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