FreshWebz Web Design & Affiliate Marketing Blog

I’m currently running a PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign on Yahoo (can’t afford Google!) for my new cheap theatre ticket site, which is themed from the main Cheap Event Tickets site.

September is apparently peak booking time for theatre tickets in the UK, so I decided to go for a big push on some of the most popular & well known London shows.

I’ve set up targeted ad groups – for these shows, containing well researched long tail keywords (which all have a decent KEI) and have carefully worded the ads, drawing on existing ads by well established companies in this sector. Most of the ads are displaying ticket prices, so the “clicker” knows what to expect & won’t click just to see what the price is.

Most of the ads are displaying in position 1 on Yahoo (these bids are around £1, on Google you are looking at around £3 for these keywords!!!) & the click through rates are currently between 3.5% & 14%, which I believe is not bad.

So, following all the rules & strategies I’ve read over the last couple of years for successful PPC advertising & marketing, how are the ads doing?

Well, I’ve had ONE SALE, from 44 clicks! Admittedly it was a decent sale & my commission will be £12 from it, but it has cost me £25 to get it!!!! On Google, I’d have paid triple that, without any guarantee of more sales. The companies that advertise theatre tickets on Google presumably make more money per sale than I do, but I still don’t see how they can make a profit when they’re paying such huge amounts for clicks!

It doesn’t seem possible to make a profit from affiliate marketing using Google (or even Yahoo), unless you’re using such obscure terms, that you then really should be able to obtain natural search engine positions for if they’re THAT obscure.

So, once again I’ll be grateful to break even on PPC & would love to know if any other affiliate marketers makes a profit from Google Adwords/Yahoo Search Marketing?!

I wrote previously about using article submissions to increase the number of backlinks & traffic to your website.

I’ve been submitting my articles manually, to the top 10 article directories, but this process is very drawn out & complicated by the slightly different layouts & entry requirements of each directory. With thousands of directories out there, although submitting to the top 10, 20 or 30 will achieve results, it will be impossible to do many more manual submissions, which will mean you have to write significantly more articles to get more links.

I’ve been looking at the different article submission websites & software for some time & decided now was the time to take the plunge!

I’ve used Submit2Please’s Article Submission Service in the past, but the charges could be considerable if you have a number of articles to publish:

• $49.95 for 100 PR 3 and above Directories (35+ PR 4 & above Directories & 65 PR 3 Directories)
• $74.95 for 200 PR 2 and above Directories(35+ PR 4 & above Directories, 65 PR 3 Directories & 100+ PR 2 Directories)
• $99.95 for 300 Various PR Directories (35+ PR 4 & above Directories, 65 PR 3 Directories, 100+ PR 2 Directories & 100+ PR 1 & 0 Directories)
• $124.95 for 400 Various PR Directories (35+ PR 4 & above Directories, 65 PR 3 Directories, 100+ PR 2 Directories & 200+ PR 1 & 0 Directories)

Bearing in mind I currently have 7 articles to submit, this is a bit too much to pay!

So, I started to look around for services or software that promise to submit to a large number of sites at a reasonable cost, whilst making sure that the submissions are valid & not classed as spam by either the directories, or Google.

Apart from the dodgy looking article submission software packages for $37, there seems to be a consensus of opinion around the following:

• iSnare
• Article Marketing Automation
• Article Marketer
• Ultimate Article Wizard
• The Phantom Writers
  

I was drawn to Article Marketers & Ultimate Article Wizard out of these, mainly because The Phantom Writers is another pay per article plan, iSnare seems a bit too cheap (my opinion on cheap services has been clouded by my recent experiences with 1and1 & Tiscali!) & other users have suggested that AMA only gets your articles out to about 30 sites.

I was originally put off UAW as it costs $67 per month & it seems that you have to spend time using it to rewrite your articles using what is known as “spinning”. Content (article) spinning involves taking an original article and using it to generate 10’s or 100’s of new unique versions of the text & these “spun” versions of your article are submitted instead. Each of these new articles presents the same ideas and concepts as the original, but expressed in different ways. Whilst all are readable and grammatically correct, each is different from the others in terms of the words on the page and therefore unique in Google’s eyes.

The importance of “spinning” your articles will depend on whether you believe that the backlinks from duplicate articles are being disregarded by Google, when Google’s duplicate content filter is treating the article submissions as duplicate content! If this is the case, then it seems pointless to submit your articles to any more than one site for link purposes, but of course, there is the side issue 0f site traffic that your article could generate. There seems to be some debate as to whether this is the case or not, with some people saying it does & others saying it doesn’t! Here’s the part of Google’s duplicate content policy that seems to say it does!

If you believe that each time you submit your article you need to use a different title, different summary, different resource box, and different article body, then perhaps the extra cost of UAW is worth it. However, I’ve also found a free spinner system called Jetspinner that I’m signing up to, which will hopefully allow me to carry out this process for nothing. Then I can create dozens of versions of my articles & submit them to all the directories instead!

Jetspinner also advertises its own article submission service called Jet Submitter (which also costs $67 per month), but as I’ve already signed up with Article Marketer for 3 months use (cost $79.95), I’m going to have to use it for now. If I’m not happy with it, I may switch to Jet Submitter & use their combined tools, but I’ll use this time to submit as many articles as possible, on all of the topics covered by my affiliate websites & see if it makes any difference to their links & rankings!

I’ve decided to switch supplier for my mobile phone offers website despite actually making a couple of sales through it at the start of the year.

The site appeared to be not working properly for some time; it had lost the custom text & meta-tags that I had added to the site & no responses were forthcoming when I wrote to the support team. As a result, I wasn’t sure that the site was even functioning properly & I decided to leave it whilst I worked on other projects. Going through the posts on the A4U forum, it seems a number of other people have had the same problems with non-payment & no replies to their enquiries.

I decided to send mobileshop.com an invoice for the outstanding monies & have received a reply from their accounts team to say that the money will be paid. So anyone with money due to them from this program might want to send their invoice to lisa.hartley@valuecomparison.co.uk. Value Comparison seems to be converting previously retail sites into comparison sites & would be a company I would like to deal with, if they actually answered any e-mails, or replied to postings on A4U!!

I have a broadband comparison domain that I would like to use & the laptop comparison site would also be useful, but if the company ignores its affiliates, what is the point? To be fair, my enquiries up to now have been with mobileshop.com, so maybe contact with Value Comparison directly will have a better response. Will let you know!

In the meantime, Mobiles4Me has now switched to the e2save affiliate program & I am now promoting the site again, through link building for now & possibly with a blog soon.

I’ve got the Alexa Sparky ranking add-on installed in Firefox & obviously, the displayed figure is the only one you notice on a day to day basis. However, since my Cashback Shopper ranking started plummeting day by day (following on from the Google Vince update), from 205,000 at its peak, to around 460,000 & falling now; although my rankings for Cashback Shopper seem to have recovered & stabilised a bit recently, the ranking is still falling, so I decided to look into the figures a little more.

My attention was drawn to the following:

Cashbackshopper.co.uk users come from these countries:

• 77.3% United Kingdom
• 1.5% France
• 21.5% OTHER

and:

Cashbackshopper.co.uk traffic rank in other countries:

• 602,105 France
• 25,967 United Kingdom

This was very interesting – as my overall ranking is falling, my UK traffic rank seems to be rising! The last time I looked, it was over 28,000 & now is 25,967. Bearing in mind the fact that Cashback Shopper is a site for UK residents only, I can only assume that despite the displayed figure falling, the fact that my UK traffic rank is rising can only be a GOOD thing! My site is the 25,967th most visited site in the UK?

Perhaps I’m interpreting this wrong, but would be interested to know if anyone else has a view on this, or perhaps knows for sure whether this is the case or not?!

I’m considering setting up a travel site, probably using datafeedr, to complement My Travel Extras. I’ve already purchased travelcheapinfo.com but am also in 2 auctions for clearsea.com & webtraveloffers.com.

Clear Sea sounds more evocative & is the most expensive at the moment, but web travel offers seems more appropriate for what I’m going to be selling????  The auctions only have another day to run, so we’ll see which one comes through!!

Good News! Another network has just been added to Datafeedr… TradeDoubler UK merchants are now available for Datafeedr members.

As an European affiliate network TradeDoubler is hosting merchants from different countries such as UK, France, Germany, and many more.

65 TradeDoubler UK merchants are now available with more being added in the next coming weeks.

Other TradeDoubler countries will be added in the next coming months.

I recently set up a new cashback site, using the Ei42 shop/business system, after being directed towards it by a fellow white label cashback site owner.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the cashback market is getting more & more competitive & different ideas are constantly required to keep getting customers & hanging on to those you already have.

I had looked at the Ei42 cashback shop/business opportunity some time ago, but felt a little cautious about it as there were no actual amounts listed on the site in terms of the cashback paid & knowing the very tight margins involved, wondered if the amounts would be far too small to bother with.

However, it seems that this issue has been rectified & cashback amounts are now shown on the site. Although they may not compete with the rates on 100% cashback sites, the fact that when you share the scheme with your friends & they with theirs, you automatically qualify to earn a percentage of the commissions generated from sales made by the whole team, up to and including seven levels deep! Therefore if, you are able to create a team of people who can successfully generate their own series of customers, you will also earn on these sales, rather than just your own!!!

Example of the commission you will receive when a member of your team generates a sale (or number of sales) resulting in them receiving a rebate from Ei42 of £1. As well as the person making the actual purchase receiving their £1, Ei42 will also pay an additional £1 in team commission which will be distributed in the following way:

Power 1 – when a person on your power 1 earns themselves £1.00 you will also earn 12.5p
Power 2 – when a person on your power 2 earns themselves £1.00 you will also earn 12.5p
Power 3 – when a person on your power 3 earns themselves £1.00 you will also earn 12.5p
Power 4 – when a person on your power 4 earns themselves £1.00 you will also earn 12.5p
Power 5 – when a person on your power 5 earns themselves £1.00 you will also earn 12.5p
Power 6 – when a person on your power 6 earns themselves £1.00 you will also earn 12.5p
Power 7 – when a person on your power 7 earns themselves £1.00 you will also earn 25p

(Power 1 are people you refer yourself, Power 2 are people they refer & so on!)

With other loyalty schemes your earnings are limited by the amount you personally spend, but with Ei42 those limits don’t exist because your team of friends is getting bigger every day.

Every time you refer a friend to Ei42 you help grow the business because every new friend adds a new shop to the Ei42 shopping network. More shops equals more sales and more profits that you can share in.

The Commission Plan is open to all members of Ei42, there is no qualification criteria and no commitment to buy anything. The same opportunity is available to everyone for Free.

I followed my existing theme with my new site, calling it Cashback Shoppers & the exciting news is that the system will be spreading to other countries outside the UK soon. As soon as it does, a whole new market of members will be available.

Will I get my Cashback Shopper or Cashback Shoppers site up & running in the USA first?!! Who knows but the race is on!!

2 of the leading UK affiliate networks have been added to Datafeedr!

1.) Affiliate Window

Total merchants: 489

Find the list of available merchants below

http://www.datafeedr.com/merchants.php#aw

2.) Affiliate Future.

Total merchants: 69
Total coupons: 18

Find the list of available merchants below

http://www.datafeedr.com/merchants.php#af

More new additions are coming!

Datafeedr is a powerful push-button store creation system that makes it fast and easy for affiliate marketers to set up, manage and update a complete affiliate store WITHOUT touching any clunky datafeed files, learning a programming language or hiring a programmer.

If you’re an affiliate marketer then you understand the fact that the more products you have to promote, the better commission cheques you’re going to receive at the end of every month.

If you’re used to promoting one or two programs at a time, it’s time for you to explore a new option which will allow you to increase your profits more than you ever thought possible.

The world of internet commerce has created more opportunities for affiliate marketers than any other program ever has – the opportunity to have an entire ecommerce online storefront, full of products you can make commissions off of, all based in whatever niche you choose!

Building Your Own eCommerce Online Store

Having your own ecommerce online store is actually much simpler than most people think. A way to build an affiliate ecommerce store is by using data feeds. Data feeds make it possible to display products from one or more merchants in the same web site.

Data feeds are similar to the RSS feeds used by blogs – an ecommerce store set up by a traditional offline business will place descriptions, pictures, and prices of their products into these feeds, and then affiliate marketers can incorporate these feeds into their own ecommerce store and make a commission off of each product sold.

You can either build your own online store, or you can utilise the services of an ecommerce solutions company like Datafeedr.com who will walk you through all the steps and support you as you get your online presence built.

We recommend using the services of an ecommerce solutions company when building your ecommerce online store, simply because they already have all of the software in place to set up your data feeds.

Data feeds are the lifeblood of an ecommerce online store, as they are the ecommerce software that adds new products for you to promote to the site. Adding products manually to your ecommerce online store is certainly possible, but it is a very time consuming process.

Data feeds take all the guesswork out of adding new products to your ecommerce online site, making it easier for you to make better profits with a wider selection to offer your visitors.

What Are You Waiting For?

There’s never been a better time to build your own ecommerce online store, full of products that you could be making generous commissions from for every sale.

The folks at Datafeedr.com have millions of different products that you can choose from for your ecommerce online store; and are ready to help you get your web site up and running in no time!

Watch the video at Datafeedr.com and see how easy it is to set up your own affiliate data feed stores.

It is with some trepidation that I hear Google has launched its own affiliate network. Lets forget how many pies Google now has its fingers in, but its “reason to be” is as an unbiased search engine, providing the best search results & experience for its users! The most interesting/worrying statement on the site is: Earn AffiliateVIP status and enjoy exclusive marketing opportunities and greater visibility in the network. So, should I interpret this as “make us money & get pushed up the SERPS”?????!!!!!

Even where PPC is concerned, Google should provide an unbiased platform offering equal opportunities for advertising products & services. Will Google start providing their own affiliates with a “discount” or other advantage over competitors? They way PPC costs have risen for affiliates over the last couple of years has indicated that they’re are not affiliate friendly, but maybe this will all change now they’re running their own network!

About Google Affiliate Network

Performics was founded as the first full-service affiliate network in 1998 and was acquired by DoubleClick in 2004. Today Performics Affiliate operates as Google Affiliate Network and remains committed to delivering affiliate channel growth for advertisers and publishers.

So, I’ve signed up to see what they offer – maybe it will all be American merchants for now, but it will be interesting to see how it develops!