The Affiliate Post
The talent is in the choices!

I have been meaning to do this post for a while now and after some recent communication with a number of other bloggers who are lacking in focus *coughPBcough* I felt it a rather fitting time.

‘How To Get Rich’ is a book I recently read by the author, and self made multi millionaire (in pounds sterling) entrepreneur, Felix Dennis. No idea who Felix Dennis is…then allow me to explain.

First and foremost, Felix is the Chairman(CEO) of Dennis Publishing - a multinational publishing company responsible for such great titles as Maxim, Stuff, The Week, Computer Shopper, Auto Express and many many more. He is a rather eccentric poet who has amassed a personal fortune of £750 MILLION along with properties in London, Connecticut, New York and the Caribbean Island of Mustique to name but a few.

Anyway, his personal story alone is quite a tale but, ‘How To Get Rich’ is focussed on his business dealings and how he made himself rich beyond most peoples dreams! IMPORTANT POINT - before you all switch off and start with your ‘oh, no…not another how to get rich quick book’ attitudes - this book is like no other.

You are probably wondering why the shameless plug here? Well I want you all to think about something and this is one of the reasons I bought the book to start.

You all want to make money online right? and you all want to get rich (as quickly as possible no doubt)? If you are someone who has read every make money online book/ebook and it’s still not working then here is the twist…try something else! This is not another ‘how to get rich quick’ book, but an open and rather frank look at how Felix Dennis did it. It’s a business manual, it’s an eye opener, it’s a motivator and it’s even a very good read! If you want to get rich on or offline then you need to have the focus and the mindset to start. If you can expand your horizons to seek out valuable information from those who have proven themselves (regardless of the sector in which they did) then you can take that knowledge, combined with your enthusiasm,work ethic and personality to any given situation…including making money online.

As much as I hate the phrase I think you will all understand what it means to ‘think outside the box’. So don’t waste your time following those ten page ebooks on ‘how to make money online’, get out there and learn something! Absorb as much of that information as you can, add your own personal touches and then apply yourself.

I had underlined so very many snippets I wanted to share with you but I then realised that I found so much value in it that I would have re-typed the entire book so all that needs to be said is…..I have not read a more perfect book on ‘how to get rich’.

On that note, I am going to go and apply myself.

If you are new to The Affiliate Post then you could not have timed things more perfectly. I have just installed a new theme which I received via email from the guys at Unique Blog Designs. I have always loved the work that these guys do and if any of you have not seen it then I recommend you go check out their portfolio. Better still this theme is free and can be downloaded from UBD Website. I’m just getting my head around it so you might notice the odd change here and there for a few days but I have to say I am very impressed. It has certainly made a difference!

While I am on that note, there are some other changes I have had to make recently, so if you are a regular reader I do apologise but I have changed my feedburner rss feed. If you dont mind can you all go and sign up again and any new readers…now is the time to subscribe too!! Go on….don’t be shy!

So AP, apart from a brand spanking new them, what else is new?

Well I had a rough weekend and a couple of things troubled me. First off I was witness to a smash and grab robbery just round the corner from my house. It involved 4 kids on mopeds, designer handbags and shoes, lots of glass, a screaming baby, 3 shellshocked shop assistants, lots of people watching and my ‘too many malboro lights’ ass chasing them down the street in vain. I won’t dwell on that too much though but it’s not like I live in a skanky part of London or anything. Anyway, the crime rate here is out of control but that’s another story. The second thing that troubled me was I spent hours working on a ‘niche store mashup script‘ trying to get the damn thing to work and it very nearly beat me. I hate being beaten and I generally do not like to stop working until I have got something right. For some reason I was having issues pulling the ebay and amazon feeds and tell the truth I had to sleep on it. I did eventually decide to cheat a little the next day and manually coded the feeds in. I actually think it looks much better and I will make it live on Reggae Artists shortly for all to see.

What is Reggae Artists? Well again, if you are a new reader you may well not know that there is a great competition going over at site flipping unversity and that is my site! It’s going to be fun doing something outside of mmo for a change and I urge you all to either enter the competiton (IT IS NOT TOO LATE) or at least go comment on Reggae Artists and let me know your thoughts.

My Bans sites are ticking over nicely and I am leaving them on the back burner for the next 30 days. I have had a good run of ACRU’S (new ebay signups paid at $25 each) recently so I am pleased with progress on that front. All in all this promises to be a really good month; other than the fact that my fiancee went back to the US today that is! Damn you and your 4th July celebrations.

Need a recap?? Well go try the mashup script, it is fairly straight forward I promise. I always say that you should have multiple streams of income and this is another string to add to my bow. Get involved in site flipping and try out the competition. Bryan will walk you through everything so there is never a better time to try something - You can follow my own efforts at Reggae Artists! And finally, new or regular readers alike……sign up for my new feedburner rss feed.

Please let me know your thoughts on my new theme, comments are always welcome.

I’ll be back with more shortly.

AP

I don’t think I can be clearer on the subject here but I WANT comments! This may be a little rant here but I don’t quite understand why only a select few loyal readers take the time to leave a comment on this blog. Recently on other blogs I have seen a few posts about why people delete comments, the commenting etiquette and the understanding that a lot of comments are left in order to get a quick and easy link, so in response to that I ask you this………why no comments here? Want me to sell myself? OK!

Three reasons you SHOULD comment here.

1) Other than the total spam comments, I will NOT delete any comment left - good, bad or downright rude!

2) This is a DO FOLLOW blog and so you will get your quick and dirty links. Leave your anchored text if you want!

3) I have an predicted PR 3/4 on the next update so just because it says zero now…you are not wasting your time!

I have never understood people who delete comments because someone leaves anchored text, or (I know who you are) people who regularly read blogs and NEVER leave a comment at all. You are missing the point - a comment is a comment is a comment right? No! Ok, so if you want to leave a cheap ass ‘nice blog’ type comment then so be it, but it does not take more than a minute to write a little something and get involved. I regularly find new blogs because of a good comment that I have read and have built a lot of my traffic by way of my own comments elsewhere.

N.B All you Entrecard droppers who come here for a quick drop are also missing out on some good quality long term traffic and a links. So what you get a quick drop and have to go quickly because you have another 299 to do for the day?!? Take a minute to leave a comment and build your links (which are way more important anyway) as you will get more out of it in the long run.

RANT OVER! Just tell me what makes you leave a comment? Do you censor your own comments? Does your own lack of comments frustrate you?

P.S If you want to check for your predicted PR then use this handy tool below!

Powered by iWEBTOOL

Tell me you are sitting there thinking to yourself that I must have been drunk when I posted this. That is if you even noticed the spelling mistake?

Well it was deliberate and you would not be alone in thinking that my usual standards had slipped. I was working on a site today when my better half peered over my shoulder and proclaimed ‘That’s not how you spell …..!’ I know it’s not darling but I recently bought a site that had quite a well known spelling mistake in it and the traffic it pulls is quite surprising. I found another one while doing my post on terapeak a few days ago, using those little teddy bear called Webkinz.

It is not something that I would recommend chasing all the time, especially if you are a bit of a perfectionist like me. It drives me crazy when I spot incorrect spelling and doing this site has been a killer because I’ll correct myself and then realise it was meant to be wrong in the first place. I’ve never tried this avenue of traffic out either so it will be interesting to see if spelling has an effect on whether or not someone will actually purchase.

Keyword research is a big factor in how I spend my time but believe me when I say it is well worth the effort. Below you will find a few of my favourite tools and don’t forget to check the spelling errors too!!

1. Wordtracker Gtrends

2. Google Trends / Adwords

3. Keyword Discovery

4. Key Compete

5. SEO Book

My better half has just reminded not to forget those geographical spelling differences that we so often debate. I don’t have a favourite (or a favorite) but here are a few examples of US and English spelling differences.

As I say repeatedly on this blog, there are a million ways to make money online and the reason so many people don’t is because they give up or worse still, don’t even try! I’ve just been reading the PepperjamNetwork blog in which Kris interviews other affiliate marketers from around the world and the most recent of which was an interview with Paul Bourque of Uberaffiliate.com. Paul (a self confessed super duper affiliate) had some great things to say and one thing I notice that these guys all have in common is that they all took a chance, not wanting to work for the man any longer. Yes, they have all had some luck along the way but taking the chance is the first step and I can vouch for that myself….it took me a couple of years of reading blogs and other mmo sites before I took the plunge, spent some hard earned cash and got down to business.

On that note I would like to draw your attention to something that might prompt you to take the plunge. Starting on July 1st there will be a competition over at site flipping university. As a relative newbie to site flipping it is the perfect opportunity to follow Bryans instruction in order to take a site from scratch to sale in just 30 days. That’s right…in one month you will build a blog, drive traffic to that blog and sell it online at sitepoint. Bryan will not be competing himself but he will be posting step by step advice along the way and not only are the prizes looking good but you will have made money online in 30 days by selling your site.

I advise you to head over to site flipping university and get familiar with the rules but suggest that if you are new to making money online and have been looking for that push to give it a go then this is a great place to start.  As the super duper affiliate says, don’t spend all your time researching - spend 10% reading and 90% of your time doing it!

Lose the fear…but be warned, I am in it to win it!!

I have been taking a break from knocking out my BANS stores recently which has been quite refereshing. I have begun to work on a few to other little projects…..such as site flipping, not only that but I have also had time to reflect on what I have learned and achieved from my efforts and how best I can transfer that knowledge to you.

I’d like to offer a few posts about tools that I use frequently and how to get the best from said tools. The first one I have chosen is Terapeak.

Terapeak is a tool that will give you some insight as to what is selling on ebay, it includes figures for average selling price and sell through rate of products. It’s great for ebay sellers and buyers alike and also invaluable to anyone using the Bans program.

So, you are looking to set up a build a niche store website and are lacking in ideas for what to promote. You go to terapeak and put in your search term and here is the information you can gather.

For the purpose of this demonstration I did a search on Terapeak for Webkinz….not something I promote myself and I did have some interesting finds! I used the free tool for this so we are looking at last weeks information here, but the first thing you will see is this. Ok, so the listings show that you will not have a shortage of products to display on your bans sites but I have circled what interests me. Average sale price indicates what sort of commissions I am looking at per sale and sell through rate shows me that people are indeed buying these funny little bears.

Terapeak also offers you loads of details on buy it now sales versus bid sales and time of day of listings etc….but that is of no real value to anyone. The second thing I look for is the recent sales as below

Now I don’t read too much into these and to be perfectly honest I sometimes thnk that the numbers don’t quite add up. Look closely and you will see what I mean. In terms of bans though I need to be assured that the things are selling and the price is right. If you see from the above picture though what interests me is that not many people bid on those dragons. This gives me assurance that I stand a better chance of making a sale if I can get people to bid through my bans stores.

Next up I look to refine my product search and I noticed that the cheeky dog webkinz are popular so I will look at those.

I have a look at the listings as before to find that whilst there will be more competiton with the bids…..these things are popular!

Instantly I see more value in these as, although there are substantially less listings, the average price and the sell through rate is vastly improved. So, I take that product and run it through wordtracker to see what sort of organic traffic I would be looking at.

A fair amount of searches per day. What about the competiton for top spot on google?

Not a great deal of competition either. The amount of daily visits is low but this is for one particular keyword and let’s not forget this is targeted traffic too! All in all that seems like a good niche product.

I recommend you get out there and try these simple techniques to further hone your niche store skills. I will follow up with more on this subject but I think you get the idea for now.

Let me know if you have any questions or additional tips on the above…….and no, I do not have a cheeky dog webkinz bans store!!

I’ll not dwell on this one too long but version 3 of the increasingly popular web browser Firefox is going on general release today. In addition to that Mozilla are looking to set a world record for the most downloads in 24 hours.

Firefox has long been regarded as the browser of choice for the more ’informed’ internet users and, as a user myself, I can only say that for any budding webmaster out there it is a must have tool. Firefox 3 promises to make it possible for you to work faster and more efficiently on the web.

15,000 improvements to an already brilliant browser can’t be wrong!

In the spirit of open source….this is not an affiliate link.

I am having a night off after an extremely bad day at the office. To give you some idea, I felt a lot like this guy…

So I’m passing away my lunch break at work and I come across a post on the BBC website about Blogger arrests being at an all time high.

64 Bloggers have been arrested since 2003 and while the majority of these of from countries like China, Egypt and Iran (where the whole idea of the internet is flawed by restrictions and monitoring), the list includes British, French, American and Canadian Bloggers. The longest sentence stands at 8 years……….. for having an opinion!!

Of course my blog is not political or anything like that, whereas the majority of those arrested were, it makes you think! Blogs are a serious medium of communication and so very easily accessible nowadays; with people sharing huge amounts of information and points of view, where do you draw the line? I have always had my concerns about internet policing policies - with enough problems getting slapped by Google for example - but this opens my eyes further still!

I’ll ask you all for your thoughts on this subject….I firmly believe the internet should remain open and unrestricted by anyone. Do you? I’m not making this political and actually I have been reading a lot recently about a lot of bans sites being de-indexed from google so I’d like to draw your attention to that if I may. Peoples source of income vanished over night because google deems them to be of little value to it’s readers! Hey big G…how about you let the people decide that?