I have failed to create my 20 campaigns this month. But I am going to take a new direction starting yesterday. I created 1 new Pay Per Lead campaign yesterday from a affiliate program in CJ.com. I hope all goes well with this campaign. I got disabled within a few hours because the landing page has some pop ups. So I had no choice but to build simple landing page.

If you’re from the USA, you shouldn’t have problems joining the loans and insurance programs at CJ.com. I got rejected by quite a number of them. Lucky for me one of the top companies let me in. I am promoting the program with the highest “3 month EPC”. I forgot what that means… I think it has something to do with Earnings Per 100 Clicks. So you can expect to earn $X if you direct 100 visitors through their links.

Pay Per Lead programs usually have some kind of form for people to fill up and you get paid when someone fills up the form to apply for a loan or something like that. This loan industry is so huge! There will be some “micro niches” for you to exploit. It took me a few hours yesterday to research the companies and types of loans available.

There will be a lot of competition but I am sure I will be able to “sneak in through the back door” with the Google AdWords 123 techniques of bidding on company names, URLs and “consumer keywords”. I got the idea of promoting loan affiliate program while I was re-reading Google Cash yesterday. There is a bonus report by Jeremy Wilson, webmaster of AdWordMentor.com on how he makes money with Pay Per Lead programs. I now wonder how the hell did I miss that one out for so long?

Categories: Affiliate Program Marketing | 9 Comments »

Good news! 4 pages of my affiliate site InternetMarketingGuy.com have been indexed by Yahoo. I have a total of 6 pages and I only need 5 of them indexed because 1 of them is a contact me page. Let’s see if I can get the FAQ page indexed as well!

Blogging and Pinging really works! Its fine if you have small site like mine. If you’ve got hundreds and thousands of pages on your site, the blogging and pinging process will take ages to complete by hand. Lucky for us there are some new software in the market to handle that kind of work.

The thing about Blogging and Pinging is that we’re actually “spamming” the blogs with “filler” content and a URL to the page we want to be spidered. I heard if you automate the process and do it too often like every 15 minutes, Blogger will ban your account but you can create another Blogger account anyway. I still have to research more on the ideal frequency to blog and which software to suit my budget. They are outrageously expensive at the moment.

I also realised that the Blogging and Pinging video is really for people who need to see how it is done. You can actually get cheaper information about the same thing. The videos by Rick Butts is really targeted for non tech savvy people. And what he does is no secret anymore.

Categories: Search Engine Optimization | 2 Comments »

Clickbank seems to be having a "denial of service" attack. No wonder I woke up to ZERO sales this morning. I almost died of heart attack…. Then my friend told me Clickbank was done so I am not the only one. At lunch time, I had one sale. What a disappointing day.

I screwed up my own database a few days back and lost 1 day’s worth of sales! I had ZERO sales on the day my databases was down. The next day I had over $150 then today I have only $23.50. Very weird indeed!

Categories: Blog Updates | No Comments »

I’ve had flashes of brilliance with my PPC affiliate income. My best day was USD $200 in sales and on an outstanding day for me would be USD $100. On average, I receive USD $50 in sales per day. The truth is its been a great challenge for me to repeat the "USD $100 - $200 days" on a consistent basis.

Flashes of brilliance just doesn’t cut it. I learn that from Mike Litman’s Greatness Held Hostage CDs. Mike says "You’re either consistent or you’re non-existent!". Now I am "stuck" in this plateau of $50 per day. I need to find a way to move to the next level. Sometimes it does get very depressing to create campaign after campaign hoping that I will find something that will sell like hotcakes.

I am sure I will get past this like how I progressed from losing USD $100 + to making a profit of USD $300 to $1000 ++ today.

Categories: Affiliate Program Marketing, Vincent's Updates | 5 Comments »

It seems like I have been indexed on Yahoo and Google but not MSN. I am only concerned about Yahoo, Google and MSN Search Engines. The rest are not that important as most people use these search engines.

How To Find Out If Your Sites Are Indexed?

I found out how to check if your web site is indexed by the search engines. Simply enter "site:YOURDOMAIN.com" at the search box at each search engine. Pretty simple isn’t it? Once you’ve entered the command above, simply bookmark the URL at the results page for quick retrieval next time.

Here are my indexed pages…

1. Google
2. Yahoo

I wish my site was on MSN…

1. MSN

There is an easier way to do this if you are using the Firefox browser like I am. Simply install this extension, visit your domain name and you can click on a button to display a list of your indexed pages or incoming links to your site.

Is Blog and Ping Very Common Now?

Back in December 2004 when I purchased my Blog and Ping videos, there wasn’t much resources on it. Last night I visited Phil Wiley’s forum and found quite a number of posts on this issue and I learnt something new about Blog and Ping….

1. You can ping to more than just Yahoo… There are a lot of places you can ping to by using a free service like Ping O Matic.
2. You can ping to MSN through Moreover’s Ping Tool. I just did a ping to Moreover.com and I hope MSN comes to my site soon.
3. There are quite a few online scripts and desktop software to automate the blogging and pinging process. They range from $49+ to $297! If you ask me $297 is too much to pay for a blogging and pinging tool when you could easily hire some programmer online to build a software to do it for you for a fraction of $297. The logic behind the blog and ping method isn’t that complicated.
4. Some people are using the Blog and Ping method with "Page Generating" software like Traffic Equalizer to help speed up the process of getting their pages indexed. This seems like a good idea.

I am still looking around the forums to get a list of all the resources available for Blogging and Pinging. If you’ve got a huge web site with thousands of pages, it will take ages to blog and ping each and every page.

Categories: Search Engine Optimization | 3 Comments »

I left my InternetMarketingGuy.com site untouched for a few days to see if any spiders come "crawling" to my site. I have visitors from 3 spiders…

1. Google’s "Googlebot" Spider. According to Google’s web site, "Googlebot is Google’s web-crawling robot. It collects documents from the web to build a searchable index for the Google search engine.". I will do a search to see if my pages are indexed in a few more days. I am still not sure how to check that at the moment.
2. Yahoo’s Inktomi Slurp also visited me again. I am confused about Inktomi Slurp and Yahoo Slurp. I did a search on the internet and http://www.inktomi.com/slurp.html gets forwarded to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp/. Does that mean they are they are the same? What I do know is Yahoo owns Inktomi.
3. Ask Jeeves came to visit me too. Don’t know where that came from?

This seems like a good start. I have a few more things to learn…

1. How frequently should I blog and ping my site?
2. How do I know if my site is being indexed or not?
3. How do I get MSN spider to come and index my site?

I will have to watch my Blog and Ping videos and listen to the MP3s again to see if I left out anything regarding the 3 questions I have above. In the meantime, you may download my web site stats as of 22 April 2005.

One of my biggest mistakes I made when I first learnt how to build web sites was not taking Search Engine Optimization (SEO) seriously. I was focused on making the web site pretty instead of getting more traffic! If done right, you will be able to get a ton of free traffic from the search engines.

If I could just get 100 visitors a day to my affiliate site and have 1% conversion rate, that would give me 1 sale a day. If my products gives me a commission of $20, in 1 month I would receive $600 in sales. Just multiply the number of visitors and you will get more money! Damn! Now I know why people are mad for creating affiliate mini sites. I wouldn’t mind creating 1 site per week if I know the exact blueprint to get it right. Right now I am still clueless.

Categories: Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

I created simple BlogSpot blog for my affiliate site InternetMarketingGuy.com and I am not really concerned if this works or not because its just a test.

Seems like the blog feed from my BlogSpot blog got displayed into My Yahoo account instantly once I did a ping command to the following URL!

http://internetmarketingguy.blogspot.com/

I did a check on my web server logs to see my April 2005 visitor stats. It seems like Yahoo was already visiting my page because I see a “Inktomi Slurp” spider visit me 23 times. But my traffic is pathetic with less than 5 visitors per day. You may download the initial web server stats from 18 April 2005. Maybe this test would have been better if I used a 100% new web site but let’s see how far I can take this web site with this blog and ping method.

Categories: Search Engine Optimization | 2 Comments »

I can’t believe I bought this Blog and Ping in December 2004 and didn’t watch it till last weekend! I bought it for only $23.50 during the Rick Butts’ birthday discount period and now it retails for $97.

What exactly is blog and ping?

According to Rick Butts….

It’s a fantastic and simple strategy for getting your site listed in Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN - all the major search engines - fast and free.It’s easy, it doesn’t cost anything and you can do it over and over again to get even the largest sites indexed.

You can literally turn on the faucet for no-cost organic search engine traffic without paying for listing fees - or waiting a month for a URL submission to work.

Rick Butts has spent hours perfecting this process and made it super simple to learn with an easy to follow, step-by-step video tutorial and he has just released it.

I was blown away when I saw how easy it was using this system - and the results will make you jump for joy.

Click on this special link right now to get his free case study where he got 1256 pages of a brand new web site spidered by Yahoo within 2 hours - and watch one of the training videos too - all on the house.

There are a lot of search engine myths out there - but this is no myth - it really works.

I finished the videos in less than 1 hour and the whole process of doing this Blog and Ping isn’t as hard as you think. From what I see, here’s what you need to do:

1. Register at Google’s BlogSpot.com. This is the same as the Blogger.com account I use but BlogSpot.com is hosted on Google’s servers unlike my VincentRich.com which is hosted on my own web host. This will save you time and money because you do not need to get a web host and web domain to start.
2. No need for any web design skills. You can simply select the default Blogger templates for your BlogSpot.com account.
3. The blogging part of the process is just to submit a few posts with the URL you want to get indexed at the Search Engines.
4. The pinging part is simply to let Yahoo know your blog has been updated so that their spiders will come and visit your pages.

I am going to test it on one of my affiliate sites I created some time back. I created a mini site called the InternetMarketingGuy.com to promote Corey Rudl’s internet marketing products and I have not promoted it at all!

I was pretty much “stuck” after the site building stage. I wasn’t interested in writing articles or newsletters on that subject so I left it there to “rot”. I don’t think it receives much traffic at all. I will do a check and post on this Blog and Ping test on my affiliate site.

I am still skeptical but I must not judge this till I have tested it. If this Blog and Ping works out great, then I will purchase a “Page Generating” software like Traffic Equalizer to pump out pages and use the Blog and Ping method to get search engines to visit me FAST!

Categories: Search Engine Optimization | 1 Comment »

More than 90% of my income comes from Clickbank products. My old way of searching for affiliate programs to promote was simply to select a top 20 ranked product in its category. Now with CBEngine, I can search for products with a lot less time. Here’s why I like CBEngine:

1. I can search for products sorted by the amount of commission paid. Without CBEngine, I would have to use Clickbank Calculator to calculate the amount of commission I will receive when I sell their product. That takes a lot of time because I have to look at the sales page to find the price and sometimes they don’t make it obvious how much they are selling it for!
2. I can sort the products by the “Change in Ranking” and “Momentum”. Some of the top 20 products might have a negative change in rank which usually means their products are selling less and less to slide down the ranks. The momentum is what the author calls “Predictive Analysis tool based on a product current sales performance”. The bigger the change in rank and momentum column the “hotter” the product.
3. Sometimes, products outside the top 20 ranking can be hot sellers too. CBEngine has an “insider list” with New Killer Products, Underexposed & Climbing and Underexposed & Gaining products.
4. I can “bookmark” affiliate programs into a folder. This works very well for me because I used to write down a list of product I want to promote on a piece of paper. With a target of 20 affiliate programs a month, this really helps to organize the whole process.
5. I can use it for as long as I want without getting “logged off”. I used to use Affiliates Alert and when I go out for lunch or take a toilet break, my account gets logged off and I have to relogin again. With CBEngine, I don’t have to worry about this anymore.
6. Last but no least, I like the flexible price options. Affiliates Alert only has a 90 day option. CBEngine has 4 payment options to cater to your budget. You can even take a test drive with limited features to get a feel for it before making your purchase.

• 7 Day Subscription - $9.95
• 30 Day Subscription - $17.95
• 60 Day Subscription - $28.95
• 90 Day Subscription - $39.95

Take a look at the screenshot on the left to see what CBEngine looks like on the inside. I am way behind my 20 affiliate programs this month. I just came back from a 4 day holiday and I and ready to create 19 more affiliate programs in the next 11 days of April 2005. I am sure CBEngine will help me speed up the process of finding profitable campaigns as soon as possible.

Categories: Affiliate Program Marketing | No Comments »

Looking at my 1st quarter earnings from my Google AdWords affiliate campaigns, I am still a little bit short of my goal of USD $1500 net profit per month.

1. January 2005: USD $1132.94
2. February 2005: USD $1132.76
3. March 2005: USD $1412.68

As you can see from the above, I made almost the same amount of money in January and February. In March, I saw an increase in my profits by nearly USD $300. In order to get a net profit of USD $6250 (SGD $10000) per month kind of income, I must somehow increase my income every month. It should look something like this…

4. April 2005: USD $2000
5. May 2005: USD $2600
6. June 2005: USD $3200
7. July 2005: USD $3800
8. ugust 2005: USD $4400
9. September 2005: USD $5000
10. October 2005: USD $5600
11. November 2005: $6200
12. December 2005: $6800

What that means for me is that I need to increase my monthly earnings by a minimum of USD $500 every single month to hit USD $6250. At the rate I am going, it is just not going to happen! I’m too slow and my campaigns are not profitable enough.

I am contemplating registering a company to run my affiliate business. Yes, a legal entity with a business checking account to run my affiliate business. I would put all my web sites’ ad revenue and affiliate commissions into this company so that I can save a little money on taxes.

I did a check on my local company laws. There will be no tax on the 1st SGD $100000 profit of new companies. If I create a company to keep my money, I won’t have to pay taxes. Coporate tax is a flat fee of 20%. If I start making SGD $100000 in personal income, my government will tax me on my gross income. I will be discussing this with my Dad who is a CPA to see which way would save me more money in the long run.

I will be taking a holiday over the weekend to think about my business and how I am going to pull off my "masterplan" to generate a monthly income of USD $6250++ by December 2005. I will be back next monday. Cheers!

Categories: Vincent's Updates | 6 Comments »