RORY HANSEN

This week’s Dot Com Pho was at Pho Trang An, where we had 12 people show up to gab about life, politice, blogging and making money online. This included the usuals (John Chow, Stephen and Ed) as well as some new faces.
Read more »

As Internet marketers, we all use affiliate links in some way or another. For some, they might be embedded into blog posts, while for others in landing pages or forum signatures. Regardless, affiliate links serve a necessary evil when making money online and we depend on them.

Introduction to Affiliate Link Cloaking
Read more »

So, if you haven’t wasted 30 minutes yet flipping through the new Gmail themes, go do it now. Then come back and join the conversation. ;-)

My favourites were Ninja, Cold Shower, Shiny, and Tree, but I also did like those cartoon-ish themes like Bus Stop and Tea House, too.
Read more »

Last month I had a breakout month with Clickbank, with affiliate earnings exceeding $400.

This month, I’ll be lucky to break $100 with Clickbank with the same site and same niche and same product, largely because traffic is wa-ay down. The keywords which were driving much of my traffic from Google are no longer ranking my site well.

So, since natural search traffic is killing me, I’ve been experimenting with PPC traffic. (You’ll remember that I wrote an earlier post about signing up for Findology, one of the many 2nd-tier PPC networks out there. I signed up after finding a $50 coupon code with an initial deposit of at least $25.)

Well, so far, my opinion of Findology is this:

The Good:

• I have only good things to say about their staff. Carey, my account manager, has been polite and helpful from the get-go. But, since our initial email conversations, I’ve yet to use her services again.
• PPC costs are LOW. We’re talking $0.03/click.

The Bad:

• I’m having trouble converting the traffic.

In the last week, my ads have generated 630 click-thrus. Result: No conversions. And, actually, I don’t even think I got any AdSense clicks. I got nothing. In comparison, with natural search traffic for the same site and same product, my conversion rate was 0.7%.

Also, Google Analytics is showing a very high bounce rate. And my gut feeling just tells me that the traffic was not engaged.

Granted, I’m still new to PPC and so, my ads are weak, my landing pages are weak and/or canned, and my sales pitch is untrained. Maybe it’s just a lack of skill on my part.

So, I queried Google to find others that WERE having success converting Findology traffic. What I found was the exact opposite. Link 1. Link 2. Seems that others have come to the same conclusion as me. Findology traffic has low conversion rates.

So, What Now?

I’ve now eaten through my initial $25 deposit with them, and still have $50 remaining. It’s essentially free money.

Not sure how to use it though. I figure I’ll still run the campaigns, and continue to tweak them to see if I can generate a sale. I just need 1 or 2 to recoup my initial $25 deposit.

After that, I don’t think I’ll deposit anymore money with Findology.

I had a good laugh when I saw this in my inbox over the weekend:

The valuation of clicks received for the time period July 2005 – October 2008 has generated a parking revenue of:

$21.45.

Yes, I earned a huge $21.45 over the course of over 3 years with Sedo, which averages out to about $0.55 per month.

After a maintenance haitus that lasted a few weeks longer than their posted notice stated, DealDotCom is back in action.

For those that are unfamiliar with DealDotCom, their concept is similar to that of Woot! in that they have a different product on sale each day. But, each product/tool/ebook is focused on blogging, affiliate marketing, generating traffic… topics that webmasters (especially those wanting to make money online) are interested in.

What sets them apart is that they have a 2-level affiliate marketing program, where you can earn 35% of the sales you send their way.

Anyway, in their first day back, they’re advertising the AutoMarker Social Bookmarking Software, which allows you access to a community of users that will propel your blog posts up the social media site ladders through votes. Sounds sorta scheme-ish, but, hey, traffic is traffic.

I just found out I won a $350 multi-function color printer!

A few weeks ago, I entered the TechVibes Small Business Week contest by commenting on one of their small business posts. It’s the kind of contest I don’t mind entering, because it’s quick and easy to write a comment, plus you might also get a few extra hits from your website link in the comment signature.

Anyway, I’m pretty stoked. I don’t have a printer at the moment, so I’ll be sure to put it to good use.

Here’s what it looks like:

Thanks TechVibes!

In Google’s recently released Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (PDF ALERT!), they describe the best practices to follow to ensure that Google can properly crawl and index your site data.

Shaun at Hobo has created a list of tips on what to AVOID doing, by summarizing many of the suggestions from the Starter Guide. Here are some interesting ones I saw:

Avoid:

• having deep nesting of subdirectories like /dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/
  page.html
• creating an HTML sitemap that simply lists pages without organizing them
• allowing your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your
  webserver is configured to give a 404 HTTP status code when non-existent
  pages are requested)
• having a navigation based entirely on drop-down menus, images, or animations

There are a total of 30 tips listed on Shaun’s post. Read them all here.

We’re now half-way through November, and it looks like my earnings this month are going to come in way below what I was expecting.

At the beginning of the month, I had blogged about how the niche site which is responsible for 75% of my earnings has had it’s SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Positions) completely disappear for about a week. They did come back, but all of a sudden, have disappeared again. Google, you’re breaking my heart!

It’s been quite disheartening, but to keep myself distracted, I’ve been working to update content, implement nofollow’s on my blogs, and research PPC more. I’d really like to start an effective PPC campaign using the Facebook ad platform, but just haven’t had the time to do the appropriate research.

It’s times like this that PPC Bully would come in handy, as it would be doing the research for me! (LOL). But, before I start using an automated tool to create successful ads, I’d like to do it by hand, to really digest how to do it successfully. To me, that’s what attracts me to this whole Make Money Online concept– understanding how all of these various tools and methods work and seeing if I can take my learnings and execute a successful campaign.

One of the WordPress plug-ins I use on my blog is the great Show Top Commentators plug-in, which displays the top commentators each month on the blog sidebar. I feel it really helps to create a sense of community and even GIVE BACK to the community of readers by rewarding those readers who help to keep the dialog going each month. Each of the top commentators receives a site-wide link back to their website/blog, which is essentially a free (unpaid) text link ad.

Half-way through November, the top commentators on my blog are:

Stew Babcock

Heather in Beautiful BC

PuReWebDev

Annalise

This is a really easy way to advertise your website and generate a little more traffic. So, if you have something to add, please leave a comment!