Internet Moneymaking - AdSense and Affiliate Programs
No posts here in quite some time, but I am still doing the things I spoke of in prior posts as time and my health allows.
I feel I have studied this internet marketing thing a bit more over the last few months, and have a good beginning with one website with an average of 60 new visitors a day bringing in steady money every month with Google's AdSense program.
Most people making decent cash in the AdSense game surely have more than one website, with each website bringing in small sums of revenue... but the kicker is with multiple websites each bringing in small sums, it eventually becomes a quite nice sum when added together as a whole. People with their health intact, and tons of energy should have no problem churning out tons of websites with this formula. Only problem is it does leave one open to catastrophe, as their internet business is not diversified.
The affiliate programs I have joined, and spent hours upon hours adding their catalog of products to my websites have sent me absolutely nothing. Few emails for encouragement, or to tell the boss they did something today. Though, I have sent them a bit of traffic... FOR FREE!!
After about 14-16 months of this...I have one affiliate sale. One(1)
I am quite obviously missing something, or affiliate programs may be excellent for merchants, but a joke for 95% of their affiliates.
Are my commissions being stolen? Are my visitors turned off by suddenly being sent to some merchant who's page looks nothing like mine? Are the products I have added to my website more likely to be bought in person due to their size, shipping costs, or the lack of the customer being able to touch, see, and feel the product in person? Is it a bad niche for affiliate sales?
Well, I have no clue, and am quite dismayed to say the least. I had higher expectations for affiliate sales, due to my total amount of visitors over the past year... I mean surely more than 1 affiliate sale should be attainable with 60,000 visitors, correct?
Well, if anyone would like to show off how they sell affiliate products, I'm all eyes and ears, because this isn't working.
Well, apparently some hacker, or cracker is angry with the United States government's "War on Terror," our President George W. Bush, and the War in Iraq as they have managed to upload html files with vulgar political statements to the root directory of about 120 websites, according to a google search of the text string, SpyKids irc.gigachat.net Brasil Ownz
How they did this is beyond me, but my build a home bar website was hit on March 7th. Only thing that they changed was the main index.php file. As far as I can tell no images, files, databases, scripts had been deleted; meaning this person did not necessarily want to ruin a person's website, and be hateful. They possibly were more interested in getting their political message out on as many easy to crack web servers as they could find. They even hit a Texas A&M University dept's page.
I must admit it is quite strange and shocking to go visit my own internet website to see if there was room for a tiki hut and bar section in the store, and my website is, basically, a blank white page with some hacker's political message emblazoned across the top of my webpage for all of my visitors to see.
As if being awake for about 27 hours straight with no sleep at the time of the discovery wasn't weird enough... then I have to talk to tech support while delirious out of my mind. heh.
Well, I've been working a bit here and there on my latest affiliate marketing website based in the health and wellness industry: vitamins, weights and exercise equipment, etc. This one has proved to be alittle tougher to get going as compared to my other websites.
The script to make the product galleries has not been up to snuff, it seems, as compared to the other program's offerings. So, we'll just have to work a bit, and adapt to pull this one off.
That is about all I have been up to... besides my health being horrible of late: lungs congested, feeling weak,.. blah blah.. on and on...
Anyways, I hope I can post a url to my new fitness website by the first few weeks of March, and if that's possible... I'd be quite happy considering how February has gone.
and by the way, It's almost Baseball season!!!!! Woohooooo!!!
Till next time, and let's hope I'm feeling better by then...
Debt Consolidation Well, I finally uploaded and re-configured my debt consolidation website, Debt Consolidation Scout . Took, ohhh, bout an hour or so. The affiliate payout on the debt consolidation program I'm with is really nice. Few 10's up front, and then money monthly for however long it takes the person to pay off their debts. So, it's pretty cool, and hopefully it'll help out a few people at the same time. If you're in debt up to your eyeballs, go check out our website.. it's free to submit your information for evaluation, and includes a free debt consolidation quote, as well.
In other news... I just bought a new server hosting package at 1and1.com and it seems to be a pretty nice package so far. 4 gigs of space, can host 200 domains, 5 free domain names up front, and tons more awesome options.
I look forward to 2005, and filling up a bit of that with my new affiliate marketing network I have planned.
Check back here to see how it goes... till next time, folks!!
Well, our 2nd affiliate marketing website, Grill a Juicy Steak, is online! Obviously, it's about grilling good steaks, and outdoor grills. Visit if you're needing some high quality steak delivered to your home, or are in need of a new barbecue grill for the summer party season coming up.
We have plans to build some new affiliate websites in the next year focused on different niches. We have ideas of making several shopping and knowledge portals. If you're an affiliate manager and offer an instant product gallery creator, and other content for your affiliates, we'd love to hear from you.
Well, my 1st affiliate marketing website, Build a Home Bar, is now up and pretty much fully functional. lol Took quite a long time to learn the industry, which I still am studying, and building this website.
Hopefully, it will be generating some sales via the home bar, bar stool store I have just set up over the last month or so. I must admit it'd be nice if the affiliate marketing industry would go to a "take orders" style model, instead of the tracking sales via unreliable cookies, etc, because so far the home bar, bar stool, and other related product's sales have been quite slow considering the amount of visitors I've had over the last 2 months or so.
I'd guess it really is in the retailers benefit to do it via cookies though, as quite a few orders that should've been attributed to affiliates probably slip through the cracks with the affiliate not being paid, etc. With that said... Hopefully, the home bar, bar stool store will work better than the text link's to a merchant's website have, but I'm not holding my breath or anything.
So far, my foray into the Affiliate Marketing industry has been riddled with pot holes, and hard work... with hardly any pay. Is it all worth it? I really don't know yet.. it sure is seeming much harder than some of the ebooks and ads have made it appear. Almost seems the ebook peddlers may be making tons of money from people's dreams, as opposed to giving you a real, solid e-biz selling tangible products that people want and need in their homes, etc.
Bluntly honest here... It just seems difficult to make money with the tools that the companies give you in the affiliate marketing industry. Now, if it was all seemless, and you took orders on your website, and sent orders to the retailer.. that would work 10 times better, I think. I'm beginning to wonder if it's annoying for the consumer to be shopping on one site, and then click on a product or merchant link and end up on some totally other website!! It just may be too shocking for the consumer... but I'm 3-4 months into this, and we'll see what happens, because I promised myself I'd do this for a year... and that's what I plan to do.
If all else fails, I'll have 3-5 themed niche websites I can add real web stores to, taking my own orders and dealing with wholesalers, and merchant accounts!
Onto other news...
I have now started my 2nd Affiliate Marketing website and it's in the outdoor grill, delivered steak and meats, barbecue sauce/spices niche. LOL I hope it'll be up and functional by summer with orders coming in for the summertime party/bbq season. I'll post links to it when it's more complete.
Till next time... and next time will not be 4 months from now, I promise!!!
Get rich scheme, my butt... Well, I'm still working every day on my affiliate marketing websites. Some days more than others, and some days frustrated more than others. Sometimes, I enjoy the websites I've built; Sometimes I realize my code is all a big mess, my keywords seem to not be how they need to be, my titles may need tweaking, on and on. This is some tough work, and no sight of a check for the next few months.
I just really need a mentor, and no, I don't mean I wanna spend 500 bucks on a pdf file. I need to be explained the nuances of this business, I know the basics, and I'm not sure that an expensive pdf on the subject will have what I need it to have considering my current knowledge. I'm at the stage where I'm building websites and I'm not sure if they're going to work or not. I really need someone to look over them a bit for me and point me in the right direction.
Well, I'm off to post on a message board and see if someone would like to pass on some help that was maybe passed onto them... wish me luck...
Welcome to the diary of a new e-biz! Here I'll be documenting the trials and tribulations of starting from scratch some new internet businesses. Some personal life will also be thrown in here and there, as well. How fun!
About Me
Name: mmh3
Location: Houston/Galveston, Texas, United States
Owner of "Build a Home Bar," a website featuring guides on building and buying a home bar.
Also, the site includes books, articles, coupon codes, and a shop with home bars, bar stools, game tables, and more.
www.build-a-home-bar.com
