He's asked me a bunch of questions since, including the dialogue below about affiliate marketing.
I've posted it here because I think it's similar to questions many new affiliates have when getting started trying to make money online.
On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 2:42 AM, mrigank wrote:
Hi John,
Just click on www.royalmusicalgallery.blogspot.com
I created it on Saturday.If you type royalmusicalgallery on
google you won't find that. Why?
Good job taking the first step and creating a web site! In answer to your question, Google ranks websites based on hundreds of different factors. Among these are relevancy for the search term, length of time a web site has been on the Internet, and the number of links coming into that web site.
Since your site is new, I would recommend working on the content of the site, and working on getting links to it from other sites.
You can find a list of ways to get links to your site by Googling "Ways to get free links to my web site." or by looking on YouTube for videos about how to get free web site traffic. Everyone will try to sell you their course about getting traffic through these articles, but for now, don't buy anything. Just read the articles to get an overview of how you can get traffic to your web site.
I went to GoDaddy India.I could understand that from what you told me.
1 Suppose if I make my own site www.WhateverMyDomainWouldBe.com. So
for that I will have to pay $ 10.69 (as mentioned) to GoDaddy through
PayPal.
That is correct.
2 Then, if I upload some free downloadable songs on this site which
if I already have on my site created from blogspot.
That is correct. You can put things on the site that people can download for free.
3 Then how will the website register make money form freely
downloadable songs? From the server?
It's up to you how the site will make money. Download and read the ThreeMoneyMethods report. It will help you learn more about how people make money online. However, you could run ads on a site where you are giving things away for free. That would be one way to make money from a "free resources" site.
Again, download the ThreeMoneyMethods report. It will give you a good start on all of this.
4.As you told that if the I charge for my downloadable songs/study
packages I can get the decided commission from website registrar.But
if the songs are free to download, can I make any money from that?
You don't make money from the registrar. The only way you would make money from the registrar would be to re-sell registration services through an affiliate link that directs people to the registrar. Here's an example of my affiliate link to GoDaddy. If you click this affiliate link and buy through GoDaddy, I make a referral commission on the amount of what you purchase.
You would make money by letting people pay you directly for the study packages you have created. You can let people pay you directly by signing up for a service like PayPal or Google Checkout and putting "pay now" buttons on your web site which let them pay you directly.
5.DO I REALLY NEED TO HAVE LICENSE FOR ALL THOSE SONGS WHICH I PUT ON
MY WEBSITES or I WILL HAVE TO TAKE PERMISSION FROM THE SITES FROM
WHERE I HAVE DOWNLOADED THE SONGS WHICH I UPLOAD ON MY WEBSITE or I
SHOULD TRY TO GET THE AFFILIATION TO THE WEBSITE ON MY WEBPAGE?
I'm not sure I understand this question. In general, my advice is... it's too easy to make money legitimately without trying to sell someone else's products or services without their permission.
If they have an affiliate program, you send traffic to their web site through your affiliate link and let people buy through them.
If they don't have an affiliate program, you may choose to send people to them without getting paid for it.
But you could also look at what they are selling and what is selling well for them, and create your own product which has similar information, but is a product that you developed or created so that you have the permission to sell it.
Hope that all makes sense!
One thing that will definitely help you is to download and read the Three Money Methods Online report.
]]>And then I make money when they persuade the person to buy. Pretty cool, right?
Yet still lots of people struggle to make money using this method.
So what are the challenges here?
Getting Traffic To Your Web Site
Also, lots of people are concerned with the idea that they don't know how to get traffic. While I wouldn't say getting traffic is easy, it is really not that difficult either. You can learn how to get traffic for free (link).
You also should really learn how to get targeted traffic, rather than just flooding a web site with people who have no interest in what the affiliate partner (also known as a merchant or advertiser) has to sell. But getting targeted traffic isn't really the key ingredient people are missing.
Selling the Right Product(s)
What about the products? It could be difficult to know what products to sell your customer, and you absolutely need product that people genuinely desire. As an affiliate marketer, you should promote products that are both useful and profitable for you, and hopefully solve some burning problem that the visitor has at the moment.
The #1 Most Important Factor
When it comes down to it, regardless of what you're promoting, how you're getting traffic, or how you'll be paid, the main factor to making successful sales as an affiliate is finding offers that convert really well. Finding a merchant with a web site that does split testing and strives to convert traffic to sales more effectively over time will help everything else starts to work more effectively. By promoting offers which have sales pages that convert at a mediocre level, the best you can do from an income perspective is mediocre.
When you promote a product or service as an affiliate, and that offer starts to convert 15% - 20% (or more) of the traffic you send, you will be motivated to work harder. I can guarantee that. You will want to find new and better ways to drive traffic to that offer.
You might even do some testing on your own, trying out different ads, or advertising sources, or paid traffic.
So why do most people fail?
Most people fail because they give up too quickly.
It can be SO frustrating to send traffic to web sites through your affiliate link, and the web sites simply don't convert your traffic into sales. If you put all that effort into getting people to the advertiser/merchant's web site, you should get something back in return, but frequently, their pages and offers might only convert .5% or 1% of your traffic into buyers, which would mean you would need to send hundreds of visitors before getting back something in return.
Most people see these numbers on the first few offers they promote, (or simply don't even send enough traffic to the web site), before giving up promoting an offer. Some people will try promoting another product or service (also called an offer), but seeing the same low or non-existent results, new affiliates will frequently quit entirely.
However, with an offer that converts well, Internet marketing becomes a LOT of fun!
So, how can you pick the offers that doing the best job of converting visitors into buyers?
Well, if you go to any of the major affiliate networks, you can usually see how well an offer is doing by looking at the statistics of an offer across the network. Pick the offers that are selling the most in terms of both sales volume and in commissions paid.
Then, you can test different offers on your web site or in your advertising. You can change back and forth between some of the best offers in a particular category. Record how many people click through your links, and watch how many people actually buy from the different options you're showing them.
After 100 or so purchases, you'll get an idea of which offers work the best. Once you have this, all you have to do is keep the winning offer, and discover new ways of promoting it.
Another thing you can do is simply call the affiliate manager (or the owner) for the program. Introduce yourself and let them know you are a new affiliate/publisher for their program. Let them know you only want 5 minutes of their time, and be very polite (this is the person who will pay you at the end of the month, after all). Simply ask the affiliate manager if they do testing on their web site, and how they track conversions.
If they can't give you a clear answer to those questions, it's likely they're not doing much testing, if any. You might want to move on to promote another offer if that's the case.
By promoting offers that are on pages which are designed to convert well (and to convert better and better over time), you can maximize the traffic you're sending, as an affiliate, to a partner web site. This not only helps your pocketbook, but helps the customer to get the product they really want, and helps the merchant to discover what's working and what's not, so that the traffic you send in the future can lead to even more conversions, and more money in your pocket.
Advice from this article: check the conversion rate of the offers you're promoting!
]]>Figuring out traffic statistics is a necessary part of your marketing responsibilities if you want to succeed online. It's an obvious course of action but one that many webmasters fail to act upon. Taking advantage of other people's neglect will help you dominate the competition.
There really isn't any excuse not to be proactive in evaluating the amount of traffic your are receiving, what target audience is visiting and what areas of concern you need to improve to ensure you are bringing in the right people. This also helps you work on getting more quality traffic.
]]> Here are 3 tips that will help you understand the criteria for analyzing website traffic.Tip #1: Begin by examining the most basic data which would be the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. These figures amount to the most precise measure of your site's activity. It would show on the surface the more traffic recorded the better you can assume your website is doing, but that is a mistaken perception. You must also look at the actions of your visitors once they visit your site to accurately determine the effectiveness of your website.
Tip #2: Determine how long on average your visitors spend on your site and if they are spending a relatively short time while visiting, it usually indicates an underlying issue. Then the challenge is to figure out what that issue is. Making the slightest change to your campaign or site's structure could do wonders. It could be that your keywords are targeting the wrong type of visitors, or your graphics are baffling and/or daunting which is causing the visitor to exit hastily. You would be surprised what some minor touches can do to enhance your visitor's experience at your website.
Tip #3: Do not get hung up on how many "hits" your site receives. This can often mislead site owners to believe that if they have a good amount of hits they can consider those numbers a success which is very far from the truth. Quality traffic is much more important than a bunch of hits to your site. Hits simply means the amount of information requests received by the server. It's much more productive to measure the amount of visitors that visit your website and the actions they are taking when they are there.
Web traffic stats can help you determine your site's effective and ineffective areas and after you have analyzed your visitor statistics you can take action accordingly by taking advantage of what is working and improving or removing what is not. Some competitors are way ahead of the curve because they are always analyzing website traffic statistics and subsequently integrating techniques helping them leave their competition in the dust.
]]>From Alex's post:
If you're an info marketer who wants more reach with your articles, I recommend you set-up your EzineArticles account to automatically post your approved articles to your Twitter profile. It's that easy and powerful!
Transcript of this video
Alex Mandossian made a post on his blog today about adding your Twitter articles or adding your Ezine Articles to post to Twitter. And what's really great, it's a really great idea, I didn't know you could do this actually inside of Ezine Articles. But he doesn't actually show you how to do it in the post, so this is just a quick, very quick video to show you how to post your Ezine Articles onto your Twitter profile.
If you go and log-in to Ezine Articles, you can click on "Profile Manager" and then you "Edit Author Bio." So I'm going to click on my name here and I've got different URL's listed here. You can put your MySpace URL, your Twitter URL, you can put all these different web addresses in here.
There's also a space to put in your Twitter Username, which in my case is Strive4Impact and your Twitter password which I'm not going to show you! Once you do that however, you click "Save Changes" and now your Twitter profile will be automatically updated every time that you make, every time you have articles approved inside of Ezine Articles.
So, this is just a quick video, but I thought you would be interested in knowing how to do that.
Now you have to set up a Twitter profile. If you haven't setup a Twitter profile, it's a good idea. You just go to www.twitter.com and you can do it there.
And so that's it! This is how to sync up your Ezine Articles account with your Twitter profile so that your Ezine Articles will post automatically to your Twitter profile.
Hope you found this helpful!
]]>I am currently trying to find very general ways of exposing Misti Burmeister and Inspirion Inc. to the public media
Currently my emphasis is on Forbes as they have a network of CEOs that I want to add Misti to.
Similar to that I am also following the Washington post and CNN to see a pattern in their news stories that we can exploit. I would appreciate greatly any suggestions as to how I can efficiently get the ball rolling on this project of media exposure.
Thank You,
Arjun
I'm not sure my skills are best suited to helping you exploit patterns in news stories, and I'm not sure I understand looking at the Forbes CEO list, though it's undoubtedly good company to be in.
That having been said, here are my thoughts:
Does Misti have a Facebook profile, MySpace profile, Twitter profile, and Plaxo account?
If no, she should be signed up for all of those.
Her website content should be syndicated via RSS feed, to all of these services.
Her website content can also be syndicated to her Amazon.com profile.
If you're not familiar with RSS syndication, it would be something good to familiarize yourself with if you're going to work in promotions of any kind in the future.
It's a simple way to take content that's only been written/published once and send it out across multiple channels.
That RSS Feed should also be submitted to Yahoo, Google, and MSN.
To learn how to do this, just google it. "How do I submit an RSS Feed to Google?"
I understand you're also manually posting Misti's content to article sites, which is great.
Misti's articles should also be rewritten/repurposed and posted to Google Knol http://knol.google.com. This relatively new tool is a great place to establish credibility and get your name out with articles.
Does Misti have a Wikipedia profile? What about a Wikipedia profile for her book From Boomers To Bloggers? Creating wikipedia profiles for both of those would be a good idea.
As Misti suggested, I have about 100 other ideas, but get back to me once you've gotten this accomplished and we'll go forward.
Thanks Arjun, and much success!
Jonathan
]]>He and I got to talking and I mentioned that he should get listed in lots of local directories to drive more traffic into the business.
He's a smart individual, and so must have passed the idea along to the local business manager.
The manager for the store called me a few days later (today), saying that he didn't know that much about how to get the business listed in local online directories, and asked if I could offer him some help.
I don't know that much about local directories either, as my business is worldwide and Internet based, but I know there are hundreds (if not thousands) of web sites which can be used for getting local business listings "out there" and promoting a local-based business online.
So here's some quick discovery stuff I did with a little Googling...
Some are free, some cost something... you'll have to research...
But, I would exhaust all free local listing possibilities first (and then move into the pay ones, if you aren't getting the foot traffic you want).
Getting listed in all of these local directories will gain you more customers, particularly if you're a restaurant or hotel, and especially if you offer them something for free, in order to get them to come in to your business.
]]> http://www.openlist.com/That's what I came up with after about 20 minutes of research.
It will probably take some time to submit to all of these, but will be worth it.
How to use this directory of local directories to your benefit:
1. Make sure your business is listed on each and every one of these that it can be listed for free on.
2. One thing you could do is become the "reviewer" and post reviews of the restaurant to all of these sites. Don't list the same review on more than two sites (or use the same reviewer name) otherwise it looks rigged. (Even write a bad review as someone else, and then refute the review as the owner, or as another customer. Let your conscience be your guide how far you take this.)
3. Once you get through adding your business to all of these, do Google searches for "business reviews" "travel reviews" "restaurant reviews" and see what other sites you come up with.
4. Once you get through that, search for "your city your business review". So in this case (a REALLY GOOD ice cream and cakes shop), I might research "denver restaurant reviews" and "denver travel reviews".
5. There are a whole bunch of other things you can do (and I can help you, for a fee, if you want to contact me) to get your store's name "out there".
But this is where I would start.
Post any questions or comments below, and I'll respond to them below.
Hope this is helpful for getting your local business listed online, and getting more customers to walk in the door of your business.
]]>Among these are to add a Google site map to your site and to use Google's webmastering tools.
As well, they talk about the benefits of having appropriate title tags and appropriate ALT image tags for your site (Two things we've discussed here previously at Affiliate Advice).
However, it can be difficult (assuming you're using static methods of building pages) to update your Google site map every time you build new pages for your site.
This is why I recommend building your site using a content management system like Wordpress or Movable Type.
And below, I have posted the code you will need for building a Google Map with WordPress or Movable Type.
]]> Movable TypeWordPress Google SiteMap Generator
http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/
You can also download WordPress' Google Map Plugin from here.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/
This is all pretty basic stuff from Google, but good stuff nonetheless. Take a look at Google's post here if you want.
http://adsense.blogspot.com/2008/07/good-start-to-optimizing-your-site-for.html
So, I made a recording to showcase some of the things that this service can do.
I recommend you use the GoToMeeting Free Trial, and give it 30 days.
If you like it, pay for it. If you don't, it's easily removed from your computer registry.
But I recommend you give it a try. It's simple, has yet to cause any errors on my computer (after nearly two years of use) and is actually fun to use.
Transcript of this video: Being someone who does a lot of things online, Go To Meeting has become one of my favorite online tools for getting things done. Go To Meeting is basically a service that lets you show people what's on your computer, or you can see what's on their computer. Some of the nicer things about it are that it's basically an online video conference recording, which allows me to see what's on someone else's computer. And I know that lots of corporations, and large corporate conglomerates, are looking for online software solutions for meeting each other online. And they don't want to pay per use because that can become very expensive. So what I'd like to do just very quickly with this video is show you the affordable services that are offered by Go To Meeting. I'm not really selling it necessarily, but if you decide that you might like to check it out, there's a free trial link right next to this video and you can use this for your online meetings. And I may have misspoken just a minute ago too, because you don't have to be like a large corporate conglomerate. I'm just an individual who does a lot of things online, but a lot of times people are wanting to know how it is that I do what I do. And so Go To Meeting has been a really invaluable tool for doing online video conferencing so that they can see what's actually going on, on my computer. And that happens through this online meeting solution.
So when I first sign in to Go To Meeting, it asks if I want to host a meeting now or if I want to schedule a meeting for later. While you can schedule it for later, for purposes of this quick video, I'm going to show you how this works, so I click to meet now and then the software goes ahead and starts a meeting. Now as part of starting this meeting, it actually sets up a phone number for me for people to dial in to, and it then gives me all of these controls right here on the screen. And it says hey, if you want to invite people you can use this information. You tell them to go to Go To Meeting and join a meeting. So you just tell somebody on the front page to meet you at Go To Meeting and click on join a meeting. And so they will go to that website and I'm actually going to do this on my desktop. So I will go ahead and get signed in here, but you can see they gave me a meeting ID to use at Go To Meeting. So I'm clicking to go ahead and log into this meeting on my desktop, but this recording you are watching is actually on my laptop. So you're going to see me show up here in just a minute from my desktop into this meeting.
So now you see Jonathan-desktop has arrived right here into this meeting. So the first thing is if I want to show whoever else is in this meeting what's on my screen, then I click play here and now I'm actually showing them my screen. These controls are blurred out, but if you could see my desktop, you would actually see that I am watching what's going on, on my laptop, from my desktop.
]]> Now here's something that's interesting. I've got Jonathan-desktop right here. I can make Jonathan desktop the presenter, which will do in just a minute. But I can also give Jonathan-desktop the keyboard and mouse. So now I go to my desktop (which is Jonathan-desktop in the conference here), and it gives Jonathan-desktop control over the screen. And you can see how it's sort of gets choppy with the movement, but it's pretty good. This means that I'm surfing from one computer on another computer. We did this from Buenos Aires, Argentina, with a friend of ours who was in London, and it works just fine. So it works worldwide as long as you get a decent Internet connection and it's pretty exciting to be able to do this around the globe. So let's say I wanted to have the controls back now, so I took them with the laptop. Let's say I wanted to look at something that was on Jonathan-desktop's computer. I would go ahead and make Jonathan-desktop the presenter. So I go ahead and do that.I'm sitting here and I'm able to type on the other computer. So this computer could be in Africa or wherever, and I would be able to actually do something on that computer like watch the presentation, but if I ask the organizer to give me keyboard and mouse control then I can ask the person, "Hey, go ahead and give me access to your keyboard and mouse." And you can see here that I'm actually on the screen, even though you don't see the controls over here. I'm actually moving around inside of controls here on the screen. The controls for the web conference are hidden from all of the people are actually attending the meeting, but I'm going to go ahead and give keyboard and mouse control to the laptop. You can see that moving the mouse over here doesn't do anything at all, but then I'm actually able to take keyboard and mouse control over the desktop. And I can actually work on someone else's computer from wherever I am in the world.
"This is now me on my laptop typing on my desktop." So I think Go To Meeting is a really awesome solution, for anyone who is looking for a web conferencing solution. That was really redundant, and hope it wasn't too complicated. Ideally you have been able to see what Go To Meeting can do. This is a very simple software that allows you to really have an online meeting solution for your company, and to do web conferencing. Also it a built-in recording so you can do a recording of your online conferences, as well as all kinds of other cool things that you can do. The services are super for affordable. What I'd recommend you do is the same thing that I did. Try it out by going to a free trial for Go To Meeting and check it out. The services are super affordable, and you can use the free trial for 30 days. If you like it, great. And if you don't, remove it from your computer. That's my recommendation. Give it a shot, and thank you very much for taking the time to watch this video. I hope it's helped you to see an online conference solution that will be helpful for your business or for you as an individual.
------------------
GoToMeeting Free Trial
Try GoToMeeting free for 30 days
------------------
Dedicated to unrivalled reliability, customer support and ease of use, their roster of satisfied and loyal customers is growing on a daily basis. Your site traffic will find that Cyboretum.com's standard as well as custom tailored hosting packages and solutions are affordable, scalable and are guaranteed to satisfy the most demading clients.
It is their existing client base and an exploding demand from all levels of the web community looking for a more personal approach, increased ease of use and a higher degree of flexibility and reliability which has encouraged Cyboretum to take site hosting to the next level.
As an affiliate of Cyboretum.com, you will receive a base commission of 20% on initial sales and recurring commission of 15% for the lifetime of the referral. Cyboretum.com pays per sale, and they pay by check or PayPal on a monthly basis, as long as you have earned a minimum of $20. They have a lifetime cookie period so your traffic will be sure to be tracked to you.
]]>Shirt apparel comes in both short & long sleeve, & are made with 100% preshrunk 6.1 oz heavy weight cotton. Fleece Sweatshirts and Hooded Sweatshirts are made with 80% heavyweight 9.5 oz cotton and 20% polyester. These t-shirts, sweatshirts and hooded sweatshirts make great gifts for your site traffic's family, friends, team and coach.
Dream & Win has two compensation plans for affiliates to choose between; the CPA option, which pays $12-$25 per new customer acquisition, and the shared revenue plan, which pays residual commission of 12%-20% of gross revenue.
Dream & Win pays per lead, and they pay monthly by check, wire, or PayPal. Dream & Win also has a 30 day cookie period so your traffic will be sure to be tracked to you.
Options University has seminars taught by experts in their field. Options University instructors have at least 5 years of experience as either floor traders or educators from other major brokerages. The quality of education is unparalleled and Options University guarantees their seminar education and their programs are the best in the world.
Your site traffic can learn how to trade options at home with their award winning courses, designed by expert option educators and traders
Options University has a unique technology which allows them to teach students worldwide in real-time, using their cutting-edge web conferencing platform, putting you in front of a professional instructor no matter where you live. You site traffic can ask questions, interact with other students, and learn options in a virtual e-learning environment, or they can attend one of the live seminars held all over the world...
Q&A With Options University you can ask your most pressing question about options trading, and one of their experts will answer it!
]]> When you become an affiliate of Options University, you will have all of this available to you and here is what you need to know and do to get started.Options University pays residual commission of 35%. Options University pays per sale , and they pay monthly by check. They also have a 180 day cookie so your traffic will be sure to be tracked to you.
]]>Pink Auctions is an online auction website where people can buy or sell pink themed items including: clothes, shoes, handbags, electrical items, car accessories, mobile phones, toys, mp3 players and playboy items. There are over 10,000 tems for sale.
]]> PInk Auctions pays £1.00 - £2.00 per sale. They pay monthly by check, wire, or PayPal, as long as you have earned a minimum of £35. Pink Auctions has a lifetime cookie period, so your traffic will be sure to be tracked to you.Click here to join the Buy & Sell Anything PinkPinkAuctions Affiliate Program
]]>MyTickets doesn't sell tickets. Instead, they help solve the often time-consuming and frustrating task of finding tickets.
Instead of jumping from website to website, and from phonecall to phonecall, they offer consumers a one-stop destination to find the tickets they want.
MyTickets has event listings from all major ticketing websites, event websites, and even lots of the less-known websites that are harder to find!
MyTickets is a relatively new service, developing new features and adding more listings everyday. MyTickets would love to hear your questions and comments, so if your site visitors have any thoughts they want to share, they just have to send MyTickets an email.
]]> To 'Help your visitors find tickets faster' MyTickets offers 4 core services - search, browse, alerts, and requests.Browse - When your visitors aren't sure exactly what they feel like doing, their browse section offers a huge range of listings in 12 catagories & over 100 subcategories. Browse by price, place, category and time. They'll help your visitors find an event for every occasion.
Alerts - If it's not listed on MyTickets, or tickets aren't on sale yet, create alerts (via email or SMS) to notify your visitors when your favorite artist, event or even genre comes to town, which means you can make some moola from their site sending emails to your traffic.
Requests - Use MyTickets Request It! to invite the artist you love to the location you want. Imagine that!
Member benefits - When you become a member of MyTickets you get free usage of bookmarks and saved searches. You can also manage, edit, and update any Alerts or Requests you create. Sign up for the MyTickets customised newsletter so you never miss an event again!
MyTickets has a base commission of AU$1.00. MyTickets does not offer recurring Commissions, but they do pay you on a Pay Per Lead basis. MyTickets will pay you by check, wire, or PayPal, on a monthly basis, as long as you have earned at least AU$100. MyTickets has a 90 day cookie period.
]]>