Why Try To Make Money Online

Time for the next update.

As mentioned a few posts ago, I stopped all paid advertising on my sites and blogs. The reason was not that I was loosing money, but that I didn't want to spend as much time managing my online business. If you don't keep an eye on your advertising you can go broke quick, so I figured that should be the first to go.

Since then I cut back on a few other things including my virtual server that I was only using half of.

I love free blogs for making money because the risk is so low. Not that it is a good idea to create a blog for the purpose of making money. But low risk because if I can't update every day it won't cost me any money.

I am back working on some Entrecard tests. So far I love all the changes they made. Spending all of my credits has by far been the smartest move I made with that system. To fully benefit from EntreCard you need to spend your credits.

Later,

Michael

Stand Out In A Crowd

Where I work we are raising money for "Make A Wish". The goal is to raise enough money to fulfill a wish for very sick children.

Each of the departments came up with a different idea.

So now when you get on the elevator you are inundated with small posters promoting a departments fund raising idea.

I love the ideas, they are great.

But the problem is that none of them stand out. When you walk in the elevator there are so many it is hard to focus on just one.

There is one poster that has some standout stuff, but no memory factor.

So, the idea isn't just to stand infront of your customers. But to stand where they can see you and clearly recognize you.

Michael

Interesting Testing Results

I had a nice surprise yesterday. I checked my stats on shareasale.com and noticed that I had a sale. But not just any sale, since I often have sales promoting their merchants.

The surprise part was that I had a sale for a merchant that I was planning on testing. I was working on a landing page and was going to promote using AdWords. But I didn't start advertising yet.

So the page was found with a natural search. After checking the page stats it doesn't get much traffic.

I may have found another winner. Now I will have to use the tools over at Wealthy Affiliate to figure out the best keywords to use on AdWords.

I could just load a campaign with 100's of keywords, but I found that using the tools at Wealthy Affiliate save me time and money. Now I only need to have 15-25 keyword phrases in my AdWords campaigns.

Have a good weekend.

Michael

Buy One Get One Free

Why run a special to Buy One and Get One Free instead of offering 50% off?

I don't know the answer to this question and would imagine that it is complex and varies by business and purpose.

Could it be to reduce stock on hand. If the product is consumable will the customer have to also buy more of another companion product. For example shampoo and conditioner.

There isn't an easy way to buy one and get one free with ebooks. That is unless you have 2 ebooks and are selling them together as a set where one is free.

Could this be a new way to joint venture. Buy my product and get Mr.x's product free? Well I guess that wouldn't be too new, but not common.

What are your thoughts on this as it relates to selling digital products online?

Michael

Update on my Projects and Tax Rebate

Today I thought I would give you an update on my projects and answer a few comment questions.

Poker - Yes, I love to play poker. If you would like to play poker with me, just go over to Club WPT and sign up. My name is localpoker. Feel free to add my name localpoker in the referred by field. The cost is $20 a month to play and it is legal in the USA. They operate under a sweepstakes format, so you play with points instead of money. I love it, later this month I will be playing in a tournament with a $10,000 prize pool.

Wealthy Affiliate - Don't forget today is the last day to lock in the lower monthly membership rate. Where else can you get one-on-one mentoring for only $30 a month? Sign up at Wealthy Affiliate today to lock in the low rate.

Tax Rebate - While the plan was to only spend 1/2 of our tax rebate on vacation and apply the other 1/2 to a credit card, we decided to spend the whole thing for vacation. But here is the deal. Before the Tax Rebate the plan was to skip vacation and focus on our debt. So we are still paying down our debt, but at the same time taking a vacation. As for if my spending $1500 is going to stimulate the economy, no, I don't think so. There is something smarter that could have been done instead of the tax rebate, but there isn't enough time to discuss that right now.

$170 Project - I did not invest any of the $170 from my $200 prize. I donated $20 to MDS and $10 was for the PayPal fee. The research is started, but I never finished it. Like much of what I do, I start something, let it sit for 2-3 weeks, then finish it. So look for an update on how I invested the $170 later this month.

Blogging - I maintain about 12 blogs and a few websites. Most get a weekly update. Income levels are slightly below normal. Maybe the tax rebate checks will stimulate the economy to buy some of my ebooks?

Social Networking - I am getting close to 10,000 contacts on MyBlogLog. That is the easy part. My almost 800 community count for my Blog on MyBlogLog, now that I am proud of. Not many blogs can grow and maintain above 600. My goal is 1,000 within the next few months.

There are a few more items to give updates on, but I have to get ready for a meeting on the other side of Lancaster. I don't care for the long drive to and from, but the meetings are great. I serve on the Outreach Department for the Donegal Presbytery.

Michael

Tax Rebate Check

What are you going to do with your Tax Rebate Check?

I was going to pay down some debt, or make a few advanced car payments. But then we decided to stimulate the economy.

Looks like we will be taking a vacation this year. We were going to skip taking vacation. But thanks to the relief payment from the government we decided to plan a vacation.

More on that later.

I have a poker tournament in 10 minutes, other then that no work tonight.

Michael

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

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

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

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

Track Your Advertising - AdWords and Paid Links

Sorry for the delay in updates. I was working on a big project and had to focus my energy on that product.

Once a month I review my traffic and advertising for each of my sites and blogs. This helps me avoid throwing advertising money away.

First I check AdWords and adjust my spending based on how many sales I got. For products I am testing I adjust prices and keywords. Some of my product tests may be dropped if not enough sales convert.

Then I check my paid links to see how many visitors I got from those links. If my cost comes below 3 cents a click I may choose to buy another months of advertising from them. In most cases I find that text links don't bring in that much traffic.

Weekly I check and adjust advertising on some of my testing products and on new tests I always check daily. I use the tools at Wealthy Affiliate to help me find new products to promote and also with keyword selection.

Michael

Know Your Advertising ROI

Do you track your advertising spend vs. income?

If not you could be throwing money away.

I track a good bit of advertising online, including the competition. It is important to know what advertising is bringing in a profit and what advertising is throwing money away.

Some bloggers may advertise to build their brand, but I have a small budget so I need to see a profit.

There are multiple ways to track advertising, traffic and income source. Many of the networks allow tracking ids and this makes life even easier.

Michael

One Month To Live

Yesterday I mentioned about the book "one Month To Live" by Kerry & Chris Shook.

Since you are only supposed to read one chapter a day I will have to add a second book to my current reading list.

So far I love the book.

I may not have agreed to roller skate on Saturday had I not been reading this book.

What does that have to do with internet marketing?

For me when I think about only having one month to live and the work I do online. It helps me to focus on what is important and cut back what is not.

The 4 Hour Work Week did a great job of guiding my thinking at eliminating things that were not important. But 30 Days To Live does so with a thread of purpose throughout.

What good is working only 4 hours a week if you are not going to use the free time for something important.

Before you spend 3 or 4 more hours surfing the net today/tonight. Cut back by 50% and head to the bookstore to purchase "One Month To Live". No, this isn't the book that was given to me for free to review. I think it will change your life, that is why I suggest it.

Michael