Sat, 19 Jul 2008
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I signed up for Overture some time this month and I must spend at least $20 per month or else Overture is going to charge me $20 for nothing. So I need to find a way to spend $20 every month on my own clicks. I don’t think that is going to be hard!
Overture’s Account Screen
This is what you’ll see when you sign up. I have deposited $30 into my account and got a bonus $25 credit. Now if you notice my account is still “Off” even though I have paid money! Now I was confused for a few days. I kept clicking on “Account On/Off” at the “Account Setup” page and set it to “On” and clicked on “Submit”. Somehow, it keeps staying at “Off”! I got mad and emailed the customer support after spending a few minutes looking through the help file only to find the the customer support link is at the bottom of every page in very tiny text.
Overture’s Account Activation Procedure
It seems like the only way to activiate your account is to call a special phone number Overture sent you after you signed up. I igonored this email initially and the customer support sent me a similar email again. I replied asking if there was another way?
Here’s what the email says:
Thank you for signing up with Overture! In order to activate your account and begin receiving targeted sales leads, please follow these simple steps:
1. Call 1-866-230-5091 any time of day to access our automated account activation system from the phone number you entered in your sign up. If you are located outside of the United States, please call our main Customer Solutions number: +1 (626) 685-5700 during our business hours: Monday - Friday: 6 a.m.-7 p.m., PST and Saturday: 7 a.m.-4 p.m., PST
2. Enter your account number, found in the confirmation e-mail you received from Overture or the DirecTraffic Center®
3. Verify your account information as prompted, such as your credit card information and zip code (Please have your account information available to complete this step).Once your account is activated and your listings are approved, you will begin receiving targeted sales leads from the Overture network of partner sites.
We look forward to helping you build your business.
Sincerely,Your partners at Overture
If you’re in the USA, it shouldn’t be a problem. It is quite a chore for me because I have to be mindful of the operating hours. I might have to call late at night from Singapore to get them at that time. Right now its about 11 AM in Singapore and its 6 PM PST in USA. Seems like I have to pay extra to get this step done. This is the first time I have encountered such a troublesome procedure.
Overture’s Money Management
This is the most important part in my opinion. Overture will charge you a minimum of $20 every month. If you read the fine print, you will learn that you must spend $20 every month.
Furthermore, once your account balance is low, you must “top up” a minimum of $30. Again read the the fine print at the end of the page. (See screenshot on the left).
Like Enhance and FindWhat PPC search engines, you will be able to see the top bid prices and their positions. The more you bid the higher your ad will appear as simple as that. Be careful when you bid on your keywords because they will set the highest CPC by default with a minimum CPC of $0.10.
Overture’s Ad Management
Overture organizes your ads in “Categories”. All your keywords belong to this category and each keyword has 1 ad linked to it. If you’ve been using Google all along this is quite a shift because you now have to write 1 ad per keyword but you can use the same ad for all your keywords if you want.
There 2 main areas where your ads may appear. In “Precision Match” or “Content Match”. “Precision Match” are the search engine results pages while “Content Match” are other web sites that belong to Overture’s network. The “Content Match” is similar to Google’s AdSense network.
I submitted my ads for approval and some of them got approved in 1 day while others are taking the full 5 days to get approved!
Overture’s Tutorials
I would love to post a link to Overture’s tutorial page with a PDF Workbook for free download but that web site can’t be accessed at the moment so I will post about it when its up again.
Categories: Pay Per Click Search Engines | 2 Comments »
I tweaked the layout of the blog a little, removed the banners ads at the top and right hand side of the page. I added a Google AdSense ad at the top of every page. Hopefully, that will help me get some extra income from this blog. I signed up for Message Cast, a free Blogger notification tool for all my blog readers but I have not received the activation email. I’ll post about that one when its confirmed.
Categories: Blog Updates | No Comments »
I stumbled upon this article titled “Couples and Life-Long Learning” at Robert Kiyosaki’s web site. I believe this article makes a lot of sense. Let me quote 2 paragraphs from the article:
“The commitment to becoming financially free requires more than simply beginning the journey. A key component to success on your journey – and maximizing the exhilaration of the ride – revolves around your traveling companion.
A partner who is like-minded and with whom you share common goals and values can be one of your biggest assets. Likewise, a partner who is NOT committed to the same level of growth can hold you down, pull you back – ultimately keep you from reaching your goals.”
This article struck a cord with me because one of my close relatives told me recently that I should get a “proper job”. I told him to me a “proper job” is improper to me. I think he took offence even though I didn’t mean that his life was improper because he earns a living with his job.
My close relative then went on saying that I am 23 years old now and I should (I hate it when people “should” me) get a proper job to help my mum with her finances. I felt like he meant I was living an irresponsible life by making a living online. Maybe he meant that he thought that was the right thing to do according to his values, beliefs and attitudes.
So let’s get back to square one…. Who Are You Spending Time With?
Well let’s start off with me. I am spending most of my time with about 5 close friends and my family members. Most of my friends are either working in a job, serving the country in the army or studying. I do not really have friends that are into internet marketing like myself. Out of my 5 friends, I would say only 1 of them really believes in what I am doing and has something positive to say to me when I share with them all my online experiences. The other 4 just say it would be better if you get a job.
In the article above, there is a quote that says “Tell me who your friends are… and I’ll tell you where you’re going?”
Have you heard of this saying that your income is probably about the same amount as the 5 closest friends you hang around. Well for its absolutely true. Most of my friends make about $1000 + per month. That’s the level I am at right now. Its not rocket science that I need to spend more time with people who are making the kind of money ($10000 +) I want to make. I have some trouble searching for these people offline but on the internet I know where to find them….
Anik Singal’s Affiliate Classroom
Anik is 21 years old. I think he’s 1 year younger than me. I joined his membership site last month and I am working on 2 affiliate web sites at the moment with his guidance. Now I was very skeptical about his promise of helping affiliates get big checks but after reading his tutorials and affiliate upsell system and numerous email conversations, I believe this guy really knows what he is talking about. I even looked at one of his affiliate sites where he sells an add on to the popular “Traffic Equalizer” software for hundreds of dollars!
Anik recommends that you build an affiliate site around an product and then you upsell the customer on higher ticket items after you’ve sold him the 1st affiliate product. So you can sell a $20 ebook and then proceed to sell him a $67 software. That’s how all the big bucks are made. As a PPC affiliate marketer, I only get 1 sale and that’s the end of the relationship with the customer. With this affiliate upsell approach I get to make more money on the “backend” as the internet marketers say.
If you’re interested to know more about building affiliate web sites, Join the Affiliate Classroom to get a 30 day trial today.
Internet Marketing Forums
I just joined John Reese’s forum. Its got over 2000 members and I’ve been asking a couple of question about Internet Marketing over there. I am amazed at what I can learn from these people for free. At this moment, this is my favourite forum among all the other forums I’ve been to.
Some other forums I frequent are:
If you can’t find real people you can see “physically”, the next best thing is to hang around at places where real internet marketing people go to online. You can definitely learn a lot from these guys because forums are a great place for these experts to show off what they know to get more business so it helps you as much as it helps them!
Greg Heslin, author of Google AdWords 123
I believe in 2 years time I will look back and really see the impact Google AdWords 123 had on my life. I can’t thank Greg enough for sharing with me what he teaches in his ebook enough. If I didn’t read this ebook, I would probably be in a job right now! I was that close to quitting to get my money offline because I was losing money with Google before I read this ebook. Now I’ve got a regular income from my affiliate marketing business because I applied whatever the Greg’s ebook suggests.
I recommended 2 friends to purchase the ebook and 1 of them made a sale from the example in Greg’s book. That was how I started making money with Google AdWords. I can’t describe the confidence boost I got when I received my 1st sale, then the 2nd… 3rd… 4th after applying Greg’s techniques.
One of the reasons I believe I am making $1000 + per month in profit is because I keep asking Greg questions on how to improve my PPC and affiliate marketing skills and he is always happy to give me great advice. I can’t hang around physically with him but email is as good as it gets for now. Maybe if I keep on learning from him I will be able to make $1400 + sales in 1 day? Man I can’t wait for that day to come!
Categories: Vincent's Updates | No Comments »
Last October I blogged about how I could determine which affiliate program someone is promoting by checking out the price of their Clickbank sales price.
I found another Clickbank affiliate report with the merchant’s username in it! This is a dead giveaway!
I found this page at this guy’s web site. He says he can help you get $400 profit in 1 week with this free Google AdWords report.
Categories: Affiliate Program Marketing | No Comments »
Did you know Clickbank has a reseller program? Its like their own affiliate program for referring other people to use Clickbank.
If someone signs up for Clickbank using your link, you will get the above bonuses straight from Clickbank.
A $0.10 bonus doesn’t seem like a lot, but if you have newsletter or an ebook that invites people to join Clickbank, the cents could potentially add up to a lot if they really make money with Clickbank. You’ll get $0.10 for every sale they make for their time with Clickbank. That’s quite cool to me because I am not rich enough to turn down any amount of money at the moment!
Categories: Affiliate Program Marketing | No Comments »
I registered for Enhance not too long ago and I’ve been testing it for a few days now. There is not much information on other PPC search engines other than Google AdWords so this would definitely help people who want to expand outside of Google AdWords to boost their income like I do.
I was resistant to expanding out of Google AdWords simply because Google AdWords has become something like my "comfort zone". I am so used to Google’s interface and style that I find it hard to accept other PPC search engines. I will talk about the differences between Enhance and Google that really annoys me below.
What is Enhance Interactive?
This is straight from Enhance’s About Us page:
Enhance Interactive is a pay-for-performance search engine company that connects thousands of advertisers with millions of consumers.
Enhance Interactive’s Paid Listings program is an easy, effective way to purchase PPC (pay-per-click) advertising. Pick both the keywords for your ad and the price you’re willing to pay for someone to click on it (as little as $0.03). You only pay when your ad is clicked on.
Enhance Interactive’s Guaranteed Inclusion service allows you to submit URLs which are guaranteed to be in the database of highly visited search engines such as Excite and Dogpile, as well as smaller directories.
Enhance Interactive also offers banners and skyscrapers distributed throughout our partner network in specific categories such as finance or travel. This is a cost-effective way to advertise on great sites such as EarthLink and NetZero.
Where will your ads appear in Enhance?
In their about us page, it says:
Enhance Interactive’s partner network displays ads on many popular sites, such as EarthLink, InfoSpace and MSN.
But when I read the media kit PDF, it says:
Advertiser profile: Advertising agencies, search engine marketing firms,
online merchants
Sample advertisers: eBay, Orbitz, Sears, Priceline, Expedia, aQuantive,
Shopping.com
Partner profile: More than 350 quality distribution partners,
mainly search engines and directories
Sample partners: EarthLink, InfoSpace, MSN, Jupitermedia, 24/7 Real Media,
Yahoo!
That is all they are willing to reveal.
Signing Up For Enhance Interactive
You will need 2 thing when you want to sign up for Enhance:
Why do I say you need to be patient? Its because I had a lot of trouble filling up the registration form.
This is what you will see. I didn’t want to pay $99 service fee for the 3 extra services so I opted for option 2: do it yourself service.
I was halfway through the registration form and someone from the Enhance support staff contacted me through their live chat. It was quite amazing because how the hell did they know I was filling up a form? I was lucky because it was late at night in Singapore and those guys probably just started work. If I did it in the morning or afternoon, they might still be in bed! I’m 16 hours ahead of PST time.
Enhance offered me a FREE Option 1: we’l do it for you service. What that means for you is that you do not need to pay $99 for it. You will have:
Remember to ask for this free option 1 if they don’t prompt you for it! I discovered it by chance!
What Enhance did for me was they helped me create my new account through their own system. I gave them my details over their live chat and they created the account for me.
Enhance Interactive Interface
Finally we can log in now! Here’s what you will see when you sign up. Notice my account balance was at $0.00.
This is the part where I hate the most. You must deposit $50 to activate your account! Compare that to Google’s $5.00? That’s 10 times more!
Remember to ask for your free $25.00 credit if you do not see it in your account balance after 1 day.
Things I Discovered About Enhance…
I’m still learning about this PPC search engine and I hope it works out for my profitable campaigns in Google AdWords.
My first ad went down the toilet….
I wasted over $20.00 on clicks that didn’t even give me 1 sale! I received over 200 clicks and I had to disable the ads. Lucky for me its was "free money" so I don’t feel the pinch!
I don’t have any good news to report on Enhance yet but I’m sure that will change in the near future. I will continue to use Enhance and learn more about it and report my findings here.
Categories: Pay Per Click Search Engines | 1 Comment »