Bankruptcy to Millionaire

So Adam commented that he thought I had given up on my blog. That all I was posting was American Idol bullshit.

Yes, it was complete and total bullshit. But there was a little method to my madness. And I bet many of you caught on to exactly what I was doing.

But, to Adam, if you think this blog is sunk, and now totally worthless (which is probably is. But I don’t give a fuck.) , feel free to visit wealthstore.com (as requested you do by Adam) and pass your own judgement as to who’s site is worth more.

I’ll tell you why I post 5 goddamned American Idol posts in a second. But first a brief comment on Wealth Store.

I went to the site, and immediately realized why Adam, was perplexed with the American Idol posts. That blog gets in my estimation exactly 0 natural search results a month.

Now let me be clear, B2M also got approximately 0 search results per month as well (actually more like 15, but most of those were probably my friends searching my name “Tevin Anderson”). And since I have no real purpose for this blog other than to document my success, failures, and what I’m learning.

Now I am NO SEO. I am an SEO retard actually. If you’re looking to make money online with SEO you need to be reading Vic, Court, and Grizz’s Blogs.

So I found out something kind of interesting. My posts on B2M were indexed in less than an hour in the search engines. So I wanted to try and capitalize and see if I could get natural traffic, that converts on an affiliate offer. Now since I didn’t have a high PR site that I could perform this experiment on other than B2M. That’s what I did.

Fuck it. Call it selling out if you like. I had some very interesting results.

I decided each post would be keyword focused. I would put a text link early on for an affiliate offer. Then I put an affiliate offer banner at the bottom of each post. The offer was an email submit for american idol season finale tix.

So the good news first. In the two days that I posted the posts, I got over 1000 unique search visitors. And I am getting roughly 80 a day after the event.

I was ranking on the first page for search terms like “songs sang on american idol gives back” or “songs on american idol gives back”, etc. They were long tails, but still getting tons of traffic (at least by this blogs standards).

I got about 8 clicks on the ads, and no opt ins. If it were pay per click (adsense), it would be great, because I would actually have made money. haha

I did all of this without any link building, so I can only imagine what a BMD run will do for something like this. I can’t wait to take what I’ve learned and apply it to a BANS site.

If I can take this info, and use it to rank for long tail keywords that actually convert. woooo…. I can only imagine.

Anyhow, if you were confused by the american idol posts. And you didn’t get what was going on. Now I hope you do.

Cheers all.

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Can you actually utilize Entrecard to increase your adsense revenue and overall CTR of your ads?

YES! Let me share with you a very profitable secret you can implement TODAY to increase your overall income on your blog.

I’ve made an interesting discovery that I thought I’d share with all of you.

It’s a very simple way to increase your Adsense revenue using Entrecard users. I’ve increased my Adsense CTR to over 1% on my adsense ads on this blog on my Entrecard Channel.

How can this possibly be done?

It’s quite simple really. I’ve placed a 125×125 text ad button just bellow the “drop yours” button on my Entrecard unit. Because this blog is listed under the “Make Money Online” section of Entrecard, and the ads are usually of “make money online” nature. These ads are appealing to the Entrecard Droppers.

ALSO

Because of Link Droppers (the people the click from one Entrecard to the other top drop their cards) nature to be clicking mindlessly across dozens if not hundreds of blogs in a row, I probably get the accidental click here and there because it’s so near the “drop yours” button.

I’m very happy with the success of this adsense implementation. If you’re an Entrecarder, I suggest you test this out and see if your results are the same.

- Tevin

P.S. Subscribe to my RSS to be notified of future contests being held at B2M

P.P.S. Give me a $5 Tip get 30 days of Advertising on my Scratchback widget. Bonus 100 entrecard credits for the next 5 to tip $5.

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Ok this is the 3rd post in a series. To catch up please read these two first:

How I Accidently Made $88.50 with First Try On Online Affiliate Marketing

Inside: Uncovered Affiliate Secrets The Big Guys Don’t Want You To Know…

Caught up? Good. Now we’ll deal with the final portion. All the EFF UPS I made in this short but profitable campaign. These are mistakes I WILL NOT make again. A mistakes you should not make.

*note: pay close attention to the end of this post to learn how you can get 30 FULL DAYS of advertising on your site, for just $1!*

Mistake #1 - Always Pay Close Attention

Obviously my first mistake was setting up a campaign and not following it. If you ever set up a PPC campaign you should watch it like a hawk. How much are you spending a day? Is it converting? If I had been paying attention on a daily basis, I would have seen that I should have increased my $10/day budget, and would have made MORE SALES before I got “disallowed”.

Mistake #2 - Not enough research

Because I was not thinking through this campaign (I did it on a whim). I did not do enough keyword research. If I had. I would have had a TON more than just 2 converting keywords. I would have came up with many more search terms that would lead to people wanting to buy holiday cards, I would obviously make more money in a shorter amount of time.

Mistake # 3 No Testing

I did not split test the ads. I know from previous testing of clickbank, and some of my own websites. That I should capitalize the first letter of each word of the URL and ad the appearance of a subfolder. But I did NOT test that I should have:

• Headlines
• Copy
• Offer
• Display URLs (I’m testing this right now in my current campaign)

Google adwords makes testing INCREDIBLY EASY. So you should ALWAYS utilize split testing.

IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER WHEN SPLIT TESTING:

Only test one element at a time! Meaning: If you’re testing your headline, make sure everything else on your ad exactly the same. This way you know which one is better. Then once you pick which one is better. Change one more thing. Until you get completely optimized ads.

Please let me know if you have any questions on optimizing/split testing ads.

P.S. If you’d like to advertise on my blog for $6 through the end of March. I have only one spot left. Also, if you tip me $1 on the Scratch Back widget you’ll receive a text link ad for $1 for a full 30 days! Advertising for less that $0.03 a day!? You have to be kidding me that widget should be full by tomorrow!

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*note there are ZERO affiliate links in this post*
this post is a follow up to How I Accidently Made $88.50 with First Try On Online Affiliate Marketing

I am going to uncover the secrets that many affiliate marketers do not EVER reveal. I’m going reveal my successful adwords campaign keywords. I’m going to show you EXACTLY how I achieved a 6.7% CTR. I am going to reveal the offer, and the exact method I used to turn a profit using Online Affiliate Marketing. Then I’m going to reveal MY COSTLY MISTAKES so you don’t make them!

You can take these tips today, and implement them TODAY to improve your already existing PPC affiliate campaigns. Or start a new one–and start making money tomorrow.

Step One - Find a Hot Niche

This one was easy. Christmas time. I wanted to find a Christmas offer. So I logged onto my newly opened CJ.com account.

Step Two - Find a Hot Offer to Promote in the Hot Niche

After about 15 minute of research if found Vistaprint.com was offering 50% off select items and free shipping on Holiday Cards. Commissions are 16-20% of each sale and 3.50-5.00 for each free claimed. Looked good to me to test.

Step Three - Start Adwords Campaign - Writing Your Ads (with your search terms in mind).

Ok, so I started my campaign. The offer was obviously a hot selling point, 50% and free shipping. So that should go in the ad. My ad looked like this:

click photo to enlarge

I knew my keywords would play around the “discount christmas card” search phrase (and variations on it. More on search terms in a second). So that was my headline, I didn’t want people to think they were free. But if they click on something that says “discount” they are likely to be looking to purchase something.

The ad accomplishes more than that. They also see that they can get them “LAST MINUTE” with “FREE SHIPPING”. This ad is chock full of features.

There is One More VERY important part of this ad to recognize.

Notice the URL. I’ve done numerous testing on other PPC ads and here are the secrets I’ve discovered with the URL. Capitalize each word in the URL. It’s not www.vistaprint.com it’s www.VistaPrint.com. This is MUCH easier to read what it is–some URLs look better than others.

But even more important is the appearance of a Sub Folder. The /christmas_cards portion of the ad. Now google is kind enough to allow you to put anything you want after the Slash (/) as long as the root domain stays the same as the destination URL.

This /christmas_cards will HUGELY increase response and Click Throughs because when they search for “discount christmas cards” (my #1 search term as you’ll see in a second), they /christmas_cards will be bold. This lets the person searching know this is a site that is RELEVANT to them.

Use the www.YourDomain.com/[primary_search_term] as often as possible when setting up your campaigns.

YES! This means more WORK when setting up your ad campaigns. Because you will need NEW ADS (and ad groups) for each of your primary search phrases.

Step Four - Adwords - Choosing Your Search Terms

click photo to elarge 

These are the keywords I ran with my campaign (yes. There have been MANY mistakes made. I’ll touch on those soon). Notice really only two received any amount of searches. “Discount Christmas Cards” and “Cheap Christmas Cards”. Also Notice that my CTR is between 6.7 and 7.0% but my ad placement is a miserable 5-6! (This is because of the very strong ad/offer).

Also notice, that I bid 1.05 but only paid an average CPC of $0.90. I bid 1.05 because I thought it was likely that many advertisers bid an even $1, so I wanted to leap frog them (I have not tested this theory, so it may be completely invalid).

Because my primary search terms are located in the Ad. This ad is VERY ENTICING to the person searching. Not only that, because the way it is written, the person click is VERY LIKELY to buy, because the ad explicitly states they are clicking on something to buy!

Step Five - Check Your Results

click photo to enlarge 

These are the sales I made after 5 Days of Running this offer. With a direct link to the offer. I did not use a landing page.

Step Six - Get Campaign Canceled by Google because they do not allow affiliate link re-directs.

These ads got canceled because Google does not allow your affiliate link to redirect to the home page. Lesson Learned - pay more attention and capitalize when something become profitable.

Where were my Errors?!

During the implementation of this campaign. I made MANY ERRORS. But I will say this in my defense. I thought I paused the campaign the second I had launched it, thinking I would make some tweaks. Then I completely forgot that it was running until the Big G sent me an email telling me it was “disallowed”.

I plan on doing an entire post on the errors I made, so you don’t make those same mistakes, and can start your own successful affiliate campaign.

But first I’d like to open it up to all of you.

Where did I go wrong. Did you notice any errors that I made, that I may not have noticed. Disect this campaign. Where did I go wrong? What would you have do to make it better?

- Tevin Anderson

P.S. If you liked this post, and think it will make you more money in the future–and you feel in the Christmas Spirit. Feel Free to Paypal me some Christmas Shopping Money :D.

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click image to see full size.

So I’ve finally made money online! In fact, I made it completely on ACCIDENT. “How can this happen?” You ask…

About a week ago I launched a campaign for Christmas Card printing through a CJ.com offer. I used exactly 6 keyphrases (4 of which never ended up getting any impressions at all). I was even so wimpy as to set a $10 a day budget.

I then decided to launch the campaign. We were off to the races, I let the campaign run through my work day. I checked back and I had used like 5 of the 10 bucks, then I noticed I hadn’t made a sale yet. I then *thought* I clicked the “pause” button that evening in my adwords account thinking I would spend a few more hours optimizing and whatnot.

Then I completely forgot about the campaign entirely by the next day. And 4 more whole days go by where I don’t even remember setting it up. Then I get an email from google telling me they are banning that campaign. I think “banning what campaign”? Then I log into the account, and sure enough I had spent $49.50. I had an ASTONISHING 6.9% CTR on apx. 900 impressions I thought:

DOH! What a waste of money.

Then I moved on… about 30 minute later I thought… Maybe I should check my CJ acount. and BAM! There is was staring me in the face! I had turned a $39 profit, in 5 days. COMPLETELY ON ACCIDENT. I was kicking myself–why hadn’t I paid more attention? What if I had run a $20 or $50 a day? What if I had spent some time on more key words? What if I had split tested ads!?

I made this without even trying! Now I’m “disallowed” because of my redirect affiliate link redirect on Adwords. I would concentrate on figuring out a way to promote the offer more, but the offer expires in 3 days because of Christmas. But my suspicions are now confirmed.

MONEY CAN BE MADE ONLINE.

I’ve tasted it. Now I want more! (I’ve already launched my next campaign.)

So if you’ve felt discouraged, just know. Money is out there for you. Just think a little outside the box, and grab it!

Cheers all,

- Tevin Anderson

P.S. Keep a look out for an extremely valuable blog contest launching in the next several weeks. You’ll love it! Subscribe to my RSS to make sure you’re the first in the know!

P.P.S. Three cheers for UberAffiliate for inspiring me.

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