Blog farms and linkwheels might sounds familiar to you and if they do you should also know that setting these things manually can take a whole lot of time.

Lordy lord.

• Niche research – check
• Account creation – check
• Unique content creation – check (yes even this!)
• Content posting – check
• Feed pinging – check
• Social bookmarking – check

I think you should check it out, there is a 7 day FREE trial so you can give it a whirl for nothing. Some people have made a fortune THE SAME DAY THEY GOT THE SOFTWARE so you cant lose!

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Click here to get your 7 day free trial.

Seriously.

The dudes behind Prosper202, which is a fantastic open source application that is used for tracking links for your ad campaigns, have just released a new service called Stats 202. This allows you to have full analytics of all your affiliate accounts in one place.

The great thing is that this is hosted on their web servers, and you can get your information on your iPhone, Blackberry or Google G1 handsets. But the really cool thing about this is that you don’t have to manually upload your SubIDs on your Prosper202 campaigns, because Stats202 does it all automatically! Rejoice!! This was a massive pain in the arse imo so it’s great they figured out a way to avoid having to do it.

It’s still in beta, so expect some bugs and things to go wrong, but for the time I’ve been using it it’s been fantastic. It’s free for now, but once it’s out of beta they’re talking about making it chargeable. Waaah.

Check out the setup instructions here – https://dashboard.Tracking202.com/stats202/setup/

SSHHHH!!! Don’t tell anyone!!

Market Samurai + Content Bully + Google Placement Ads = $$$$$$$$$$

Go.

PS. Direct link – Download Content Bully

Boooooo. My linkwheeling had been funneling quite a nice amount of quite responsive traffic to my money page for the last 2 months. Then this morning i check my email and found that the keystone in the wheel had been “been flagged by our system as a violation of our Terms of Use.” Booo.

I’m guessing it was this particular section of the rules that it was violating.

* You must have no more than 1-2 links to any one domain on a page of original content (tinyurl and other cloakers are considered wildcards).  Note that this means that you may not have any promotional links on hubs that appear elsewhere on the internet.

So i have removed all the links bar 2. One back to the money site and the other one which extends the wheel to a different blog with more information about the product on it.

All the big web 2.0 sites seem to be cracking down hard on affiliates pages lately. Squidoo have some new ultra sensitive spam detection in place on certain keywords and topics. Forex being one of them which is a shame. This means you have to start to really put up some quality content when you are using these sites. They can be a very important part of your marketing plan, especially if you mainly use bum, so we have to respect them or we will lose the use of them.

Off the fix up the hub in question!

I was talking about creating a few blogs/sites to use as a key to getting accepted to various CPA networks. Well i have created 3 blogs in 3 different niches. I will still be keeping these secret (:P) until they are a bit more established and i have used them for what i want.

I have outsourced some content creation for all 3 blogs as i don’t have time to update my now 10 or so blogs (wtf too many blogs) by myself.

Stay tuned for more on this soon. I’m starting to get busy again at my day job, plus ive started back at Mandarin classes two nights a week. Funny story, work have approaced me to advise them on social media and internet marketing strageties. Hah. This is an advertising agency you would of thought they would have a social media expert already!? No. You would be surprised. Anway, that is a whole other post.

Hello dear readers! did you miss me!!? I missed you missing me so i thought i might try to update more regularly. :teef:

Anyway as i was saying last time, i thought i would try my hand at some CPA networks and in order to join some of the programs you need to look like you are setup to sell some stuff by having some sites established to use as, bait in a way. Well on the weekend i bought a couple of  domain names for some new blogs and started to set it up. I’m not going to reveal it here just yet but i will tell you its in the sustainable living niche. (think Earth4Energy). Blogs are a very easy way to setup a professional looking site with minimal work.

Lazy?? PLR to the rescue!

Now i don’t really know a whole lot about this niche at all so where do I get all my content from? I could outsource some fresh articles, but i really cant be bothered with that just yet so i went looking for some PLR articles.  I found a couple of really great ones that are relatively new and don’t seem to be rinsed out by people just copy and pasting them all onto their sites just yet. One even included a 5 part ecourse for my auto responder. Rad.

Some people might think that PLR stuff costs a bomb but i got 130 articles, that 5 part ecourse all for the grand total of $8.97 USD + $5.00 USD = $13.97 USD.  Awesome. Oh actually i almost forgot there was a turnkey minisite i found for sale which has a 21 page ebook and a sales page with graphics for another $15. I got it just for lols and it had some bonuses like audio and transcripts. Totally sweet.

So for a grand total of $28.97USD i have pretty much a whole site ready with a product i can sell and a blog with 100 or so posts and some articles to spare to whack on ezinearticles. Kick ass.

What the hell just happened?

How far did i digress right there!? pretty damn far that’s how far. I completely forgot what i was doing in the first place.  Nevertheless, i now have my blog setup with a whole bunch of articles i got my girlfriend to rewrite on auto post*, auto responder ready to go and mini site being redesigned with some new graphics and text being re-done. And i only actually really started working on this today! Plus i started a 10 day detox today and i was doing work for my day job! How productive am i!? Bloody. And i hardly made any spelling mistakes!

So that just goes to show how even a lazy arse like me can pull out a whole couple of sites in 7 hours of off and on work and a little bit of super lazy PLR purchasing.

Word. Till the next one when i hopefully have got some deals ready to go and stuff.

* If you aren’t setting your blogs up on auto post then you are wasting too much time. If you have all your posts ready to go you dont want to have to come back every day and post a new one. Just set the all up and schedule them to post themselves! Too easy!

So, WTF is CPA?? CPA as you may or may not know stands for Cost Per Action. This means that if you get someone to do something, like submit an email address or give up their post code (zip code) you get somewhere in the region of $1USD. Totally sweet. What happens to that lead once they give up that info is entirely inconsequential to you as you have already been paid. However if you send some shit traffic to that offer and the advertiser cant make any of that $1USD back from any of them, they will start to investigate why.

I have tried this before and didn’t really have much success, probably cos i just jumped right into it and registered for a couple of networks and was caught out not being prepared. The only network that accepted me was probably the easiest one to register with and the biggest, Commission Junction. I did register for Advaliant also but never woke up when they called me at 4am to do a phone interview. This I was absolutely not expecting so i failed. I have heard many good things about them, and their affiliate managers do seem quite friendly (from voice messages and AIM chats!) so i will be trying again with them during my experiments.

So what now? Well, in order to get accepted to the various CPA networks out there, i am going to make a website. This website will be used solely for the purpose of applying for networks. Most of them will not really take you seriously if you look like a bit of a noob. Imagine if you were kind of a dork at school, and you wanted into the cool club. You can’t just rock up and ask if you can be part of it, as the cool kids will simply laugh in your face and say “piss off you weird red headed weirdo” and that girl you fancy from up the street will laugh at you too and you will be forced into becoming somewhat of a recluse for the rest of the term. Ahem. Sorry about that.

So to avoid any embarrassment you need to look like you know what you are doing. You don’t actually have to know what you are doing tho as you can simply bluff your way in. This is where the dummy site comes into play. I wont go into this any more in this post as i don’t actually have one setup yet huhuh :$. So I will go off and build one and come back and show you what I have created.

The next update will probably be in a weeks time hah!

Firstly, apologies to anyone that reads my blog for the lack of updates. Kind of haven’t been in the writing mood lately for some reason, this doesn’t mean that i stopped doing stuff tho!

Secondly, with my review blog plugging away nicely all by itself  one thing i have decided to embark on with a bit more enthusiasm is CPA promotions. Over the next few months i hope to fully establish myself as a fully qualified CPA expert huhu. I will go through the sign up process with a few more networks and report back with my experiences and any tips for anyone out there in my current situation.

So stay tuned for the next update! Which will be i dont know when. Maybe in a week! Who knows!?

Till then!

Oh, if you want to know what i am up to at any particular time, the best way to to that is to follow me on twitter @HughMc. Also as i am not regularly updating the site as much as i once was, subscribing to my RSS Feed is the easiest way of you to see what’s new here without having to visit!

So i started a review blog a while back. In the last 30 days it has made $444.52 USD. This, at the time of writing, equates to $618.25 AUD. This is totally profit as i do not pay for any traffic to the blog. It almost pays my rent!

Oh look at that, as i was writing i just made another sale for $16.56. For a product ive never made a sale in too wtf. rad.

Anyway, it took a little bit of time and a i went thru a bit of drama with one particular post, but now i am reaping the rewards.

Review blogs are EASY.

You might be thinking that i just write up any old crap about a product and post it, well you’re wrong. I think the secret to a good review blog is to have plenty of negative reviews too. So _buy_ the product or even ask for a review copy so you can _actually review_ the thing.  If someone visits your site and checks out a few reviews and they are all beamingly positive 5 star reviews then i dunno about you, but i would probably think its all a load of crap.

I will continue to write up reviews for things and keep building the site up. Hopefully within a few months it can actually totally cover my rent and then some! What do you think might happen if i have a couple of these running? Hmmm.

Good.

Quite a few of you out there (myself included) might be having a hard time building up a list. I used to buy traffic and drive them through to a squeeze page to get leads but this turns out to be a) rather expensive and b) pretty useless as most of that PPC traffic is not very responsive once they are on your list. I found this technique that helps you build a list and at the same time make quite a bit of money with affiliate sales. I want to share this with you because anyone can do it and it is really not a lot of work.

Well when i say not a lot of work i mean not a lot in comparison to most other marketing methods. You still have to do some work of course!

What i am talking about is borrowing someone else’s list to sell a product, so you and whoever’s list you are borrowing can both profit and build your lists.

How do you do it?

First off, let me give you an overview of what needs to be done to accomplish this.

Go and search the ClickBank marketplace for suitable products. There are 3 criteria that these products have to meet to be eligable.

1. Of course they need to be in your niche.
2. High affiliate payout (minimum 50% but go for 75% or anything above $50)
3. Has to include a back end recurring payment (membership sites etc)

Now if you have a list of your own, even if it is very small like 50 or so, do a test campaign of just 3 emails to that list and see if it converts. If you get any response at all from a list that size then you’re in business. I ran a test email campaign for a product that paid $75 plus more on some back end up sells to a related list of 70 and it converted at almost 10%. Bingo.

Now go and find someone in your niche with a list of 2500 leads at least and build up a relationship with them. This part i will leave up to you as we are all different and what works for me might not work for you. This might also take quite a while as not everyone will be willing to play ball. But here are some tips to make this easier and more attractive for them.

• Offer to write the emails for the campaign, show them the emails and let them have some input etc.
• Offer to answer any support queries so they are not bothered at all.
• Agree to split the profits (50/50 plus 100% recurring or whatever).

This is all about building relationships and getting the list that everyone wants: one that BUYS.

Building YOUR list.

If you use ClickBank, when you make a sale you will know you get the buyers email address. So send a thank you email for the purchase and offer something for free (in exchange for opt in) that compliments the product they have just bought. Then you start to build a list of your own, leveraged from your promotion partner’s list! Genius! Why didn’t i think of this before?

Dealing with support queries also helps you to build a rapport with buyer and potential buyers. After all, if you help someone they are going to remember your name – right?

Instead of just offering an email address for support, you could (if you can be bothered, but it is a good idea so do it) set up a website that has a list of FAQs on that particular product. Put that url on the email campaign instead of the email addy. Make sure you either buy the product or ask for a review copy (most publishers are more than happy to give you a review copy). You can’t give support without some knowledge.

You can also put an opt-in on the support page giving away the freebie that you will offer in the thank you email. The more chances to capture their emails via opt-in the better.

Results

Now this is what can happen:

• My tiny list of 70 converted at 10%
• The email campaign to the larger list (2500) converted at 5%
• It grossed $9836 of which I get 50%
• I also get recurring monthly of $770 for next 11 months

So a list of 70 has leveraged an income of over $14,000 in the next year.

Now if you go with a larger list owner, you have room to negotiate, so long as there is a recurring element to the product. You could give 100% commission to the list owner and you keep the recurring income for example. Just work out something that you are both happy with. You can do this over and over again if you want to. Going by my numbers, if I do this again another 5 times I will get nearly $100,000 purely from that first time on a borrowed list. And now because i am building a list of my own, there is the prospect of even more being squeezed out of it. You can see how this is a very good idea if you are just starting out.

Off you go!