Sublime Products » Internet Marketing

Why Money Making Niches Didn’t Make Me Any Money

Amin — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:35:03 +0000

I’ve recently been experimenting with a technique for making money as an affiliate.

It’s a relatively simple technique and in my first month I made a few hundred dollars. By increasing the number of sites I expected to make even more the following month. What happened turned out to be very different from what I expected.

I made virtually no sales. I’d calculated that I should have made many hundreds, possibly into the thousands. The amount of money I made was about $60.

Ok, these sites are set it and forget it sites. You don’t need to keep going back after they’re made, which is always an attractive proposition because passive income like that is easy to multiply over time. That’s where my first mistake came in. I did set them and forget them. I didn’t check them as I know now that I should have done.

Traffic has been going down – along with my search engine results positions – and since this was a new technique I was testing I was disappointed. Maybe the technique doesn’t work longer term? I should have known better and trusted my instincts.

What’s happened is that someone has hacked those sites. They diverted any search engine bot traffic to a page of links of their own choosing. That made my sites look like a real spammer’s paradise. It’s no wonder they’ve gone from first page of Google (I had position 3 for many of them!) to completely off the map. Here’s the thing though. When I checked the sites in a browser they looked fine. It was only the search engines who got the spammy page that had been put on my sites. Of course the search engines are the very ones I’m relying on for organic traffic, so going from #3 page 1 to invisibility was guaranteed to cost me money and lose me traffic.

It’s fixed now and I know what to check for. That’s one mistake I shan’t make again, but in the meantime it’s cost me the affiliate sales I should have made plus the cost of the domains that are now effectively trashed because they’re off the chart as far as Google are concerned.

I should have been getting about 50-60 unique visitors a day on each of those sites. I’ve been getting 1. Even with 1 visitor I made about $30 so far this month. Just by the law of averages if I’d have 50 times the visitor count there’s a fair chance I’d have made over $1,000 this month. It’s been an expensive lesson to learn, but I’ve learned it. I hope you can learn it without the need to suffer it.

Just because a site is said to be set it and forget it, that does not mean you should forget it! Check it regularly, look for foreign files that you didn’t upload. Changed your passwords regularly and don’t use the same one on all your sites (I never use the same passwords and my sites still got hacked – I have my own theory as to why, but let’s say I’ve cancelled that hosting plan).

If you find a decent niche and start making some money on it, keep an eye open for any changes. Even a sudden spike in traffic can be a problem because it might indicate someone is spamming – that can happen if you have an affiliate program on the site. I learned that lesson the hard way too, when I got shut down because someone decided to spam a great offer I was making…

Summary: keep an eye on your sites. They’re your lifeblood and their value can be destroyed by other people. Don’t let them put their hand in your pocket and rob your family of what you’ve worked for.

More Traffic

Amin — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:05:04 +0000

Traffic Building Mini Course

Traffic is the lifeblood of any website. And it’s also something that everybody with a website wants more of. It is, in fact, something every website owner needs.

You can read my short series on traffic generation, starting tomorrow. For this series I’m going to offer some valuable information, but I’m not going to make it publicly accessible. It will only be accessible to anyone who is signed up to my list. I’ll send a password out tomorrow so you can access the posts.

There are dozens of ways to get more traffic to your website. Actually, there are probably hundreds, but one of the most popular ways is also free and that’s what I’m going to be concentrating on.

So why not make it publicly available? Well, I did think about that, but I want to offer something just to my existing subscribers. Of course, since the series doesn’t start until tomorrow there is time for new people to become subscribers too. At the end of the series there may be a surprise or two, but I’m keeping that under wraps for now.

Please note that this free training series is not for experienced marketers already pulling down thousands of dollars a week – I won’t insult your intelligence. It’s really for beginners and people just finding their feet a little bit.

So sign up now – the signup box is just over on the right under my picture – and I’ll see you tomorrow.

A Marketing Lesson from Hollywood

Amin — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:12:27 +0000

Hollywood certainly knows how to market.

They spend millions of dollars on promotion and publicity and almost everyone on the planet gets to see some of their output at some point.

As internet marketers, we would do well to study how they market new products, recycle old products (‘Anniversary Edition, Limited Edition…’) and make you feel like you’re part of their loop.

Individual stars appear to do it effortlessly and so many of us feel we know them, just from seeing them on the big screen a few times. Isn’t it true that you have a favorite actor, or actress? Aren’t there some actors you just don’t like – for whatever reason?

I ponder this point in an article I wrote a while back. You can view the entire article over at Ezinearticles if you want to find out the full details of the lesson I draw from the experience.

But here’s a small taster:

Now I happen to love Julia Roberts – she’s a great actress and I always enjoy her films. And let’s be honest, she’s very pretty. So when I saw what looked like her blonde twin I immediately felt that I would enjoy the film.

That’s not actually logical, because I’ve never seen this actress before, but my emotional response was exactly the same as if it had been Julia Roberts. I guess, if you want an explanation, that the part of my brain that recognizes faces kicked in and sent a message to my anticipation center that Julia Roberts was in the house – so to speak.

When the actress spoke she also sounded like Julia Roberts so that made the connection even more. In the end I had a very good time watching the film, it was thoroughly enjoyable and a good time was had by all the family.

At the end of the film I got to thinking how really good marketers use the same phenomenon to make more sales. Let me explain…

If you think of this in the context of all the big launches that have happened recently you’ll be able to see how they’ve used this phenomenon to reach into your pocket. The phenomenon is likely to increase over the next 12 months as savvy marketers pick up on the fact that it works. Smart marketers are already doing it, but new people are joining the ranks of the ‘friend of a friend’ every day.

This is your chance to use the power of relationship to improve how you interact with your visitors, subscribers and customers. When they see your name, what memories and associations do you want them to have? Because if you’re not controlling how they see you, who is?

Marketing Waffle

Amin — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:01:03 +0000

Have you ever been the victim of hype?

We’re all so used to advertising of the most blatant and outrageous kind these days – just watch almost any infomercial – that I believe we think it’s normal.

So when some steaming pile of hype comes through your email inbox it can be hard to spot it. Sometimes.

But there’s one particular type of ‘advertising’ that is particularly offensive, in my eyes. It’s the type that promises the mythical average man or woman a chance to get a bargain collection of products that will help them make a living.

I’m not going to start mentioning names – there would be too many to mention anyway! But recently I’ve been receiving some emails that tell me how there’s a wonderful collection of ‘superb products’ at knock-down price from someone who’s struggling a little because they had to take a week or so off work to do some other stuff.

Funny really. Well, it would be if it weren’t for the fact that I keep getting emails from the marketer that explain how it’s possible to make money ‘even while you sleep’. Having multiple streams of income that are virtually on auto-pilot isn’t a pipe dream, it’s a reality for a lot of people. And I have no doubt the marketer is making good money online – so why cry the poor tale when you’re supposed to be showing people how to make money?

What I find just a little difficult to take is that this ‘sale’ is happening to rectify a horrible situation for the poor marketer. That week or so he couldn’t work really made a big hole in his income, it seems. Perhaps he should have set up a couple of extra new income streams beforehand…

Creative advertising will always be with us and I applaud it, where there’s a transparent level of honesty. But sometimes the hype that you get in the promotions is just ridiculous. And the more ridiculous the claim the less likely there is to be extreme value in the offer, in my opinion.

Here’s a tip for you to keep your hype radar on high alert: if it’s in an email promotion that has more than one person sending similar emails, it’s hype.

Organic referrals, the kind where friends genuinely recommend something for each other, are rarely neat, pre-packaged and identical.

Don’t miss a bargain, by all means, but make sure it is a bargain first. Don’t be too impressed with tales of woe. We all have them, don’t we?

And by the way, my car blew up this week so now’s your chance to get a bargain on a couple of superb products that I’ve never offered this cheaply before. Just send a money order to….