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

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/

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 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 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.

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...

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!