There is a lot of hype surrounding registering a domain name that contains the keywords for your product or service.  I’ve had domains rich in my keywords and others bereft of any relevance at all.  The common wisdom is that you domain name doesn’t matter.  Having tried it both way, I disagree.

Yes, all the good names are taken unless you have a lot of cach lying around.  The good news is that you can still be creative and find good domains.  Hyphens are your friend.  Plurals are you friend.  And, of course, optimizing your pages will always yield better non-PPC results (i.e. search traffic).

I’d like to tell you that I’m going to keep you posted on my latest experiment, but honestly I’m too lazy to post all that much.  Stay optimistic, but not foolishly so.  There are still a ton of great domains to be had!  If you’ve found a great name and have made it work, let me know.  You don’t have to be specific, just share your experience in the comments below.

I went back through my AdWords campaign and made some adjustment pre-launch and lit the fuse today.  We’ll see how it works out tomorrow.  Right now, I’m running two ad group with about 30 keywords each.  I also have three ad variations set to do battle each ad group.  I’m not split testing my landing page just yet because the spend will be very low and I honestly need more time to get another version together.  The good news is I think the initial version will be fine on this one.  Nice to have a job where you’ve been creating and optimizing sites for years.  The bad news is I’ve never sold anything “real”.  This campaign is for a product rather than a service so getting my thinking straight going into it was pretty key to having the site right.

Once I get a better track on where I’m at I’ll share my failure success with you all.  Wish me luck!

If you haven’t tried BlogRush, it’s a pretty simple concept. Sign up for BlogRush and paste the Javascript they provide in your side bar or other visible area of your blog. Once approved, your BlogRush widget will begin appearing and you will see within the widget links to five posts. You can see my widget on the right hand side of this page. Essentially, you build syndication credits each time the widget is displayed. Those credits determine the level of syndication your own posts will receive. Smaller blogs also receive bonus credits to help them get exposure they would not otherwise garner with their own traffic. Sounds good so far? Great!

I have seen some traffic from BlogRush, but since this blog is relatively new it’s been a trickle rather than a flood. Also, I’ve noted sites that sport the widget tend to bury it. As for gaming, since traffic is measured strictly based on page views, it would be trivial to set up a script to call a page on your blog repeatedly to inflate your credits. However, BlogRush has committed to its users they are working diligently to not only improve the quality of the network, but to also plug holes in the system.

There has also been a lot of discussion as to whether BlogRush violates Google’s AdSense TOS. I’m pretty confident this has been resolved for the most part, but if you use AdSense on your site, use your own discretion as to whether you want to participate in BlogRush or not. Even though I’m not using AdSense on this blog at the moment, I would still feel comfortable using it with the BlogRush widget as well.

Ultimately, I see no harm in continuing to participate and will look forward to seeing improvements and, more important, more traffic. Do you use BlogRush? Tell me how it’s working out in the comments below.

Like everyone else trying to make money online, I read every worthy MMO blog out there. Some are well established such as John Chow and others are relative newcomers like Neil Turner.  Unfortunately, just as Monika at Easy WordPress expressed her frustration with MMO blogs I’m also growing more wary of what I’m seeing out there.  As a result, I’ve taken down my “Who I read” section for the moment.  Over the next couple of days, I’ll be adding it back and reviewing each blog I ultimately include in my list of trusted resources.  The only requirement for inclusion is to truly add value to the Internet marketing and blogging community.

While many MMO bloggers are giving back, many are simply writing about MMO and getting paid by luring the uninitiated to click a “gozillian” affiliate links.  I guess that’s OK, but it’s too bad there isn’t more transparency.  Plus, outside of the “A-listers”, it can be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.  There is plenty of wheat though.  For example, I almost fell over when Neil posted an actual Facebook MMO tutorial the other day.  It’s worth a read and the link I gave it because it’s actually informative.  Neil presents an actual offer, strategy and landing page.  Sure, the campaign may not have been a huge success, but it’s a great example of the foundation work needed in order to build successful campaigns.

The truth is, this is a hard business and a wide variety of resources and skills are required to survive and flourish.  Sick of the MMO scene?  Tell me about it in the comments below.  In the meantime, I’ll be working on my own campaigns and looking forward to sharing my failures… and successes with you soon.

Here’s one strategy that I could see working.  Ramp up Valentine’s Day first thing in January.  Then roll right into tax preparation software and services from February to the beginning of April.  Next, it’s Mother’s Day in May, and Father’s Day in June.  Take the summer off (j/k) and pick up again with Halloween followed by Christmas.  Rinse and repeat.  The only real problem here is that we’re talking about managing five separate niches and marketing to a variety of consumers. Optimizing could be tricky and the time commitment would be fairly big the first time around.  And, your campaigns could completely bomb.

Personally, I’m sticking to a couple relatively small niches that are not affected a great deal by seasonality.  Since I’m a small fish, this is letting me experiment and grow incrementally without having to factor in seasonal sales swings.  That said, look at some of the bonuses we saw for tax time.  It’s a fact that some affiliates were killing it in order to warrant those numbers.

If you’re running seasonal campaigns, hit me up and let me know how it’s worked out for you and what factors one needs to consider when going this route.  Drop a comment or shoot me a note! 

The only downside to American Express is that there are still quite a few businesses that don’t take it. The good news is that it’s mainly small retailers. American Express has been quick to remind merchants that on average, card members spend much more than their Visa or MasterCard carrying equivalents and thus, more and more merchants have offered Amex as a payment option over the past couple of years.

For business, I use the Simply Cash Business Card. The card features 5% cash back on gas, office supplies and wireless and 1% on everything else. The cash back is credited to your statement at the end of each month.

How does Amex fit into all this? Well, I bring it up because their rewards are one small way to slightly enhance your ROI for the better on both the advertising and publishing sides of your Internet marketing endeavors. The success of many campaigns hinges on small margins. For a contemporary analog, think of black jack. If you play it perfectly, you can attain a 1% advantage over the house. Credit card rewards that are cash-based offer a similar edge and if you don’t play it perfect, you’ll lose your advantage. I know it’s small, but in the world of analysis even the fractions count.

While credit cards can be a great way to help fund your marketing campaigns, you have to take cash flow into consideration. If you carry a balance, you have to factor the interest you pay into your ROI. This is especially true where you might have as much as a sixty day wait for payments. If you look at the super affiliates, they are able to leverage more frequent payments because of the size of the commissions they earn on a monthly basis. If you’re starting out, you don’t have any leverage at all. Be sure to understand exactly when you can expect to be paid for your PPC/PPA campaigns and manage your cash in such a way that you pay your card balances in full each month.

On the marketing side, it’s also important to remember that if you’re running PPC/PPA ads, you’re likely funding your account based on your future spending. Commission Junction is one example. They require you to maintain a balance equal to what they project you will spend in the next 30 days. They even provide you with monthly report that tells you exactly where your prepaid-paid balance needs to be. For PPC campaigns, expect many frequent charges and monitor your spending closely. This is especially true for any new campaigns that you’ve launched.

As you track your campaigns’ ROI, you have to factor in how much your advertising actually costs — including interest charges and any cash back rewards you may earn. My advice is to carefully consider which rewards your credit card offers and lean towards cash rewards.

Here’s a quick and dirty example for illustration:

You spend $1,000 to earn $2,000 on your current campaign. You receive a 1% discount on your spend making your actual spend $990. Instead of a 100% return, you yield a 102% return. Now, what happens if you have to pay interest? At 12%, that would precisely offset your cash back. At 14%, you’d pay $1,001.67 to earn $2k and your return would be 99.67%. Pay the minimum and continue to carry your balance forward and you can easily see how doing so will erode your ROI.

Pretty neat huh? While I know few people enjoy math, I do know that we all want to maximize our returns. Considering every factor including your actual cost of capital in your campaigns can really pay off in the long term.

What rewards card do you use and why? Have you seen any similar advice as the above? Share your experiences in the comments below!

At its most basic, Twitter just asks you to answer the simple question, “What are you doing now?”.  When I first starting hearing about it in the mainstream media, Twitter was mostly brushed off as a casual curiosity without much use.  Now that it’s on fire, answering that simple question really isn’t about answering that simple question.  It’s about creating a way for you to tell others what you’re doing.  Friends, family, colleagues and even strangers can follow you and respond to your tweets on Twitter.  You can easily communicate with a group of your followers or even, say, just your family.  What are you doing now?  I’m writing a post about Twitter.  What are you doing now?  I’m picking up groceries, I’ll be home in 15 min.

So, it’s not so basic after all.  I think that’s been the main problem with introducing newcomers to the service.  It just isn’t easy to grasp without some real world examples of how people are using it.  To that end, I’ll start tweeting away and see if I can help you understand it better.  I do know that a lot of Internet marketers have picked up on the phenomenon and there have been some interesting findings about how Twitter accounts rank in the SERPs (um, search engine results pages for the uninitiated).  If I get as addicted as everyone else, I’ll follow this up and let you know how it’s going.  If I really adopt it, I’ll even add a widget to the blog so you can follow me right here.

Oh, and you can tweet in many ways and from many places.  Here are some applications that work with Twitter to get you started.

If you’re using Twitter, let me know how you’re using it and whether you love it, hate it or are indifferent in the comments below.  If you like you can follow me on Twitter.  Follow me and I’ll follow you.

Just edit the header of your theme/template and insert the following between the <head></head> tags:

<link rel=”favicon” type=”image/ico” href=”http://example.com/yourfolder/favicon.ico” />

Note, you’ll have to figure out how to edit the header with your particular blog host.  For example, in Blogger, log in to your dashboard, choose layout, then choose the tab titled “Edit HTML”.  Insert your relative link to your favicon then save your template changes. 

Depending on how you upload files to your image host or server, you’ll either FTP in or upload to your directory. If you need some for favicon hosting, here is a short list of free image hosting for your favicons.

Once you’ve made the changes, you will likely need to clear your browser’s cache before you’ll see your custom favicon in the address bar.

As I continue to work on driving traffic to my various projects, sometimes I can’t help smiling when I see this crap. So much work for something that last for such a short amount of time. I’m wondering if any one out there can chime in and let me know if this has worked and, more important, is it sustainable? It would be an interesting experiment to try on a throw away domain for a week or two to see what happens. Load up the AdSense, read the news and Google Trends and post away (and profit?).