I've just completed Day 22 of the thirty day challenge, despite the official challenge ending 2 days ago. Yeah, I got a little behind - mainly due to the content writing and life in general. Now that there aren't anymore daily updates of the 30DC I should be able to catch up on all my work pretty quickly.
Today's lesson was all about testing and tracking and we were granted an audience with none other than the man himself, Dan Raine, as he took the podcast and video cast helm to explain all there is to explain about tracking.
During the podcast Dan explained that tracking is the 2nd most important thing in marketing next to market research. Not only does it show how well you're doing, as you can track the number of visitors to your site as well as how many people click through to your product page. It also serves as an early warning system if something goes wrong, as you can monitor the amount of visitors and if you start noticing a drop off in clicks you can look to see if your affiliate product has changed in any way, or if there is a new competitor on the scene. Dan told us that to get a decent idea of how you're doing you'll need to track for at least 2 weeks or so, or get around 1000-1500 visitors or more.
He talked about 'slippery' content, which is just how good your content is in relation to how many people click through to your product. The better your content, the more clicks through, the more slippery your content.
I've chosen to put in place the Statcounter tracking code to measure the people who visit my sites, as I've been using it for some time on my Cards-A-Gogo shop on Cafepress, so I have a feel for how it works. You can also use Google Analytics, which I believe gives you an easier-to-read data display but for now at least I've opted not to use it due to the time it takes to familiarize myself with it. To measure the click-throughs to my affiliate products Dan has supplied us with his own tracking system, which basically does a re-direct to an address specifically created from the original affiliate link you input. So I put in my Amazon.com affiliate link and a new link is generated. I then enter this in my blog instead of the original code, so that everyone who clicks on that link, gets quickly re-directed to count their click, and then re-directed back to Amazon, and they are none the wiser for being shuffled. We can then easily check our stats by logging into the 30DC dashboard. I assume then that the 30DC website (or at least the dashboard) is going to be left up online for the long long haul - as it would be a pain to have this going for a while and then find we have to change everything due to the site being removed by Ed and Dan. I'm sure it will be, there is so much information floating around the forums that I think plenty of people will be using it and adding to it for months or even years to come. A very handy present for us 30DCers indeed.
So I changed all my links (luckily I didn't have too many at this stage) and have already noticed the stats rising.
One thing that has been mentioned since a couple of days ago is that by now we should have more than one platform for our niche. This is something I haven't gotten around to as yet but I will be starting Squidoo lenses for both my niches from tomorrow, as well as continuing with the 30 day challenge. I've also got a couple more ideas for niches that I plan on looking at today to see if they might be worth getting into - in which case I'll start working on the market research and traffic testing for them next week, as well as continuing to work on my Cards-A-Gogo shop in preparation for hitting it with the link-love.
All in all a pretty easy day work-wise. I posted a new blog for each of my niches, and the content writing never stops. Once I've gotten a few posts under my belt for each blog I'll be able to slow down and only post once a week, but for now I really should be posting at most once every 3 days...something I've been a little neglectful with recently.
Showing posts with label affiliate marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label affiliate marketing. Show all posts
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Rinse and Repeat
On Day 21 of the challenge Ed had a problem with his video so instead we got a 25 minute audio presentation and a PDF with the slides that would have been used in the video had it worked. I, of course, didn't get clued into that until I was about 20 minutes into the audio - realizing then that I could have been looking at the PDF as Ed went along. No matter, I took a quick look through the PDF until I had caught up. Minor problem for me was that some of the images that Ed had placed in the PDF weren't showing up for me. Normally, with Ed doing an accompanying video with the PDF supplied as well, this problem didn't matter, as I could see the images Ed was using in his video presentation. For this one, I had to just guess. I think I did okay.
Basically, today was a sort of "rinse and repeat" of yesterday. Ed reiterated that we are still in the testing phase, and not to get too hung up on the affiliate product too much, as this was only being used to test our market. Some people have been lucky enough to make money while testing, and why not, but the ultimate goal here was to produce our own product down the track so that no only can we reap all the rewards from sales ourselves (instead of only receiving a commission), but we would then have an asset which we could possibly use to buy and sell. With our own product we can feed it out to affiliate marketers (like we are NOT hehe) and get them to do the work while we get a slice of everything they sell. Maybe our product will be so good that someone will offer us big bucks to buy it (our product being a website perhaps). But Ed was clear that this was something of a possibility only and definitely a far way down the track. I wasn't fussed - I'm just concentrating on making my first dollar through this affiliate sales part, the thought of selling my own product is, at this point, a dream.
He asked everyone to head on over to Mike Mendel's blog and check out his piece on Quality Content. A damn good read made up of a lot of common sense. He pointed out something that I could relate to - that quality is something that you know of, yet you have a hard time defining. You are aware of quality when it's around you, yet when asked to describe what is quality, you become tongue tied...well I do anyway. It's just one of those things in life that is there - you have a feel for it - but it hasn't really been until now that I've had to analyze what it is all about. Where does this quality come from. How can I produce it? For me, it comes down to a feeling I get when writing content, and that's the best I can do to describe it. I'm definitely one of those people/writers who is never satisfied with their work, but I can still tell when I have written something that would be helpful to someone else. Something that has merit, has meat, and is geared to serving the purpose for which it was created. On a creative level I may think it stinks, but I'm not writing a novel here, so it just needs to be interesting instead of truly captivating. I'm sure that will sound weird to people but I know what I mean ;o)
I did pick up some pointers from Mike, such as the use of sub headings in my blog pieces (which I have implemented over at my best Wii games blog), as well as cutting back on the use of affiliate links. I was never spammy with them anyway, but my last best Wii games blog post did have 4 links to the one game in it, so I cut that back to two. The use of pictures to space out your content was something else that Mike mentioned, but I feel I have that under control.
So the benefits of our Market research are now starting to show, as the sites we've put up should be receiving a certain amount of traffic. Obviously, that doesn't mean to say that we are getting as many visits as were in Gtrends for our niche, as our sites are still climbing up the Google page ranking, but we should be seeing results nonetheless. I certainly am for best Wii games. I placed tracking code from Statcounter.com several days ago and have seen, due mostly to social bookmarking, that I'm getting around 50 visits to my site per day. That number does include my visits, so it's probably more like 40 outsiders having a look. Plus, with Statcounter, I get to see where they came from, and I'm seeing that more and more people are finding my site based on their Google search term. For some terms I'm actually in the top position, others I'm no 2. Most I'm around no 5-10 but the point is people are clicking through to my site. In my Amazon.com affiliate stats I've seen around 60 people click through to products from links I have on my site (that includes my 2nd niche as well). All in all I'm pretty happy with the way it's going. It's still very early days but as long as I keep putting out content every 2-3 days and chip away at the social bookmarking then things will progress.
The next stage for me is to increase my profile by using another hosting platform for more content relating to my niche keywords. The goal, as Ed puts it, is to try and gather 200+ people a day to your product, so the more reels you have in the water the more chances you're going to have of catching more fish. So the plan is to start work on a Squidoo lens revolving around best Wii games. I notice there is actually a lens up there already, but I think mine will be better. In the lens I can link directly to the Amazon products also, as well as host Adsense ads on the page. I can discuss a variety of topics relating to best Wii games, but unlike a blog I'm not heaping content upon content. I make up the one page and can just tweak it every so often to keep it fresh. It's about creating a cluster of sites that all feel back to your niche. My niche lends itself to having a number of products available, and I think that will give me more chance of getting sales.
So for now I need to write another blog for each of my niches, and then start on the Squidoo lens, as well as get stuck into the Day 22 challenge content.
Basically, today was a sort of "rinse and repeat" of yesterday. Ed reiterated that we are still in the testing phase, and not to get too hung up on the affiliate product too much, as this was only being used to test our market. Some people have been lucky enough to make money while testing, and why not, but the ultimate goal here was to produce our own product down the track so that no only can we reap all the rewards from sales ourselves (instead of only receiving a commission), but we would then have an asset which we could possibly use to buy and sell. With our own product we can feed it out to affiliate marketers (like we are NOT hehe) and get them to do the work while we get a slice of everything they sell. Maybe our product will be so good that someone will offer us big bucks to buy it (our product being a website perhaps). But Ed was clear that this was something of a possibility only and definitely a far way down the track. I wasn't fussed - I'm just concentrating on making my first dollar through this affiliate sales part, the thought of selling my own product is, at this point, a dream.
He asked everyone to head on over to Mike Mendel's blog and check out his piece on Quality Content. A damn good read made up of a lot of common sense. He pointed out something that I could relate to - that quality is something that you know of, yet you have a hard time defining. You are aware of quality when it's around you, yet when asked to describe what is quality, you become tongue tied...well I do anyway. It's just one of those things in life that is there - you have a feel for it - but it hasn't really been until now that I've had to analyze what it is all about. Where does this quality come from. How can I produce it? For me, it comes down to a feeling I get when writing content, and that's the best I can do to describe it. I'm definitely one of those people/writers who is never satisfied with their work, but I can still tell when I have written something that would be helpful to someone else. Something that has merit, has meat, and is geared to serving the purpose for which it was created. On a creative level I may think it stinks, but I'm not writing a novel here, so it just needs to be interesting instead of truly captivating. I'm sure that will sound weird to people but I know what I mean ;o)
I did pick up some pointers from Mike, such as the use of sub headings in my blog pieces (which I have implemented over at my best Wii games blog), as well as cutting back on the use of affiliate links. I was never spammy with them anyway, but my last best Wii games blog post did have 4 links to the one game in it, so I cut that back to two. The use of pictures to space out your content was something else that Mike mentioned, but I feel I have that under control.
So the benefits of our Market research are now starting to show, as the sites we've put up should be receiving a certain amount of traffic. Obviously, that doesn't mean to say that we are getting as many visits as were in Gtrends for our niche, as our sites are still climbing up the Google page ranking, but we should be seeing results nonetheless. I certainly am for best Wii games. I placed tracking code from Statcounter.com several days ago and have seen, due mostly to social bookmarking, that I'm getting around 50 visits to my site per day. That number does include my visits, so it's probably more like 40 outsiders having a look. Plus, with Statcounter, I get to see where they came from, and I'm seeing that more and more people are finding my site based on their Google search term. For some terms I'm actually in the top position, others I'm no 2. Most I'm around no 5-10 but the point is people are clicking through to my site. In my Amazon.com affiliate stats I've seen around 60 people click through to products from links I have on my site (that includes my 2nd niche as well). All in all I'm pretty happy with the way it's going. It's still very early days but as long as I keep putting out content every 2-3 days and chip away at the social bookmarking then things will progress.
The next stage for me is to increase my profile by using another hosting platform for more content relating to my niche keywords. The goal, as Ed puts it, is to try and gather 200+ people a day to your product, so the more reels you have in the water the more chances you're going to have of catching more fish. So the plan is to start work on a Squidoo lens revolving around best Wii games. I notice there is actually a lens up there already, but I think mine will be better. In the lens I can link directly to the Amazon products also, as well as host Adsense ads on the page. I can discuss a variety of topics relating to best Wii games, but unlike a blog I'm not heaping content upon content. I make up the one page and can just tweak it every so often to keep it fresh. It's about creating a cluster of sites that all feel back to your niche. My niche lends itself to having a number of products available, and I think that will give me more chance of getting sales.
So for now I need to write another blog for each of my niches, and then start on the Squidoo lens, as well as get stuck into the Day 22 challenge content.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
How To Make Money
Day 14 of the challenge had us just watching a couple of videos from Ed, explaining to us how we are initially going to be making money with the 30 Day Challenge process. First up, though, he told us that we must write another 3 pieces of content on our keyword phrases...yikes! It had taken me 3 days just to get through the first three pieces, now I gotta write another three?! Actually, after writing the initial three articles on each keyword phrase I'd managed to learn enough from them to not only get interested in my niches enough to want to learn more (and therefore write more), but I also managed to get into the swing of writing in general, and don't feel anywhere near the pressure I did prior to writing anything.
Ed took us through a couple of ways of finding our affiliate product to promote. Yes, I know what you're thinking, the 30 day challenge is just about affiliate marketing...well, personally I don't actually see whats so wrong about that in the first place (in the second place, no, it's not actually going to be an affiliate marketing exercise). If this was just about selling someone else's product I wouldn't be disappointed at all. Plenty of people out there make plenty of money from affiliate sales - and those people don't have Ed and Dan's cutting edge marketing techniques on hand - so I really don't have a problem with it at all. But as Ed says, the ultimate goal is for us to be selling our own products (and therefore reaping all the rewards instead of just a commission). I don't know if we'll actually have time to go right into product creation as part of the 30 Day Challenge, although with the amount of content that has been coming through so far from the guys I wouldn't be surprised if they managed to fit that in with only 14 days to go (10 really, as there is no content uploaded on the weekends). I say there are only 14 days to go because I'm actually writing this on Day 18.
So Ed took us over to clickbank.com to look up some affiliate products to promote. I'm not the biggest fan of clickbank, as I find it's been overrun by a lot of crappy products with poor sales pages. Some of the sales pages have their own name squeeze (a form to get you on their mailing list) and I'm sure part of this challenge will be learning to use our own name squeeze...perhaps. But on the whole the site is good for finding something to promote for the challenge. Ed pointed out that this is not our main goal, but we are only using an affiliate product as a means to test to see if the market are actually willing to spend money. If you link to a good affiliate sales page and people go through your site to the product and buy it, and they do it often, then you know it's a good market. Some markets may get lots of searches, but predominately just from tire-kickers, people who aren't interested in spending money. This works as a way of seeing if the market is going to make you money in the long run.
Ed also took us through Amazon.com, for those people who couldn't find a product on clickbank.com. As you would be aware Amazon.com sell almost everything, and up until I saw the video I didn't realise they had an affiliate program. They only pay out commissions of 10%, which is paltry compared to the commissions you can get on clickbank - but as I mentioned, this isn't about getting money, it's just about recording the amount of sales. I do understand why Amazon's commissions are so small compared to clickbank, though. Amazon deal in real products, whereas clickbank deal in digital products. Digital products are a lot cheaper to produce, and are usually produced by the person who is selling them, therefore they can dish out high commissions to entice affiliate marketers to promote their products. Amazon deal in products created by others, so they have had to pay an initial wholesale fee for the product, and therefore cannot afford to hand out too big of a commission. Also, as Amazon is so HUGE and well known throughout the world, I dare say they don't need that much help selling their products anyway.
So after having a browse through clickbank I only found one product for one of my niches and none for the other - pretty much what I had expected. Amazon had plenty of stuff I could promote and so I signed up with them. Unfortunately, seeing as I'm in Australia, I only have the choice of receiving my affiliate commissions by cheque or gift certificate. If I choose a cheque I lose US$15 for each cheque they send me - so I picked the gift certificate. I figure if I actually do sell anything and make some money I can always find something in Amazon to spend it on.
So now I'm off to write my next three articles...
Ed took us through a couple of ways of finding our affiliate product to promote. Yes, I know what you're thinking, the 30 day challenge is just about affiliate marketing...well, personally I don't actually see whats so wrong about that in the first place (in the second place, no, it's not actually going to be an affiliate marketing exercise). If this was just about selling someone else's product I wouldn't be disappointed at all. Plenty of people out there make plenty of money from affiliate sales - and those people don't have Ed and Dan's cutting edge marketing techniques on hand - so I really don't have a problem with it at all. But as Ed says, the ultimate goal is for us to be selling our own products (and therefore reaping all the rewards instead of just a commission). I don't know if we'll actually have time to go right into product creation as part of the 30 Day Challenge, although with the amount of content that has been coming through so far from the guys I wouldn't be surprised if they managed to fit that in with only 14 days to go (10 really, as there is no content uploaded on the weekends). I say there are only 14 days to go because I'm actually writing this on Day 18.
So Ed took us over to clickbank.com to look up some affiliate products to promote. I'm not the biggest fan of clickbank, as I find it's been overrun by a lot of crappy products with poor sales pages. Some of the sales pages have their own name squeeze (a form to get you on their mailing list) and I'm sure part of this challenge will be learning to use our own name squeeze...perhaps. But on the whole the site is good for finding something to promote for the challenge. Ed pointed out that this is not our main goal, but we are only using an affiliate product as a means to test to see if the market are actually willing to spend money. If you link to a good affiliate sales page and people go through your site to the product and buy it, and they do it often, then you know it's a good market. Some markets may get lots of searches, but predominately just from tire-kickers, people who aren't interested in spending money. This works as a way of seeing if the market is going to make you money in the long run.
Ed also took us through Amazon.com, for those people who couldn't find a product on clickbank.com. As you would be aware Amazon.com sell almost everything, and up until I saw the video I didn't realise they had an affiliate program. They only pay out commissions of 10%, which is paltry compared to the commissions you can get on clickbank - but as I mentioned, this isn't about getting money, it's just about recording the amount of sales. I do understand why Amazon's commissions are so small compared to clickbank, though. Amazon deal in real products, whereas clickbank deal in digital products. Digital products are a lot cheaper to produce, and are usually produced by the person who is selling them, therefore they can dish out high commissions to entice affiliate marketers to promote their products. Amazon deal in products created by others, so they have had to pay an initial wholesale fee for the product, and therefore cannot afford to hand out too big of a commission. Also, as Amazon is so HUGE and well known throughout the world, I dare say they don't need that much help selling their products anyway.
So after having a browse through clickbank I only found one product for one of my niches and none for the other - pretty much what I had expected. Amazon had plenty of stuff I could promote and so I signed up with them. Unfortunately, seeing as I'm in Australia, I only have the choice of receiving my affiliate commissions by cheque or gift certificate. If I choose a cheque I lose US$15 for each cheque they send me - so I picked the gift certificate. I figure if I actually do sell anything and make some money I can always find something in Amazon to spend it on.
So now I'm off to write my next three articles...
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