Karlonia.com

Yesterday I received an email from one of my affiliate networks which seems to indicate that the merger between Google and DoubleClick is now officially complete. Back in April, Google announced that it was paying $3.1 billion for the online advertising company DoubleClick in a move that initially drew skepticism from various privacy advocates and the European Union but was eventually approved by regulators. The merger was seen by many in the business community as a strategic attempt by Google to expand beyond its core operations in search and into the market for online display advertising, something that DoubleClick had managed to do relatively well.

Meanwhile, back on May 16 I had joined the DoubleClick Performics network in order to take part in the Barnes & Noble affiliate program while also gaining access to a plethora of other high-end companies offering affiliate programs with widely varying commission incentives and qualifying criteria. Although the recent email states that the platform for our accounts will continue to be hosted at ConnectCommerce.com, DoubleClick Performics will now be officially renamed and operated as the Google Affiliate Network. There will also be changes to the user interface happening over the next few weeks that reflect the changeover to Google. Here is the full text of the email update from the new company’s Group Product Manager:

We are pleased to introduce Google Affiliate Network . Effective Monday, June 30, 2008, DoubleClick Performics Affiliate will operate as Google Affiliate Network. The integration with Google’s brand is a reflection of efforts to quickly assimilate our business and teams, as well as reinforce Google’s commitment to the Affiliate channel. Together with our new colleagues at Google we are creating new opportunities for monetization, expansion and innovation in Affiliate Marketing.

Within the next couple of weeks you will see some exciting changes to the user interface reflecting the new brand. The platform will continue to be hosted at www.ConnectCommerce.com, but will eventually migrate to a google.com product url.

As noted in earlier communications, DoubleClick Performics’ Search operations are being spun off and sold to a third party. While many advertisers have relationships with both DoubleClick Performics’ Affiliate and Search, there have always been separate account teams and product-specific specialists servicing clients’ search and affiliate programs. These teams remain intact. While the formal separation will occur when the Search business is sold, the businesses are functionally separate today.

We are proud of what we achieved as Performics and this name change signals a new milestone. Google provides world-class resources and enables us to continue to attract the best talent to support our advertisers and publishers. Now as part of Google we have an exciting and unprecedented opportunity to advance our industry. We remain committed to ensuring you receive the quality service you have come to expect from us.

We appreciate your business and look forward to doing great things together.

Sincerely,

Chris Henger

Group Product Manager
Google Affiliate Network

This morning I received an email from LinkShare, a large affiliate network that I signed up with a few months ago. Apparently the company is appointing two people to act as co-presidents and has issued both an email notification to its affiliates and a press release to the media announcing the recent change in leadership.

Interestingly, I detected an English usage error in the very first sentence of their letter — they used the word “lead” where they were supposed to use “led”, which is the correct spelling for the past tense of this particular verb. I have marked the error in the reprinted copies of the letter and press release below with the strikethrough feature. This will make excellent fodder for my next English lesson post that is scheduled for the upcoming weekend.

Meanwhile, if you’re a webmaster who would like to make some extra money by adding some more affiliate marketing opportunities to your repertoire, you can sign up for LinkShare’s publisher membership by clicking through to their site from the banner below.

Dear Valued Partner,

I am pleased to announce that beginning today, LinkShare will be lead led by Jonathan Levine, who you may know is our CTO, and Yasuhisa “Yaz” Iida from Rakuten. They will be co-presidents.

Jonathan brings extensive knowledge of LinkShare’s technology and our Lead Generation, Affiliate, and Search businesses to the organization’s presidency. His appointment underscores our commitment to technological innovation and leadership.

Yaz brings deep experience in merchant services and sales from our parent company, Rakuten. As Executive Officer of Rakuten’s Ichiba Business Unit, he managed merchant services and sales during a period of great growth there. He will also help LinkShare continue to leverage Rakuten’s experience and resources as we grow and diversify our business. Yaz has lived and worked in the US and UK, and held senior management positions at Gilette, The Walt Disney Company, and Dyson Ltd.

On a personal note, while I will remain Chairman of LinkShare’s board, I will be stepping down from my executive roles at Rakuten and LinkShare on July 31.

Please join me in congratulating Yaz and Jonathan. I look forward to seeing many of you at the LinkShare Symposium in New York on June 24.

Best Regards,
John J-H Kim
Chairman
LinkShare Corporation

Here is the official press release. It seems that the lead/led error managed to slip past their proofreaders and copyeditors — oops!

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Following up on their earlier announcement of a new 6% flat rate commission structure for affiliates, renowned bookseller Barnes & Noble is now offering magazine subscriptions online in addition to their usual repertoire of books, music, video games, and membership options.

Barnes & Noble Magazine Announcement

We are pleased to announce we now carry magazine subscriptions online. Choose from over 1,000 print and digital subscriptions with thousands of single issues available for download. Find what you want in more than 50 categories - from Fashion & Style to Business & Money, Computers to Cooking, or Entertainment to Science. You can browse magazines by format, price range, language, or country of origin. Post banners and links to our magazine store offering savings up to 90% off newsstand prices!

In accordance with the new flat rate commission, all online magazine subscriptions will receive a commission of 6%.

Regards,

The Barnes & Noble Affiliate Team

Meanwhile, readers who do not find their favorite selections at B&N can check out Amazon’s magazine offerings, many of which can now be delivered electronically through the new Amazon Kindle.

Yesterday I received a pleasant surprise in the mail when this check arrived from Clickbank. I had not logged into my account for a while to look at the actual numbers, but it seems that I managed to make enough sales to reach the default $100 minimum threshold without even realizing it.

To get a close-up view of the check, simply click on the image. Clickbank’s current check printing font is quite small, making it difficult for me to display a properly resized image that is easily legible. Fortunately, the thumbnail feature will allow you to view the image in its original full size without requiring me to display the whole thing on the home page. This is handy for keeping the overall “weight” of web pages relatively light and reducing load times.

After I received the payment, I logged into my account so that I could find out where the sales had been made. I was pleased to see that most of the sales were coming from my pages on bum marketing techniques and how to fix the computer CPU speed. This confirms that my overall strategy of combining bum marketing methods with targeted long tail SEO is actually working, even with Karlonia playing the role of the article directory. Now I just need to find a way to scale it up so that Karlonia will finally have a respectable income and I won’t have to worry about moving to a place like Malawi and subsisting on nsima just to be able to afford basic living expenses.

One of the biggest challenges with using this strategy is that in order for the traffic to actually convert into sales, the article page needs to provide information that helps the visitors solve a real problem that they are struggling with, and then suggest a product that can help them with the solution. I have found that it is not enough to just do the SEO and throw in an affiliate link or two as an afterthought. The product(s) that are linked to from the page must match up exactly with whatever the visitors are searching for as a solution to their problems. Otherwise the page will receive traffic but will not convert.

I still have many pages that are receiving a reasonable amount of traffic but are not yet monetized. Most of them are keyword-targeted articles that have been moderately successful in terms of SEO, but the topics do not match up well with any available Clickbank products. Recently I have signed up with Amazon and Barnes & Noble as possible alternatives, but their commission rates are generally much lower than those found at Clickbank. They do have a much greater selection of products, however, and even a small commission is better than nothing.

Another alternative that I have discovered recently is PayDotCom. This program uses PayPal and works much like Clickbank in terms of offering a variety of digital products with relatively high commissions for affiliates. They also have the advantage of being available to people in countries like the Philippines that are still not allowed to sign up with Clickbank. Moreover, they pay bonuses for referring affiliates who either become vendors and sell their own products or purchase the account upgrade that is offered to new affiliates. After catching up on the posting, I will browse through their marketplace and see if I can find some relevant products to include on my currently unmonetized pages.

Last week I reported that this site had been approved for the Barnes & Noble affiliate program and that they offered commissions of 5% for most item categories. Earlier today, I received more good news in the form of an email announcing that the overall commission rate is being increased to 6% for all items:

Dear Valued Affiliate,

Great news! We are pleased to announce an exciting change to the Barnes & Noble affiliate program. Effective June 1st, all products sold on BN.com will earn a flat commission rate of 6%. That means that you will earn industry-leading payments on all of our exciting products including:

1. New & Used Books
2. DVDs
3. Music
4. Print & Digital Magazines (New!)
5. New & Used Textbooks
6. Video Games
7. Gift Cards
8. Toys
9. Home & Gift
10. B&N Membership

Now, earn our best commission from dollar one on every product we sell - there are no more product exclusions or confusing bonus tiers. As always, thank you for your feedback and continued support of our program.

Regards,

The Barnes & Noble Affiliate Team

Note: The quarterly bonus on books will no longer continue after the second quarter, but we will track and pay bonus commissions through June 30th, 2008.

This means that the items in the PC and video game categories, which had formerly earned only 2%, will now get a significant boost, and there will be no more tiered structures with regard to sales volume. The only caveat is that B&N is also phasing out the quarterly bonuses. However, in order to earn enough bonus commissions to exceed the current flat rate of 6% under the old system, I would need to make several thousand dollars in monthly sales, which is a very difficult feat for most bloggers. In effect, the new changes are like getting a 1% raise (4% for video games). For once, it is nice to see a change in terms from a large company that actually benefits the “little guy”!

Some encouraging news arrived in my email this afternoon when I received two approval notifications from affiliate programs that I applied for almost two weeks ago. One was from Barnes & Noble, the bookstore that I had mentioned briefly in yesterday’s post about shopping for books online. The other was from DoubleClick Performics, an affiliate network that includes the Barnes & Noble program along with many other advertisers. Here is the approval letter from B&N:

Dear Karlonia,

Congratulations and welcome to the Barnes & Noble.com Program. Your application has been approved.

BN.com will be using house links, for more information please click here:
http://www.performics.com/publishers/houselinksfaq-bn.pdf

How to get banners & links:

1) Click here to get creative assets: http://www.connectcommerce.com
/partner/view_related_clients.html?reltype=A&primary=getlinks

2) Once you find the advertiser, select Available Links from the Action menu, and click the Go button. The system takes you to the All Available Links page.

3) You can refine the list of links you would like to view by selecting advanced search and selecting links that meet your needs. You can search by link category, size, type and duration.

4) Once you have found a link, select the checkbox next to the desired link and click the Generate and Add to My Links button. You may select multiple links if you wish.

5) For each link, copy and paste the HTML code into your site to begin tracking. Do not click Duplicate Link unless you want to create a second instance of the link.

Should you have any questions, please take the time to review the online FAQ at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/affiliate/faq.asp . If your question is not answered in our FAQ, contact us at BarnesandNoble(at)publisher.performics.com for further assistance.

We are pleased to have Karlonia as part of the Affiliate Network and look forward to building a lasting and profitable relationship. As a Barnes&Noble.com Affiliate, you’ll enjoy the benefits of partnering with the world’s premier bookseller and a recognized leader in e-commerce.

Sincerely,

DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Program
Powered by ConnectCommerce…www.performics.com

B&N pays 5% commissions on most categories of items including books, textbooks, memberships, gift cards, music, DVD/Videos, calendars, and toys. For PC and video games the commission rate is 2%. They also offer the possibility of collecting a bonus commission of 1%-3.5% per calendar quarter (3 months) if the total sales volume generated exceeds $5,000. While this seems like a pretty high figure, at the rate my mother (and many others, judging by the crowds that I have seen at our local B&N store) buys books from these guys, it may not be too far out of reach. Meanwhile, here is the approval letter from DoubleClick Performics:

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Since most of us bloggers and Internet marketing enthusiasts have our business operations based on (surprise!) the Internet, it seems natural that our advertising would be done online also. However, as long as our websites are designed to attract readers, deliver useful information, and ultimately make money, it never hurts to look at some of the more traditional and creative offline advertising methods as a way of attracting visitors to our sites that otherwise may never have known about us. As with most of her others, this article by Cheryl Frost is primarily targeted toward brick-and-mortar small businesses, but it also presents some interesting ideas for using offline advertising that we could apply to our Internet marketing endeavors.

Marketing for your small business requires that you keep up with the times, and that means taking advantage of digital media sources such as websites and cable TV. But digital marketing should only be used as a supplement to conventional methods. Never abandon old school tactics. Remember, not all of your potential customers will be digitally oriented, and a simple OFF button can kill your marketing connection. Non-digital media keeps the line open while still providing creative ways to lure in new prospects.

TRADITIONAL PRINT MARKETING

Newspapers and Telephone Directories

Good old fashioned print marketing is still a very common way to increase sales. No respectable newspaper lacks plenty of supportive ads. Do a little research on your target newspaper’s circulation to see not only how many people purchase the paper, but also how many businesses subscribe.

Telephone directories are also heavily used these days. A decent sized yellow pages ad would be a helpful supplement to a simple address listing. You can’t include as much information as a website, but you can promote your company’s unique competitive edge in your directory ad.

Signs

Businesses that operate out of customer-oriented shops decorate their walls with signs that advertise and inform. Customers who enter your shop for one particular item will have their attention drawn to other products and services you offer. Any promotions or discounts will be noted in signs on the walls, hopefully enticing the customer to inquire about them.

When customers have to wait for your services, they have nothing to do except read. Their eyes will skim the walls for all written words, not realizing that what they are actually doing is learning. Be sure all of your signs are informative, but not misleading.

CREATIVE MARKETING

Promoting a new business requires a little creativity, but it doesn’t mean you have to hire someone to stand on a corner in a gorilla suit, waving your logo. Creative marketing means that your business logo can appear in the most natural, yet unexpected places.

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This article by Cheryl Frost discusses the importance of overall image and logo design for small businesses, which could easily be applied to either traditional brick-and-mortar establishments or to Internet marketers with virtual storefronts. It also highlights a subject that I am still grappling with; I have not yet chosen a definitive logo for Karlonia.com and need to do so eventually so that I can truly begin to advertise the site as its own brand. If you have any ideas for a logo or design that would best represent the site, please let me know in the comment section.

To ensure that your small business is memorable, that it stands out from the rest, the professional image you dress it in is one of the most important elements of marketing. Your business image encompasses everything it is remembered for — a descriptive name, creative logo, and catchy tagline. These characteristics are what make or break the longevity of your company. Give your small business a set of fingerprints, a unique identification that customers will never forget.

Names and Brands

Choose a clever name for your company but one that also describes what you do. If you are too cutesy with the naming process, people might remember the name without any recollection of who you are. The same holds true for your product names. The products your company produces become your specialty, your brand. Name your products strategically and then wear the brand well.

Business Logo

How you present your company’s name is just as important as the name itself. A logo represents the name by way of art, logotype, and color palette. You’ll need to design a logo that is visually appealing yet easy enough to read.

The graphic art of your logo starts with a symbol or icon. The logotype gives the name a unique, memorable flair. Choosing a color scheme to combine the art, type, and background can be important too in the identity of the logo. Colors are often chosen by relevance of the product (i.e. brown for chocolate, green for nature) or to support an appropriate emotional response. The right design can help etch your company name into the minds of the viewers.

To see just how influential logos are, think about some of the most famous logos. Pepsi, as a good example, has used a variety of the same logo for decades. But no matter how many ways they tried it, you could count on the red, white and blue sphere. If you took the name, Pepsi, off of the can, wouldn’t you still know what brand it was? The same holds for the Coca-Cola brand. You might think that if you removed the Coke label, it would be just a red can. But it is the specific shade of red, the carbonated impressions, and the ribbon-like white line that tells you the drink is a Coke. The cursive lettering with the last C weaving in through the last L is also unique in telling the drinker that it’s Coke. So it is the design as a whole and not the individual components that identify your business logo.

Making your logo known

Once you’ve created the perfect logo, integrate it into everything you do. The logo should appear on letterheads, advertisements, invoices, and even shipping materials. If you have a website, your logo should be on each page so the customers always know they are in the right place. Several variations of the same logo (i.e. different sizes) make it easier to imprint the logo in different places. Your logo might not be as impressive on a huge billboard as it is on a promotional pencil. So create a design that will accommodate both.

Out-market your competitors

If most of the community already knows a business like yours, why do they need you? That is exactly what you need to integrate into your marketing strategy. Create a company tagline that shows prospects your uniqueness. Make them need you.

In your advertising campaign, invent a catch phrase that plays on your customers’ emotions. Do you remember the catch phrase, “Just Do It”? Those three words had a major impact on Nike’s sales. People went around saying “just do it” because they liked the power it gave them to take charge. They weren’t as in-charge as they thought they were, of course, because they were acting on Nike’s command. Inadvertently, these Nike parrots provided free advertising for the sporting goods company simply because they had the catch phrase implanted in their brains.

When you create a catch phrase that your customers never forget, something more memorable than anything your competitors have ever invented, you will have out-marketed your competitors, causing customers to veer away from them and toward you instead.

Your business image is much more significant than any single product you offer. After all, you do want your customers to remember your product, but more importantly, you want them to remember where they got it. Make that first impression a lasting one. Be creative with your name, logo, and tagline. And when you out-market your competitors, be creative when spending the extra money you will undoubtedly bring in.

This article by Cheryl Frost provides some useful steps for developing a marketing plan that can be used by small businesses. As with her previous article Preparing Your Small Business for the Market, most of the basic ideas here can be applied to marketing on the Internet as well as in the “brick-and-mortar” offline world.

A good marketing strategy includes a good plan. Many less successful businesses jump right into advertising and promotional efforts, accosting every media source from office cork boards to national newspapers. These businesses have not thought things through and waste a lot of time and money on hit or miss tactics. If you plan your marketing strategy carefully, you can focus on the best media source for your business and the best way to lure in customers.

The following steps will help you develop an effective marketing plan, ensuring a successful and profitable return on your marketing investment:

Set Objectives

Know what your business objectives are before you start. Set objectives that are obtainable and realistic to avoid frustration and failure. Your objectives will sculpt your business image with goals such as high quality, fast delivery, or friendly customer service. Place a measurement on your objectives — i.e., five new customers per month or no more than one percent of product returns. It is easy to state that you want fast delivery, but how will you know if you’ve accomplished that goal unless you preset how long delivery should take? Don’t set goals that are barely within your reach. Start small and raise the stakes after you get a feel for what works best for you.

Analyze your business plan

Take a look at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your business plan. Consider how you might strengthen the weaknesses and promote the strengths. Opportunities should be weighed for value and return; meanwhile, take note or confront any threats to the plan. Simulate a variety of scenarios, imagining the plan in effect for a long period of time. Try to determine how your plan will be received by potential customers.

Formulate a tactical plan

You also need to plan for how to follow through with your marketing efforts. Take everything you know must be done and plan out how it will be done and by whom. You might take on your own marketing plan or you may decide to hire a firm to help. If you become your own marketing agent, lay out the steps to set the plan to action.

Review the plan

Give your marketing plan a one year test period. After which, review the plan, comparing it to sales data and any other feedback you receive. Reviewing how the plan actually works will help in your efforts to improve it. When you review, you can see the actual strengths and weaknesses, giving you the data you need to either revise the plan for next year or scrap your plan and start anew.

Like the other elements of small business procedures, marketing requires planning. Developing a proper plan will make a dramatic difference in the prosperity and success of your company.

This article by Cheryl Frost covers some of the steps necessary to plan out the practical steps in setting up a small business. Although written from the viewpoint of establishing a traditional brick-and-mortar storefront type of business, the basic ideas outlined here can be applied to Internet marketing and website development businesses as well.

Marketing your small business requires preparation and planning. The more effort you put into your marketing strategy, the more successful your business will be. Take the time to dress up your company before announcing your formal presence. Proper planning is the most important step in marketing; part of this step involves having a catchy name to attract attention and setting prices that benefit both you and your customers.

Naming your company

Although the saying goes, “you can’t judge a book by its cover,” it happens all the time. The name of your business is the cover of your book; it will be judged, because it is your potential customers’ first impression of who you are and what you do. If you are an office supply dealer with a business name of “Curley’s Fun Stuff,” how will your customers relate your title to their needs? Maybe you had a puppy named Curley once, and you wanted to honor him and also make your business sound casual. That is great for fulfilling your needs, but it’s the customer you want to please, not your long lost puppy.

The name of your company should say as much as possible about your business in 2 to 5 words. Let’s say your name is Adam and you have an office supply company that specializes in both high quality and wide variety of paper products. “Adam’s Office and Paper” tells potential customers your name, what type of business you run, and that you specialize in paper. It might not be an exciting title for you, but it is satisfying to the customer.

But you do not have to be boring when choosing your business name. You can be both creative and informative at the same time. Try a play on words, which entices people to read and reread your title. Grand Paws might be a good name for a pet grooming service, for example. This name plays on the glamorous paws of the animals, but also sounds like “grandpa.” People appreciate the extra effort businesses go through to come up with a clever name.

Product and Price

You’ve got a market and a name and a general idea of what you will sell — whether it is a service or a tangible product. Now you must determine how much you will charge.

Price is just as much a part of your marketing strategy as it is a business decision. Your prices must be competitive so you don’t scare away the customers. However, if you specialize in high quality goods or services, low cost might be less important to the customer. In this case, even high prices should be reasonable, which is what you would integrate into your sales pitch: High quality at reasonable rates.

The most important goal of your business, of course, is profit. You would like to have low enough prices to make your customers happy, but you have to consider your own costs to run the business.

Markup costs

To determine how much to charge for each item, you should have a formula to work out how much it costs to you (item plus overhead) and how much of a profit you can reasonably make.

Example: Black ink cartridges, purchased by you in bulk, 10 cases at a time. Resell them to the customer by the case:

One case of 24 black ink cartridges = $40
Markup percentage = 200%
Markup amount = $40 x 200% = $80
Cost + Markup = $120
Selling price = $120 per case.

Note that the $80 markup amount is not your profit. It should be enough to contribute toward overhead costs, such as wages, rent, and other business expenses, while still providing some margin of profit.

Manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP)

If “lowest price” is not the focal point of your business, following the MSRP is an easy way to set prices. Your prices would be average and fairly competitive. Using the MSRP would alleviate the task of crunching numbers in an attempt to always stay below or above the line.

The disadvantage of using a predetermined set of prices is that it does nothing for your company’s image. Even if price is not a consideration to your company’s edge, it is still something the customers weigh out. The manufacturer’s suggestion may not be competitive or even realistic in the current market. So although the MSRP is an option, it might be more beneficial to your reputation to put in the extra effort of calculating desirable prices yourself.

Of course, company name and prices are not the only features of a marketing plan. But they are the bookends of the strategy. You must be thoroughly prepared before marketing your business. Successful marketing always includes a good plan; without a plan, your business is likely to fail.

Today I received a newsletter from Dush Ramachandran, Vice President of Business Development at Clickbank, a well-known affiliate network for selling information products. The company is getting ready to launch Spanish language versions of their sales forms and order processing pages, making it possible for affiliates and product vendors (publishers) to target their marketing campaigns toward Spanish-speaking regions of the world. They are also introducing the ability for customers to purchase Clickbank products in other currencies besides the U.S. dollar. French and German language capabilities are set to be implemented shortly after the Spanish language platforms are in place.

This is good news for me and other Clickbank affiliates because it opens up the possibility of geo-targeting advertising campaigns outside of the usual “first tier” countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia) without having to worry as much about language difficulties. For things to become fully globalized, the product publishers will still need to create versions of their products and sales pages in other languages, but I expect this to happen fairly soon for most of the popular and well-converting products. Meanwhile, you can read about the details of Clickbank’s latest announcement in the newsletter below.

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Forums, or more specifically forum signatures, can be an effective method of bringing fresh traffic to your website from interested visitors. Admittedly, this is a method that I have underutilized for the most part, but I have enough experience with it to know that it works if implemented consistently. However, forums can also be a valuable source of information, especially for those of us who are just getting started on the path of online money making. In this brief post, I will provide links and short descriptions for three forums that I have had bookmarked for a long time and have proven to be good sources of both information and useful services for webmasters.

Digital Point.com - This popular forum primarily deals with search engine optimization and Internet marketing issues, including many topics about the search engines themselves and what is going on with them. For example, there are currently several active threads that are discussing a possible Google PageRank update that may have started a few days ago. Although such threads often contain more speculation than actual facts, if you read through them carefully they are still a good way to get feedback and confirmation from other webmasters.

In addition to keeping up with the latest search engine news, Digital Point also has an active marketplace section where you can buy, sell, or trade many different kinds of webmaster-related products or services, such as domain names, text link advertising, content creation, or even entire websites. Although it has come under some criticism from more seasoned Internet marketers for being a “newbie forum”, it can still serve as a useful venue for outsourcing certain services and obtaining them at relatively low prices. And of course if you actually ARE a newbie, it is a good place to get a general idea of what kinds of things work and what doesn’t when trying to make money from your websites.

NamePros.com - This forum was established primarily for discussion and trade of domain names, but also covers topics related to website design and development as well as online money making tips. They have an internal currency that can be purchased or sold for PayPal funds and then traded with other forum members for services. It is possible to trade for Stumbles, Diggs, or other types of traffic generating possibilities here. Once you have been registered for at least 30 days, you can even make a little extra money through their AdSense revenue sharing program that allows you to earn 50% of the revenues coming from any posts that you make. My previous post on NamePros.com discusses this forum in more detail.

Warrior Forum.com - This one has long been a haven for more experienced and intermediate level Internet marketers. Serious discussion of marketing topics can be found here, including ad copy writing, SEO, PPC, product reviews, how-to guides, and even self-improvement advice that can motivate you to make more money. In fact, it is possible to obtain information here for free or at a very low cost that would otherwise be purchased as a mid-priced (or higher) ebook by those who are relatively unaware. If you already know the basics of how to do Internet marketing, this can be a place to draw fresh ideas from and interact with others who are already having success in this particular arena.

Today Dan Moses, owner of the online marketing and traffic building program FreeClickThruClub.com, sent out a rather lengthy newsletter that reported on some of the recent happenings with the program. In the last part of the newsletter, he included this feature article that discusses some of the lucrative possibilities of having your own program or membership site.

He has given us permission to republish the article on our blogs as long as we include his author resource box, which I have placed at the end of the main text in between the two lines.

Have you ever asked yourself what it would be like to be a program owner?

Have you ever thought how it might feel to own a program of your own some day?

Have you ever wanted to own a successful Internet business, but just didn’t know how or where to start?

Do you find yourself day dreaming what it would be like to own a program online? For years I wanted to own a program online, but really didn’t have a clue at that time what I wanted to own. Finally, I met someone that could help me get started in owning a program and my life changed forever.

Becoming a program owner is so much more then just establishing an online presence. You can do that by building a list or promoting affiliate programs… no, being a program owner is like creating a masterpiece that you have control over. It’s something that you become a part of… it gets in your blood and if done right… it will become part of who you are.

In order to make the best decision on what type of program to own, several factors need to be considered. You want the most suited program for you… this program needs to enable you to perform at your peak level. Warning: Don’t create a program until you’ve answered the following five questions…

1. Would you like to earn a residual income from the Internet?

2. Would you like to build a list very quickly?

3. Would you like to create traffic on demand?

4. Would you like to build relationships with Top Marketers?

5. Would you like to achieve freedom from employment?

If you answered yes to these 5 questions then this is for you, but are you willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen?

Being a program owner is more then getting up in the morning and checking stats and sales. You have to invest your heart into your program and the time needed to make that program a huge success. At least that’s the way I’ve always done it.

People know the difference from an owner who cares for them and a owner who’s only in it for themselves and the money.

So what kinds of programs are there to own online?

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Earlier tonight I received an email from the owner of MoneyListProfits.com, a site that offers a system for increasing revenues from PTR programs. They also have an affiliate program that I joined a few days ago, which means that I have been receiving newsletter tips from the program’s founders about how to best promote the program. This seems to be one of the more informative ones so far, so I might as well share it with you here. It covers the topic of affiliate link tracking software and why it is important for affiliates to track the original sources of their traffic and sales.

As I explained in the last email, your success as an MLP Affiliate Partner is very important to all of us at MLP. We want you to succeed and we do not hate sharing our profits with you.

On the contrary, we want you to make as many affiliate profits as you can because you are helping us achieve our primary mission of reaching as many people all over the world as possible.

And in order to do that, I will be sharing with you some great tips that you can use to maximize your affiliate profits.

Today, I wanted to let you know why you should NOT use your default affiliate link. That is because we have given you the power of advanced tracking that 98.87% of the affiliate programs on the net do not provide.

With this power tool, you have the much-needed ability to change your affiliate link instead of using the same link all the time at all the places.

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Using Google AdWords is arguably the best way to quickly bring targeted traffic to a website and attempt to convert it into sales. For many people, it is an attractive and convenient alternative to conventional website building and search engine optimization. However, many Internet marketing beginners, commonly referred to as “newbies”, can easily get caught up in the hype that often accompanies the potential for relatively quick profits from Google Adwords advertising. Consequently, many of them make crucial mistakes in setting up and implementing their AdWords campaigns, which can be very costly and may lead to some of them quitting the Internet marketing business altogether. Therefore, I have assembled a list of 10 common pitfalls that you should avoid when advertising with Google AdWords or any other similar pay-per-click service.

1. Not split-testing your ads: Almost all veteran AdWords advertisers do not simply run a single campaign and hope for the best. Instead, they create two or more campaigns using the same keywords but with slightly different wording in their ads. This allows us to see which ad performs better in terms of click-through rate (CTR) and actual sales. After enough clicks have been tallied, you can simply drop the loser, keep the winner, and then split test it again against another variation of your ad. Through this process, you can consistently improve the quality of your ads over time and pay less money per click over time.

2. No tracking of conversions: The word “conversions” is one of those semi-fancy Internet marketing terms for “actual sales”. With PPC marketing, it is very important to track these so that you know exactly which of your keyword groups are profitable and which ones can be safely discarded. The most profitable keywords are not always the ones with the highest CTR.

3. Making ad groups with too many or irrelevant keywords. This common newbie mistake occurs because many people start out with the idea of throwing whatever keywords “sound good” into the group, thinking that more keywords = more traffic = more sales. Of course, this is not a very efficient way to do it and can lead to poor quality scores and unnecessary losses. A better strategy is to make several ad groups of closely related keywords and match them to the text of your ads and the landing page.

4. Mixing up search and content results: Many AdWords users will simply opt into the content network as part of their campaign. While this can increase the number of clicks received, it can also bring a lot of unnecessary expense because the content network represents a different group of visitors from those who arrive at your ads through search queries. These two networks should be placed in separate campaigns, after which the content network results can be tweaked to lower the cost per click and exclude underperforming sites from showing your ads.

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