Neil Shearing’s Internet Marketing Strategies

OK, I may be throwing money down the toilet with this post… (not for the first time ,pdf link), but, hey, I love you guys, so here you go…

I haven’t put together a set of bonuses for Ewen Chia’s “Super Affiliate Cloning Program”, but I know some people who have. It wouldn’t feel right for me to promote a product offering no extra bonuses when I know people are basically offering their first-borns if you buy through their link. So here you go… compare the best offer and decide for yourself which bonuses you’d like…

Louis Allport…
http://www.AllportPublishing.com/SpecialOffer.html

Cody Moya…
http://www.codymoya.com/affiliatecloning/

Anik Singal…
http://clicks.aweber.com/z/ct/?RtezX.hNU7ZKiLC.5OCQPQ

What’s in it for me? Erm… Nothing.

If you’d like Ewen’s product, compare the offers, then empty your cookies. (see this tutorial for how to do that if you’re not sure) then revisit the site you’d like the bonuses from and order using their link.

I apologise to marketers offering bonuses with Ewen’s product that I don’t know about. The three above turned up in my Inbox, so I’m mentioning them.

Apparently Google are wanting to get rid of ads leading to low-quality pages. Such pages could be full of affiliate links, “squeeze pages” that try to capture email addresses without much content or pages that are intended to ”flip clicks” (by buying low-cost clicks from Adwords and flipping them by having high-paying Adsense ads on the landing pages).

Apparently Google don’t say you’re banned, they say your minimum cost per click is $5, $10 or somesuch. LOL. Same thing.

Check out the SE Roundtable posts here and here for more information. Those posts comment on Webmaster World threads, which require a subscription to access but here’s the official information from Google themselves and a long thread at Digital Point if you’re interested in more reading!

If you want a copy of Clickin It Rich or Revenge of the Mininet, check this out…

“I’m offering Clickin’ it Rich and Revenge of the Mininet for 30 more days, starting August 01 2006. As of September 01 2006 the affiliate program will be closed, and the products removed from the market.” (source)

Marketing gimmick? Not on your life. I’ve know Michael for long enough (erm, five, six years!) to know that marketing gimmicks are not his style. In fact, he took his best-selling Nothing But Net offline a few years ago, something which I haven’t seen any other marketers do.

He now gives NBN away for free. Will he do that with Clickin It Rich and Revenge of the Mininet? I don’t know. He only said he was withdrawing them “from the market”… so, if you want to risk it, I guess you could wait and see if he’ll just put the ebooks online for free. But, considering he mentioned support as an issue, and he’d still get people asking questions (probably more!) if he gave away the ebooks, I wouldn’t bank on them becoming freebies. 

Michael Campbell made a post at his blog that I found interesting. He’s now using smArticle Composer for Adsense sites and XSitePro for affiliate revenue sites.

The use of smArticle Composer is because it gets very, very high clickthrough rates and so earns the maximum amount for the traffic each site receives. It’s also shockingly fast at building site.

I’ve built sites using smArticle Composer and I can see why the pages get lots of clicks (just check out the examples in the sales letter to see for yourself). However, the sites are very basic. Naturally you can edit the templates by hand (yeugh) or get someone else to do it for you, but the problem you’ll encounter, most likely, is that people won’t link to the site naturally.

It’s all well and good to get your own links by submitting articles or submitting to directories but real sites grow links organically because they’re useful and so people link to them as references. When sites grow links organically you won’t have to worry about maintaining your PageRank or traffic.

So the line is drawn… are you going to build Adsense sites with articles that “survive” in the search engines but don’t get organic links and only get inward links because you do the hard work of building them, or are you more attracted to building true quality sites that get links organically because other webmasters want to link to them as resource sites? 

Neither strategy can really be called “right” or “wrong”. It’s down to your own preference at the end of the day. Personally, I can see that living on the edge with a ton of sites that are “surviving” in the search engines in July 2006 may not be a good place to be in July 2007.

A past article getting a fresh airing… with new comments at the end…

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A major concern of mine for people who only earn money from affiliate programs is that the rug can be pulled out from under you.

It’s all very well building excellent mini sites and making sure pages score highly in the search engines.

But what happens if the affiliate program closes?

What if the affiliate program commissions are changed such that you earn $0.25 per click instead of $0.50… but you know all your pay per click campaigns are only profitable if you earn over $0.35 per click?

Nightmare!

Here’s a very real example which I received from c2it, the Citibank-backed person-to-person payment system (kind of like PayPal)…

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c2it.com

Dear Neil Shearing,

We want to thank you for participating in the c2it (SM) service publisher program, and to advise you that we will be terminating our program on September 30th, 2002.

We will continue to pay a $5 commission for every approved c2it account that you generate until September 30th, 2002. However, international sales must be conducted before September 30th to be eligible for the additional commission.**

c2it links will be deactivated on September 30th, 2002! c2it creative links will be removed from the CJ interface on September 30th, 2002. You are no longer authorized to feature c2it advertising on your site(s) or within emails at that time. After September 30th, you will not be eligible for any commissions on c2it enrollments (leads) and or c2it transactions (sales).

If you have any questions pertaining to this news, please feel free to contact me. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

We have enjoyed working with you.

Regards,

c2it Affiliate Manager
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Hmmm, not much fun if you were referring people to their program and earning $5 per referral!

My advice is to make money from affiliate programs while you create your own product.

Once you’ve launched your own product, you can use affiliate links to “backend” sell to your customers… but the “frontend” (your products) give you that all important income stability.

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I would now include Adsense in with those comments… Adsense is owned, run and operated by Google. If, for any reason, they halved their payouts or even closed the program, there would be huge problems for anyone who built their business (and income) around Adsense. It wouldn’t be total devastation because you could re-direct site traffic to other programs, but it would involve a lot of extra work and hassle.

In a word, diversify.

Just a quickie to let you know that Affiliate Classroom officially launched today and there are some unique bonuses for early bird buyers. Check out what the full product looks like (in fact, I think they’ve added to it since I got my copy !!), and head on over to the website for the full scoop on this incredible product for budding affiliate managers!

I jumped the gun with my previous post containing a picture of the Affiliate Classroom product, the Affiliate Manager and had to censor myself!

(you could say I gave you a world exclusive for a short time while the uncensored image was up!)

Now I’m officially allowed to show you this quality product in all its glory… sitting on my kitchen worktop…

(click to enlarge)

I’m still working my way through this huge package… it’s a tour-de-force of information about starting an affiliate program, managing affiliates and finding and recruiting super affiliates. There’s also a huge amount of additional information such as categorized links for every topic relating to affiliates you can think of. A great resource. You can find out more, and get a free report by clicking on this link.

In Allan Gardyne’s latest newsletter he talks about the struggles he has staying focused, which is a topic I’ve mentioned here recently. Allan has some great practical tips, and I’d like to share his article with you…

 ================================================
2. Here’s what I do
   …How to stay focused and achieve your goals
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(The latest goal I’ve achieved is at the end of this item.)

Here’s a question “Dotdash” asked on our affiliate forum:

   “Anyone else having problems staying focused on specific tasks? I’m finding that as soon as I get settled into something like writing a page or article I get another email from someone telling me to stop what I’m doing now and pay attention to this extremely important aspect, then another one about something else important and so on.

   “It’s so easy to get distracted by things coming at you from all directions that sometimes I spend my couple of hours a night just going round in circles and not accomplishing very much.”

This sounds so familiar. Been there, done that.

Here’s how I overcame the problem.

It’s a system which works well for me - when I remember to use it…

Keep reminding yourself who’s boss of your life.

You are.

1. ALWAYS do the following: At the end of your work day, make a list of the 6 most important tasks to do the next day, in order of priority.

If it’s a large task, break it down into bite-sized chunks.

Don’t leave this list-making to the next day. Always prepare it the day before. For this system to work, you must hit the ground running every day.

2. Next day, DON’T start your day by checking for email. Don’t read newsletters, or visit news sites, or blogs, or do any of your usual favorite distractions. Start on No.1 on your priority list. Do it. Move on to item No. 2. Do it.

If possible, break your tasks into 50-minute slices. Aim to get a task done in 50 minutes, or perhaps two tasks in 50 minutes, depending on how complex they are. Setting a time limit will speed up your work, especially if you’re a perfectionist or a procrastinator.

Reward yourself with a 10-minute break. Do a few stretching exercises. Drink a glass of water - you need to keep your brain lubricated.

As you’re reading this, picture yourself actually doing this. At last, you’re getting USEFUL things done. You’re building your business. It feels good, doesn’t it?

After lunch, when you go back to work, DON’T check your emails, don’t read newsletters etc. They can wait. Carry on doing your high priority tasks. You’re the boss, remember. You’re allowed to decide what’s important.

(If you have employees or people to whom you’ve outsourced work to who are likely to need prompt answers, schedule times for answering urgent emails. Don’t allow them to interrupt your vital tasks. If you allow them, constant interruptions will spoil your creativity and slow your output.)

When you’ve completed your list of tasks, reward yourself with an enjoyable break. You’ve earned it.

Go for a walk, watch the sunset, read a chapter of a novel. Watch TV for half an hour. Chat with a friend or spouse. Do something you enjoy, and soak in the good feelings you’re having about achieving something worth while that day.

It feels good, doesn’t it?

OK. Now allow yourself to check a few emails and answer any urgent ones.

Before stopping work for the day, make a new list of the 6 most important things to do.

Stick with this system for 21 days. It seems to take 21 days to form a habit.

Keep concentrating on how GOOD it feels when you tick those items off your list. Don’t cross them off. Write them down on paper and put a big fat, satisfying red tick beside each one as you achieve it. (If you have software which enables you to tick off items on a list, that’s good, too.)

Try this system and you’ll be utterly amazed at how much you can achieve in a day, in a week, in a month.

An important part of this system is rewarding yourself when you achieve your goals. For example, take your spouse or a friend out to dinner to reward yourself for having achieved your first day where you get 100 visitors a day, 500 visitors a day, 1,000 visitors a day, etc.

Plan special rewards for when you finish a special report, write your first 20 articles for a new website, have your first $100
day, $500 day, $1,000 day, whatever.

When you buy your first investment shares, when you buy your first property, etc., ALWAYS celebrate.

This is really important. Always enjoy your successes.

You deserve them.

I admit I get distracted from this system occasionally and then have to prod myself back to it. I’m a bit of a rebel and don’t like taking orders from anyone - not even myself.

On days when I do follow the system my productivity is hugely better than on the days when I’m disobedient.

Sometimes I wonder just how much more I could have achieved if I’d followed this system more consistently.

But it is working…

Joanna and I have just bought another apartment with water views.

It’s what you might call a “lifestyle investment” rather than a strictly business-minded investment. All thanks to affiliate
marketing.

We haven’t moved in yet. I’ll show you some photos another day.

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For those of you who don’t know, Allan runs associateprograms.com , one of the first ever ”affiliate directories” which he started in 1998… just a few short months after I registered my scamfreezone.com domain. Allan has written his very highly regarded newsletter throughout the 8 years he’s been running associateprograms.com and the latest issue is number 290. It’s a great achievement to have provided such high quality information over such a long period of time.

Interestingly, while I was always more product-orientated, Allan always stuck with earning his online income through affiliate programs. He has a few other sites in addition to associateprograms.com such as…

http://www.PayPerClickSearchEngines.com
http://www.LifetimeCustomers.com
http://www.LifetimeCommissions.com
http://www.KeywordWorkshop.com

Allan is the only high profile Internet marketer I know of who earns his income only through affiliate income. If you want to learn about making money as an affiliate, his is the first site I’d suggest you visit and the first newsletter I’d suggest you sign up for.