement on my site.

After a sweet offer of $200 per sale for the first 30 days I said I would give them a shot. I hopped on the phone with Ben and talked numbers with him. He promised me a minimum of 4% conversion on qualified traffic. I sent him traffic slowly and I realized their conversion rate was no where near 4% (more like 1%). Still, I got new sales notification emails and watched my account balance grow. I was happy because the payout was so high and I would just throttle the traffic. I had planned on dumping them after the first 30 days if I didn't notice an increase in the conversion rate.

Then I started noticing sales emails with no record of it in my affiliate account. I got on the phone with Ben and he investigated. After a few weeks, and many annoyed emails/calls from me, he explained it was a "bug" in their software (which is iDevAffiliate, something everyone uses).

I started seeing the writing on the wall so I immediately stopped sending traffic his way. Figured I would let the relationship go and collect what's owed to me at the next payment cycle. Well, when that cycle came I got an email notifying me that I had been paid via Paypal. Well, I hadn't received anything from Paypal confirming and when logging into my account, the payment wasn't there. Now it gets interesting.

I email Ben and got no response. I call Ben and leave voicemail and get no call back. I email again and finally get a response. It was another "bug" in the software and I will get paid on the next billing cycle (a month away) because the sales I was to be paid on had not reached the 30 day requirement (in other words, if the user cancels, my commission is voided). OK, that's fine and I understand that.

Well the next payment cycle has come and gone nearly 2 weeks ago. Ben is no where to be found. I call their number and it's changed to a new one. I call that one and I get no option for his extension. I can only get a tech support rep who promises that he as no way of transferring a phone call. Oh and he is unable to get me on the phone with Ben Hong, or anyone else for that matter. There is no other number I can use to reach Ben or anyone in their affiliate department. It's only him, the mighty tech support rep, and guess what, he is not able to help me with affiliate issues. Of course not.

What are my options?

At this point I am calling it a loss. I'd rather forget all about them and try to get the word out.

I should head down to their office (also in So. Cal. where I am located) and ask to see Ben in person. Thing is, I would rather let the affiliate world know how they run their business and hit them where it hurts, their bottom line.

Funny thing is, I am not the only one with a negative experience. A friend of mine jumped right in with them (after I told him about the $200 offer) and began sending them a lot of sales. See, he has a string of new clients who require a website to continue working with him. He was sending them 4-6 new sales a day. Now these are confirmed sales because these users are his clients and he is on the phone with them while using their WebHostingPad.com accounts.

Guess what? His sales started disappearing. Ben claimed they had cancelled their account, but of course they hadn't. Obviously they are my friends clients and he can easily confirm their accounts were active and the user had not requested cancellation. At least he was able to collect payment on most of his sales. Now he has no way of reaching Ben either. Shady shady!

Feel free to link to, republish, whatever this posting on your blog, forums, etc. Be good to help out our fellow marketers and let everyone know not to deal with these clowns.

Update: - This morning (3/13/08) I received a call from Ben Hong saying he apologizes for all the "mixups" and I have been sent a payment via Paypal. Word travels fast in the blogosphere and less than 24 hours later I was paid in full. Funny thing is, it wasn't a lot of money that was owed to me (less than a thousand) so it wasn't the end of the world and that's why I decided to call it a loss and write the post to begin with.

So for anyone out there having trouble, write a blog post about your issues. The social web has given us a powerful tool to "fight back", so why not use it?

Technorati Tags: affiliate, affiliate marketing, ben hong, commission, shady, webhostingpad