Looking back…

Looking back you’d think I’d been at this attempt at affiliate marketing for a while now.  From the date of my first post, I’d think so too.

When you look back and see that I had some major technical glitches, followed by a frustration induced break, while performing the duties of my busy day job, you’ll understand that the actual hours spent on this project aren’t actually all that much.

Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way.

Be diligent. It seems like it takes a good 40 hours to put up a good site.  So a couple hours per day for a couple weeks could do it.  If you’re good with making websites in general with Wordpress, or some other CMS, or what have you, the framework will be up in no time.  The rest of the time is creating original content and using content from others (with permission).

Be patient. Everyone I’ve talked to about affiliate marketing says just that.  It can take a few months after you have great content on your site to start seeing results.  And it’s purely a numbers game.  Only a small percentage of visitors to your site will click through, and then only a small percentage will buy anything.  The better your site, the more visitors you will get.

Be creative. Consider submitting articles to sites like EzineArticles.com, posting to relevant forums and overall getting the word out.  Make all of your contributions high quality, and make it easy for people to find your sites and contact you.

(Update: I created Trend Mashup.  Check it out and let me know your thoughts.  As ALWAYS it’s a work-in-progress, like every website should be.  It’s new, but coming along well.)

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There are a couple of site that you should learn about.  One is Digg.  From their website…

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users. You won’t find editors at Digg — we’re here to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and we’re changing the way people consume information online.

The other is Technorati.  This is a site where people can submit their own blogs, read others and write reviews.

If you want to get noticed, I suggest that you join up and learn the ropes.

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Technical glitches be gone

I brought upon myself and one of my websites some major technical problems.  I keep thinking I’m up and running, and then I mess it up.

Let this be a lesson to you; don’t install one content management system over another perfectly working website.  Just be careful, like I wasn’t.

Meanwhile, my coaching site is up and running.  Ethan Time Training.  It’s about life and performance coaching.  Check me out.

 

Ready to make some comissions :)

I had some technical problems that were almost totally my fault. Now I’m really really back to work. I just posted a new website that I’ll announce here later.

One of the first things to do after publishing a website is to get it ranked higher in search engines. I’ll be working on that for the next week (and longer) I’m sure.

- It’s a good thing to look at your competitors web sites and to do some analyzing. I’m getting better at that. The plan is to use what seems to be working on their sites to my benefit. This doesn’t mean taking content or anything. But good looking layout and keywords are a good start.

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working on it.

I’m still here, but I’ll need to take a couple days off from posting from time to time.  There’s a lot of writing involved and some website design, but I’m feeling more and more optimistic.

Reading around, it looks like the biggest reason why people aren’t successful with affiliate marketing is because they give up too early.  I think this takes some learning and patience.  It’s no big deal, any new job has a learning curse.  I’m treating this like any new task, and soon enough I’ll have a couple new projects to announce.

So, take a look at my links over there on the right side menu under “Learning Programs”, and also look at my Checklist page for hints on how you can get started.

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Making progress

I’ve been deep in the learning curve for a couple days here.  Adwords seems complicated at first, but with a combination of that and ad sense, I’ve been able to track the progress of this site and another as far as getting traffic is concerned.  Slowly but sure people are starting to find me.

I’ve also been writing like crazy some product and service reviews for a new site that I hope to launch early next week.

If you’re hoping to try this working from home/work online route, I still recommend that you pick up one or both of the programs I’m reviewing.

Check out my Checklist page for a bunch of things you’ll need.

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The Concept

The Theory:  You can make money online advertising/promoting other people’s stuff.

That’s a fact actually.  I’m trying to do that now.   That’s why I’m keeping track of my progress here.

I was speaking to someone tonight who checked out this site and wasn’t quite sure what it all meant.  The basics of it are what I wrote above. Also:

  1. By creating websites of various kinds (blogs, product endorsements, etc) you can get monetary credit/commissions when people click on a link on your site and buy something on the other site.
  2. This is basically like any salesperson getting a commission for a job well done.
  3. There are styles of websites that are easier to use than others (I refer to Wordpress for example)
  4. There are step-by-step ways of starting from scratch to completed website that are designed to guide you all the way through.
  5. The two programs I’m reviewing on this blog both claim to do that.

At this point in my research I’ve narrowed it down to The Super Affiliate Handbook and Opportunity.com.  So far, both programs are doing for me exactly what they claim.

Now, if you check out some of my other posts and they seem like technical jargon, don’t worry, feel confident that you will learn what each of those things mean.  When you get to that step of the process learning come quickly, I believe, and what used to seem like technical words – are now just tools that you will use easily.

I’m doing it.  So can you!

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More on Google Adwords

One thing that affiliate marketing  training programs emphasize is Google Adwords. It’s basically a simple way for anyone to advertise on Google. We’ve all seen those ads on the side of the page when we’ve “Googled” something. I suggest signing up for your Google account and signing up for Adwords. Once you’re there, or if you already have some experience, the following video could be useful to you.

This video explains strategies for getting the most out of your Adwords keywords.

Resources:
Here is the official Google blog post on the subject. Google Adwords bidding tutorial blog post

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Joining Technorati

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I have to post this code to complete my Technorati application.  This is a pretty cool site with tons of blogs, and it’s recommended by many to join.

Add to Technorati Favorites

 

Program Reviews

I’ve just changed my page that used to be “dual overview” and split it up into different reviews of each program.  As I go along in the process and put to use more and more of the taught techniques, I plan to update those reviews as needed.

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