I believe in Affiliate Marketing, flat out, 100%. I know Affiliate Marketing gets a bad rap in the online money making niche. It attracts a lot of people seeking get rich quick. It also attracts the less than honest marketers. Get rich quick schemes have and always will be around. On my blog
Starting a new Series.
I will be setting up a (from scratch) new Affiliate Marketing Blog. I will be emailing the entire process to all my Subscribers as each step is completed.
You will have direct access to me thru a personal email for any questions you have. If you are serious in getting your affiliate marketing started. You can setup your site at the same time i am setting up mine. This will be a monthly email untill the site is finished. I will show you what services I am using and will always list 2 services, one paid and one free. You will know what affiliate product i will choose, where it will be hosted and how I choose the keywords and optimize the site.
So Stay tuned and I will show you step by step and we can do it together. You can even setup a site with the same product as mine. When we are done you will have the skills to repeat the process and have as many sites as you want.
I will be keeping the process very simple. There is no need to complicate the site or process. Again it will be simple.
Just sign up for my “Subscribers Only Premium Content”.
See you on the next step.
By: Todd Brannan
Ok, So now you have your blog setup and you are posting great content, and sometimes you feel like your going nowhere? You don’t know if your going in the right direction. So now you’ve got a few quick ways to find out.
Way #1: Alexa
Go to www.alexa.com and click on the toolbar tab and install the toolbar or statusbar. This will tell you what your site is ranking globally. The lower the number the better. For instance when I first put my site up it ranked somewhere around 12,000,000 as I have written more post the number has dropped and is now at 858,253. Also the more frequently I post the quicker the number drops. If I don’t post and just leave my site dormant the number rises. Also as my number moves so does my traffic. The lower the Alexa number the higher my traffic. So even though I don’t see progress like I want on my site, all I have to do is check my Alexa number and I can see positive changes in the right direction. Every time I see the ranking lower I know I am on the right track. Everytime I visit my site I see the ranking number in my status bar on my Firefox browser and I log it down so I can track my progress in my spreadsheet.
Way #2: Cpanel
Check your traffic stats in your Cpanel. Just log into your Cpanel and the in the left sidebar scroll down to website traffic. There will be listed 3 stats, yesterdays traffic, traffic this month & traffic last month. Its that easy. This number I also log into my spreadsheet.
Way #3: Subscribers
Your Opt-in form should be on every page above the fold. This number will be the slowest moving. But these are actually the most valuable numbers and what you are ultimately looking for. These are your most interested following and they are looking to you for guidance. Send them great information, ask them what they need, what you can do for them to help them.
” New Blog Gaining Traction? 3 Ways You Can Tell” – Click to tweet
Nothing moves your blog in the right direction as much as being consistent. What ever you do, make sure you are posting on a schedule. It can be daily or weekly or bi-weekly or even monthly, but be consistent. Believe me when I say I have paid the price of being inconsistent. I have seen massive changes in the negative direction because I got distracted. Also I have pointed my blog in the ascending direction just by being consistent. It is also possible to speed up your progress by speeding up your activity on your blog. Also I have been able to achieve a lower number on Alexa in less than three weeks, than in the previous 8 months. Just by being more active.
Of course this is only a basic starting point, later I will cover some more advanced techniques.
Let me know if you have any techniques that have worked for you.
If you are having trouble with your post rankings in the search engines, then let me tell you about a Keyword plugin for WordPress that you may not know about. It is Keyword Winner. It is incredibly easy to use and to setup and it gives me data when I go to write a post right in the Add New Post screen. All I have to do is type in my post title and hit the Get Keyword Winner Suggestions and it gives me a list of keywords color coded from red to orange to green. Green being the keywords with the least amount of competition. I can even drill down deeper if I choose.
Then after I have posted my post I go to my All Post Page and view my post and there I can see my Google position for my post and the previous position change info and the post page rank. This is excellent data to have at your finger tips. I suggest you check out Keyword Winner and see for your self how great this plugin is. You can get it at Keyword Winner Website.
Have you got a plugin that you would recommend? Tell me about it.
Post Update: 10 hours after posting this post, it is ranked #8 in Google for my keywords. Hmmm, now I will tweak my post to achieve better rankings. I can see this data instantly in my WordPress Dashboard for all my post. What a great plugin.
Post Update: 1 week later this post has achieved #1 position on Google!
Update 04/26/2013: TweetAdder 4.0 software is no longer allowing the user to automate the auto follow / auto unfollow. For this reason I will be searching for new software to recommend.
03/24/2012 Upate: TweetAtacks is no longer available. So I have updated this post and I am now using Tweetadder.
This is the Super Simple Plan I use to drive traffic to my site and build my email marketing list.
One of the best Twitter Programs on the market today is Tweetadder.
This software allows you to follow automatically and then unfollow automatically if the person doesn’t follow you back in 3 days or whatever time period you want.
You can build a large list of followers automatically using Twitter programs. Now there are two views of thought on this.
1st, it has been said that you only need 150 targeted and active followers. Any more than that and it would be hard to keep up with all the questions and needs of your followers.
2nd, You look more like a trusted authority when you have a large following. Although a lot of the followers don’t even hear your tweets cause they just want a large following also. There are a lot of people on twitter just tweeting and tweeting and nobody is reading.
Now here’s my take on this question…..what is better?
I want totally targeted followers that engage me with questions and add to the answers for the whole group. In order to get these, I have to go thru a lot of followers to get there. You need to build a following as large as it takes to get these 150 interested followers. These followers are in my niche, some are for me to learn from and others are for me to teach from my experiences.
Ok, here is the step by step process.
Download Tweetadder (My favorite of all Twitter programs) It has a trial period for 300 followers and install and set it up.
If you need help on setting it up, just email me.
Run tweetadder every day or just leave your computer on and it will run automatically.
Follow from keyword or follow other guru’s followers, since these are already targeted followers.
Then start tweeting and retweeting premium content, some of it your own and some of it from other sites. Try and engage your followers. Use video and photos as part of your tweets. When you have a link to a video people are more likely to click on it than a regular shortened link. Always state it is a video or just use the Youtube link.
“Remember Engage, Converse, Share Ideas, Personally with your Followers”
If you try and build your followers too quick your account could be suspended. I have added 16 followers a day for the last 90 days on average using this software. I like to play it safe and be able to monitor all of the people the software is following. Of course you could set it up for a lot more.
By doing this method I am able to drive traffic to my site. Once there, the visitor then has a chance to subscribe to my site updates. That is what I ultimately want.
If you purchase the paid version you can do anything you want to market your product on twitter. It has to be the most powerful of all twitter programs I have seen.
Hope this helps, BTW tell me what Twitter programs you use for making twitter marketing easier?
Here’s To Your Success,
-Todd
My Step by Step process that will guarantee you more Youtube views.
This is the most important part of ranking in the search engines for your video, because it describes what your video is about.
Chose 1 primary and 1 secondary keyword for your title. The primary keyword is put at the beginning followed by your secondary keyword. Then put your secondary keyword at the end again.
Example: Video Optimization – Step by Step Optimization
Remember your Title is your Headline, It must grab your readers attention and get the click.
Keep your title 8 to 10 words and 50 to 80 characters.
Your title must describe your video precisely.
Use the dash (-) and pipe (|) symbols to make your title easier to read.
Your Description needs to be keyword rich article with your website address at the beginning. write about a 200 – 400 word article pertaining to your video. Treat it as a mini blog post. End it asking your viewers to comment. Engage your audience, ask advice, ask feedback, ask for criticism, ask for their story, ask for their experience, ect.
Example:
https://www.toddbrannan.com Step by Step method how to rank better with Video Optimization. If you take your time and approach it with a formula, you will see that you can rank much better than just throwing up a video and not taking the time to optimize it. There are many ways………..
In the description box on the video page only the 1st line is visible unless the viewer presses the “show more” button on the description box. So the first line of the article must show your website address and a opening sentence that pulls your reader in more.
Tags need to be relevant keywords. You may need to brainstorm for keywords or use a keyword tool to complete your list.
Example tags: video optimization seo ranking optimize
Your video needs to be interesting enough so your viewers will watch the whole video to the end. The shorter your video the better to get your point across. A short video has a better change of being watched to the end. If people bail out after watching a few seconds it won’t rank high for your keywords. Because the search engine with think it is not relevant to your keywords.
Be sure to Allow comments
Chose the appropriate Category
Allow Video Responses
Use http://www.tubemogul.com for posting to multiple video sites at once (free service).
Leave some information out of your video. When you come to the end of your video leave a point or a tip incomplete and tell the viewer that they need to go to your website to get the answer. Or promise them a free gift download if they go to your website and sign up for your email updates.
Now I want to tell you of a little experiment I did for a friend of mine. I posted this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzydnVn5NS8 on Feb 16, 2010 and it has only gotten 102 views as of this writing.
I reposted the same video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8YbBMlheww almost a year later on Jan 7, 2011 and it has 5036 views.
What is the difference? Just compare the title, description and tags. Also, I embedded the website address at the top of the 2nd video. That doesn’t change the rankings but it does give the website address more visibility.
I used http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal (its free) to find all my keywords for optimizing the second video. The 1st video was uploaded with no thought to the optimization process.
That about raps up How To Get More Youtube Views and btw tell me about your experience in optimization of your videos.
To Your Success,
-Todd
My Affiliate Challenge Results:
I have been fed up with all the so-called “I have your solution websites” telling you that you can make $30,000 to $100,000 in little to no time if you just buy their program. That somehow it is different than all the others out there. And in fact it is so good, that once you do click the Buy Button and buy it. Then they will try and up sell you on another aspect of their program that makes it even better and will speed up your money making ability and so if you click the buy button again and then you are sometimes again taken to another page to try and up sell you again.
If their program is so good, why do you have to be up sold once, twice or even three times more. Here is what I believe, Their program can not deliver what it is suppose to, or else they would charge the whole amount up front and even tell you the whole amount up front. But no they have to miss lead you into thinking you are getting a great deal for $37 or $47 and then up sell you on the next $97 or $197. If you bail out on the first offer, you will notice you will be given a chance to buy it at a $10 or $20 discount. They are desparate to make a sell.
In the last 4 months I have looked at 130 programs and purchased 4 of them and all of them had a discount on the first bail of their page. They all also had 2 up sells at least. I test drove 1 program on the initial buy and the first up sell. The other 2 I only purchased the initial offer. After test driving all 4, I decided on one to keep and use for my Affiliate Challenge. Yes I requested refunds from the other 3 products, because they were GARBAGE.
I decided on PushButtonMoney (@ $27). I did not buy the up sells. The program is easy to setup and can be done in a matter of hours for the complete beginner. It offers a 50% commission for Affiliates. Basically the program lets you promote 5 different niches:, Internet Marketing, Music, Weight Loss, Muscle Building & Dating. Once you purchase the program you need to setup a Clickbank account and an Aweber account. After that you will need 1 domain name and hosting for each of the niches you want to promote. The System is browser based and can be used by Windows, Mac & Linux.
Just logon and choose your niche then you are asked for your email autoresponder list name and clickbank username for your commission. Then you are taken to your page where you can customize your squeeze page and then upload it to your domain. The squeese page is for capturing your prospects email and delivering them to the Pushbuttonmoney.com sales page. All you have to do is drive traffic to your squeeze page.
The program has extensive videos for teaching you how to setup everything you need to do. It is all there from Domain name to web hosting to autoresponders to how to drive traffic and use social media.
It is the most complete I have seen and doesn’t get too complicated. If you are a beginner or novice and want to learn affiliate marketing this will teach you the basics and have you setup in no time at all.
So I had this squeeze page setup in only a couple of hours. It is really basic and to the point. Then I was working on driving traffic the rest of the day. I have also come to the realization that no matter what program you choose, the most important thing you can learn is how to drive traffic. Without that skill you cannot make any money. Then you can promote any product that you believe in and make some serious money.
Now for my results.
I have been at this for 60 days and I have been driving traffic for about the last 50 days. To drive my traffic I choose to do it by video. I posted several videos and edited them several times even deleted some of them and reposted some I thought were better. All and all 60 days is not long enough to know what is working for your videos and what is not. I had some get a lot of initial views right after posting and then nothing after the first week or 2. And others I thought were better got nothing. I did learn how to optimize the video page after posting the video. I will cover that in another post later.
Well at the end of my 60 days I fell short on my $250 goal. I only got to $207. But I can tell you this was quite a learning experience. I will be writing more on actual step by step things I should have done differently. Even though I did not hit my goal, I am continuing my Challenge to see if I can maintain what I have built and get it to my $250 goal. Then how much work it takes to maintain it and grow it larger. I am all about creating passive income as much as possible.
Last year I purchased a Single Family Home as a rental property. I took advantage of the foreclosures in my area and got a good deal. The home generates me $265 a month in passive income. So now you see where I got the $250 goal from. When I bought the home the goal was $300 a month in passive income. I fell short on that because of an A/C problem that cost me more than I estimated and also the house did not rent for what I wanted it to. All in all the property was a good deal and I am happy to have made the deal. After I pay all my bills for the house, I bank $250 a month for the as long as I own the property. I have total $10,000 invested in this house and it returns me $3180 a year. Where else can I make a return of 31% a year? Thats right the Internet with my challenge sites.
So back to my challenge. I figure if I can build sites or landing pages or squeeze pages in less than a day and then drive traffic to them and earn at least $250 a month per site. Then I can build as many as I need for the income that I want. I don’t have to deal with customer support for the product. That is why I like affiliate marketing. I will always buy the product first, evaluate it and see if I like it and can use it and it is worth the cost. Then I will build a squeeze page and then drive traffic to my page.
Yes, the 60 days was not a lot of time. But I still think I will perfect my system and try again later with another product. Also during the 60 days I was also testing and writing for some other programs. I have told many of my readers to be focused on 1 item at a time as you will accomplish a lot more. I need to take my own advice. There are times I have 10 or 12 projects going as the same time and trying to finish them all so I can move onto my other 20 or 30 idea projects. For now I will be posting articles that have been a result of my challenge for the last 60 days.
Feel free to ask any questions that I have not answered here. If anyone has or is going to purchase Push Button Money please let me know and I will coach you with what I have learned.
If you are looking to make some videos for your website and want the best possible results with the smallest investment, I have some ideas for you. The equipment I use to shoot my videos:
Canon PowerShot A560
Digital Concepts TR-60N Camera Tripod with Carrying Case
Designers Edge E-245 Incandescent Clamp Light, 6-Foot Cord
Eiko ECT 120v 500w Photo Flood Lamp
Eiko Supreme Photoflood Light Bulb
B & D Seamless Background Paper, 107″ wide x 12 yards, Black, #44
The lights I use get very hot, so you can probally substitute compact flourescent bulbs and get the same results. I have my studio set up all the time, so it is very fast for me to create my videos.
So now on to the videos. The 1st video is shot with my 2nd Generation Iphone. This video shows you how I have my studio setup.
The 2nd video is shot with the Canon PowerShot A560 at the larger size setting and as you can see it has very good quality. 640 x 480 video size.
The 3rd video is shot with the same camera and at the smaller size quality and as you can see there is not much difference. 320 x 160 video size.
Ok that is how I do my videos. If you have any other ways that you do yours leave a comment.
It gets overwhelming when you start to research how to drive traffic to your blog. There are so many different ways one can get very confused what to do first and then end up doing too much, in too many directions and then not making any headway.
What do you need to concentrate on?
Search Engine Optimization?
Guest Posting?
Pay Per Click?
Submit to Directories?
Forums?
Social Sites?
Content?
YouTube?
Podcasts?
Ect……and many more.
What do you do first? Do all of it? Do just a few? The answer is different for everyone. I have see sites benefit for just one source.
Concentrate on just ONE technique and only one for each TIMELINE. That means you will have 3 techniques building your traffic. The three timelines are, Short, Meduim and Long Term.
For me this is how I approach my traffic building.
Short Term
Immediate results,
Social Sites,
I have traffic from this in just a few days and spread the word of my site. I post USEFUL rich content and create conversations in my niche. I seek out others that do the same and comment on their postings.
Medium Term
Takes a little longer results,
YouTube,
Posting video and commenting on other video in my niche is my medium strategy. I add sites in my niche to my channel and comment on other channels.
Long Term
The longest time results,
Content,
Write from your Passion, from you Heart, Rich, Full, Honest Content. Content is King and
always will be. The search engines will pick up on the great content and you will be rewarded with constant traffic that will last for years.
In 2001 I had an Inflatable Moonwalk part-time business. I did not have any experience in websites. I wanted to advertise my business on the internet and had no idea how. I purchased a piece of software the I built my site with. The software would automatically link all my pages together and allow me to insert the keywords all the right places without a huge learning curve. Back then the software cost $150. So I put up a 3 page website with pictures of my Inflatable Moonwalks and general information. It took me about 4 or 5 weeks to get everything just the way I wanted. Not being a large site, but it was really informative for our customers.
I started checking every day to see if I could get the site to show up with my keywords. I had no luck. So I just forgot about doing anything else more to the site. After a couple of months later my customers were telling me that they found me on my website. I was surprised and searched for my keywords on Google and Yahoo. Yahoo had me listed as #2 and Google had me listed as #9. After finding this out I canceled all my other advertising. Well my site stayed on Yahoo between #1 and #7 for seven years. Google was a bit tougher, I was between #4 to #25 for the same time period.
The only changes to my site were price updates in those seven years. I did the work once and I benefited from that work for 7 years. At the end of those 7 years I sold the business and shut down the site because of an accident I had.
“How I Generate Website Traffic” – Click to tweet
In recap,
This is just my way, I am a minimalist, I like to keep things simple and straight forward. I hope this helps.
To Your Success,
-Todd
How many times have you checked out a blog and it looks like a site with good information, you browse around a little and then you subscribe to their newsletter. Then in a few days you start getting email from the blog that is nothing more than telling you how great what they have to recommend is. You click on the link in the email and it sends you to a squeeze page that just wants you to buy something. You don’t get any USEFUL information in their emails. You just keep getting email after email offer. You can tell they are just in it for the money. They really don’t care to offer any help to anyone. I have emailed a few sites to ask for advice or help just to see if they would respond…..you guessed it nothing happened. I subscribe to about 20 sites a week, and don’t see much value in the newsletters, just lots of offers.
If you want to make an impact online and build a huge list for your blog, write great, valuable information and give it away in your newsletter and people will stay subscribed to your list and your following will grow HUGE. You will become the authority for them. Then you can recommend product and services and make an income the will surpass most of the other bloggers and websites. Remember the “money is in the list”. But before you get to that your subscribers needs come first. Give them the useful and valuable information that they seek. Then your list will trust you and your recommendations. And the money will come.
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