Above is a pic (the opening pic, actually) of a character from a one-shot manga called "Apple". Basically the series was about this guy (whose name is Apple, as the title suggests) who is the "ultimate evolution" capable of morphing into any animal alive and also using psychic powers. It was a nice one-shot with some pretty interesting themes and science behind it.Well, what did I do this week? Pretty much link build. I find more and more of this is just link building and writing articles or lame comments on people's blogs. That being said my earnings have reached an all time low on the hubpages income. I didn't expect to be rolling in $1 days or anything, but now I'm back at around .03-.04 per day across all 18 hubpages. None of em are backlinked, so I really couldn't care less (for another few weeks, anyway, then I'm going to switch from hardcore Clickbank to hardcore Adsense). And, of course, no more Clickbank sales.
I'm honestly quite surprised by how ranking in Google seems to be such a crapshoot. Terms I tried to rank for a month ago now have Articlesbase articles on the first page (second position, IIRC) ranking very easily with no backlinks at all. It's getting silly how Google's algorithm must be working now. Anyway, this post serves as a week in review as well as going over a couple of topics I've been thinking of lately.
First, Ben over at Make Money Online with SEO (I know you're sick of me mentioning him, but the guy really is awesome) did an update and talked about the fact that to affiliate sell you really need to let go of your ethics, at least the tiniest bit, or you're going to have a hard time selling. Going by the hard and fast common perception of what is ethical, then I completely agree with Ben. But going by self applied morals and ethical values? Well I know I personally don't step outside of my own self made and rationalized code of truth or whatever you want to call it. I haven't been doing this long enough to have a real "system" in place, but for the (wow, now it's 3 months) I've been going at this at a snail's pace, I've come up with a way to market that I feel is fair to both readers that just want the info, buyers who may buy, and myself who wants that sale.
1. Find my product. I'm talking about Clickbank here so I just go to CB-analytics or Cbengine (rarely) and pick out a nice product. I'm looking at several products with nice gravity right now, and some that have single digit gravities just because I don't want the competition.
2. Read over the product, evaluate it at a non critical level. If it seems interesting I keep going. If not, I move on to look for a better product (sometimes I'll try and find a better on in the same niche).
3. Check the "affiliates" section. Any vendor worth his salt will have a pretty good section boasting articles and sample PPC campaigns. I scope out the articles and figure out what the vendor is going for with them, then how I can twist them to my own words.
4. Find published vendor articles. This is a pretty simple thing to do if you just have a product name. Vendors usually direct link so I just search for the product name in quotes through ezinearticles and you'll usually find it pretty fast. The page links back directly so either it's a very stupid affiliate or the vendor of the product. My way of judging which one is usually to look at the page views. A lot of the times the author name will be similar or something as well. Anyway, reading what the author says then looking up "non biased" info elsewhere is a good way for me to determine if it's good. For example if someone gives tips on how to clean gutters on a place like About.com and they don't cite a source that has an affiliate link or something, then I compare that to the ezinearticle from the author of my potential promotion and see if it looks good.
I don't assess the product so much as I assess the author. I'm sure that's a very bad way of doing things, but once I start getting more money I plan to buy products I promote, or, at least ask for review copies. Right now I would but I get the feeling I'd be passed over so fast it's not even worth the email. Some vendors I have asked and I get rejected pretty quickly.
But alas, that's just my way of doing things. I think a lot of affiliates try out the product they are going to promote first, it doesn't have to promise all of its outrageous claims or anything, but just giving valid info is enough for me personally. The only things that I WILL absolutely try out before promoting are MMO products. Honestly, though, I don't want to promote MMO products too badly. There's a lot of stigma attached to them, and if I flogged every product that came my way saying it would make you thousands of dollars a month then I would lose credibility pretty fast, or I'd have to constantly come up with new persona for my next MMO niche product. Either way it's a pain. I'll only promote stuff like Google Sniper and One Week Marketing; which I know work in theory.
Alright, continuing on, the second part of this post is going to be about short term active income. Wait, what?! Isn't the goal of making money online to get long term passive income coming in so you can relax and take a day off when you want to? Yeah, but I'm realizing more and more you can't create this passive income with truly no investment. Not fast enough for my liking, anyway. I originally set out to make about $1000 online (with internet marketing) by the end of the year, and then kick it into high gear for next year with whatever was making me money while experimenting. Well now I'm about 1/10 of the way to that goal, and yet I'm already in trouble because of other issues- namely, schooling. In the next 15 weeks or so I need to make about $3000 to keep attending safely. And by safely I mean without having to worry about getting another scholarship.
I know this goal is possible with internet marketing. But I'm not sure how probable it is. Hence why I'm looking into money for the here and now. Instead of pounding out articles for backlinks to sites that never seem to rank, or, worse, sites that don't convert even though they rank well, I'm going to try and do things a little differently and raise money by other internet means. I won't be giving up as an internet marketer, but I will have to put it on the back burner for a while while I try and get some more capital. I'm trying to get together a few things right now, but, with any luck, I'll be able to get signed on with sites like Associated Content, Constant-Content, Textbroker, Brighthub, and other article directories that pay you upfront for writing articles. I mentioned writing articles for money earlier, remember? Bright hub is probably the one I really want to work with. They pay $10 for every article accepted, so writing 3 articles a day for the next 15 weeks (piece of cake... or pie... whatever you like) would net me my tuition.
Well, that's about it for last week. This next week I'm going to try and focus on building links to my one self owned domain and getting it ranked. I'm fairly certain if I just build a couple of links per day and run free traffic system on it once per week that it will be ranked for its main key term on page 1 instead of page 17. But I'm going to see how this first run of Free Traffic System and me changing ezinearticles and hubpage links did before making any definitive statements. I'm really liking owning my own domain because even if this site fails conversion wise, it will still be ranked for a term that gets 3000+ phrase searches a month and maybe more terms, which means I'll be able to sell it pretty easily (I hope). Looking at some of the stuff that sells on Sitepoint I think I should be able to get a couple hundred out of it, assuming I ever get it ranked, of course.
Other than that, link building as usual this week. Good luck to everyone and hope you make lots of money online, or you might end up having to go into Christmas light installation (shameless plug/giveaway niche).
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