Entries from March 2008 ↓

 So because this site is fairly new and all I’ve been playing around with the theme on Wordpress, and I just recently setup some Adsense Ads on the left sidebar. (Please pay attention to them I’d appreciate it =) Anyways, out of curiosity I went to a few of my posts to see what would be advertised alongside them. Most of them had fairly relevant offers posted there; however I was curious what they would put on my post about Google’s Anti-Competitive URL Policy and strangely enough they couldn’t think of anything to put there except for horoscope ads, and ways to tell the future! I’m sure there’s a joke there I just can’t think of it at the moment.

PS I’ve since hit refresh a few times and they appear to have picked up the relevancy a bit better… now they are for affiliate/PPC type offers.

Do headlines like these grab your attention? I have to admit, I am a bit of a sucker for these things, and to a degree I think that is human nature. Yet over time, you start to get desensitized to the endless “The Widget To End ALL Widgets” type of claims.

I realize that an effective sales letter is absolutely crucial to the success of a product; however at what point do ethics come into play? Personally, I am trying to learn how to write a better (well, better is irrelevant because I haven’t written one of my own yet) sales letter, in fact I’m attending a webinar this afternoon on the very topic.

You see topics discussed like “Writing Hypnotic Sales Letters.” Now, persuasive is one thing, but do you want people to buy against their will? Do you really want them to turn in their will at the door and mindlessly get your next product? Well, the pocketbook screams a unequivocal and resounding YES!

What if your product sucks. You know it and I know it, however we write a sales letter saying that this thing is going to be the silver bullet that takes away the client’s widget-related misery. Sure, it might get them to buy, and sure, they’ll probably be too lazy to return the thing when it doesn’t live up to their expectations, but they won’t likely buy another from you. Then again like good cattle, once they’re on your mailing list they just might. Is that the kind of business we want to be in?

I guess the place to start is with a great product; then you really can make some serious claims about it in good conscience. However, even for some of the truly impressive products that I’ve purchased, I’ve still been let down after the incredible hype of the sales letter.

Is it possible to “over-wow” your customer? I know that when I see a sales page now, credibility is one of the first things I look for. If I don’t see that in seconds, I’m out of there. Credibility though, is a funny thing. It’s like a gut instinct that I can’t peg down to any one or two items. I can’t say “If the headline is blue, I’m outta there” or “If they don’t have testimonials, I’m outta there” because credibility is more complicated than that.

I guess the whole point of this post is in regards to the ethics of sales letters. I do not seek to dispute what works and what doesn’t in terms of getting the sale. There’s time for that later and plenty of others have done that as well. However, if you can write a sales letter that will make you a cool million, guaranteed, at the expense of violating your morals (perhaps by making unsubstantiated claims about your product) then should you? I know many people do. It is the same argument that led to the creation of the nuclear bomb and pursuing human cloning. Just because you can, does it mean you have to?

I’m not going to answer this question because I can think of all kinds of “what if’s” that make it hard to just say yes or no in such a short space; however I’m interested in having the conversation.

What do you think?

In my newly found quest to promote this blog and generate traffic, I thought why not submit to a ton of site directories? I found a ridiculously long list of free web directories at lazyurl (they will know if I copy it!! and I submitted my site to a few. I’m curious - has anyone had any quantifiable success with free directory submissions? Anyways, the sheer monotony of doing that for about 20 seconds caused my attention to slip and I started surfing again.

I stumbled upon the following list of filters one can search Google with, and became immediately intrigued. These links search Google for blogs with a specific PageRank (PR), and apparently filter out all blogs that use nofollow links in their comments (better check them yourself though). That started me thinking. Chris Sandberg once told me that a great way to get traffic and rankings was to post on other people’s blogs; basically become involved in the community. In addition, links to your site from pages with a high PR count for more when Google is calculating your own PR.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no SEO Master; in fact I’m just starting out here. But I can put two and two together. So why not find a blog with a high PageRank, and post it to death? Just kidding, make sure your posts are meaningful.

So here’s that list of Google filters. Simply click on the PR you want, and search Google for a topic relevant to your blog, and voila, bang presto - you have a list of sites that have decent PR!

PR 6 - http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=01…66:2ziwmhsusja
PR5 - http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=01…66:gpfnyqgww54
PR4 - http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=01…66:fcvptc3lghk
PR3 - http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=01…166:ec1btv16hl
PR 0-2 - http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=01…ygwict5bzjo&hl

Now comes the next little problem: hardly any site out there is going to allow you to post a comment on their main page (most likely the highest PR page on the site). So if you posted on a sub page, you might not be getting any value at all, right?

Never fear, there’s a tool for that too!
I found this cool tool at SEOCompany.ca (which has many cool FREE tools) which will check internal site pages for PR. So if you combine the links above with this tool, you should be able to find high PR blog pages that you can post a comment on. Because most blogs use the title of the post in the URL, you can quickly look down the list and even pick a high PR page that is most relevant to your own blog.

Hope you find this useful.

The other day I logged into my Adwords account and I had one of those nifty alerts waiting for me:

Looking at my current campaigns, I don’t think this will affect me much; however I’m interested if others out there think this is a good or a bad thing. I frequently run afoul of Google’s URL policy with one of my ads - it is for an affiliate program where I link directly to the merchant’s site. Google won’t let more than one ad run with the same base URL. For example, 123.com and 123.ca can run side by side; however 123.com and canada.123.com are not okay.

The problem with this as an affiliate marketer is that if someone beats you to the punch by staking out an ad to the main domain, you’re basically out! At that point, because they’ve got a pre-existing spot in there, and are deemed “more relevant” than my hasn’t-run-yet ad, they get to keep their spot and I don’t get to run my ad unless I can find an alternate domain to send traffic to, and then convince them to carry on to my main offer. Where is the survival of the fittest in this scenario? It’s more of a survival of the first.

IMHO, Google should at least let my ad run for a few days, to see if it outperforms the incumbent ad. Some of the ads you see out there are so terrible you just know you could make a better ad that would be deemed more relevant, but we’re not even given that opportunity because of Google’s repressive regime.

In Vancouver BC where I live, there is this one intersection on Robson street (one of the busiest areas downtown) where there are no less than three Starbucks coffee shops! Out of four corners available - three are occupied by the same store! These three stores have been there for several years now, which tells me that each is profitable in its own right. If city council legislated that this wasn’t relevant enough for the average visitor to Robson street, then these stores would be denied a business license. How well do you think that would fly? Would Starbucks complain? Would the clientèle complain? Hmm.

I understand that Google doesn’t want an entire page of ads for 123.com, however if all those ads are outperforming ads for 456.com, why not? Markets will organize themselves; however Google likes to play divine architect and dictate what they should look like. Any Economics 101 professor will tell you this kind of intervention leads to inefficiencies in the marketplace and should be avoided.

I read this e-book recently called Project Quick Cash. The basic premise was why bother with all this “build your marketing empire” nonsense when you can reliably make a few hundred bucks from 10 minutes of work? Well, he’s got a decent point I guess; it is at least worth considering.

So one of the methods talked about is a way of capitalizing on a tool called Google Hot Trends. The purpose of this tool is to flag any terms that are skyrocketing above their average search volume. For instance, if national TV suddenly runs another expose on Britney Spears, even though her name is normally searched quite a lot on Google, the sudden increase in traffic due to greater interest at that moment causes Google to register a spike in traffic and call it a hot trend. This list contains the top 100 and is updated hourly.

So as marketers how can we capitalize on this laser targeted interest? Well in theory it should be easy: find a product that people consider relevant to the hot trend and put it in front of them! This can be accomplished in a couple of ways. The most obvious is to find an affiliate program selling exactly the thing people are searching for. For example, often times the hot trends include specific models of a product. I’ll open Hot Trends and see what is up right now to illustrate (click on the graphic to see it fullsize):

The above pic is a screen capture from today, and several items are immediately obvious as specific products. Checkout #19 and #27. These are two keyword versions of the same product, a Kodak v1003 digital camera. So now that you know there are lots of people looking for this particular item right now. The trick is, you’re not sure why people are looking for this item - perhaps it was just featured a “Worst 10 Products of All Time list!” Then again, more likely it was featured as a great product on some review program. If possible, it helps to figure out why it is hot before you promote it, but use your judgement.

So now you have a product idea; now you need to find a site selling it that has an affiliate program. Amazon and Ebay are two obvious choices, though there are many others. Try searching for your keyword and “affiliate program.” Another good idea is to search for exactly the terms shown, find the top site or two and see if they have an affiliate program. Sign up, and setup a Google Adwords campaign using the keywords provided by Google and turn it loose!

A word to the wise: pay as little as possible for your keywords! Using this strategy you WILL get hundreds of clicks in pretty short order; you need to make sure you aren’t paying through the nose for a lot of lookey-loo traffic.

My Experience

So I’ve tried this tactic myself a couple times so far, because the principle of it really clicked with me. It’s like selling umbrellas when it’s raining, and sun lotion when it’s hot, which just makes good business sense.

I noticed that a weight loss book was featured on Hot Trends one day, so I got an affiliate link setup through Amazon and setup a Google campaign. My results:

Clicks: 675             Cost: $80.29             CPC: $0.12
Total Amazon Sales: $351.56                Amazon Commission: $20.67
Net Profit/Loss: ($20.67-$80.29-) = -$59.62

On a different occasion I found a Panasonic digital camera trend, and again used Amazon:

Clicks: 196             Cost: $23.69             CPC: $0.12
Total Amazon Sales: $32.14                  Amazon Commission: $1.29
Net Profit/Loss: ($1.29-$23.69) = -$22.40

As you can see, I kind of missed the profit boat on these experiments, losing nearly $80 altogether.

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes \
that can be made in a very narrow field.”
-Neils Bohr 

Experience rarely comes free: I’ll chalk this up as part of my tuition. Another quote:

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over
and expecting different results”
- Albert Einstein

Burning $80 just to pass time does no good unless you can learn something from the experience. Here are a few lessons I learned:

Lesson 1: Don’t Pay Whatever The Heck Google Wants You To Pay

Google is now infamous for the “Google Slap” part of which means they can just arbitrarily make your minimum bid whatever they want to. Some keywords are okay at 5 cents, and others Google mandates you need to spend 25 cents, or even several dollars. Presumably, this all relates to their epic quest for relevancy; however often it is hard in practice to see how. Anyways, on the weight loss experiment, I was a cocky little newbie and bid way higher than I should have. I actually accepted some of Google’s minimums (20-35 cents) because I wanted active keywords (the alternative is your keywords don’t run). This led to a much higher campaign cost than I should have had. One thing I noticed though: I had incredibly high click through rates (in excess of 20-30%) and as I checked back in every few hours, Google would let me slide my bids downwards a bit because they recognized the high relevancy. Over time I cut out the high-cost keywords, and my overall CPC came down a bit.

On the camera experiment, I didn’t cave to Google unless their minimum was only a few cents higher than I was willing to pay (I was aiming for 10 cents or less; they offered 12-15 cents for some keywords). However, I still ended up with a 12 cent CPC overall.

I suggest aiming for 5 cent keywords and little else, unless you know you have a real winner of a sales page/product combo.

Lesson 2: Amazon’s Commission Structure Sucks for PPC

When you are making in the 4% range, it is difficult to make pay per click work with Amazon. The interesting thing was that I only sold a half dozen weight loss books and all the rest of the revenue came from items like Brita water filters, camera tripods and DVDs. So I was able to take advantage of additional revenue, because my cookie was on record as the referral. This is a benefit of using Amazon versus a more targeted site; however I suspect a more targeted site would perform FAR better on the promoted item.

I suggest finding a more direct affiliate program where you’re actually able to make a good return on each sale.

Lesson 3: Pick a Good Sales / Landing Page

On the weight loss example, I was too eager to get going because the trend was volcanic hot and it was my first one, and I just KNEW there was money to be made ;). So I looked on Amazon, and they were sold out of the exact book that was listed, except for a couple of used copies, and they didn’t have a real good sales page for it. (Many products they have a good product page, but this one didn’t for some reason). So I linked to the page displaying the Amazon search results for that term. My book was top of the list, but there were a lot of other related items on there too. Mistake. I suspect this caused a number of dropped clicks right there, as people really wanted THAT product, and probably went back to Google to find it.

I suggest picking a good landing page that clearly displays exactly what people are searching for. Make it easy for them to buy! This is PPC 101.

Conclusion: Does it Work?

Although I haven’t made any money on this strategy so far, it makes so much logical sense that I find myself wanting to try it again. I think I’ve learned a few lessons, and I think with tweaking (and the right products) there is good money to be made. One serious advantage of this strategy is the sheer lack of time required to get setup. If you’re familiar with PPC, and have the necessary accounts setup already (Google and a relevant affiliate program) you can have one of these setup in less than 10 minutes.

Project Quick Cash has additional tips to making this strategy successful, but I don’t really have time to get into them here. There are also about five other low-cost strategies to turning a quick buck in the book; perhaps I will experiment with them as well and then share my results here later.

I’ve decided that since this blog is essentially starting out at Ground Zero, this is a perfect time to implement something to track the amount of traffic I manage to generate. My only pledge related to this is I will not spend money to promote this blog - all traffic that comes here will be 100% free.

As of today, March 20th, 2008 here are a few indicators I’ll be posting on a monthly basis:

Popularity Indicators
Alexa: 13,952,743
Google PR: 0
Technorati Authority: 0
RSS Subscribers: 0

The Golden Rule
Feb 2008 Visitors: 1 (pretty stellar eh?)

I’m using Google Analytics (which I’m not 100% certain is setup properly with WordPress - need to test that) for my traffic stats. I’ve filtered out my own IP so I won’t be artificially inflating my traffic. What you see here pure and simple is the number of people that come here. One day if this goes anywhere maybe I’ll come up with a fancy graphic or something. Wouldn’t that be cool.

Are there any other indicator stats you might recommend?

I’ve been coming across a fair bit of information lately about how people use blogging to generate traffic. This currently being my only blog, and currently having next to no visitors (yeah, it kinda keeps my in my place <`_`>) I figure this is a perfect place to experiment with some of those techniques. I recently attended a webinar by Chris Sandberg over at DotComSecrets and he was talking about a few methods I’m going to try to put in place.

Basically the most important things are content quality and consistency, paired with a good linking strategy. The content part is going to definitely be a work in progress as I consider myself pretty low on the expertise pole here, however I think I can swing that to my benefit by discussing the different things I come across. Being an active student of internet marketing I usually find myself with more to read than I really have time for. One goal therefore will be to regularly evaluate and discuss things I learn and put some thoughts up here for discussion (for all you people that will soon be swarming to my amazing blog!).

The second part of what Chris was saying had to do with linking. For me this was a bit of an eye-opener as I always kind of wondered in the back of my head how to get traffic here without advertising the site. I’ve told a few close friends about this blog, especially if they’ve been looking for information to get started themselves; however I was wondering how to break that whole 1-2 visitors a month phenomenon. (My other sites thus far rely on paid advertising so this is a good experiment in free traffic). Anyways, in essence the goal is to find similar blogs to your own through resources like Google’s Blog Search or Technorati and then get involved by posting comments on posts they’ve written. Make sure you can leave your site address on there somewhere, so you essentially get a link back to your own site, hopefully in context with your site-related comment (which I’ve heard is good SEO practice).

The other thing you can do is use track backs to your advantage. By linking to another persons’s blog in your own post, WordPress can create trackbacks, where the other blog owner is essentially notified that you’ve linked to their site, and it even shows up on their page in lieu of a comment. Both of these techniques get you links on other sites, and links are good for SEO and they are good for leading people to your site from elsewhere!

Starting out with affiliate marketing, the question is inevitably: “Where do I find products to market?”

Let me assure you - there is no shortage of them out there. However, you don’t want to spend your whole day signing up for new programs, you want to get down to business right? Likewise, every little mom and pop store out there doesn’t want to spend their days managing their affiliate programs, and would rather have someone else do it for them. Thus the rise of companies like CommissionJunction, ClickBank and many others. These companies act as hubs, linking vendors to affiliates who want to promote their products. They provide the interface and usually handle the transactions, payouts, all that fun stuff.

So which one is best for the aspiring marketer?

There’s actually no easy answer to that, as it totally depends on your style and what it is that you want to promote. I started out using CommissionJunction and ClickBank primarily, and to a large extent they are the ones I still use. However I just recently dicovered PayDotCom as well, and so far it looks pretty promising.

Here’s my take on the ones that I’ve used most extensively.

CommissionJunction (CJ.com)

Commission Junction is great because they host hundreds and hundreds of offers, and they’re constantly adding more. They have lots of training materials and in my opinion are one of the most established players in the game. They have a good link tracking system and it is easy to generate fairly detailed reports. CJ has many established businesses using them, as well as smaller players. For example, you can find offers on there from Dell, Ebay, WeightWatchers, and many other well known names. They also do direct deposit, which I like. Nothing like getting paid ASAP, rather than waiting for USPS! One downside though is that they only pay once a month. Starting out, you’ll need to wait until the end of next month before you’ll get paid for the sales you generated this month.

TIP: One trick I learned though is you can phone your credit card company and get them to change the end date of your credit cycle (for FREE) so that it aligns more closely with the CJ pay dates, so that by the time the advertising bill comes from Google or Yahoo or wherever you have been paid by CJ and you never have to use your own money out of pocket to cover the time lag.

ClickBank (ClickBank.com)

ClickBank has thousands of products available and has been around since the beginning of this game. They focus primarily on information products (such as ebooks), which are huge business on the internet. One big bonus about ClickBank is the they pay twice a month - so you’re able to get your money a lot sooner. They don’t do direct deposit though.

TIP: One thing that can save you a lot of money is to buy information products through ClickBank on your own user ID! As far as I am aware this is fully legal and you’re able to save up to 70% on many products! This can be great as ClickBank has a lot of great products related to internet marketing.

PayDotCom (PayDotCom.com)

PayDotCom is the latest site that I’ve come across, and it is rapidly gaining popularity, due to industry leading vendor terms. More and more vendors are choosing to list here instead of ClickBank. PayDotCom is tightly integrated with PayPal, so if you have a PayPal account you can receive your money in your account right away! I’m not aware of any other program that pays this fast! They don’t hold back money as ClickBank does (in case of refunds they hold a small percentage for months!) and they also have a lower refund rate.

TIP: When you sign up for PayDotCom, your account is free. However, after joining you’re presented an amazing offer where you can get up to $1000 in account credit! This offer is well worth it as they also throw in Mike Filsaime’s Butterfly Marketing course - which has been successfully used by thousands and thousands. PayDotCom splits their fee for each sale between the affiliate and vendor, so this credit goes towards those fees.

Well those are the three that I’m currently using, though to be fair I’ve also got accounts at LinkShare, CPA Empire, NCS Reporting and maybe one or two others that I can’t remember off the top of my head. There are more programs out there too.

One trick that I’ve learned is if I have a great idea for marketing campaign for a particular product (for instance if it suddenly gets on national TV and everyone is looking for it) I do a search on Google for “Product X affiliate” or “Product X affiliate program.” Nine times out of ten, if there is an affiliate program out there for that product, you will find it by this method. You can also look at the bottom of the site you’re interested in promoting, often there will be a link there called “Affiliates.” They will often direct you to register with CJ, or whichever site they’re associated with.

Until next time…