Make Money Advertising

I read an awesome report today about making money using AdWords. There are many out there, but this one was like no other.

The guy made over $1 million in 9 months.

I use the tools over at Wealthy Affiliate to help me tune my advertising and find new products to promote. So I was already doing a good job of keeping my cost down while still maintaining a high ad position.

The report talked about having an upsell on the backend. I haven't tried doing an upsell yet, so I will have to check the forums at Wealthy Affiliate for some tips and advice.

So many things going on right now. Big poker tournament tonight.

Michael

One Blog or Many Blogs?

One of the comments I got yesterday asked why so many blogs.

Do you think it is better to have one blog or multiple blogs? There is no one right answer, but below is my answer.

I prefer to have multiple blogs based on topics. Would you keep coming back to my blog if I posted about solar power one day and mountain bike tires the next?

I create a new blog for each topic that I am interested in. Some of the blogs only get one post per month, others once per week and others once per day.

By keeping the topic content together I get better search engine results. So this benefits me in the SERPs and benefits my readers as they don't have to weed through content that they are not interested in.

Michael

Project Planning

I was considering promoting some clickbank products next week. But instead I am going to promote some shareasale.com programs.

There is normally less competition in PPC advertising when promoting niches from networks other then Clickbank.

I found one that only has 3 advertisers promoting it. Good chance I can write a better ad and conversion copy.

Rewards are something I have noticed the offline world picking up more and more. It isn't as easy to do online, but something I am going to look into.

Michael

Past the 600 Post Mark

This is post number 601. Hard to believe that I made it this far.

Now if I could only break the $200 a day barrier.

Traffic picked up on one of my blog. I love when that happens. Guess I will have to increase the posting frequency.

Most of my blogs I only post once a month or once a week at most. This is my only blog where I post almost daily.

Time to do some research and start planning next week.

Michael

I Joined The Mile High Club

While in Denver I joined The Mile High Club. Well, not the one you are thinking.

As you can see from the photo I visited the Capitol building and had my photo taken on the 15th step. We all took the 10 minute walk from the conference center to visit the capitol.

What did you think of the post title. Using attention getting text is important. But you have to use the right mix and not overdo it.

Stop back next week to see how I start using the $170 to test selling some products.

Michael

Tools For Blogging Success

I see that FaceBook added a chat application today. I know that most of the email providers also have a chat option. But I like the ability to chat with contacts no mater what email provider they use.

Over at Wealthy Affiliate they keep adding new tools to help me make money online. I love the research tools, saves me a good bit of time and money. They provide much at a very low price.

I haven't invested my $170 yet. I will probably use it to test 2 products with AdWords, but haven't decided yet.

My MyBlogLog community is growing nicely. Almost at 800 and it should hit 1,000 this summer.

Michael

What Can We Learn From Events

As you may know I was in Denver last week at a conference.

While there I attended a bunch of educational sessions and talked to a couple hundred vendors. It was neat to see how each of the vendors did their marketing.

Some were offering a chance to win a big prize like a Mac notebook or iPod touch, while others were handing out small trinkets. Some even gave pins to put on our conference badge.

At first I thought the big prize vendors were missing something by not having a handout at the conference. But then today I got an email from one of the vendors with an announcement of the iPod Touch prize winner.

And what did I do. Well I opened it and read the whole thing. In addition to announcing the winner (wasn't me) they told me about a free webinar that I can register for next week.

How smart is that.

There is just one more thing this vendor could have done to get me closer to being a customer. And that is to present on one of the session topics.

I give credit to the vendors to freely give of their time to come to a conference and offer free training.

More on offline and online marketing over the next few days.

Michael

MyBlogLog Widget

So far my community count isn't increasing any quicker by displaying the MyBlogLog Widget. I had hoped my count would go up quicker but it didn't.

Traffic is the lifeblood of any web business. I get traffic from multiple sources and MyBlogLog is one of those sources.

Where does your traffic come from? All one source or multiple sources?

For some of my sites I do paid advertising, but this blog is for research, testing and reporting, so I don't advertise it as much.

Time to check in on my Facebook profile and get some work done.

Michael

BLOG Design Changes

I made a couple changes to the blog design.

I removed some elements from the right column. Currently I have the new MyBlogLog widget showing, but I may remove that if it slows down page load time. It does look cool, so I will probably keep it there.

I have to modify the top text links and the bottom banner. That will be another day.

I noticed that traffic died down after Entrecard changed their advertising algorithm. My site was getting good traffic and my ad rate was over 70. With the new alg I am looking at 32 or 64 on most days, with a high of 128.

Michael

Back From Denver CO

I am back from Denver. This photo is of the stuff I got from the Event Booths.

This Year Collaborate 08 was in Denver, CO. I don't mind the cold, but it was odd to travel into colder snowy weather when spring is starting to warm up where I live.

I won't go into details about Collaborate from the educational and networking side, but I do want to mention the vendors. Like all previous years, the vendors work their magic to lure you to their booth.

Most have something to give you in exchange for a scan of your badge. That gives them full access to my contact info.

So what do they give away. I got at least a dozen pens. Not all of them made it into the photo. Some were giving away an iPod or more expensive gift as a prize drawing.

Does the SWAG matter if you are interested in a specific product or service? I don't think so.

As a matter of fact one vendor stood out way above the rest. Their SWAG was not as good as many of their competitors. But they knew that trinkets are not what convert prospects into customers.

While I have your attention, I donated $20 of my $200 prize money from WinningOnTheWeb to MDA. Someone I know was soliciting donations and I felt it was a good cause.

As for the remaining $180, stay tuned for some testing. I am anxious to find and test more products to sell online.

Michael

New Tools At Wealthy Affiliate

I just got an email today. Great news, Wealthy Affiliate is going to be releasing some new tools very soon. As early as Friday there will be some new tools on Wealthy Affiliate
that other sites charge over $100 a month for.

I am excited. I already feel that Wealthy Affiliate is under priced and this really drives up the value. That reminds me I can use their page builder to whip up a site for that niche I found on Monday.

Since I will be away for a few days I won't get to play with the new tools until I get back.

Michael

What To Do With $200

I spent some time thinking about what to do with my $200 prize winnings. PayPal took $6.10 of it off my hands and I will be donating $20 to a charity or my church.

So I have $173.90 to invest, spend or hold.

My first thought was "Spending money for my Denver trip". But for the most part that is paid for and I don't want to spend that much on stuff. My second thought was credit card debt.

I have plenty of credit card debt, so that would be a guaranteed return above what I could get in a savings account.

But on the other hand if I use it to test some offers I could find one that will convert that money at least 50% every month. With $173 I should be able to find an offer that brings in at least $50-60 a month in profit. The hardest part is getting past the testing and keyword refinement stage.

I did look on Wealthy Affiliate last night and found a product that looks awesome. It is an under the radar mover, so right now competition is very low.

The only down side is I don't have a site already in that niche and I would have to build one. Since I leave for Denver in a couple days, I don't have time to do that.

I will probably Spend $70 of it in Denver and use the rest to test 2 offers/products.

More on that in a future post. I will also provide an update on some of my advertising tests in a few days.

Michael

Thanks to AffSpy

I got my $200 prize today from AffSpy. If you remember a couple days back I mentioned how I won $200 from AffSpy in a contest on WinningTheWeb.com from March.

The AffSpy tool is awesome and for those like me that promote multiple merchant networks a real time saver. With my research at Wealthy Affiliate I can quickly go to AffSpy and search offers to promote.

I am off to Soccer practice. My daughter plays on a local U8 team. While I am there I will have to ponder how to spend my $200.

Many thanks to AffSpy for offering this prize on WinningTheWeb last month.

Stop back to see how I spend the $200. I would like to try and at least double it by the end of April.

Michael

The Week Before Denver

Next week at this time I will be heading to Denver for a conference. Collaborate 08 to be exact.

I am heading there as part of my job for a big project later this year.

The Internet Marketing portion of this is about advertising.

There will be about 15,000 people there all with interest in the same thing. So I took a peek at how much it would cost to advertise there.

A 10x10 booth in the expo costs $10,000. Floor Decals cost $3,500. Bottled Water cost $15,000 for 2 days.

At first I thought some of these vendors are paying $2 or more per "impression". But then I realized that these people are selling $20,000+ products. So 1 or 2 sales would be a profit for them.

Something to keep in mind when we advertise online.

This time next week I will be on my way to the airport. The conference starts early Sunday, so I will be heading out Saturday.

Michael

The Shopping List of Keywords

I got to thinking today about Keywords. It is absolutely amazing how 1 word can make the difference between a sale and just a visitor.

Imagine this.

You own a store in a shopping mall. Every customer that comes into your store is either holding a shopping list or they are there to look because they were told by someone else that you sell good products.

Now of all the prospects that have a list only some of the prospects actually buy and become a customer.

As it turns out all the customers who bought have matching lists. If even 1 word does not match, they didn't buy.

Believe it or not, this is real in the online world. It just happened to me.

As you know I am constantly testing new products to sell. I use Wealthy Affiliate to find products and research keywords to promote those products with PPC. I use the techniques they teach at Wealthy Affiliate.

I added 1 keyword phrase that is much like the others in my keyword list, but only different by one word. Guess what happened. Prospects started turning into customers.

Or should I say prospects were able to find my store because what I was selling matched what they have on their shopping list. Now to go in a weed out all the keywords that don't convert, then I will head back to Wealthy Affiliate to look for more products to promote.

What an awesome feeling that was to discover the power of ONE WORD in the right keyword phrase order!

Michael

I am a Winner !!!!!!

I won a couple prizes over at Winning The Web.

You may remember me telling you about the contest early in March. Well I did most of the stuff to earn entries and my effort paid off.

I won $200 from AffSpy and a 125x125 banner for one month on Blog About Your Blog.

Gyutae is heading away for a conference so I won't get my prizes for about a week. I'll update on what I do with the $200 when I get it.

I just may have to look for more contests to enter.

Michael

Hang With Me Online

Are you my friend?

The best way to find me is on MyBlogLog, just click the My BLOG Community link above and join my community. You will need a Yahoo id, free if you don't already have one.

Another option is FaceBook, again just click on the My BLOG Community and then on my FaceBook icon. You can also see my YouTube and Twitter links there as well.

I tend to hang out online for a couple hours a day, so there is a good chance we will meet sooner or later.

I am getting close to having over 10,000 contacts on MyBlogLog. That is my current goal for MyBlogLog.

Michael