Affiliate Money Maker

Today I have received my LEC check for the last month (May). They pay once a month by check or wire transfer (which I think is only applicable to the US-based affiliates) for the previous month and, which is important for me being Europe-based, their checks always arrive very fast (unlike the old AdSense which not only takes two months to pay you but also takes ages for the check to get delivered, grr!)

Last month I made only $92 with Leading Edge Cash due to my attention being distracted by setting up other web sites and trying out other affiliate programs and different new things so I even forgot to put it on hold as I initially meant to. The program has no minimum payout level by default but you can set your own limit.

I will be reviewing the LEC affiliate program some time soon - in the meantime, sign up and see for yourself what it’s like.

My turn to do the Famous Blue Wallet post! Like I mentioned a while ago, I have earned the blue wallet by posting on MoreNiche forum - and today it has been delivered to me! It has been delivered by a DHL courier, pretty fast. Nice of the MoreNiche lads!

Here it is:

Nice one isn’t it? Now, I need to make more sales to store the money in it!

I’ve been searching for some Firefox plugins to automate some of the stuff I do on a regular basis and came across iMacros - an extension that can record and repeat any recurring actions. I only had a couple uses for it in mind - but just around the time I installed it and started playing with it I have noticed this post by Linda Buquet who in her turn was quoting this post by Stuart of Earners Blog - both mentioning the same iMacros plugin. Stuart lists a ton of ways to use the plugn - which gave me a few ideas as well! The one I liked most is checking stats - this one takes a lot of my time daily - I guess I am addicted to checking stats, I do it every now and then! I definitely need to automate it.

However I might go even one step further and use another plugin, Check4Change, for notifying me when exactly my stats change and are worth a look at them. As the name of the plugin indicates, it tracks changes on a page and notifies you of them. You can select a bit of text on the page - like the number of conversions, in case of affiliates stats - and you will know exactly when a new conversion happens.

Most programs I use send email notifications when you get a new conversion so there is no need for me to track my conversions like this. (BTW, if your affiliate program has this feature of notifying of conversions by email do opt for it!) But for tracking clicks this is really handy, say when you launch a new site and want to know when visitors start coming to it.

What are your favourite tools for automating your affiliate tasks? Share them here!

I have recently posted a review of GenBucks affiliate program but at the time of posting I was not sure about some details, namely affiliate commissions on refill orders. Well, I have contacted GenBucks to find it out for sure and here’s what they told me:

Me: I have a question concerning affiliate commissions - if somebody
orders some pills through my affiliate link and then comes back later
and orders more do I still get commissions on that later purchase?

GB: yes, provided they dont delete their cookies

Me: Thanks! How long are the cookies active for?

GB: they dont expire

So, provided the cookie remains on a person’s computer, all their refills should be bringing you affiliate commissions - lovely! Now, back to work and building and promoting sites and making money!

I have come across mentions of GenBucks affiliate program several times on several sites of other affiliates and grew curious about it. Since nobody I know could tell me what it was all about and I haven’t found any comprehensive GenBucks reviews online I decided to sign up myself and have a look at it. Well, here goes.

Seems like the program is a few years old already (the site exists since 2004). They are open for international affiliates, newly registered affiliates are approved right away. Their products range from PE to mp3 players, with over 40 sites to promote. They claim average conversions of 1:47. The member area navigation is weird at first but once you get used to it it’s pretty operable. The members get access to a number of free tools, site templates, banners and images to use on the sites. There is a member forum that is moderately active. The members get access to the free hosting provided by GenBucks.

The payment options available are wire transfer and a free ATM card that they make for you once your balance reaches $100. The commissions you earn depend on the product and range from 20% to 50%. I’ve no idea yet if refills are counted towards your commission as well. The program is multi-tier: you earn commissions on 3 levels. For each downline signup, you are paid $1 and then you are making 2 to 4 percent on your second level sales and 1 percent on your third level sales. You get your commissions regardless of refunds that may occur which is cool as for me. Besides the commissions which are paid out weekly with a threshold of $100, you also make rewards points: for each $1 you make in commissions, you get $0.01 in reward points. As they are accumulated, you receive different rewards starting from a mousepad or a T-shirt and up to a Bentley car.

Sign up and give it a try - I think it’s worth it.

I’ve been playing around with some Web 2.0 sites like MyBlogLog (I believe I need to make a post about using these for your affiliate online business) and came across something interesting. You see, one of the features MyBlogLog has is displaying the recent posts in the blogs that belong to the communities you’re a member of. This is exactly how I’ve found this post that caught my eye today.

A couple days ago, I’ve been posting about changes to Google’s site quality guidelines - so this one will be as handy as ever. Kieron Donoghue over at Here.org.uk has just done a great post entitled Google AdWords Landing Pages - how to build a page that won’t get banned, with examples. Now, like I mentioned before, I do not do PPC at the moment but this is a must read for every affiliate using PPC. Here’s just a short excerpt from Kieron’s post:

Your landing page website should contain the following pages as standard:

1. Sitemap - this should be accessible from all pages of your site.
2. Privacy Policy - lots of resources on the web to create one of these, just Google “privacy policy”. If you are in the UK then consider applying for the Data Protection Act. It only costs around £35.
3. Terms and Conditions - as above, here is a good resource.
4. Contact Us - with full physical postal address and telephone number.
5. About Us - description of what the purpose of the website is and the business operating it, i.e. you.

OK now that you have these basic pages, consider adding these pages too:

1. News - add a page where you regularly update with newsworthy stories related to the niche you are promoting.
2. Blog - like a news page but you can also add editorial comments here and opinions.
3. How To or What Is Guide - pages/pages with detailed unique content describing the product/service you are promoting and how they work. I.e. if you have a coupon site then add some pages describing what coupons are and how they work, an idiots guide really.
4. FAQ’s - think of every question related to the product/service you are promoting then list them and answer them here.
5. Glossary - every industry has its own terminology, create an A-Z of industry specific jargon here and define it.
6. Deals/Offer pages - again everyone has specific deals and offers, so list the ones relevant to your product/service on their own page.
7. Individual product/pages - likewise the chances are that your product/service will have different components. I.e. a certain brand of credit card will have a gold card, platinum card, reward card etc. So build pages for each product containing very detailed information, more so that you would find on a traditional landing page.
8. Submit your review - offer your users the opportunity to submit their own product/reviews. Not only does this create stickiness but it gives you free content.

Simple enough, although does require some additional work - but just think how your CPC can drop thanks to these few changes - not even to mention that with a landing page like this, you will no longer be banned from using AdWords.

For those of us affiliates wondering why this or that affiliate program pays exactly the commission it does, here’s an interesting post by Shawn Collins - with a video even - detailing his point of view on setting up the commissions level for the affiliates. A must read for everyone wishing to understand the other side of the affiliate game!

Here are a couple of interesting bits from his post:

You don’t want to pay out less than competing affiliate programs, and just the same, it doesn’t make sense to far exceed their commission rate.

Ideally, you will dig into your margins to pay some degree more than the competition to set your affiliate program apart from the pack.

Of course, this is just one piece of the puzzle. Your site has to convert well, too, in order to keep the affiliates happy.

Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land has posted about the updated Google Quality Guidelines for webmasters:

* Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
* Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
* Don’t send automated queries to Google.
* Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
* Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
* Don’t create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
* Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
* If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

Clearly, as affiliates, our attention should be drawn to the last two sentences. Search Engine Roundtable sums up the overall opinion of the forum mebers discussing this change that “the new guidelines are much more explicit and clear” - which cannot be bad as now we know what it is exactly that Google doesn’t like about affiliate sites.

So, what should I make out of this all? First of all, here’s more proof that I am on the right track building review sites or comparison sites for products instead of just redirecting the visitors straight to the affiliate site. Second, all these increasing limitations will surely have even more impact on affiliate sites using PPC - which makes me kinda happy I rely on organic SERPs mostly so far. At some point, I guess I will be tempted to try the paid advertising model for my sites just to get the feel of it - but it should be approached correctly.

I promiced to post about running an affiliate business in an international market so here goes.

First of all:

Why would you want to do it?

1. English is one of the most popular languages among the Internet users but it surely isn’t the only one. There is also a huge Spanish, French, Italian, German-speaking audience and so on.

2. With many affiliate programs translating their sites to target these audiences, it makes sense from the point of view of monetizing that international traffic.

3. As a rule, the competition in these international markets is much lower - resulting in much lower costs per click in PPC and much lower compatition in organic SERPs.

What do you need to do it?

1. Ideally, you should know at least a bit of the language of the market you’re targeting -  doesn’t mean you need to be a fluent speaker, but knowing just enough to select the most targeted keywords surely helps.

2. If you don’t speak the language but feel it’s still worth it, you might want to hire a native speaker to help you with creating your site and selecting the keywords.

3. Also, have this native speaker check the quality of the translated site of the affiliate program you’re promoting - sometimes their translation quality is rather low which might hurt your conversion rates and then it’s a lot of effort wasted on your part. You might want to have a couple of words with the affiliate managers in such case and ask them to improve the quality of their translation.

4. And NO, Google language tools just don’t cut it! As a person with some linguistic background, I can tell you that machine translation will never be quite the quality we expect from human translation.

Possible Drawbacks  of Targeting International Markets

1.  You might be unaware of some cultural specifics of the market you are targeting - which may render your campaign ineffective.

2. What seems like an affordable price for the US audience might not be that affordable for people in some other countries - again, this bearing negative impact on your conversions.

3.  What has been a familiar product for the English speaking market migth be a totally new product for the international market - so it might take some time before people get to trust your offer and those conversions start rolling in.

4. While for the English speaking markets, affiliate programs typically provide plenty of advertising materials such as banners, buttons, articles and so on, these may be scarse in other languages - so you will have to do most of the work yourself.

All in all, international market is a totally new experience, with its positive and negative sides, but let it not stop you from trying to conquer it - it is really worth the try. Currently, several affiliate programs I am using provide translated web sites:

• Leading Edge Cash - French and Spanish
• JoeBucks - Italian, French, German, Spanish, Chinese and Dutch
• MoreNiche - they are currently playing with Google translation of some of their sites into german, Spanish and Japanese so I guess the real translation is coming soon as well.

Go ahead and give them a try and let’s compare our notes later on.

Just thought I’d post about a sale I just made of VigRX Plus. My commission is $103 - not bad!

Leading Edge Cash is what I’ve spent most time doing so far. I am doing other things as well though but considering the amount of time I’ve invested into LEC products, they are my main money makers as of now. I hope to diversify my income in the nearest future, however, as I am now working on more things from other affiliate programs as well.

What initially made me look at LEC is their launch of translated sites for VigRX Plus. I have checked the markets and the competition there was nothing near the competition in the English speaking market - so I thought I just can’t miss the opportunity. However, what I saw there was nothing like my expectations. In international markets, it seems to take a ton of targeted traffic to make a conversion. I am still researching and comparing though.

I think I will do a post some time soon about being an affiliate in an international market because there are some specifics to it. It’s just, well, different and deserves a post of its own.