Affiliate Marketing Journey

Lessons of the Day (cont)

2009-02-05T00:45:00.000-08:00

On my Macbook, I was attempting to copy and paste from a window in Windows (running in VMWare Fusion) to a window on the Mac side. It was working perfectly and I had all the VMWare Fusion tools installed. It turns out there's a limit on the size of data you can copy and paste. So I had to split it up.

Lessons of the Day

2009-02-05T00:42:00.000-08:00

I spent some time updating Adwords Editor and when it came time to post I kept getting this:

"AdWords Editor is unable to check or post some of your changes,
because doing so would cause you to exceed AdWords account limits. In
order to complete your request, please revert some of your unposted
changes or delete some items, then retry your request. For more
information about AdWords account limits, please contact AdWords
Support.

(Error number: 17)"

In my case it was because one of my Adgroups had more than 2000 keywords. Bleh! Hope that tips saves you some time.

Back from my hiatus..

2009-01-27T22:20:00.000-08:00

I've stopped my affiliate marketing efforts for a few months. A few hiccups I encountered: my laptop broke and two of my websites got hacked into, which was a big discourager.

Okay, okay. Weak excuses. The important thing is I'm back. I'm sad that I missed the big holiday shopping rush.

I went to visit a friend who opened his own restaurant. We chatted about his experience with it. One thing he said to me that stood out, "It was hard. I worked 13-hour days everyday for a year...but now it's better, I get a day off" I don't really know what about that statement that made its impression on me. I guess it's just that knowing the road to success is a hard one. At any point you can give up, but it's the ones that stick with it that get there. I've always heard it, but this time it kind of stuck.

Perfect timing because I learned that Campaign Blasts is starting their next Blast Challenge on February 2nd.

This week, I've been brushing up on Blasting and installing necessary software in preparation of the challenge.

Here are my goals
100 blasts by March 4. 2009
$100 a month
$100 a week by May, 2009 (Since it's my one year mark)
$100 a day
$100 a day for 30 days

Back From Hawaii

2008-09-13T16:16:00.000-07:00

One beauty of affiliate marketing is that I go off to Hawaii for a week, come back, and see that I have made another sale!

My trip to the beautiful state of Hawaii has reinforced my determination to do this.

Currently: Working on 100blasts over the next 5 weeks. Aaaggh..::stops and inhales:: I can do this. I'm ready.

I did it!

2008-08-25T22:17:00.000-07:00

I made my first sale!

Making some progress..

2008-08-08T23:47:00.001-07:00

I have three campaigns/blasts going on at the moment. After a couple days of an uneasy start, I got my first four clicks!

I am very excited.

First couple of days blasting..

2008-08-07T20:49:00.000-07:00

I've started three blasts. I'm not getting that many impressions. I'm not getting any clicks. Is this normal?

I have a hunch about one of my blasts. It has a lot of impressions, and no clicks. I need a specific merchant to make it work, but they have not approved me yet.

Chugging along.

PPC

2008-08-04T22:50:00.000-07:00

Launched my first campaign.

If I had a dollar for every time something didn't go according to plan, I would've already started making money ;)

Note to self: Before starting direct linking, make sure your merchant allows it.

Jumping in!

2008-07-24T21:23:00.000-07:00

Starting my venture into pay per click..

Currently making a little progress.

2008-07-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

Yay! My ezine article got approved!! It feels very exciting. It may be a small step, but it's definitely a nudge of encouragement =D

Currently working on social marketing..

My homework: http://www.socialposter.com/

Ezine Article

2008-07-15T22:12:00.001-07:00

My landing page is ready. Not quite finished yet. I still need to add php code to test. (Still learning how to do that. I thought it was simple, but I can't get it to work.) Brad suggested I started generating traffic to it. So I decided to "launch" it. If I start getting traffic to it, I'll know where it came from anyway.

Just submitted my first Ezine article. Yay!

Currently: chugging along. Trying to generate traffic. Next stop: Squidoo!

Stop what you're doing right now..

2008-07-15T13:08:00.000-07:00

and backup your work!

My laptop which has all my files (for my webpages) won't turn on. Luckily, I had already uploaded them to my webserver. (Whew!) Imagine, all that work.

It has served me very well since college. The once top of the line HP with its 50GB hardrive. Time to get a MacBook! Just kidding, I have to earn it first ;)

The .htaccess file

2008-07-10T13:16:00.000-07:00

I just learned how the .htaccess file is more than just specifying error pages. Here is a great link. It's a great introduction also if you have no idea what the .htaccess file is and provides sample code:

http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess.shtml

It shows you how to:

Specify error pages
Stop directory browsing on your website. So that if you have an images folder, you “hide” it so that if people go to yourwebsite.com/images, they wont’ see a list of all your images
protect your .htaccess file
Stop hotlinking: so that people won’t link to your files and images and eat up your bandwidth
Ban bad bots that eat may crash you webserver!

This site has a few more sample codes/content for the .htaccess file: http://blog.dreamhosters.com/kbase/index.cgi?area=3083

My status so far..

2008-07-09T12:03:00.000-07:00

I created a website in the hopes of landing in the organic search results. I started creating a landing page, but still have not been approved for a very important merchant. I should’ve waited to be approved by the merchant first before spending so much time on it. I’m not going to toss this niche, but I have decided to start another related campaign in the mean time. This time I did it backwards, well backwards from the way I did it last time. I found the merchants I wanted to promote, created my landing page and then I also created some content for other parts of the website. It does get faster the second time around.

To do list
Add some php code to make the affiliate links more presentable
Add some php code to be able to test
Submit my articles to Ezine

Currently : Trying to keep it simple.

Overcoming that overwhelming feeling.

2008-06-22T11:05:00.000-07:00

The past two weeks were a little challenging. I noticed I keep getting distracted.
After spending a couple days trying to create a catalog of products on my website and learning to upload datafeeds, I realized that I'm spending too much time creating a mirror of my merchants sites, but I want to focus on generating traffic to them.

I finally got some affiliate links on my site and added a more pictures to make it visually appealing. In creating my landing pages, I'm researching about creating effective landing pages, I come across PPC and split testing. For a few days, a lot of stuff go through my head: Do I want my landing pages to be a part of my Joomla content or just a basic web page? I hear Google wants better content. Generate traffic to my site. PPC or add more content for organic search? Split Test my pages. With each day, I spend time reseaching the new question. Then, this morning, I woke up and my head just yelled "STOOOOOOOOOP!!. Just create a landing page."

So the lesson is: it's important to stay focused.

CJ account

2008-06-08T21:55:00.000-07:00

It's the end of the week and I got my website up! Thanks to Joomla. There are a few limitations of it, but I should be able to find some plug-ins that will help me work around it.
First of all, it doesn't have multiple categories. It does have this plugin called Virtuemart that will allow for multiple categories. I installed it on my localserver and it slowed down my Joomla admin a tad. I don't know if it's my computer, but I'm hesitating about installing Virtuemart on my webserver. I will eventually, but first I must decide between Virtuemart1.1 and Virtuemart1.0.
Second, it's not very SEO friendly. There are a few workarounds, but it's going to take some extra work.
Another thing, I didn't realize that Joomla 1.5 stable version was just released this past January (the Beta version in October 2006), so templates for Joomla!1.5 are still limited. I ended up just modifying the standard template myself.

I'm tempted to check out Drupal, but exploring that will delay my goal this week. Drupal will have to wait.

I submitted my website to Commission Junction and got approved for an account. Yay! I started working on putting links on my site, and I realized that I don't have a clue. Soo, I will be working on this for the next hour or two http://cju.cj.com/tutorials.html.

My goal this week: Get my website up with working affiliate links and at least 2 landing pages =).

Exploring Joomla!

2008-06-02T18:03:00.001-07:00

Last week was an action week for TBIP. I was trying really hard to get my website up and running by the end of the week, but I was not able to. I wasn't going to have a full blown products website for my niche, but I was determined to have something more than just a landing page.

In the middle of last week, I started creating my website in Dreamweaver. The vision of my site is clear in my head, but I could not easily translate it onto screen. I started flipping through web templates online in hopes of finding a template I can just tweak. Somehow I came across Joomla! It's a content management system. So far it looks like it can deliver everything I'm looking for.

Now, Instead of having to learn SQL, CSS and PHP, I can just focus on learning Joomla! So the past few days I've taken a few tutorials on Joomla! and on the developer side of Joomla!. I'm so impressed. I've gotten installed on my pc and my webserver and made a sample site to see familiarize myself with how to use it. I really want to get my site up and running by the end of week!

Designing my site

2008-05-27T17:48:00.000-07:00

The second week of TBIP was basically about creating a website. This week's workload grew a lot. Aside from keeping up with learning about affiliate marketing and keeping up with researching my niche, I have to learn about designing and creating websites! I've decided not to outsource just yet because I want to be able to really learn everything. It's taking up a lot of time, and I feel it's worth it.

Since my last update, I've registered myself at several forums for my niche. One site had me wait three days before I could start posting just to make sure I wasn't a spammer. I've done more reading about my niche at different websites.

I've also started designing my site. I chose the color scheme of my site. I chose based on color psychologhy:
www.sibagraphics.com/coulour.php

Today I created a sitemap. I was having trouble because I kept getting the urge to create a different site for each of my personas, but after several drafts I finally chose one that I think will work.

I also wanted to learn more about database driven sites. They separate content from design and provide an easy solution to being able to quickly update your sites. Are database driven sites the only solution? I must look into it. Anyway, here's the SQL/PHP tutorial I took:
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/ddws/index.html

TBIP Day 7 & Peer Discussions

2008-05-21T00:25:00.000-07:00

This week's session for TBIP is about designing/creating your website. Today, was about designing a visually appealing site. I started brainstorming on how I want my site to look like. I was having trouble because I can't imagine my site to be anything but a macro site. There are many products to promote and many customer personas to target. Since this will be my first affiliate site, I know that a micro site should do for a couple of reasons: I don't expect my first site to be perfect the first time, I want to test the niche, I want to test the site, etc..

So I chatted with my buddy Brad for a little bit. He helped me realize that the microniche I have been working on is actually a niche. I still need to carve out a smaller niche. So I spent some more time today trying to carve out a smaller niche. He advised me to pick a smaller niche, become and expert in that tiny area and then expand.

I've now chosen my smaller niche. The workload lightened up a little bit and a lot of the work is becoming much more clearer and a lot less overwhelming compared to yesterday. I understand my customer personas better. I have a better idea of what the direction of my site should take.

It's good to have a trusted peer and/or mentor in affiliate marketing. I can get feedback on what I'm doing right and wrong. An outside perspective can provide some great insight. They can provide good resources and they are an excellent resource as well.

Getting to Know My Audience Action Guide

2008-05-19T23:57:00.000-07:00

I did not get to complete all I wanted to do today. I barely just finished the TBIP action guide for Session 4. So that leaves the rest of my to do list unchecked.

Session 4 Action Guide was a little demanding:
1. Review product advertisements
2. Review company websites
3. Review company financial reports and news
4. Join community sites
5. Consumer review sites
6. Subscribe to newsletters and blogs
7. Buy books
8. Be the Customer
9. Create customer personas
10. Create niche keyword list
11. Categorize te keywords for each persona

I'm having a little trouble creating customer personas which means I can't categorize my keywords. So I still have to do that.

One thing about Session 4 Action Guide, is that it's not a one time thing. It's an ongoing process. Today I found a few forums and blogs for my niche. I'm very excited about all the resouces that I am finding.

It's a little overwhelming because now not only do I have to keep up with affiliate marketing blogs and news, I also have to keep up with blogs and news about my niche.

TBIP Week2 Day 6

2008-05-19T17:18:00.000-07:00

I am currently falling a little behind. TBIP action worksheets for week 1 were sent over the weekend. The research I have been doing on my own is not quite as thorough as the action worksheets. I'm still really confident with my niche selection.

Today's topic was 'Building a bulletproof site'. Feeling a little overwhelmed. So here's my to do list for today:

Complete the action worksheets sent over the weekend
Figure out my Unique Selling Proposition: what value does my website provide?
Decide what kind of site I want to build: a comparison site or a review site, etc..
How big do i want my site to be?
What specific need of the customer should it address? Or address all needs?
What are my site goals?
How do I organize my site content
Preliminary site map
At which stage in the buying cycle are my site visitors?
How do I deal with which phase?

I'm leaning towards a site that helps the customer decide what they want to and tell them the best place to get it.

Organizing my niche research

2008-05-13T23:20:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I'm a little surprised, since I've heard many times that niche researching can be very tedious. I've spent the last few days researching my niche. My niche is an actual tangible product, so my methods may not apply completely towards all niches.

One of the hiccups I encountered while researching is the overwhelming amount of information. I spent quite some time getting off track. So I had to organize myself.

(I started taking notes in Notepad, but that's wasn't very useful when it came to reading my notes. I started keeping it in Microsoft Excel, but I didn't like the idea of having multiple files between my home and work computer.) So I use Google Docs Spreadsheet. I love it! I can easily access it from home and work without having to worry about whether or not I have the latest version open. My way of oranzing is constantly evolving. Right now it's in this format.

Sheet 1: Random notes: other possible niches I may want to pursuse in the future, article titles I would like to write, various ways to categorize my niche product, specific keywords to look into
(I'm sure I will have to find a way to organize this sheet, but everytime a cool thought goes into my head I write it so I don't forget it)

Sheet 2: Competitors
Each competitor takes 10-20 rows & 4 columns:

website address
pros of the site
cons of the site
notes (how i found the site, # of visits as reported by http://www.compete.com/ [thanks, Brad!])

Sheet 3: Merchants has 9 columns:

website
name 3rd party affiliate program/private
commission
payment frequency
number of days to store cookie
affiliate tracking software
reports?
price 1
price 2
notes

(price 1 and price 2 are the prices of 2 different items found on all the websites so that I can get a better idea of how their prices stack up)

Sheet 4: Products has at least three columns:

Category
Price range
a column for each of the merchants and how much it goes for at that site

What do I research?

2008-05-10T20:24:00.001-07:00

Now that I've picked a small niche, I've been doing a lot of research. So much that it might be a little overwhelming. I'm starting to jump ahead into what do I want my site to look like so that I know what kind of information to gather. Do I want my site to list all the types of products and link them to the merchant once they've decided on which type? Or do I want to rate all the sites and then lead them to the site? The former feels like it would have a higher conversion rate. The latter seems easier to do (which would be good to test this niche). So again I'm going to resort back to a spreadsheet to help me organize the information I need to find and what I find.

Product
What are the different types of this product?
Which products have better reviews?
Which products are most popular?
Which product are on every merchants' list?

Merchants
Who are the merchants?
Which merchants sell which type of product?
Which merchant has better prices?
Which merchant has better reviews?
What do I like about this particular merchant?
What do I not like about this particular merchant?
How does this merchant address the needs of the customer?
Who is their target customer?

I'm starting to wonder if this smaller niche is still too big..maybe I should do a microniche? I'll decided after I fill this spreadsheet.

Carving out a Niche

2008-05-09T11:04:00.001-07:00

After choosing a big niche, I must carve out a smaller niche to focus on.

This was a little harder that I thought it would be. It's hard to stay focused on a micro-niche especially because a lot of the competition seems to be really broad and because I'm so interested in everything.

I decided to resort to the good ol' fashion way: a pros and cons list. Well in this case, instead of two columns there were 4: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. I listed as many possible smaller niches as I can. For each one, I did a brief SWOT Analysis. Brief in that I concluded they were all the same because they're still part of the same niche. So I added another column: target audience. There was one whose potential target audiences is wider than all of the other smaller niches. (I also considered if there were merchants, I am confident there are many because of the competition. ) Now I have a small niche.

I am sure there are many ways to hone in on a smaller niche.

visiting merchants' and competitors' sites and see what their focus is
what am I in the market for?
are there any new products/services being introduced?

I will continue researching this niche to find more about the needs of the customer, what the competitors have to offer, what the competitors don't offer, etc..

I found my niche!

2008-05-08T23:14:00.001-07:00

TBIP Wk1, Day 4 was excellent: Understanding your audience.

Learned a lot. I'm not a marketing person so it was all brand new information.

As I logged into my computer to get started on researching my target audience, I decided to keep up with my blog subscriptions. And there it was: an offer for a new affiliate program. I got really excited about it. It fits the number one criteria: I'm genuinely interested/passionate about it! It's very broad, now I just need to carve out a smaller niche from it. I'll probally tackle multiple smaller niches in the future, but for now, I need to decide my first one. My research has to start over again, but I only lost a few days!

Niche researching

2008-05-07T23:07:00.000-07:00

I still haven't chosen my first niche, but I do have one that stands out from my list. I started doing some research about it. I was a little surprised that I did not find as many competitors selling products as I thought I would. I think I only found one affilliate and the noticed a lot of the PPC ads were the direct sellers- no affiliate in between? I did find a lot of sites that ask you to fill out forms (which I believe is another form of internet marketing, but not my focus as of right now)

This made me wonder if there were any merchants in my niche. I signed up for Clickbank. It was pretty easy. I found several merchants for my niche. Including one of which I was a customer of! This was encouraging..

Is the lack of competitors a sign of a bad niche or hidden niche?

1) what are the keywords I should target?
2) what will be my unique angle be?
3) what are customers looking for?
4) how will i drive them to my site: paid search? organic results? blogging? i hesitate with blogging because i'm not a professional/expert in the industry of this particular niche.

TBIP Wk 1, Day 3: Developing a Rock Solid Business Plan

2008-05-07T19:22:00.000-07:00

Today was a good session for me. I'm so excited about getting started that I completely overlooked the preparation step. I've decided to keep myself organized electronically. I read some blogs about a few tools. Should check those out.

Lessons for the Day:
Think objectively about your model. Act on reason not emotion.

1) Choose your Niche

2)Analyze your Niche: SWOT Analysis. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunties, Threats?

3) Dig deeper/Market analysis

Competitors
Sufficient demand
Understand the customer
Find a unique angle
Get feedback

So I have a list of possible niches that I would like to pursue.
A few have passed the SWOT Analysis. Still need to 'dig deeper'.

Today I will:
-google my competitors
-browse through some tools to keep me organized

Day 2

2008-05-06T23:37:00.000-07:00

I missed Day 1 of TBIP because I couldn't watch it at work. The anticipation of waiting for the Day 1 recording drove me so crazy that I decided to watch Day 2 at work anyway. I hope I won't regret that decision =P

Anywho.

Topics:
Day 1: Choosing your Niche. Most important rule is to do something you're interested in/or have experience. Understand your customers. Don't pick something just because it made someone else a lot of money. They made a lot of money in it because they were really interested in and/or had experience with it.
Good niches: good selection of merchants and have a clear advantage of buying online

I've been keeping a list of certain areas/niches that I would like to explore in. Everytime I come across an area of interst I write it down. As that list continues to keep growing, my #1 pick hasn't changed yet.

Day 2: Building your Business. Three business entities were introduced. Sole Proprietorship, Limited Liability Corporation, S- Corporation. All have pros and cons. Tax avoidance is a right. Tax evasion is illegal.

I've decided not to focus too much on this yet. I need to get my business up and running before I lose track with this stuff. It's good to get educated in it so the tax proffesional I hire knows he/she can't take advantage of me, but like Jeremy said, I'd rather hire a professional because that's what they do and what I do is make money.

Getting Started

2008-05-04T00:13:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog about affiliate marketing. I'm a beginner in affiliate marketing. I'm eager to learn and share with you my so-called journey.

Why I'm doing affiliate marketing: There's the obvious, I want to work harder for myself than I do for someone else. I see the huge potential. My close friend Brad had actually quit his day job! So the promises aren't made from some distant infomercial, I can see it happening through someone I personally know.

Who I am: I am Julia. I have no experience in affiliate marketing whatsoever. I took a few courses on web development and Photoshop and would say my knowledge in both is intermediate. Brad invited me to join The Black Ink Project (which I like to call TBIP) by Jeremy Palmer.

What I am doing now: TBIP starts tomorrow. I spent the last week reading High Performance Affiliate Marketing by Jeremy Palmer. It was really a really good book and it provided a good foundation.. Brad and Jeremy both mentioned using PHP so I also spent a few hours taking a PHP tutorial at PHP.net . I also read a few blogs written by other affiliate marketers.

Can't wait till TBIP starts!