Associate Programs Newsletter #190
It seems to be the dream of most affiliates … to own a web site which keeps on earning commissions month after month with little or no work needed to maintain it.
This week I describe a web site which is just like that.
CONTENTS:
1. Semi-neglected site earns $400 a month
2. Sneaky script alters your browser’s home page
3. EasySiteHits promises targeted traffic
4. NEXT WEEK: Tricks and traps with pop-under traffic
5. Still waiting for SmartShop commission
6. Latest winners of free banner advertising for a year
7. More online retailers in danger of crashing
8. Popular articles you may have missed
9. Thought for today: How to compete with big business
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1. Semi-neglected site earns $400 a month
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Some affiliate sites keep on producing revenue month after month with little or no work by the site’s creator.
Neil Shearing’s https://www.3rdpartyprocessors.com is one of those sites.
Last year, Neil spent a total of only about 10 hours on the site and did almost nothing to promote it. In spite of that, it earned him about $5,000 in affiliate commissions, or $400 a month.
The site explains the options you have if you want to process credit card sales without having a merchant account.
He originally called the site https://www.nomerchantacct.com , which I mentioned in last week’s newsletter.
“I changed the domain name because the first one was tough to spell and not very easy to remember. Initially, I wanted ‘No Merchant Account’, but I thought shortening the domain name to www.nomerchantacct.com made sense. In retrospect, it doesn’t,” Neil says.
“Also, www.3rdPartyProcessors.com is more descriptive, kind of along the lines of your https://www.PayPerClickSearchEngines.com and it also begins with the number ‘3’ which may help directory placement.”
Neil showed me an affiliate commission statement from Verotel, listing the commission checks Verotel has sent him for referring new clients last year. The total: about $5,000.
The site’s total earnings are almost all accounted for by the Verotel commissions.
“The other processors have sent me very little for my referrals. I think ClickBank and Verza have sent a few hundred, and another site that sent good money went under in the dot-com collapse,” he says. “Verotel has been my only consistently high payer.”
His only expenses were $12 a year for each domain name and $1 or $2 a month for web hosting. (He has a multi-account with Hosting.com.)
“Both sites combined get about 40 visits per day (except for last Thursday when they got four times as many).
“They’re just two of those little sites that sit on the edge of the web, earning me another income stream.”
I asked Neil what he does to promote the site. He surprised me by saying: “Almost nothing.”
“In the past, I’ve had mentions in bCentral Digest, in your newsletter and in Ken Evoy’s MYSS. I’ve also used Michael Campbell’s SEC to submit to search engines and once in a while, I mention the site in my newsletter. So, the quick answer is, “in the last year, almost nothing.”
According to the Marketleap Visibility Index –
https://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/ – those sites don’t have many links to them:
https://www.3rdpartyprocessors.com 76
https://www.nomerchantacct.com 115
In comparison, Neil’s ScamFreeZone has over 10,000 links to it.
He spent nothing on advertising, which looks like a lost opportunity to me.
He earned $5,000 from about 14,600 visitors so each visitor was worth about 34 cents. Not bad!
If he wanted to buy targeted traffic, he should be able to pay at least 25 or 30 cents per click, as long as the traffic he receives is highly targeted.
To see if that’s possible, I checked Overture.com.
Good news. He could pay only 5 cents per click and grab the No.1 spot for the phrase “third party processor” or pay only 13 cents to be No.1 for “third party credit card processor”.
Because Overture has alliances with most of the major search engines, he’d appear prominently in search engines all over the Web for those tightly targeted search terms.
According to Overture’s Search Term Suggestion Tool at
https://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ last month 915 people searched at Overture for “third party credit card processor”.
Many more opportunities exist on other pay-per-click search engines. At https://www.PayPerClickSearchEngines.com you can find more than 220 pay-per-click search engines.
I believe the reason Neil makes a handy income from this site is because it provides USEFUL information. He helps his visitors choose what service to use.
If you want to add another little revenue stream, think of a way to help buyers reach a buying decision.
For some ideas on starting a successful affiliate site, see
Beginners guide to affiliate programs
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2. Sneaky script alters your browser’s home page
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I see some truly awful affiliate programs. A new one that was sent to me this week is one of the worst.
The merchant is selling a script which re-sets the default home page in your browser.
That by itself might be OK. However, this sneaky script is designed to be enabled simply when you VISIT a web site. That’s all you have to do – visit a web site which uses this script and you’ll find that the home page in your browser has been altered without your permission.
The next time you decide to use Internet Explorer, the first thing you’ll see isn’t a blank page or whatever site you’re used to seeing. Instead, you’ll see a totally different site.
The script changes your software in your computer without asking for permission or warning you in any way.
The selling pitch? Many people don’t know how to change the default web page in their browser, so if you use this script, automatically changing the default home page of every visitor to your site, you’ll receive lots of traffic – or so the theory goes.
If you were silly enough to use this script, you’d wreck your reputation. Just imagine all the hate mail and bad publicity you’d receive from people who DID figure out what you were doing.
This script is such a ghastly invasion of my property – and yours – that I’m not going to name the company which promotes it. I don’t want to give it any publicity.
The merchant is also selling an Auto Bookmark Script which will automatically add your bookmark to a visitor’s Favorites folder, again without any kind of warning.
It’s sad that someone clever enough to write scripts is wasting his talents creating this unethical junk.
The affiliate program was hosted by ClickBank – but not any more.
“ClickBank has closed the account,” Executive Vice-President Dan Henderson told me.
“With over 30,000 clients, some of our clients will switch from what they originally were selling to a product that we would not allow.”
Well done, ClickBank!
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3. EasySiteHits promises targeted traffic
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Want a guaranteed targeted flood of visitors to your site?
That’s what Keith Baxter’s EasySiteHits promises.
Keith makes it sound so easy – “2 Clicks And 27 Seconds Of Your Time” – and I discovered that if you want to do a simple test it really can be just that quick and easy.
You simply type in the URL of the page which you want to receive traffic, choose from 19 traffic categories, enter your credit card details, and Keith does the rest.
The traffic is generated via a targeted pop-under network, Keith says.
“We have 88 sites that maintain our JavaScript code. Each site is geared towards a specific subject, thus we were able to create categories that related to each,” he says. “When you choose a category, we only host your site on those specific pages. We have recently added a search engine as a source of traffic as well.
“We generate traffic through the search engine in two ways. We placed HTML codes in the search engine search pages. What happens is this:
“1. We have split up different keywords into categories. Every time a particular keyword is searched a site from that category will be displayed as a full page pop-under. This is very effective in these situations.
“2. We’ve placed links to our network in the top 20 of every keyword search available. This link points directly to our network! When someone clicks on that link they will be sent to one of our advertiser sites.”
You can get pop-under traffic elsewhere cheaper, but it won’t all be highly targeted. From what I hear, there are also rogues who generate fake hits.
I was wondering about the quality of the traffic, so I decided to give Keith’s service a quick test. Late last month I bought a few thousand visitors and sent them to a simple, fast-loading page which promotes Ken Evoy’s SiteSell – https://makemy.sitesell.com – affiliate program and products.
A few days later, I checked my traffic logs. Yes, the page had received thousands more visitors than usual. Next, I checked my SiteSell stats to see if there had been an upsurge in sales.
Well, I received an upsurge all right – my SiteSell commission for December was more than THREE TIMES my November commission.
However, don’t get too excited by that. Ken complicated things by launching a “two-for-the-price-of-one” sale late last month, dramatically boosting my sales. So my test of EasySiteHits was inconclusive.
I’m now planning to do more sophisticated testing, isolating the EasySiteHits traffic from other traffic.
If you’re buying pop-under traffic, it’s probably best to create a special page just for that purpose. Make sure the page is dramatic and eye-catching, emphasizing answers to the question: “What’s in it for me?”
Signing up people for your newsletter may be the best choice.
EasySiteHits has a two-tier affiliate program, paying 20% on the first level and 10% from all sales created on your second level.
The best way to promote it would be to do careful tests and then describe the results of your tests.
Check it out here:
https://www.associateprograms.com/easysitehits
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4. NEXT WEEK: Tricks and traps with pop-under traffic
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If you have experience buying pop-under traffic, good or bad, I’d like to hear from you to help me with an article for next week…
“Tricks and traps with pop-under traffic.”
Please write to me at
allan AT AssociatePrograms DOT com
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5. Still waiting for SmartShop commission
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Quote:
“I spent another week trying to chase SmartShop.com up and they don’t pick up the phone (all answering machines) or respond to emails/faxes …”
N. Azam
https://www.Litmania.com
Full details:
Associate Programs Message Board:
https://www.associateprograms.com/discus/index.php
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6. Latest winners of free banner advertising for a year
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I’ve just drawn the latest lucky winners of free banner advertising for a year on AssociatePrograms.com.
The winners are:
John Renna
Quality Software, Inc.
https://www.maxsponder.com
Peter Jazwinski
https://www.bigq.com
left side design, right side results
Greg Moore
Akashik.net Hosting
https://www.akashik.net
John Shepler
https://www.execpc.com/~shepler/
A Positive Light…it’ll brighten your day
Jesse Roberge
https://www.jsoftconsulting.com
NotePads+, 1st Contact, Calendar+, Bio-Rhythms & JSoft Mail
Would you like to go in the draw to win free banner advertising for a year? It’s easy. All you have to do is provide a link to
https://www.associateprograms.com. Thank you!
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7. More online retailers in danger of crashing
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SmarterKids is paying $111 to acquire each customer, Mark Vigoroso reports in an E-Commerce Times article.
“Surviving online retailers still have substantial work to do in order to reach the end of 2002 without closing up shop,” Mark warns in the article ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/15624.html
If you’re promoting major online retailers, keep an eye on their financial reports. They can’t keep making losses forever.
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8. Popular articles you may have missed
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Previous articles
High school dropout creates profits from mini sites
Create profit from mini sites
How fast learner Yanik Silver succeeds
Follow up viral marketing
Semi-neglected site earns $400 a month
Semi neglected websites
Site Build It! V1.5 does the “grunt work” for you
Find super affiliates Part 1
My view of a sub-tropical bay
My view of a sub tropical bay
Are you new to affiliate programs? I highly recommend the FREE “Affiliate Masters” course.
Download the 10-day free course here:
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9. Thought for today: How to compete with big business
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“In order to compete with big business you have to do what big business won’t or can’t. That means finding a niche that is being under served.” – Bob Cortez, Listchannel.com.
All the best
Allan Gardyne
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