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Thursday, July 31, 2008

Progress with Social Networking

I have completed my initial goal of creating five blogs, four of which are slowly being monetized with various offerings based on the blog's purpose and audience. A fifth blog, has been created for the sole purpose of learning Wordpress, the language used to create web page layouts quickly.

Here is a list of the blogs I have created:

The Dieting and Weight Loss Blog - My personal story of weight loss and cholesterol lowering (Some exciting news here today with my weight loss results!)
View Blog
The Way To Success - The Future Super Affiliate Marketers Blog - (the blog you are reading)
View Blog
The iPod Review Blog - where I review my family's iPods, accessories and iTunes
View Blog

The Debt Blog - where I assist a friend in extracting his family from excessive debt
View Blog

The Guitar Hub Page - a new site that inserts Adsense and Kontera ads for me.
http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Guitar-Hub


And the no-ads blog:

The Guitar Blog - where I review some of the guitars from my collection, and accessories
http://nachase.wordpress.com/

By creating these blogs, I hope to have Google 'index' them. In this way people can find me through 'organic-search', the non ad supported results in Google. Also SocialSpark lets you place a code in your .html to validate and add your blogs to your profile page on SocialSpark.

I have already achieved some success through EntreCard, and the contacts you make through their service. I have had one article posted on a website with 42,000 readers daily. Another article will be published in a soon to be released book! The receipient gifted me over 7,000 EntreCard credits, which you can spend in their shop for web design, advertising on other blogs, buying products and more.

I have joined SocialSpark, digg, FaceBook, LiJit, and a few more Ad Networks to compare offers for ads to place on my blogs. Now I am linking to other bloggers and marketers out in cyberspace. We'll track the results that other marketers are having using Social Networking.

I have continued the daily practice of commenting on the top bloggers blogs, and linking comments that I make on my blog back to them. One day I hope to be a guest blogger on one of these sites. I have an appointment to strategize with one of my Affiliate Managers in New York next week.

This will start my adsense portion of my on-line marketing efforts. Here is where the big money is spent, on 'clicks', and made, on 'click-throughs' to buy.

Thank you for reading my blog, and please do leave a comment! Respectfully, Nicholas

Monday, July 28, 2008

Monday at The Way To Success

Greetings! Hoping your weekend was as excellent as mine was.

I was invited to an informal networking and strategy-sharing meeting of successful Affiliate Marketers on Saturday afternoon. What a great experience this turned out to be...

The group numbered fifteen in total, with four newbies, and the rest very experienced SEO and PPC marketers. The place we met had outstanding coffee, to fuel my listening skills for the following two hours of great tips, stories of success and failure, and overall expressions of hope for the economic future on-line.

There was discussion about legendary marketers and bloggers, such as Jonathan Volk, http://www.jonathanvolk.com , John Chow, www.johnchow.com , ( currently reporting $32,000.00 monthly, approaching $40,000.00 soon!) Jeremy Shoemaker, aka Shoemoney, http://www.shoemoney.com (received a $132,994.97 check from Google, for one month, of adsense income in 2005! He reported his income at $10,000.00 per month).

Some of the alternative campaign techniques were discussed, and how some marketers have been caught using techniques that Google considers outside the bounds of 'fair-play'. Google's mantra is a 'relevant search result experience', for the users of Google. Practitioners of these 'gaming-the-system', techniques are often found, and punished, through a process called the 'Google-Slap'.

'De-indexing your site', and stopping your revenue should get the marketer's attention quickly!

The use of these techniques comes at a considerable risk to your on-line reputation. However, some may want that image of themselves discussed and debated. I prefer to take the long view, and the higher ground even if it means less initial profit for me. I cannot compromise these values that have served me well for many years.

My reputation, both on-line and offline, must be a lasting and positive one. Others may choose to implement these techniques as they choose. I cannot imagine there is a 'long-term' benefit in these strategies.

Some brand-new marketers were asking the same questions I did when I started my on-line marketing business. It was fun answering their questions! I started out reading everything I could find on the web about SEO and Pay-Per-Click strategies.

Questions ranged from 'How to start a blog and monetize it?' - to 'How do I avoid spending all of my money 'hosting-adsense' ads on Google, before I see a profit?'

The exchange was free and open, and I was amazed how quickly the time passed. After two hours they were still going strong. Another engagement took me away, or I would have stayed until they closed.

For this week's update, I have created more ads on my blogs, excepting the Guitar Blog which is hosted on WordPress.com. They do not permit ads there, but I may do some reviews of products carried by one or more of my Ad Network's, with a link to the landing page for that specific product. I started this blog for fun and to learn WordPress, the prefered application for page layout on the web.

When you create a link on your blog, as provided from your ad network, the link includes your affiliate number, so the ad network can track your impressions and click-through's and credit your account. Did I say $$$? That is the basis by which Affiliate marketers receive payment.

On this blog, barely one week old, I have 33 'impressions' for one ad, and eight on another. So that tells me that the visitors are finding content relevant to their search. 'Impressions' are merely another name for 'curiousity-clicks'. The visitor is curious about what the offer might be, but may not be ready to buy. So they click around gaining knowledge about the product or service they are researching, before committing to buy or 'click-through'.

'Click-through's' are the goal, when the visitor actually buys the product or service they land upon, after that first click. I just added another ad that could potentially be huge, for an expensive seminar with a high commission. I'm hoping to get a lot of click-through's on that one!

As you build your on-line business, remember to be respectfull to all of those you deal with. They will remember you if you are kind and patient. I have had several mentors tell me the only reason they responded to my comments on their blog, was because I placed link's in my blog's body text here: www.johnchow.com, and linked-back to their blog post on my blog through my Blog List on the right side.

I am getting ready for a large influx of visitors, once all of my blogs get indexed by the major search engines, Google, MSN, and Microsoft.

The next post will include further data on the success I am experiencing.

Please do leave a comment! Respectfully, Nicholas

Friday, July 25, 2008

Friday Status Report

I have started three new blogs this week.

The Diet and Weight Loss Blog, which chronicles my personal diet and weight loss lifestyle modification project. You can read all about this here:

http://dietingandweightlossblog.blogspot.com/

I have also started The Debt Blog, about one family's debt and solutions to resolve their debt issues. You can read all about this here:

http://wwwthedebtblog.blogspot.com/

I'm also teaching myself how to use Word Press at my third new blog called the The Guitar Blog.

www.nachase.wordpress.com

My purpose in creating these blogs is to populate them with rich content, and begin adding advertisements gradually. Struggling a bit with blogger, and creating a six-box advertisement button area near the top right of my blog, emulating some of the top Super Affiliate bloggers like John Chow, Jonathan Volk, and Zac Johnson's blogs.

Word Press does not allow advertising on their site's blogs, so this will be a training ground for learning the features and tools in Word Press to eventually roll-out world class web pages elsewhere in my Internet Marketing Empire...

I have earned over 600 EntreCard credits, throughout three of my four blogs, by posting new blog post's, and writing one article for a book project soon to be published.

EntreCard has been covered in a previous post, but the strategy is to have people click on your EntreCard button on your web page, and you can visit their web p[ages and 'Drop' one credit, once per day. EntreCard credits can be used in their 'Shop' or to buy advertising on other EntreCard buttons. Your ad is in rotation with others, and costs EntreCard Credits, deducted from your account by EntreCard.

If the site hosting your ad is popular, the 'Credits' deducted can be quite large!

Ok, back to blogging, emailing and promoting my four blogs with ads.

Eventually as my web pages get indexed by the major search engines, I may see a trickle of revenue from my Affiliate Network offers.

Late Breaking News: An opportunity to earn 5,000 EntreCard credits has just been received! I only need to write an article over 1,000 words on the subject. Here we go...

To your online success! Respectfully, Nicholas

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

All is well at Comission Junction now..

My last post detailed some issues in getting my first link activated at Commission Junction. I am happy to report that all is well now!

The vendor was aware of the small glitch when modifications to the standard payout are made. The 'Performance Incentives' to the payout amount needed to be selected, then "accepted" by the marketer (that would be me...), in order for the link to become live.

I was so very happy, after a 12-hour wait and lots of emails, the issue was resolved. The vendor even offered to contact CJ Support to highlight this issue for them to resolve.

Now I have a highly popular service offered with a larger than standard payout which runs until the end of 2008! Excellent... Now the challenge is getting my site indexed by the major 'Search Engines', and creating a buzz around my offer through other marketing strategies.

This is all a challenge for even someone who has a bit of proficiency with computers, it's still a lot of work to:

1. Create a web site with Google-required elements, Rich content, Privacy statements, Contact Information, No Spam Policies, Not Sharing your personal data with anyone etc, etc.
2. Find the Affiliate Network with the highest payouts
3. Join that network and set up payment options, PayPal, Check etc
3. Select a banner, button or link to place on your website
4. Copy the linking code either java or .html to your website
5. Choose the location for the ad to run
6. Drive traffic to that location from indexing, submitting your site to directories, (carefully!)
7. Tweaking your ads to raise more search engine page results for your ads
8. Work with your Affiliate manager to find more opportunities to advertise
9. Repeat...Repeat...Repeat the above until you see results.

I am enjoying the assistance from people who have the attitude that now that they are successful, they are willing to share what they know with others.

John Chow (www.johnchow.com), Jeremy Palmer (Quit Your Day Job), Jonathan Volk (Super Affiliate), Jeremy Shoemaker(Shoemoney.com) and Zac Johnson are a few of the Top Affiliate Marketers who are willing to share what they have learned with others.

As I continue to grow my online business, I will be consulting with all of these fine gentleman as the need arises. They are highly successful yet humble at the same time. A very fine quality to find in a business that sometimes reveals the dark-side of some people who are ruthless in all aspects of their lives.

My next post will reveal the success or failure of my first attempts to make a living online.

Respectfully, Nicholas
Zac Johnson has an excellent comparison of different Affiliate Network payouts here: http://zacjohnson.com/my-affiliate-program-pays-more-than-yours/

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Ad Networks and Support Issues

I joined Commission Junction and was approved, using JohnChow.com's, increased commissions in the form of 'Performance Incentive' signup promotion. On Commission Junction's - 'Get Links' page for the offer I wanted, it stated that there was a 'Performance Incentive' associated with the vendor, and the vendor confirmed the offer of higher payout in a subsequent email. However Commission Junction had placed a STATUS: 'Delined Application' in this field on the search results page.

I contacted the vendor again, and he stated that he wanted me to get the links,and that this had happened before with CJ. I have received two CJ-Customer Support emails, with a long list of reasons why an Application may be 'Declined', none of this was relevant to my particular issue, so I replied to CJ Support again, and the vendor, stating that the vendor wants me to have the link!

We'll see how long this process takes, meanwhile I cannot promote the offer which has a high payout and extends until the end of 2008. It's causing concern for me that my first contact with CJ Support was not well handled, and Zak Johnson has a current post on his blog today about this very issue:

http://zacjohnson.com/five-reasons-why-your-affiliate-network-sucks/

As a new Affiliate Marketer I am trying to take the high ground, and be as professional as possible. I am discovering that just like any other industry, Affiliate Marketing has it's professionals and amateurs, all trying to play in the same sandbox.

Please comment on my post, and let's all try to pull together and insist on better performance out of all of our Ad Networks! Respectfully, Nicholas

Monday, July 21, 2008

Monday Update and Goals

It's Monday, and as we all begin our work week, exchanging our time for dollars, I thought I would continue the dialogue on all things Affiliate Marketing.

Monday Status update.

So I have been accepted at Commission Junction www.commissionjunction.com

Tried to create my first ad campaign, but I just faxed my W9 today, so I assume that my payment account will not be live until tomorrow.

My first campaign is with eDiets.com, and the new blog is located at:

http://dietingandweightlossblog.blogspot.com/

My current strategy is to create a blog for a need, such as weight loss or dieting. Write some rich content that is really relevant to this market for the search engines to crawl and index. Have the blog indexed by Google, by using the Google Webmaster tools.

Write more rich content, and place one or two ads on the page. Wait and write more content, maybe add some video or some audio to the page. Wait, and Wait, and Wait.

Create traffic to my site by commenting on other blogs and leaving my link in the comments. Visit a few diet and weight loss sites and leave comments there. Start linking to the sites or ask for a link from my site to be placed on their site.

Duplicate the above scenario 25 more times, for 25 blog pages, with relevant content and a few ads.

I will report my success on this strategy as time passes.

Respectfully, Nicholas

Friday, July 18, 2008

Friday Fun - Status of my Affiliate Marketing Progress

It's Friday, as Craig Ferguson says on his Late Late tv show, "It's a great day for America!".

So far this week I have joined the following Ad Networks or Ad companies.

PepperJam Network, Market Leverage, Kontera, ContentLink, ClickBank, EntreCard with SezWHo comments area ratings interface, FreeSiteSignup with John Chow.com, and looking into RocketProfit that Shoemoney recommends.

PepperJam Network seems like a great company. They have a ton of offers, and some of the comissions are huge. I will post some of my results from PepperJam.

I joined Market Leverage on the advice of Jonathan Volk at Volk Marketing, a Super Affiliate. Market Leverage has recently appeared on the network scene, and is making great strides towards success. I will blog about my experiences with Market Leverage as we go forward.

So far the Affiliate Manager I am working with has responded quickly to my questions! This is a good sign for future customer service already.

Kontera is a pretty cool deal. They serve both Advertisers and Publishers, and you can sign up as either or both. The approval process was painless, and I will blog about my results with Kontera as they are achieved.

I learned about ContentLink.com, from John Chow at JohnChow.com.
Contentlink is pretty cool and unobtrusive. They populate your blog text in selected words changing the word to a double-underlined, blue colored word.

When you hover over these blue words you discover a relvant, pop-up information button clearly labeled "Advertisement" on the top, and permitting a click on the More Info button will take you to that site.

ClickBank is a well known company, so I will only say that I need to do some research with how to best begin using their services. More to come on ClickBank.....

Entrecard creates a lot of buzz because you can earn 'credits' that you can spend on advertising or in the 'Shop'. I already have received over 100 EntreCard credits by commenting and linking-back to blog sites that have the EntreCard Widget running. They provide a database of EntreCard members to search to gain more credits. Interesting paradigm at work here.

More to come on EntreCard.....By the way, the SezWho comments section rating partnership was announced. Basically you can see a rating of your comments on sites that install the SezWho comments tool.

FreeSiteSignup.com - I signed up based on John Chow's recommendation due to the fact that other than this blog, I did not have a website for my Affiliate Marketing business, Chase Marketing. Sign up was easy, paid the yearly hosting fee to Midphase.com, and the next day my website was set-up. I received some video training on how to set up my cPanel and configure my website.

I now have a web page pre-built with offers and some free stuff to encourage visitors to browse and buy! Of course, I have access to sub-domains on the web host, so I am looking forward to creating additional 'Folders' to run these other sub-domains from. More on my web site build-out as time advances....

My hope is to eventually have at least 25 seperate 'niche' web sites with rich content and all of the other things Google likes. I will be experimenting with direct-links to see if this will provide some revenue.

This internet marketing game is complex, but I hope to be able to report that it is also possible to make a decent living while helping others achieve success.

Once we have enough income to live on, we want to pursue philanthropic giving, including benefiting schools, orphans, and sponsoring some children's education and household needs in India and Africa.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Content Link

I have joined Content Link today. www.contentlink.com.

The small blue-colored text with underlines you see within my blog post's are relevant links based upon the words I have used in my blog.

When you hover over these words they pop up relevant information in the form of advertisements, which if you then click on the link within, it will take you to that site based on your desire to navigate there.

It's a very non-intrusive way to provide some additional relevant search capability, within my blog text. I wanted to test this facility for the next 30 days to see if you believe it is a good feature for my blog or not.

Please do comment back and let me know if it's a thumbs-up or thumbs-down? I will tally the results from all who comment regarding the above, and we'll see if this should be continued or not...

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Zac Johnsons Post about work habits!

Check out this post from Zac Johnson:

http://zacjohnson.com/stay-motivated-and-get-out-of-that-slump

In it he details how to stay motivated in running your online business, and treating yourself as he did to a brand new Mac in order to provide incentive to working!

Excellent post Zac, you have my attention!

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

ZakShow.com a cool website!

So I was trolling the web looking for Entrecard credits, heh heh, and came across this site.

http://www.zakshow.com/2008/04/04/get-50-entrecard-credits-instantly/

Zak has created an amazing site with all kinds of interesting content, including the Top 5 Myspace morons post which had me in stitches.

Check out his site for some really deep content, and a lot of interesting posts!

Thank you Zak for the Entrecard credits too!

"Entrecard flips the switch for Blog Comments! Fantastic!"

I have joined SezWho, http://entrecard.com/blog/?p=444%20.

They are currently running a contest to award 5,000 credits to anyone who follows the rules on the Entrecard blog site listed above.

This is a comments-based service that applies Entrecard credits by commenting on other blogs about SezWho. I still do not understand how I use credits, but I imagine with enough I can host ads, or purchase goods?

I still need to read the EntreCard User Guide to suss all of this out.

I will let you know about my progress... It sounds interesting and will certainly get the conversation going!

Affiliate Progress

So I have joined the PepperJam Network on the recommendations of one of it's most successful Super Affiliates, Jonathan Volk. If you are an Affiliate Marketer, and want to join the PepperJam Network, just click on the animated PepperJam button on the upper right side, and you are usually approved within twenty-four hours.

I received the approval today, so now the process begins to research the ads offered on the PepperJam Network (there are hundreds of them...) and set them up to run. Not sure how the whole revenue stream works, but I assume it is PayPal as a default.

It will be interesting to also set up a free website offered by one of the Ad Networks that John Chow (www.johnchow.com) uses, called ShoppingAds (http://shoppingads.com).

They offer to set up your website for free, provide a custom web page design, and begin making money immediately! I am signing up today, and my progress will be reported here.

One other project I have been participating in is; The Black Ink Project by Jeremy Palmer of www.QuitYourDayJob.com. Jeremy has created numerous lessons delivered in the form of live WebEx presentations, and you can download all of the Black Ink videos and support files, including wireframe examples and excel-based spreadsheets to aid in setting up your campaigns, in various formats for WIN and MAC at his website, (www.blackink.com) and Quit You Day Job site has a link as well.

He has started BlackInk2, and if you register at his site, you can download even more in depth training on how to start-up, and run a successful online business, having guest consultants on everything from setting up your company, selecting your niche, designing your web pages, and optimizing your site, with a special software application for tracking your campaigns. Jeremy is an awesome guy, not asking for any renumeration at all!

All in all I am excited about making money online, and hope to report success in the very near future.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Trust and Active Listening

Trust
This is a very important concept, and one that bears repeating. Trust... is something that once lost is difficult to redeem. I lost trust in someone once, and they lost trust in me, on a mutual misunderstanding about some alleged behaviour occuring at a social gathering that was considered inappropriate.

The behaviour in question never occurred, however the perception was that it had.
For about a year there were no words spoken between each of the offended parties, until one day, another individual who was trusted spoke about the incident in conversation. Once it was revealed to this participant, that the behaviour had in fact never occurred as believed, the long lost trust was restored immediately.

This was a totally avoidable scenario, if only the trust had been established securely between the two individuals.

Perhaps you have experienced a situation where trust was broken or compromised, even though that was not the intent of the behaviour.

Sharing Information
My reasons for blogging are to offer information, receive commentary on it's value, and continue to improve the communication going forward. You no doubt could offer up additional insight and information to the conversation, adding to it's value, and providing a necessary balance to the dialogue. In addition, after consulting with a top performing affiliate marketer, I have made the decision to monetize this blog.

Progress will be reported as ads are placed and revenue figures will be provided as an example of Internet Marketing success.

Active Listening
I attended a class for engineers, while working for Sony Electronics. The class was titled "Active Listening". The facilitator of the class revealed the fundamentals in developing a technique to actively listen to whoever was delivering their particular message.

After a period of careful consideration, we were encouraged to respond to the speaker. It was absolutely essential that we all do this when we are conversing! After a while, breaking out of our old habit of beginning our responses, before the speaker had completed their thought, was very refreshing. It did take some time to fully embrace these 'new listening techniques', and gradually reject the 'active speaking' techniques we had previously exhibited.

In all of the conversations I have had throughout my life, I was able to learn so much more by actively listening to the other person. After careful consideration for the context and intent of the speakers statements, I would formulate a well-tempered response, always with the intention to aquire more information. This method has proven to be extremely beneficial in my career, especially when my manager was the speaker!

Value Gained
The value of active listening is threefold:

One, you clearly understand the focus and intent of the speaker's information.

Two, you can avoid any misunderstanding by concentrating specifically on the words that were spoken.

Three, you establish that you are are genuinely interested in what they have to say and will actually value it. Even if the thought is something you may disagree with, at least each speaker can respect the other as a basis for achieving the essential mutual trust.

In turn, if they also practice the same thoughtful listening techniques, we now have a situation where misunderstandings can be reduced to a rare occurence if at all!

Your Turn
Now it's your turn. My thoughts have been offered, I am truly ready to listen. Your responses will be valued and respected. Thanks!

Sunday, July 13, 2008

A New Direction Monetizing my Blog

So, I have turned over a new leaf.

After consulting with currently one of the most successful Internet Marketers who just happens to be a personal friend, he has encouraged me to engage in some advertising in order to monetize my blog.

He advised joining some ad networks such as Azoogle Ads and PepperJam Network in order to extend my reach and improve my Internet Marketing skills.

Starting out, I am going to create my first ad campaign on Yahoo Search Marketing, then try MSN Ads, and finally, after I select and hone my niche selections, and do some competitive analysis and create a business plan, I will launch some Google Adsense campaigns.

In all of these endeavors I will strictly avoid any "Black-Hat" techniques, as I do not want to try to game the system, but work with the excellent tools provided to make legitimate websites that offer quality products or services. Google frowns and even 'slaps' those who would try to 'game' the system, and I have no interest in doing anything deceitful or dishonest.

In other words, I want to be in this for the long-haul, and try to realize some of the successes my friend has experienced.
I hope to use this blog as a kind of journal of my progress, and will state some of my income results as they occur, not to impress but to inform that it is indeed possible to create a stream of income using the internet, and advertising as the basis for the growth.

Thank you for your comments, as they will fuel my interest in posting the results as often as possible.

To your success as well! Nicholas Chase - (future Super Affiliate).