Associate Programs Newsletter #236
I realized with a shock this week that it’s five years exactly since I quit my day job so I could concentrate full-time on earning a living from affiliate programs.
Today I discuss the most valuable lesson I’ve learned in those five years.
It’s a two-part article. I’ll publish the second part next week.
CONTENTS:
1. Last newsletter for a while
2. Affiliate programs: Picking the low-lying fruit, Part 1
3. Don’t panic over Google’s changes
4. Are you new to affiliate programs? Start here
5. Six popular pages
6. Useful resource: 26 steps to 15,000 page views a day
7. Thought for today: Your mission on earth
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1. Last newsletter for a while
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The next issue of the Associate Programs Newsletter will be the last for … I don’t know how long.
Perhaps a few weeks, perhaps a few months.
If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that I had a bone marrow transplant a few weeks ago – a last resort treatment for a rare blood disorder called aplastic anemia.
It’s been a rough trip.
I’ve had immuno-suppressive therapy, chemotherapy with the usual side-effects such as nausea and vomiting, a molar removed because of a chronic abscess, bleeding behind my left eye (sight nearly back to normal now), bleeding into a muscle in my groin, cytomegalovirus, and the latest complication, graft versus host disease, in which the transplanted bone marrow cells are trying to reject my body.
I’m on a Western medicine merry-go-round where they give me one drug to counteract the effects of another. Some of the drugs boost my immune system while others suppress it.
For those of you who are into alternative medicine, I’m also taking a heap of supplements with the agreement of my specialist – not that he has any faith whatsoever in them.
We were warned that complications were inevitable – I just didn’t expect so many of them. And this is only Day 57 of a journey that is never shorter than 100 days and can take many months or even years. We’ll be staying close to the hospital for quite a while.
On the brighter side, it looks as though the transplant has succeeded.
My blood counts and liver test results are improving.
For the first time, my red cell counts are going up, so the transplanted cells are now strong enough to produce white cells, neutrophils and red cells.
This is a major indicator – an extremely encouraging sign.
My appetite has returned, my energy levels are improving and I’m now able to go for walks each day.
Not publishing the newsletter for a while will enable me to concentrate on returning to full health and fitness.
One thing that has helped me get through this difficult time is the pleasure I get out of seeing our revamped Affiliate Marketing Forum continue to be such a friendly, helpful place for affiliates.
My heart-felt thanks to all those who are giving their time freely to help other affiliates on the forum.
You’re truly wonderful.
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2. Affiliate programs: Picking the low-lying fruit, Part 1
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If you want a quick, easy harvest from a fruit tree, it makes sense to start by picking the fruit that is within easy reach of the ground.
Later on, as you gain more skills and confidence, you might decide to get a ladder or climb trees to find choice fruit that others have overlooked.
It’s the same in Internet marketing.
Affiliate programs are the low-lying fruit – the easiest pickings.
For anyone wanting to earn a living marketing on the Internet, they’re the best place to start.
Consider the sheer simplicity of selling other people’s products…
You don’t have to spend time and effort producing your own products, you don’t have to deal with customers, don’t have to try to coach an army of affiliates… don’t have to think about hiring an affiliate manager.
You can choose products you love from among thousands available.
However, among all the possible ways to promote affiliate products, where are the easy pickings?
Should you promote them via a large, frequently updated site, mini-sites, newsletters, autoresponders, giving away ebooks, posting on forums and in email discussion lists, using search engine optimization, advertising in newsletters, by using Google AdWords to send visitors directly to the merchant, or what?
What’s the simplest, most cost-effective, time-effective way of bringing in the revenue?
One way to start finding the answer to that is to by eliminating things that AREN’T simple.
If you’re new to affiliate programs, don’t start with them.
For example…
Building a large site that needs to be updated every day isn’t simple. It demands a huge commitment in time and energy.
For most people, publishing a weekly newsletter that requires a lot of thought and research isn’t easy.
Mini-sites which get their traffic mainly from pay-per-click search engines or AdWords may sound easy, but the advertising requires frequent monitoring.
They’re all good methods, but they’re not the simplest, most time-effective way.
The simplest way I know of to promote affiliate products – and attract revenue from AdSense – is to build a keyword-rich, information-rich site with a simple design.
It helps enormously if you choose a topic in which you already have a passionate interest, but getting stuck into something completely new works for some affiliates, too.
Ideally, the site should be so interesting and useful that other people will voluntarily link to it.
The big trap many affiliates fall into is in assuming that earning revenue online has to be complicated.
Very simple sites work beautifully.
Google loves them – even after the recent upheavals.
As soon as you start complicating things, you start wasting time, tinkering with things unnecessarily, spending hours learning how to do things you didn’t need to do in the first place.
You’d have less stress and be much better off financially if you spent that time adding another useful, helpful, keyword-rich article to your site.
Keep it simple.
After you’ve built your site, got all the links to it that you can, and experimented with changing the headings and words on the pages to maximize your conversion rate, what then?
What should you do next to increase your earnings?
(To be continued next week)
NEXT WEEK:
Picking the low-lying fruit, Part 2
How to avoid getting mired in the affiliate mud
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3. Don’t panic over Google’s changes
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After several months of stability, Google caused a flurry of anxiety among thousands of web site owners when it made major changes to its ranking algorithms recently.
Many sites that had been highly ranked for a long time dropped like a stone.
For example, Rupert’s https://www.cheap-computers-guide.com had been No.1 in Google for 15 months for the phrase “cheap computers” (without the quotes).
After the Google changes, it dropped to No.12.
However, a few days ago, it had risen to No.5 and then No.3 and now today he’s back at No.1.
On his DJ site, he stayed No.1 for “dj tips” while his ranking for “dj equipment” temporarily disappeared. Today, he’s No.11.
If your site has crashed in the rankings, don’t panic.
One thing’s for certain – Google still isn’t perfect and so its algorithm changes haven’t ended and probably never will.
I think the two best things to do are keep adding keyword-rich, original, useful articles to your sites and keep attracting more sites to link to your site.
Do that, and in the long term search engines will treat you well.
Here are some theories – some wild, some carefully researched – on what’s happening at Google:
www.webpronews.com/wpn-2-20031203CrackingGooglesNewAlgorithm.html
https://www.searchengineguide.com/hotchkiss/2003/1204_gh1.html
https://www.searchengineguide.com/terry/2003/1205_tv1.html
https://www.webworkshop.net/florida-update.html
https://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3286101
https://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3286181
https://www.optitext.com/pub/florida-report.html
https://www.seo-tests.com/google-florida-update.html
A chart that attempts to explain things:
https://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/google-florida-chart.htm
A tool that helps display the Google upheavals:
https://www.scroogle.org/fiasco.html
Some no-nonsense advice on what to do:
https://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=283860
One thing to learn about now will be how Google’s implementation of word stemming will affect search engine optimization.
For a good analysis at any time of what’s happening at Google and other search engines, I recommend Stephen Maheny’s Planet Ocean.
I talked at length with Stephen at a conference in Colorado a few years ago. He’s utterly committed to delivering the best possible tips on search engine optimization.
That’s all he does.
His team concentrates exclusively on what the search engines are doing. They do their own tests and report on the results.
They’re experts, including some areas of optimization that are controversial. They cover it all.
They produce a top-notch ebook, “The UnFair Advantage Book on Winning The Search Engine Wars”, which is updated monthly, and their must-read newsletter – “Search Engine News”.
I’ve been a keen subscriber for years because the information I learn from Stephen helps my sites rank highly in search engines.
Check it out for yourself.
https://www.associateprograms.com/planet
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4. Are you new to affiliate programs? Start here
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The 10-day free “Affiliate Masters” course is simply superb. It tells you how to become an affiliate champion.
It’s about 100 pages of excellent information – giving clear, high-quality, step-by-step, day-by-day content that lays out a process that really works.
You can download the whole course in one PDF file.
Get started on the right track today…
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5. Six popular pages
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Save these links in your Favorites. You’ll want to refer to them again and again…
How to boost your AdSense revenue:
Build a simple, keyword-rich site, preferably using valuable keywords. That’s the key to earning good revenue from AdSense.
How to boost your AdSense revenue
Affiliate marketing experiments using Site Build It:
Rupert knew nothing about affiliate programs when I hired him. Now one of his sites earns more than $3,000 a month.
Web affiliate programs experiment 2
Best affiliate programs:
Our top 10 favorites, and why. These are the affiliate programs which consistently perform best for AssociatePrograms.com.
Best affiliate programs
Affiliate programs directory:
More than 6,000 affiliate programs in a searchable database that is usually updated daily. You can search by category, by keyword or alphabetically.
https://www/AssociatePrograms.com/directory/
Associate Programs Forum
The friendly, genuinely helpful affiliate forum. Ask a question
or help someone else succeed.
https://www.associateprograms.com/discus/index.php
Good resources for affiliates:
Tried and proven affiliate resources for affiliates and affiliate
merchants. These are tools and books I use.
https://www.associateprograms.com/categories/Affiliate-Resources/
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6. Useful resource: 26 steps to 15,000 page views a day
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Brett Tabke’s article outlining 26 steps to building a simple, successful web site was written in September, 1999, but it’s still a must-read resource – recommended by Google.
“Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone
26 steps to 15k a day”
https://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2010.htm
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7. Thought for today: Your mission on earth
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“Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re alive it isn’t.” – Richard Bach.
All the best
Allan Gardyne