Pastrommy [dot] Com

Archive for January, 2009

I launched yet another affiliate marketing site today based around the guitar niche. Instead of making a Squidoo lens and pushing traffic with articles, I opted to try something new. I installed Joomla onto the domain and stripped it down as far as I could to make it look like a real sales page. It actually looks really good! Followed up with some PPC ads on Google. I’ll see how it pans out and post some results. I plan on seeing what else I can do with this Joomla sales page business…

My tip today is on masking affiliate links. If you don’t know what masking affiliate links means, it involves hiding your affiliate link so that visitors aren’t wary of clicking on it. For example, which looks better?

a)strommy.product.hop.clickbank.net/
b)www.myproductsite.com/goto/product.php

The answer is “b”. This is because the link appears to be internal and have no marketing affiliation. It’s not very hard to believe that people wouldn’t click a link simply because it’s an affiliate link.

So how do you mask your affiliate links? My favorite way of masking links is to create a folder named “goto” somewhere on my server and putting PHP redirect files for every link I have. In other words, after you’ve created a folder named “goto”, assuming the example above, you would create a file called “product.php”. In this file place the following code:

<?
header(”location: strommy.product.hop.clickbank.net/”);
?>

Using the above example, everytime someone clicks my link “www.myproductsite.com/goto/product.php” they will be redirected to “strommy.product.hop.clickbank.net/”. Some say that PHP redirects are a bad idea if you plan on using Pay Per Click advertising but I’m not sure if it’s true or not. What is your favorite way of masking affiliate links?

Yesterday while searching the web I came across a site that talked about how much money can be made online, how easy it is, yada yada yada. Whatever it was talking about, it motivated me to kick it in high gear and start making money with affiliate programs. Since my experience thus far is minimal and I’ve yet to have a big breakthrough, I decided I should learn affiliate marketing from the ground up again.

After searching around the net for some free courses, I found The Affiliate God. This website is made by a guy a lot like myself except he’s way more successful than I could ever hope to be. Anyways, the course is broken up into 4 weeks of videos that you could easily get through in a day if you wanted. I decided to watch all the videos from week 1 yesterday. I’ve got to admit, and no that is not an affiliate link up there, that his videos were probably the best training videos I’ve watched. He is very easy to listen to and comprehend because he takes a very laid back pace through all the videos. I also found myself laughing more than one time when he would stumble on words or what not. Basically, he keeps you entertained through the whole thing as well as giving you a plethora of information.

Armed with this new information I set out on completing my week 1 niche site. I’ll let you know how it goes. In the mean time, check out Frank Silvestre’s blog on Finding a Money Making Niche.

So I started reading this book today called “Blog Schmog” by Robert W. Bly. The book was written in 2006 so I’m sure most of the statistics are already way off knowing how fast the internet changes. Anyways, I’m only about twenty pages in but the book is about what blogs can and can’t do for your online business. I’ll be sure to keep posting things I learn from the book.

The book so far is a pretty good read. I’ve certainly established that he really hates blogging thus far. However, he’s also brought up some interesting points and given me something to ponder about… What is my blog doing for others? Why should anyone read it? Well, I know it’s not much now but hopefully people who visit my blog will learn how to make theirs a little better.

Blogging in the world today is a lot of information copying and redistribution. The most successful bloggers have unique content and bring something new to the already overcrowded table. What is your blog bringing to the table?

Blog Schmog

I’ve found that one of the best ways to get motivated is writing down my goals. When you have something to shoot for, your more apt to do the work to get there. So, without further ado, I give to you, my goals for 2009…

1. Get Car Club Union over 1000 daily unique visitors.

2. Increase my revenue stream to an average of $3000.00 per month.

3. Turn a profit of over $500.00 on an affiliate campaign.

4. Finish and launch my first e-book.

5. Launch three more e-books.

6. Get 100 subscribers to my feed on this website.

As you can see, I’ve set some concrete goals here. There is no grey area…I will either succeed or fail on each of them. Wish me luck! What are your goals for this year?

P.S. I just upgraded to Wordpress 2.7 today. Wow! Talk about improvement!

Happy New Year to you, my faithful readers! I apologize for not posting more tips for making money online. I’ve been very busy with finals and getting ready for next semester.

I have some big plans for all my sites in 2009, especially this one. I have my first e-book on the way. I can’t release the details yet as it isn’t a very saturated niche but I will release information as I feel necessary!

Best of wishes to you all in ‘09!