Monitor Your Landing Pages!
Don’t make the same mistake I did. On Tuesday, I spent over $300 on adword traffic to a page that was not available. I don’t know what happened. Everything was working fine for the past month, all of the sudden, this page was no longer available and everyone that went to it received a 404, page not available error message.
I found out about the error when I logged into my ebay account to see that impressions and clicks were down. At first I thought nothing of it since eBay tends to be slow when it comes to reporting impressions/clicks. I then logged into my adwords account to see how many people had clicked on my ads, and the number was way above what ebay was reporting. I decided to test one of my landing pages, and lo and behold, I received the famous hostgator 404 error page.
I contacted HostGator to let them know what was going on. It seemed as if something was wrong with the rewrite rule. I don’t know how that could’ve happened. I didn’t log into my account or make any changes to it in a few days. Things are back up and running normally.
To protect myself from losing money like this again, I’ve signed up for a little service called Montastic. Montastic is a free website monitoring tool that will alert you via email when your site’s down it’s back up. Montastic will check your site every 10 minutes.
Thank You to Mark Wielgus from 45n5 for replying to my frantic twitter messages and for referring me to Chad from cdfnetworks.com’s “Don’t forget to monitor your landing pages” blog post!
My Taxes Are Finally Paid!
I mailed my 2007 tax forms and payments today. It’s such a wonderful feeling to know that for the first time in 3 years, I’m not going to be on any payment plan with the IRS. For the last 3 years, I’ve been on some sort of payment plan with the IRS for not completely paying off my tax obligation. I got myself in this situation because I either wasn’t putting away enough for taxes or because I was dipping into my tax savings when times got hard. The bad thing about owing the IRS money is that you owe them money. The good thing about owing the IRS money is that if you’re willing to pay, they are very flexible and will work with you in order for you to pay off your debt.
I remember the first time I realized that I was going to owe money to the IRS. I thought for sure that I was going to go to jail for not paying my taxes in full. I think I was around $18,000 short. I can remember nervously freaking out at the thought of owing Uncle Sam money; it really scared me!
When I called the IRS to let them know that I didn’t have all of my tax money, I was very surprised when the lady on the phone told me that I can pay over time. She asked me a series of questions such as how much I could afford to pay each month and when I wanted my payments to be due. In the end we agreed on a fixed amount. The agreement was that I had to make my payments on time, each month, and I also needed to pay the next year’s taxes in full. If I broke any of those terms, they could’ve placed liens and garnished my wages, etc. Lucky to say, I paid them off in time!
The next year, and the year after, I was in the situation! I was in the same situation because each year, I would use my income to pay off my previous year’s tax liability. And for a while, I really though that I was going to be like this forever! Luckily for me, it wasn’t the case. I was able to pay off all of my tax and I still have money saved for my 2007 taxes.
I promised myself that I wouldn’t let myself be in this type of situation again, ever. To help me keep my promise, I’m putting away 35% of my monthly affiliate earnings in a special business checking account. I’ve also started making quarterly tax payments. Making quarterly tax payments will help me out because I won’t be tempted to use the money when times get hard. I will also not get penalized by the IRS each year!
So if you’re in a similar situation, remember the following:
- If you owe money to the IRS, talk to them. The worst thing you can do is pretend as if you don’t owe, or as if the it will go away if you don’t think about it. It will follow you until you pay it off. Call the IRS, talk to them, explain your situation. They will listen to you and work with you to pay off your liability.
- Make quarterly estimated tax payments. If you’re self employed and are paying a lot in every year in taxes, the IRS expects you to make quarterly estimated taxes. If you don’t make them, expect a penalty.
- Put away a good percentage of your affiliate earnings for taxes. Don’t do what I did and use your tax money to help family, friends, or yourself when times are hard.
Twitter Tips and Tricks
Twitter is a great tool that allows you to post updates and network with people. You can post updates via instant messenger, sms, the twitter site, or from any of the twitter clients that are available. It is a great concept; follow a bunch of people, when ever they update, you get a notification of the update.
How do you twitter?
There are many ways to twitter. You can post updates via sms, twitter’s website, instant messenger, or one of the twitter clients available. My personal favorite is instant messenger.
At first I tried twittering via SMS; it was a great idea until people started updating more often. Getting hundreds of text messages per day gets annoying! My favorite way to twitter is via GTalk. This is great because I get updates as they occur via instant messages. I also use Gtalk on my phone, so when I’m away from my desk, updates are sent directly to the gtalk client on my blackberry.
Twitter Tips and Commands
To start receiving updates, simply send on and you will instantly start receiving updates from the people you follow. To stop receiving updates send off
On - turns on twitter updates
Off - turns off twitter updates
If you’d like to get a person’s last update, simply sent get username (username being the person’s username) So if you wanted to my last update, you’d send get royalradande
Get username - gets the person’s last update
To follow people on twitter, simply use the follow username command. Once you follow someone, you will automatically start receiving updates from that person. For example, to follow me on twitter, send follow royalradande.
To stop following someone and no longer receive their updates, send leave username.
Follow username - follow a person on twitter and receive their updates
Leave username - stop following a person and stop receiving their updates
Other Commands
Stats - shows you statistics about your twitter account. Such as the number of people you follow and are following and also the words you’re tracking.
Track Keyword - when you track something on twitter, you will receive a message when ever an update contains the keyword you’re tracking. You do not need to be following a person to track keywords. So for instance, if I wanted to track my name, Jonathan Radande, I would send track jonathan radande, and when ever anyone using twitter included the words jonathan radande in their messages, I’d get updated.
Similarly, you can stop tracking keywords by sending untrack keyword.
Direct Messaging
Sometimes there’s a need to send direct messages. When you send a direct message, nobody but the person you’re sending it to receive it. You can only send direct messages to people who are currently following you. To send a direct message send D username message. This will send a direct message to the user.
These are all the twitter commands I know. If you know of more commands, feel free to comment.
I Upgraded and Moved
Since its official release, Wordpress 2.5 has already been downloaded 100,000 (as of this writing, it’s only going to increase by the time I finish writing this post). I also downloaded a copy and upgraded this blog to version 2.5. I haven’t really used the new version much, but I can tell you that it looks really nice.
Installing version 2.5 is pretty easy, just make sure you backup your blog before doing so!
Changing Hosts
In addition to upgrading to Wordpress 2.5, I also switched hosting companies. This blog, and some other sites of mine used to be hosted by Westhost. The majority of my sites, including this blog is now hosted over at HostGator . I made the switch to Hostgator for a number of reasons:
- Price - Hosting at Westhost was simply costing me too much; I’m not saying that it was a lot of money (I believe I was paying $12.50 per month), I just think that other hosting companies were offering way more features and services for half the amount. With Hostgator, I’m now on the Baby Croc plan which is costing me $8 per month. I can host unlimited domains, unlimited emails, and unlimited databases. I definitely think it’s worth the move!
- Speed - This is one of the main reasons I’m leaving WestHost. Uploading and downloading data via FTP very slow! Seriously, it takes about 15-20 minutes to upload the entire contents of a wordpress install. With Hostgator, it takes me no more than 6 minutes. On top of the slow transfers, the connection would often break during mid transfer, causing me to start all over or to upload one directory at a time.
Moving the site from Westhost to Hostgator wasn’t hard at all. At first I was worried since I’ve never moved a wordpress installation before, but in the end, it was fairly simple.
The first thing I did was back up the wordpress database. Backing up the database was extremely easy thanks to the detailed instructions provided by the folks at wordpress.org. Once I had the database backed up, I proceeded to back up my entire directory structure. It is important to also backup the directory structure; the wordpress database doesn’t contain any images, themes, or plugins you’ve uploaded.
Once everything was backed up, I created a new mysql database on my hostgator account and also added the domain to my account. When you create the new database, make sure that you update your wp-config.php file to reflect the new mysql database name and connection information (if it changes). Once the database was created, I did an import of the database. Once I did that, I just needed to change the DNS information to point the hostgator name servers instead of westhots’.
So it’s official, I’m running on hostgator servers, and I like it!
BTW, Wordpress 2.5 was downloaded 761 times in the time it took me to write this post. So what are you waiting for, download Wordpress 2.5!
Local Meet Up Review
Last night I went to my first meet up for internet marketers in the Lehigh Valley. Although 9 people were scheduled to show up, only 4 of us actually made it. It would’ve been great if everyone who promised to show up actually did; it was still cool.
All of the other guys were either currently selling on eBay or used to sell on ebay. I was the only one doing affiliate marketing. One of the guys, Tony, really impressed me. He spends 60-70 hours per week working on eBay and sells a ton of shit. And Tony is a smart guy. He thinks outside the box and has figured out a lot of ways to get things to sell on eBay. He’s currently a trading assistant. Basically, he charges people 30-35% of the final selling price to list their items on eBay and get it sold. Once their item is sold, he sends them a check.
He gets customers/things to sell by:
- Purchasing leads of people who would like to sell their items on eBay. He’s currently paying some kid in India $10-15 per lead.
- Buying things at garage sales. He usually tells the seller to contact him at the end of the day with all the unsold items and makes a deal. Sometimes he gets the items free, and other times, a deal is brokered on the spot.
- Liquidating used/return merchandise from local retailers. He likes to target small local chains, maybe 5 or 6 stores.
- Using Amazon.com as a drop shipper. When drop shipping was discussed, Tony said that “the only reliable drop shipper I use is Amazon”. I don’t know if he uses Amazon to send directly to the buyer or if he sends the item to himself first, and then ships it to the buyer.
Nobody at the meeting really did affiliate marketing. A few said they had in the past, and that they no longer did it because it was so time consuming. I thought it was the other way around. Affiliate marketing is less time consuming than selling on eBay. I don’t have to worry about shipping, packaging, and stocking items.
In the end, the meeting was very fun. I got to meet some new people and ate some ok food. I will go a few more meetings to see if any other affiliate marketers join.
Find Local Internet Marketers
if you’re interested in meeting other internet marketers in your area, I highly suggest that you check out www.meetup.com. I never thought about meeting locals who were trying to make money online until Wes Mahler posted an entry on his blog about a meet up for ppc marketers in the Bay Area.
After reading that post, I decided to see if there were any such meet ups taking place in my area. Sure enough, there is a meeting on March 25. This meet up is all about making money online, although from the looks of previous meetings, many people are interested in making money via ebay.
If you’re in a bigger city, I’m pretty sure that there is a meetup taking place in your area. Check out meetup.com and see if there’s something related to making money online and go out and meet other like-minded people.
This meeting is taking place in the Lehigh Valley on March 25. For more information, visit the Internet Money Strategies Session information page on meetup.com
The Online Dating Niche
I’ve decided to try marketing online dating sites. If everyone else is making money with online dating, I want a piece of it, too! The more competitive a niche is, the better the possibilities of earning money from in it. If others weren’t making money from it, there wouldn’t be so much competition. So if you’re looking for a niche, try ringtones, credit cards, loans, insurance, online dating, and travel. You’re going to make money, if you play it right.
I will write as much information as I can about this online dating campaign I’m going to start. I’m currently in the process of putting a small site together and hope to have the site complete by Friday, March 14. Once the site is complete and online, I will start campaigns in Adcenter, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Google Adwords. I might even give the second tier ppc engines a try, even though I’ve never really worked with them.
Introducing UberAffiliate.com’s Charity Check Tuesday
Paul of UberAffiliate.com is starting something new on Tuesdays. It’s called Charity Check Tuesday, and I think that it’s a brilliant idea. It’s kind of similar to Shoemoney’s Free Shirt Friday, except you send in a check, and in return, you benefit by getting some link love and a charity also benefits at the end of the month.
For more information, read the post on Charity Check Tuesday
I will definitely take part of this for two reasons:
- I will get some exposure.
- The money I send will be put to good use.
Expect a check from me!
Opimizing My Ebay Campaign
It’s time for me to optimize my ebay campaign. I have been testing it for a month, and I know that I can definitely make a lot of money from ebay. There are still millions of people out there who do not have ebay accounts, and at $25 per new user, it’s definitely worth pursuing.
The ebay affiliate program pays $25-$30 per new user who buys an item or simply bids on one. On top of new registrations, you are also paid half of what ebay charges its sellers to list an item. The more money an item sells for, the more you get as an affiliate.
The cool thing about ebay’s affiliate program is that they provide you with so many tools to help you make money.
The ebay API is the number one tool that they provide to their affiliates, or anyone. The ebay API allows you to retrieve listing data directly from ebay. The data is returned in xml format, instantly! I use the api to get listings of what ever I’m promoting.
At first, I was a little intimidated by the API; I’m not really a programmer. But with the help of google and some PHP related queries, I was able to understand the ebay API have it output the data I sought.
Optimizing My Ebay Campaigns
Although I didn’t make a lot of money with the program this month (advertising ate most of my profits), I’m determined to increase my earnings this month.
Last month, I had a 45% CTR and earned $4,796.78. My goal for this month is to increase my CTR to 75% or higher. With a higher CTR, I will be able keep more of that $4,796.78 :-).
I will do the following to increase my CTR:
- I will get a domain name for each product I’m promoting and build a mini site around it. Right now, I have one general domain and simply create a page for each product that I’m promoting. For example, If I’m marketing Dyson Vacuums, I would create a Dyson Vacuum and place it at www.domainname.com/DysonVacuum.What I will do is create brand new sites revolving around the product. So instead of www.domainname.com/DysonVacuum, I will create www.DysonVacuumOnSale.Com (just an example, I don’t own that site if it does exist).
- I will go over the keyword data that I’ve collected over the past month and eliminate the ones that didn’t convert so well. By eliminating the duds, I will increase my overall conversion rate.
- I will redesign my landing pages. I’m not really much of a designer. I will probably get someone to design some pages for me.
- I will expand to MSN Adcenter. I tried Adcenter before, but it seems like they simply take forever to get anything done over there. I don’t know, maybe I’m doing something wrong.
Next month I will post the outcomes! Enjoy the rest of your day. Peace out!
List of U.S. Towns and Cities
Here is a list of 25,000 cities and towns in the U.S. I’ve added the city/town’s full state name and abbreviation. Use it to expand your keyword list. The list is in excel format. Column A contains the city/town name. Column B contains the full state name. Column C contains the state abbreviation. I got the list from the U.S. Census Bureau’s website. I was made aware of the list after reading Jeremy Palmer’s High Performance Affiliate Marketing ebook, which is now available free of charge.
- us-cities.xls - 2.73mb