The Truth About Build a Niche Store

We’ve all been lured by dozens of different ebooks for sale, all regurgitating the same “make money” dream in a variety of ways. But most of those ebooks offer you words and ideas, and brag about how much money they make. Are you as tired of those as I am?

I purchased Build a Niche Store simply because the creators offered me something more than words and ideas. They provide real tangible software with free updates forever and an unlimited domain license (yes, you can use BANS on as many domains as you like). I like that a lot. Build a Niche Store (BANs) is in version 3 now. FREE updates and a great forum where you can get support if you need it as well as great creative ideas on how to make your niche store even better! Read more

eBay Moves Affiliate Program In-House

Hello fellow affiliates! With just a little effort, you can earn a lot of money with the eBay Affiliate Program. All that you and the other 100,000 affiliates have to do is drive traffic to eBay. Easier said then done and Build a Niche Store can help solve that little traffic problem.

eBay hosted their affiliate program with Commission Junction for years. eBay recently announced that they are moving their affiliate program in-house starting on April 1, 2008. The new in-house network is designed to give affiliates better access to revenue opportunities across eBay Inc.’s global platforms. Read more

March Revolution Affiliate Contest

Brian Gardner, the creator behind the Revolution Wordpress theme series, is hosting this year’s first time ever March Revolution Affiliate Contest! He has some fantastic prizes that he will hand over to the top three affiliates for the month of March:

• 1st prize - 4 night Bahama Cruise & $500 spending cash
• 2nd prize - Samsung 19? Flat-Panel HDTV, Revolution All-Inclusive Package or $500 cash
• 3rd prize - $250 cash or gift certificate to your favorite online retailer

Three fantastic prizes for the top three Revolution affiliates. Will you be one of them?

Contest Rules:

• The contest will begin on March 1st, and run until 12:00 midnight March 31st
• The people who generate the 3 highest amount of affiliate sales (in US dollars) throughout the course of the month will be awarded 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes
• To enter the contest, you must be a Revolution affiliate
• You must post on your blog and linkback with the details of this contest
• Self-purchases made with your own affiliate code will NOT count
• You can use any of the affiliate banner images from the Revolution site

Head over to the contest and find out more!

The Rich Jerk is Really a Jerk

OK, I said it. The Rich Jerk describes himself appropriately. He really is a jerk. I had not read this jerk’s ebooks before so when I saw The Rich Jerk Making Money on the Internet ebook for just $9.99, I figured I had nothing much to lose. If there is just one small tidbit of information that helps me make lots more Internet money, then it’s well worth the purchase.

First let me say that The Rich Jerk is not for the faint of heart! He is brash and direct, a very hardcore Internet money making guy. He tells it like it is. So if you like fluffy, cute advice about how to make money on the Internet, then don’t get the Rich Jerk ebook.

If you are new to making money on the Internet, The Rich Jerk may not be for you, although he does include a supplemental chapter for beginners (and at $9.99 for a 65 page ebook, it’s a steal). Many of his tactics assume you know a thing or two already about Internet affiliate marketing, he just gives you a few of the pieces you are missing.

I won’t (and can’t!) give away all the secrets of The Rich Jerk ebook, but I will talk here about the chapters that were valuable for me and why.

Creating an Affiliate Website that Sells Like Crazy

The Rich Jerk provides some sales letter strategies that really lit a fire under me. Writing good sales letters is paramount to your success as an affiliate marketer. How many times did you get lazy and just copy and paste someone else’s crappy text onto your affiliate sales page? I know you do it. The Rich Jerk and his brash methods will definitely get you motivated to write sales copy that SELLS! He showed me how to think outside my box that I have fallen into.

Unique Search Engine PPC and Strategies

Everyone thinks they know everything about PPC Strategies. But I bet your ads look just like the other eight on the page. The Rich Jerk provides some good strategies for PPC ads and making money with Adsense. I started using some of his strategies for my PPC ads and guess what? They work!

Websites You Can Make Profitable Right Now

If you are not already using ClickBank, then read this chapter. The Rich Jerk gives some good information about creating profitable niche ClickBank websites.

Summary

All in all, just half the chapters were useful me (I didn’t mention them all here), but again, it was well worth the $9.99 for the ebook. You probably spend that much for two Starbuck lattes or three snacks in the junk machine in your workplace breakroom.

Honestly, I would not have paid $98 for this ebook (the original price when it was first published) but at $9.99 it was worth the price of admission. Plus you get access to The Rich Jerk forums to discuss, what else, MAKING MONEY ON THE INTERNET.

If you are out of ideas, your profits have plummeted, or you just want to increase your monthly checks, The Rich Jerk ebook will definitely keep you busy thinking outside the box.

Choose Profitable Products and Boost Sales with Clickbank

You started a blog and now you want to make some money. Am I right? Not many people blog for free these days. There are many ways to monetize your blog and you’ve probably heard of or tried many of them by now.

Let me introduce you to Clickbank. Maybe you are already acquainted, maybe not. Either way, read on and maybe you’ll find a tidbit or two to help boost your sales.

Clickbank is an online payment processor and affiliate marketing system. It allows you to sell other people’s stuff. When you do, you get a commission based on the terms of the product agreement.

Unlike many other affiliate programs, Clickbank is geared primarily towards digital products like downloadable software and ebooks. Before getting into Clickbank, here’s a quick detour on a couple of things to do before getting started.

If you are thinking about writing niche articles or creating a niche website, the first place to start is finding your niche. That is not what this article is about so I won’t be focusing on that. So let’s say you find some keywords that are likely to make you a profit. Now what? Well you have to find some products that match those keywords.

But not just any products. You want to promote top notch products that are going to make you a PROFIT! That’s why you are blogging, isn’t it? To make a profit.

OK. Now let’s say you have your top notch, money-maker keywords. The next step is finding the affiliate products. Clickbank is a great place to start. You can find thousands of affiliate products to sell within a variety of categories. All it will cost you is the time and energy to find the products and create your niche articles.

Take a look at how to find products that sell really well.

1. Go to Clickbank.com.
2. Click Marketplace (located at top right).
3. Type a keyword in the keywords field and click Go. You can also narrow your search by selecting a category.
4. A list of products that match your query display in a list. Each Clickbank product displays information similar to the image below.

What does all that stuff mean?

• $/sale: The amount of money you earn for each sale.
• Future $: Average rebill revenue.
• Total $/sale: Average total $ per sale, including all rebills.
• %/sale: The percentage of the product sale price that the sale represents.
• %/refd: Fraction of publisher’s total sales that are referred by affiliates.
• grav: The measure of how many affiliates are promoting the product. This is a weighted sum and not an actual total. For each affiliate paid in the last 8 weeks Clickbank adds an amount between 0.1 and 1.0 to the total. The more recent the last referral, the higher the value added.

The Gravity indicator will tell you how well a product is selling. So a gravity score of 100 means a product is potentially selling better than one with a gravity score of 20. What if the gravity score is off the charts, like 450? Maybe the product is selling too well and you can’t compete with that type of competition in an already saturated market. I like to stay within the 70 to 100 range for gravity. Occasionally I will go for a lower gravity number especially if the product is new to market.

Once you select a product, check out the sales page. What are they selling? Would you buy it? If no, then why would someone else? Think about that.

Other things to consider in your Clickbank adventure. Let’s say the percent of the Clickbank sale to you is $20.00. Sound good, huh? If you are using Pay Per Click (PPC), be careful and do your math. If you pay 20 cents per click and it takes 100 clicks before a single person buys the product, then you have not made any money. You will break even. Even it takes 120 clicks before someone buys the product, then you have lost money.

It will take the same amount of work to promote a product that pays $46.00 as it does for one that pays you $20.00 so choose wisely. Now if you are just blogging on about stuff, and not using PPC at all, then it doesn’t matter so much except for your bottom line.

I am proud to say that in January, The Success Space made $499.00 with Clickbank products. This total took into consideration one returned item. So get blogging and start your own Clickbank profitable niche!

What are your Clickbank stategies?

Using Wordpress to Create Profitable Niche Sites

 

As a confessed, long-time affiliate marketer, I can tell you that creating lots of small web sites can be a very tedious task. Don’t get me wrong. I love getting checks in the mail as much as the next person but I knew there had to be a better, more efficient way to create these niche web sites.

I heard lots of blogosphere chatter about using Wordpress to create static web sites. Wordpress is a fantastic Content Management System (CMS) that is typically used for blogs and ongoing conversations with the people who read them. It’s easy to manage because once you write the articles, the hyperlinks (like monthly archives, categories, and pages) take care of themselve. Everything in a tidy neat little package.

Usually, when I select a new affiliate marketing niche, I look at profitable keywords or products, and build a site around it. High maintenance is out of the question! Who has the time for that. I like sites that bring in two things: traffic and money!

I had the good fortune to meet Caroline Middlebrook. Caroline has done the hard work friends, and written an ebook about creating the very thing I wanted to create. A low-to-no maintenance niche web site using Wordpress. I like it already!

I downloaded the ebook with no expectations but was pleasantly surprised. Caroline has a technical background but has written her ebook so mere mortals can actually understand it!

She starts out introducing the subject about niche sites and then launches into a nice overview and how-to about installing Wordpress. Caroline also targets the important points in the Wordpress Admin panel and how to get your Wordpress theme going.

It was a nice Wordpress refresher but then she reveals the real gems of creating your niche static web site with Wordpress:

• Setting up Adsense
• Essential Wordpress plugins and how to install them
• Site subject and monetization
• Static pages
• Link structure
• And much more!

All in all the “How to Develop Money-Making Niche Sites with Wordpress” ebook is a quick read with some great information and tips. Your mind will be flowing with new ideas when you finish this one!

Download it for FREE at Caroline’s blog.

Check out  iThemes Wordpress Themes, my favorite Wordpress themes for creating niche affiliate sites.

Leave Typos Alone and Get Some Internet Traffic

Are you one of those people who carefully spellchecks your blog or website and makes all the necessary corrections? If so, you can be missing out of my favorite kind of Internet traffic, that is, typo traffic. I know, all the “Pro” bloggers tell you to check for those typos in your blog postings. Don’t bother with corrections. Chances are, you did type something wrong that can benefit your site.

Did you know that AT LEAST 17% of all Internet searches contain typo variations of the real keywords? Wouldn’t you like to steer some of those search results to your website?

There are two types of typos:

• Domain
• Regular words

Domain Typos

Now even though we all have a Favorite menu in the Internet browser, many people still enjoy typing a domain name to reach the Internet destination. This result in lots of domain typos. Imagine if you owned a typo domain of a real domain that gets tons of traffic? You would end up getting lots of free traffic too.

Take JohnCow.com for instance. First you have to know the real domain name. Everyone knows who JohnChow.com is, don’t you? If not, scoot right over there and then come back and finish reading this post. Well, JohnCow.com is a typo domain version of JohnChow.com. The bloggers over at JohnCow.com have a had a lot of fun with this one. Do you know in their first month of owning the domain, they had over 67,000 new visitors? And the visitors just keep on coming.

How about Gamil.com? They were around about eight years before Gmail.com came into the Internet picture. Gamil.com gets tons of free, new traffic due to all of us who can’t type Gmail.com correctly.

There are two good examples of typo domains. See, typos can drive enourmous traffic!

Regular Word Typos

Now that we covered domain typos, let’s talk about regular words in blog postings, web pages, title tags, and meta description tags. I first discovered typo traffic when I typed a product name incorrectly on an affiliate marketing web page. I didn’t realize I typed it wrong and was pleasantly surprised when my sales for that particular product went up suddenly. I checked my site statistics and found that all these Internet surfers were typing the product name incorrectly into the search engine. My site was number one for quite some time due to that little mistake.

Lots of people use typos now on purpose to drive traffic to their sites. So give it some thought before correcting it next time you find a typo in your blog post or web site article. People have built entire blogs or web sites around typos (domains and words.)

Serve Up Ads and Profit with AdEngage

Although AdEngage has been around since 2004, I just became aware of the company. Where have I been?

Anyway, AdEngage is a service that connects publishers who want to sell ad space on their websites with advertisers who want to purchase ads on their websites. AdEngage is also particular about what publishers they allow into their network of publishers - preferably, quality sites with real content!

AdEngage serves up text and PhoText ads in a variety of customizable sizes, both vertical and horizontal formats. A PhoText ad displays a photo with text, and both are clickable.

Once you create an account, and place the HTML code in a key location on your website, your site will be listed in the AdEngage directory. Once it’s listed, advertisers browse through the thousands of sites to select one or more on which to display their ads.

Then the ad shows on your website and you make money! Yeah!

The Success Space signed up as a publisher recently and placed the HTML code in the right most column.

The amount of money that an advertiser will pay to advertise on your site is directly related to many factors. You can see in the example below of a random site that I selected from AdEngage. For this example, the fee is $320. per week to advertise on that particular site. Excellent paycheck! And that is just for one advertiser. It’s likely they have many rotating at the same time so do the math fellow bloggers!

Since I just got started with AdEngage, I am still waiting for an advertiser to purchase ads to display on The Success Space. In the meantime, they display some random ads to fill the space. I am hoping that AdEngage will prove more lucrative than Adsense. I’ll let you know how it goes.

It is very easy to sign up and get started. What are you waiting for?

Have you used AdEngage? Good experience? Bad? All comments are appreciated!

Entrecard Connection - Life is Colourful

Entrecard has proven to be not only a clever, traffic driving tool, but a way to be introduced to other bloggers and the stuff they write about. Traffic on The Success Space has increased since I started with Entrecard.

Getting back to getting to know other bloggers through Entrecard, let me introduce you to Life is Colourful, a blog about my favorite topic, making money online. You can learn about everything from search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, and other ways to make money online.

It’s nice to read good honest information from someone who is not afraid to try new things and share the results with everyone. I especially like the article, How to Get Free Seasonal Search Engine Traffic.

Life is Colourful reminds us about the many holidays or events that happen throughout the year that many bloggers don’t use to their advantage to get traffic to their blogs or websites.

Building a post around holiday or special event keywords can drive additional traffic to your site that you would not otherwise have.

Scoot over to Life is Colourful and get even more great information about making money online.

Getting a New Spin on Articles

Do you find yourself spending too much time rewriting articles? Maybe you are rewriting articles from a private label article service, an old article that you want to re-publish elsewhere, or some other reason.

SpunWrite is the ultimate article rewriting service. SpunWrite uses real people, not software to rewrite articles that are submitted. When you submit an article, it’s sent out in pieces to the content writers, so no one writer ever sees your entire article. You can order 1, 2, 3, or more versions of any one article.

Article spinning by SpunWrite is unique and well done, a high-quality service. I usually get articles back within 12 hours of submission.

I do not receive any money to post this article about SpunWrite. They just provide a great service well worth mentioning.

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