Affiliate Marketing Blog

Internet Marketing Tools of Trade

Christoph — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 16:34:09 +0000

I have received a few inquiries from people wanting to know which tools I use for my websites, promotion, keyword research, and what ever else falls into the same category. Please note that I cannot specify certain parts of my work, but I think I am able to share a few bits and pieces on what tools I am using to run my business. I am including links to the products – some are affiliate links and others are not. If you like a tool and would like to buy, please feel free to use my affiliate links. It helps me to stay motivated to pass on helpful information.

Websites

I mostly use WordPress to build my websites, but quite a few of my websites are hard-coded html or PHP files and I use Dreamweaver CS4 for those. Dreamweaver is great for web design work and to visualize certain things when building a website. I think CS5 was just released, but I have not yet checked if it is worth upgrading. For non-design work I use Notepad++ – it’s a free software that is great for coding work.

Keyword Research

Last year I bought Micro Niche Finder and love it. It’s a great tool to do keyword research. It gives you great insight into search volume, competition, and related keywords. It pulls data directly from Google. Some people are abusing this tool and then Google slams on the breaks. When you use it, set your settings to search engine friendly – meaning it takes a few moments longer to get the data you are looking for, but it keeps you from Google asking for more CAPTCHAs. Anyway, I discovered several niches using Micro Niche Finder. Once I found keywords I use the Google Adwords keyword tool to verify number to eventually dig a little deeper as needed.

Article Marketing

I mainly use Ezinearticles.com for article marketing. If you write good content, it helps you to get good backlinks. Tip: Do not always write about the niche you are promoting. You might not get the publicity you are looking for. You can always link from non topic related articles to your site and make up for missing niche relationship by volume of links. Hint: Computer reviews and cell phone related articles work best.

I am currently testing out Unique Article Wizard for some secondary websites of mine. It automates article redistribution and you can drip feed how many articles are published per day. It takes a little longer to write articles for UAW, but the automation piece for the distribution seems to work well.

PPC Keywords

I use SpeedPPC to build some of my PPC campaigns. I am in my 3rd year of using this tool and still love it. It saves me so much times when building PPC campaigns. If you are serious about PPC Marketing, SpeedPPC is your friend.

WordPress Themes

I mentioned already, I use WordPress to build many websites. Over the years I bought many professionally designed WordPress themes. Most of them lacked support in the end and it sucked when WordPress had to be upgraded. Now I am strictly using Thesis for WordPress. It is a well supported Theme for WordPress, comes with a ton of SEO features build in and is highly customizable. Once you have the hang of it, you can push out a unique looking WordPress website in 10-15 minutes. I usually use a 2 column layout for my websites as I found that this works best.

Outsourcing

Initially I had hired people off Wickedfire and still do for certain tasks. Then I had hired people through Craigslist on the Phillipines to do work for me, but the quality was not as expected. Now I am exclusively using oDesk for work that can be outsourced easily. oDesk has a great rating system so that you review people before interviewing them for a job. You can also try a few people first and then eventually settle on a few and hand them recurring work accordingly. oDesk takes care of paying these people and it all goes through my credit card so that I accrue points, too. oDesk is free to join and you only pay when you hire someone for a project. You can try it with a small budget first to see how it works. I have to check, but I think I am approaching the $1,000 marker soon of work outsources to oDesk people. oDesk is greeat for outsourcing content writing, design work, and many other tasks.

Conclusion: This is an incomplete list of my tools of trade. Each of the products mentioned here I am actively using as otherwise I would not recommend them.

Google Adwords Bid Simulator

Christoph — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 20:58:32 +0000

I have to say, I do like the new Adwords Bid ESimulator tool. I did not notice this at first, but once your keywords are running for a little bit you will see a new icon next to the keyword.

The screenshot above shows that one keyword has this option available, while the other one does not. Once you click on the icon you will see something similar to this

Pretty neat in my opinion. I am not sure how long this has been out as I am not always using Google Adwords, but I think this must be fairly new. I like it.

Leaving Enom

Christoph — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 19:58:15 +0000

On July 1st Verisign, the company being the top level registry for many domain names is raising their prices. I had originally started with an Enom Domain Reseller account at a price of $7.95, but that price has already gone up to $8.45 internally. Now with the new price increase my new price for domain registrations would be $9.00 per year per domain. With owning over 160 domain names that is getting quite expensive. The upcoming price increase alone would add $88.00 in cost. Compared to my original price of $7.95 per domain it is even $168.00 increased in cost.

Besides using Enom I have a handful of domains ad Godaddy and Dynadot – mainly from when I bought a website and never transferred it to Enom. So, I looked at Dynadot.com’s bulk pricing and even after the upcoming price increase a domain registration would cost me less than what I am currently paying at Enom (before the increase). So, I did some research and overall Dynadot.com seems to be a reputable company and so I just loaded up my account over there to get into bluk pricing. You need to spend over $500 per year with them to get into their first level of bulk pricing. That’s an easy one for me.

I just transferred the first 16 domain names away from Enom to Dynadot and will do more before the price increase happens on July 1st. I might not transfer all of them right away, but I think the majority of my domains will move soon. Also, with Dynadot I can refill my account via credit card without paying a processing fee. Enom always charged a 3% processing fee and so I had to pay via check. Now I can pay by credit card and get points on my credit card spending with the card issuing bank. So, another benefit of moving away from Enom.

While the money part is important, there is another big reason for me to move away from Enom. About 6-9 months ago they updated their website and put a new domain name suggestion tool up. Well, that tool sucks and all it does is promoting crappy .ME domains. The tool is useless and cumbersome to navigate. I had complained to them in the past, but I guess Enom does not care too much about their resellers. The Dynadot tool is not perfect either, but better than what Enom has. It’s one of those change things – change happens all the time and sometimes it forces us to cut ties with something we have been so accustomed to.

Payment has sent

Christoph — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:55:03 +0000

Nice – always glad to see these type of payments:

Dear Chris

LeadPoint has sent your payment today via Check in the amount of $0.00 for leads sold on the LeadPoint exchange during the period ending 31-May-2010 07:00:00 UTC.

Note that payments are made based on the Sell Date of each lead and not the entry date of the lead to the exchange.

Please see the user guide within your LeadPoint account for more details on payment terms and conditions.

Thank you for your business!

LeadPoint Customer Service

Just wondering why they are sending a payment for zero dollars?!

Going Outside the Box

Christoph — Tue, 25 May 2010 04:03:01 +0000

I have 2 websites with relatively targeted traffic for certain products. However, I am unable to convert the traffic into sales or leads for related products. One one of the two sites I finally added Google Adsense and even that generates maybe $20 per month – not a lot for 10,000 visitors per month. On the second site Adsense works even worse – $4.71 for the last month on roughly 5,000 visitors.

So, I am definitely not happy with these results. So, this evening I decided to try something completely different. F*ck the related product idea – we’re going completely off the beaten path. Let’s see how Dating, Freebie Offers, Forex, and some other stuff converts. Even if I only get one email submit to convert every other day, I will still come out ahead.

Another thing I am now doing on 2 other websites of mine is list building. Over the last 3 months my online income has been a little bumpy and by looking at the numbers from the different years, I always see these bumps from mid-March to early June, for next year I want to work out a few more options that help to make the overall income more stable. And I think list building is definitely a solid option. I use aWeber for the list building. On the 2 lists I am building I started with generating free reports for the website visitors to motivate them to sign up. As soon as they sign up they will receive access to the free reports.

You can easily build a 20 – 30 page report. PLR content as well as content from Article directories goes a long way (be nice – keep the author information somewhere in the report).

I am already up to a whooping 5 subscribers on one list. While the number is low, it is actually good that way. I can slowly build out the follow-up messages and test out things. Currently I am sending out 4 non-sales emails followed by one sales email. Then it is quiet for another 4 non-sales emails and then another sales emails. The report itself has a few affiliate links embedded, too. We will see how this works out.