Money-Code » research

SEO Elite Review

admin — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:22:50 +0000

Some of you following along with the blog are aware that I’ve been on a buying spree lately for internet marketing tools. I’m a strong believer of “it takes money to make money”, and I’ve been trying to find ways to maximize my time and efforts, and tools are vital to this. Lately, I’ve been on a big SEO (Search Engine Optimization) kick, and finding ways to drive organic, targeted traffic to my sites.

I recently purchased Blog Comment Demon which is fantastic and Bird Feeder for Twitter followers, but I also needed a tool to help gauge and provide as much information about how my sites ranks with various keywords. This is where SEO Elite comes in. After several recommendations from friends/associates as well as reading some posts on Digital Point, I figured this was the next tool in my tool box I needed.

I’m currently using SEO Elite for two large purposes, while I discover and maximize other features. I’m primarily using SEO Elite to determine how my site ranks with the keywords I have chosen with Google’s keyword tool. The second area I use is to view other sites that compete with me and see how they rank on similar keywords. By doing so, I can potentially find where they’re backlinked.

SEO Elite also has some great tools similar to Blog Comment Demon for finding blogs and other potential linking sites.

Another key feature, but I haven’t worked on this yet, is to be able to submit articles to article directories with a centralized tool. Part of streamlining things is staying organized, and that’s my goal for July is to establish a ‘process’ and work a ‘plan’ for SEO to my sites. By using tools to help organize, centralize and optimize I feel this will help in the big picture of my internet marketing ventures.

I would highly recommend purchasing SEO Elite. It’s a quality product with tons of video and audio tutorials. I’m just scratching the surface and I’m thoroughly impressed with this piece of software by Brad Callen. If you purchase this, and have any questions, I’ll be more than happy to try to help you out.

The 4 Hour Workweek

admin — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 01:45:52 +0000

Today, I wanted to talk about “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Timothy Ferriss. I’ve heard this book tossed around over the last year, but never paid too much mind to it. A few days ago, Shoemoney mentioned listening to this book and he was able to take a few things away from this book, so I thought I would take a more serious look at it. Another book that Jeremy mentioned in the past that I was very pleased to read was “The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to QUit (and When to Stick)” by Seth Godin. Since that was a real eye opener, I thought this would be the same.. and I was right.

The 4-Hour Workweek is a great read or listen. There is some fluff and hype, but the core concepts are very ground breaking yet simple. In a very small nut shell, this books discusses the idea of freeing your time by removing the distractions in your day to day work life. How to prioritize tasks, and how to deal with fears that you’re purposely avoiding.

This book hit so many nails on the head it was unbelievable. There were a few concepts that I really took to heart. I’ll be paraphrasing, but the concept of creating tasks solely to avoid tasks that you don’t want to do, or are afraid to do. Another concept is the idea of picking up tasks to “stay busy” versus being productive. I’m definitely guilty of all of these things. It also teaches you to “unplug and reset” your brain. Since many distractions are related to our need for information and communication, it stresses the idea of going “off line” so to speak. Reading email on a extreme limited basis, avoiding meetings, etc to free up your time to do the “hard” things in a timely manner.

This book isn’t about being lazy and working only 4 hours a week and being wealthy, it’s about prioritizing time and maximizing your time to be extremely productive, which in turn will FREE up time for fun stuff.

As a affiliate or internet marketer I thought this book was very informative and informational. I’m starting to realize how some of the solutions listed in the book can greatly improve my situation. Some are scary or difficult, but I will definitely give them a shot. I was pleasantly surprised by how inspirational this book is. Seeing things in different view point (talking about the ‘new rich’ vs. the old rich), is a perfect example. If you’re look for some motivation, I would recommend this book. “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich” by Timothy Ferriss.

Incoming search terms:

4 hour work week codes
the 4 hour work week code

No related posts.

Diversifying beyond affiliate marketing for additional earnings

admin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:55:46 +0000

Today I was thinking about different areas where to make earnings. I noticed on Twitter that someone posted a update regarding a freelance service. After checking it out (related to cutting layouts into valid XHTML code templates) I started to think that becoming a affiliate or internet marketer goes beyond just the sales of products or services.

Many affiliate marketers have skills that others lack. Skills that are valuable to other internet or affiliate marketers but also skills that go beyond this field and into the standard workings and requirements of the internet itself.

To me, a internet or affiliate marketer is a entrepreneur that is trying to find opportunities to make a living solely by their own means. No bosses, no schedule but based only on the desire of calling their own shots. As of now, I’m still not a full time affiliate marketer, but I am a full time entrepreneur. I’ve owned my own web development business for five years, and I added affiliate marketing to the business as a way to diversify. And now I’m want to make that a focus. But you could definitely look at it the other way. Affiliate marketers should definitely look at selling services to make a few dollars to diversify your income streams.

Looking at the freelance service, I was thinking that many marketers, could do simple coding project, or design work, or content writing that has nothing to do with the affiliate marketing field and make a few dollars during down times. Also this could provide networking opportunities or potential niche research with the clients you’re working with.

I already mentioned Wealthy Affiliate’s Jobs area that provides a venue for programmers and designers to be hired within the affiliate community. Digital Point might be another place to look for these opportunities. Freelance sites are all over the internet and could be a wealth of opportunity.

The bottom line, diversity is very important be it niches or affiliate strategies, but diversifying your income stream could save your bacon.

Keeping focused and staying positive.

admin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:03:27 +0000

Keeping focused and staying positive. These are two areas I really think about often to keep my head in the affiliate marketing game. At times, this can be difficult, but it’s a definite must.

Keeping focused. If you’re not focused you’re wasting time and are very unproductive. My focus is contingent on a lot of factors, including sleep, diet, emotional state, etc. Identify why you lose focus at times, and identify how you get it back is critical for managing it. Focus is directly related to production, and production is related to earnings. I like to produce. This can be sites, ads, PPC campaigns, SEO work, directory submissions or entries for this blog. If I’m focused, I produce, and when I produce, I earn.

Staying positive. Affiliate marketing can be a very tough area to be successful in. Not to mention that it’s not ‘quick’ but slow. Work you do today will pay off months down the road at times. This can sometimes give the illusion that you’re not earning after you’ve committed hard work and energy in projects. The important thing is to not wait for the instant gratification (even though that can be nice and fun) but to stay focused (see above) and continue to be positive, even if your earnings are coming in right away.

I personally believe a positive “can-do” attitude leads to better focus and production.

Looking for opportunities

admin — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:00:51 +0000

When I talk about opportunities, I’m talking about new areas to generate income in the affiliate marketing space. When I travel, talk with people or do something simple as watch TV, I’m always on the look out for new opportunities to diversify my affiliate marketing portfolio of sites or PPC campaigns.

Here are some of the areas I focus on.

TV Commercials
You’ll generally see your basic commercials about weight loss, dating, fitness, etc. There are reasons those commercials play when they do. They’re targeted to a demographic of that particular program. This could help in how you target your PPC campaigns, and to find ‘hot’ offers.

Antique Displays
I was recently on vacation and was walking past various antique stores. In their window displays I would see ‘themes’ of ‘hot’ collectible antiques. I took mental notes of these potential hot niches for EPN store fronts.

Talking to people about their hobbies
I have many friends that are into many different hobbies. Hobbies that I never heard of, which could be great opportunities for affiliate marketing (both used and new items). Your friends could possibly help in content creation or at least you can ‘interview’ them for a general description of that particular hobby. You can also find out what is widely needed for that particular hobby, etc.

Google
I spend a lot of time on Google, as I imagine a lot of you do as well. Pay attention to your searches, but mostly pay attention to the ‘Sponsored Ads’. Take note of high or low competitive areas. Take note on how they write the ad.

Twitter
I’ve recently become a avid Twitter enthusiast, and I’m really impressed with the information that pops up there. Pay attention to trends, discussions that could be beneficial to follow. Learn from others on Twitter to see how they promote their goods or services while you’re exploring new niches or opportunities.

There are lots of ways to find new opportunities, but the first step is to open your eyes and ears, and identifying these potential hot spots. After you’ve identified some potential opportunities, convert those to test sites or campaigns. Identify, digest, produce then repeat.

Analyzing analytics for additional niches

admin — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:36:56 +0000

Today I wanted to talk about Google Analytics. If you any of you are NOT using Google Analytics, please stop now and create a account. It’s free and extremely easy to add to your sites and the information you can get from this is amazing! You can learn more here:

http://services.google.com/analytics/tour/index_en-US.html

One of the big features I like to go over is the “Traffic Sources Overview” report. Viewing this report will give you Keywords analytics. What did users type to reach my sites. Generally, it shouldn’t be a surprise. If you have a site about widgets, you might expect to see “Widget” as a keyword. But, if you adjust the report to view a larger span of time, you might find some interesting keywords. For example you might find specific or long tail keywords like “xyz widget 123″, or more generalized terms like “automotive widgets”.

I like to view these keywords for possible niche opportunities. “Automotive widgets” could be a productive niche site. I also then like to plug that keyword into Google to see how my site ranked for that keyword. If it ranks high with many searches, it could be a opportunity to create a new site and then link to it from your existing site. I ran several reports last night and found four new niche opportunities. Today, I’m planning on doing additional research to see if those would be worth developing into sites. It’s important to test the waters. After doing research and determining it’s worth development, create and launch the site, the results might lead you into new directions with niches you would have not thought about in the past.

I want to point out that I’m identifying only one small report in Google Analytics, there is tons of useful data there. Take advantage of it!

Clicks and sales down, time to evaluate and adjust and react.

admin — Sun, 03 May 2009 17:21:13 +0000

Starting in April, I noticed a significant dip in commissions, initially from EPN. Reviewing posts at the EPN forum, I started to see others with similiar observations and complaints. Coincidentally there was a reporting error (for a small range, commissions were double posted). Currently the sites and network that I have created has been incredibly steady. Earlier in the month I did not see a decrease in traffic or clicks, just a decrease in commissions.

As the month progressed, I started to see a dip in other areas. Google Adsense was showing a drop in clicks as well but earnings are still holding up? My Commission Junction stats were also showing similar results. Immediately I thought it could have been due to Google slap, but checking Google, all of my sites are still indexed, and I’m still receiving organic traffic. Like wise, my paid YSM clicks were down as well. What does this mean?

During April of 2008, I experienced the worst month of my affliate career. I initially blamed it to the transition from CJ to EPN, but it’s odd that I’m seeing similar results 12 months later. It’s definitely not as bad as 2008, but it’s a very significant drop compared to March/2009.

Here are my theories, and I would love to hear yours if you have any.. or if you’re experiencing similar results.

- United States economy is finally hitting the affiliate marketting sector. Currently, all of my sites have been primarily targetting US traffic. People are making less money and are possibly losing their jobs. Internet spending is down. This could be the reason why my paid YSM clicks are mirroring my earnings dip. Oddly, my Google Adsense clicks are down, but the earnings are still in the averages. I’m thinking that people are compensating the lower click throughs by raising their cost per click… and because of that I’m making more or the same but with less clicks? I’m still digging into this one.

- The other theory, which I’m not leaning towards is the tax month. April 15th is the tax deadline, and often if you’re paying, you’ll wait to make that payment at the end. I’m not liking this theory too much since the clicks/traffic seems to be similar across so many of my niches.

I’ve identified a problem and a threat to my earnings. It’s time to react and compensate this issue. Possible solutions…

- Create more sites now, and take advantage of this knee jerk reaction to produce more sites. Find new productive niches?

- Find the highest performing sites and attempt to improve them. This is a bit sketchy, since I don’t want to negatively impact the performing sites. I don’t want to focus on the low performing sites, since I want my efforts to be financially productive during this weird phase. I would work on the low performers as a experiment when I have free time. I need to turn the ship around now.

- Adjust my PPC campaigns. I could be targetting the wrong customer base or I’m being buried by other PPC marketers. So I might need to gamble a bit more and pay for higher priced keywords to gain those sales and commissions.

The bottom line, it’s not a time to whine and complain. It’s time to see what the problem is and see if you can fix it.

Are you guys seeing similar issues with April (and now May)? Love to hear your thoughts, so please comment!

Thanks!
hanji

Incoming search terms:

epn sales down

Getting Inspired

admin — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:44:55 +0000

Looking at my earning reports, I’m well on my way to the $20K mark for 2008 (gross not net) sales. I felt this was actually pretty good with the set backs this year. I think if eBay didn’t move away from CJ, Google AdSense terms/privacy change didn’t happen and finally the YSM change didn’t mess with my expense bottom line, I would have done much better. I know those factors slowed my development. In fact, today, I launched my first EPN site since the cutover. Even with the run of bannings, and my confidence at a all time low with this affiliate program, I still punched a site out. Earlier this year, I would stress that building was the key. Build and learn, but always stay proactive. I know after the summer, I took a more passive role and maintained my earnings, while not building to earn more. That was a mistake, but I think it was necessary to ensure that these changes didn’t drastically impact my portfolio first.

Areas that I’ve been focusing on to help light a fire under me was to first join the Wealthy Affiliate program. I have to say that this is a fantastic program, and I have learned a lot. I have not been able to see great returns at this time, but the foundation is in place. I know that down the road, I will be focusing on PPC/Offers more, and this was the BEST way to understand some aspects of the game. If you’re interested in affiliate marketing, I strongly recommend joining.

The latest change I’ve done was to finally upgrade my PopShops account from Pro to Enterprise. This allows me to have multiple PIDs for my CJ campaigns by offering profiles per shop. I’ve been running PopShops on one domain, and it has shown a profit every month. The interface at PopShops is awesome to say the least. I’ll be branching off into more affiliate store fronts using Commission Junction, Google Affiliate Network and LinkShare. The commissions are so much better that EPN, and I need to focus on diversification within this 4th quarter.

I’ll also be establishing some goals for 2009 in the next few months. I’ve stated before that setting realistic goals is important, as well as planning different ‘angles’ on achieving those goals.

This month, a good affiliate friend of mine and myself, have created our own 30 day challenge. This was primarily set up to motivate while learning from each other. We set up a simple challenge where in 30 days we need to launch 3 sites and see a return net of $100 combining all 3 sites. We will compare notes when we’re done, by showing niches, techniques and strategies on how we did it. I think we’ll both be able learn a ton from each other! So far I have launched 1 site out of 3 (eBay site). I’ll be launching a PopShop site for number 2, and a product review comparison site for number 3. I’ll promote all with YSM/MSN PPC as well as general SEO/link building. If this works, I can see us pushing the sites and/or returns higher in the months to come.

Hopefully, all of you are still forging ahead and trying new things. To make it in affiliate marketing (just my opinion) you need to stick with it and constantly push yourselves.

Using Google Alerts

admin — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 17:01:59 +0000

Today I want to talk about a tip that you don’t see discussed too often. That is the use of Google Alerts. If you’re building a blog or store front and working for a niche, Google Alerts can be a handy tool to help give you content to write about!

As we know content is very important to get that needed organic search traffic, but coming up with content is not the easiest thing to do at times, especially if you’re super busy. It’s hard to feel the pulse of a certain niche you’re working in, even if that niche is something that you’re very interested in, etc.

With Google Alerts, you can enter a keywords to be alerted on. Let’s still run with my ‘Star Wars’ theme as my paging example the other day. When you enter the phrase ‘Star Wars’ in Google Alerts, you can be notified by daily digest or ‘as-it-happens’ (I personally like to receive instant notification — so it can fuel my ADD througout the day). You can also select a type of web content to be alerted on. They are:

News
Blogs
Web
Comprehensive
Video
Groups

Now after you’ve selected your type you should be good to go (obviously you need Google Account set up). When Google runs across your term, you’ll be sent a email notification with a link or links to the site that has your alert term. This can be useful in a couple of ways. Number one, this can get you nice NEW info to blog about. And secondly, it can send you to blogs where you can comment on. Please don’t do stupid comment spam, but provide useful contribution to the topic and other comments, but you might be able to add a trackback or provide a URL back to your site for critical backlink development.

This tip is nothing new, but rarely see people talking about it for some reason. I’ve been using alerts for about 4 months, and seeing some good backlink development from it, but most importantly, it’s giving me ideas and directions for article writing on web stores and blogs.

PubCon 2007

admin — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:34:33 +0000

I’ve been thinking about registering for PubCon 2007 in Vegas this year. $699 for early registration (till Oct 15). Have any of you attended past PubCons? Is it worth the dough to go?

I personally want to go to actually talk to people that are interested in what I’m interested in doing. Maybe share some ideas.. and see if I’m doing some idiotic things or any ideas to get on the right path to success. Plus, I’d like to meet some Shoe, Chow, etc, which I understand will be there. I don’t think any of them are speaking, but I’d love to shake their hands and say you’ve been an inspiration.

If any of you have ever attended or planning on going, please comment. I’d love to hear your ideas.