Jentrepreneur

E-Junkie vs Clickbank for Selling E-books

I have a series of e-books that will be released on one of my sites, with the first e-book coming out in a few weeks at most. I’m looking at both E-junkie and Clickbank as possible sales platforms to handle delivery and affiliate programs.  Any thoughts on which would be best?

I know Clickbank seems to have the better-known affiliate program and likely more built-in affiliates. They also seem like it would be more hands-off to run an affiliate program through them, whereas I’m getting the feeling with E-junkie that it’s more manual. Am I getting that right?

My concern is that I don’t plan to launch the affiliate program until the e-book has been out for a few weeks (when I’ll be raising the price, as I’ll have tapped most of the market members I’m directly involved with). Can Clickbank work well in that kind of situation, or should I go with E-junkie if that’s what I want to do?

Currently I only use Clickbank as an affiliate, and I’ve sold one e-book through E-junkie, so I’d really love some feedback from those more experienced if possible.

Posted in Products, e-books | 2 Comments »

Affiliate Marketing Update - December 3, 2007

It’s been exactly a week since I began promoting a specific affiliate product (The Six Figure Freelancer e-book) through ClickBank. I’d promoted one or two affiliates quite some time ago, but never with reviews or much attention drawn to them, so this is my first “real” attempt at affiliate marketing as an income stream for my sites.

I set a goal of ten affiliate sales for The Six Figure Freelancer during my first month. It’s not much for most people, but it would be enough to convince me to look into additional products to promote on my various sites. As of now, I have four sales, so the goal is looking pretty good. The first two sales came over the first two days of promoting the e-book, and the second two sales came on December 1st.

Here’s what I’ve done to promote the product so far (which pays $23.25 per sale):

• I added a text link to the top of my writing forums.
• I added an image ad to the sidebar of my freelance writing blog (the e-book is specifically targeting freelance writers).
• I wrote a review and published it to my freelance writing blog.
• I created a Squidoo lens (where I first posted the review actually) on Six Figure Freelancing - I added plenty of useful information there for freelance writers wanting to earn more, and didn’t just use it to advertise the product.
• I added a text link to my business blog in a sidebar above the fold (as a part of my plan to replace private advertisers with affiliate ads to prepare for a major theme overhaul where I won’t have room for as many private ads).
• I’ve included the affiliate link on this blog in my updates.
• I’ve included a text link referral in my email newsletter template that goes out with each newsletter from my freelance writing blog.

I think that was it so far. It really didn’t take very long to do, and has so far earned me over $90 (not much, but also not bad considering those earnings will likely continue for at least a little while with no more than two hours’ work).

As for what I can do to improve that, the biggest would be to work on increasing traffic to that blog. It’s not a high traffic blog by any means. I do need to start targeting a few keywords better for SEO, and I need to get myself posting a bit more frequently there again. Traffic was at its best when I posted daily, and ideally I’d like to get to the point of posting there twice a day.

If I do move on and promote another product, I’d likely find something for my book marketing blog next. I may even decide to do that sooner than the one-month mark, but I haven’t decided on anything yet.

So that’s the one-week update. So far I do have to say I’m happy with the results given the amount of time and energy put in.

EDIT: As of December 5th, I’ve made my fifth affiliate sale of this product, and have hit half of my monthly goal (ten sales) in just over a week. So as of now, it’s looking pretty likely that I’ll be expanding on my affiliate promotions in the new year with additional products and on additional sites and blogs.

Posted in Advertising | No Comments »

My Top Performing Ad Network

I haven’t used a ton of ad networks (Adsense, Widgetbucks, and briefly YPN and one or two others a while back), but I was interested to see which ad network is currently my top-performing one.

It’s actually Indeed.com.

If you’re not familiar with Indeed.com, they allow you to publish job ads or a job search box on your website or blog. I first became familiar with them in 2005, when I was still writing for About.com (who uses Indeed for their job search).

If you run any kind of business-oriented site where you may have job-seekers making up a significant portion of your readership, they may be worth a try. I’ve found them to be a particularly good option on my freelance writing blog, especially after lately increasing the ad exposure there for them.

I’m not earning big bucks or anything from that blog, because it’s relatively low traffic, but the Indeed ads are earning me about three times what Adsense used to when it was my dominant ad network there.

Just thought I’d mention it for those not yet familiar with Indeed Jobs yet. You can find more information through the “publisher” link at the bottom of their site.

Disclaimer - This post contains affiliate / referral links.

Posted in Advertising | No Comments »

Affiliate Marketing Plan

I had been considering promoting affiliates for quite a while - as in picking individual products to actively promote (not just an Amazon link here or there or a referral link to some service). I just didn’t have a lot of time to start looking for a product I could ethically get behind and actively market.

Over the holiday break, I was contacted by the author of an e-book called Six Figure Freelancer. He sent a review copy, I made time to read it, and I liked it. I didn’t agree with absolutely everything in the e-book and made some suggestions (which he’s actually implementing - that certainly encouraged me to give promoting it a try). (more…)

Posted in Generating Income | No Comments »

The PageRank vs Traffic Debate - Why You’re Both Wrong

Just a quickie today…. I get so sick and tired of seeing the same stupid arguments between webmasters; especially the one about whether PageRank or traffic is more important to making money on the Web. News flash: you’re both wrong! Here’s why:

It’s impossible to determine which will earn a site more money, because every site has its own monetization strategy. And Google be damned, PageRank isn’t going to stop making people a lot of money just because they did their little “paid links are evil” dance and chant.

If you sell text links, whether or not you actively promote the site’s PageRank, the PR is still going to be a deciding factor on the advertisers’ end, and will determine whether you get the advertisers and how much they’re willing to pay.

If you monetize using things like Adsense alone (stupid), then traffic will lead to more clicks which will lead to more income. But you’re not dumb enough to make a serious effort at monetizing a site while only using Adsense, are you? Didn’t think so.

So see that? Traffic is not the better factor in making money. PageRank is not the better factor in making money. Knowing how to run a damned business instead of buying into every bit of BS you pick up in webmaster communities is the better factor in making money on the Web!

Posted in Generating Income | 2 Comments »

Are You Stealing if You Use Ad Blockers?

There’s a discussion going on in the DigitalPoint forums about the ad blocker for Firefox, and whether it’s ethical, or content theft, to use tools that remove all (or the bulk of) advertising from free content websites. What do you think? Do you think it’s OK to remove ads from a site that’s offering free content? What if the ads aren’t of the intrusive variety (not hijacking your system, gathering excessive stats, or using heavy resources)? Or do you consider it stealing to remove the income stream from something people put hard work into? (more…)

Posted in Advertising | 2 Comments »

Paid Blog Posts: Use a Service or Sell Them Yourself?

It’s been a little while now since paid blog posts have emerged as a somewhat popular income stream for bloggers. Paid posts really aren’t anything new though… they’re just the blog version of the print advertorial in a sense. If you offer paid blog posts of any kind on your blogs, do you prefer to work through a service like ReviewMe or Pay Per Post, or do you prefer to sell posts independently (leaving all ethical debate aside for right now)? (more…)

Posted in Advertising | 1 Comment »

My Thoughts on Google and Buying Paid Links

This is a repost of a recent comment I left on a webmaster forum regarding Google’s “distaste” for paid links.

This whole thing has really gotten ridiculous. Here’s reality:

1. Google created a new advertising market by factoring links into Pagerank.

2. Google convinced webmasters the world over that Pagerank actually means something. Advertiser demand was born.

3. Publishers respond naturally to advertiser demand. People are making a lot of money with this new market; Google not included.

4. Advertisers are also getting a lot of value with this market, which takes away at least some interest in other advertising models (Adwords anyone?).

It’s easy for Google to try to pretend that they’re just being altruistic in wanting cleaner search results. But if that were the case, they’d really have to scrap pagerank almost completely or at least stop factoring it into search results and let it just remain the little marketing tool that it’s always been for them.

Does Google have the right to work inclusion in their search engine any way they please? Sure they do. Does Google have the right to decide to devalue paid links? Sure they do.

But if Google wants to operate under a certain kind of business model, it’s their responsibility to make it work; not the webmasters’. We have no responsibility to add no follow to our paid links. We have no responsibility to report paid links. Frankly, the only people who are going to have the time to go around doing all of that anyway are the ones with too much time on their hands because they’re not out there earning money (that and the competitor saboteurs as someone else mentioned earlier). I’m all for cleaner search results. But why should any of us spend time that would otherwise earn us money cleaning up the mess of Google, because they didn’t think things through before jumping into their current model?

It’s up to Google how they choose to run their search engine. And it’s up to each webmaster how they choose to run (and monetize) their website. I say, if we’re going to do all of these favors for Google, what are they going to do for us? When Google starts making algorithm changes in your favor as per your personal request, you should certainly return the favor and change your own business model to suit their needs in return. Until then, it’s wishful thinking.

You have to choose what kind of business you run with your websites. It’s up to you whether you choose to be “choosey” in the links you’ll link to, or whether you’ll post a link from any Joe Schmo willing to pay you. My personal stance on this one is simple: only post links that would be of some actual value to your readers, and then it’s nobody’s damn business how you’re monetizing them. Your readers are the ones you need to be transparent with, and if you are, you’ll keep the trust and help ensure that you’ll always have other monetization models to fall back on if you need to. If you plan to run even remotely successful sites, you’d better have better things to be doing with your time than playing “clean up” for Google.

Posted in Advertising | No Comments »

Make Money Blogging: Blog Radio

Are you looking for a way to make money blogging, but typical blogs bore you after a few weeks (or days) of posting? Maybe hosting a blog radio show is a good option for you. I’m about to kick off my own first blog radio show (with BlogTalkRadio) tomorrow evening, and have some monetization ideas that may be useful to you: (more…)

Posted in Generating Income | 1 Comment »

John Chow’s Free E-Book

John Chow released a free e-book called Make Money Online with JohnChow dot com a few days ago (the e-book link is towards the bottom of his post there). Honestly, I still haven’t been able to make time to read it, but I felt it was worth a mention. Considering that:

a) It’s free; and

b) John’s stuff is usually at least worth the time it takes to read,

you really can’t go wrong with it, now can you?

John posted yesterday on another issue near and dear to my heart… blogging on subjects that you love. Also worth a read.

Posted in Generating Income | No Comments »

Make Money Online: Paid Blogging and Paid Posting

A reader of my freelance writing jobs blog requested that I post a collection of paid blogging networks and paid posting services for bloggers and writers to make money online. I felt it was more fitting to this blog, so here are a paid blogging and paid posting list if you’re interested in making money online through blogging. (more…)

Posted in Generating Income | 4 Comments »

Why You Shouldn’t Stop Buying and Selling Links

While I’m on a link buying kick on my various blogs, here are a few simple reasons why you should continue to by links, despite what Matt Cutt has to say about it… (more…)

Posted in Advertising | No Comments »

Are You a Google Slave?

With all of the buzz in the webmaster community lately about Google wanting to “penalize” paid links, it’s a good time to talk about “Google slaves,” whether or not you happen to be one, and what you can do to about it if you are. So, are you a Google slave?

Google Slave - For our intents and purposes, a “Google slave” is any webmaster, blogger, or online business owner whose income potential is wholly, or very significantly, dependent on the actions of Google. That might be a site which gets 80-90% of its traffic from Google, a site that earns all or the vast majority of its earnings through Google Adsense, etc… any business that would be severely hurt if Google changed an algorithm or something else completely out of the site owner’s control. (more…)

Posted in Advertising | 3 Comments »