What it takes to make it BIG in online marketing

10 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on October 26, 2007 in Affiliate Tips, Working Online  

People ask me all the time how i got into doing what i am doing and how i became a player in online marketing. So i figured i would provide a little insight.

1. It takes focus! - it is easy ESPECIALLY when you work online to get distracted by emails, instant messages, fun sites (that can kill a lot fo your time). So stay focused, If need be don’t check your email during the day, turn off any instant message clients so you can accomplish the tasks at hand. In affiliate marketing don’t get overwhelmed by the number of offers just go after a few and target those untill you make them work.

2. It takes perseverance! - You have to be the type of person that even though you are losng money you keep trying. Even when Google Delists you, you keep trying. You can’t give up in online marketing, as it is constantly changing there are new battles daily with victories and defeats you have to be able to take both in stribe.

3. Don’t get Complacent! - Yes its great when that offer starts earning you a 100 or 1000 a day but don’t get too happy and just sit back.  Cause that offer or campaign can be pulled tomorrow or your rankings can take a dive… what then?

4. Network Network Network - Don’t be a shy fly on the wall. Network with other earners and online marketters. Send them an email if you feel brave (don’t make it lame and say oh i think your awesome can your teach me your ways (these go directly to spam!)) also don’t ask the typical questions be creative. You would be surprised cause as online marketers we love to interact with people since we lack it due to online work. Attend conferences that will help you make contacts. (For affiliate marketers affiliate Summit is the best, it is for the Marketer not just huge companies with big pockets)

5. Have Fun! - If you don’t have fun you will end up wanting to quit this work quicker than a burger flipper at MCD’s (don’t even think they have burger flippers anymore).

6. Be Creative - While you can make money by reading and trying to copy other people to really make $$$$$$$$$ you need to be creative with your approach, its not that hard you just have to try to be different… sometimes the ideas take off sometimes they fail but thats part of the fun.

7. When you start making it don’t be afraid to expand!!!!!!!

You have a tip to help people make it in online marketing leave a comment.

CJ affiliates Spybot Search & Destroy Immunize is killing your Sales!

24 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on October 17, 2007 in Affiliate Tips, CJ Affiliates  

So a Few days ago on one of my computers i was getting popups randomly. So i went and downloaded Spybot search and destroy to have it search for adware etc.. and i noticed they had an immunize function now. After search ran i had it immunize also just to cover all bases. Well the next day i was coming to my site and clicked on my Yahoo search marketing banner on the right and noticed it went to a dead page. I thought hmmm….. thats odd. Maybe my link is old or something, went in and put in the new code and still went to a dead page.  I tried both browsers IE and Firefox… both dead page.  I gave CJ benefit of doubt and thought maybe just an issue and will be resolved in few minutes or hour. Well i forgot about it untill the next day, I tried again still a dead page. So i decided to email CJ about this. Below is the email response I got.

Dear David,

Thank you for your inquiry. In reviewing the link I am unable to replicate the error. The link is routing to the correct destination page. The server is not timing out on our end. This appears to be a problem with your specific computer or browser. I would advise to check your security settings. If they are set too high, they can prohibit certain images and/or web pages to be viewed. In addition, you may want to try accessing the links through another computer.

According to another publisher experiencing a similar error, the latest version of Spybot Search & Destroy v. 1.5 immunizes against our links. They had to remove the immunization for our links to work.

While you may not be using Spybot, I would assume that it may be due to similar third party security software which is not allowing the links to route through our servers to the destination page.

Thank you for your patience and please let us know if we can be of any further assistance.

Sincerely,
Commission Junction Client Support

After this email I go an Un-Immunize my computer, and what do you know the links all now work!!!  So be warned all CJ affiliates if your users are using Spybot Search & Destroy and Run the Immunize it will block your links and cost you sales!!!!! 

Why Not Tracking Your Campaigns can Cost you Money!

6 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on August 22, 2007 in Affiliate Tips, PPC, Yahoo Search Marketing  

You can read everywhere that people suggest you track you campaigns and statistics, even on this blog. Meaning not relying on Google, Yahoo, Msn or other networks to rely on them to send you just the country or target traffic you are paying for.  There are many programs out there that you can pay for that will track the IP’s of your visitors and be able to tag to a certain campaign, or you can have one built. I personally had one built for me as the ones out there worked but I couldn’t get the information I wanted or get it in the way I wanted it. Yes this cost me a decent penny to get this tracking program built, but it has paid for itself already several times over.
Take this example. I am running a campaign on yahoo search marketing and I was checking my program stats and noticed that I was seeing a lot of traffic from foreign countries and my whole account is set to US only.  So I dig thru my stats for Aug 1 thru 13 and find that anywhere from 10 to 25% is from foreign countries.  So I log into my Yahoo search marketing account and contact them letting them know what I am seeing and attach a report for just one of the days and state that I am seeing this on all days Aug 1 thru 13. A day later I get an email stating it has been escalated to their click fraud department and I should get an email in a few days. Two days later I get this email:

Our investigation concluded that your account experienced one or more occurrences of the following situations:

?        Unusual end user activity or behavior
?        System issues

As a result, we have issued an adjustment to your account in the amount of $X,XXX.XX. This adjustment should post to your account within three to four business days. You can view your billing history through the Reports section of your account by selecting the Billing Transaction Detail Report.

To protect the integrity of our systems, we unfortunately cannot provide you with the specific details associated with the identified pattern of behavior. We want to assure you that we are always working to improve the quality of the traffic delivered to advertisers and as such we are taking the appropriate steps to help prevent these types of activity from occurring again in the future. Our sophisticated Click Protection System runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week and is designed to prevent advertisers from being charged for certain clicks. However, there may be instances, such as this one, where we make additional adjustments to your account.

As you can see they don’t come out and say we agree with you that you received foreign traffic, they did offer me a nice credit. With that said I was making a profit on the campaign even with this amount of foreign traffic being sent. So the credit is just icing on the cake, but this is something that is deserved by me as I am paying for US traffic not foreign traffic. This is just one example of why you need to track your campaigns by a third party software that tracks IP addresses etc. to monitor it for foreign traffic or even click fraud that you are billed for.  One other instance you can read about is from PepperJam Search and their $10,000 “Goodwill Credit” .

Leaving Your Day Job to Work Online

15 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on August 20, 2007 in Affiliate Tips, Working Online  

Many people know that in October of 2006 I left my day job (Electrical Engineer) to work online full time, and i get asked all the time how i did it. Well today i am going to go over some things i did to prepare for that day but also how i came to the conclusion that it was worth the risk. ***

First thing I suggest to anyone is that if you are currently doing it as a hobby don’t use the extra money to just have fun, use it to pay off debt. When i turned in my resignation at my day job the only debt i had was my mortgage, no car notes, no credit card bills. I was able to do this because i planned ahead and used the extra money i was making online to pay off those debts. I would highly suggest this to anyone that is considering leaving, that is if you have debt at all.  (If you don’t already have one, build up a nest egg that you culd support your family for atleast 6 months, i recomend a year but 6 months will do.)

Second can i handle working from home or do i need an office. This is a tough call for many but was easy for me. I don’t have kids yet only my wife, so i know the distractions would be minimal. I chose to work at home and so far it has been great. If i had kids i would probably have to rent out an office or build a seperate building or something so that they would know Dad is going away to work.

Thirdly and most important can you handle the ups and downs that come with working online. Talk to any person making money online and they will tell you about the ups and downs. Server crashes, boots from google, hackers, Clients not paying, a fad dies off, the list goes on. With that you want to diversify your revenue streams and make plans of how you handle server outtages etc.. (if 100% critical there are companies that guarantee 100% up time but you will pay for it. ) Depending on how you plan to make your living online will vary your ups and downs greatly. For me i mainly do affiliate marketing, IF an offer gets pulled or cancelled that could mean hundreds or thousands of profit i won’t be getting anymore. Do i panic…. well maybe a little but then i gain composer and move on to the next thing. But with that i also have a baseline of normal websites earning revenue for me thru various revenue streams. so even when i “panic” my earnings online will still more than cover my bills its more of man that sucks that i am not making that anymore.

How did i decide it was worth the risk??? Well it came down to a conversation with my wife as i was basically working two jobs and i enjoyed both of them. One working as electrical engineer from 8 to 5, and from 6 to 10 as webprenuer. As you can see doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for family. So after much thought and discussion. I concluded i didn’t want to look back on my like 5 or 10 years from now still working as an engineer saying i wonder what would have happened had i gone full time working online. That is what sold it for me as i never want to live life with regrets… plus what was the worst case… my wife would have to find a job and i would have to find a job. Not so bad of a failing outcome as most families both husband and wife work 8 to 5 jobs.  So from there i took the plunge into full time online work.

I do have one regret after doing this for over 9 months, I wish I had done it SOONER!

*** Please note that these are my thoughts an opinions and I am not a financial advisor. You have to make your own decision on how you want to live your life and what you want to do with your money.

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