It’s possible you’re sitting on a treasure chest right now. And the longer you’ve been trying to make money online, the higher your probability of striking gold is.

In fact, the more times you’ve screwed up, the more sites you have tried that have turned out to produce no income; the more times you’ve given up in the middle of a project and jumped to a new opportunity… the luckier you just might be!

Here’s the thing:

When you’re making websites, particularly as an affiliate and particularly when you’re looking for organic search engine traffic, AGE is an advantage.

Most of us know that the longer a domain has been registered, the more authority it’s given in the search engines, all other factors being equal. Not only that but the longer a domain has been registered, the more value it has for a potential sale, all else being equal.

It’s yet another reason why NOT GIVING UP is a great strategy online. The longer you hang in there, the greater the leverage you obtain!

Do you have any old sites lying around that you had continued to renew at the domain registrar but haven’t worked on in a while? If you know what to do with them, you could be about to hit the jackpot.

If you begin working on a site that’s been around for a while, registered for a while, indexed for a while, your results in the search engines can be twice as fast. That is twice as fast to get high rankings, bring in big traffic, and start seeing sales!

Not only that, but in the time you haven’t been working on the site, new keyword markets might have emerged, or new products to promote in that market may have come along, all of which YOU as the owner of an already indexed and aged domain might be in PRIME position to capitalize on.

And there’s more opportunity than that. If the niche you were in grew, and the competition increased, chances are your domain became more valuable too. People might be hunting down it’s owner as you’re reading this. You might have gotten one of the quality keyword rich .coms and now there are no more available… and so on.

So what do you do if this is you? How do you capitalize?

1. Look At Why You Abandoned The Site

Did you find it too difficult to rank? Clicks too expensive? Affiliate program didn’t convert?

Chances are that with your aged domain name it will be easier now to rank… plus there could be new keywords that are less competitive…

The clicks will probably only be more expensive, but again with the new keywords AND it might mean there’s better opportunity to make money from Adsense clicks when you get traffic from other places.

If the affiliate program didn’t convert, there might be new products to promote now. New offers might have become available. You might have found new networks to search in since then too.

2. Make Some Changes

Once you know which of the above problems you ran into originally, you simply change approach and get to work.

Maybe you need to change your monetization, write some new content to attack those new keywords, or rearrange your existing site layout. Whatever it is: Do what’s necessary! This is easy money here!

3. Promote!

Chances are you probably know at least a LITTLE more about generating traffic than you did back then. Put it to work! Remember all the work you do promoting this site will be double as effective now.

Put up new ad campaigns, write and submit new articles, look for new link partners, make new hub sites. Anything you can do will help. And with the knowledge that you’re already in a position of advantage, you should be more motivated than usual to keep going until you see the cash!

Bottom line: If you have old sites like this I hope this has been inspiring, but even if you don’t there’s an important message for you here.

The sites you’re working on right now? Even if they’re not working… if you tried and failed… it might not end up as much of a failure as you think. Keep renewing those domains, keep them hosted if it’s not too expensive, and see how the scene looks in a year’s time.

If you can stick at this thing, if you can keep going and not give up, fortune… AND Google… WILL favor you.

The lights are dim, but the energy is bustling.

Around tables they sit, sharing drinks, conversations, Iphone apps… but most importantly – business.

It’s a bit like a scene from the Godfather…

As you approach them, you realize that what they are engaged in is very much a closed club. You’re only cool by association. Unless you get introduced by someone who’s already “in”, you may as well not be there.

They’re congregating as we speak, all around the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, much of Asia, even the Mid East on occasion.

And while overall, they are unassuming, it’s these small groups of businessmen who control EVERYTHING you buy related to online business…

Yes, what I’m describing is the hotel bar outside your average internet marketing conference, and the groups of marketers you find there. And if you are trying to learn online marketing, these are people, and circumstances that you NEED to know about.

Why?

Every product launch you see, these guys are behind it. Every time you whip out your credit card at the keyboard for a “how to” course, these guys are behind it.

It’s here that they sit around deciding who’s going to mail their list about what, (before it’s even launched) which upsell is going to lead where, compare sales letter conversion rates, and scheme out how they can get YOU to spend the most possible money for the LEAST possible value.

Sound scary? It kinda is…

For me, it’s everything I hate about this business. Hearing things like:

“People are going to unsubscribe anyway, so why not just send people a sales pitch in every email?”

“I don’t even use XXXX – haha, but I did a product on how to make money with it last year”.

“You’ve got a launch coming up? Cool, I’ll tell my list about it.” (Haven’t seen or tried the product for a second and don’t even care) Or alternatively…

“It converts at 10%? Great, I’ll mail it!”

Those are all things I heard this past week. Eeeeuuurrggghhhhh!! It makes me sick to my stomach.

But that’s how this game works. If you are trying to learn online marketing, that’s what you have to contend with.

The BS is so thick, and you just have to be SO careful with who you trust, and what you buy. Your radar must ALWAYS be on and you have to be extremely connected and focused with what you want to learn, what your desired outcomes are, and maybe most importantly, what your budget is to achieve it. If not, guaranteed you’ll spend far more money on the internet than you make.

—————— Phew, rant over with for now. ——————–

All of that said, there are those very few select individuals who I meet, and they shock me. The diamonds in the rough, the roses growing through the concrete. The people who despite this often disgusting industry we are in, somehow retain their integrity, somehow stay decent people, and still do phenomenally well without the sleeze.

And meeting those people is always worth wading through the douche bags. It’s these people that allow my conscience to survive as a marketer, and inspire me to keep fighting the good fight in this game.

So rather than pure negativity, I thought I’d let this post be a shout out to some of those standup souls who I’ve met recently – to make sure you all know who they are too. They deserve it.

1. I was lucky enough to have a chat in NY with Chris X – you know, DayJobKiller etc? I know how much this guy is into launches, how “in” he is with the guru crew… but no, somehow he’s the nicest guy ever! This is like, Clickbank Millionaire, Adwords uber-guru… He asks about Elysia and I’s engagement, we talk biz for a little, I tell him we’re coming to the UK, and he invites me to meet up with him and their mastermind crew for a beer some time. Just a real dude, you know?

2. In Brisbane, AU while we were back, we met up with super blogger/marketer and fellow Aussie Yaro Starak. Same deal… We talked travel, relationships, a bunch of random stuff, then he takes his afternoon to show us his favorite cafe in Brisbane where he often works. Hardly a word about mailouts, JVs, or how we could “help” each other… A total champion of a guy.

3. Picture this right… We go to meet this guy at this “private membership club” in NYC. The first room we walk into is this enormous lounge area complete with all kinds of super glossy dark leather couches, and bookshelves, with random clusters of evidently super rich people chatting, or working on their computers… the kind of room you’d imagine an old rich dude smoking a pipe in… We go up to meet this guy at the rooftop pool (apparently one of the only in NYC) and the scene is like a rap video… What appear to be models, and rich tanned new yorkers of various kinds huddling around, ordering drinks, sitting in inflatable couches, and so on.

ANYWAY, we meet this guy – someone you probably don’t know, his name’s Jonathan Fields – multiple time published author, highly popular blogger, and about a hundred other awesome things…

Again, first time we’ve met, and we sit and chat like old friends. Despite having every opportunity in the world to be pretentious and snobby, he’s down to earth, open, smiley, friendly, and is as interested in our lives as we are in his. He shouts our lunch, then when we leave he goes “If there’s anything I can do for you guys, let me know”. No, not “will you promote my new launch now”… the exact opposite. Just a genuine, impossibly cool chap.

So yes, it’s true. These rare folk do exist.

If you get a chance, and you’re looking for some people you can trust, check out what these guys get up to at the links I provided. Like I said, it’s the existence of people like this who make the insanity of online business worthwhile.

Otherwise, I hope you found in this post both a wake up call, and some consolation. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Photos: Godfather: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brhomnet/2517897563/

Yikes, what a week!

If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been or why I’ve been ignoring you, this post hopefully exonerates me!

Last Monday, months of secrecy and preparation culminated in a romantic (writing my own review) proposal to my girlfriend of 4 years, Elysia, (who many of you know!) in Central Park, New York!

Man, with arranging a ring, both that the girl will like, and that’s the right size, picking a location, and keeping it all secret from a partner who, also working online, is around you basically 24/7… Let’s just say it makes “making money online” look easy!

Anyhow, it’s a super exciting time for us so I couldn’t help but share. Here’s some pics for the nosier among you as well:

This is near where we were in CP:

And for the ladies, this is the ring:

We’re back in Mexico now, ready to get stuck into some serious work and enjoy our first few weeks of the “affianced” life! haha

You’ll be hearing from me again soon.

I finally hit a threshold.

I see alot of people’s blogs every week through our memberships and give a lot of advice to affiliate marketers as to how to grow their income and so on. So I KNOW first hand how many people HAVEN’T yet implemented anything like the changes the FTC recommended late last year for affiliate marketers.

(If you missed my post on the FTC updates at the time when they happened or still don’t know what they are – check here.)

Furthermore, I know how much of a pain it is to get a proper disclaimer done for your affiliate blogs, particularly if you don’t have a lot of time or money available.

So what I’ve done is this…

I knocked up a very quick, very brief, side bar widget “mini disclaimer” that is generic enough that any affiliate marketer can upload it to their sites without trouble. Having it on your website can contribute to your compliance with the new FTC regulations without you having to spend a fortune to do so.

This is what it looks like:

Before you use it though, I have to give you MY disclaimers that you MUST read, before doing so.

1. Obviously I am not a legal professional and this disclaimer is not constructed by a legal professional. As such it does not take into consideration anything to do with your website. Of course, I make no guarantee that this will clear you of liability based on the new FTC guidelines.

2. Having this on your website DOES NOT mean you will be in full compliance with the new guidelines.

3. This is not to be seen or used to REPLACE a full and proper disclaimer.

If you read that and now you’re wondering “What is this even good for then?, the answer is:

If you’re currently doing NOTHING, this MIGHT get you out of SOME of the trouble you could find yourself in at the hands of the FTC.

We know they have been very unspecific as to exactly HOW they want affiliates to disclose their relationships and WHERE, so for now, something is better than nothing.

Furthermore, the benefit of this is that I have written a disclosure that I think will minimize the hit that such a statement could make to your click through and conversion rates.

Bottom line, think of it as the first step to your full compliance.

Here is the link to download the images. You can choose the colour that fits best with your blog’s theme from the zip file at this link. If that link doesn’t work, try the RAR version at this link.

And below is the video on how to implement the disclaimer image as a widget to your WP blog’s sidebar. You’ll notice that my Windows is currently in Spanish but don’t worry – it won’t affect your ability to understand what I’m doing on the video

Oh and I was in the middle of a terrible cold at the time so again, excuse me for that!

Enjoy!

Alot of people have goals, both financially, and as regards their online business. I assume you are one of them.

Maybe you want to make an extra $1000 a week to help pay the bills. Maybe you want to build your business to $10k a month to replace your work income and quit your job. Maybe you want that mansion and Ferrari that you see in those “how to get rich” advertisements.

Knowing WHAT you want is important. But knowing WHY you want it, is VITAL.

Because money – including that which you hope to make online – is always a means, never an end. It’s only ever a vehicle by which you can obtain something else.

Maybe that something else is security – the feeling of greater comfort and less stress related to your finances.

Maybe that something else is freedom – a greater level of choice over how you spend your time.

Maybe that something else is respect – a way to gain greater admiration from those around you. (the “something else” isn’t always a positive thing).

For me it’s freedom.

I just got back from a little jaunt snowboarding in New Zealand with a group of old friends. The past month I’ve been back at home in Australia visiting family but for the rest of the year I’ve been living in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The ability to live and work anywhere, choose my own work hours and freely decide exactly how I spend my time every day is the peak for me. That’s what life’s about for me right now and that’s the WHY that my financial goals move me toward.

There are 2 reasons that knowing what that something else is for you, is important.

1. For your own motivation

Because “what’s” aren’t inspiring. $10 000 a month as a physical object is nothing. It’s just paper. But the changes that would make to your life are inspiring. What you would DO with that income is inspiring? What WOULD you do with the level of income you desire? Do you even know? Alot of people don’t.

Moving toward “Freeing myself from my day job to spend more time traveling with my family” is a lot easier than moving toward “10 000 a month in income”.

2. To make sure your goal is really going to bring you the “something else” that you want…

There’s a good example of this idea in the movie Wall Street. The guy is a big financial trader, hoping to do these massive deals and become a multi-millionaire. When asked what he will do after that, he says something like “Just retire, buy a motorbike and ride across China”… ie, something you could do for probably $5000 if you really wanted!

So many people say for example “I want to take my business to 7 figures a year” – and I often think: “What for?”

What will you do with 7 figures a year? Do you even know? What is it that you REALLY want?

I don’t say so to blow my own horn, but my girlfriend and I have this year lived a life that it seems alot of people dream of. Classified “retired” by our level of work in most people’s standards, living in a beachfront, oceanview apartment in the basically year round sunshine of west coast Mexico. We have a lady to do our washing, clean our place if we want, we eat out probably 4-5 times a week…

Want to know the big secret?

Our rent is $695 a month! I pay $1.50 for beers – $20 for a high end meal.

I always said I wanted to be a millionaire. But the longer I live, I only grow more convinced that you don’t really need to be!

The point is that if you know what you REALLY want (that something else), underneath the monetary goals, you might realize that you don’t actually need anywhere near as much money to achieve it… you might even see that no level of money is going to get you to that thing you really want. Maybe it’s time that you really need… maybe it’s love? It’s always something.

So what is that WHY for you? What is your “something else”. I’d love to hear from you!

Or if you don’t want to post, give it some thought in your life this week. What is it you really want, and are you really moving toward it…

A few commenters on my last post mentioned that they were impressed by the conversion rates of the text links in my blog posts for the particular niche blog that was being tested.

So I thought I’d write a little something about what I do to achieve the highest possible conversion rates on all pieces of content that I put out there, and in particular one little secret that I have an inkling makes all the difference.

Let’s start with a scenario…

Say I’ve got a keyword that I think I can pick up some quality targeted traffic from. I want to write a piece of content on this keyword and have it both rank highly in the search engines AND convert highly for this group of visitors.

Let’s say the keyword is: “Tony Robbins seminar review”. I’m trying to write this post so it will rank well for that keyword and have the searchers of that word coming to my site, where I’m promoting some seminar tickets that I want my visitors to grab through my link.

The first thing I do is try to get into the mind of the searcher.

I try to think deeply about who that person is, what their core desires are, and what it is they really want to find. I try to imagine I was them, searching for that term – what would I be looking for.

Obviously this exercise is easier the more specific the keyword is, but the above is an example we can work with.

So first up, most people searching for the word “review” regardless of what comes before it, is someone who wants to know what the opinions of OTHER PEOPLE were about this product. They’re not looking for the sales pitch from the company, they want to know a user’s opinion.

So if I’m writing on that keyword, I have to find somewhere on the net, what the opinions of other people have been, and use them to craft my post.

I might start the post by addressing that person’s thoughts:

“Almost everyone knows the name of Tony Robbins in the world of personal development. But does everyone rant and rave like those people you see on TV? What do real people say about Tony Robbins seminars when no one is watching?”

You talk to the thoughts that person was probably having when they searched it. Anyone searching “review” keywords is someone who is interested, but wondering if the advertising claims are BS or not… they might be slightly skeptical, wondering what other people have said so they can be assured enough to make a purchase.

And the other thing about people searching “review” – at least, the people searching “review” that you want to target – is that deep down, they actually DO want to buy! They want to be excited and take the plunge, but they just want to be confident before making that decision. They want someone to confirm that the product is as awesome as the advertisements say.

So you speak to those thoughts within them. You have your post confirm what they want to believe – as long as the thing they want to believe is true (like if Tony Robbins seminars AREN’T awesome, you don’t write that they are, and you shouldn’t even really be promoting them).

And this alludes to the kicker: the factor I think really makes the difference.

That is, you don’t just give the searcher what they’re searching for… you give them what you think they would find in an absolute dream scenario, even if they didn’t search for it.

Here’s an example:

Say someone is searching for “buy Tony Robbins tickets online”.

What they are DIRECTLY looking for is a website that sells Tony Robbins tickets.

What they would LOVE to find (even though they didn’t search it) is a site that sells Tony Robbins tickets… AT A DISCOUNT.

You see the difference?

So at the end of the blog post on this keyword, I slip in something like this:

“In fact, I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that at the site below, you can not only purchase your Tony Robbins tickets online, but at the moment, there’s a special offer on where you can get them at 10% off!”

And so on.

Of course this particular statement is reliant on your ability to actually and promote a site where your readers can get a discount, but it’s the underlying principle that’s important here.

Move your thinking from “What does this searcher want?” to “What would this searcher be OVER THE MOON to find?”

Maybe it’s a discount, maybe it’s a way they can get a bonus with their order, maybe it’s just something that they can do after they purchase to get the most out of the product… anything small like that helps.

Because when you’re not only meeting the searchers expectations, but exceeding them… that’s when you’ll get the super high click through rates and super high conversions.

Give this a try on some of your affiliate blogs and let me know if you see results!

This post is about monetization and conversion for affiliate type blogs.

Let me start by showing you some interesting stats for one of my affiliate blogs in the past month.

But before I do, some explanation.

I usually monetize a niche blog with affiliate links in two positions:

1. Links in content. That means calls to action through, and at the end of your blog content.

2. A banner, whether it’s in the sidebar, or the blog’s header, that consequently appears on every page and post of the blog.

I set up two campaigns; one that tracked the clicks and conversions of the affiliate banner that on this occasion sat in the sidebar, and one that tracked the total clicks of all the call’s to action on all the pieces of content on the blog. In other words, I tracked the performance of sidebar banners vs calls to action.

The results were interesting. The columns are from left to right: Clicks, Page Views, and Conversion Rate.

This offers a number of lessons but I think the main ones are these:

1. The title of this post is the biggest lesson. If you are forsaking one of these forms of monetization for the other (only using a sidebar banner, or only using in content links) you might be missing out on as much as half of the affiliate sales you could otherwise make. Banner advertising is not dead, banners do still get clicked, and you need to be integrating them in to your monetization strategy if you aren’t already.

2. Engaged readers = conversions. Although the sidebar banner generated more click throughs, look at the difference in conversion rate. The people who clicked on the calls to action (on this blog always at the end of the content) were MORE THAN DOUBLE as likely to make a purchase. They read through the whole article, they were engaged with your content, and so they were more motivated to buy. A call to action that fits with how the visitor found your site (If they searched “dog training ebook” and your call to action says “Click Here to find the number one dog training ebook on the market at a discounted price” then you’re on the right track) is vital to achieving this.

And there is plenty more to take from this that we’ll delve into in the coming weeks.

If your site is getting traffic from the right targeted keywords and not getting sales, these are vital matters to look at. With the right tweaks you can literally double your sales or more without getting any new traffic… and who doesn’t want that??

I received a question today by email that’s worth answering publicly.

From a concerned student, worried about the fact that (as has been explained by other marketers), this new Google update is attacking auto bloggers and scraped content sites. And that that whole business model might now be compromised…

Wait… I feel like it’s 2005 again.

Newsflash: EVERY Google algorithm update cracks down on autoblogging and scraped content sites. EVERY update they make is designed to get more and more crappy pieces of content out of their index.

Newsflash: Autoblogging as a business model is ALREADY compromised and has been for a long time. I’m sure there are still people making money with it, but why the hell would you want to? So you can be constantly running from the Google programmers, constantly having to comply with their latest attack on you… constantly having to change your approach to keep your income stream from drying up? I have played that game before and it’s not much fun.

Autoblogging will always exist, and Google will always hate it and make new algorithm updates to crack down on it. Get used to it.

For those of you Firepow members reading, you probably have a simple question: What about Firepow’s Content Blitz tool?

Yes, our Firepow software does have an auto-generated content tool. And anyone who actually reads my training on the tool will know just how it is to be used. NOT as a tool to run whole sites with, but as an add-on, to be used gently, in combination with your unique content that is the focus of your site. That’s it.

BTW, you know why autoblogging keeps existing? Because lazy people keep wanting to believe that they can still make big money without having to do any work. And someone has to make tools and write courses to please those people, REGARDLESS of whether those tools and those courses actually work.

Something to think about.

There’s a piece of conventional search engine optimization wisdom that I think needs challenging.

Hands up if you’ve heard this:

“Smart SEO strategy is to start out targeting your long tail keywords first, and as you generate fast traffic from them and grow your site’s authority it becomes easier to take on your more short tail, competitive terms.”

Overall, it has it’s truths, and isn’t bad advice. But lately I’m finding the opposite strategy to also have merit.

That is, trying to target some of your shorter tail keywords first, and it becoming easier to rank for your long tail keywords as you build links to your short tail focused content.

Example:

I’m promoting Firepow software and my short tail keyword is Firepow, and my long tail keywords (a few of them) might be Firepow blogging software, and Firepow blogging software review.

I have been noticing both in analyzing competing sites in some of my niches, and confirmed by testing it on my own sites, that when you start out building links to your site (possibly your home page) with the anchor text “Firepow”, it becomes easier to rank for “Firepow Blogging Software” almost by default.

I’ve seen cases where I’ve got a blog on a domain like: reviewfirepow.com and I want that root domain to rank for Firepow so I go about building my links… and after time my post (eg) reviewfirepow.com/firepow-blogging-software is ranking for Firepow Blogging Software even though I didn’t build a SINGLE link to that post…

Where alternatively I would have spent time building lots of links to that individual post to have it ranking, then moved on to another keyword, by hitting the main keyword hardest and first, ranking for the subsequent keywords requires less, or even NO effort.

I’ve seen competitor sites doing it too. Building NO links to their inner pages but all links to their home page and just ON PAGE optimizing all their post pages well, and by consequence sending so much spider juice to those  inner pages that that, in itself, along with sitting on an authoritative domain with alot of links is enough to have those inner pages rank for all their long tail keywords.

If you do this, you do sacrifice a little long tail traffic in the short term, but over the long term, pick up more of it, as well as more short tail traffic because you spent more of your optimization and link building efforts there.

While this is not a call to drop the one method and replace it with the other, it’s definitely something to think about, and maybe test out in your own SEO. If you happen to do so, or have done so already, do let me know!

I hope you found this valuable.

This is a follow up to an earlier post on finding secret keywords in your niche. This is a little way you can extend that method to multiply the number of secret profitable keywords you can find by 10 times or more. Let me know what you think!