I learned a GREAT Adwords lesson I want to share with you - it’s at our PLR website - read it here www.keywordcontent.net/plr/a-valuable-google-adwords-lesson/

Thanks!

I do the affiliate marketing thing like you.

Anyone that has been doing this for a while knows the drill:
a) find a product with a decent pay off.

b) research the demand in terms of searches.

c) get a keyword list together

d) set up a landing page to entice people to buy this product

e) write articles and set up a Squidoo Lens, Tumblr, Twing Forum posts and other directives back to your site to help send traffic.

(f) and last but not least, some affiliate marketers get into Adwords.

Adwords can be scary and it will turn into a money sucking machine if you don’t go in with a little headstart on how it works.

Remember, Google is a business and the responsibility of a business is to turn a profit. There are many ways Google has built in to Adwords to allow them to turn a quick profit.

First of all, don’t choose worldwide coverage unless you *know* for a fact that your product has international appeal, otherwise you may wind up with a lot of “curiosity clicks” from other place that had no intention of buying from you. Normally when I go into a campaign, I use US, Canada and UK. That’s it for my campaigns and they pay off fine.

Next, don’t choose to show accelerated ads, show your ads evenly as that way you won’t burn through your adwords budget quicker.

You don’t need #1 position on Adwords results to be popular with customers. I usually rank about position #6-#8 in my bidding and my ads cost less and I still appear on the front page and plus I add this. Here is a technique you may not know. When you set up your Adwords ads, use the following formula and you can use it on any line:

Here’s a sample ad for promotion of our PLR articles at Keyword Content

{KeyWord:Niche Content} Articles
Quality PLR articles written by our
own inhouse writers. No Memberships
www.keywordcontent.net/PLR

Okay, see that first line? Here’s the breakdown:
{Keyword: means that if someone searches for Dog Training PLR, their EXACT keyword will appear in the place of the word “keyword” however if they type something too large to appear the word “Niche Content” will appear instead.
Either selection will be followed by the word “articles”.

so
{Keyword:Heartburn} Cured Now!

Would appear as : “Acid Reflux Cured Now” to someone that was searching for acid reflux.  That person would be more likely to click on my ad because it has their exact keyword phrase their were using. This is a great way to really laser target your Adwords advertising and spend less while making more.

You can use ANYTHING as long as you write it like this {Keyword:Your Chosen Words}
Also, you can use this technique on ANY line of your Adwords ads. This is a great way to get more clicks and find targeted visitors that want your product. I’ll repeat it again, people will generally click an ad that has their exact keyword phrase.

Best of all, this is absolutely legal and Google Adwords has instructions on how to do this in their Adwords instructions.

I’ll talk more about content versus search networks on Adwords later this week.

If you have a for profit website or blog - no one has to tell you that you need content and not only that, you need content relevant to your site or you will be buried in the supplemental (supplement-HELL) results and in short - no one will find your site, your affiliate programs will make nothing and you will be another bewildered person that put a lot of work into setting up a site that isn’t selling diddily.

There are ways to remedy this situation so that your affiliate marketing programs will start paying off:

Be Unique
Google loves uniqueness and richly rewards it.
Sounds easy enough right? Take a minute and take stock. Are you using an unchanged template for your site? Change it so it isn’t leaving a duplicate footprint with Google and other search engines.

Is your content the same as everyone else’s? Change it. There are numerous ways to do it. Use a content spinner. A content spinner will take your articles (content) and then you choose to change the keyword and the content spinner will “spin” your article into something unique. Read what it spits out though- sometimes content spinners get it all wrong and come up with some interesting phrases.

Another option is to use limited edition private label rights (PLR) content. That’s a great way to get quality content. There are PLR companies where you can pay a monthly membership fee and also places like Keyword Content’s PLR where there are no fees, content written by professional writers and a TON of freebies.

Don’t use RSS feeds to fill your site with content. Those feeds are not unique to your site and won’t help your rankings at all.

Beware free article databases - yes the content is usually pretty good, yes it’s free, but it’s been out on the net for who knows how long and putting on your website won’t do a hill of beans worth of good for your own page rank or traffic building. If you want content, you’re either going to have to pay a writer, go the PLR route (always a good choice), or write it yourself. Yes, I said write it yourself.

If you’re wordy, you can write your own content. For my own content, I hit Google Trends and talk about things that are relevant to whichever one of my affiliate sites that I’m working on that day. Which brings me to another point, I know some people say you can put up a site, throw up Adwords.com advertisements and walk away - I have never had that luck. I find if I log into my sites once a week and put up content - it works and it works beautifully. It keeps the site fresh, the content relevant and the traffic coming which equals PPC + affiliate marketing $$ - and that’s a good thing.

After you take your website content up a notch, check your affiliate programs. Is each and everyone relevant to your page - if it’s not and you really feel the affiliate program has merit - create another site or blog. Try to not have more than 1 to 4 programs on a site - more than that is really over kill and tends to make people choose nothing. I have had the best success with 1 to 2 affiliate programs in my own humble experience.

And that’s just a little overview for today, I’m going to be talking about Adwords and how to get the most bang for your buck in my next post.

Have a super day!

Taking what I have learned from online marketing, I am writing this post to maybe help someone that is just getting into to it from making a costly (in the literal sense) mistake.

First of all, decide on the product you want to represent. Sounds moronic and simple, well that’s because it is.

Go to any of these places that have affiliate products to choose from such as Clickbank.com, CommissionJunction.com, Linkshare.com, Paydotcom.com, Clixgalore.com. Shareasale.com, MaxBounty.com, Tradedoubler.com or Amazon.com and choose 1-3 products. I’ll tell you why in a bit.

For the sake of argument, let’s run with Clickbank.com.

Okay we’ll choose one product to start with and run with that.
Let’s go to Clickbank.com and click on Marketplace. There we will find a huge number of choices - now we just need to narrow down our products to what we want to promote.

Think of common issues you’ve had or know people that have had.

Potty Training Kids?
Dog Training?
Cat Training?
Losing Weight?
Making Money From Home?

All of these are common issues and good choices. Now narrow it down.

Since more than half of America is overweight, let’s help them out and rep a weight loss program we like.

You can sort your results however you like, the default is by popularity. Here are the top 2 choices for weight loss programs as of today:

1) Fat Loss 4 Idiots. Affiliates: FatLoss4Idiots.com/aff :::: Thanks.
$/sale: $31.05 | Future $: - | Total $/sale: $31.05 | %/sale: 75.0% | %refd: 94.0% | grav: 597.85
view pitch page | create hoplink

2) Top Secret Fat Loss Secret :: 75% Commission:: Best Affiliate Toolkit. Makes $25-$60 Per Sale | Converts As High As 3%-5% | We Tested Just 1 Promo & Made $2,280/24hrs | We Give You Same Promo Free! | Sells Itself! | Get 1st-Movers Advantage | Join Now Free! | TopSecretFatLossSecret.com/affiliates.php.
$/sale: $32.33 | Future $: - | Total $/sale: $32.33 | %/sale: 75.0% | %refd: 91.0% | grav: 235.06
view pitch page | create hoplink

Both of these are high gravity, meaning they have a lot of affiliates representing these products so if you fear competition, choose a product with lower gravity.

The pay out for these is just over $30 a sale each so that’s not bad at all.

Okay now for the promotion you will have a couple of options-

*Create a review page where you compare the two weight loss plans. Even better if you’ve used them or know someone that has. Make one slightly better than the other - pros and cons work well. Search YouTube for a video - I guarantee you’ll find one - videos add a lot of OOmph to affiliate review pages. This will entail having a domain and you can get one dirt cheap at Web Host Giant. Here’s an example of a pros and cons website, it would be even better if there was video too. http://weightloss.4infoandreviews.com/weightloss.html

*Create an informational blog and make 3-5 postings about one or both programs. Here is the exact same website text in a blog (Wordpress) format.http://weightloss.4infoandreviews.com

* Magically Redirect - You can simply get a domain name and then redirect it to the landing page of your affiliate product. This involves zero creation of pages of any kind and you simply tell your web server to bounce anyone that lands whatever URL you choose to youraffiliatename.affiliateproduct.hop.clickbank.net.
Here is an example of a redirect: http://find.4infoandreviews.com

Now you can got out and post yourself on Digg.com, Stumble.com, Sphinn.com and Squidoo.com yourself however nothing will have the traffic driving ability of Adwords.com.

Adwords.com will kill your bank account if you’re not careful but if you play the game right and I’m about to lay it on you how, you can win and create a steady stream of passive income. You pay in advance so if you only want to spend $10 advertising, just put in 10 bucks and when that is gone - your ads will be suspended until you make another payment.

Now what I’m about to tell you works for my products with my keyword choices and my ads that I write.
Tweak this to be your own system and you’ll have a way to see very quickly what will work and what won’t with Adwords and you can make great money when you line it up right.

Okay I use keywordspy.com first to see what the best ROI (return on investment) keywords are for products.

I go to www.keywordspy.com and input a keyword or product name. This time I am using “4idiots” the Clickbank name of our product “Fat Loss 4 Idiots”.

At the next screen I click on “Affiliate Keywords” and I’m about to show you how to dig for gold.

There are three tabs there “affiliates” which will show you the top affliates selling this product.
“Keywords” is the total keywords used in selling this particular product.
“Ad Variations” will show you the various ads that are being used.

Under keywords, click on the ROI column and sort to show the best to the least return on investment keywords. Cut-n-paste or write ‘em down. That’s the ones we’re using for Google Adwords first. These keywords have already proven they are giving a return on investment - why not benefit from someone else’s research?

Next look at the ad variations, but DO NOT COPY THEM. Just glean what they are hitting on. Use each keyword in your title and ad body for greatest relevance. I have found most people will click an Adwords ad that asks a question, it’s like they feel the need to answer or something and usually they answer by buying the product -ka-ching!

Be targeted in your keywords. “Weight loss” is a logical keyword but it is also way too broad of a keyword and it doesn’t target people wanting to lose weight specifically. “Permanent weight loss” is one with a good ROI as is “Lose weight for wedding” these are both people looking to lose weight and keep it off and that should be the basis of at least one of your adwords ads. Sure you won’t get 3,000 clicks a day but who wants clicks with no sales?

Now get your webpage, blog or redirect up and running. It doesn’t have to be fancy-dan gorgeous - friendly, believable and easy to read will garner you far more sales. Redirects either piss people off who didn’t want to visit a sales page or they work great on a well written campaign. Sometimes I’ll test out a redirect for a week and if I see it’s not converting sales, I’ll throw up an html page or a blog page to promo the product and it give it a week to perform.

Now head over to Adwords.com and create your campaign.

It’s pretty self explanatory, but take your campaign out of the partner search network and the content network. Put your keyword phrases in [brackets] so you target people searching EXACTLY for those keyword phrases.

You don’t need a ton of keyword phrases - longer (long tailed) more exact keyword phrases will bring you less traffic but they will bring you the people that really want to buy.

This will cut down on clicks that are basically wasted that cost you money because someone was curious. This will lead to more targeted clicks by people that are actually part of your own targeted consumer base.

Here’s a cool hint too - you can’t put call to action phrases in your adwords ads like download now, click here, visit now - however it CAN be in your URL. Like one of my book ads has the URL http://www.keywordcontent.net/download-now it’s a definitely call to action that shows in my Adwords, however it’s legal because it’s not in the text. But I have more conversions on this link than any other.

As far as bidding, I like to have my advertisements appear in the top 5 ads so I bid higher initially then take it down .25 to .50 a day until I’m still in the top 5 but not spending too much on my Adwords campaigns. Think about when you search - do you click down 4 or 5 pages to find something?
Of course not.

Also, if you’re using a site or blog - by all means, try to hit organic results too by using places like Socialmarker.com where you can submit your website or blog to something along the lines of 30 different networks and generate free traffic.

I wish you tons of success!

I got a copy of “Get Google Ads for Free” several months ago and I was inspired. I spend money every month on Adwords like a lot of other people and I get more traffic and make more sales as a result.

However, “Get Google Ads for Free” will take it to a whole new level. It’s not rocket science by any means. You’re still buying Adwords however, you’re more than covering the costs, in many cases 3-times the amount because you’re wisely using your website as VRE (Virtual Real Estate) and it has value. You’re selling ad space to folks with related items and they make weekly or monthly payments to YOU.

However, you can’t just slap up a website and expect to sell advertising space. You need two basic magical things before people will buy ads from you. Why should they buy ad space from you if you don’t have traffic?

You need to build traffic first and foremost and it starts with making your landing page simple and to the point. You’re just building up a mailing list of people through your main page and you’re giving something away. In my case, I was giving away a report on the garbage that is in commercial cat food. No strings attached, people just fill out their email addresses and bam! They got the report in their email box delivered by my autoresponder.

Get Good, Reliable, Affordable Web Hosting
First of all, if you’re going to do this - be smart and don’t pay an arm and a leg for a domain. You can get a great deal on a web hosting account at www.webhostgiant.com .
Go for the reseller account, That way you get UNLIMITED domains for $4.79 a month and these are fully functional servers with all the bells and whistles. Each domain name you want to register will cost you $7.95 per year.

This is Your Online Business, Promote the Heck Out of It!
Remember, you’re going to be selling ad space on your site, make the traffic enough that it will entice buyers to want to advertise their own businesses and products on your web site. But How?
Promotion, my friend - sheer unadulterated promotion. This will also make you popular with the search engines too.

You can help the page rank of your site rise quickly by linking TO your webpage from other source. The base domain of such sites like Blogger.com and others will help give your page weight.This takes a little effort on your part, but the it’s extremely easy to maintain.

1- Set up a blog at www.blogger.com. Make it a review of your site. For mine for example, it would be, “The Cat Food Report Review” and I have on overview of what the site is about in a post. Talk about cat food, cat health, and just make 3-5 posts initially to ads some good content. Link to your page in the article as well as on the blog itself in the sidebar.

2-Set up a www.tumblr.com account and link back to your website from there. Tumblr gets good traffic and is much loved by the search engines.

3- Put the feed of your blogger blog or if you’re using Wordpress to build your main site, that’s cool too, either way put a feed in “My Yahoo”.

4-Make a page at pages.Google.com and publish it.

5- Go to Linkmetro.com and Rankready.com - use the free service and set up some link exchanges with websites that are in your own genre.

6- Find some forums in the genre of your site and answer a few posts and have a link to your own page. This will encourage people to visit as well as help your page rank.

7- Use www.socialmarker.com to submit your site to social networking sites . At the time of this writing you can submit to about 30 of them and for free.

Optional but Good -
1- Make a page at Myspace.com, Facebook.com and a Squidoo Lens and link all of them back to your site.

And in all the above places - promote the fact you’re giving away something FREE - because you are. Everyone loves free stuff, they will come to your site to get it.

Very Optional but Fantastic
If you want to really send traffic to your page in a short period of time. A press release will do it. Create news, write about your new venture and free report - people will come! You PR will get picked up by blogs, RSS feeds and more all over the net - it’s a great way to do viral marketing. Go to www.prweb.com and you’ll see really quickly what makes up a good PR.
Tips -
Don’t use the same phrase to link to your site, vary it a little bit - so instead of “cat food report” you can use theme sentences such as “what your cat is eating” or “ingredients in commercial cat food” as optional link wording.

Don’t put the same wording on every page - vary them so they are exclusive content or everything you just did go in the proverbial sandbox at Google and other search engines and your website won’t stand out from the crowd with any authority.

There are a lot of other places to promote your site and you’ll certainly get your favorites going. The key is to DO IT. Once you get a game place going - it will take you about 1-2 hours at the very most to set up a site and get it going.

If you can find an affiliate marketing product that corresponds to your genre, put that on your Thank you page where your ads are. Keep it at one for best results, two at the very most.

Updating
You’ll need to update your blog pages once a month - just a single post with something about your site with a link. Use something current in the news about whatever your subject is and write about that. Also hit Link Metro and Rank Ready and continue to add a few links per month.
And that’s it in a nutshell!

“Get Google Ads for Free” already has a layout for how to figure your ad costs, how to do your Google Adwords and how to target your traffic. I just showed you how to get even more.

To Your Success!

Somewhere between settling down and having kids, it happened - your need for an extra income increased by quite a lot. Then you have to weigh the factors on whether or not you’re going to work outside the home. For many mothers, the cost of child care for one or more children, the professional wardrobe necessary for most jobs and the ridiculous price of gasoline can make working at home a very appealing thing. Not to mention that if you have little ones, they will probably develop a perpetual case of the sniffles that may or may not require antibiotics, my family doctor affectionately termed it, “Daycare Syndrome”.

Paying yet another doctor bill for what I thought was an unnecessary cold my daughter had is when I decided I wanted to be self employed and see my kids all day every single day. If we wanted to go to the zoo on the spur of the moment, we could do it! When summer rolled around and we wanted to go bake at the pool for a day - we could do it! I decided if I were self employed I would have no boss, no schedule and no one to answer to except my clients and I would make sure to work in the evenings and early mornings when my kids were sleeping so no time would be taken away from them. And so started my search for what I could do from home.

I had done some web design in the past and I knew html like the back of my hand. Why I would just do web design for people. Well, it sounded good. I built a website and nobody came. I didn’t know a hill of beans about how to market myself online at the time and then I got one client who referred me to others and in the meantime I got very educated and read everything I could get my hands on about Internet Marketing and how to get listed on the search engines. What did Google, Yahoo and other search engines consider important? That was my goal to find out and I did it. Soon I had web design clients then the inevitable happened. Web design wasn’t something I truly enjoyed and I started getting a little burned out. I cringed when I saw an order for web design come in and even though the money was good, I wasn’t enjoying it - in fact, I was dreading it. Still, I did my best for my clients while I looked for something else I would enjoy doing.

I decided since I had really gotten a handle on internet marketing I would take advantage of this new Google Adsense program where you put their script on your website and when people click you make money. I looked at my web stats and I had a really healthy number of unique visitors every month. I would never need to work again from all these clicks I was going to get! So, I did it and make approximately $1.25 the first month in clicks. Well, that won’t even buy a cup of coffee much less replace the income from web design.

Then one of my clients asked me to create some web content. Words on a page for a website and I don’t have to design it? Sure! I found that I liked doing research on products and writing compelling web copy to make everything from bad breath to fine jewelry interesting to read by and entice the reader to purchase from the client’s site. Then I got asked to create articles and I found something I loved to do, I loved to write and getting paid to create words really rocked.

I learned to create articles, blog entries, keyword articles, e-books, press releases and even horoscopes for people and their websites. I’ve lost track of how many thousands of pieces of content I’ve created but I’ve enjoyed every second of it. I really enjoy research and I feel like I do something that keeps my brain busy learning every single day. Late last year, I wrote a book, “Write All the Way to the Bank” about how I did it and laid out a step-by-step game plan so you can do it too.

Okay let’s talk about you. What are you talents? Don’t say, “None”. Everyone can do at least one thing really well and it’s just a matter of propelling yourself forward and doing something that you’re both good at and enjoy.

Love to write your thoughts? You can make it as a blogger or writer for the web and there are literally thousands of open opportunities to choose from every single day. I can show you how.

Do you love to organize? Consider starting a personal organization service. There are a huge number of people that would love to have their closets, drawers, cabinets and more organized and just lack the time and knowledge to do it. If you have a special talent for keeping things neat as a pin, sell your knowledge and you can do two main ways. Set up a service online that shows your talents (Use your own closets, kitchens and bathrooms for your first before and after photos) and then promote your online website by writing short articles about what you do and posting them on websites such as www.goarticles.com or www.ezinearticles.com with links back to your website. People searching for closet organization will find you and use your services.

Ever wanted to own an online retail business? It’s very possible and you don’t have to buy stock either. Consider the world of drop shipping. In a nutshell, when you drop ship, you have a retail store online and you show products as they are your own. When people buy, you contact your drop shipper, pay for the item and pocket your profit. The drop shipper will ship the item in your company name and your customer is none the wiser.

Need a website and you don’t know beans about html? You can get a website that is literally fill in the blank and create a retail-ready website that is ready to with just a few clicks of your mouse and a Yahoo website is very affordable.

Now, need some ideas for finding drop shipping companies? First of all, don’t buy a list. Those lists are generally scams and you just paid upwards of $20 for something that is probably outdated anyway. I went through a lot of Google searches to find an actual, legitimate drop shipping supplier and I bumbled onto one of the best!

The drop shipping catalog that I use has a huge number of companies affiliated with it and you can check it out here at Worldwide Brands/One Source. Ever wanted to sell jewelry, dog toys, plus size fashions, designer clothing, handbags, shoes, sporting equipment or even home security items? You can find it all there and more. Be the coolest Mom in the universe and sell children’s toys! The price for drop shippers is below retail so you can compete with other retail outlets and your supplier won’t be undercutting your pricing either. It’s a great way to have an online retail business. Some drop shippers charge a small fee find out if it is per order or per item and choose your drop shipping partner accordingly.

Okay now you need to promote your online store. A company blog about what you’re selling, what products make great gifts, ways to use the products with links back to whatever you’re writing about is a wonderful way to promote your site for free. Also, informational articles with a link back to your site, such as the importance of using pretend play to stimulate a child’s imagination would be a great topic for a website that sold children’s toys. Don’t write a sales piece, make it informational and you’ll have people coming to your site. No one wants to read a commercial; you don’t, I don’t and neither will your potential customers. You can set it up yourself or have an outside company set it up.

A press release is another great way to promote your company. You can write one yourself or for about $25 you can have one written by a writing company. Create news, think of yourself as Jon Stewart of the Daily Show and make some news about your company. Have a poll on your website and publicize the results, tie in your company to an observance. A good example would be if you have a home safety store to release a press release along the lines of, “XYZ Company Promotes Safety in the Home During National Safety Awareness Month”. Need to know where to check out those groovy obscure observances to create press releases of your own? Check out Brownie Locks, she has it all.

Are you a member of any forums online bulletin board communities? Don’t just join a forum and start posting links to your website. You’ll get blacklisted faster than fast. There are robotic programs that do just that - don’t be confused with something like that. Instead, ask questions, post replies where you’re interested in doing so, make online acquaintances and get “known” in the online community. You’ll get much better feedback and no hassles for linking to your website or products.

Social networking is the biggie now with building traffic to yourself. You can hit up Myspace.com or Facebook.com. Even Hi5.com is getting traffic to people now. Building a Squidoo lens (simply a member page in Squidoo-speak) is another way to get yourself found and show what you know about a topic or product. If you’re passionate about what you do, put it on a page with a link to your own website. It’s a good way to really reach targeted traffic for your website. Sites such as Digg.com or Del.ico.us.com, Stumbleupon (my personal fav) and others are wonderful ways to share your links with others. You simply click and submit the site, along with a brief review or synopsis and keywords that relate to the website. Done. You can submit to something like 30+ social sites at once through Social Marker.com.

Affiliate programs and Pay-Per-Click like Adsense are great ways to bring in some supplemental income. You need a blog or website with a fair amount of traffic. Blogs are by far the best for this and you need to post things that relate to the content of your blog so you can get indexed with relevance in the search engines. In short, keep the theme you start with. I’ve always made far more money off promoting affiliate programs on blogs rather than Google Adsense. People have seen those “Ads by Google” on so many sites for so long, I personally think they blot them out of their field of vision now. Blogging to the Bank is a great e-book that will show you exactly how to build a blog and how to choose affiliate programs that will yield good returns.

In the 1990’s, the online businesses of creating stationary and gift baskets exploded as home businesses for stay-at-home-Moms. They are still good businesses with a lot of draw as the call for personalized and “made for you” items is still strong. However, competition is fierce and you have to be able to market yourself on the web. Using the online techniques above is a great way to promote yourself if you want to go this route.

Avoid like the plague:
*Websites that offer a pre-made affiliate site for $XX. You won’t make a dime because the
search engines prize uniqueness above all. How can you make a dime if your content is just like
everyone else’s that paid x-amount of dollars for a website?

*Lists of companies that promise work at home opportunities. These are an old scam that is
still going on to this day. Repeat after me: “Don’t pay to work”.

*Companies that promise 6-figure incomes for doing nothing. If they don’t have a service/product
they are selling, how the heck are they making money? Steer clear.

*Products that promise you overnight wealth. Google Adwords for Free is one of these. It’s
a cool concept but will only work for a minimal amount of people.

*Data entry or email collection “jobs”. These are 99.9% of the time scams. If you run across
one that is an actual legitimate gig - please forward it to me so I can fill in that hopeful
1% I left open in that estimation above.

And those are just a few ideas. Think about what you’d really like to spend your time doing and make it happen. If you really want to make a living at home, there are a good number of ways and it’s just a matter of putting your efforts forth and doing it.

To your success!

Have you noticed most of the online money making products look alike?
They almost all seem to be displayed on web pages that are longgggggggg and have testimonials and promises. The pages are long so you can read more and more and believe what you’re reading. You can make a million dollars with XYZ program.
And at the bottom the price is always a $300 value and will be priced at $27 - $97 dollars. Ever notice all the prices end in “7″.

Did you ever wonder why that is?

Conventional wisdom shows that 33% more people said they’d buy a product priced at $97 dollars rather than $100 - wouldn’t you knock off $3 bucks to increase your sales by a third?

I get emails from people that have tried this program or that program - and then write me and tell me what a scam it was. I personally try every affiliate program I talk about. Some work - some don’t. Joe Bucks for example has been VERY good to me and it was only a $1.95 investment on my part for a fully branded health products store. I have personally tried the Dietrine and my personal results alone sold many, many bottles of this carb blocker.

I also tried Google Adwords for Free. I personally think Dr. Jon cons people just a little. I have spoken to numerous people that have done this program now and not one has had the results in just a few days or even a few weeks.

They promise it will be raining money on you - in fact ,from what I’ve gleaned from other people as well as my own experience, it takes weeks upon weeks of laying out money for high position adwords to get enough exposure for your site to start selling ad spaces to pay for your Google advertising. However, if you stick with it - you’re bound to make your money back as it IS much cheaper to advertise on a website that has a good traffic draw as opposed to buying adwords and for most companies -and money spent on advertising is a tax write off.
However, here is the rub - one thing that isn’t really addressed in his book is that potential advertisers put strong value on the page rank of your website and you need to get your site a decent page rank and that can only be done through a little SEO work on your part which includes keywording your page, creating backlinks through posting articles on forums such as Ezine Articles that can give you a backlink (albeit temporary) with a page rank of 7, and also trading links with sites in the same genre which you can do at places like www.linkmetro.com. for free.

I personally laid out around $800 in Google advertising before I made a dime back on my Google Adwords for Free experiment.

I did everything by the book (Google Ads for Free Book) and I own a keyword article writing company so I’m not really unschooled in the ways of getting good page rank or SEO for organic search results. I also wrote a press release that had over 33,000 looks in one weekend (my savvy way of saving money on Adwords advertising) and my ads averaged around 3000 impressions a day so it wasn’t due to lack of people finding my ads or my site.
You can see my site here : http://cats.scojoknows.com
Was it worth it?
At this point the experiment is still ongoing and I’m undecided if it was worth all the effort - but at this time I’m pulling in the direction that there are much easier ways to create passive streams of income.

Adsense is another way many people make money online but it’s a lot more than just throwing up a blog and putting your ads on a page. You need to have content and it’s even better if you align yourself with some affiliate programs to boot. Then you need to maximize your pay per click.
How?
Check out http://www.iotaweb.com - it has a monthly update of the highest paying keywords. Last time I checked, Wisconsin Lemon Law was paying $67 a click. That’s a nice bit of change and if you can create a site that will encourage visitors as well as clicks; you can create a good stream of income. Once again, you need to make sure your blog shows up in the organic search results by doing some SEO 101 on your site using the methods above. If you’re gifted with an ability to write even remotely well, you can put a press release and you’ll jumpstart your traffic.

Last but not least, did you know there are companies other than Adsense that you can set up on a Pay Per Click basis? Well there are and many of them pay better than Adsense - check out Alternatives to Adsense - you can even sign up as an affiliate and sell the ebook for something like $27 (there’s that magic “7″ again) and keep 100% of the profits.

Oh yeah one last thing - I finally got my money back from Link Explore. Yay!