Without really even trying I’ve got this domain (codingelite.com) to rank first page in Google for “internet marketing”, which is the main keyword everyone in this market is obviously gunning for. Out of ~92,700,000 results we rank #6-8 depending on what data set you’re on. We’re now right up around and beating sites like bidvertiser (with over 5.5 million links in yahoo alone) and other companies with huge SEO budgets.
There was really nothing out of the ordinary that got the site up there - just obvious on page optimization with the homepage being extremely relevant to internet marketing, basic link building, using the services I’m a member of and a few greyhat tricks. Of course I’m not making any money from this particular site and don’t plan to, because this was just done as a test to see if it could be done. And before you ask, no, I don’t sell SEO services and never will.
Since getting some good affiliates over at clickbank, I have had a few requests to make it so that the “?hop=” isn’t shown at the end of the link. Affiliates will want this to not be displayed since it shows their ID. So instead of having yourdomain.com/?hop=cbid, you want it to just be yourdomain.com.
How do you make it so that the ID isn’t shown? It’s really simple. Just make the salespage index.php, and use this code:
Obviously, this is just a 301 redirect that is set to happen if there is the “hop=” in the link. And offer.html will just be your normal salespage.
Although this product has nothing to do with internet marketing, no matter WHAT you sell, go ahead and do this. You’ll find that your affiliates will definitely like you for it.
There was a post on the warrior forum today about this guy with a video who has got over 40 million views on youtube already. The interesting thing is the URL in the description box is actually an affiliate link to a clickbank product on how to play the guitar. (I wonder how much he is making from those 40 million views? )
Apparently the uploader isn’t actually the guy playing in the video, but regardless, this is still an awesome guitar riff. Not that I normally have any interest in guitar music.
If you make any kind of software or infoproduct (even if it is just simple promotional stuff that takes 20 minutes to make) then the place you really want to get accepted at is upload.com. It varies a lot, but oftentimes, download.com will bring in more downloads for your program than every other software directory on the internet combined. Other times, the promosoft submission will get you more downloads. But you ALWAYS want to get listed in download.com because of its huge traffic numbers.
… So how do you maximize your chances of getting listed? I can tell you after doing 200+ submissions to them a lot of it is luck. You can still get junk accepted, depending on the mood of the person who reviews your stuff at the time. I’ve seen people submit stuff full of spyware (zango/waverevenue) that gets listed. Other times if the editor is being tight you can have even really good programs declined.
Anyways here’s a few things that in my experience have got a much higher acceptance rate:
1) Put several programs under the one profile - don’t make new accounts for each new submission! Unless you are submitting stuff full of crap then there is no need to anyway. If you already have a couple of programs you have submitted and are listed under one account, the editor is much more likely to accept another program under that account. I have one account with 10 successful programs under it; and I doubt each would have been accepted if they were under different profiles.
2) Make a special upload.com version. When I use HTML executable, I make the title something like [program name] - download.com verison, or something similar. You can also mention upload.com/download.com in the start page. It only takes like 1 minute more to customize it like this. For some reason, the editors always seem more reluctant to decline your program if it looks like you made a customized version for them.
3) Leave notes for the editor. Just say something, anything, it doesn’t matter. Usually I just tell them how I made a special version for upload.com and how this version has less ads/promotional stuff than the normal version.
4) Make an install process. There are many programs that let you make install files, some are free, but the better ones are paid. I generally just make it put an icon for the program on the desktop and an entry in the start menu. This will make your program look still more legitimate and only takes a couple of minutes. I generally use Install Station for this.
5) Make a company website with information about your program. This one is important. If the upload.com editor is unsure about something, a lot of the time they will take a quick look at your site. If you have a blank page as your company site, they are almost always going to decline you. Upload.com wants to accept people who they think are serious software companies; so don’t skip this step.
For anyone bitching about how upload.com is too strict, or how it’s too hard to get accepted etc. just go through some of the things above. Software submission stuff still works but only if you do it properly.
Because I do so many software submissions that promote affiliate products I have looked at a lot of ebook/HTML compilers that can take html code and turn it into a .exe file. After trying basically all of them I can say the best one hands down is HTML Executable (<– non affiliate link).
This thing is so much better than other html compilers I’ve tried it’s not even funny. It lets you customize basically everything, including the icon, details, company, splash page, and even let’s you use your own scripting. The best part is support for your own skins, so you can make each of your programs look totally different.
If you often need to make .exe programs to submit via promosoft then this is the program you need to get.
I recently just lost over $800 in commissions from a world of warcraft gold selling company (I have an affiliate pitch site in that market) after they changed around their entire affiliate program and didn’t seem to feel responsible for paying their affiliates. It is ironic that my affiliate links to their site are still active, yet I can’t actually login to my account.
The site I have basically promotes WoW Guides/Gold Sellers side by side, and I promote 4 different gold providers. So far only 1 has paid through paypal. Although I have no idea what the game is even about, I like marketing WoW stuff because the market is so insanely lucrative. So it’s interesting that these companies don’t mind screwing over their affiliates.
I have heard stuff like this happening before with CPA companies (eg. if you’re generating worthless leads or incentivizing people to join), but in this case I wasn’t doing anything blackhat. Advertising networks and ppi companies are similar. You don’t want to promote them too heavily until you get your first payment and you know for sure they pay.
From the merchant/vendor side, here is why you want to setup your affiliate program with a trusted company like clickbank:
Affiliates will promote you more because they KNOW they’ll get a cheque
Affiliates are more likely to promote because they don’t have to go through your signup process
You’ll get more exposure from affiliates browsing the marketplace
You’re not responsible for technical stuff with your affiliate program
From an affiliate standpoint, I would much rather promote something I find off clickbank/paydotcom/shareasale etc. than sign up to someones private affiliate program, wait to be accepted, look for my affiliate link, and then wait to see if I get paid. This is why as a merchant you will likely get way more affiliates if you go with a trusted affiliate company, rather than having your own in-house program.
Bottom line? Don’t manage your affiliate program yourself unless you are totally serious. And as an affiliate, don’t promote a private affiliate program too heavily until you are sure they pay.
If you don’t already know, promosoft is basically a tool that automatically submits your software to around 800 software directories like softpedia, freedownloadscenter and so on. You can create something really basic and then use promosoft to submit it to all the directories in its database, and typically get a decent number of downloads in the next few weeks. Plus, you get a lot of one way links from software directories linking back to your site once they list your application.
When I tried this on my existing sites, this has worked really well. So when I made a brand new site (it’s about 4 days old right now) as a side project — it’s a minisite in a certain non-IM niche – I decided to make a few basic applications related to that niche, host them on the new site, and submit them with promosoft.
Somehow (I have no idea why) this seems to have completely f-ed up my Google rankings. Here’s a screenshot (scaled down again)…
That’s how my rank for a certain keyword changed in only a couple of days. The brand new site was on the second page, and then almost overnight, it’s gone all the way down to the ninth page. The same thing has happened with other keywords the site was ranked for.
Here’s what’s wierd — the only thing I have really done to promote this site is through promosoft submissions. The only links pointing to the site are one way links from software directories ranging from PR1 up to around PR7. This is OFFPAGE optimization. There is no content on the new site that would get it penalised by google as it is all unique, and I don’t link to any dodgy sites.
I know google will discard your links if they see it as spammy or un-natural, but the general rule is anything a competitor can do to your site won’t screw you over with google. In this case, anyone could use promosoft to mass submit the pad file on my site to hundreds of software directories, and have them link back to my site. So there is obviously something I’m missing here.
I’m not too worried because I only put about 5 hours worth of work into building the site and doing the promosoft submissions, but this is still pretty annoying because I have no idea why this is going on. It has to be something to do with the fact that the links are being seen as spammy by Google. Still, since it’s offpage, I didn’t think that would have so much of an impact. Either that or I’m just completely missing something.
But anyway, if you’re ever scared about some brand new competitor in your market, maybe you should try doing a few promosoft submissions linking to their site. Just kidding.
I just got to pick up a rebranded version of this really useful tool, which lets build keyword lists, see the number of searches for each keyword, and give the amount of competition for that keyword in Google/MSN/Yahoo. This is a huge time saver when it comes to looking at the profitability of a niche and what keywords you need to target.
(In fact, the only other thing I know of that does this is Niche Inspector which is $100+)
Because I have it with rebranded rights, like with every other piece of software, I have given it away free. Here’s the direct download link:
I would say this is worth at least $27 and that’s an underestimate if anything, because there is no other free software that even comes close to this. I would sell it except I’m kinda busy with more important projects. You can go ahead now and download the software free, and that comes with resale rights so you can give it to anyone you want.
I was reading the NittyGrittyMarketing sales page and saw it mentioned how google actually has a free multivariant split test script, free for adwords advertisers. Even though I completely hate adwords — I have found way better sources of advertising – I went to take a look at the script because I’m interested in doing some multivariant testing for disablespyware.com to get the page to convert the best it can.
I have to say, this thing is pretty f-ing impressive. What’s surprising is that few people are even using it (I think its still in beta now). Until now, if you wanted to do multivariant testing, which is where you test several elements of a page all at the same time, you would need to get something like Muvar 2007 which is around $300. Google’s multivariant testing script is very easy to install (I set up a test in about 5 minutes) and works really well, even though its given away free.
Combined with google analytics, this is a really powerful thing to play with on your site. Even though adwords PPC is ridiculously overpriced and full of click fraud for advertisers, Google has definitely put together some great free resources for webmasters. They also have a basic A/B split testing script although I haven’t checked that out yet.
If you don’t already have Google’s multivariant split tester, this is what you need to do…
Sign up for an adwords advertiser (adwords.google.com)
When you login, go to the “Campaign Management” tab and the “Website Optimizer” subtab
Pick the multivariant tester and insert the code on your page
From there on, you just need to pick what parts of your page you want to test. I recommend for a new site you make, install the script, and test everything — then send a bunch of cheap junk traffic to your site. From there you can test what’s actually working and start making a lot of money once you start marketing your site and getting quality traffic.
I had forgot about it for a while, but my programmer has finished an update to my well known software ImageWaterMarker. Basically, after giving it to a few thousand people, there was a lot of feedback — so I just listened to what people wanted and included it in the update. If there are any more complaints (not that I have anything against negative feedback)… then I’d sure like to hear about it
I have to say the updated version is pretty neat. Here’s a screenshot (scaled down, of course):
One thing a lot of people wanted was to rotate and choose the position of the watermark, which I knew would be useful, so this is what this new update primarily does (along with a few really minor bug fixes). With this new version you can have the watermark text at any angle you want AND have it at any location on the image you want.
I was actually thinking about charging for this update and pitching it to everyone who has already downloaded the original version, which I could have easily done since there are more buggy applications like this being sold for around $30/each. Also, I’m not going to load this up with browserware or big bolded links back to my site in the aim of making money off this, or even use it for any “ulterior” motive.
I’ve decided just to give this away free because I think it’s something a lot of people would find useful. The other thing is that I don’t really feel like spending time setting up a system to sell this, and it was cheap to develop anyway.
In other news I’ve been looking at developing an anti-spyware program for the last month or so, and I’m hoping to get it released by next week. Obviously spyware programs cost an absolute ton to get developed if you want something comparable to the likes of million dollar companies like Norton/Ad-Aware, thanks to the sophistication of many spyware/adware programs out right now — but what I’m going to release is still going to be pretty good.
I can’t say exactly what it’s like now, but once I get the custom GUI done and other graphics it’s going to be an extremely useful piece of software. I’m going to give away the trial version as soon as I get it completed (so stay tuned).
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