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Deep Sea Fishing Compliments of Affiliate Marketing

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

Many of my readers wonder if they’ll ever get to the point where they’re making a decent income from their online affiliate programs. Well, I’m here to tell you that yes there will be a day when you’ll be able to quit your ‘regular’ job and live off the income that your websites take.

I started doing Internet marketing in 2006. I had no idea what I was doing. I bought an ebook (no longer available) and was inspired to give it a whack. I made some MFA pages and after several months got to about $5/day.

That sucked. But it was enough to keep me motivated.

Two years later and I’m pulling in a nice set of checks each month. Usually I deposit them and put most of the money back into my business, and I spend some on the kids.

But this month I thought I’d treat myself. And I did.

That’s me this past weekend on a 57 foot charter boat off the coast of Alabama. I’m fighting an Amber Jack and eventually I win.

I took my 15 year old son, left Friday, rented a nice apartment on Dauphin Island, and drove back on Monday. The entire 4-day trip was paid for with just two checks from affiliate marketing. It was awesome.

So for you that are wondering if you’ll get there, you will. Stick with it, learn some search optimization for your website, build links and you’ll have checks bigger than mine. Then you can tell me about your adventure.

Posted in affiliate marketing, beginner sem, money | No Responses »

Make Money as my Photoshop Designer

Saturday, May 31st, 2008

I’ve posted a contest over at 99designs.com and I’m inviting you to submit your best work. Winner gets $300 bucks.

But even better, if your design is selected as the winner, there is a very good chance that I’ll have more and more work for you – work that will be offered exclusively to you first.

My last graphic designer wasn’t reliable, so I had to fire him. Are you reliable and good at what you do? Here’s your chance to make money- both now and in the future.

Posted in competition, money | No Responses »

When You Need Your Website “Yesterday”, Don’t Call Me

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

About two weeks ago I received an email from a lady who took one of my classes about two years ago. She was looking for a website redesign for her employer.

Well, I put together a nice proposal and emailed it off to her. For two weeks I didn’t hear anything. Then yesterday comes this email:

Will,
We have decided to go with a bid from another web company because of the time frame they can provide. Over the last two weeks, we’ve realized we need our website “yesterday”. Your pricing and other items were right in line with the other bid, but we decided to go with them because of our timeline.

Umm, ok. My response (once I calmed down from the sheer stupidity of the scenario):

Hi X,
Congratulations on your selection of a designer for your website! I personally would never build and launch a website in two weeks. I don’t think it would be fair to my clients. Nonetheless, I wish you luck (blah blah blah)

I ran the response past my PR team (aka my wife) and verified that it wasn’t a smartass reply. I didn’t want to come across that way, but rather let them know that I create quality, and I can’t create quality in a matter of two weeks.

Sure, I could throw together a website in a few days. Any web designer could. But it wouldn’t be optimized for search engines. In fact, I’d be willing to bet the ‘winning bidder’ won’t even put meta descriptions and keyword-targeted titles on each page. Heck, that’s the easy part, but I bet they don’t.

If you’re serious about building a website, you need to take the time to get more than pretty colors on a page.  You need to sit down and think about how you’ll market your site.  Will the site simply be a brochure, or will it be a full-out marketing machine, ready to suck in customers and spit out revenue?

If you’re not serious about a website, just pick any two and I’ll get started on it.

  • Good
  • Fast
  • Cheap

Posted in Marketing, money, small business | 4 Responses »

Are All Good SEOs Outrageously Expensive?

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

This post is the part two followup to The Invisible SEO.

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while, and finally have a few minutes to post my thoughts on the ever-rising cost of SEO.

Diane Aull did a great piece yesterday over on SearchEngineGuide called “Why do the (good) SEOs cost so %&*# much? She had a good story about a maintenance man that knew just what to do, and where.  It’s a good read.

Now, as I mentioned last week, I listened to the SEO 101 webinar from HubSpot, and in particular I wanted to hear what the guy had to say about finding a good SEO.  I’ve already complained about him saying a good SEO should rank, so its time for me to bitch about the other thing I didn’t agree with him about – price.

Mike says: “Any good SEO that is worth their salt, the majority of them are going to be more than $2000 a month.”  He goes on to add, “and anyone who’s only a couple hundred dollars a month… doesn’t provide a good value for the money”.

Wrong!

While I agree, $2000 a month is probably a good number for decent sized small businesses, it’s not fair to use it as a generic baseline.  There are many factors involved in each business that determines this amount.

SEOMoz said they won’t take a client for less than $10k a month.  They have a great staff that can handle large accounts, and can dedicate staff to each project to make sure their clients get the value they are paying for.

Not-so-prominent SEOs such as myself don’t (or can’t) hold themselves to such standards, and still be able to eat each night.  While sure, I’d love to get me a few $10k accounts, I must continue to live in the real world.  And my world is full of small business with small budgets that want to grow.  And I’m just the guy to help them do it.

I have a small business client who I just took on recently who rents out those cool bounce houses that every 35 year old wishes existed twenty years ago (where were they!?).  This client doesn’t have a big budget. And to add to that, she has a short window of time when these things can even be rented out (who wants to bounce while it’s snowing? Not me.). So its fair to say she’s not going to spend $2000 a month right away on SEO. And that’s ok with me.

So for a few months we’ll do what she can afford, and we’ll reassess the situation then.  Spring will be chugging along, and (if I’m doing my job) her business will be well. Perfect. Now she has the opportunity to adjust her budget and do a full-court press the rest of the summer. We both win.

I end up with a client that is spending a nice amount of money for my services, and her business is growing (and ranking).  Had a told her upfront that there was a $2000 entry fee, I’d have never made a dime.

Now, I should also mention that I am selective about the clients I take on.  Some clients just want it all, and they want it all for under $500 bucks.

It ain’t happenin’.

I’ve got ‘buddies’ who are willing to put up with these types of clients, so I’ll just pass them on.  Headache avoided, friends fed.

But $2000 or they are “worthless SEOs”? I don’t agree.

Posted in SEO, money, small business | 1 Response »

Can Canadians Make Money Online?

Sunday, October 21st, 2007

I had the pleasure of speaking with Monty Loree from the Canadian Money Advisor yesterday about people making money online.

We spoke a bit about my business and how I started out doing web design. As I would build these websites, I would always ‘farm out’ the web hosting to another company. I saw a need for my clients to get hosting, and I discovered that I could offer these things on my own. So that’s where I started making money online. Ten years later, I’m still doing it through SEM.

And the good news is, you can too!

Posted in Marketing, beginner sem, hosting, money | No Responses »

Top Spot Isn’t Always Best (Bowling for Dollars)

Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

When I first jumped into PPC, I was all excited to get clicks to my affiliate site. I was disillusioned to think that everyone that visited my site would click through and apply for whatever it was I was presenting them. Boy was I wrong.

Not only did they not click through, but I was paying a fortune for those no-good clicks.

So how can I get people to my site without paying so much?

Well, start by targeting the third or fourth spot in PPC. Click to continue »

Posted in PPC, beginner sem, money | 1 Response »

How To Get A Boatload of Money From a Business That Says They Have None

Friday, April 20th, 2007

So you read my post on how to get your first seo client, and now you’re out bustin’ down small business doors and teaching classes to seal a deal. You get a few solid leads, but when you follow up, they all tell you the same thing: We don’t have that kind of money.

Well, you’ve got a few choices…

Click to continue »

Posted in SEO, money | No Responses »

VA Tech and Phishing Scams – Already

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007

With tragedies such as what happened at Virginia Tech on Monday, there are always the scum that crawl out of the sewers to take advantage of the good will of others. In cases like this they register a domain name and then send spam attempting to fool people into going to the site and donating money to help the families of the victims. We saw this when Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi, and after the bombing of the Federal Center in Oklahoma City.

GoDaddy and other registrars are reporting a host of new registrations of domain names that relate to the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Many will prove to be valid attempts to support family and friends of victims and will not even ask for money. Others will certainly be those that want to make money through the suffering of others.

Also realize that it may be a phishing attempt to get personal information about yourself in preparation for identity theft. If you receive email, FAX, or phone attempts to get money from you supposedly in support of the victims of the massacre, please check out the organization closely first.

To learn more about phishing and related illicit activity, the following two links provide some very good information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing
http://www.antiphishing.org/

If you’re one of the idiots trying to profit from this, stop it. There are plenty of more legitimate ways to make money online. Don’t stoop to this level, take the high road to success.

Posted in GoDaddy, money | 2 Responses »

You’ve Got People

Tuesday, February 20th, 2007

This is the first of several local-related articles. Local search is taking off, and if you’re not in the ballgame early, you’ll miss out on a huge potential for big bucks.

While you may not have a lot of money to spend on the ‘Net, you’ve certainly got plenty of ways to still make some nice money. Since you are alive and breathing, I’m sure that means you know people.

Do you ever go to the dentist? Good. So you know a dentist.

Are your kids in boy/girl scouts? Chances are a few of the other parents are business owners.

Go to church? Business owners galore!

Basically what I’m saying is that every day in our lives we run across people who have a local business. These businesses thrive on customers. New customers, as many of you know, are the hardest to get. They want new customers, but they know nothing about SEO. They don’t see it feasible to pay you thousands of dollars to optimize their site and run a PPC campaign.

But, mister or missus SEO amateur, why not use those mad SEO skills to your advantage?

Check this out.

Two months ago a guy who owns a local pool installation company asked me for a bid on redoing his website so he could get more business. Once I told him the price, he flipped out. That was pretty much the end of that deal, or so I thought. Then, last week I was reading Michael Wolf’s local search interviews when it hit me: I can still get these people’s business AND make probably more money than if they’d just pay me the original quote.

Here’s how:

I went and asked this pool guy how busy he wanted to be this summer. He (of course) said “Oh man I want to be swamped with work”. Sweet. In my most non-cocky-but-confident manner, I told him I believed I could refer a ton of work his way, and he could pay me for each lead I send him. First thing he asked was “What will this cost me?” Nothing up front, I replied. I’ll build a site, I’ll send you the leads, and you pay me for only quality leads.

So at this point, I’m thinking to myself it’d be nice to get $50 bucks per lead I send him. “What do you normally pay for a good referral?” I asked.

“If I close the deal, and it was a referral, I pay the person $200 bucks”.

I about shit my pants. I told him we’d work out a deal this next week and I’ll start sending him leads by the spring. So needless to say, I’ve already purchased a domain name and started building a site.

Now back to my point. You’ve got people. There are people you meet every day that are in need of your SEO expertise. Even if you don’t know a lot about SEO, you know enough to target a local campaign, most likely with little or no competition. You’re crazy not to.

Later on this week, I’ll tell you how I’m going to track and confirm every one of the leads I send to this guy.

Posted in Marketing, SEO, beginner sem, local marketing, money | 1 Response »

Do I Have to Buy a .com?

Friday, February 9th, 2007

Without getting in too deep into SEO tactics, I wanted to touch on the subject of buying a domain name. Often times GoDaddy, Registerfly and various other domain registrars have sales on .info domain names.

Now, some of the bigshots in SEM say that .com is the only way to go. Bullhockey. I’ve had plenty of good luck ranking .info names, including several number one spots on Google, Yahoo! and more. To me, the idea that .com is more trusted than the others is probably of little value.

Back to the sales on .info. If you keep an eye on various SEM blogs, which I’m sure most of you do, you’ll sometimes see mention of .info sales. I’ve even seen FREE .info names for a year. Most recently, I heard that a registrar had them for 88cents, and I believe GoDaddy currently has .info on sale for 99 cents.

So go grab a few .info domain names. They’re cheap, and you can get some pretty good keywords to help you target your campaign.

Posted in GoDaddy, Registerfly, beginner sem, domain names, money | No Responses »

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