I stumbled across Neilsweb.com a little while ago, I liked what I saw and subscribed to Neil Turner’s feed. I’ve been following his progress ever since. Hopefully this review will convince you to do so as well.
Neilsweb follows the story of a Canadian college student pursuing an accounting degree who turned aspiring super affiliate. When I first visited his blog, I was surprised after reading several posts to learn that he just started in the affiliate marketing business in March of 2008. That isn’t to say he was entirely new to the Internet. Neil built a solid foundation of the technology (HTML/CSS/PHP etc) behind the underpinnings of the Internet before he caught the affiliate bug. Now, he’s working actively at his goal of achieving super affiliate status while continuing to pursue his accounting degree.
Neil’s blog chronicles his journey in stunning detail. Unlike many of the super affiliates, Neil has been incredibly candid with the information he has shared. I mentioned in my post on make money online blogs how I was floored by the detail he provided in his post Killer Facebook Strategy Revealed. Add to that today’s post Getting the Most Out of Facebook Campaigns and I think you’ll quickly see that Neil is clearly setting himself apart from the pack.
Personally, I’m looking forward to continuing to enjoy the quality content Neil is producing. As such, I’m adding him to my “Who I Read” section. Again, as I mentioned in my Make Money Online Blogs Post, this is a space strictly reserved for those resources which I have reviewed and follow daily. Be sure to sign up for Neilsweb’s RSS feed or follow his posts via email. I know you won’t regret it.
I’ve been running BlogRush on my site for the past two weeks. BlogRush has positives and negatives. The biggest positive is getting your content syndicated across a large number of sites with related content. The biggest negative is that the system is open to being gamed.
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.
Robert Frank of the WSJ’s The Wealth Report wrote a post the other day about a watch that sells for $300k, but doesn’t tell time. Impressively, it sold out in a mere 48 hours. On your first pass you may think this excessive trinket is easily dismissed as some crazy little gadget that billionaires use to flaunt their wealth. On the other hand, since it tells you whether it is day or night, hence the Day&Night Watch, it is in fact useful. How you might ask?
A watch that tells you it’s day or night can help lend perspective to your on and off time. Daytime = working. Nighttime = not working. I think that was the principle philosophical goal of the watchmaker as well (not to mention some smart marketing). If we evenly split our 24 hours into two distinct 12 hour blocks we have on duty and off duty or as the Website puts it:
A new interpretation of Time based around two Tourbillons operating sequentially. The Day Tourbillon operates during the day, defining the wearer’s period of activity, and stops after twelve hours, handing over to the Night Tourbillon dedicated to man’s own private sphere.
Makes a lot of sense since many of us normally work 12 hour days. But that’s just for regular people like you and me. What can we learn from this philosophical timepiece?
For the super wealthy, they have actually bought a lot of time for themselves. Time is a resource that can be bought, borrowed, sold or lost. We buy time by having someone else launder our clothes. We borrow time when we engage in reciprocal favors. We sell time when we offer a product or service that reduces a consumers expenditure of time. And, we lose time when traffic is heavy. As one builds wealth, time itself moves from something concrete and tangible (think “I have two more hours before I can go home.”) to the abstract (think “I’m not bound by time commitments so I have many choices as to how I’ll spend my time.”). The abstraction of time enjoyed by the filthy rich is a reflection of the fact temporal boundaries can be overcome. If you don’t have time, it means you do not have choices of how you will spend your time. You have to go to work, you have to prepare meals, you have to walk the dog etc.
What does this mean for us mere mortals? Principally, we need to have a tangible understanding of what our time is worth. One could start by calculating one’s earnings per hour, but I feel that’s a little too simplistic of an approach. Rather, I would look at the likely hours you will live and divide those hours into your lifetime earnings from this day forward and your accumulated assets.
The average life expectancy (based on 2004 CDC data) for males was 75.2 and 80.4 for females. For the sake of a simple example, let’s say I earn $150k annually from age 35 to 65 with no salary increase. That’s $4.5M in earnings. Along the way I invest 5% of my earnings and yield a lousy 6% annually. Add to that the value of my home with no mortgage at $500k. That would be about $5,227,000. How many more years do I have? About 40. How many hours in a year? About 8,760. So, I have 350k total hours left. Now, let’s net out that useless luxury called sleep to get 234k waking hours. That means my time is currently worth about $22.34/hour ($5.227M/234k). Compare that with $25.68/hour if you just divided your wage by your waking hours in a year. An interesting side note here is you can clearly see the importance of making wise investments. If you can get your lifetime dollar per hour to equal or exceed your annual wages per hour, you are probably making sound financial decisions for your future. However, I digress.
What’s the point? The point is that if I can save an hour by paying $22.34 or less for that hours’ time, I’m actually gaining some time for myself. If the time costs more than $22.34, then I’m actually losing time I’ll have to recoup elsewhere or I’m making a choice to value that time more highly than I value my own. How do you value time with which you do whatever it is you like? Well, that’s for the philosophers. I’d simply say you can’t put a value on time you spend enjoying life. It truly has no value.
All that being said, it would appear making $300k watches might be a good use of all that free time.
Sorry for phoning it in on Friday. The WP 2.5.1 update was muy importante, but what happened to Saturday and Sunday?
Well, I took the weekend off (actually Friday as well) to focus on my house, my wife and our animal (literally) children. On Thursday I realized I just had burned out a little after posting so fast and furiously over these past several weeks so I just let it go a couple days.
I’m probably one of the worst when it comes to realizing you need to take time off and then not actually taking the time I need. It’s crazy how long this three day weekend seemed. That’s a sure sign it’s time for a break. Imagine what it would feel like to take a whole week off?
At any rate, in any event and anyhow, I’ll try to pick up the pace and not leave any of you waiting with bated breath for my next post. I hope today’s rather philosophical entry makes up for the two (well three) day hiatus.
An update to the recently released WordPress 2.5 is now available. If you’re like me and running WP, you need to update now as this release fixes an important security issue:
We recommend everyone update immediately, particularly if your blog has open registration. The vulnerability is not public but it will be shortly. In addition to the security fix, 2.5.1 contains over 70 bug fixes.
Be safe WordPressers!
I’m a relative newcomer to affiliate marketing from scratch. My day job has allowed me to monetize a well established site in a very specific niche — a niche we dominate. I’ve never really had to build from the ground up on my own. I have all of the requisite skills both from the publishing and advertising side of the game. Yet, it’s still daunting to start afresh and do something completely new.
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.
Everyone knows about the termination fee you must pay to your cell phone carrier if you decide to terminate early. Interestingly, there are plenty of service providers out there that do not provide a termination clause for convenience. What this simply means is that unless there is a breach in the term and termination provisions or a well defined mutual termination clause you are stuck with the terms of that contract for the duration of the term. A typical example would be a lease. You also need to be aware of the prior notice you need to provide to terminate the contract under its normal term. For example, you must give sixty days advance written notice prior to the end of the initial term. This is important because lots of agreements provide for automatic renewal.
The good news is that most service providers will negotiate a termination fee if they think you are unlikely to pay or if you are well into the term of the agreement (say half way or more). Note: I am not a lawyer so get qualified advice before doing this, but my general approach has two steps. First, let the other party know that you want out and are aware there is no clause for convenience. They’ll generally tell you they aren’t inclined to let you out. The key is to not offer you are willing to settle via a termination fee. Finally, follow up and suggest a termination fee if they did not suggest one previously. Do not state an amount you are willing to pay. Let them come up with a number and, if it’s reasonable, write up the paper work, execute and pay the fee. If they ask you for an amount you’d be willing to pay, use the opposite strategy you would in an interview–namely, low ball them and then negotiate if need be.
Most of these agreements were written specifically so that you are bound to the term of the agreement. The reality is that this kind of settlement is negotiated and consummated all the time. Of course, you could choose simply to not pay, but I suspect you like nasty letters from lawyers about as much as I do.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s a pretty solid approach if you really need an exit.
It occurs to me that targeting seasonal niches might be an interesting long haul strategy. I’m curious how much optimization effort would be needed when you ramp up again the following year. I can see where simply dusting off a campaign could be a really fun way to keep it interesting while at the same time having campaigns in your back pocket once you’ve been through a year. Plus, year after year you would simply be tweaking and improving campaigns that are, for the most part, already in the can.
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!
I’ve had a bunch of great business ideas. Or maybe they were great ideas. In most cases, I’ll never know because I could never get them off the ground. Why? Because they were very complicated.
Building a complicated business isn’t a bad thing at all. For one, complexity means you are benefiting by creating a barrier to entry into your product, service or market. On the other hand, ideas like these tend to require substantial initial capital. That’s why I’m such a big fan of bootstrapping. You preserve equity and force yourself to keep things simple and inexpensive. As you move your idea forward and pull in some revenue, you can reinvest and make your business as complex as you like.
The point of this post is to remind us all that sometimes the easy ideas are some of the best. Take Todd Davis of LifeLock for example. Sure, they raised a bunch of money, but the business itself is so simple it’s genius. A little technology here, a little automation there and marketing that takes advantage of everyone’s media-induced fear of identity theft and you have the perfect money making storm. All of this because they do something that everyone can do for themselves at nearly no cost. But, it’s a pain in the ass so why not pay $10/month or $110/year and let them do it for you? Believe me, lots of people do. LifeLock is a money making machine and now they have lots of copycats.
I used to see businesses like this and think I’m doing something wrong. These ideas would really get me down. Now, I look at them as educational and inspirational. Most important, it reminds me to keep things simple.
Joel Comm’s Adsense Secrets 4 is an impressive piece of work. While I’m not new to AdSense, I found tons of helpful advice in this eBook. His original books, New York Times bestsellers were priced at $97. For anyone that is starting out, $97 might seem like a bunch of loot, but the reality is that using his advice you’d easily earn the purchase price back.
Now, after a two year hiatus, Adsense Secrets 4 returns. For the most part fully updated to reflect the many changes to the AdSense program over the past few years. What’s more, since this is being released as an eBook, Joel’s made it available for only $9.95! That’s a fantastic deal to get you started in maximizing your AdSense revenue. Google just announced its earning and blew away the Street’s expectations. Now is a great time to get your feet wet and one of the first stops is monetizing your assets with AdSense. I highly recommend Joel Comm’s Adsense Secrets 4.
Watch this space. I’ll have a lot more to add after reading Adsense Secrets 4 especially as it relates to how thoroughly Joel is killing it monetizing his very specialized area of expertise.
