This is interesting.
“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 [...]
Read the rest...
lurksteraz on October 13th, 2007
It seems Zac Johnson is giving away some free passes to Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas. It’s free for anyone to enter.
Here are some details:
Winners will be selected on the following dates:
- October 31st (1st FREE PASS)
- November 30th (2nd FREE PASS)
- December 7th (3rd FREE PASS)
I for one would not mind attending. Las Vegas is only a short 5 hour drive from Mesa, AZ. Being that I have never attended an event like this, it would be great to actually learn something in person.
If you’re into Affiliate Marketing, Zac’s site offers a bunch of great information, especially if you are just starting out in the affiliate world.
lurksteraz on October 13th, 2007
Since joining the ranks of affiliate marketing, one thing I cannot find an answer to, are the long, testimonial, video, screenshot super duper long sales pages everyone makes…. You know the pages I’m talking about. If you don’t, I’ll give you a hint. It’s normally a single page that takes about 5 minutes to scroll through until you find the ‘Buy’ button.
I don’t get it. I’m guessing that they work, they seem to be everywhere. Is there a history to these kinds pages? Did some super affiliate marketer one day spread the word that extra long, 82,000 words a page websites work? Are there statistics out there that prove that they work better than a normal looking website? I’m guessing so, since everyone and their mother is reproducing them to no end.
I couldn’t bring myself to creating one, simply because they seem stupid to me. You have 30 testimonials, screenshots of bank records and includes every free e-book out there. I may be missing something and if I am, please, tell me, send me some links to stats on them.
Last but not least, the email capturing just to get to checkout. This I understand, this I can deal with. I understand the purpose of gathering additional information for cross promoting products and services.
Anyways, I just wanted to throw out some questions and thoughts, if you can explain any of the above, feel free to comment, I’d be interested in some stats.
lurksteraz on October 4th, 2007
Been busy lately. In a push to make more money, have time to spend with my kid and also fund moving to Bend, Oregon, I’ve decided to leave the Search Marketing Agency I have been working at for the past 3 years. It’s a little freaky leaving a job, especially when the least amount time I’ve ever been at a job is at least 3 years.
I took a new position as online marketing director at a small start-up. So I hope this also opens doors for me to pursue more opportunities.
So, I wanted to make a quick post about SEO and re-designing an established website. Here are some of the key elements I’ve preached when someone wants to do a complete overhaul of any site. Some of these are basic, but again, worth mentioning.
1. Keep the same domain name if possible. Domain equity is important when it comes to being an authority site. Longevity plays a key role in helping you rank.
2. 301 redirect old URLs to the new corresponding URLs. This helps pass page link popularity and links to the new pages and also lets the search engines know you have new pages to index.
3. Always plan to incorporate optimization into your site. This is important since you don’t want your company to have to go back do double work. Always plan you attack to make your time as efficient as possible.
4. Update your backlinks. Go through your backlinks and see if anyone will allow you to update the anchor text. This is great for applying new keywords that you want to rank for.
5. Always build content into your site. Many times I’ve witnessed businesses rebuild a site only to use text that’s built into the images, Flash movies, ect. You should always build content.
Anyways, I just wanted to throw those out there. They’re basic, but you’d be amazed at the kinds of companies don’t do this.
lurksteraz on September 17th, 2007
Wow, apparently Blog Rush is the new thing.
Here is a blurb from the ‘About Us’ section of the site:
“BlogRush is a free service that was created to help bloggers solve their #1 need:
More Readers For Their Blog.
By adding the BlogRush Widget to a blog, a blogger can get instant distribution for their latest blog post titles across a network of related blogs.
BlogRush users earn “syndication credits” (the right to have their blog post titles shown inside a widget on another related blog) based on their own traffic (loads of the widget) as well as the traffic of other users they refer to BlogRush. Users can automatically refer others to BlogRush via special links on the widget, as well as through the promotion of a special referral URL they are given.
BlogRush is a “Cooperative Syndication Network” that rewards its users for their contributions to the network — from the impressions they provide of the BlogRush Widget to the referral of other users through 10 ‘generations’ of activity and the impressions of the widget that they provide. BlogRush was designed to be incredibly viral and to provide its users with tremendous distribution leverage to receive exposure for their blog content (onto related content blogs) that they could never achieve on their own; at least without a massive advertising budget.
BlogRush is the brainchild of Internet entrepreneur, John Reese. Mr. Reese is the founder and CEO of Income.com, a soon to be launched social network and media company for entrepreneurs. BlogRush is the first Web property of the Income.com Network, a network of sites and services to help entrepreneurs and business owners succeed. Income.com is based in Orlando, Florida.”
lurksteraz on September 16th, 2007
I’ve decided to write a little post about keyword research tools that I’ve used. I ran into a couple people that thought they were gods gift to the SEO world and everything they talked about were solid gold and they would never be wrong. When we talked about researching keywords, they were only using one tools, Yahoo Keyword Selector Tool. Well, I didn’t have the heart to tell them as this gave me an edge, but if you didn’t know, Yahoo hasn’t supported this tool in a long time. I think it’s been since January for an update. So this makes the counts a little skewed as well as seasonality being reflected.
These guys also tried to convince me that the counts were for natural search only. I had to laugh and walk away for a second. YST uses paid numbers and inflated a little to get people to buy more keywords for PPC. Although the numbers are a good reflection of a particular market, they shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Next we had talked about the Trellian keyword tool. If you have ever used this tool, it’s pretty good but limited. Anyways, these guys were trash talking the service to no ends. From the search counts being not accurate to they charge too much yet they still used it. Personally, I like this service, but everyone has their opinions. This service gathers their keywords from ISPs. One important element though is the search counts are from about 2 million users. So, do the math on 2 million users compared to however many internet users…. I think I forgot to tell these about this factor…ooops!
Now I didn’t really try to argue or attempt to correct these guys, only for the fact that they thought they were the hottest shit since sliced bread and offered no real knowledge and were just negative. These kind of people drive me nuts. I may not be the best SEO blue ribbon winner of the universe, but damn, common sense has to play a role sometime.
lurksteraz on September 11th, 2007
Well, the wife and I decided to take a trip from Arizona to Bend Oregon to scope out real estate. I’ve never been to Oregon, so if you ever get a chance, I would highly suggest going their.
So we flew into Portland and checked a few areas around the airport. Then we drove over the bridge to Vancouver, WA. Very nice place with alot of older homes. We then drove down to Salem to check out homes in the surrounding areas. They weren’t bad, but not quite what we were looking for. We found ourselves heading over to Bend, and all I have to say is Wow! We stayed there for 3 nights and we both love it. You can’t beat lots of trees, great weather, and all of the outdoor activities that are available.
So now my wife is hard at work trying to scrounge up some real estate. I guess this means I’ll have to either telecommute from my current job, find a new agency in the area OR work for myself. I’m loving the idea of working for myself but freaked out about the unknown. I’m kind of a creature of habit of wanting to have a secure job, medical insurance for the family and so on. I’m in huge debate with myself on what to do. Knowing I can probably take some contract jobs for quick cash is OK with me, but there is still that unknowing factor of not being able to pay bills.
My goal now is to save every penny I make from affiliate marketing, stash into some high yielding bank bank(ING) and save as much as I can to make this move. How could I pass up the chance to live someplace where I could hike, camp, canoe, mountain bike etc in the spring and summer and snowboard in the winter with a quick 40 minute drive? This is like a dream playground for anyone into outdoor activities. A little harder to do when it’s 115 degrees outside. Just to give you an idea of Arizona; this year broke the record of something like 35 days straight OVER 110 degrees. DAMN HOT!!
I’ll be sure to post progress on our dream move, but probably won’t happen for another 7-12 months or so.
lurksteraz on September 6th, 2007
So, since my background and profession is in Natural Search Marketing. I thought I would share some of the problems I see when people are “SEOing’ their websites and offer some suggestions on what has worked for me on my websites (not this blog).
1. Targeting 40 keywords for one web page: This is just stupid. For one, your keyword density is going to be all out of whack. Second, hos are you going to fit all of these keywords on one page? My tip: Target anywhere from 3 - 5 keywords per page. This allows you focus on one main keyword and find derivatives of the same term while keeping in mind they are terms people are actually searching for. Remember, you won’t get traffic from terms nobody is looking for.
2. Placing all of your keywords above the sites’ main body: Ugh! don’t you hate it when you visit a site that has a ton of keywords all stacked on top of the main page body. Normally these are in Bold and separated by hyphens. My Tip: actually try to work these keywords into the body copy and also into header tags. There is some importance to these.
3. Tiny little text at the bottom of pages and same color as background: Oh Brother! Although this isn’t as intrusive as the keywords above the body, but this is also annoying. When you visit a site and the page you’re on looks like it’s a million miles long and when you scroll down and there appears to be nothing there. CTRL+A reveals alot!
Well, these are just a few of the annoyances I see on some sites and I’ll post more later. Feel free to comment on some of the stupid things you’ve seen.
lurksteraz on September 6th, 2007
Thought I’d share this with you. Derek B has hit another home run with one his posts about Building An Authority Affiliate Site .
I do have to say one thing though. I’ve been reading alot of blogs about affiliate marketing there is alot of crap out there. I think DB’s site is one of the most informative I’ve read and will continue to read. I’ve noticed that there are blogs out there that all they mention is how good they do with affiliate marketing and how they have every toy known to man, yet offer nothing really informative. “I went here, I bought this” kind of posts are inspiring, but at the same time offer no substance for truly learning the craft of affiliate marketing.
Anyways, that’s my rant for the moment.
lurksteraz on August 29th, 2007
Looks like Bodog has taken a hit from someone on the ownership of the Bodog.com domain name. Calvin Ayre has issued a statement. According to some people, 1st Technology LLC is the company behind taking the domain in a $49 million dollar lawsuit. I wonder what it’s going to take for Bodog to get the name back?
I still use Bodog for some affiliate stuff, so now I need to go through and change the links out to the new domain, newbodog.com.
What sucks for them is that fact that my affiliate site and their site were actually competing for some popular keywords. I guess I’ll have to step up some efforts to make some conversions.
lurksteraz on August 28th, 2007
Have you ever started a project, completed halfway only to never return to it and finish? That’s the story of my life. I have so many projects that are just sitting out there in cyber space collecting dust. Here is what happens to me:
1. Think of something that has the potential to make some cash.
2. Start researching the market and collecting keywords
3. Start working on a layout for the website
4. Think of a new domain or niche
5. Launch the new site
6. Searching for a new domain name from line 4
7. Find a few links to the newly launched website
8. Start another new layout for domain I just bought
9. and so on
You can kind of see a pattern in the way I’ve been doing it. Work on one thing and think of something else that could be better and start working on that, and the vicious cycle continues. I call this affiliate er-web-tile dysfunction. I just can’t get it going.
Solution:
I’ve started to focus on just a few niches. Starting with building a site and then further building it out. Obviously I’ll shoot for natural rankings as this is the easiest to start with, then when the time(and money) are available I can start to throw PPC advertising at some offers. I’m sure people reading this are saying, ‘go for the ppc advertising first, instant traffic’, well unless you want to deposit some cash into my paypal, I would do it. But when money is tight, I have to shoot for natural rankings.
To start, I have 3 websites I’m focusing my effort on and are ranking already for some keywords but the high traffic keywords haven;t surfaced yet. I’ll try to post some progress reports on these, so stay tuned.
