Worse, is the fear of stopping something that’s working in order to test something that’s unknown.  Without exception, experienced marketers have learned that a well optimized landing page for your ad, keyword or article, will result in MORE affiliate sales than a direct linking campaign to the sales page.  The trick is in learning how to keep your landing page from getting in the way of your sales.

Ed Dale calls this “slippery-ness” of your content. If your content is slippery, your reader will click through to your link to learn the rest of the story, read the punchline, or satisfy his curiosity that you’ve raised in your copy.

Wealthy Affiliate includes one-on-one mentoring and coaching with Carson & Kyle via PM on the site.  After then landing page I had set up last week (the one I started with Site Rubix & polished with Dreamweaver), I thought I had a “perfect” campaign set up.  OK, not really, but it was at least a campaign in which I thought I’d followed all the basic rules of affiliate marketing:

• Compelling landing page
• Targeted keywords
• Common Keyword Technique (learned on Wealthy Affiliate’s 8 week course)
• Good Converting Merchant Product

Thankfully Carson was honest and pointed me to additional tutorials on the site.  I modified my landing page (yes, it’s better), then simply redirected my current (converting) direct linking campaign to have those same ads point to my own landing page & mini-site.

So far, my CTR (click through ratio) is good, but it’s only been a few hours.  The real test will be if my content on the landing page is “Slippery” and results in clicks to my merchant page.

I’ll keep you all updated.

Just recently, however, new analytics sites are being given a new object orient script to install, simply referred to as “GA”. Presumably stands for “google analytics”.

Anyway, here is the simply coversion to add click tracking to your BANS store with the new code from analytics:

First, take a look over at Web Mogul’s site for the initial steps, but instead replace step six with this:

Old Step Six:

After the rel=”nofollow” attribute, add this:

onclick="javascript:urchinTracker('.$clickUrl.');"

MAKE SURE there is a space between the ending quote on the rel=”nofollow” and the onclick.

New Step Six:

After the rel=”nofollow” attribute, add this:

onClick="javascript: pageTracker._ trackPageview('.$clickUrl.')

. MAKE SURE there is a space between the ending quote on the rel=”nofollow” and the onclick.

I hope that helps! Let me or Web Mogul know if you’re having any troubles with the mod. He wrote the original mod and did all the hard work. I just updated it for the new GA code.

If you are undecided on Build a Niche Store, check it out! My commissions are increasing slowly with ONLY organic search traffic and minimal effort at driving traffic to the store.

Today I want to introduce two useful tools from the big G (Google). Having written the book on web based searching, Google has designed several useful tools that you just shouldn’t be without, yet many people just don’t know where to start.

Google Analytics

This incredible free resource from Google allows you to view an enormous amount of data from your websites, track conversion rates, file downloads, keyword use, geographic location of your visitors and much, much more.  One neat trick I just learned about is having analytics email me a report everyday.  For one of my niche websites, I simply created a report that contains the keywords used to find my store that day, and the store pages that were visited.  it was as simple as viewing the report in Analytics and clicking the “email button”.   For subsequent reports, you can add them to existing reports or create new ones.  All the reports get sent to you in a PDF file to your specified email address at whatever interval you choose (daily, weekly, monthy, etc).

Google Webmaster Tools

I just signed up for this about 2 weeks ago and can’t believe that I have been building websites for 4 years without it.  My favorite uses of the google webmaster tools include the ability to submit a sitemap, run a check of your “robots.txt” file, see what pages are indexed from your site, see what sites link to your site, and the MOST fun, is seeing where your page is ranking on actual search engine hits…and what keywords are getting clicked on the most.

I’ve found the best results with new sites when I have the majority of the site up before submitting the sitemap to Webmaster Tools.  According to Google, large & rapid changes in the content of an existing website can be an idication of a hacked site or a spam site.  If you’ve registered a domain name, don’t submit it to google until you’ve developed a good part of your site.  Of course your website will never be finished, but that’s expected.  Google likes dynamic, living sites.

Are you using either Analytics or Webmaster tools?  If so, let me know about them here in the comments!  I’d love to here about your favorite features that you’ve discovered in both programs.

On the horizontal nav menu across the top is a link directly to my referral site, a web site that sells live plants. I receive a 5% commission for each order placed. Based on my commissions, the orders are averaging about $100 each, which is exactly what they advertised.

On a different front, I’ve got two BANS sites set up (Build a Niche Store), and am getting trickles of comissions on those as well. Again, daily hits are only in the 10-20 range, and I’m still seeing some comissions. The great thing about the BANS sites is that the ebay cookie remains active. If a user who clicked through to eBay from your site purchases anything in the next seven days, you get a commission!

So if you haven’t already, check out both of these things. The Thirty Day Challenge is 100% free, you can start it anytime, and it is packed with incredible information about internet marketing that is easily worth hundreds if not a few thousand in “tuition”…and years of real life experience.

As far as the Build a Niche Store goes, Shoemoney recently did a paid review on it, set up a crappy looking store, and there has been a big influx of new users on the forums. The majority of the sites look just as crappy as Shoemoney’s site.  Mine, however, look fantastic, because I don’t use the default template but instead customize free wordpress templates to make mine stand out.

If you decide to purchase BANS, I’d appreciate it if you used my link above…after all…you heard it here first!  (Maybe).  I also have some recommendations for hosting & domain registration if you have any questions about those aspects, let me know and I can help guide you through your very first domain purchase

What makes a good keyword phrase to target?  One that has low competition and adequate daily searches through organic search on Google, MSN or Yahoo.

 Why is organic search important?

The easiest and best traffic you can get for your site as a marketer is the traffic that sells itself.  Suppose your site is selling gold-plated widgets, and it’s ranked in the top 1-3 on the populular search engines for that term.  If there are 100 searches a day and your site is at the top of the list, people searching for purchasing or general information on gold-plated widgets will go directly to your site, read your great content and slip right through to your product or affilaite link with very little selling required on your part.

What I’ve been learning about keyword phrases is that your site needs to be tailored towards just one keyword phrase in order to rank as high as possible on the search engines.

What if there are multiple good keyword phrases?

You can create multiple free blogs on any of a number of platforms such as blogger, wordpress, tumblr, squidoo, etc.  Rewrite each of your content articles slightly to include your keyword phrase in the title of the article, the first sentance and several times in the content of the article.  Each article and/or site should ultimately include a link to the product you are selling.

As long as you are getting good traffic, have good content, the product should sell itself.  (Whether or not your product or the affiliate product has a good landing page and is in fact a decent product with low refund rates is important as well, but a topic for another article).

But can’t I get banned from Google for targeting keywords?

If you are genuinely intrested in creating good, quality, original content for end user consumptio, then no, you won’t get banned from any search engine just because you are targeting a keyword phrase.  On the other hand, if you participate in “keyword stuffing”, an unnatural repitition of the keyword within an article, or if you are clearly providing non-original or scraped content then yes, you may get banned.

So here are three tips for writing for keyword content

1)  Focus your original content articles to include your keyword phrase in the title of the post, the first sentance of the post and several times within the post

2)  Create blogs or websites on free blogging platforms that contain your keyword phrase in the title of the blog

3)  If you have more than one really great keyword phrase (low competition, high number of daily searches), consider setting up more than one blog to target the second keyword phrase.

Do you have any more suggestions?  let me know!

For the past several days I’ve been following Ed Dale’s Thirty Day Challenge.  I mentioned it to you briefly last week, but I wanted to wait until I’d gotten through the whole market research phase before mentioning it.  Part of me wants to keep this a secret because the information is so powerful for an internet marketer!  But I’ve picked up much of my internet marketing knowledge from generous bloggers and want to return the generosity.

Not to mention that the entire course is free, and even when he recommends products that do have affiliate programs attached, he never offers or mentions an affiliate link.  Ed Dale and colleagues spent loads of time and money putting all this educational material together and organizing the thirty day challenge…it baffles me how the found the time and energy to do it, and they are not even charging for it!

Well, I’ve bascially been obsessed with it for the past several days, and crammed the first 14 days of the 30 day challenge into about six days.  Basically the first 14 days are all about market research.  Ed shows you how to use tools you know about in new ways, and introduces several new tools.  In addition, they’ve even created some new, free tools that combine their knowledge of internet keyword research.

So what is the 30 day challenge?  THe challenge is to make $10 in thirty days with the techniques he teaches in the course.  I know some of you will scoff at that amount (why so little?) but before you can run you need to walk and before you walk you need to crawl.

If you can learn the techniques and apply them to a small niche and make $10, then you can continue making $10 a month or multiply your efforst across many keywords and make $100 a month or even $100 a day.

The first 14 days of work is the most challenging, I think, because it requires patience and persistance.  I’m sure many people quit around day 7 or 8 when the work starts to get a little bit hard.  But without this groundwork, you could waste months (even years) of time trying to assert yourself in a market with either too much competition or too little consumer demand.

So at the end of Day 14, I’ve found two keyword phrases, with little competition, adequate daily search volume that represent two different markets.  Before I’ve spent any time working on content, I’ve found two phrases that I know for certain people are searching for in Google and other search engines.

I hope you realize how valuable that proper keyword research can be and are willing to learn how to do your research correctly.  Check out the thirty day challenge for yourself.