Here is the link to the meetup.  I would love to see this thing grow over time.  I know there are plenty of affiliate marketers and small business owners in Cincinnati who would enjoy this networking chance.  It is not always easy to meet others when you are trapped behind your computer all day, and this meetup should make it easier.

If you are not in Ohio, then maybe this post will inspire you to start your own group.  I paid the $45 for meetup.com only because I don’t have the time to market this thing.  I have tried posting in Craigslist before without success, so I thought I would try another angle.  We’ll see what happens…

 http://internetpro.meetup.com/64/

Because I rely on the search engines for traffic instead of PPC, the formula is bit more complex for me.  Generally I set up a simple website with a main page and 4 or 5 articles to start with.  I will then submit another 5 original articles to places like ezinearticles.com to build a small traffic flow.  This process usually takes a couple of days and my goal is to earn two or three sales.  Obviously this isn’t much, but it does let me know that the sales page converts on some level.  Ideally I would see a conversion for every fifty clicks to the offer.

Now I know there is some potential and I can test out some new keywords.  Let’s say I built a site about attracting women.  If I targeted the phrase “attract women” and had some success, then I will continue my other online strategies to boost traffic for this term.  Once I average 50 visitors a day I can gauge if this keyword will produce on a consistent level.  If it doesn’t then I know it is time to try the next approach.  Remember, I have already experienced some sales so I know the product has potential.

The second phase of testing involves trying a new keyword to increase conversions.  In the example website above, I might write some content focusing on the phrase “meeting women” or “dating women”.  Even though this may seem like a subtle change, it could be all it takes to increase sales.  If your sales spike after promoting these terms then you know you need to focus more on the new terms.  If conversions decline, then perhaps you hit the nail on the head from the beginning.

They key is to keep throwing new keyword content into the mix and finding what sticks.  Even though your site will start slowly you can still measure results between the different terms.  Always think in future volume.  How proportionate are the conversions to the time and money you spend on them.  If you are in a niche where you can easily get five hundred visitors per day, then you might only expect 1 in 300 to buy.  If however it takes a lot of work to get steady visitors and only 1 in every 100 convert, then it might not be worth your time.

It is not always easy to pick a proven winner in affiliate marketing.  Everyone writes and thinks about things differently.  So while your buddy might convert on every 30 clicks for a product, your particular style and strategy might not even reach 1 in 100.  That being said, it might be worth it if it was easy for you to gain your 100 visitors. 

It is all about how much time and effort is involved when measuring productivity with article marketing and SEO.  The only thing you have to be cautious of is giving up on a project too early.  You could literally wake up one day and find yourself in the top 5 search results and your sales steadily growing.  So let a project simmer if you are getting frustrated.  Submit it to 700 directories and work on something else for a few months.   Once your site climbs the SERP’s it could be whole different story.

If there is one thing I have learned over the past year as an internet marketer it is that backlinks are the single most important aspect of search engine optimization.  Keyword selection and on-site SEO optimization are helpful, but nothing is more powerful than hundreds of links pointing to your website.  With that I mind, I focus nearly all of my efforts on building as many possible.  Again, I only invest my time and energy on this tedious process after my first phase of testing has shown results.

The good news about building links is that many of the tasks can be outsourced.  This is key for me because I only have a couple of hours a day to dedicate to affiliate marketing.  Sure you drop a few hundred dollars doing it this way, but the time it saves is well worth the price in my opinion.  Here is my checklist for each site:

- Build 1 Squidoo lense with a unique article linking to my site.
- Build 1 Weebly website “ “
- Build 1 Hub Page “  “
- Submit a PDF article to Scribd “  ”
- Submit an article to Gather under one of my themed profiles
- Create a MySpace page with 5 blog entries and 250 friends (link back to my site)
- Submit site to 500 directories using this guy
- Add 5 to 7 more articles to my main website
- Submit each new article to 50+ social bookmark sites (1 article per week)
- Hire a link builder from GAF to get 10 PR2, 5 PR3, and 2 PR4 links (about $150)

This entire checklist is completed over a period of about 45 days.  If things go well then I typically see a steady increase in both traffic and sales.  Ideally the project will earn at least $300 per month, which is more than enough to justify investing more work into climbing the SERP’s.

I hope this helps some of you who are struggling with how to generate traffic to your websites.  Of course you already know how much money I make online, so there is no sense pretending that these strategies have made me a millionaire. Nonetheless, I am excited about the future and this is the template that has worked for me.  If you need a more comprehensive plan for building a money-making website, then I recommend reading Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate.

Feel free to contact me with any questions.

I usually start a new project by identifying an offer or product that catches my eye.  This could be because I know it is selling well or simply because I am intrigued by what the publisher is offering.  I follow this up with research on how many websites/affiliates are promoting it and using the Google keyword tool to get an idea of how popular a niche is in terms of search volume.

Once I feel confident that there is adequate demand for the offer I build a quick website with either XSitePro or Wordpress.  Almost all of my sites follow the same format.  I use the home page to briefly discuss the problem that people searching for my keywords typically have, and I conclude by highlighting the affiliate product that provides a solution.  Sometimes I “review” three or four similar offers and other times I just provide one solution.  Either way, I get paid when they click on the affiliate link and purchase what I recommend.  Pretty simple stuff.

Since I rely almost exclusively on search engine traffic, it is important that I provide enough unique content to capture adequate traffic.  I usually start by including five articles of about five hundred words each. This seems to be enough to get about forty visitors a day, which provides some insight into whether or not the project is worth my time.  I also add a stock photo to each article and name it with the keyword phrase that the content focuses on.  This helps to provide some traffic from image searches on the topic.

After the website is built I submit five unique articles to ezinearticles.com and isnare.com.  I target each one towards a different angle or keyphrase that potential customers might search for.  I also bookmark each one of my website articles on social bookmarking sites.  Generally I submit each one to fifty sites at a rate of one article per week.  By the end of this cycle the site has been live for about two months. 

Ideally, I will have generated enough sales to start investing more time and money into the project.  If sales have been slow (or in rare cases non-existent) then I let the site “simmer” for a few months.  I’ll make some final tweaks to the sales page and wait and see if a miracle happens.  Every once in a while a project will seem like a bust but then all of sudden the Google-effect takes over and it begins to capture steady traffic and sales.  This is when I reinvest my efforts and try to take it to the next level.

In my next post I will write about the things I do with the profitable projects…

There are probably quite a few newbie affiliate marketers out there like me…you have tackled the introductory steps to making money online, but you are having trouble getting to the next level.

You’ve tried and succeeded at some level with bum marketing, SEO, and maybe even building traffic.  The problem is the whole process feels like you are running in place.  You keep doing things that have worked before, but for some reason the results haven’t multiplied.

This is exactly how I feel…but I’ve got to tell you why I am excited for 2008.

Over the holidays I bought an ebook, which is something I swore I would never do.  The sales page connected with me from the start and I simply couldn’t control my curiosity.  I was prepared to throw $30 out the window and laugh at my gullibility…but instead I was floored.

The book is Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate and I highly recommend it for anyone who has found some small scale success online but strives to get to the next level.

The sales page alone has more solid strategies in it than most of the guru blogs and forums.

Well worth $30.  I think I have read it over five times and I just launched my latest site following the guidelines.  The techniques are built for long term success, so I don’t have a million dollar check to show you today, but I will be updating you on the results.

Check It Out

After finding only limited success with building multiple sites across different offers and niches, I have decided to tighten my focus for 2008.  I am no longer going to simply choose an offer, build a site, and promote it for a few weeks.  This strategy has not increased my income very fast, and I am starting to realize that you really need to saturate a niche in order to succeed.

Ironically enough, the first affiliate website/project that I built has been my most successful.  After reading insights from the different guru bloggers I now understand why it has worked and my other ventures have failed.  When I started my first venture, my entire focus was on one project.  I wrote a nice array of content for the website as well as the article directories.  I also took the extra time to build niche pages across other free platforms like blogger, squidoo, and hub pages.  Although I doubted the return on my efforts for quite some time, I eventually woke up one day and found my site pulling in steady traffic from Google.

For some reason I chose not to follow this template for my other ventures.  I have spent the last four months sifting through affiliate offers and starting two or three projects a month.  My theory of course was to cast a wide net…but it has not produced nearly the return I was hoping for.  So while it has taken me some time to see the error of my ways, 2008 is going to be a different story.

I have already begun laying the groundwork for my next project, and the focus is on building an entire network of related internet properties.  This is going to take a significant amount of time, but I am feeling pretty confident that it will succeed.  The hardest part is going to be writing the content for multiple outlets. 

One thing I discovered with my first site is that you only need to update your feeder sites regularly for the first few months.  After that you can let them simmer and focus solely on your main money maker.  Of course you have to patient with getting only 25 visitors a day for a while…this is the hardest part.  But once you get listed high enough in the search engines the money begins to flow.

So that is my unofficial resolution for 2008.  Spend more time building a network for each project, and waste less time jumping from pond to pond.  I have also learned some important lessons about choosing niches based on competition levels, which will give me a better chance to excel with each new venture.

Perhaps some of you find yourself treading water while you constantly try new products to promote.  If this is the case I recommend taking your top three performers and building other sites that feed into them instead of trying a new niche.  It is much more profitable to expand on something you know works as opposed to blindly throwing darts.  Trust me…I’ve tried both ways!

I have spent a substantial amount of time building up a particular site of mine in the past two months.  I was drawn to the niche because even though the core subject is relatively competitive, there was not a lot of affiliate competition in the market.  The highest search results are filled mostly with reference websites and people who wrote their own books.

When I first started I wrote a couple of articles promoting the site and then I decided to let it simmer until it generated some sales.  Fortunately, I made my first sales right out of the box, which lead me to invest more time and effort into the project.  It is interesting because I did not have a lot of confidence in the product, but through the Clickbank marketplace I could tell that it was generating some ok sales for other affiliates.  Once I made a few sales of my own, I started to get excited that I had found a winner – low competition and a $40 payout per sale. 

But as time has passed I am starting to realize that this is unlikely to ever be a high margin website.  The number of conversions per visitor is poor and they have gotten even worse after I added a mailing list opt-in.  My only real hope is that the conversions will improve once the traffic increases over time.  So far I have only managed to get one of my websites to rank highly in Google, but that single one has been a steady performer ever since.  I am hoping the same will happen with this erratic one as well. 

But all this leads back to one question – should I even bother to bust my hump to promote a site with sporadic earnings?  Sure I have done a lot of work to get it to the meager level it is at, but would the time and energy I would spend to on it in the future be better spent on something else.  Affiliate marketing, especially when using long-term SEO strategies, can lead to a lot of internal conflict for the marketer.  On one hand you don’t want to give up on a site that you have spent hours on, but the flip side is that you don’t want to waste any more time on a dud product.  Your pride can urge you to keep going forward even when your conscience tells you that you should face reality.

In this particular case I am going to tweak some things and give it until the end of the year.  I plan on moving my email opt-in lower on the page so that people will see the affiliate offer first and hopefully make a spontaneous purchase.  I am also going to tweak the sales page to be a little more aggressive.  From there I will continue to promote as usual and see what happens in the next 45 days.  Perhaps there is still a chance I can make it work.

I love reading the different webmaster and affiliate marketing forums.  Not only can you get some great insights, but you can also learn from the mistakes of others.  The most common scenario I see from people who struggle making money is their constant obsession with what everyone else is doing.  They want to know step by step how to make a million dollar website.  While I wouldn’t mind reading a book that details just that, I am also realistic enough to recognize there is an element to this industry where you have to rely on your own intuition.

It seems to me that the most insightful forum and blog posts I have read all share the same thing in common.  The author gives some great tips, but then follows them up with some valuable advice…get creative.  Too many affiliate sites are all the same (including some of mine), and I think the average internet user has become overexposed to the millions of bait-and-switch sites that saturate the web.  This is the exact reason why I have begun to experiment with some alternatives to the standard affiliate website format I have been using.  It has become obvious to me that you really do need to come up with something creative and eye-catching if you are going to breakthrough to the next level in this field.

So what makes for a creative affiliate website?  Well first of all, I don’t have one so I wouldn’t know!  That being said, I do have some of my own concepts that I am trying to integrate into my next two projects.  First and foremost, I want to offer value to the visitor.  This means they will be glad they stopped by my site and will hopefully come back or tell a friend.  Secondly, I want it to be targeted enough to rank well in the search engines and realize a nice flow of traffic.  I have learned though experience that traffic really makes a huge difference in terms of sales (duh), but it is not easy to build traffic to a sales-pitch site.  Even more difficult is gaining backlinks to these types of sites.  Thus, I am now focusing on content first since it is much more likely to build sustainable traffic and generate backlinks on its own.

Of course this is all just theory on my part.  I could average 1000 unique visitors a day who have no interest in clicking on any of my affiliate links, and this would leave me with the greatest idea that never made a penny!  But considering how much time and effort I spend on begging and pleading people to clickthrough to another website, I welcome the prospect of attracting thousands of visitors who actually want to stay for a few minutes.  I just need to hope that some of then will be in the buying mood.

First, I got burned once again by having a site built entirely around an affiliate program.  The culprit was again AzoogleAds, who canceled a program I had just started to cash in on.  It was an awesome offer where the program paid $15 per sale…no matter how much the customer spent or what they bought. 

After a few months of experimenting with my site, I had just reached the point where I was getting steady traffic and sales.  I was looking forward to the possibilities…until the offer was pulled this weekend.  The only good news is that I learned from past mistakes and signed up with another pet meds affiliate program a couple weeks ago as a backup.  The kicker though is that they only pay 12% of the sale total, which has averaged out to be about $5 per transaction.  (Sigh)

I also found out last week that one of my primary Clickbank affiliates raised the price of his product as well as the commissions to affiliate.  Why is this bad news?  Well it shouldn’t be, except it appears the new price has lowered conversions by almost half!  So while it is great that I am earning a couple extra bucks, it doesn’t matter much when I am only making half the sales.  It has only been a week since the price increase, but I think I will send the guy an email if the poor conversion rate continues.

So the bottom line is that the first week of November has been a complete bust.  Considering this month also has a major holiday within it, I don’t think I will be breaking any records.  It is getting to be that time of year where you need to have a shopping site to make the best money, and that is where my heavy investment into Clickbank is going to cost me.

Despite all the negative news, I am excited about two new website projects I have coming up.  Neither one deals exclusively with an affiliate offer, so I should be more protected from these major setbacks I have been experiencing.  The new goal is to create a value service for the visitor and hope that I can draw thousands of visitors.  Not all of them will be shoppers, but the law of averages says that some of them will be.  The best part is that I will be able to rotate ads and offers, so it won’t matter if one of them doesn’t convert or gets cancelled.  I’ll keep you updated on progress.

I probably spent three hours going through my website changing all of the affiliate links that I dropped in pages and posts.  I purposely took my time to avoid having to go back through the process again.  However, much to my dismay I am still getting 5 to 10 clicks a day reported by the old provider.  They do redirect these clicks to another offer, but it really is a waste of targeted traffic. 

The bigger issue is that I can’t find what links are producing these clicks!  I have gone through every post twice now (all 83 of them) without any luck.  Since I use very basic tracking codes (post, banner, sidebar, etc) it doesn’t really help me find the source.  Even worse is that I gave the site a major overhaul this summer and some of the tracking codes are left over from the old site.

The bottom line is that you shouldn’t be lazy with tracking codes!  Make them as targeted as possible not only to track performance, but to make your transition between offers much easier.