This Thin Affiliate is STILL Killing it on AdWords

Seth Godin mentioned it is easier to change with the market than it is to change the market:

Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean the market cares any longer.

It’s extremely difficult to repair the market.

It’s a lot easier to find a market that will respect and pay for the work you can do. Technology companies have been running this race for years. Now, all of us must.

With that in mind, Google long ago highlighted that they didn’t like certain advertising arbitrage business models. Last year they went one step further by releasing a video claiming how searchers are demanding more for advertisers.

One of the factors among many that will be key for marketers to be successful moving forward is that they’ll increasingly need to think about acting like a content creator, or thinking like a publisher is a way to think about it.

When you walk into a bookstore, a Borders, there’s 500, a thousand magazines on the shelf, and each of those publishers is thinking about not how to stop, shock, interrupt, or detract that reader. They’re are thinking about “what is that I can say in this moment that will be helpful content to a reader”.

The above such claims were, of course, nonsense. They are not what the marketplace demands, but are just a reflection of Google’s desire to sell more keywords and push advertisers toward buying more along the search cycle. But they have enough search marketshare that in the worst economic climate in nearly 100 years they can chose what money they want to take and what they leave on the table.

Thin affiliates are viewed (at best) as unneeded duplication in the marketplace, and (at worse) purveyors of scams and spreaders of fraudulent offers. Most of the affiliate market could be clean, but the 2% of the market operating at scale with shady practices did enough damage that Google would rather flush the business model than spend time sorting through it.

Perry Marshall tied in recent AdWords marketplace changes for affiliates to the above concept that it is easier to change with the market than it is to change the market:

As of today, in some categories, the number of advertisers has gone from 50 to 5. The land has been cleared for people who create original products. A lucrative opportunity for content creators.

But the only way you can survive as an affiliate on Google now is to have a website with a lot of great, original content, and an email list.

If you’re gonna do that…. you might as well have original products too :^>

It is nice to believe that we have Google’s power to change the market or that we can make the market like it once was, but profit is rarely (never?) created by wishing time goes backwards.

If you know how to do targeted advertising it is not hard to take that knowledge and create a niche vertical product around it. Lower margin and higher maintenance (at least off the start) than slinging bits, but over time as you build brand awareness, social connections, get marketplace feedback, and build organic traffic streams you enjoy margin expansion.

Oh, and that thin affiliate who is killing it on Google AdWords… well you already know who they are. Once you own a big slice of media, you can set the rules as you wish. icon smile This Thin Affiliate is STILL Killing it on AdWords

Affiliate Summit West 2010 Is Sold Out!

If you’ve been thinking about going to Affiliate Summit West this year, you may have to wait for some cancellations to happen for spots to open up first. I saw a Twitter update this morning from @MissyWard that Affiliate Summit West 2010 is sold out.

According to the website, the ASW crew is busy processing cancellations to open up spots, but with the event being less than two weeks away, I would imagine that things will continue to be tight.

asw2010 sold out Affiliate Summit West 2010 Is Sold Out!

Christopher and I just barely secured our Affiliate Summit West (ASW) 2010 tickets yesterday morning.

Here’s how it all went down.

We’ve actually been trying to decide for a couple of months now if we were going to attend the summit. Before we could commit to attending any outside industry events, we wanted to get all of our in-house goals accomplished first.

Last year we launched several new affiliate sites, managed an offline Meetup group, took on a ton of new clients, opened up the Open Source Marketer Coaching Program, and launched our own affiliate program all before the end of the year. So with everything checked off our list and on schedule now seemed like a good time to go.

Personally, I’ve been wanting to go to Affiliate Summit for a couple of years now. So when I received an email over the weekend that said the event organizers expected to sell out soon, I immediately called up Christopher to see if he was still interested in going. He said he was onboard if we could also do some skydiving on the trip. I totally agreed and it was on.

Affiliate Summit should be a great place to meet potential joint venture partners, find affiliates for the Coaching Program,  pick up some affiliate marketing information, and just get out and have some fun. There’ll be tons of companies there, along with representatives from the major affiliate networks, not to mention all the individual affiliates who will be attending the conference.

So, on January 17th we’ll be flying from Dallas into Vegas for three days of affiliate marketing fun.

Having an Internet business is as much about living life the way you want to as it is about making money. That’s why Christopher and I are both students of lifestyle design.

While we work to build our online business interests, we also want to make sure that we are constantly looking for ways to integrate those activities into our lives. We want to purposely blur the lines to end up with lives that are profitable in all areas. Very few people in the 9 to 5 world get to blend their life with their work without loosing a piece of themselves in the process. That’s why we decided that this trip needed to include a little extra curricular wind tunnel skydiving.

Originally we had planned to drive from Dallas to Las Vegas to attend the conference.

asw2010 map Affiliate Summit West 2010 Is Sold Out!

Along the way we were going to stop in at Eloy Arizona for a few hours of indoor wind tunnel skydiving at the SkyVenture Arizona facility. They’ve got a state of the art wind tunnel there where they teach people how to skydive in a controlled environment.

SkyVenture Arizona Affiliate Summit West 2010 Is Sold Out!

If you’ve never actually seen someone take flight in a wind tunnel, then here’s a short 3 minute video that shows what the experience is like.

One day last year, after discussing our bucket lists with each other, Christopher and I discovered that we both share a life long desire to experience the thrill of skydiving in an indoor wind tunnel. I don’t know why, but it just looks like something that would be awesome to do. So we agreed that if we were going to be traveling out west anyway, we definitely had to stop in Eloy on the way.

After researching the route, calculating the round trip mileage and drive time though, we decided we didn’t want to spend 23 hours, one way, in the car. That would have been fun ten years ago, but now it just sounds like a sharp stick in the eye. So we started researching flights and hotel packages to see if we could fly straight into Vegas and stay at the Rio Hotel and Casino where all the action will take place.

Christopher learned that there is an indoor skydiving outfit in Las Vegas that’s less than two miles from the Rio and I discovered that if I cashed in some of my American Express Membership Rewards points we could save almost $500 on $1200 worth of airline tickets and hotel stays. Bonus! So we bought the Affiliate Summit tickets, booked the flights, confirmed the hotel reservations, and agreed to take some time out during the conference to visit Las Vegas Indoor Skydiving.
Las Vegas Indoor Sky Diving Affiliate Summit West 2010 Is Sold Out!

With all that taken care of, now the real excitement begins. The clock is ticking and we have less than two weeks to create our Twitter lists, follow key influencers, compile a list of vendors to visit on the showroom floor, decide what to wear for three days, and learn what after hours events we should be trying to get into.

Man, how cool is that?

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

P.S. They say, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Well, if Christopher screams like a girl in the wind tunnel and I get it on video, it’s going on YouTube baby!

Benefit from your profitable ideas.

 Affiliate Summit West 2010 Is Sold Out!

Making Money Online With Affiliate Marketing

This is the first of eight articles that cover making money online. Is it really possible to make money online? Sure it is. The most important elements are belief and understanding. It’s not rocket science. All you have to do is understand how things fit together. So, to kick off the series we’ll start by talking about making money online using affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is essentially the process of promoting someone else’s products or services in exchange for a commission on the final sale. It really is a new spin on the traditional form of selling that has been around for ages. The new part of the process though is that technology has made it possible to track a single sale back to the person who made the referral.

Imagine that you could get a nickel for all the times you recommended a restaurant, a movie, or a car to one of your friends. You’d be rich right, if not at least a little better off financially than you are today. Well, online it’s possible for you to get a commission on referrals you make to someone.

Now, I’d like to tell you that the process is as simple as just telling your buddy to go see the new James Bond movie, or telling them to order the steak at your favorite steak house, but there’s a little more to it than that. Just as you build up trust with your friend through small daily interactions, so do you build trust with your online audience. It’s only once you have that trust that you can turn it into referrals that make commissions.

But don’t fear the process of building a site, publishing content, and gaining trust. It isn’t rocket science. A lot of people have done it and so can you. All you have to do is be willing to believe that you can do it and then actually spend the time doing it.

Here are five things you can do to get started.

  1. Pick a topic to write about – choose a topic you are passionate about so that you’ll have the strength to continue writing about the topic even when things get tough.
  2. Start a blog – start capturing your thoughts so that you can share them with others. Blogs are the replacement for traditional sources of publishing. Writing on a blog makes your words available to millions of people all around the world. That’s a big audience and if you only capture one percent, that’s still a lot of people.
  3. Write about what you know – every one knows something and has something they can share with others. If the information you publish helps someone else solve a problem or save time by short cutting a process then all the better. If you don’t know how to do something, then interview someone who does. Expert interviews are the best way to learn something new while creating content for your website at the same time.
  4. Identify products and services you want to promote – be sure to promote products and services that you truly find valuable or think your audience will find valuable. Promoting something just for the sake of promoting it won’t get you anything.
  5. Be consistent and seek to add value for your readers – Stephen Covey say we should seek first to understand and then be understood. Take the same perspective with your readers. If they find value in what you share with them, they will want to know more about you and what you have to say. This will lead to more sales and better conversions. So, make everything about them and then they will reward you.

The rest is rinse repeat with a few tips and tricks picked up here and there along the way. What’s really important to remember is that you can do it. You already do it for free offline. The only difference is that online you can get paid to do what you already do.

If you’re stuck on how to choose a topic, then take the plunge and enroll in a course that teaches you step by step how to become an affiliate marketer. It will be well worth the money. In most cases, all you need is one idea to make the course worth the admission fee. Of course, you can always join the other members of Open Source Marketer who are getting the information they need to succeed with affiliate marketing.

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at selling products and services directly off of your website. Sometimes that means having a physical inventory, and sometime it means having a digital library of products to offer. What you sell is really up to you, but then we’ll talk about all that tomorrow.

Dig it, grove it, own it,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Do what YOU want and get PAID for it!

 Making Money Online With Affiliate Marketing

How I Scored A $575.80 Affiliate Sale

Recently I received an email from one of my affiliate managers telling me I had made a sale on one of my affiliate accounts. I always love getting these emails, so naturally I logged into my affiliate account to see what my new earnings were. What I was greeted with was a sale notice for $575.80.

As you can imagine, that was definitely a pleasant thing to see and since I’m all in favor of encouraging positive behavior, I started thinking back on the different ways that the sale could have taken place. Did I write an article? Was it an affiliate banner placement? Did I send an email out that included a link? How did this sale happen and how could I make it happen again.

For most people ten of these sales a month would more than pay their bills. If this is you, listen closely because this could be the thing that puts you on the road to making good money online. To be clear, I’m not saying this is the only thing you should do to make money online, but it would be a great addition to your other efforts.

What I realized was that I had written an article six days earlier that had included an affiliate link to ShareASale.com, the affiliate network my sale was made with. In the article I had written the reasons why you should start an affiliate program.

The article included information about different affiliate solutions. One of the named solutions was ShareASale because they offer affiliate program management services and I’ve had a very good experience with them as an affiliate.

I made sure not to sell anything in the article because I didn’t want to jeopardize losing reader trust. I also made sure to offer solid information about which software packages had what features and to highlight their pros and cons. It wasn’t for me to decide which solution would be best for the reader, but I did try to bring all the facts to light so the reader could make their own decision for their situation.

Become an OSM Member and read the premium portion of this article.

The overall goal of your article should be to provide your reader with as much value as possible by bringing well balanced, relevant, information to their attention. That means you should know what points matter most to your reader so you can correctly highlight the most important aspects of the topic.

The potential for this type of affiliate marketing is endless. Good quality articles can be written for just about anything and these days a lot of products and services offer affiliate programs that will pay you a handsome commission if you can send them qualified customers who need their products and services.

It certain worked out in my case and you can be that I’m already thinking of new articles to write to attract more interested readers so I can get a lot more $500 dollar emails from my affiliate manager.

Sharpening my pencil,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

 How I Scored A $575.80 Affiliate Sale

InstantCapturePage.com Review ….. Now We Can All Build A List Easily

Has Jeff Long found the holy Grail of list building? His brand new application, InstantCapturePage.com gives you the opportunity to add an opt-in box to any page.

Whether it be a social media profile such as Facebook or Youtube, a blog, affiliate link, even a page that you do not own. Imagine having an opt-in page on all your social media links. Having evaluated the product we will see whether “it does what it says on the tin”?

InstantCapturePage.com is an ingenious little tool that basically adds your customised opt-in box to any linked site. Your box greets every visitor, and is predominantly displayed, with the required landing page in the background.

The box can be designed to allow closure and passage, or force opt-in. This will depend on your marketing approach, and product.

The opt-in can be linked to your existing autoresponder such as Aweber, or all subscribers can simply be sent to a dedicated email address. These subscribers are also held within the back office, and can be downloaded.

Want to greet your visitor personally. Simply, add a video to your opt-in.

But can it really link to any site? I tested a link to a well known colleague of mine, and also to the Facebook log in page. Both worked perfectly, with visitors having to complete my opt-in before gaining access to the respective sites. Cool.

Another benefit of the application is it’s simplicity. Literally anybody could build and link an opt-in box in under a minute. With no programming or html training. This product is ideally suited to affiliate marketers linking to a standard sales page, who are looking to build their own list. It can also be edited in seconds to change the link page.

The verdict. 95% of online marketers would not have a clue how to add an opt-in box to a sales link or blog. This is truly a revolutionary product which will help many people seeking to build an online business. Even experienced marketers would make use of a product that literally takes minutes to produce. And linking to any site ….. Watch Out, the possibilities are endless!

About the Author:

Mike Dillard Traffic Formula 2.0 Review: Get Noticed

When I started blogging quite some time ago, I thought, “how hard could it be?” Most blog sites are so user-friendly that even a six-year-old can write a blog if he wanted to.

Everything except how to get people to see my blog, that is. It’s a lot like building a 5-star resort hotel in the middle of paradise, and I forgot to build the roads to get there.

You are Cordially Invited

[I:http://www.yourblogriches.com/wp-content/uploads/ArtBasmajian19.jpg]It wasn’t that my site wasn’t accessible; it was that no one knew about it. To do that, I could go down the well-trodden (and expensive) path of advertising, or I could do it the Mike Dillard Traffic Formula 2.0 way. Since I had nothing to lose, anyway, I decided to take my chance.

But that’s why Mike Dillard is who he is. And being who he is, he shared that knowledge with me. With all the traffic that I am now generating for my blogs, I could just as easily have been making a lot of money in the MLM industry.

Mike’s Journey

It really wasn’t that much of a gamble on my part, really. I mean, do a little surfing and you’ll find out a lot about Mike Dillard. He is an Internet pioneer who has managed to conquer new frontiers, and with his Mike Dillard Traffic Formula 2.0, he will be giving you your own Internet survival kit.

I haven’t gotten to the best part yet. Are you ready? If you buy your ticket to the “Beta Release” of Mike Dillard Traffic Formula 2.0 on June 3, 2009, you won’t just be earning soon and getting a head start on your competition, you’ll also be saving a LOT. Just click on the button below, and get ready to face your future head on!

About the Author:

Make Money With Affiliate Marketing by Playing The Game Correctly

The procedure involved in becoming an affiliate marketer is definitely not complicated. You fill out a short form online and you are instantly an associate to that company. They supply you with your own unique affiliate link so they can trace the customers you send to their website. They supply the goods for you to sponsor, they regularly supply you with a website, they do the summarization with buyers, close the sale and handle with the shipping, complaints and income. You are compensated a pre-arranged percentage of the auction, as expenses. All you have to do is market the products to obtain prospective customers to click to the company’s website and wait for your payment checks to come in.

Some people make loads of money with affiliate marketing while others make peanuts. The chief difference among the two comprises mind-set and research. Affiliate advertising is not a get-rich-quick method, it comprises time and patience to establish a productive business. You should research various products, aim audiences, commission scales, the reputation of the corporation and the competition of the merchandise. There is a lot of money to be made through affiliate marketing, but only for those who approach it with a business mind-set.

Having a superior merchandise is just the first step, it is of no use to one who knows about it. Traffic is the term used online to explain the visitors to your site, and your record contains people who have given you permission to email them with details. These two aspects are important for your success as an affiliate dealer. There is an excess of free information available online on these two topics.

You might begin with a company or merchandise, using their free website and this is a reasonable method to get initiated if you are new to creating bucks on the internet. It provides you a chance to look around, find your feet and learn without any risk. Perseverance and commitment are needed to make good money though.

If you have your own area and website, you can sponsor several different goods from the one site. This could be disorderly and untidy if you were promoting completely unrelated goods though, so select one domain, called a niche, and decide on products within that niche.

About the Author:

Best Way to Make Money at Home or Just a Bunch of Hype?

Tired of your day job and want to make money while staying at home? If so, you’ve probably seen quite a few opportunities out there that profess to help you make money. The key is figuring out which opportunities work and which are nothing more than hype.

This can definitely be difficult, but one of the real ways to make money from your own home is to get started in affiliate marketing. Think it’s all hype? Well, let’s take a look at affiliate marketing and all it has to offer you.

Looking at the benefits of affiliate marketing is a great idea before you get involved. The ease of getting your start in affiliate marketing is a big benefit and worthy of consideration. It’s also easy to begin part time, start making your money, and then go full time later. It won’t cost much either.

If you want to work at home, you may have to begin as only part time to get your new home business off the ground. Affiliate marketing allows you to do this. Even if you have limited money to invest, it doesn’t cost a lot and you can get involved without a huge investment.

Another benefit of affiliate marketing is that the products are already developed. You don’t have to develop products of your own, which can take a lot of time and money. Quality products are already out there and all you have to do is promote them. It’s a great way to get a headstart and can help you earn money in the beginning, even if you want to later develop your own products.

When you work as an affiliate, you don’t need to worry about providing customer service or taking care of orders and payments. Simply advertise the product, and everything else is taken care of by the company you are working with. When you use the affiliate links you are given and advertise them, as you draw in traffic, people will click on the links, and when they buy the product, you are the one that makes the money.

For most affiliate programs out there, there is no cost for you to join the program. It may cost you to start promoting the affiliate product if you have to purchase a website or you decide to use paid advertising methods, but you should not have to pay to get involved in the program. This allows you to get your start in affiliate marketing with very little overhead at all.

If you are just getting started at trying to make some money at home, it really doesn’t get much better than affiliate marketing. This is not just a bunch of hype. It is the best way for beginners to make money from home today.

Of course it’s not easy money and it will take some work, but if you are willing to work at it and put yourself into it, there is definitely the opportunity to make quite a bit of money with affiliate marketing today. If you are looking for a way to start making money from your home, this is definitely your best option as you start out.

About the Author:

Starting a Online Business – Does Not Have To Be Difficult.

Starting a online business is in fact very easy. Anybody with basic computer skills can start a web business. In this article we will have a closer look at one of the options available and the steps you will take when starting a online business.

The main means to earn money on the internet is by selling something. You can either sell your own product if you have one, or someone else’s product for a commission.

If you are thinking of starting a online business. Chances are you do not have a product of your own. So let’s get you started by selling other people’s products.

The first thing you will want to do is find a product to sell. For this I would recommend that you open an account with Click Bank. This is a good place to start and the service is free. Once your account has been confirmed. Do a bit of reading to get the basics.

The next step is to open an account with Google Adwords. Without Adwords you will not be able to get anywhere so the minimal setup costs are well worth it. You will need this account to advertise the products your are selling as well as do Keyword Research.

Once again, when your account is confirmed, do some reading to get to know the service. In brief this is how it works. You place an ad for the product you are selling and select the keywords that would attract customers to your ad. You would bid on the keywords your have chosen and it stands to reason that the more popular the keyword, the higher the bid.

Now to find a product. Go to the market place in ClickBank. You will see that there are lots of categories to choose from. In the beginning, it may be advisable to choose a category that you do have some knowledge in. Then select 5 to 10 products that pay commissions in the region of $20 or more.

Now you need to find out if the products have a chance of being viable. To do this we will be using Google Adwords Keyword tool. First thing, go to the keyword tool and enter the exact title of the product you want to sell and ask Google to suggest keywords.

The number of searches for your product is important. As a rule of thumb. If there are less than 3000 searches per month. It may not be very profitable to market that product. Next thing to look at is the competition and what the suggested minimum bid is. Remember, the more the competition, the higher the needed bid will be.

If someone is searching for say “How to Cook Beef” and this is the title of your product. It would safe to say that someone doing that search wants to know how to cook beef. Therefore, it would be reasonable to expect that for every 100 clicks on your ad at least one sale will be made. Working on a 100% profit margin. At a minimum bid of .10c you would break even with the one sale. All additional sales out the 100 clicks would be pure profit.

This may not sound like you will not be making a lot of money. But, repeat the same procedure with 20 to 30 products giving a profit of $300.00 each per month. See how it ads up.?

Now let’s take it one step further. Look at the other keywords suggested. What you are looking for is 5 or 6 other keywords that are closely linked to the product you are selling. These keywords you analyze on the same principals as explained above. Bear in mind though, you do not need 1000′s of keywords. A few well chosen keywords will do the job.

So far so good. The last step is to write the advertisement you are going to publish. For the title of the ad, use the exact name of the product. For example, if the product is “How to Loose weight”. That would be your title. Then do a search for the title and have a look at the competition ads. Get some ideas, and write your own, but a little better.

A word of warning. Playing the Adwords game can be a very expensive exercise if you do not monitor your monthly spending against sales made. You also need to be able to monitor your ads and keywords, to find out which are working and which are wasting you money. If you do this. You could have a very pleasant experience when starting a internet business.

About the Author:

Why People Fail To Make Money As Affiliate Marketers Online

One of the most troubling aspects of Affiliate Marketing is millions of web sites promoting overnight riches to those looking to get into the industry. Affiliate Marketing is a multi billion dollar industry and this has created an environment where vultures can pick off unsuspecting new comers like sitting ducks. Unfortunately those who have the determination , work ethic and desire to start an online business are turned off before a single keystroke has been made. This is the dark under belly of an industry that is impossible to police and in turn creates problems for honest, great value programs and courses to stand out in their own right.

There are Affiliate Marketers making millions of dollars every single year but it’s important to note this is the very small percentage. As I mentioned the beast that is the Internet allows for brash, bold and ridiculous statements to be made and taken by gospel by the masses. With billion of dollars been put into the pockets of Affiliate Marketers every year, where is this money going and how can you position yourself in front of it?

Mind set plays the biggest role in success whether it be on the Internet or with traditional business models. Nothing will determine your chances of success more than your mind set. This is the where most slip up, the truth is there is no such thing as overnight riches, unless of course you win the lotto. It is safe to say the vast majority of people getting involved with Affiliate Marketing are under the impression that the Internet requires them to do less work for more money and the belief of fast money. Affiliate Marketing is like any other business, it takes time to learn, grow and blossom, time and time again I see Affiliate Marketers throwing up articles, websites, blogs and PPC campaigns and sitting waiting for results. As painful as it sounds, most simply sit and wait to see results without putting any work into their online business.

Affiliate Marketing has a learning curve that differs from person to person dependent on their experience level.. Failure is part of the business, this is something that must be accepted, but your mindset will determine whether you can analyze what has occurred, adjust your approach and get back on the horse time and time again.

One common personality trait that successful marketers have is perseverance, the never give up attitude is what you will find is common with people making six figure incomes yearly consistently. For those who are able to position themselves correctly the effort to make money online may seem next to none, but for those who make the kind of money promoted on websites, this income did not come without the expense of countless hours of studying, testing and working on their online business. If you have a never give up attitude the chances are that you will position yourself in time to make a healthy income online, do not look at the number of people that fail, like I mentioned a vast majority either sit and wait for money to magically appear in their account or fail once or twice and give up completely. Be proactive and grab the online world by the horns and ride it for all that is worth, the rewards are worth it and the financial results will see you loving every single moment you spend working on your online business.

For more information about Affiliate Marketing please visit wealthy affiliate and one week marketing

Read crucial points of view for website traffic – this is your personal tips store.