Archive for Monetizing
Commission Junction University
Posted by: | CommentsIf you plan to attend Commission Junction University (CJU) 2008, early registration will be available from May 1 – June 15, 2008. Be sure to save the date and register for CJU 2008, the premier pay-for-performance industry event for publishers and advertisers, held in Santa Barbara, CA, September 16-18, 2008. Take advantage of early registration and save $100 on your registration fee!
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Do Not Put All Of Your Eggs In One Basket
Posted by: | CommentsTable of contents for Introduction To Affiliate Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing 101
- Plots, Plans, and Schemes
- Content, Content, Content
- Get Those Visitors!
- Do Not Put All Of Your Eggs In One Basket
Don’t rely on one source of income! I can not stress this one enough! Sure…. right now, you might be lucky enough to cash $50 checks each month. If the one company you’re hawking closes its doors tomorrow…. meh…. 50 bucks….. so what? Maybe I have to eat at a restaurant one less time next month.
Think about the future…. what if you’re good at making money on the internet? What if you’re cashing $3,000 checks per month a few years from now? Now, what if that one company you’re hawking closes its doors?
OMG! THE MORTGAGE! THE CAR PAYMENT! MY TRIP TO THE BAHAMAS! HOW AM I GONNA BUY GROCERIES! I NEED GAS MONEY! I’M DOOMED! THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!
Get the picture?
True story…. when Cafepress began its affiliate program, it was in-house. (That means the company managed its own affiliate program.) Many affiliate marketers relied on that one program. In the spring of 2007, Cafepress announced that it was outsourcing the program to Commission Junction AND the affiliate’s percentage was being lowered.
Result? Several people were sent into a state of panic. Will my old links work? How much is the decrease going to hurt my bottom line? And so on….
Those who had eggs in several baskets around the internet and promoted other companies weren’t as affected financially as those who ONLY promoted Cafepress.
Those who had made a good living promoting ONLY Cafepress faced a crisis. That 5% decrease had a more profound effect on their checks at the end of the month.
Lesson learned!
Affiliate programs are just one type of monetization for your website.
Take a good look at the page you’re on now. What catches your eye?
Maybe you’re building a website and need hosting. Wow! That ad in the sidebar says that Bluehost has a plan for $6.95 per month! Maybe you’re a link clicker? There are AdSense links at the bottom of each post under “More Links.” Oooooo…. cool banner at the top of the website. See? I don’t just stick with one company or one method of advertising. That’s what I mean about diversification.
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Get Those Visitors!
Posted by: | CommentsTable of contents for Introduction To Affiliate Marketing
Actually, this is one of the hardest parts of the whole process for me. I can write the content (brilliantly, I might add) 
and I can plot and scheme better than anybody I know…. but dragging those visitors to my site while they’re kicking and screaming can be a bit overwhelming at first. I quickly learned, thankfully, if you do the planning and write the content well, getting the visitors to come is much easier.
Think of the planning and content like measuring the ingredients for a cake recipe- it gets messy and confusing sometimes, but if you do it well, finding tons of willing volunteers to eat the cake (visitors) is a snap. Search engines will send you free traffic if you’ve done your homework and included a bunch of targeted keywords in a niche that’s not too narrow or over-saturated.
Once everything is in place, then it’s time for you to expand your wings and start marketing your site a bit more. Start with free marketing using social networks. You can do several things like: build a Squidoo lens concerning your niche, Twitter about your exploits, create a MySpace or Facebook account…. the list goes on and on.
After you’ve started receiving search engine traffic and traffic from social networks, it may be time for you to experiment with paid advertising. I’ll warn you though…. GO SLOW! Advertising is sometimes like gambling….. you give sites your money and you may or may not see a good return of your investment. NEVER spend more on advertisement than you can comfortably afford to lose.
Even if you find a great moneymaker, things sometimes happen that are beyond our control. I’ve heard several shopkeepers bemoan the fact that one of our POD companies crashed while they had advertising campaigns running. It happens…. trust me….. you don’t want to spend a ton of money that you can’t afford to lose when there are so many variables involved.
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Content, Content, Content
Posted by: | CommentsTable of contents for Introduction To Affiliate Marketing
Without quality content, your site will be dead in the water. You may have the best-looking site with the best products available, but if customers can’t find you, what’s the point? Keyword-rich content helps to reel those customers in through the search engines.
Before we go any farther, let me just point out: content does NOT have to be pages and pages of articles like this one. One good example of what I’m talking about is using CPShop to begin an affiliate t-shirt site. Now, if you were doing a dog t-shirt site, you could add some dog articles to help draw visitors to your site. But, what kind of articles would you add to a naughty t-shirt site? *pauses* Ok… I could probably think of some, but that’s beside the point…. *wicked grin*
Content can be as complicated as writing a series of articles OR it can be as simple as writing good, keyword-rich descriptions! I am gonna put this in big, bold letters: DESCRIPTIONS CAN MAKE OR BREAK A PRODUCT-ORIENTED WEBSITE!!! No descriptions or cruddy descriptions = no way for search engines to find you = no customers = no money!
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Plots, Plans, and Schemes
Posted by: | CommentsTable of contents for Introduction To Affiliate Marketing
You may not need a secret formula, but I wasn’t kiddin’ earlier when I said ya gotta plot…. ya gotta plan! There are a lot of considerations to make before you run off and slap up some website thinkin’ you’re gonna make a wad of cash.
My best piece of advice is to do what you love. You’ll have tons of ideas about a niche that you know and love. I have a cooking/foodie site because I know and love a lot about food! *at least that’s what my scales keep tellin’ me* 
Then you have to research and decide which topics to pursue for that niche. For my example, I had to think about things like: Do I want to concentrate on one style of cooking, like Italian, Chinese, etc? Do I want to stick to one type of food, like vegetables, desserts, etc?
When you are narrowing down your topics, you need to also ask yourself, “Which topics will be the most profitable?” Simply posting recipes and monetizing with AdSense may not be as profitable as writing reviews about wine refrigerators and offering product links, for example.
Also, you need to research and pick the best affiliate programs for your niche.
Let’s say that you’re going to do a t-shirt shop with affiliated designs. Which do you think you will find more products to choose from, boys and girls?
A. Dogs
B. Warthogs
Well, duh! Dogs, of course! There are tons and tons of dog t-shirts available from a wide variety of vendors.
One caution, though….. make sure your niche is not over-saturated. There are probably 82 gabillion sites on dogs. Sometimes the niche needs to be narrowed…. perhaps a site that focuses only on one breed would be easier to rank well in the search engines with. But don’t narrow it down too far! “Labrador Retrievers” might be easy to find information and products for…… “chocolate labrador retrievers” would be harder……. “blind chocolate labrador retrievers with arthritis” starts to mosey into the, “I’m a tad anal” category.
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