Upside Down Affiliate

Upcoming Articles from the Upside Down Affiliate

A quick post to let you know of several articles that I have been cooking up. I know it’s been ages since the last update, but I hope that these articles will make it worth your while to stick around. I know there are (at least a couple) of newbies to affiliate marketing that are keen to get some truth on what programs are worth pursuing.

So, more to keep myself focused on the task I’ve set myself, I’m listing the articles here in the hope that it will spur me to finish them all sooner, rather than later. (If you don’t see any updates in a timely manner, please email/poke/comment or tell me to get on with it – I assure you, the guilt will win over my procrastination).

• Make Money Without Selling Anything

  How some people make a lot of money giving away stuff for free.

• Killer Tools for Making a Killing Online

  Some of the best tools you’ll need to make money online and manage the many components involved.

• SEO and Organic Search Success

  Why pay for search rankings if you don’t have to?

• Sell Other Peoples Stuff or Make Your Own

  Using Amazon, eBay, Etsy and Zazzle to sell physical products, even your own, without having any stock.

• The Social Media Phenomenon

  MySpace, Facebook, Twitter -  the communities are big and can pay big too, provided you mind your manners.

• People Search and the Global Domains Opportunity

  One third of all searches are people related and what to do if you missed out on the .com race.

• Google’s Four Aces – Alerts, Adsense, Adwords, Analytics

  How to use Google for your own aims.

• Traffic Exchanges and Free Advertising

  Are we all just clicking for free ads or is there any point to traffic exchanges?

• The Clickbank Conundrum

  So many products to chose, so few actually selling. How do you pick some winners?

• Cash Gifting, Revenue Sharing and Random Payments

  If you want to win it, you’ve gotta be in it.

• Making Money with Web-based Services

  Everything from domain names and web hosting, to full blown email marketing, online book keeping and mobile phone apps.

• The Terrific Twitter Traffic Machine

  The new list and how easy it is to build using some tricks for Twitter.

Phew. That’s a few – I didn’t quite realise the task I’d set myself until itemising them all above.

Oh well, guess I better get onto the first one. Check back soon or subscribe to the RSS feed for updates as each article (eventually) goes live or follow @UDMarketing for the latest in Affiliate Marketing news and tweets.

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Tags: affiliate marketing articles tips reviews

Posted in affiliate marketing programs | No Comments »

Affiliate Program Reviews Coming Up

This is a quick post to let you know that I will be writing up a review and my epxerience with a number of affiliate programs and other money making schemes over the coming weeks and months.

I’ve been involved with Affiliate Marketing for nearly 6 months now and have some valuable knowledge, tips and cautions for you.

I’ll tell you what has been working for me, and what has not, complete with the tools and other resources I have used, so please bookmark or subscribe to the RSS feed for the latest updates on when the reviews get posted.

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Tags: affiliate program reviews

Posted in affiliate marketing programs, hints and tips, recommended affiliate programs | No Comments »

Marketing Tools for Making More Money

I have recently added a whole list of new websites and utilities to the Tools page, which any affiliate marketer or online business owner should have a quick look over.

I have been so busy trying a whole slew of great (and not so great) new tools over the last month – I will be elaborating on each tool that I’ve come across and will go into a bit more detail about my experience (and results) with each.

I must apologise for not blogging more frequently, but I have my freelance design consultancy to keep running and have been juggling several projects on the side too. The easiest way to keep up to date whenever I post here, would be to subscribe to the RSS feed or just catch my tweets via Twitter – if you do follow me, you can also grow your own followers virally while you’re at it.

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Posted in hints and tips, tools and utilities, twitter tools | No Comments »

Experiments in Making Money Online

Wow, I can’t believe it is May already and it has been positively weeks since I last posted to my Affiliate Education blog! However, I have not been lazy nor have I been procrastinating – instead I have started to run a few tests in several online money making programs and over the next few weeks and months as developments unfold, hope to reveal more of these endeavours so that you might learn from my toil.

I have added a new page outlining the various projects and experiments I am running and the tools I’m using to juggle all of these flaming chainsaws – check out the Projects and Tools. It is very much a page in flux, so I thought it might work best as a separate page instead of a blog post.

Since my posting here is pretty irregular (in between running my ‘day job’ and associated blog) it might be easiest for you to subscribe to the RSS feed or follow me on Twitter – I usually tweet any updates to this or my other blog making it a cinch for you to get the update when I post more on my money making experiments!

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Golden Rules for Successful Search Marketing

There are many facets to successful internet marketing and over the last week I have been reading a lot about Google AdSense and AdWords and how true online success comes down to keywords.

If you want to make money online, knowing exactly what you need to do to dominate your market or take a slice of the pie, comes down to selecting the right keywords for your product. But choosing good keywords is easier said than done, and without relevant, up-to-date information, keyword selection is a gamble instead of a science.

The Three Golden Rules of Search Marketing comes down to this…

1. Target High Traffic
2. Target High Commercial Value
3. Target Low Competition

Simple enough right? Well not quite.

How to Target?

By using Focused Keywords to Target a Niche in a Profitable Market.

How To Profit

• Capture maximum Traffic and Commercial Value
• Don’t rush in – Plan your entry to the Market
• Analyse the Competition

Things To Look For

• 1. Number Of Competitors
  SEOC: aim for under 50 000 (get listed in weeks, not months with minimum effort)
• 2. Strength Of Competitors
  Find weakness to exploit (exactly what to do outrank them)

The trick however, is how to do the analysis quick enough to take advantage of an opportunity.

To help with time consuming SEO analysis, I’ve been using a relatively new tool called Market Samurai.

This is an awesome tool especially for niche marketing, and I am still learning how to use it effectively – in  much the same way a painter uses his brush to create a masterpiece – it takes time to master any tool for the greatest effect.

The support on their site is excellent but if people want my first hand encounters with the software, please ask any questions in the comments and I’ll be happy to reply.

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Tags: high commercial value, high traffic, key to keywords, low competition, profitable market, successful internet marketing

Posted in affiliate marketing programs | No Comments »

Global Domains International

The last week has been occupied almost entirely with keyword research, domain purchasing and lots, I mean lots and lots of reading, and to be honest, my head is spinning right about now. Google AdWords, AdSense, monetizing your blog, and all manner of other marketing avenues – I’m a little overwhelmed at it all.

I’ll write a wrap up later this week with more details on the affiliate marketing activity I’ve been involved in, but most specifically, my findings with the GDI residual income opportunity – does anyone you have any experience with this affiliate program?

I’d be interested in any opinion or research that others may have on it.

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Tags: $10 business opportunity, .ws, free trial business opportunity, global domin names, income for life

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Amazon Ends Commissions for PPC and Paid Search Referrals

So I got an email from Amazon’s affiliate marketing program today and was staggered to read the following…

Dear Amazon Associate:

We’re writing to let you know about a change to the Amazon Associates Program. After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca, or www.endless.com through keyword bidding and other paid search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines, and their extended search networks. If you’re not sure if this change affects you, please visit this page for FAQs.

As of May 1, 2009, Associates will not be paid referral fees for paid search traffic. Also, in connection with this change, as of May 1, 2009, Amazon will no longer make data feeds available to Associates for the purpose of sending users to the Amazon websites in the US or Canada via paid search.
This change applies only to the Associates programs in North America. If you are conducting paid search activities in connection with one of Amazon’s Associates Programs outside of the US and Canada, please refer to the applicable country’s Associates Program Operating Agreement for relevant terms and conditions.

We appreciate your continued support and participation in this advertising Program. If you have questions or concerns, please write to us by using the Contact Us form available on Associates Central.

For affiliate marketers in the United States or Canada, this must come as a giant kick in the nuts. I have yet to read further about how other countries will be affected, but I am assuming that many associates will see a massive drop in their profits from Amazon’s Associate program.

Are you affected by this? Why do you think they have done this and will you jump ship from their associate program as a result of this decision?

Please leave a comment with your thoughts on this matter, I would be very interested to hear from fellow marketers across the pond.

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Tags: affiliate marketing, amazon associates, paid search traffic

Posted in affiliate marketing programs | No Comments »

Shorten Your Links and Get Paid to Tweet

How would you like to earn money for using a URL shortening service? Well, this is now a reality thanks to Linkbee.

All you need to to is register an account at Linkbee and start shortening your links to earn cash.

There are currently three different ways you can earn money using Linkbee’s URL shortening service:

1. Interstitial Ads – paying $1.00 per CPM
2. Banner Ad – paying $0.50 per CPM
3. No Ad – Just a shortened link

The rewards above are for Australia, but if you are based in the US, Canada or the UK, you get $2 for interstitial ads and $1 for banners shown above the target page.

So what are you waiting for, sign up with Linkbee now!

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Tags: earn money, linkbee, short links, shorten urls

Posted in hints and tips, tools and utilities | No Comments »

Making Money with Your Mailing List

One of the best ways to make money online is by leveraging your existing mailing list.

I’ve recently come across a lot of great information by Michael Rasmussen (no relation to Sean Rasmussen as far as I know!) on how to use your existing email list to increase sales. This is a marketing strategy I have used in the past, most often just to let some of my clients and customers know about a new product or service I have to offer. And it really does yield results, because soon after have I sent out an email broadcast, I see a  spike in the website traffic.

As a direct result of this, I get new enquiries, and often an order or two.

Now admittedly, my mailing list is relatively small, so the few results I get are just a percentage of my total mailing list subscribers. But it is proof that it can and does work. Just imagine the results you could achieve if your mailing list has 1 000, 10 000 or even more subscribers on it!

If this is a strategy you want to implement, get onto Michael’s Email Promotions Exposed and apply his techniques to your own marketing. And if you are clueless about mailing lists and their power to convert, then feel free to contact me about designer email marketing, as this is something I do for several of my own clients, including The LoudSpeaker Kit who have seen a dramatic increase in their website traffic, and have started making their first international sales!

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Tags: email marketing, email promotions exposed, mailing list leverage, marketing

Posted in affiliate marketing programs, designer email marketing, tools and utilities | 4 Comments »

Integrity and Ethics Can Help You Profit

Very recently, I was fortunate enough  to attend a seminar held by two of Australia’s top internet marketing entrepreneurs – Shaun Stenning, 24 year old marketing whizkid, and Sean Rasmussen, author of Year Of The Affiliate.

Both had an absolute wealth of information on the current state of marketing online. But it wasn’t their knowledge, secrets or techniques that I was most impressed with.

It was their ethics and integrity.

For a person that is new to internet marketing, and specifically affiliate marketing programs, your first question is probably “can I trust these guys?” And to demonstrate a point, Shaun asked the audience, “Who in this room, gets someone to cut their hair?” About 80% of the room raised their hands. He then asked “Who gets their hair cut at the same salon each time?” Only a couple of hands dropped. He then asked “Okay, why do you keep going back?” And the overall response was

“Because I trust that person to cut my hair how I like it.”

It seems blatantly obvious, but this was a great lesson – people like to buy products or services from people they trust. And you only build trust by being true to your ethics and upholding your integrity.

If a customer (or rather potential customer) doesn’t trust you, chances are they aren’t going to buy what you have to sell, no matter how great a deal you might be offering. So bear that in mind before you begin selecting the affiliate marketing products you wish to promote. If you pick a product that sells well but is ultimately of little value to the end user, there is a high chance they will never buy from you again.

If you want to grow your affiliate marketing profits, be sure to promote quality products that you yourself would endorse.

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Tags: affiliate, ethics, integrity, marketing, profit, trust

Posted in affiliate marketing ebooks, affiliate marketing programs, hints and tips | No Comments »