I Apologize – How NOT To Get To Google In 30 Days

To all my readers who do have been reading the blog, I apologize.  I just looked at the dates and I haven’t posted in more than a month!  This is not how you accomplish things!  I should know better, as I’m in the process of learning about Internet Marketing.  I just say though, in the past month I have learned double of what I have learned before then.  How you ask?  TAKING ACTION!  I can’t stress how important this is!  Here is a rundown of what I’ve been doing while I’ve been away from my blog.

1) Cost Per Action (CPA) – I have joined some great CPA Networks.  Amongst my favorites are Ads4Dough and EWA.  If you want to join them, I might can get you in, lol.  I’m still new to both of them.  I have been running some dating campaigns on Facebook and have been breaking even most days, but I’ve been making some money as well.  I have also been running a few campaigns with Google Adwords and MSN Adcenter, but haven’t had much luck on those.  I’m still researching ways to optimize those campaigns.

2) Niche Sites – I have been doing some research on niche sites lately and starting to see how profitable they can be.  I started with doing a small niche site related to technology and it didn’t pan out too well.  I then did more research and found a new niche that is related to my 9-5, so I’ll probably be putting more effort toward that in the next few weeks.

Other than that, I’ve been working really hard to learn more about affiliate marketing and specifically, I’m trying to becoming great at one traffic source before I branch out to others.  As you can see from above, the traffic source that I’m focusing on now is Facebook.  If you have any tips or questions, hit me up and I’ll get back to you!

My First Campaign Using Tracking202, and Facebook

So tonight I decided to go ahead and make my first go at a true CPA campaign.  I got my Facebook open, got Tracking202/Prosper202 open, and about to walk through the steps that I”m using to get the campaign going.

The first step was picking out an offer.  I found one that I really liked and I felt like I could easily push it (I wasn’t totally correct on this).  Next, I set up the tracking with Tracking202.  This was pretty much straight forward, they have great tutorials over on the site.

I just created my creative in FB and I started using a spreadsheet to track all the changes I made to it and so forth.  Come to find out, creating FB ads manually is a tedious process.  I ended up having about 15 different ads running, targeting 2-3 different offers.  I was just doing some testing to see what will have the highest CTR.  I never really saw the traffic that I wanted, but it was a valuable lesson and I learned TONs.  Shout out to NickyCakes and Kidbzone3 for pushing me to take action and asking my dumb questions along the way.  I’m sure I’ll ask many more dumb questions, but I took action, and didn’t lose too much!

 

Get More Conversions In Less Than 5 Minutes!

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I’ve been SUPER busy trying to learn new things and I’ve even launched my first niche site.  A friend at work and I are working on it together and we think it may take off!  I just hope I have time to post on both sites often.  I may have to hire someone to do that for me!

I just had to tell you about this thing that I always see with internet marketing but I never knew why it looked so bad.  Well, tonight I found out why.  This “thing” is the Belcher Button.  It was developed by a guy named Perry Belcher.  I’ll let him tell you all the details, but this button was designed especially for people to buy stuff.  I’m not sure if it’s always true, but the reasoning behind it all sounds great! Click here to learn more about it and the Psychology behind it!

 

Change Is Good

Tonight I’m about to revamp the blog a little. Please bear with me while I do so. I’m about to add on some more plugins, put on some ad space, and finally convert the theme over to Rockwell (by Site5). I have a lot of news I would like to share with you soon as I get the site done! -BW

My First Affiliate Purchase

Yesterday I made my first affiliate marketing purchase! For some reason it excited me. I also signed up to be an affiliate so I’ll be selling the product as well! I’m also typing this from my iPhone, which is a first too. As for the product, it’s called PopUp Domination, and I got it for a few sites that I’ll be working for in the future. I hear it’s a great way to get people to sign up for your mailing list. I will definitely keep you all informed! –bw

My Poor Theme

Yes, I know that I haven’t updated my theme yet.  I have one that I want to use, but I just haven’t had time to put it up yet.  I’ll work on it tomorrow for sure and by Monday I’ll have it up!  Thank you all to everyone who follows this blog and I hope to get more readers very soon!  This weekend will be dedicated to SFM!  Stay tuned!!  BW

Midweek Webinars

Last night I caught the tail end of a webinar from John Chow, Jonathan Volk, and Zac Johnson.  For some reason the time in my calendar was set for 9pm, and that’s the time it ended!  It sucked!  For the time I was in it, it was probably the best webinar I’ve been in (about Affiliate Marketing that is).  They weren’t trying to sell anything and they basically answered all the questions that people had.  I emailed John Chow and see if they were going to release the whole webinar, and then just a little while ago, I saw that Zac Johnson has it on his page!  I’ll be watching it tonight before bed for sure!

Right now as I type I’m in a webinar with Chris Guthrie, Brian Evans and Ian Fernando.  It’s great so far!  I’ve watched another webinar that had Chris and JVolk (hope he don’t mind if I call him this).  Chris talked about web marketing and some things he did with his site, NetbookReviews.com.  Ian went over some traffic stuff and went over PPC, PPV, and other traffic avenues.  He believes greatly in paid traffic!  Brian’s presentation was great also!  It goes with what I’m trying to do with one of my local sites and how to manage an email list.  He talked about the Email Series, List Analysis and Testing, and all sorts of other ways on how to maximize what you get from your email list!

In short, both webinars were very great!  I’m about to go watch what I missed with the John Chow one and see what I can learn!  I have my notebook in front of me and taking some notes!  I suggest you do the same!

Affiliate Marketing: Secret Society or Ponzi Scheme

Over the last few nights I’ve been up reading, researching, and reviewing (I’m going to start calling this the 3Rs) various sites of Super Affiliates, as well as just sites about internet and affiliate marketing.  It’s really an information overload!  I started thinking, most of these sites from affiliate marketing gurus are really just selling affiliate marketing tools/processes, and “systems.”  Affiliate marketing can’t be that hard to break into without buying someone else’s system.  Or maybe you have to invest in one of these systems so you can get a taste of what affiliate marketing can do for you.  Sometimes it feels like a secret society, and at others it’s like a big circle when people who are trying to make money are just buying things to achieve that goal, making the people who own the product rich.  Let’s say the product is good, and the buyer makes money, is the buyer then going to sell a product too?  Seems like an elaborate Ponzi scheme, but I’m sure it’s not.  The super affiliates don’t talk about their sites too much, so you really don’t know what else they are doing to make millions.  I just have to find out where to get started.  I think I’m getting some ideas though.  :-)   Thank you Anthony Deloach for sparking my interest in something today.

How to make $1000 a month online from scratch!

Would you like to make $1000 a month online from scratch?  I came across this article today.  I read through the first two pages and I’m going to make it a point to read through all of it when I get home, and if you’re ready for this kind of life, I think you should also!  It seems to walk you through the entire process of getting started with affiliate marketing, SEO, keyword research, how to choose a niche, everything!

The site is called Affiliate Programs, and here is the link to the article I’m referencing!

Photo: AMagill (Flickr)

What Are Squeeze Pages?

So today I was looking at a webinar replay from Trey Smith and a guy named Anthony.  Forgot his last name.  Well, they were talking about how they made mistakes and certain niches and stuff like that.  From listening to it, they sell products, but they also have their own products that they get affiliates to sell.  Interesting….

So, after that, I signed up for Warrior Forums.  It’s a forum dedicated to Internet Marketing.  We’ll see how that goes as well.  I’m never good at keeping up with forums, but I guess it’ll be a place where I can look up information that I didn’t know or want to know more about.  While on there, a guy said someone was giving away $47K worth of Internet Marketing tools.  Of course, this sounded like a great deal, so I clicked on the link.  Took me to what I’ve heard mention a “sales copy” page.  I signed up, and waited for a link.  Basically, I was added to a list, which I also see is a major asset in Internet Marketing.  I didn’t read through it all, but I did see something mentioning “Squeeze Pages.”  I have seen this term a few times, so I thought it would be a good time to do a small write-up on it, even though this is getting a little longer than what I would like it to be.  So….  without further stall, here is what I found.

First, I did a Google Search (of course)…  The first link was to Wikipedia (of course)…  I read through it, or skimmed it rather.. and in simple terms a Squeeze Page is a landing page that is created to collect opt-in email addresses.  I guess I should go ahead and write a template for these type of pages so I can easily pop them out when needed.  I don’t need one for this blog yet, but I think I will need one for a venture I have going on with a buddy of mine.  Actually!!! (fresh thought), I should have Google traffic from AdWords go to it’s own Squeeze Page!  I think I might be onto something here.  Here are some of the parts of a Squeeze Page:

  • Single web page, no hyper-links
  • Relational success stories
  • Minimal text (to not distract the user)
  • Utilize things like color psychology, catchy sales copy and keyword rich text

With all of this in mind, I’m going to try to find some good free templates for squeeze pages, and if not, I’ll develop one!  I may even release it to the public!  -BW