Whew! What a month. It's still not even 10pm here but I felt it was safe to wrap the month up and deliver the new stats. I feel it gives other people hope that this blogging thing really works, but also that the whole helping others thing really works because that's what I'm really trying to do (while getting a few referrals here and there, of course).

With the new layout and a decent amount of new visitors who have become loyal readers, the site has begun to really flourish. Here are this month's stats for the site:

• Google AdSense - $11.25
• Aweber Signups - $7.98
• Amazon Book Commission - $0.66

For a grand total of $19.89! Which, I might add, is $7.37 more than last month. That might not sound like much, but it's a 59% jump from last month's revenue. Not bad at all if you ask me. That's 40% of the hosting bill.

Additionally, we were able to launch the forums test this month and we had a fantastic RSS contest that will end tonight at midnight (more on that later). Our RSS subscriber base jumped up to around 200 as a result and that's not bad at all. Not to mention - we are fast approaching the sub-100k Alexa rank, which is extremely cool all by itself.

So that should about do it. Thanks for supporting the site and I hope you keep coming back for more in February!

Thanks,

Scott

Popularity: 26% [?]

Google Adwords advertisers! If you don't know about this, you're only hurting yourself.

This is just a cool little trick I learned from one of my friends while chatting with them today. We were talking about a dating offer and he nonchalantly pasted a link to me and, despite how long I've been marketing, I had no idea this was a feature. I was happy to find out about it though.

So basically, you can go on Google and search for any keywords you have ads for, but in the URL you place this little bad boy:

http://www.google.com/search?q=dating&adtest=on

Yup, it's that easy. Google will say the following at the top of the page to indicate that you're viewing ads in test mode:

Warning: This page is a tool for AdWords advertisers to test their ads. For full Google functionality return to the Google homepage.

How awesome is that? On top of that, you can't click on any of the ads accidentally. This is especially great for people who have max bids above $1.00, but also good for anyone who just doesn't want to get charged for clicking on their ads.

The best part is that it doesn't run up your impressions, which directly affects your CTR (Click Through Ratio) as the formula is literally Impressions / Clicks. You want as little impressions-per-clicks as possible.

Anyway, I just thought I'd let you know. Hope it helps.

Scott

** Update 2/1/2008 **

Okay, so I found out there's an actual URL you can go to in order to perform this search and it's even more powerful than I thought. Just go over to-

http://adwords.google.com/select/AdTargetingPreviewTool

You can preview your ad from different contexts, like location, which google search engine, display language, etc. Very cool stuff.

Popularity: 34% [?]

As you may know, tonight is the last night for the $100 RSS Contest and it's done pretty well! We've gotten an extra 60 subscribers out of it and that ain't bad.

Of course, if you haven't subscribed yet, there's still time! At midnight tonight, I'm going to check the list and choose the five winners and it will be officially over. As stated in the original post on the contest, I'll be e-mailing each winner to ask them where they want their money PayPal-ed to.

My only hope is that all the awesome people that signed up for the contest, don't suddenly just disappear the next day. We have some great information here for making money online (or so I've been told ;)). And it will only get better as we go on as our members start commenting more and giving more feedback.

Plus, we've got the great forum now. I'm happy with the way it's started to take off a bit. I won't get my hopes up but people seem to be liking it. It should turn into a good thing.

Anyway, as for those who have entered the contest already, I wish you luck.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Several times per day now, people ask "how can I get started with affiliate marketing?" Of course, I reply with a link to one of my handy-dandy posts that already covers the topic and answers straight away, but still-- there are those who are so impatient with this answer or any answer that entails some kind of up front work that they demand to know which campaigns I run and how I run them profitably.

While I don't blame them for wanting to take the shortcut to riches, it doesn't make much sense. You've got to learn something along the way to keep it going. It's got to be a business for you, not a get-rich-quick scheme. If you're serious about it, affiliate marketing shouldn't be approached as another "make money online" crap shoot. When you do it right, there's little gambling involved.

I remember one of my favorite parts from the Rich Dad, Poor Dad book by Robert Kiyosaki. Essentially, he was released into the city without any money and was able to rack up a substantial investment in just one day. Granted, he probably used his connections and his name as leverage, but the point is that even without all his money, he knew exactly what to do to make it all back.

That's what this business is all about. If I had to start from zero again, it would take me about a week to get back to where I am now. And it's not necessarily because of who I know but what I've learned in the year I've been in the business. But don't discount the effect of networking either.

Tons of opportunity arises out of just knowing some people. I have the best discussions with random people I talk to on a daily basis because I'm able to learn something new from each person I have a conversation with. That's the attitude you should have when approaching anyone, be it online or in the streets -- "what can I learn from this person?" Ever since I've adopted this motto, I see people in a different light and it makes relating to them much easier because if there's one thing people love to do it's talk about themselves. Use that to your advantage.

Returning to my point on running it like a business, it's easy to get caught up in the term 'affiliate marketer.'  It seems like most people wear it as just one more notch on their "make money online" belt, like an Adsense or a Text-Link-Ads type thing. Really, if you are marketing products for other companies, you are in the business of sales and you should treat it as such. That includes filing taxes and picking up the phone when you have a question or something goes wrong.

I've been reading lately that one of affiliate managers' biggest peeves is that those affiliates without managers who want managers don't bother to pick up the phone and talk to someone. Your affiliate managers want to help you, not just because it gives them a cut of your sales but also because they can push you to do better. If you're going to be worth anything, you should take it seriously and use every tool you can to push yourself to be, for lack of a better term, all that you can be.

So people, and you know who you are, stop treating it like a side project and go mainstream. If you put your heart into it, you'll start seeing rewards like I do and like the cats I know who are rolling in it on a daily basis.

Make it happen, cap'n.

Popularity: 18% [?]

I won't go nuts over the 215 RSS Subscribers because although it's crazy awesome, I know it fluctuates up and down. But I will say how bad-ass to see ATB growing like it is. It's almost as exciting as top profit days in affiliate marketing -- almost.

Yesterday, we had 281 unique visitors to the site (including Google, Yahoo, MSN bots and myself). If you're curious, you can always check the icon at the bottom of the sidebar for our extremetracking stats (click here for link). For a site that's been up for three months without any kind of crazy promotions, that's not half bad. This is the 70th post, we have over 250 comments and the forum already has 21 active members! It's very encouraging.

This won't be a crazy long post, but I just wanted to thank everyone who keeps coming back and contributing to the comment section of the posts. The more you do so and the more other newbie affiliates read what you have to say, the better this blog works. So keep it up and I'll do my best to keep providing you with daily posts on how to maximize your affiliate marketing profits.

Thanks guys,

Scott

Popularity: 18% [?]

If you hadn't guessed already, I like reading. I spend a good deal of time at Borders and Barnes & Noble just browsing through the Marketing, Business and Computer section (also known as the nerd section). While I was browsing through the Marketing section, I happened upon this little jewel by Anthony Borelli and Greg Holden called Affiliate Millions.

Much like the last book I reviewed, Moonlighting On The Internet, this book is all about Affiliate Marketing (as you might have guessed from the title). The major difference is that this book is completely geared toward the newbie. In fact, the authors divulge full knowledge about various campaigns, so much so that I'm going to try out a couple myself just to see how well they do. Hey-- you can never have enough nodding donkeys working for you, right?

The book starts out with the main author describing his average day where he rolls out of bed and checks stats (like any of us), only his best month so far has been around $250k. While this is a day in the life of Uber Affiliate, most of us are still amazed at anything close to $10k on a consistent daily basis.

From the beginning, affiliate marketing is defined and explained in detail. Then the author breaks down search marketing and why it's important (essentially the information you find at ATB but with pictures!). There are also chapters on what to look for in a product/offer you'd like to sell and how to research keywords for that product.

My favorite part of this book is the math section. The author busts out with several formulas for determining how profitable a campaign is based on actual numbers vs. estimations, which is what gets a lot of affiliate marketers in trouble when they're just starting out.

If you are new to affiliate marketing and you want to get a jump start on it, I highly recommend you buy a copy of this book and read it three times or more.

You'll be glad you did.

Popularity: 19% [?]

For those of you who didn't catch it, we recently launched a small forum to help people get started on their affiliate marketing adventure. When I say "we" I mean the community and myself of course, but I thought perhaps not everyone was aware of the fact. Of course, we're technically in a beta just to see how everyone reacts to the idea of a new affiliate marketing forum.

So far, we've had a decent amount of daily activity in there and I started it small so that it could grow as needed vs pouring tons of forums in there and hoping people would just start filling up the vast emptiness.

I'm pretty proud of how it's turning out in so little time. People are already helping each other out and I'm able to interact directly with people to give them tips and advice.

Right now we have 12, count 'em, TWELVE active members and already, we have success stories. For example, Killafawk has already seen some success with a campaign he's been helping others with (read more here).

Overall, I'm happy with our progress and hope it continues on the upward trend. If you haven't already, register on the new forum and start asking questions! Or, if you're an affiliate master, we can always use your brain.

Popularity: 18% [?]

If you're an avid Google Adwords user like I am, then you probably get frustrated with it sometimes. I don't know about you but I get especially frustrated when I can't figure out exactly what users typed to pull up my ads and even though I have tracking turned on, I still don't know what actual terms converted into sales for me.

That was until today, my friends, when I stumbled on this post at Apollo SEM titled "NUDE: AdWords Keyword Data Exposed With Google Analytics!"

This was posted back in December of 2007, so if this is old news to you I apologize, but it's news to me and I felt it was worthy of sharing with you fine people. At the very least, it deserves a Sphinn.

One thing I wanted to point out was that they stated their source at the bottom of the post, like so-

Our source for learning and applying this secret to our client accounts and our own accounts comes from a November 2007 blog post by the GA-Experts. Thank you, GA-Experts, for sharing this secret with us!

Regardless, it's a great bit of knowledge to have

You're welcome.

Popularity: 25% [?]

I just wanted to respond to all the hubbub that's been floating around about Azoogle being the big bad wolf due to cutting their referral program down a bit.

Right off the bat, I'd like to point out this portion of their Publisher Terms and Conditions-

Company reserves the right to change any of the terms and/or conditions of this Agreement at any time, with or without notice to you.

Some people are saying that Azoogle is a promise-breaker and that they have basically rendered themselves untrustworthy as they broke their "promise" to pay out referral money unconditionally. I have two responses to this point-

1. Did you really think they'd pay the money out unconditionally ? No one in their right mind would assume a company would pay money out without at least some restrictions (fraud, financial issues, etc.)
2. Since when are policies considered promises? A policy is a procedure and in this case, it's the current procedure as specified by Azoogle. A promise is something you tell your girlfriend to make her believe you'll "never do it again." I have never believed a company promised me anything. It's my company's policy to pay me on time each month but if they change the payment policy and structure, I'm not going to whine about UCI breaking its promise to me.

I realize that there are people who are going to take it personally no matter what and I realize it does suck that you can't just let the income roll in on autopilot as I wrote about recently. And also, it might bug you that Azoogle is moving its staff into fancy shmancy new headquarters as UberAffiliate showed us when he was flown out to see them and you might even think it's the reason behind the updated policies, but even if it is, that doesn't make Azoogle any less trustworthy.

What matters is that they accurately track sales and pay you correctly and (hopefully) on time, every time. As I realize it's my assumed duty to help out the little guy to get started and maximize profits, I will say this: don't look at this as a road block, look at it as an incentive to generate more money for yourself. Let this be the fire under your ass that pushes you into financial freedom.

You'll be a lot happier.

Popularity: 25% [?]

As an affiliate marketer, it's an insane game of catch-up when you have to go back and forth between your sales stats and your spend stats. When you want to do reporting, if you aren't using any kind of keyword tracking software, it's a bitch to generate your own. Well, these are just a couple most of the many gripes that inspired this post. This is basically a wish list I'm creating in hopes that someone out there will answer my prayers and make something resembling this dream system.

Free

It's a long shot, but hey, it's the perfect price. I believe that any software worth having should, at the very least, have a free package amongst its paid packages that doesn't limit you too much to use on a small-time basis but limits you just enough so that you eventually do have to upgrade if you become a more intense user. Oh and also, I don't mean a timed trial. When I say free, I mean free for the long-haul baby. Any perfect keyword tracking software would have to start out FREE.

Live Statistics

And I mean LIVE baby, like right now! This goes several ways, from spend sources to revenue stats to visitor stats. When I want to know what my spend stats are for a particular PPC source, like Adwords, I have to log in and run a report to get my most up-to-date spend stats for the day. When I want to see how much I've earned, I have to log in to my statistics application that I developed myself and when I want to see live visitor data--well--I can't ... yet. Having live statistics from all my sites would, in turn, allow me to have a central location for all my information and that's a beautiful thing. Any keyword tracking software worth its salt would need live statistics polled, say, every ten minutes or so. That way all my graphs would be up to date.

Graphs, Charts & Reports (Oh My)

What good are stats if I can't see them graphically? What if I'm a visual learner? I need graphs, baby! Pretty ones, too. If you're going to build that perfect keyword tracking system, it had better have graphs ("wow" looking ones). Then, what if, at the beginning of a new year, I need to print out all my data for tax purposes? I need exportable reports. Yeah, I'm talking about CSV, Excel and the like.

Easy-To-Implement Code For Landing Pages And Such

My biggest peeve with every keyword tracking system I've used so far, mainly affiliate radar, has been its implementation. Although it's not impossible to figure out, it lacks that ease of use that would take it to a godly status. Face it, most affiliate marketers aren't developers or even HTML jockeys to say the least, so the best bet would be to make something really easy to implement -- something like Google Adsense code. And the site would have to SHOW us how to place the code, preferably with videos!

Video Tutorials

How awesome are video tutorials? They make learning fun and easy. Hell, I love to make them in my spare time and post them up on Youtube (check them out here), so it can't be that difficult to make tutorials on the keyword tracking website and all the bullet point features. Also, it makes the site look less enormous and daunting if you see someone else actually using the site the way it's intended to be used.

Security

The last thing I need as an affiliate marketer is to worry about people stealing my keywords, looking at my landing pages and basically stealing my business model for the campaigns I run. Additionally, I don't want to have to worry about the people who run my site looking through my financial data or about the site being hacked and random people gaining access to my data. This means strong security measures have to be in place for data storage and the site owners would need some kind of absolute accountability to its public. How that would happen, I do not know.

One more note on security. At the landing page level, keywords would have to be encrypted as well so that random affiliates and affiliate managers will keep their grubby fingers away.

Customer Service

This kind of goes without saying, but I felt I should include it anyway. Customer service is always a must to at least provide some kind of sense of "I care"-edness to the service, even if they don't. It gives the customer the sense that they are actually helping to turn the gears of action to get them what they want, even if the customer service rep is merely a middle man between the person and a FAQ list and eventually, a trouble ticket form. Sometimes you just need a live person.

Web 2.0 Hotness

Is it too much to ask for the site to be strikingly handsome? That's right, if I'm going to be married to this site for the long haul, I want it to be pretty for as long as possible--just like my wife (thanks Sarah). That means, it has to not only look great but also carry web 2.0 functionality with it. Just enough, but don't get carried the *!#% away (Yahoo! Search Marketing, you know who I'm talking about). AJAX is a feature not the main show, baby. Just keep it fresh.

Auto Stop Losses

This is a feature I've been scheming up in my head since I started. I figure, since this dream keyword tracking software can already tap into the back-ends of my PPC sites (like Adwords, YSM and Adcenter), it should be able to turn my campaigns on and off based on my current profit standing. As affiliate marketers, we all have those days where a campaign that is normally doing great decides to put on its ugly face and turn on us. Not to mention when we were first starting out and didn't really know what the hell we were doing and lost $5,000 within the first month (sorry Sarah).

Just imagine-- if you could put in a "stop loss" amount of, for example, $50.00 and the system would constantly monitor your stats and automagically shut the proper campaign(s) down as soon as it noticed you were $50.00 into the negative. How cool would that be?

Of course, you wouldn't want to set some small number as your "stop loss" as there are times when campaigns that are breaking even temporarily dip into the negatives and then shoot into profit; however, you wouldn't want to set it to a number that is too high either as it can take search engines a while to stop showing ads even after you've turned them off. Overall, I think you get the point.

Auto Suggestions

With the right statistical data, this hypothetical system could make suggestions about whether or not to look for new keywords for the campaign, remove non-converting keywords, ditch the campaign, adjust spending on the campaign, try different ads on the campaign, etc. Not only would this be an insanely awesome tool for n00bs, it would help seasoned affiliates maximize their profits and learn new tricks here and there to apply to new campaigns.

Centralized Advertising System (CAS?)

Going back to the idea of a central location for live data, why stop there? While we're at it, we might as well allow affiliates to stop using the clunky interfaces of Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft Adcenter and start using the ONE interface for the keyword tracking software. For what, you ask? Well, for creating/managing ads and keywords of course! How many times have you been inside your YSM Panel and thought "Dear god, what monkey built this thing?" You aren't alone.

Once and for all, there should be an intuitive system for adding keywords and distributing them across ad groups in such a way that maximizes efficiency. Also, as affiliate marketers, we use individual ads across multiple ad groups. Why not use one ad and apply it to multiple ad groups instead of creating the same ad over and over and over?

This would be the mother of all features but if done right, would revolutionize this business.

Email Collection (Aweber Style)

While it's in the business of hanging out on our landing pages, the software might as well have an option for collecting e-mails in an Aweber-like fashion. That is, it would pop up with a box or hang out somewhere on the landing page and ask people to sign up on the mailing list. Then it would have follow up messages and the ability to broadcast without being spammy. Don't get me wrong, I love Aweber but if some software could centralize all my affiliate tools, I'd be there in a heart beat.

Click Tracking (CrazyEgg Style)

Although CrazyEgg does an incredible job, live click tracking is just a cool feature to have. Google Analytics is also a great tool for this kind of thing, I know but wouldn't it be cool (once again) to be able to manage all of your affiliate-related tools in one place? On top of that, the software could suggest strategic placement based on clicking hotspots to maximize revenue. Just a thought.

Conclusion

I know there are POS's (pieces of software) out there that already do some of the things I mentioned but I have yet to find one that does all of them or even most of them. Someone out there has to be willing to build such a monster and when they do -- game over. I will be MAD RICH. Until then, I am just making a decent living.

But I can dream.

Popularity: 39% [?]