How to Double Your Affiliate Earnings
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This is a really valuable affiliate tip, that is also slightly embarrassing.
One of the first hosting companies that I began using when first started working online was Hostgator. I like them. There are cheaper companies, since they don’t offer a “pay for a year, and save a whack of cash” deal like most companies do, but I’ve always been satisfied, so I’ve always promoted them as an affiliate.
I’ve made quite a few sales for them too.
Today, I was searching through Commission Junction, looking for hosting offers for my new blog setup service site, and was surprised to find Hostgator as one of the hosting companies in their system.
You see, since I signed up as a client with Hostgator, I was given an affiliate link with them as part of my client account.
Here’s the rub, if I use the link I received from Hostgator as their client, I get $50 per referral.
If I use the link from CJ, the payout is $100!
It never even occurred to me companies would run different affiliate payout offers through competing affiliate management sites. When you run a search inside CJ for “hosting” offers, you’ll understand why they do it. The search returns many offers and most publishers will simply sort by payout. The only way to get noticed is to have a high payout.
The first take-away is to shop around for affiliate offers, even to the point of looking for the same company in different affiliate marketing networks.
The second take-away is to use link management software or domains for your affiliate links, so if you do change the offers you are promoting, you can do it in one place and update all the links on your site(s).
Do You Follow a Plan? Win a Prize.
This weekend’s “Answer a Question - Win a Prize” is about following a plan
First the rules:
Leave as many comments as you like. If you don’t have a clear answer to the question, but what to just discuss the question or related thoughts, anything goes and anything on topic will be considered as a possible winner.
I’m the judge and jury.
I may award more than one DVD prize if I feel there is more than one deserving response.
I will ship the DVD anywhere in the world, at my expense.
Contest is open until Midnight Mountain time (UTC -7) on Sunday August 5th, 2007. On Tuesday AM, I’ll post the winner. However, if you read this and it’s after that date, post your comment anyways, I may still send you a DVD.
his week’s question is simple…
Do You Follow a Plan?
Specifically I’m interested in your efforts to make money online, but take the topic in any direction you like.
Here’s some related questions to get your comment juices flowing.
If you do have a plan…
Where did you find your plan?
What makes you think it will work?
Is it written down?
Do you have a deadline to implement it?
How did you come up with the plan?
Do you stick to it? If no, why not?
If you don’t have a plan…
Why not?
The best answers get the $100 DVD, which shows you how to earn a living by creating and selling your own DVDs. (See the DVD sales page on Kunaki.)
Have a great weekend,
Jon
Unscramble Your Brain & Get More Done
Do you ever have those days where despite having a well organized to-do list, you still can’t get anything done?
I do.
It seemed to happen fairly often, to the point where I needed to question what was going on. Some days I’m ultra productive; thrashing through an arms length to-do list, and some days I just can’t seem to get started or I waste countless hours checking stats and stock prices.
Even on days when I followed my favorite productivity tip from Four Hour Work Week of preparing my to-do list the night before, I still had days of getting nothing significant accomplished.
The Answer?
Art of Money July Recap
I’ve been running an Art of Money monthly recap for the last few months with earnings etc, but it has been pretty consistent for the last couple months and July was no exception, so I figured I switch it up a bit and give more of a business update of what I’ve spent my time on for the month of July.
Continuous Learning
I am continuing my way through the Building Profitable Websites course at University 20/20. The module that I am currently studying is about building a website content blueprint using their market intelligence tools.
What’s Your Biggest Challenge - Results
First let me say that you all renewed my faith in my blogging. A while ago I read on ProBlogger how being a “people person” was essential to being a great blogger.
I know I don’t usually get very many comments on my posts, and I chalked it up to the fact that I’m a geek at heart and more of a computer person than a people person.
But now I know it’s not true, you don’t have to be a people person to get a conversation going, you just have to ask a straight-forward question…and offer bribes of course. 
Let’s get to the answers to my post: What’s Your Biggest Challenge? Win a Prize.
The List of Challenges
The Easiest Way I Know to Make $10,021.00
This story is going to require a bit of setup and background. It is an account of the events in my life over the past 2 weeks that increased my net worth by a little over $10,000 with almost no effort on my part.
My Wife
You need to first know a bit about my wife.
In my experience there are two basic types of people. A venture capitalist once called them propeller heads (or dreamers) and anchors (practical, down to earth types).
My wife is the former and I am the latter. She is the only person I’ve ever met who managed to maintain a major portion of her childhood innocence into adulthood. As a result she gets to live in a world where magic is common and accepted as the norm.
When she wants a new kitchen table, and there is no money in her budget for it, she just informs God of her request and in a day or two someone will offer her one or she’ll find a $500 maple table in a back alley that just needs a bit of TLC to look like an amazing antique.
There’s more to her than these thin slices of course, but this is the knowledge of her that you’ll need to understand the rest of my story.
What’s Your Biggest Challenge? Win a Prize.
Well I’ve got a box full of $100 “Earn An Income By Creating Your Own DVD” and I’m moving in 5 weeks, so I’d better get busy distributing them.
I figured a great way to start would be to have a “question time” where I ask you a question and then reward the best responses.
Here’s the rules. One answer (entry) per comment, you can leave as many comments as you like. If you don’t have a clear answer to the question, but what to just discuss the question or related thoughts, anything goes and anything on topic will be considered as a possible winner.
I’m the judge and jury.
I may award more than one DVD prize if I feel there is more than one deserving response.
I will ship the DVD anywhere in the world, at my expense.
Contest is open until Midnight Mountain time (UTC -7) on Sunday July 29th, 2007. On Tuesday AM, I’ll post the winner.
I’m not pretending that I’ll be able to answer the questions. If I can, I will, but mostly I’m just curious about what people feel holds them back.
Here’s the official question…
What’s the one thing that limits or prevents you from reaching your goals with your efforts to earn money online?
Another way to look at it would be…
“If I had _______ I would be able to easily create a six figure (and beyond) income.”
The best answers get the $100 DVD, which shows you how to earn a living by creating and selling your own DVDs.
Have a great weekend,
Jon Symons
Blogging at midnight on Friday, so you don’t have to.
Ed Dale’s Thirty Day Challenge
I just discovered an interesting opportunity that I wanted to pass along.
It is called “Thirty Day Challenge” and it is being run by famous niche site creator Ed Dale. (Famous because he sold his collection of thirty or so sites for $5,000,000 a couple years back.)
The challenge is designed to get you to make your first $10 online, without spending a penny.
I realize that it is a very modest goal, and yes you are correct, it is aimed at absolute beginners, but I believe that there is probably some cool stuff to be learned for anyone interested in online money making.
They have promised that it is all for free, meaning no cost to go through the whole challenge, get all the tools and tips they use and to complete the challenge.
If in fact it all does end up being free, with no product offers or “upsells” then they will certainly be forcibly removed from Internet marketers union.
From what I’ve seen so far, they seem sincere.
I am guessing that, they are going to use some kind of product creation as the primary means of making money and it looks like they are going to provide you with a blog, so that’s how they can keep it zero cost.
One thing I like about how it is setup is that while everyone competes as an individual but you can join teams to help each other out. It is a fun idea and it looks like, from reading the forums that there are some really interesting and experience people joining in (like the founder of WordTracker, Mike Mindel…yes the WordTracker).
The contest begins August 1st, and the pre-season information started flowing about a week ago, so you will have to read the blog (go to the beginning and read it backwards) to get up to speed and get all the tools setup.
Personally I’m still on the fence as to whether or not I’ll actually participate (due to having a lot of things going on already). If you decide you’d like to do it, then leave a comment or get in touch, maybe I can be persuaded to join your team. Canadians have won the previous 2 years, so I may be lucky!
Video intro: http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com/
The blog: http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com/blog/
The forum, where you can find a team: http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com/forums/
Let me know what you think or if you’re planning to join in.
$10,000 Box Arrived
Well James D. Brausch is a man of his word. The prize for the contest I won last week arrived and it was Christmas in July here in Edmonton.
100 copies of James’ DVD product called “Earn An Income By Creating Your Own DVD” which sells on Kunaki for $100 each.
$100 x 100 = $10,000.
Actually, $10,000 if I sell them for full price, but if I can use (or leverage them) for contests or give-away’s or trade for services, then potentially I can get a lot more value than that from them.
I love this gift/prize. Not only do they perfectly tie into what I know and preach is the best way to make money online (by creating products) but it also messes perfectly with The Four Hour Work Week, which I read daily and consider to be my current business bible.
[In case you haven't read the book Tim's promotes the idea of a "muses" which produce a $10,000 a month income with very little hands on maintenance required - he suggests that selling information products, is the easiest way to accomplish this, and even gives an example of someone who achieves freedom creating her own Yoga DVD.]
I haven’t had a chance to watch the DVD yet, and I’ll get a review up as soon as I do.
Thank you James, I’m blown away.
Jon Symons
P.S. Wondering why Mr. Brausch would give out such a generous gift. Well it does make good business sense and I would normally tell you all about it, but it was Christmas in July at Terry Dean’s house too and he already wrote a great post about using the law reciprocity in your business.
5 Ways To Discover Affiliate Products That Make Money
On my recent post about pre-sell affiliate pages, Rich Minx left a question about how to find affiliate products to promote.
It’s actually something I never really thought about, so I thought I’d develop it into an article and came up with 5 ways that I have used to find affiliate products.
I’m sure that there are many more, so feel free to leave your ideas in the comments.
Here’s my Top 5 Ways to find affiliate programs that can actually make money.
5.) Copy Related Sites
When you visit other sites that relate to your topic, what are they promoting? Pay particular attention to sites that are more successful than you, and that promote products, especially in prominent positions on their sites, for extended periods of time.
It is likely that these are the affiliate programs that are making them money. Steal their ideas!