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Creating Ecomm Affiliate Sites To Avoid Google Penalties

January 29, 2012 By 3 Comments

This is just a short article on something I’m experimenting with currently.

The Google Panda update crushed a lot of webmasters this month and I think this might be directly relevant to some of that.

How to Walk the Fine Line Between “True Merchant” and “Thin Affiliate”

If you look at the leaked Google General Guidelines document that was made available a few months ago (Google search it if you don’t have it, its still pretty prolific), you’ll see that there’s tips in there for a G manual reviewer to try to decipher between what is a thin affiliate site (a spam site that gets penalized upon review) and a true merchant (which is really just a site that offers little content but gets a pass).

Right from the G Manual review doc. How can affiliates create sites which mimic these traits?

In my opinion, the SEO implications of having your affiliate site look and work like an ecomm site are potentially HUGE. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing

Building Authority Sites with Aged Domains

January 23, 2012 By 20 Comments

This is something I’m doing exclusively as of a few months ago and its something that I rarely ever read about.

Oftentimes when people are buying aged domains they are usually using it as part of their link building network or maybe to drop into a network like Authority Link Network so they can get a decent daily post-queue.

I rarely ever hear people talk about the benefits of starting an authority site on an aged domain and this is exactly what I want to touch on today.

Why Build a Site on an Aged Domain?

Starting your website with an expiring domain name is like starting a marathon 1 mile ahead of everyone else.

Unless the domain was previously used for some kind of malicious activity, the domain comes with its own “old site authority” that you can take advantage of. This completely removes the time a new site is going to need to build up this trust, possibly avoiding any kind of new site filters (like the sandbox) which are a royal pain in the ass.

2 Visual Examples: New Domain vs Aged Domain

I’m going to share a couple screenshots of 2 different sites built around the same time. Each has had a relatively equal share of love regarding links and content and they were both started around the same time.

New Domain

Here’s a graph of a site I started building in late September. This was on a brand new domain name that I regged because I thought of a clever name. The only time I would recommend doing this is if you have BIG PLANS for the site and want to turn it into a real business, something more than an affiliate site. Only then would a good name actually benefit you beyond the benefits you’d get from getting an aged domain with a less-nifty domain name.

As you can see from the graph [Read more...]

Filed Under: Domains

December, 2011 Income Report

January 23, 2012 By 3 Comments

What I’ve Been Working On

  • This past month I’ve been spending 80% of my working time on Marketer’s Center. I’m developing a handful of neat services and selling them in a different way through upsells, downsells, and one-time offers. Nobody else as far as I know is selling services this way so its defintely very experimental. I might write something on it later.
  • My other 20% I’ve been spending on creating a couple brand new sites. I’m now exclusively building my sites off of expiring domain names, I’ve found ranking with these domains is 1,000% easier than regging a brand new domain. I plan on writing something about this within the week.

Let’s Get to the Numbers: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Income Reports

Taking Over the Internet, One Wiki At A Time

October 16, 2011 By 6 Comments

Wikis are no doubt powerful link building platforms. It’s been suggested that because of their editorial nature, Google may give links found on these kinds of sites more link juice than others.

However, because of their public nature, wikis can be prone to “creative use” by pretty much anyone. If you’re anything like me, you’re no stranger to dropping your links on wikipedia. Links from wikipedia can not only drive a decent amount of traffic but they’re very powerful, too. A good link for extra reading on this is How to Get Wikipedia Links that Stick by Kingofsp.

If you’re not interested in jumping through hoops there is an easier way.

Here’s the footprint:
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Link Building

August, 2011 Income Report

September 30, 2011 By 12 Comments

I haven’t been able to make a post lately but wanted to leave this income report from August.

Monthly Milestones Reached

  • I finally launched Social Media Supremacy and have been working on perfecting some last minute details. The final package includes 200+ social votes (tweets, Google +1s, facebook likes/shares), a ton of social bookmarks, and LSI posts on a stealth network I put together. You can find the WF thread here.
  • I mentioned last month I was studying analytics, an aspect of internet marketing that I was pretty green with. This month I ended up getting my Google Analytics IQ certification. I learned a ton in the process.
  • My custom subscription panel for Marketer’s Center is 99% done but we’ve run into a problem regarding Paypal’s limit to only one IPN per account. How are you ecommerce guys that run multiple stores getting around this? Going to try a multi IPN script, hope it works out fine.

Let’s Get to the Numbers: $4,210 For the Month of August

Total is +$356 from last month, which is nice.

Adsense: $1,817 (+$136)

Finally an up month for Adsense. That’s a good sign.

Amazon: $608 (-118)

E-bay Partner Network: $1,467 (+$192)

EPN has been going up and up for me. Earnings per click has been solid @ 9 cents a click.

Commission Junction: $281 (+230)

A few leads and a big sale, not a bad month for CJ for me considering how sparsely I promote it.

Others: $37

Infolinks was $10 and Chitika was $22. I’m starting to remove these units when I see them, I just don’t want them clogging my sites anymore. The revenue they both bring is negligible. Lending Club interest is $5.

Priorities

I mentioned inthe last income report that I’m going to start building authority sites again. I eventually did find a designer, a tech guy to set them up, and a couple writers to fill it with decent content. I’ve already got 1 site that’s 80% done (needs more content) and I purchased an aged domain 5 days ago to start up another. Ideally, I would like to jam these out 1 every 2 weeks.

Hopefully these figures will move up consistently in the coming months now that I’m building sites again, instead of looking relatively stagnant.

Filed Under: Income Reports

Niche Site Challenge Part 2: Content, Monetization, and Analytics

August 26, 2011 By 16 Comments

I started this challenge with the idea that I would be able to show readers like yourself exactly how I go about building a site.

However, so much has changed since I last built a decent quality site (it’s been a while for me, since some time last year) that I’m experimenting with a few new things. Heck, each section I’m going to cover each has some new site-building element about it.

With that said, let’s jump right into it.

The Domain

The first thing I want to do is reveal the domain to you so you can check it out:

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Niche Site Challenge

Advanced Google Analytics for Affiliate and Internet Marketing Part 1: Click Tracking and Advanced Segments

August 15, 2011 By 15 Comments

Becoming a master of analytics is something that I think a lot of SEO professionals skip on. When you’re driving all organic traffic you certainly have the liberty of throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks. It’s easy to be lazy when your incoming traffic is free (in a sense). Up until this year, I’m guilty as charged.

I’ll be using Google Analytics in this series because I believe that’s what most use, even though there is a section of webmasters who advise against it. My thoughts on the matter is this. If you site stinks then hide it (even though G still collects tons of data with Chrome), but if your site is better than most why try to be secretive about something like that?

What You’ll Learn From This Series

My biggest beef with 99% of the analytics articles you’ll find online is that they tell you exactly how to set up and use the different features found in G Analytics, but they don’t tell you how exactly how you can use the data that you’ve gathered. Sure, you’ve segmented your incoming organic traffic by > 10 seconds on page but what does that _mean_ and how can you use it to make your site/income/engagement better? This is the vital piece of the puzzle that I think is far too often left out.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Analytics Tagged With:

37 Signals “Getting Real” Review and Notes

August 11, 2011 By 8 Comments

37 signals has created what I consider to be an adaptable ideology behind developing web applications. They practice what they preach and from these ideals they have created successful applications such as Basecamp, Backpack, Campfire, etc…

The book “Getting Real” is a culmination of everything they have learned from building a successful SaaS business from the ground up.

If you saw how much I spend every month on SaaS apps, then you no doubt understand what a lucrative (and growing) industry this is becoming.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Book Reviews and Notes

July, 2011 Income Report & Upcoming Posts for August

August 6, 2011 By 15 Comments

A little bit of a slump in income for July but overall I’m not too worried about it.

I just decided the other day that I’m going to get back into creating new sites. These authority sites will be created around these new quality guidelines:

  • 700-1,000 words per post, LSI content.
  • Awesome designs, low bounce rates (hopefully)
  • Solid social media profile backed by a “real” persona.

I already have 3/4 positions filled on my list for these projects (2 previous hires and my tech guy) but finding a good designer is more difficult than I expected. I would like to have them pump out 1 good site every 2 weeks, I think that’s a very conservative goal.

This would make a positive impact on my affiliate revenue but it will take months before anything substantial is realized.

Monthly Milestones Reached

In terms of productivity, July was a good month. I got a lot of important things done like…

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Income Reports

Google Panda Webinar by Guerilla

August 3, 2011 By 34 Comments

On August 1st, 2011 Guerilla from Drip Feed Blasts hosted a Google Panda Webinar which was about 1 hour and a half of the best content I’ve ever seen on the topic.

Because the Panda update impacted me so severely (30-40% revenue loss from my affiliate site earnings across the board) I’ve been researching the Google Panda update for the last 3 months and have literally put tons of hours into finding strategies to fix and avoid it. This webinar here jam packs all of that current Panda research along with some actionable strategies that you can use today to try to recover from the update if you’ve been targeted.

If you were on my list then you got the pre-registration link for this, but if not then don’t fret because the replay is here.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With:
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