My Journey to Make Money Online

A taste of success

2011-07-12T20:49:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm not gonna lie...I've been too busy to work on my affiliate sales lately. It's been on the back burner and learning that Google AdWords banned me for not providing enough unique content didn't help. I was pretty discouraged about that and hadn't checked out my progress in awhile.

To my surprise I made my first sale! I'm not sure how or if the sale was driven from Google AdWords before I was banned, but it has given me motivation to start paying attention again. Ideally I would like to get back on Adwords, but that's going to take a lot of work and refactoring of the website.

I've read that it takes many affiliates a year to make their first sale, so I don't want to get too excited. My traffic flow is obviously limited without targeted advertising so I'll have to get creative. Back at it!

Share A Sale

2011-06-18T10:44:00.000-07:00

I thought you might like to know where I'm getting all of my merchants from. I'm using www.shareasale.com as my primary source of affiliate partners.

They offer a huge selection of merchants to choose from separated into categories such as:

Art/Music/Photography

Business

Automotive

Clothing

Gifts

Home and Gardening

Travel

and many others

Currently, there are almost 3500 different merchants to choose from and that number is growing daily. They track your sales using referral links that you post. Once you get someone to click your link there's a tracking cookie embedded into their browser that will allow you to get a sale usually 30-60 days after they clicked it.

The great thing about that is you don't have to worry about making the sale during their first visit. This is perfect for a niche that is marketing more expensive products. Most people won't impulse buy on big purchases, so the cookies give them time to think about it and if they come back and buy, you still get credit.

Their payments are prompt and it's easy to track your progress. They have live statistics on your clicks and sales conversion rates for each retailer you're affiliated with. Their minimum payout is $50 and they send payments on the 20th day of each month if you've met that goal.

I'm pleased with their service and the huge selection of merchants. Instead of selling random products like at ClickBank, I can instead market a retailer and the quality products they have to offer. I tend to sign up for a merchant or two a week and many of the programs are approved instantly.

I don't like waiting several days for a response from retailers and Share a Sale often eliminates this need. I'm still waiting on my ever elusive first sale, but I feel good about the content I'm putting out.

Also remember if you're a retailer and you're having a difficult time getting your products to sell and traffic to your website, check out the merchant program they offer. You set the commission amount and let others market your products and services for you. This will save you money for low costs and hopefully take your business to the next level. Good luck.

Write Write Write

2011-06-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

I've been writing a lot lately. I've not only been writing reviews for the affiliates that I'm associated with, but I've also been writing articles to promote my niche, home decor.

I truly believe writing is the key to success in affiliate marketing. It's critical to build relationships with the people you are selling to. You have to let them know that you're a regular person that's trying to help them out by giving them something they need.

Writing will also help you get your link out to more sites. The more sites you are linked to, the higher your potential traffic will be.

I got my article about buying home decor online and saving money published at Ezine Articles. I'm going to try and write another article this weekend if I have time.

Writing articles is a great way to get links back to your site and promote your area of expertise. I've gone ahead and submitted the article I've already written to a few other services, but so far I haven't heard back anything yet.

I'm still churning away at Facebook marketing, but so far I still have no sales as a result of it. I'm going to carefully monitor it this weekend and then I'll decide if it's worth it or not. My feeling is that people might be clicking the links by mistake and that's costing me.

I think money with Google advertising would be better spent, but I'll let you know what I find. Enjoy the weekend!

Pay Per Click

2011-06-08T10:21:00.000-07:00

I knew it was only a matter of time until I looked into the marketing strategy of "pay per click". In a nutshell, it's where you pay advertisers like Google, Facebook, etc to display your ads to targeted users and you pay them per click.

This is a fantastic way to drive targeted traffic to your website. The only problem is it can be quite expensive. So far I've only tried to advertise via Facebook and I've only started with a small budget of $5 per day to see if it helps drive potential customers to my site.

The great thing about Facebook is they have so much personal data on millions of people. You can modify your target audience based on things like demographics (age, sex, location), likes, dislikes, education, and more.

Once you select your target audience and build your ad, Facebook will then recommend a bid price to get your ad featured. If your market is more narrow, the price will generally be higher. For me, it was between $0.89-$1.31 per click.

Facebook also gives you the option to pay per impressions. This means that you pay them a fixed amount and they will show your ad to 1000 users on Facebook in your target audience. The price is generally lower for this service, but may not be as effective.

Last night they targeted about 14,000 users before I got 5 clicks on my advertisement. It's pretty amazing how fast $5 has come and gone. The average price per click for me was $0.99. I know it's a tiny budget, but I figure if sales are generated from this targeted marketing, then it should pay off.

The average price per 1000 impressions for me was around $0.50. So I would have easily maxed out my $5 daily budget before getting 5 clicks. I will have to investigate this further, but for now I'll be doing Pay Per Click.

I'm also looking into Google AdSense advertising. With Google I would imagine it would be better because the targeting is even better. For example, someone Googles "Levi's silvertab jeans". There's a good chance that they're a serious buyer. So your ad can be displayed on that page and if clicked, you may get a sale.

(After I posted this, I looked on my blog and saw an advertisement for Google Adwords for a free $75, so I signed up to see if I qualify, woo hoo free money!)

Food for thought. I'm staying at it. I heard from Ezine Articles about my submission and I need to make a few modifications i.e. self-promote less =). I hope it doesn't take another week for review, but we'll see.

Slowly, but eventually?

2011-06-03T22:10:00.000-07:00

I got listed on Google and I thought that would be my biggest hurdle, but the real challenge is getting my site top ranked in the search pages. Yes, I make the first page if you Google home decor online buying advisor, but that's not an ideal search.

The competition for other words like home decor online or home decor reviews are in the millions. This will certainly be tough to get any real traffic from Google, but I will continue trying.

Right now I'm focusing on adding quality content and working to spread my link around the web as much as possible. I don't want to pay for traffic, so for now I'm relying on free methods. One site I've found was www.pingomatic.com and this site lets search engines/ blogs that your site has been updated. It seems great, but I don't know that it has helped me at all yet.

I also joined the Google Webmaster network and am using their suggestions to improve my site. Who knows better than the top search engine right? I'm still not listed in Yahoo or Bing to my knowledge and my traffic is still weak, so I'll keep trying various techniques to start making sales.
Cheers!

To Google and Beyond...!

2011-05-30T08:53:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been working diligently to get quality content onto my site affiliate marketing site. Last night I decided to submit it to Google with the hope that it would list it in their directory someday.

I woke up this morning and tried a Google search and to my surprise the site was listed! Given, it's not a top ranked site and the search words have to be quite specific, but it's better than nothing.

I thought it would be much more difficult to get listed. I checked Yahoo! and Bing later on and so far I'm not listed on either. I've read from other sources that if you're listed on Google, then you will show up on other search engines soon after, but I decided to submit my URL to both just in case.

It takes time to generate quality content and adapt the site to today's standards, but it's definitely worth it. I haven't received substantial traffic yet, but things are definitely looking up.

Affiliate Marketing Revisited

2011-05-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

So again I'm trying affiliate marketing with a new approach. This time I've created a website and I'm promoting products through thoughtful reviews.

I can already tell the hardest part about this will be getting listed within search engines. It's quite a process today to try and get your site on google, yahoo, bing, etc. So that will be my next goal.

In the meantime, I plan to add more content to promote the home decorating niche. I chose this niche because it is something that I enjoy and it has the potential to be lucrative.

There are also many topics on this niche. For example, I can focus it on furniture, lighting, faucets, hardware, etc. These are resources people want to know more about and having a comprehensive site with reviews to ensure they are safe will accomplish this task.

User Testing for Fun... and Money

2011-05-21T08:50:00.000-07:00

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I'm a big fan of www.usertesting.com. As a software engineer, I only wish I had thought of it myself, but I digress. This site allows owners of websites, applications, etc to post jobs and get user feedback on what they have or are planning to build. So now you can voice your opinion on that clunky old web page and the company will actually listen. All you need is a microphone and the ability to describe what your thought process is. You don't need to be a software expert and in fact you may get more jobs opportunities for not being one.

User testing or usability testing is an important aspect of user interface design and you get paid $10 for about 20 minutes of work. I know you're thinking, wow that's great $30 an hour working from home, but what's the catch. Obviously, there are a limited number of jobs and they tend to go fast. You need to start the job within 15 minutes of accepting it and you need a computer with a microphone. Usually the video will be from 5-15 minutes and after that you may be asked to answer a few questions about your experience. The video follows your clicks and mouse movements on the web page or application and records your narrations.

These jobs, like most surveys, are based on demographics so some days you may get offered five to ten testing opportunities and other days you may only get one or none. If you're a stay at home mom or someone that is available during the day and week nights you'll probably have quite a few opportunities, but I wouldn't bank on getting more than five to ten completed per week. You also need to pass an initial screening process by performing a sample job. If you describe what you're doing and stay on task, it shouldn't be a problem to pass.

So far I've only been able to complete one test, but I did receive $10 a few days later in my paypal account (cool). For those of you that don't have a paypal account, they are free. I hope this is useful for you and please follow my blog if you enjoy receiving this information :)

Survey Says...

2011-05-20T20:56:00.000-07:00

To initially get a feeling for online money making, I'm trying a breadth of techniques first. I've joined a few survey companies. This can be a time consuming job and most of the pay outs tend to be from $0.50 to $15 plus bonus incentives. Most of the surveys take anywhere from 10 minutes to 7 days, but the average is usually 20 minutes. ( The 7 day one involved texting a phone number every time you saw certain advertisements in your daily life.) The surveys can fill up quickly and most of them are looking for a certain number of people that match different demographics like age, sex, location, etc.

. Global Test Market www.globaltestmarket.com is one of the largest and highest ranked survey networks in operation. After a few days of membership, I've received a few surveys per day and have been able to complete about half of what I've received. My big issue with them is that I may "qualify" for a lot of surveys, but I seem to be "screened out" of the majority of them. Global Test Market will give you an entry into a daily $300 drawing and a quarterly $20,000 drawing when this happens, but I still find it annoying.

They also give you "Market Points" for surveys. These points can be used to gain entries into cash sweepstakes or you can redeem them for cash. 1000 points is equal to $50 US and the average survey pays 35 points. You must accumulate at least 1000 points to redeem your money. Overall I could see myself making a few extra hundred dollars from this site in a year. Like I said, not a great return on investment, but if you're bored you can usually multi-task while doing these surveys.

The second site I joined is www.inboxdollars.com. This site is pretty cool and if you sign up now they give you $5 for free to start. Most of their surveys I've received are pretty low paying (usually around $1). So I have not completed many of them yet, but they also allow you to make money in other ways. You have the option of receiving paid emails (usually $0.10 to click on them).

You can also complete offers to sign up with other companies for money, you can play games for money, watch videos for cash, get grocery coupons, and get cash back percentages for shopping through their partners online (Some good ones are 5% cash back at Overstock.com and 13% cash back at shoemall.com). As you can see there are many ways to leverage Inbox Dollars and I like the fact that they use actual dollar amounts to show your progress.

Some of the offers are great because they're things that you'd do normally anyway. For example, if you sign up with DirecTV through them, you will receive $25. I haven't had time to thoroughly dig down into the site yet, but so far I like it. They will also pay you to sign up for other survey websites like the aforementioned Global Test Market. They'll give you $1 for that and they'll give you $2.00 to sign up for Valued Opinions (another survey site).

Inbox Dollars and Global Test Market are my top two survey sites. I don't mind cranking out a few surveys in my spare time, so it's a way to make a few extra dollars.

On another note, I've also decided that click bank is not really for me. If I'm going to promote products, I'd like them to be reasonably priced and from well known companies. Most of the websites on click bank would deter me if I was a buyer and the products usually retail around $50. So I'll be searching for other affiliate marketing opportunities soon and keep you up to date.

Affiliate Marketing Adventures

2011-05-18T08:16:00.000-07:00

I've started affiliate marketing. The title may seem intimidating, but really all you do is promote products for others or yourself. Usually these are e-books that others have written, but you can also write and promote your own. I would like to write my own e-book, but for now I'm promoting other people's products.

From what others have said, this is one of the best ways to make real money online. The key is to pick a product that you truly believe in and promote it through word of mouth. You can promote it through social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and even the question and answer websites that I've mentioned previously. One well-known site that sees millions of user traffic a day is Yahoo Answers.

The idea is to thoughtfully answer questions that relate to what you're trying to promote and offer a link to the product. You provide them with a reasonable answer, but also provide your affiliate link to try and sell the product you are promoting. The key is to do some research on the product and read reviews about it. I'd feel much better promoting a product that actually helps people improve their lives. The site I'm using to promote products is www.clickbank.com. There are hundreds of products to choose from and so far I'm promoting is www.tedswoodworking.com.

The reason I chose this product was because it seems highly valuable and provides lots of videos, pictures, and step by step procedures to help people make over 16,000 wood products. Of course, you will need the proper tools, but it is a rewarding experience. Recently I built my own coffee table. I had most of the tools, but I was shocked at how cheap the wood and screws were to build it (pictured above). I just need to add some stain and call it a day. I still saved hundreds of dollars by making this piece of furniture myself and it will make for a nice conversation piece as well.

Back to affiliate marketing. By offering your link to others you can make money from them just clicking on the link, but the real money is made from actually getting sales. Make sure you choose a product that is reasonably priced and one that offers great value for the money. Some of the more popular topics are weight loss and of course making money online.

People claim they can make a lot of good money from promoting products like this, so I'll let you know how it goes. So far this money making process is slow, but it is exciting to check my accounts and monitor the little progress I am making.

My First Experience

2011-05-17T19:10:00.001-07:00

I feel new here... this being my first time trying to make money online and all I think that's normal. I admit it was an overwhelming experience to start. There were many schemes and legitimate sites that I had to sift through to get started. I consider myself a competent citizen and I don't see any reason why I can't make a little extra money online using the skills I've obtained over the years from school and just from living life.

The first thing I've started to do is answer questions. It sounds simple enough and actually it is. I chose this as my first option because I genuinely enjoy helping other people by using what I already know. There are several sites that offer cash incentives for helping others, but the one I chose was www.webanswers.com.

This seemed like the easiest site to "get my feet wet" and so far that has proven to be true. It only took a few minutes to setup my account and get started. I then proceeded to search for questions and try to answer them. What I've found so far is you should be selective with the questions you decide to answer. My strategy so far is to look for questions that I can answer that have anywhere from 0 to 3 answers. This is because sometimes it's hard to say what the questioning user is looking for and you may be able to provide additional insight on the topic. The key is to write a thoughtful response that provides the original poster with a comprehensive answer. Most of the questions with less answers thus less competition require a paragraph or two to fully answer the user's question.

Then if the user selects your answer as the best, you can start generating advertising revenue using Google's AdSense. This means that from now on any ad revenue generated from people visiting the question will be split between you and webanswers (60% for you and 40% for them) However, you must post at least 10 times before you can register for or link and existing AdSense account, but you'll still be able to generate revenue on the questions where your post was selected as the best answer. Currently, I'm still waiting for my AdSense account to complete the registration process, but so far I've answered 19 posts and received 3 as the best answer.

Some of those posts were early on when I was just trying to get 10 posts under my belt, so the numbers are slightly skewed, but I don't expect an accepted answer rate of more than 20%. So far it's slow going, but like I said, I do enjoy helping others out, so I don't mind taking 5 to 10 minutes here and there to answer others questions and help solve problems.

I've found that this site will be great for answering my questions as well. As I continue to renovate my home and run into issues, it will allow me to gather ideas for free. There are plenty of other question and answer money making sites out there as well.

I'd love to hear about some sites/ techniques that you've used and your thoughts on them.