Make Money Online

Long story made short with no explanation : I’ve just created a chatroom here at Uberaffiliate, you can click here to connect to it.

Now for the explanation. If you’re anything like me, some days you’re at your house chugging away at campaigns and you just get bored. Maybe most of your friends on IM are working and can’t talk, you don’t want to wait for people to reply to your forum posts, and you just want to take a break. That’s why I set up a small chat room attached to UberAffiliate. I plan on just popping it up in a new window and letting it chill in the corner of one of my monitors. I used to hang around the Cakes chat room, but the past few times I’ve gone in there hasn’t really been anybody on.

This is also a way I think I’ll be able to connect with you guys (the readers) better. A lot of you send me IMs during the day and I’m either not paying attention to Adium, or by the time I get back to the computer to respond you’re already gone.

So if you just want a place to hang out and chat/shoot the breeze with other marketers, just head to the chat room.

Nothing big, maybe I’ll see you there maybe not! Oh if you have your own IRC program that you’re more used to, the channel is #affchat.

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AffChat at Uberaffiliate

So Nickycakes has come out with his first affiliate industry product he calls LPLockdown. It’s a service that provides cloaking for your landing pages so other affiliates can’t see or steal them.

LPLockdown : The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good

We’ll start off with the good here. The things it does for your pages are nice, if you’re not currently doing something like this with your pages, you should look into it. LPLockdown will :

1) Cloak your pages from other affiliates. Cakes has a database of affiliate IPs he’s collected, so when they hit your landing page they’re redirected somewhere else.

2) Steal their traffic if they steal yours. if someone rips your page 100% and leaves your javascript, you can redirect traffic from their page to your page/offer.

3) Uptime/downtime monitor so if your landing page goes down you get a notification.

The Bad

While there are positives to using this service to protect your page, there are cons to this.

1) It’s not self-hosted. And seeing as Nickycakes himself said it’s “by affiliates for affiliates”, do you want to give Nicky (an affiliate) potential access to all of your landing pages?

2) I have a friend who programs and said he programmed the exact same thing for himself in 2 days. Do you want to pay $50/month for something you can pay a programmer a few hundred bucks and have forever?

3) This is interesting…reverse IP lplockdown.com. You’ll find the site 11i.us. Check the WHOIS on that info. It’s Nicky’s actual info. Do you trust a product who was created by someone that can’t privacy protect their own self?

4) It looks like I designed that site the first week I learned Photoshop. The WordArt in the video gives it a nice ‘95 touch.

The Ugly

Everyone is pretty aware that this is NickyCakes’ product. I’ve gotten the chance to meet him and chat at events and he’s a nice guy. Like with all arguing on the internet I think once everyone comes together we realize how lucky we are and the pansy e-fighting that happens doesn’t really mean anything anymore.

Be that as it may, Nicky’s online persona has always been ripping others in the industry to shreds. He rips on the big Gurus like Shoemoney and Chow, and also has torn apart myself (the Goober) and Ubercamp.

So the question is : if he really made this product to “contribute” to the industry, why does he have to charge for it (more so $50/month…maybe $5-10/month would be more legit)? Especially when it’s not anything advanced, it’s like making a blog post about how to track keywords with PHP. Again I’m not a programmer and haven’t seen the backend of LPLockdown, but after talking to friends it doesn’t seem all that hard to just do this on your own (or pay someone to program it for you). I’d use LPLockdown as a fresh reminder that you should be doing your best to hide and protect your pages.

Nickycakes having financial trouble perhaps? Gotta pay those taxes.

Here is the original post:
Nickycakes Gains GURU Status w/ LPLockdown (/sarcasm)

This isn’t meant to be a long and planned out post with my 2010 predictions, just getting some thoughts out.

Here’s what’s been happening with me and my product launch. My plan has been to set up a continuity offer with a product but have it be legitimate at the same time. Believe it or not I think there are ways to attract customers without offering them a Free* Trial. I’ve now been rejected by 2 or 3 merchants and am awaiting the reply on another. Because of all the scamming that went down in 2009, Visa/Mastercard are tightening their grip on things…especially domestically. And since I don’t have any real processing history, domestic is the route I have to go. So even though my offer is completely legitimate and actually charges them up-front for a sale, the banks are saying no just because there is continuity involved (I don’t want to get into the specifics, but my charges monthly would be under $20, not $110.33). This sucks pretty bad because now I may be forced to abandon that business model and try and make this work by just straight selling it. I’ve put too much time into it to scrap, but now I have to make huge changes. I have to now build a full website and come out with a mini product line so I can offer combo packages and things like that to incent customers.

That’s how 2009 impacted me, where will the affiliate industry be in 2010? While working on all of this product mumbo jumbo, I kind of “left” the affiliate industry for a while. Didn’t talk to my AMs much, didn’t browse offers, didn’t keep up too much on the news. Now that I’ve been looking to get some campaigns and other projects running again (with the product delay I have to make money somehow), things seem to be changing. Rebill offers that made up a lot of business for affiliate networks are dropping. There are still ones that exist and offers running well so it’s not like they’re completely dying, but things will change.

I think many affiliates will realize that before rebills came along everybody was still making money. Not millions every month, but there was plenty of money to be made and there still is.

I’ll keep you guys posted on what happens with my projects and how everything is influencing them.

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Affiliate Marketing in 2010

I’m just assuming that this is going to have to be a series of articles, it would probably be huge if I crammed it all into one. At this point in time, I am almost ready to launch my product on the advertiser side. By the end of this week everything should be 95% ready to go. I want to just shed some more light on this area because there’s not too much content on becoming an advertiser. Most blogs just write about the affiliate side of things, but you still hear all the affiliates saying “being an advertiser is where the money is at”. Do we not see content on this topic because that’s the truth? At first I kind of thought this, but not so much anymore.

Being an advertiser is a HUGE hassle. If (like me) you’re doing it by yourself, it seems the number of things to do is endless. I would make checklists every week, and for every 1 thing I crossed off, 2 were added in. It’s stressful, time consuming, requires money and connections, and some knowledge. I’ve been working on this for almost 6 months now, and for the past 3 my income has shot down to $0…I’ve been spending all of my time and resources on this. I’m hoping this article series will save potential advertisers a lot of time, or at least give you a good “idea” of what being an advertiser is like.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say at least 9/10 people reading this aren’t really making a significant income online. Via affiliate marketing, blogging, SEO, whatever. Well I’m about to tell you how to turn that around with a little bit of simple writing. You see, becoming a super affiliate blogger really is a lot easier than you’d think, you actually don’t even have to know anything. You’re going to really sense the satire in this post, but also know that everything is true.

Step 1 : Pick a name that dictates you from the start.

You want people’s first impression of you to be that of a self-proclaimed badass, chances are they’ll believe it. Examples :

UBERaffiliate.com
shoeMONEY.com
SUPERAFFILIATEmindset.com
CASHtactics.net

In the least, include something like “I Make Money Online By Telling People How I Make Money Online” in the title of your blog. All people want from your blog (in most cases) is to learn how to make money. Remember…you don’t actually have to be an uber affiliate, you just need people to think you are.

Step 2 : Regurgitate some already known tips.

Go to my affiliate marketing guide, or visit other affiliate marketing blogs around the web. Read all the content that’s been talked about a billion times (like how to track with php, why more content on your site gives you a better quality score, how to write adcopy, etc). Use words like “laser-targeted” and “server side tracking”. You don’t even have to know what you mean by that, it just makes you sound pro.

Step 3 : B/s current events.

Bring up some fancy Google Trends swine flu graph :

And talk about the huge spike in the graph, and that you should be capitalizing on selling immune system rebill products. Now people will think you’re keeping up with current events, and they can check back on your blog for more current events. Even though you pointed out an obvious fact and just pulled a Google Trends graph. Case in point. Not many comments on that post but that’s because it was one of the first. It did it’s job.

Step 4 : Land a big guest post somewhere to explode your readership.

By this point, you have a name like DancingWithTheSuperAffiliates.com and a tagline like “Ex-Blackhat Conman” to give people the impression that you’re straight out of a Clint Eastwood movie. You also have a small reserve of posts that are going to make you look like you know what you’re talking about, and that you keep up with the industry. It’s time to get your readers.

This could be one of the most difficult steps, because you actually have to write something that’s worth a guest post somewhere. For me, I had to sacrifice breaking Facebook ads on Shoemoney to get my readers. It was a great article though and I think I had over 1,000 readers a week later. Once you have a kick-start like that, your readers will start linking to your future posts, about regurgitated tips and common sense current events.

Step 5 : The Earnings Screenshot

This one is absolutely necessary if you want a following that will pause their campaigns at your will/recommendation.

As demonstrated by previous heroes of our past, you can completely fake the screenshot. If you’re then caught doing so (which you have to be really stupid), just come back and say “EDIT : This edit came in before people called me out. That check isn’t mine, I only posted the picture for entertainment purposes. I did make that money though…”

Step 6 : Linkbait and Commotion

Any decent blogger can be good at writing link bait. Have you noticed the hundred links in this post already? Also I don’t mean it’s required that you get a ton of links back to your article, starting a good fuss in the comments section usually does the trick as well. You want to keep people engaged in your blog, and also entertain them. I think people like when I post something they don’t agree with, because they get to speak up against me.

Step 7 : Ads, Review Posts, etc

Things like ads and review posts can add a sense of legitimacy I think in a blog. If people are buying ad spots and review posts, the blog must be worth something. Keep in mind, nobody actually has to buy a review post/ad spot for it to look like they have. Put in some affiliate network ads and review posts (that they didn’t ask you to do) and pop in your referral link.

…

Follow all these steps and you may actually turn yourself into the super affiliate you’re claiming to be. You’ll make money from the ads to put into PPC, and have networks begging you for your traffic that doesn’t exist.

Cool people (and friends) mentioned in this post :

Me
Shoemoney
John Chow
Chad (CDF)
Kris (Cash Tactics)
Cakes

More:
How To Become a Thuper Affiliate Blogger Overnight

Join ma boi’s network Opes Media. I’ve been pretty excited myself a while for their launch, and now the time is here.

I actually went to Miami to visit the Opes HQ before ASE this summer, and it was pretty sweet. They have an awesome office and everything is setup really nicely. I got to sneak a peak at the back end of the system, see their offers, landing pages, etc. Basically by the time I had left, I was excited for their launch not so I can tell everyone here, but so I could run some of their offers myself . They have some offers converting pretty well actually that I’m going to give a shot (if you do any rebill stuff now, definitely check these guys out).

Opes is tops with its professional layout, and seamless interface. Signing up is easy and doesn’t require a lot of time. And once you get going, you know you are getting the real deal. They have their own proprietary network that utilizes server-side tracking, and everything is totally customizable. They have some pretty rad looking offers that are worth checking out. Plus they have exclusive advertisers too, so offers should convert pretty well.

One nice thing was the account managers which can be iffy for many other networks. Their account managers knew their stuff and were always available, which is nice because when problems come up it’s good to have help waiting. Also, they got flexible payment options that help with cash flow needs. Basically, it is a network that knows what you need to do well, but whether or not you do well is up to you.

Check them out, it’s worth a signup at least. I’m not getting paid for this post nor does Opes even have a referral program, so there’s no incentives for me. Just something you should check out.

Advertiser update: many long days and 6am nights aside, everything is starting to come together. Hopefully a couple more weeks and all the heavy work will be finished.

Join ma boi’s network Opes Media. I’ve been pretty excited myself a while for their launch, and now the time is here.

I actually went to Miami to visit the Opes HQ before ASE this summer, and it was pretty sweet. They have an awesome office and everything is setup really nicely. I got to sneak a peak at the back end of the system, see their offers, landing pages, etc. Basically by the time I had left, I was excited for their launch not so I can tell everyone here, but so I could run some of their offers myself . They have some offers converting pretty well actually that I’m going to give a shot (if you do any rebill stuff now, definitely check these guys out).

Opes is tops with its professional layout, and seamless interface. Signing up is easy and doesn’t require a lot of time. And once you get going, you know you are getting the real deal. They have their own proprietary network that utilizes server-side tracking, and everything is totally customizable. They have some pretty rad looking offers that are worth checking out. Plus they have exclusive advertisers too, so offers should convert pretty well.

One nice thing was the account managers which can be iffy for many other networks. Their account managers knew their stuff and were always available, which is nice because when problems come up it’s good to have help waiting. Also, they got flexible payment options that help with cash flow needs. Basically, it is a network that knows what you need to do well, but whether or not you do well is up to you.

Check them out, it’s worth a signup at least. I’m not getting paid for this post nor does Opes even have a referral program, so there’s no incentives for me. Just something you should check out.

Advertiser update: many long days and 6am nights aside, everything is starting to come together. Hopefully a couple more weeks and all the heavy work will be finished.

Read the original here:

Keep asking questions on the questions post, since there’s usually a ton I’m just going to start answering them now.

NOTE : DON’T ASK QUESTIONS ON THIS POST, ASK THEM ON THE ORIGINAL. IF THEY’RE ASKED HERE THEY WON’T BE ANSWERED. I LINKED TO IT FOR A REASON.

Gary asks…

How much capital did you have to play with when launching your first ever campaign?

These are always fun, easy to do, and helpful to everybody out there because I’m directly answering their questions. Ask me anything related to affiliate marketing, life, anything you want. I won’t answer retarded questions either.

Just post a comment on this with the question you have. Let’s do it up.

Here is the original post:
Ask Me Questions