The forum is small and concise, for now.  I like that there is a membership fee because it keeps the reality of the community in the back of your head.  There isn’t going to be spammers and link junkies all over the place, I hope.

The community is under 2000 members right now and it’s still only $1.95 to join.  Darren posted an announcement the other day that the intro pricing was going away when the forum reached 2000 members.  Take this chance to get locked in at $1.95 and join.

www.problogger.com is the link

I see a bunch of familiar faces and as many new ones, so that is nice.  I hoped to be able to connect with other like minded bloggers and I don’t see that as being a problem right now.

There is a screenshot of the forums that have been added so far.  There is much discussion in just about all of them and it’s nice to see Darren get involved as well.  I have been following problogger.net for sometime now and really have taken a lot from the blog.  That is part of the reason I decided to join the forum.  I figured the interaction would be more instant and I would be able to take my blogging to the next level.

Have you joined the community yet?

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• Forums at DigitalPoint.com are Quite Helpful
• Bloggeries.com is an excellent Bloggers Resource
• Searching The Web: Blogging Tips

Basically, “5 things to remember when watching TV“, or “10 things to do when on vacation in Maui” type of post will give something for the reader to read, comment on and pass along to the web.  If you get it just right, you are looking at a possible social media explosion and will win out with a popular post read by many.

For my list post I am going to write about the “5 Things NOT to Do if You Want To Make Money Online”.  These items are from my own experiences over the last couple of years and of the 5 on the list, I wish I hadn’t done any of them.  Enjoy.

5 Things NOT to Do if You Want To Make Money Online

1. When you have a blog that is set up with inlinks and getting paid monthly, do NOT let the domain expire because you are not paying attention to the emails.  (cost:  $100/month)
2. While spamming your blog link all over comment sections, make sure you do NOT misspell it.  (cost:  unknown, but traffic for sure)
3. If you are going to buy an old domain name because it has some awesome keywords in it, do NOT buy one that has been banned from everywhere on the internet.  (cost: $10, to date)
4. When signing up to hundreds of affiliate networks, do NOTforget your login information, especially to the one that has $$ sitting aside for you!  (cost:  ~$100)
5. Whether you are in affiliate marketing on Facebook, using EPN, Google or Clickbank, make sure you do NOT violate the terms of service.  (cost:  can be more than you think!)

So, there you have it.  I have been able to whip up a “list” post in a matter of 20 minutes, by just thinking about some of the things that I have messed up on in the last 2 years.  What do you think?

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• Welcome AverageGal.com to Affiliate Obsession
• Posting One Time Per Day Helps
• Tips for Affiliate Blogging Beginners, Part2

When I am writing up a short post or a long article, I try to keep certain keywords in mind, but I also try to keep the reader in mind.  You may have to keep the reader insterested longer than you think.  That “12 seconds” you have to impress the reader is important.  If you are going to fill a post with a ton of keyword content and forget about the “real meat”, you aren’t going to have to worry about readers, that’s for sure.

I found a website that will check over your website and then rank how easy it is for your readers to read. 

Check out the readability of your blog:  http://www.addedbytes.com/tools/readability-score/

The website is extremely easy to use and you can check any number of variables as well.  For the most part you are just taking your text and pasting it into a box on the page.

Once completed, you will see the readability score of the text, from different scoring systems.  The higher the grade, the more readable the text is.  There are links to the Wikipedia pages of each test as well, so that you can read about how and what they grade the text on.

This post has a 81.70 (out of 100) for a score, so at least I know it is quite easy to read.  It’s useful tool if you are writing long articles for your  blog or website.  Check out how each system grades your text and see how you score.

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• Marketing – K.I.S.S – Keep it Simple Stupid
• Text Links vs Banner Ads for Offer Promotion
• Tips for Affiliate Blogging Beginners, Part2

How Does it Work?

Basically the idea behind their offers is that someone will have to complete one in order to get access to privileged information on your site.  That is why this works great for TV/movie sites.  You can have access to a full episode blocked by your gateway and when the user completes the offer, they get access.  They are happy to watch an episode and you are happy to collect money for the completed offer.

If you are not sure how CPALead.com works, let me give you the rundown.  The first thing you do is setup a “gateway” on the site.  That is like creating an Adsense channel for a separate website.  This is the gateway that will show the offers your readers can choose from (if they want to view the content that is currently blocked by the gateway) and if they complete the offer, they will get access to whatever you have blocked.

Can I See Some Samples?

Websites like SimpsonsEpisodes.com, WatchScrubsNow.com and DeadliestCatchEpisodes.com are just some examples that use the CPALead.com Gateway feature.  When a user goes to watch an episode they are presented with a lightbox (that blocks out website content) that offers them offers to complete.  In return for valuable information that advertisers want, the user will get access to all the episodes on the site, for life.

But How Do I Make Money?

Each of the said offers (which CPALead tries to match with your site) has a payout associated with it.  If the user completes the task, you will see that amount in your account.  Now, picture this happening a hundred times per week, or even, per day!  You could see anywhere from $.40 to $14.40 per offer credited to your account! 

As you can see, the potential to make the money is astonishing.  All you need is a well developed TV/Movie site you can update quickly and traffic.  As you can see by the image below, this month I have made $6.11 with VERY LITTLE traffic.  Basically the more your site is in demand, the more money you can make.  I NEVER market this site and Google just keeps sending traffic.

Now, the question is, can you get the same return with your own site?  The process is simple, which I will outline in another post, so stay tuned if you don’t know how to start your own TV/Movie site.

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• Use Clickthru.com to Get Some Traffic
• My First Check From NeverBlueAds.com
• Promote Affiliate Offers on ProjectWonderful? Not Anymore!

In my opinion, this was bad for the $75 that I spent to gain traffic to my site.  I really am not sure how to track what clicks came from Myspace through my site to ebay, but on the days the campaign ran, I got a total of 49 clicks to ebay.

At this time, my monthly balance is nothing stellar, but I see almost no return on my investment in Myspace advertising.  I really didn’t know what to expect, but I really thought I was targeting users very well and those that clicked through would have bid for sure.  I really can’t expect that every single click will WIN a bid, it’s not like just clicking through and BUYING.  The user still have to WIN the auction.

With this bad news I wasn’t even going to post screenshots, but I think that before I advertise my own site on Myspace again, I am going to have to find a better way to track the clicks.  This would be just so that I feel comfortable reporting the results.

Myspace advertising is still plenty worth it and the one thing that I would announce to those that follow this blog for advise, make sure you realize what audience you are trying to reach and how LARGE that audience is.  If you are going to get views up the ass, make sure it’s worth what you are paying for clicks.

I am not giving up, I have a couple of other sites AND affiliate offers that I know will still work on Myspace, so stay tuned.  If you have had success with Myspace, why not leave a comment here and let us all know how it went!

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• Myspace Advertising Not a Total Bust – Results
• Myspace.com PPC Campaign Results
• How To Get Online Marketing For FREE

So now, I attempted my 3rd go around with Myspace Advertising and again, I chose the niche site as the landing page.  This site is making me about $200 a month now, I thought I would see if I could increase that with Myspace.

Ad Information

Since I am promoting Iron Man Collectibles, I knew I had to target an audience that was into things like the movie, action figures and comic, for sure.  These types of people love to shop, collect and spend big $$$ on ebay.  Below I listed who I targeted for this campaign.

Demographics

• Males only
• 18-30
• Education – all
• Relationship – all
• Perental Status – no preference

Geographics

• National – US

Interests

• Comics, Batman, X-men, Iron Man

I thought about it for only 10 minutes or so before I started the campaign and Myspace only gives you a few options when it comes to targeting interests.  I really like Facebook better for this, but I felt that promoting this site would be better on Myspace.

My PPC was set at .50 (about half way between recommended), I set my budget to $25 per day for a total campaign budget of $75.  That means I will spend $25 per day, but never more than $75 total.  In this case, it only took 3 days to reach my maximum.

As you can see, my CTR was .20% which I guess isn’t all that bad.  I did like to see the 74,432 ad views though.  I targeted a larger group than I thought and maybe could have narrowed that down a bit, on the other hand, I did go through all my clicks in under 3 days!  That is nice to see as well.  If my clicks would have taken 2 weeks, I would have had to look at who I was targeting and maybe clean that up a bit.  It looks like I targeted the right group fo clickers, that’s a plus!

Where Did All The Clickers Go?

Since we know that I am promoting a niche site hooked up through ebay, I also checked the stats available from the EPN.  Right now, it is showing about 49 clicks through to ebay on these 3 days.  I checked my EPN stats and I can see the clicks through to ebay.  Since the cookies are good for 7 days, I will have to update you on the actual amount of $$$ the clicks made.

Stay tuned!

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• Myspace.com PPC Campaign Results
• MySpace Advertising Not a Total Bust – Results Part II
• 2nd Myspace Advertising Attempt

First Impression

At first glance I see a wordpress theme designer giving away simple free themes to help boost his presence on the net.  There are a few photoshop tutorials (helpful to me) and it seems the blog was just started last month.  Since it’s so new, we can’t really give any indication on how well he is doing.  Maybe he’ll stop back and let us know.

Photoshop

PS tutorials are always a help and the ones I read through on WPThemekid.com are very easy to follow.  Step by step instructions for some basic things you probably didn’t know you could do in photoshop.

Themes

The themes seem to be created by Daniel and are quite fresh from what I normally see when people are giving away themes.  I am sure, as a designer, we will see more complex themes to come.

Summary

Thanks Daniel for coming to comment and I hope that you will stick around to learn a few things about affiliate marketing.  Pass this post along to friends and let them know they can be introduced as well.  I urge all of my readers to visit WPThemekid.com and say hi to Daniel.

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• Amazon Niche Store – AmazingWebStores.com Free Trial & Review
• Marketing – K.I.S.S – Keep it Simple Stupid
• Father’s Day Affiliate Marketing Tips & Experiment

It is quite simple really, just like all of the other contests that you see all over the interweb.

Typical Contest Entry Information

The first thing you have to do is subscribe to my blog via email.  All verified emails from the date of this post will be entered in the contest. You can do that with the form posted right at the bottom of this post.

Secondly, you will have to post about my contest, telling me how you want it more.  I will even give you the words to use if you cannot think of any for yourself.  Just copy and past the information below or, if you are creative enough, you can use your own words, but the 2 links must be included.

I am too lazy to write my own post about for a contest entry, so I have just copied and pasted this one.  Hurry and subscribe to John’s Affiliate Marketing Blog and you can win money, too.  The more people that enter, the more money he is giving away.  Also, if you like learning about affiliate marketing, you should read his posts.  Good luck.

Let’s here how bad you want this money (starting at $10) and for every single entry, I will throw in $5.  I must say that I like this type of contest, but I didn’t invent it, I am borrowing it from John at JWRMedia.com.

And there you go, it’s quite simple, don’t you think? The winner will be chosen, at the end of March, from all of the entries.   I will be reading each one and choosing the most creative post answering “Who Wants it More?”, so keep that in mind.  I will now that you entered because you will have subscribed to my blog AND written a post about this contest.  Tell your friends and let us all share in the wealth.

Contest Starts: Today
Contest Ends: March 27th
Winner Announced: March 31st

• $100 MarketLeverage Affiliate Contest
• UniqueBlogDesigns.com Has a Contest & Birthday!
• Marketing – K.I.S.S – Keep it Simple Stupid

One option, that I use to check the areas of the USA that I want to target an offer, is Google Trends.  If you don’t know, Google Trends shows the amount of activity of a search term used in Google Search.  By typing in a search term, you will see how many searches are done and even from what locations throughout a selectable region.

You might be asking how Google Trends can help.  I really didn’t get it 100% until I read a post that Shoemoney did about promoting locally.  If you are going to advertise on Facebook, for instance, you are going to have a better CTR if you can target a certain group.  Of course, it helps if the group is associated, in some way, with your affiliate offer.

Take all the weight loss offers on the web today.  You can try about 100 different products, JUST PAY SHIPPING!  The offers are everywhere and if you really want to promote one, you are going to want to see what region is searching for “weight loss”, right?  By searching Google Trends for that term, searched in the US in the last 12 months, you get the results shown below.

It would appear that for that search term, Charlotte, NC has the most activity, followed by big cities from two other states.  With this information you can go to Facebook and target these areas.  Of course, there is no guarantee the users will click your ads, or even care, but at least you did a little extra research before throwing your hat in the ring.  By targeting these cities and certain keywords, you will narrow the group of users down that will see your ad and your CTR should be higher because of that.

Without this information, you might be inclined to just target a wide range of users by keywords, and you will see a poor CTR for sure.  Your ad will be shown so many times that a couple of clicks will look like nothing to you.  Keep your ads targeted, at least until you find what demographic works for you, and I am sure your CTR will increase over time.

Do you use Facebook to promote any offers?  If so, have you had any luck?

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• How To Use Google Trends to Get Traffic
• Facebook Coupon PPC Campaign – GameFly Trial
• Social Media Traffic – Can You Monetize it?

The Flip Mino HD is the coolest gadget around. You can shoot one hour of video in HD (so you can play it on your plasma) and you can even edit your footage right on your device. This device is so small that it will fit in your pocket so you will never miss capturing a moment ever again.

To enter all you have to do is sign up for Ryan’s newsletter and post about the competition.

Check out all the details of how you can enter the Win a Flip Mino HD competition now.

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• Do I Need a Blog Newsletter?
• DealDotCom.com and Clickbank Insider Secrets
• Use Blog Directories for Simple, Cheap Exposure