Affiliate 101

People often ask “How important is a domain name?”  The answer to that is a tough one. So I’m going to break it into sections so you can apply it to what you are interested in the domain for.

SEO Website
A google search can return many bad domains, along with some really great domains.  Take a look at the content on those pages.  The good domain could get away with poor content and optimization, and still rank OK, while the bad domain (not necessarily bad, but it doesn’t contain the keywords) is likely ranking because the website is well planned out with good content and optimization.

PPC Landing Page
If all you’re going to do is have a single page where you will send PPC traffic to, the domain could be a bit more important.  People look at that along with your ads title and description.  If you are selling car parts, and your domain is sugarkisses.com, you can sugar kiss that potential customer good bye.  Try to get something that says “car parts”.  Unless you have a bank roll, don’t expect to go and register carparts.com, but you could possibly register carpartnation.com, or carpartalley.com.

Buzz or Brand Website
What I mean by Buzz or Brand website, is that it’s a site that is something that people will talk about, or write an article about.  For that, any domain would work, if it’s catchy.  When the guys at Google decided to build a little search engine, they probably would have loved to get the domain search.com, or searchengine.com, but those had long been registered.  They then picked a word that was related to what they were trying to do, and then changed it a bit to get a name that was available.  Now that’s a brand.

In summary, the importance of the domain really depends on what it is you plan to do with it.  There are probably more bad domains out there making money than there are good domains, and I bet you can rattle off 20 domains that don’t mean anything either.

If you are planning to pay someone to build your sites for you, there is no need to read any further, though I would still recommend you learn the basics, so you can keep other honest. By that I mean, if you go to a mechanic, and you need a new air filter, they may say that’ll cost you $300. If you don’t know the basics of your car, you may have to pay that. Same applies to website development. A developer may say something cost $10,000, but if you know it’s a simple change, you can take your business elsewhere. This is very important unless you really have someone you trust.

I am going to post details about the environment that I recommend. I have used some others, but ended up with this because it’s AWESOME FREE. Actually, it may not be the best, but this is definitely not an example of you get what you pay for.

PHP/MySQL/Apache
This has become the standard for many websites these days. It’s all free and there are so many developers, and code sample out there, that it’s very easy to get started. For this, I recommend the following installation. It includes the Apache Server, MySQL Database, and PHPMyAdmin all bundled up in a nice package, and in a way that’s easy to manage and upgrade. This is for PCs. There is something for the Mac called MAMP that is very similar:

EasyPHP – Windows

MAMP – Mac

Code/HTML Editor
As for Editors, you can use an Open Source environment called Eclipse. There are a bunch of different ones out there, but this is pretty good (and FREE).

Eclipse - Mac/PC (make sure you get the PHP Environment)

Database Management
If you are going to be doing alot of work with MySQL, you will need a way to manage tables, and data. EasyPHP installs PHPMyAdmin, which you can do everything you would likely need to, but if you want to do alot more, and with an easier interface, you’ll need to spend some money (not much though).

Navicat – Mac/PC

Source Control – Advanced
If you are going to be developing as part of a team, you will likely want some sort of Source Control. We use Subversion (SVN).

Subversion Source Control – Mac/PC (if you get to this point, let me know, there are alot of things you need to do it right).

Most websites are built based on templates. A template is a design that usually includes a header, navigation, body and a footer. These main page components can change throughout a site, but chances are, they are going to look pretty similar. This is accomplished with a template. The look of a website comes from a template. Many people start from scratch, and build their own. Smart people start with something someone else built. There are a number of sites out there that offer Free Website Templates. These are also sometimes called Open Source Website Templates. If you aren’t familiar with open source, it’s another name for Free. Here are a few of my favorite:

• Open Source Web Design
• Open Web Design

If you have a budget for your project, you may want to buy one from a paid template site.

• Template Monster

This tutorial is provided by IBM.

Learning PHP, Part 1: Register for an account, upload files for approval, and view and download approved files

Learning PHP, Part 2: Upload files and use XML to store and display file information

Learning PHP, Part 3: Authentication, objects, exceptions, and streaming

Yahoo Search Marketing includes a number of products from Yahoo.  Their PPC product is called Sponsored Search.  Those of you that have been around for awhie may remember it as Overture.

Yahoo Sponsored Search will show your ads on the Yahoo network of websites, and their partner sites (if you sign up for the content network).

Understanding the Basics from Yaoo goes into great detail about how it works, and how it can benefit you.

I sat in on a Webinar about the Google Website Optimizer and here are some thoughts and notes.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t like many of the pages on my website. I just don’t. Many of the designs are 3 years old, may have some misspellings, and are basically done by someone with little design experience. The problem is that the pages work. Some of the best websites in my industry look like they were done in the mid 90s. But they work, and maybe they work better than some of those shiny new sites that are built with lots of venture capital. Anyhow, there have always been ways to make changes, and determine if it worked or not, but it’s never been this easy.

Enter Google Website Optimizer. You can track many different version of your pages, and really take any of the guessing out of interpreting the results. This is a free product from Google, the only requirement is that you have a Google AdWords account. Just because you need an AdWords account doesn’t mean that you need to do it on a page that you are sending AdWords traffic to. That opens this up for any of your sites out there. Did I mention this was FREE.

Features:

A/B Testing – 2 completely different versions of a page

Multivariate Testing – For every section of a page changed, it makes a unique combination. So if you change a header, a graphic, and a description, there will be 9 difference versions of that page tested with results.

Followup Testing – Once you’ve gone with the best based on the results above, are they still working?

Testing Possibilities:

- Info rich or short and sweet
- Left or right layout
- Product facts or aspirations
- Lead or sales focus
- Reinforce site security or privacy
- Highlight a free service

In doing your tests, they recommend that you have about 100 conversions (click, email, sale, lead, etc) per version you want to test. So if you are only getting about 200 conversions in a 2 week period, you should only test 2 pages. This isn’t a rule, but I guess it makes a difference for how solid your results will be.

You’ve probably heard of PPC by now.  If you haven’t, it stands for Pay Per Click.  The name really sums it up.  It’s a form of internet advertising where the advertiser pays somebody for the action of a click.  There are other variations of this such as Pay Per Call, or Pay Per Lead.  Again, the name really describes them best, so I think you can figure out what the other two are.

Why do people use PPC?

Well, why do you want traffic.  If you can make money off your website, or have some kind of view you want to get across, you probably want traffic.   It is like no other form of advertising.  If you do a print ad, or a tv commercial, you have alot of expense to produce that ad, or tv spot, and then you probably have a hard time telling if it was successful or not.  With PPC, you set your budget which could be a few dollars a day.  You tell the search engine what kind of visitors you want to get, and then if they send someone to your website, you pay them an amount that you had agreed on earlier.

Where does the traffic come from? 

When you buy PPC traffic, it can come from Google, MSN, Yahoo, AOL, or joeswidgets.com.  You have control to say where you want it from, and how much you are willing to spend to be in the different places.  With Google, if someone searches for Blue Widgets, and you have that keyword in your account, your ad will appear ranked against everyone else that has that same keyword in their account (no, you aren’t the only one).  If you tell google that they can distribute their ad to their Content Network, your ad can also appear on joeswidgets.com, because Joe wants to make some money writing about widgets.

Why does it work?

Everyone can be a winner here.  There is a very low cost to entry, and it’s an opportunity for everyone to be happy.  You buy PPC, that get’s you traffic, which hopefully makes you some money (unless you are doing it wrong).  Google makes some money (which allows them to dominate the world), and Joe, over at Joeswidgets.com, has an opportunity to write about something he loves.  I’ve left out one important person.  The CUSTOMER.   None of this works without them.  If you don’t know your customer and what they are looking for, they have no incentive to click on any of your ads.  I can’t stress this enough, KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER, and make sure everything you do has them in mind.

Analytics is important to any webmaster. If you don’t know where your traffic is coming from, and what they are doing once they are there, you are missing a big opportunity to improve your traffic and improve the money you can make off your traffic

Say you are getting 1000 visitors a day to your site, but don’t know where it’s coming from. You will spend time doing very general updates to your website, or nothing at all. If you knew that 800 of those visitors were coming to the section about widgets, you might spend the bulk of your time finding partners that sell those widgets.

You then look at how people are getting there. Is it from a search engine? Is it from some article you wrote. Maybe the traffic is because you had a few people Digg your article, and then a few more did. This traffic isn’t going to last forever. You need to repeat what you did in that scenario, and do it again and again.

If it’s all coming from one search term at google, you have to figure out where you’re ranking at, and what’s your next step. Say you are ranking number 1 for blue widgets, and that is sending you 100 visitors a month. You need to make sure you stay in that position by doing some SEO. If you are ranking number 3 for red widgets, and getting 120 visitors a month, figure out if you can move up in rank. That is a bigger opportunity than optimizing for blue widgets.

This is a very basic example of Analytics usage, for a very small website. There are a number of tools that help in all different sorts of ways. With all the opportunity for traffic optimization on your website, the good webmaster utilizes the tools available to focus on the best return on their valuable time.

On the Internet, there are always hundreds of different ways to make money online.  The Internet is a medium that is particularly suited to entrepreneurs and people who have the ability to recognize a consumer or business need and quickly move in to fill that need. Everyone does not possess the “killer instinct” or have a great deal of creativity, so sometimes solid money making opportunities might just pass by.  But the market for health ebooks with resale rights is a niche market that can benefit a lot many people who are not so creative.

People are constantly in need of information.  They want to learn how to do things, but they don’t want to spend a lot of time on research and fact checking.  People are more than willing to pay for reliable information that can be obtained as quickly as possible. Health ebooks with resale rights are such attractive products to marketers because there will always be a healthy demand for accurate information.  These types of books will always have an audience and one can sell them over and over again without ever running out of products or having to pay additional fees.

An e-book is the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. Such documents are usually read on personal computers, or on dedicated hardware devices known as e-book readers. Some examples are: How to Sell Your Home in Less Than a Month, How to Build an Online Retail Business, How to Create a Website in an Hour, etc.  The text is very straightforward and doesn’t contain the usual fluff can be found in traditional books produced by large publishing houses.  This kind of information is easy to understand and would be valuable to a lot of people. Thus, one can see what a lucrative venture purchasing and marketing health ebooks with resale rights could prove to be.

Marketing one’s own ebooks is also an option. But some people may not really have any expertise in a marketable subject matter.  Secondly, they may not have the time or the know-how to sit down and compose an entire book.  Thirdly, a lot of electronic book authors are known and trusted in their fields, which makes a great selling point in itself.  Overall, it’s just far more convenient to purchase health ebooks with resale rights than to come up with something on your own.

Before getting into the ebooks resale business it is essential to understand different kinds of ebooks resale rights.

1. Giveaway Ebooks Resale Rights
The ebooks are given away freely along with its resale rights. Thus, something obtained completely free can become a source of income. The only point to be noted is that the giveaway ebooks resale rights will not allow you to edit any matter from the ebook’s content.

2. Basic Ebooks Resale Rights
Basic ebooks resale rights allow the first buyer to resell the book without branding or editing. But one cannot pass on the resale rights while reselling the ebooks. A buyer buys the book and resells it to keep the entire profit. His customers can use the book only personally.

3. Master Ebooks Resale Rights
Master ebooks resale rights allows a person to resell the ebook with the ebooks resale rights. Branding or editing is not allowed here also. More money can be made with this type of ebooks resale rights.

4. Private Label Ebooks Resale Rights
Private label ebooks resale rights are most beneficial for people who want to make the maximum out of ebooks resale rights. It allows a person to brand, edit and modify the book. And one also gets the authority to sell the ebooks resale rights.

Anybody can achieve financial success primarily through marketing health ebooks with resale rights.  People who own websites already have an excellent marketing tool at their disposal.  An order page can be created on the site and the ebooks can be sold from there.  The delivery of books to customers can be via a download on the website, through e-mail, or on a CD-ROM sent through the postal service.  Even people without websites can profit from health ebooks with resale rights.  One has to just find other ways to market the ebooks, such as auctions or online bookstores.

It’s true that everyone can make money on the Internet.  All you have to do is find a product that people want and that you can gain access to.  Health ebooks with resale rights might be just the thing you’re looking for in order to break into online marketing, so check out some titles today.

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