New Affiliate Discoveries

Time for my monthly update.  I’m pleased with how I did, considering I was fairly distracted this month from being able to promote an market my Build a Niche Store Websites, letting them run on whatever organic juice they already had.

I did begin a few new projects this month, look for upcoming posts that discuss new ways of creating traffic and how I learned a few new tricks!

Here are the numbers:

Build a Niche Store: $188.55

AdSense: $5.09

TextLinkAds: $54.15

Total:   $247.79

Again, you can see that AdSense doesn’t add up to many cents.  Or much sense at all. It’s just there.  And while I can’t retuire on $247.79, it’s more than I made last month, and it’s more than you’re making if you’re not getting your feet wet at all!

I have several new projects that I”m working on, and I’d like all of you to be able to watch some of the details.  I recently took a serious step forward in my internet marketing education.  I’ll fill you in on all the little secrets soon!

How did you do this month?

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If you are like me, you’ve got dozens of different ideas in your head at one time.  It’s hard to focus on just one topic to make a blog post, let alone to set up an entire campaign.  I’ve read a lot about affiliate marketing and feel that I’ve got a decent understanding of it, but as you’ll note from my monthly earnings reports, I’ve still got a long ways to go in order to quit my day job!

One common theme has come up in the past few days of my reading online.  And that is, “Just do something!”.  You can read for hours and days on end, but until you go out and Do Something with your affiliate marketing efforts, you’ve got nothing to show for your investment and no possibility of earning any money.

My problem is that I’m so distractable, I have a hard time completing even one thing before I get that next “great idea” and move on to a new website,  or new niche.

A second common theme that has entered the forefront of my thinking is process mapping.  Not just diagrams of your advertising campaigns, but an actual flow diagram of where the target is, where the funnels are and how you expect your visitors to get from one point to the other.

Process maps can be simple or complex, they can be created by hand or by computer software, and they can help guide you toward success or keep you mired in failure!

Are you interested in learning the difference between the two?  Let me know and I’ll post part two!

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PLR stands for Private Label Rights.  Why should you be intersted in it?  When you purchase a PLR product, you are purchasing the right to put your own name on the product, to brand it as your own.  If you don’t have expertise in a certain field, or would like to sell or give away a software product or ebook that you don’t have the knowledge to create, PLR content can be just the ticket to get you into the door of affiliate marketing.

I recently purchased my first PLR content, actually 2 in one day.  I paid for them out of my profits from Text Link Ads, since it goes directly into my PayPal account, so it’s (kind of) like Free Money.

I found the items by googleing “My Niche” + PLR and searching throug the first page of returned sites.  Many were simply articles much like this one talking about PLR.  But several of them were selling PLR content.  For this current project I’m working on, I need a big dose of new content that I didn’t have time to write.

When purchasign PLR content, you need to be careful however.  You are not purchasing the copyright to the articles, only the right to brand it with your name.  in most cases, the original author will be selling the PLR product to a number of interested buyers.  Scrupulous sellers will limite the number of buyers so that the content remains (somewhat) original.

But keep in mind that Google can add a page to it’s supplemental index, or even remove it entirely if it sees duplicate content.  SO I’ve been spending my evenings “Spinning” or re-writing the PLR articles just enough to be unique, then posting them on my new site, and trying to get some Social Love with Digg, Stumble, Squidoo, etc.

So if you are anxious to get a project off the ground, and dont have the time, expertise or the patience to write the content yourself, consider a PLR product.

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I had a decent month in February, largely thanks to an established PR 4 blogs from which I’ve sold 5 text link ads.  I am also seeing my BANS stores increase in income.  Adsense is still there, but mostly because I’m too lazy to do much to optimize it.

Here are the numbers:

Text Link Ads:  $52.26

Build a Niche Store:  $93.30

AdSense:  $3.28

Total: $148.84

Total for the year:  $243.31

I admit that my expenses are absent.  The TLA money gets deposited into my paypal account, which I then use to buy domain names when the thought strikes me.  i’m still paying for private registration, which eventually I’d like to stop, but I am waiting to start a formal business (an LLC for example), until I prove to myself that this is not a hobby, but a business.

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This is something I have been wanting to do for awhile.  I have great designs in my head, understand HTML and PHP, and have made some easy mods to my existing themes.  What I am missing is a step-by-step method to get the designs in my head out and into a coded format.

I am currently reading Small Potatoe’s Tutorial on Designing a Word Press Theme.  It’s a great piece of work so stop by and check it out.

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This post is a little late, but I wanted to share with you my online earnings for the month of January. Nothing real big, but it’s a start, and I just got my first check from commission junction the other day, deposited it in t he bank today! I’ll post a jpg of it in the next few days…

So here it is:

Build a Niche Store: $58.13

AdSense: $6.64

Text link Ads: $27.70 

Total: $92.47

It’s not great, but not awful, and more than I made last month, and more than I was making before I embarked on this adventure. Stay tuned for more earnings reports.

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How Many Niches Do You Want? Many marketers make a goal that they will have x number of blogs or niche sites in compeletly unrelated niches. I’m finding that it’s very difficult as a new marketer, to consider niches out side of those that you already feel comfortable in.

What do These Niches Have in Common?

Take the following niches for example: snowmobiling, skiing, skateboarding, surfing, bicycling, triathlon, mountain biking, tennis, golf…

What do they all have in common? That’s right, they are all sports.

Are Technology Niches any Better?

Are you sporting inclined? Or maybe you are technology inclined? Does your list of niches look like this: Computers, Vintage arcade games, nintendo Wii, Playstation, iPods.

If so, you’re no better off that the sports nut above.

Stretch Yourself into New Territories

If you really want to reach out into other markets you are going to need to stretch yourself. Look around you, especially those people or aspects of your close friends that you tend to distance yourselves from.

Racer X, Sho-Gun and Lavender Oils?

Does your wife really love body lotions and home-made skin creams? Does your husband really get turned on by old-fashioned comic books?

If so, you’ve got another niche ready for you to explore. Better yet, get your spouse or friends involved in your new niche exploration. Let them know that you’d like to learn more about the car that Racer-X drove, or the Samari sword that was used in Sho-gun, or the latest naturally pressed lavender oil soap on the market.

Look around you and you’ll discover niches you’ve never even considered before!

Thanks, if you enjoyed this post, you can learn more about Affiliate Marketing by signing up for my free email course over on the right!

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Content is King as they say.  As much fun as keyword research and building new BANS sites is, I still feel strongly that my websites provide valuable content.  Some people create literally a hundred or more sites, submit them to search engines to get a lot of backlinks, then just leave them sit and let the search engines find them.

Visitors arriving at these sites may find what they are looking for, but there is one thing for sure.  If you do not regularly add content to your site in the form of valuable information, your site will simply get pushed further and further down in the search engines.

Creating content takes time…either from you or somebody else.  For the time being, I prefer to write my own content.  Most of my enterprises thus far, are in niches that I currently, or at sometime in the past, have had an interest in, making it a bit easier to spend time creating original articles.

Tonight, for example, I spent about an hour in total researching a new topic, writing an original article, posting it to my website, then submitting it to several “social” sites, such as Digg, Stumble, Facebook, Propellar and Delicious.

I have been cultivating a network of friends on Digg.  In addition to helping them out and Digging newsarticles that I like, whenever I submit a new content article to one of my websites, I send a “shout” to all my Digg friends…most of whom will Digg it as well.  This usually gets me about 10 diggs, and is enough to get my article to hang out the “upcoming” section of the site, gets me several new visitors who may (or may not) be interested in my products.  But most importantly, these activities get your new post indexed quickly by the major search engines, and get backlinks “deep” into your site, to inside articles.

In all this took me an hour (plus some time to post about it), but I hope to speed that process up in the future.  It obvously depends on how much research I do vs. how much of the knowledge is already in my head.  Frequently, the knowledge is already there, but by browsing manufacturers websites I get some great ideas about how to organize my thoughts.

What kinds of activities do you do to increase traffic to your site?

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One of the most important things for me in my internet marketing activities, is to maximize my time and be as efficient as possible.  There is so much great (and crappy) information out there, that even when you find the good stuff, you can sit and read it for hours!  Supposing that you’ve come up with a decent game plan (after spending scores of hours with game plans that were crap), it’s sooo easy to get distracted when you should really be “working” your plan.

My latest activity that I’ve added to my (endless) list of to-dos is to post in a niche related forum, at least 5 times per session.  That sure doesn’t sound hard, but the trick is not to become engrossed in the forum itself. I get in, make 5 posts and get out.  Now you may think that I end up making garbage posts, but I try my best to be sure they are quality posts that add something to the thread being discussed.

Don’t get me wrong, the niche is one that I’m interested in, and I think that if I could tap into a forum market (possibly several forums), that I could dramatically increase the traffic and repeat visitors to my site.   But I’m also not so deeply involved in the forum that I become engaged in reading every single thread. I’m perfectly happy to enjoy my “performance” of the niche activity without much input from others.

This detachment from the forum, combined with a true interest in the niche, allows me to spend only about 15 minutes at a time getting this important marketing activity done.  By posting in a niche related forum, I build relationships and trust with the other forum members, contribute something positive to the community and eventually, will have a potential base of new visitors to my Build a Niche Store site in that particular market.

It’s a win/win situation for both me, and my future new visitors!

What are some ways that you make efficient use of your marketing activities?

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How does this sound for a productive Thursday evening?

1. Washed & Folded 2 loads of laundery
2. Cleaned out the refrigerator
3. Took out 3 bags of garbage
4. Cleaned the bathroom
5. Wrote four quality blog posts
6. Cleaned the kitty litter
7. Packed for a 5 day vacation

Here’s a trick for increasing your productivity at home, especially for those of us that tend to procrastinate…Trick Yourself!

Six years ago when I was in my last year of graduate school, I decided to by a new car. you can imagine that this was a very stressful period for me…in my last year of school, stressed out about finishing my degree, passing my exams, fulfilling my work requirements with the school, thinking about moving for my next job after school, not knowing where I would be working 6 months in the future…

I’m sure you all know what stress is about!

I’ll confess. At that time I was seeing specialist in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT. I was simply overwhelmed with all that I had to do and I recognized that I needed some guidance. She helped me realize the best technique I’ve ever learned to deal with the overwhelming number of tasks I needed to complete.

Create a reward for delayed gratification.

Her suggestion was that I use my pleasurable activities as a reward for accomlishing some sort of work task. I decided that every few days, I would test drive a new car, but only after and only IF I had finished my school work and job seeking work for the day.

What an amazing experience it was! I was motivated to get some work done, and in the afternoon I took myself to a car dealership to test drive one of the cars that I had pre-selected in my research. In the end, I bought a Honda CRV, one of the best purchases I’ve made in my life, aside from my graduate education.

So now I’m off to the beach!

Fast foward six years later to this week…I’ve been workign non-stop like a dog and finally have 5 days off and I’ve got a plane to catch in the morning…how do I straighten up this mess of an apartment?

I rewarded myself with delayed gratification! the only thing I wanted to do after working nearly non-stop since the week before Christmas was sit on my couch and watch TV. But how in the world would I get packed for my mini-vacation to California?

A perfect way to start a vacation…

My little animated buddy TIVO helped me out. I watched 3 of my favorite TV shows ( a total of 2 1/2 hours of TV) but at each and every commercial break, I paused the TIVO and worked on one small item from my ToDo list. The result was that I cleaned the worst parts of my apartment, sorted my laundry and set myself off for the airport feeling organized and refreshed.

What are some of the techniques that you use to increase your personal productivity? Let me know in the comments below!

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