Alex Dumitru / Sandossu

Google has been changing rules lately and it’s banning lots of websites, especially for selling text links. Now, the only way to sell links is to use the “nofollow” tag if you want to remain G’s friend.

Of course not everyone is satisfied with Google’s measures and many continue to sell links, but the problem comes when Google excludes them from it’s index. If G isn’t an important source of traffic for you, then you shouldn’t have any reason to worry, except that once banned you lose the PR and probably no one will buy links anymore.

But what if Google is your main source of traffic and simply kicks your ass ? Then you definitely have a problem. I took KnowMoreMedia’s case, a blog network with a lot of paid bloggers and that had a decent traffic and revenue. Unfortunately for them, Google was bringing the most of the traffic, until they found out KMM is selling text links. Now their traffic has decreased significantly and they aren’t probably even earning enough to pay their bloggers.

In this case is both parties fault, because on one side Google shouldn’t impose this rule, but can do it. On the other side KMM was making profit of G’s traffic and should have followed the rules. Now probably they are going bankrupt because they weren’t responsible enough and didn’t took good actions.

It’s true sometimes we have to risk, but this definitely wasn’t the case, because they were doing much better if not selling the links and getting the traffic from Google, than selling links and getting no traffic or PR. Now they are earning neither from the CPM/CPC ads and aren’t going to sell links anymore, because of the PR0 Google left them with.

The conclusion is you have to take care what measures you take when running your business and never put all your eggs in one basket.

I just logged into Feedburner to check my Blog’s subscribers and i see that three of my blogs went to 0. It seems like Feedburner is having an issue again and unfortunately lately it has had issues quite often.

Hopefully they won’t just lose track of my subscribers and solve the problem, as i am losing both visitors and my subscribers might unsubscribe if they aren’t receiving news from my blogs.

Last month i’ve noticed something opposite from now, when my subscribers went up with more than 100% for one day and then just returned to normally. I’m sure that they subscribed all in one day and then unsubscribed the next one and that was another Feedburner issue.

Are you noticing anything strange today ?

Update: Everything is back to normal now

I think you all know that incentives can’t be good for search engines, but please tell this to both Ask and Microsoft too. After Ask.com allowed a company paying people to search using their search engine, now Microsoft is offering prizes for searching.

What advertiser will be crazy now to pay for his ads to be shown on any of those two search engines, when people are paid to search and will probably just click the ads by mistake, without any potential interest on the product ?

Microsoft has been desperate for a while to grab a piece of the market and has proved it when they tried to buy Yahoo!, but that was a good move, at least in comparison with this one. It looks like they have to think about changing their marketing team, because their decisions are only going to harm the company and make them lose money.

I hope at least Google won’t take the wrong road and keep fighting with the others by relevancy. Anyway they will probably see an increase in ad sales and advertisers moving from Ask and Microsoft.

A search engine is defined by organic traffic. When an internet user needs something he usually searches for it and the webmaster or advertiser gets a targeted visitor interested in it’s content or product. Now Ask is going to change this, read below to see how.

Search engines from the view of a searcher 

As i’ve said above, when you need something you just search for it using one of the many online search engines. If you choose the right search engine, you might find what you’re looking for and be a happy man, if not, consider changing the search engine or the keyword.

Until now that was the only reason to search, but what if you were paid to do it ? Then you won’t probably interested in the keyword you search and just do it to be done.

What search engines mean for a webmaster and advertiser

For a webmaster or advertiser, search engines are a wonderful source of targeted traffic, that convert very well, probably the best. But that is if the user is doing a search because is interested in the product and not paid for it. In the second case, he just does it to get paid and then probably closes the page.

And why do i say that Ask is going to change the definition of the search engine is that a new website released that pays users to search using the specified search engine. MySearchFunds pays you every time you search using Ask.com search engine and this definitely screws the relevancy.

But that’s not so bad for the webmaster, because he is not paying anything to get ranked there, but for the advertiser. I don’t think you’d be a happy advertiser to pay for your PPC ads at Ask.com and then Ask.com to pay somebody to click them, will you ?

The effect in search engine industry

From my point of view, i think the few advertiser Ask.com has will move to Google, Yahoo or Live so only them will have something to win from this. Ask.com will probably just remain a garbage search engine, with cheap, low converting ads, like it wasn’t enough already.

What do you think about this ?

1. Choose a good product

The first thing when you want to start doing affiliate marketing is choosing one or more products to promote. Put yourself in your visitors shoes and think if you’d buy a doubtable product. Well, I’m sure you won’t so make sure the products you sell are trusted so you will definitely get a higher conversion than a low quality product.

Do not try to sell products that over exaggerate on features that don’t meet, but choose products that are good and useful and point the features.

2. Don’t lie

Don’t lie about your product. If you’ve read the first point and you will follow my words, then you will chose a good product, but you have to only point it’s features, not lie or exaggerate because the visitor will then go to the product page, see you lie and leave, without converting into a sale.

3. Point the advantages

Your visitor is a potential customer that has to be convinced about the product you want him to buy. So point the product’s features and advantages clearly, tell him why he has to buy it, but as i’ve stated before, be honest. A happy visitor is more possibly a potential buyer, so make him happy, tell him what he wants to hear with honesty.

4. Present your product

Affiliate marketing isn’t about putting a link on a page that says “Buy MacBook Air Here”, you have to tell him what you are about to sell him, tell him advantages, disadvantages in a clear way and also show him pictures. You know, one photo can mean more than one thousand words so he has to see what is it about.

5. Build a landing page that converts

Affiliate marketing can be done through many ways, but almost all of them need a landing page. The landing page is an important factor in convincing the potential buyer to become a buyer, so you have to make sure you offer an easy navigation, simple, good looking design that your visitor will trust.

6. Focus on quality traffic, not quantity
Not everyone searching for a product is really interested in buying and to be more clear, only a few from those searching for a product are going to buy and the others are only curious. So you don’t have to focus on the amount of traffic, but on it’s quality. And in affiliate marketing quality is equal to targeting, so you don’t need social networks visitors here, you mostly have to focus on people looking to buy.

The best traffic for affiliate marketing comes from the search engines and you have to focus on some keywords, the most common is “Buy <<and here comes your product>>”. It will probably be hard to rank well for this keyword, so you’ll have to try long tail keywords.

7. Track your results

Affiliate marketing is about tracking and tweaking, so you have to track every visitor and it’s every move and click. You have to see what converts better, what ad sells most, then try to modify your placement, design and texts. Then track and see what happens, until you get to a satisfying conversion rate. But you never have to stop tweaking, because your landing can’t be perfect and there is always an improvement to make, you just have to find it.

Lately i’ve used a lot of social networks to promote my websites, especially blogs and i want to share my thoughts on them with you. And then i would like to see your experiences with them in comments.

Stumbleupon

This seems to work best for me, because if you have a good profile, with good pages submitted and enough fans, it can bring much recursive traffic. The traffic from Stumbleupon seems to be better than Digg, with more interested readers, that stay longer on the website and navigate more pages. Also, in comparison to Digg, Stumbleupon can bring even more traffic, but not all in the first day. For example, i’ve posted a story two months ago and it still brings me decent traffic, counting more than 100,000 visits i think.

Digg

In my opinion, Digg seems to have too many bad users that keep burying news with no reason, have an auto-bury algorithm and moderators. So it’s quite hard to get a story popular, if you don’t have a strong profile or a very interesting story. The traffic coming from it depends from day to day and especially the hour the story gets popular. It can often happen to only bring a few thousand of uninterested readers, if the story doesn’t get popular in a rush hour.

Reddit

Lately i’ve read that Reddit has the worst membership of all Social Networks on the web and from the experiences i’m having with them i’ll have to agree. There are very bad, uninteresting, spammy or old stories on the subdomain front pages especially. It doesn’t bring very much traffic and also the traffic doesn’t seem good at all.

Propeller

I don’t have much experience with this one, but it doesn’t seem very good to me and the traffic seems to be low. On some niches, it might be good, but i still prefer Stumbleupon, Digg and Reddit better than Propeller. I think the transfer from Netscape.com harmed them a lot and the traffic definitely decreased. In my opinion, it’s been a bad idea and probably a loss for them.

Hugg

A niche social network, that brings extremely low traffic and it only seems to work for environmental-based stories. Very easy to get on the front page and even if it doesn’t bring much traffic, it’s very targeted and the readers stay longer on the website than from the other social networks.

Other social networks

I’ve also tried Mixx, NewsVine, ShoutWire and others that i’ve had absolutely no success with them. Mixx is new, doesn’t bring yet much traffic, but has potential and a good membership. It might become very good in the future. With NewsVine i’ve had no success and i don’t seem to get it. ShoutWire worked good until i got banned with no reason and i didn’t want to sign up with other user because i got mad on them.

Now please share your experiences with the social networks, so we can learn more about them and understand them better.

Unfortunately, I have been very busy lately and I didn’t have time to post on this blog and now the time has come for a vacation, to get some rest and relax, so I can get back to work and put my plans in application to reach my goals. Tomorrow I will leave for Switzerland for 10 days, I think where I probably won’t have an internet connection, which would be great, because I won’t be tempted to check stats and try to work a bit.

Here’s what I have accomplished in 2007:

- Managed to get my websites decent traffic and revenue, but not as much as I wanted to.

- Bought a car.

- Got a job I Like.

And my goals for 2008:

- Reach a constant monthly revenue from my websites that will fit my needs.

- Earn more experience in Affiliate Marketing.

- I want to move in an apartment and live alone, without my parents.

- Pass the exams.

- Have success with the business I have been planning since november.

Now tell me your goals, what have you accomplished in 2007 and what are you expecting from 2008 ?

And a Happy New Year !

WordPress 2.3.1 has been released, but doesn’t bring any features, just security and bug fixes, as you can read:

• Tagging support for Windows Live Writer
• Fixes for a login bug that affected those with a Blog Address different than
  their WordPress Address
• Faster taxonomy database queries, especially tag intersection queries
• Link importer fixes

Download WordPress 2.3.1.

Chitika launches the Premium Publishers Club to recompense the publishers that bring much quality traffic to it’s advertisers.

To become a premium publisher there are the following qualifications:

You have used Chitika ads consistently and made at least $1000 over the past 90 days

AND / OR

You have a proven high-quality of traffic based on the feedback of our advertisers.

As Chitika states, the premium publishers will enjoy a lot of features:

• Higher revenue sharing
• Real time auditing
• A dedicated account manager
• The possibility to create custom ad units with the help of Chitika’s designers
• Live chat
• Monthly account overview reports
• Custom backup categories
• Chitika Premium Publisher badges
• Get the chance to post as a guest blogger on the Chitika Blog

You can read more on the Chitika website

After Paypal has accepted Romania only to send money, a few months ago, now they’ve also allowing romanians to receive money from other accounts and also withdraw. This is a great news for Romania and it seems also Bulgaria, that was also accepted to receive only at the same time with Romania, can now also receive and withdraw. You can check the accepted countries here.

This great news from Paypal came right after Google Adsense added the option to receive the money through Western Union, in one day, without fees.

I’ve found out that paypal now allows Romania to withdraw and receive funds from seopedia.