Look What Dave Found


Why You Should Promote Residual Affiliate Programs
April 7, 2006, 4:37 am
Filed under: Commentary, Miscellaneous
Are you a webmaster in need of additional income?  Or are you planning to set up an online business but you still don’t have any product to sell?  If so, affiliate marketing may be the best solution for your problems.  With affiliate marketing, you won’t need to worry about the products you have to sell.  All you need to have is a website with sufficient contents that are related to the products of a certain online company offering affiliate programs.  By becoming a member of the program, or by becoming an affiliate, you can start earning a certain amount of money right away!
 
Affiliate marketing is special type of cooperative business relationship established between a merchant and his affiliates.  In affiliate marketing, an affiliate agrees to direct some traffic to a merchant’s website.  If that traffic is converted into some type of action, like a visitor purchasing a product on the merchant’s website or a visitor becoming a lead for the company, the affiliate who directed the traffic will be compensated.  Compensation may take the form of either a percentage sales commission for the sales generated or a fixed fee predetermined upon the application of the affiliate on the merchant’s affiliate program.
 
 
Promising a lot of benefits both for the merchants and the affiliates, affiliate marketing has become one of the most popular online marketing methods today.  In fact, almost every merchant or retailer site today offers an affiliate program that any one can join into.  Most retailers would entice people to become affiliates or members of their program by promising great benefits like large commissions, lifetime commissions, click through incomes and a lot of other benefits.  But would all these affiliate programs bring off the same benefits?
 
Most affiliate programs would pay you, as an affiliate, a one-time commission for every sale or lead you brought to the merchant’s website.  Commissions for this kind of affiliate programs are usually large, ranging from 15% to a high of about 60%.  Other affiliate programs would pay you a fixed fee for every click through or traffic you send to the merchant’s site.  Programs like this often pay a smaller fee for every click through, usually not getting any larger than half a dollar.  The good thing about this kind of program, however, is that the visitor won’t have to purchase anything in order for the affiliate to get compensated.
 
Another type of affiliate program is the residual income affiliate program.  Residual affiliate programs usually pay only a small percentage of sales commission for every sale directed by the affiliate to the merchant’s site.  This commission often comes only in the range of 10% to 20% sales commission.  Because of this, many people ignore residual affiliate program and would rather opt for the high paying one-time commission affiliate program.  Are these people making a mistake, or are they making the right decision?
 
 
We can’t tell, for sure, if people are making a mistake by choosing a high paying one-time commission affiliate program.  But we can definitely say that they are making a large mistake if they ignore residual affiliate programs.  Residual affiliate programs would indeed pay at a lower rate, but merchants offering such kind of programs would generally pay you regular and ongoing commissions for a single affiliate initiated sale!  That means, for the same effort you made in promoting a particular affiliate program, you get paid only once in a one-time commission program, and a regular and ongoing commission for a residual program!
 
So, are the benefits of promoting residual affiliate programs clearer to you now?  Or are they still vague?  If they are still vague, then let’s make them a bit clearer with this example:
 
Suppose there are two online merchants both offering web hosting services on their sites.  The first merchant offers a one-time commission type of affiliate program that pays $80 for every single affiliate initiated sale.  The second merchant also offers an affiliate program, but this time a residual affiliate program that pays only $10 for every single affiliate initiated sale.  As an affiliate, we may get attracted at once at what the first merchant is offering, as $80 is definitely a lot larger than $10.  But by thinking things over before actually getting into them, one may be able to see that the second merchant is offering us more opportunity to earn a larger amount of money.
 
Supposed you have directed traffic to the merchant and it converted into a sale, you’ll get paid once by the first merchant for the sale you have initiated.  But with the second merchant, you’ll get paid monthly for as long as the customer you have referred to the merchant continues to avail of the web hosting service.  That means that for the same effort of getting one customer to avail of the merchant’s service, you get paid monthly in residual affiliate programs while you only get paid once in a one-time commission type of affiliate programs.
 
 
So, are residual affiliate programs worth promoting?  Definitely yes, because you virtually get more money from these types of affiliate programs in the long run!  And would residual affiliate programs work best for you?  Probably not, probably yes.  It is not really for me to tell.  But with the benefits that residual affiliate marketing can provide, it would really be unwise to ignore such programs.
 
Leave a Comment


Diversity Is The Key To Monetizing Your Blog (David Gridley)
April 5, 2006, 6:45 pm
Filed under: Commentary, Miscellaneous
Diversity Is The Key to Monetizing Your Blog
by: David Gridley (dgridley)

Banned by Google Adsense? It could happen without warning and has to many unsuspecting (and some not quite so unsuspecting) Adsense publishers who’ve somehow managed to run afoul of the Adsense TOS (terms of service).

It’s beyond the scope of this article to discuss the possible reasons why your blog or web site might be or has been banned but suffice to say that if you’ve put all your eggs in one basket by using Adsense as your only or primary source of revenue, you could be temporarily bankrupt, cast adrift in a sea of mistakes you could have easily avoided.

Sure, as a contextual ad server, Adsense is far and away tough to beat. Their range and depth in advertisers is their strength making them the top choice for monetizing the average blog or web site.

Ok, now re-read the preceding paragraph and take a closer look. I’ll repeat: (Adsense’s) range and depth in advertisers is their strength.

It’s the diversity in the sheer number and type of advertiser and ads they offer that make Adsense numbero uno in their field.

So, in other words, if you’ve been banned by Google, you’ve just lost access to that huge database of ads and advertisers. What do you do?

And, maybe you haven’t yet been banned from the Adsense program and just want to “hedge your bets” and add some additional streams of revenue?

 

Let me tell you this: the absolute key to monetizing your blog (or web site) is DIVERSITY.

Everyone likes a choice and the more choices you can offer your visitors translates directly into those “additional streams of revenue” we mentioned earlier.

Let me suggest a few no-cost ways we can accomplish this quickly and with the least amount of “muss and fuss”, using my favorite blogging platform, WordPress.

(By the way, if you’re not blogging as a way of branding either your name or product, you should be. Blogs tend to get more traffic and page rank, as well as faster indexing by the search engines, than almost any other online platform. A regularly updated blog with relevant content can easily go from PR 0 to PR 4 (or better) in just a few months. Higher page rank translates into more $$ for you!)

First of all, why use WordPress? Three reasons: reliability, free support, and loads and loads of free WordPress themes and plugins to choose from. In addition, WordPress itself is free and is included in most hosting packages as part of the Fantastico module in your CPanel. For most of us, WordPress is readily available and can be installed with just a few clicks of the mouse.

If you don’t have hosting of your own, you can also sign up for a free WordPress blog at www.wordpress.com.

Because this article is primarily about methods you can use to monetize your blog or web site, we won’t go into adding themes to WordPress other than to say there are hundreds of free themes available, allowing you to literally change the look of your WordPress blog with the click of a button.

Let’s say you just installed WordPress (or even if you’ve already been using WordPress), what can you now do to add those additional streams of revenue to your blog?

Here’s a short list of essential plugins you’ll immediately want to install to monetize your blog and why:

1. Martin Laine’s excellent Audio Player
Martin’s plugin allows you to easily add MP3 audio files to your posts allowing visitors to feel your enthusiasm as you explain the benefits of visiting your blog, or using your service or product. Audio increases visitor interest and promotes sales by allowing you to personalize the experience of visiting your site or blog. Adding audio to your site is as easy as uploading the audio file to a specified directory, then posting the link to your post. Laine’s Audio Player plugin automatically transforms your MP3 links into an audio player.

In short, you can commercialize, brand, and monetize your blog by using audio effectively.

2. Rich Manalang’s WP-Amazon plugin for WordPress
Amazon.com associates should immediately install this handy plugin. WP-Amazon allows you to easily search for and add branded Amazon links and images to your posts right from within the WordPress control panel.

3. Wayne Walrath’s WP-AdSense-Deluxe plugin
Assuming you haven’t been banned from Google Adsense, WP-AdSense-Deluxe lets you define one or more Google adsense ad blocks (or Yahoo Publisher Network-YPN ads) which can then be easily inserted into any post (including multiple ad blocks per post) simply by adding a pre-defined comment within your post.

4. Angsuman Chakraborty’s Ad Rotator
Ad Rotator is an ad rotating solution for your ads, including Adsense, Clicksor, Chitika, etc. Ad Rotator displays an advertisement (which is randomly selected from a group of advertisements specified in a text file) at your chosen location.

5. Thom Skrtich’s Auto Translator
Here’s a No-Brainer: translating your blog automatically into one of several different languages can significantly increase readership and sales. Auto Translator helps you accomplish this by allowing visitors to select a flag from your WordPress sidebar and automatically translating your post or page into the visitor’s language. Think of the possibilities!

 

6. Edna Melendez’s WPCashLinksLite
This is my personal favorite tool and WordPress plugin. Available as both a free or paid version, WPCashLinksLite (free version) allows you to enter up to ten keywords with destination URLs that you want linkable throughout your blog posts and comments. What makes this so great is your destination URLS can go anywhere you specify for any keyword or keyword phrase you choose. For example, on my www.iPlayGolf.info, I’ve used WPCashLinksLite to direct the keyword “swing” to a specific golfing-related Clickbank ebook affiliate link. Best of all, WPCashLinksLite can be used in addition to Adsense so it’s a win-win situation.

So there you have it.. six of the best, in my opinion, ways you can diversify and monetize your WordPress blog.

But before I go, let me suggest just one more application you’ll definitely want to add to your revenue enhancing repertoire, Qumana Desktop Blog Editor with Adgenta.

First of all, Adgenta (or Q-Ads) is an easy and powerful way for you to enhance the revenue potential of your website or blog. Q-Ads is a unique way for you to embed ads anywhere you can place an image. These images will look “familiar”.. in fact, they are images similar in appearance to the text ads served by Adsense and Yahoo Publisher Network.

Two things that make Q-Ads an awesome revenue tool: YOU choose the keywords used to display the image ads AND Q-Ads can be used in conjunction with your Adsense! Q-Ads and Adsense equal “the best of two worlds” in my book!

Downloading and using Qumana Desktop Blog Editor allows you to write, save, and post your blog entries to a variety of platforms, including WordPress. Q-Ads (or Adgenta) is integrated into the application, allowing you to insert Q-Ads anywhere into your blog with the click of your mouse.

To sum up, using these tools I’ve described will allow you to expand and diversify your blog’s revenue streams and free you from depending on Adsense alone!

=====================================================

About The Author:

David Gridley (dgridley) is a daily visitor to www.webloggers.org and the Namepros.com domain discussion forum (with over 8000 posts) and has been selected NamePros Member of the Month twice. He is also author of the www.lookwhatdavefound.info blog and a host of others. To reprint this article in whole or part, request permission by email to dave@davidgridley.com .

For over 16,000 pages of free articles just like this one, visit: www.articlesites.info

 
 
Leave a Comment


Look What Dave Found: Moving Day!
January 14, 2006, 9:22 pm
Filed under: Commentary, Miscellaneous, Shameless Plugs
Look What Dave Found has moved! You can now. find the blog at www.lookwhatdavefound.info
 
See you there!
 
 
 
Leave a Comment


Look What Dave Found: Is Slashdot Passe?
January 12, 2006, 8:41 pm
Filed under: Commentary, Miscellaneous
I’m wondering aloud if Slashdot hasn’t slowly begun sinking below the horizon with the advent of rivals Digg and Newsvine? I know that lately Slashdot is the last check on my news run .. I wonder how many others feel the same.
 
It’s not that they don’t do what they do well.. it’s that Slashdot, to me, lacks freshness. In that I mean, they need to redo their presentation. It’s looked the same forever and, frankly, it’s boring and pales beside Newsvine’s in particular. Digg has that “I’m accessible” appeal to me.. it’s just as newsy but speaks to me directly.
 
Be interesting to see who survives the present shakeout.. for my money, I’m betting on Newsvine when it comes out of Beta. You heard it here first!
 
 
 
 
 
Leave a Comment


Look What Dave Found: Email any size file to anyone FREE with Pando
January 10, 2006, 6:18 pm
Filed under: Commentary, Freebies, Miscellaneous, Shameless Plugs
http://www.pando.com

From The Site:

pando: is a tiny app that lets you email any size file or folder to anyone, free.

we: are currently conducting a closed beta testing program. To request an invite, enter your email address below.

I just received my Beta tester invite, tried the program and it works extremely well.

If you’d like an invite to download and use Pando, send me your email. I’ll send you a small test file which includes an invitation to download Pando.

 
Meanwhile, check out the links posted in the Sidebar here and visit my friends.. thanks!
 
 
 
 
Leave a Comment


Look What Dave Found: 1gb Ilo MP3 Player from Walmart!
January 8, 2006, 5:33 am
Filed under: Commentary, Miscellaneous, Shameless Plugs
 
I think I mentioned earlier that I’d purchased (on impulse) a 1gb Ilo Mp3 Player from Walmart a few days back. It’s ORANGE <blech> but how well does it work? Did I get what I paid for?
 
First, the storage capacity (the package says it will hold up to 460 songs) at 1gb was more than sufficient for my needs. I wasn’t ready to shell out more than the $100 it cost me for a more expensive unit with larger capacity and 128 – 512mb seemed a bit small.
 
 
Second, I liked that it included a FM radio tuner. That was one thing I “wanted” in a potential buy. I’m big on “Talk Radio” and hoped I could get my daily dose of Rush (yes, Limbaugh) if I so desired.
 
Well, it plays well enough.. the sound, to my ears, is just peachy..
 
My main complaint? The case and buttons have that “don’t push too hard or too often or we’ll break in a heartbeat” feel.. hopefully that won’t be the case.
 
Only time will tell, eh?
 
 
 
 
 
1 Comment


Look What Dave Found: CB Text Ads Generator, Part 2
January 7, 2006, 6:26 pm
Filed under: Commentary, Miscellaneous, Shameless Plugs
1. How’d you like to auto-convert contextually relevant keywords in HTM, HTML, PHP, and ASP pages to Clickbank affiliate links with your Clickbank ID?
2. What if, on mouseover, those links displayed the relevant Clickbank title and product description?
3. How about if you could automatically add your Clickbank affiliate links to a single document, page or an entire folder (and sub-folders) at the click of a button?
If you’re currently a Clickbank affiliate or hope to become one, you owe it to yourself to take a close look at, then purchase, CB Text Ads Generator. With CB Text Ads Generator you can do all of the above and more!
You can add links in two ways automatically:
Exact Parse (default search):  

CB Text Ads Generator finds the exact keyword match of Clickbank product titles and descriptions within a document.  In case of identical match, then on mouseover, the visitor gets a window with Clickbank product title and description.

Or:

Sound Ex Parse (Intelligent search):CB Text Ads Generator will also find keywords in a document/file that “sound” like Clickbank Products keywords.  In such a case, on mouse over, the visitor gets a window with Clickbank product title and description.

CB Text Ads Generator automatically loads a Clickbank keywords datafile when you open the application. Simply import your individual htm, html, php, or asp file (or an entire folder and sub-folder), click the Parse option, and CB Text Ads Generator wil add the relevant Clickbank affilate links (embedded with your Clickbank affiliate ID) and save the file. It’s that easy!

In just a few clicks, you can monetize all your PLR articles, your website pages, ebooks, and more!

For more information: CB Text Ad Generator

 

 

Leave a Comment


Look What Dave Found: CB Text Ad Generator, Content Creator Pro..
January 6, 2006, 4:59 pm
Filed under: Commentary, Miscellaneous, Shameless Plugs
 
Quickly I wanted to post to wish everyone the best in 2006.. my holidays here in Southwest Missouri were a bit hectic but nice!
 
First, I treated myself to a few “gifts”.. I needed to upgrade my hard drive from it’s pitiful (by todays’ standards) 10gb and move “up” from Windows ME to XP. Over the holidays I’d notice Walmart <gasp!> had a computer system on Clearance for $275 (an Everex Explora RS2600) so I bought it and have been slowly migrating from the “old” to the “new”. Biggest complaints: no Windows CD included, on board video slows the computer noticeably. Guess I’ll have to upgrade either the RAM (256mb currently) or disable the on board video and install a video card of my own.
 
 
I also bought (from Walmart, I confess), a 1gb Ilo MP3 player for just under 100 bucks.. now, I had no real need of an MP3 player but I figured a guy with an MP3 website and no MP3 player was somewhat scandalous. ;) Why not an Ipod or similar? I must admit, it was strictly an impulse buy on my part.. the 1gb capacity, price, and built-in FM radio sold me because it was available at arm’s length!
 
I’m excited about two new products I’m in the process of trying out: CB Text Ad Generator and Content Creator Pro. Check out the sales pages and after I’ve had a chance to fully try them out, I’ll post more here. I’m off work the next two days so I’ll devote some time to playing with both of these!
 
Well, sorry this is so short.. I’m sure I’ll be adding more soon.. meantime, have a great day! I’m off to work!
 
 
 
 
Leave a Comment


Look What Dave Found: #1 on MSN! Merry Christmas!
December 25, 2005, 7:34 pm
Filed under: Commentary, Miscellaneous, Shameless Plugs
Well, here’s one advantage of using the .info domain extension..

I just placed a site on my www.portablemp3players.info domain a bit less than a week now (Dec 21st) and it’s already showing at #1 position on MSN for “portable mp3 players info” (portable mp3 players resources too!)… not bad, I’d say!

http://www.freezepage.com/1135532100FHGPSCORCW

Gonna make this short today!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

 

 

2 Comments


Look What Dave Found: PortableMP3Players.info, Holiday Wishes!
December 21, 2005, 8:59 pm
Filed under: Commentary, Miscellaneous, Shameless Plugs
 
Sorry, I haven’t updated much the last week.. I’m trying to beat a nasty cold! Lost a week’s work already and while I’m back to work now (for my second day), I still feel really drained…
 
Time for a Shameless Plug: Introducing PortableMP3Players.info
 
I just set up a new site, www.portablemp3players.info .If you’re looking for a new MP3 player or are interested in reviews and articles concerning the new Ipod, Nano, and more.. check out the site. If you find something that interests you, be sure to click on the Amazon link to purchase!
 
Need help getting your new forum off the ground? Will post for food…
 
With over 7000 posts under my belt on NamePros.com and 2 Member of the Month awards, I’ve decided to pimp myself out a bit and offer my services as a “professional” message poster. You get some interesting posts and threads poted to your new (or old) forum, I get a little more exposure and networking in (plus some bucks). Interested? Email me for info.
 
Right now, I’m going to cut this short, drink a cup of (ugh!) Theraflu and catch 40 winks.. in the meantime, Happy Holidays!
 
 
1 Comment

previous »
Next Page »