Affiliate Marketing - The SMART Way

55 responses so far ↓

• 1 admin // Jun 11, 2008 at 5:42 pm

  If there’s something I’m missing - just lemme know…

  Cheers,

  -Chris

• 2 Jeremy Hier // Jun 11, 2008 at 10:10 pm

  Hey Chris,

  Reports sound great.
  Looking forward to them.

  Jeremy

• 3 Alex Miller // Jun 12, 2008 at 3:52 am

  Hi Chris,

  Sounds great! Don’t forget as well to focus on those wanting to build and promote their own informational product - which includes recruiting affiliates…I personally would struggle with this.

  Thanks,

  Alex

• 4 Morgan // Jun 12, 2008 at 5:55 am

  Hey Chris

  Thanks a bunch for your in depth answer to my quesitons on your previous post, here are a couple more important things you may want to add to your reports that I feel is essential but no body ever asks…

  1. How you go about running a successful internet marketing business ie: how do you keep track of all your sites and incommings and how you go about the basics of accounting to make sure you are on top of it all.

  2. How you go about setting up your company for an affiliate markeitng business ie: protecting yourself through a llc, taxes etc

  3. The reason for setting up multiple affiliate accounts with different vendors ie testing accounts, accounts to protect your identity from your compeitors etc

  4. What affiliate tracking software, link tracking, organizers etc you use to keep your business in top shape.

  I realize the reason why these topics are not covered is because the newbie really does not need to know this upfront, which personally I think is an error…

  sowhat happens when the newbie is now earning a income, but yet does not know how to do the above and starts loosing alot of his cashflow due to not knowing how to run a proper affiliate markeitng business, gets taxed heavy, does not know how to track effectivly, is unorganized etc etc. I feel these kind of topics should definately be addresse from the beginning like any offline business would do.

  Cant wait for your reports and coaching program.

  Cheers

  Morgan

• 5 Morgan // Jun 12, 2008 at 6:18 am

  Whoops, forgot to include another important topic you can put a report together on, and that is how to effectivly go about purchasing and promoting PLR products, ie what are the best plr products to go for and why, where to find good plr products, what you need to do to the plr products to make them more effective for your own use et etc, and then how would you go about setting up a plr product on your own site with a merchant accoutn,sales letter etc

  Cheers

  Morgan

• 6 Internet Marketing Blog // Jun 12, 2008 at 7:43 am

  Great news! Looking forward to getting those reports.

• 7 cheetu // Jun 12, 2008 at 7:51 am

  I strongly suggest to have a report for software marketing, many of us are doing it.

  and its more important to kick start lazy affiliate sites becouse you need minimum 200$ for a site to build and instant SEO.

  and if you are planing for linkvana then softwares can provide you initial free cash for investing in such a expensive service.

  I am about to by linkvana by my 1st CB check which was 907$, its enough for 6 months of subscription if I write on my own.

  In that report their are many things to be included about this tactic.

  Cheetu

• 8 Mike Russell // Jun 12, 2008 at 8:11 am

  we hear from people who are fired-up and ready-to-go all the time. Usually, this is because they are new to marketing online. The trouble is that it is very common for people to suffer information overload and the subsequent sapping of energy and motivation it causes. The term “information overload” has been seized by marketers nowadays and used as yet another psychological trigger, but what does it really mean? What are it’s actual effects on real people and most importantly, what can be done about it in practical terms that have been proven to work in the majority of cases? I know I suffer from one particular aspect of the condition in that I actually have all the tools, so don’t need templates, or basic HTML tuition, etc, yet I still suffer from paralysis and strong feelings of lethargy and disillusionment with the whole online making-money process. I’m willing to bet that I am very far from alone in this. Without one’s mind in the right condition, there is little point in trying to learn more - it will simply make matters worse. This is a far more widespread and serious concern for many people.

• 9 Big Al // Jun 12, 2008 at 10:03 am

  Hi Chris — all the above sounds good and is pretty much where I suffer…

  My 2 cents… I think part of the reason we (or I) lack focus is because we look to earn too much too quick. We’re hyped up to see at least 6 x $ in days. Chasing the dream…

  I think if newbies either need to change mindsets to a longer term, asset building (as you endorse — I can’t see this happen with the sales pages out there pushing overnight success).

  Or… bite the bullet, take some short term money (probably not building assets) but as a means of proving to themselves that it is possible and building up from there. Once they’ve learnt the hard way that the longer term assets are much better and a better use of time than say purely article/bum marketing. I know think why write x articles a day when I could write content - but previously it was all about the fast money with no start money.

  I like your book and it’s taken a year for me to sit down, stop looking over the fence and get on with my project following a (your) blueprint.

  Alan

• 10 Big Al // Jun 12, 2008 at 10:04 am

  Sorry I wrote too quickly so not sure if you can work out the above — call it a puzzle (back to work before ze Boss comes)

• 11 Andrew Witherspoon // Jun 12, 2008 at 10:19 am

  Thanks for the response Chris. I’m really looking forward to the cookie cutter mini sites.

  It wasn’t quite a big hassle to transform a basic template into one like the example mini site in your ebook and video at http://www.thelazymarketer.com/flash/registry.html
  but it will be so much easier to make minisites with your templates, I’m sure.

  Count me in as sold on at least that product, (priced correctly) and the traffic series.

  On a side note, when I asked the question about mini site templates I should have also stated that a tutorial on how to do the whole web app, hta thing for seo traffic should be done.

  This is a major part of the ‘Lazy’ plan if you want to get that traffic kick started. Please think about adding this title.

  Maybe something like “How To Build Easy Apps ‘For Dummies and Smarty Pants People Who Are Really In A Rush”.

• 12 Wilson // Jun 12, 2008 at 10:37 am

  Hi Chris

  I would be very grateful if you include a report on some of the mistakes you think you made when you started like the tax issue and so on and also what you would have done differently for some of your sites if you had known earlier like you said about selling them. I forgot to ask this earlier

  Thanks

• 13 David // Jun 12, 2008 at 11:21 am

  Is there any way to learn how to hone in one the day-to-day things to focus on…
  I mean, sometimes it feels like the life of a chicken with its head cut off. Is there a way of crunching down what the ideal morning would look like, for example, for an online marketer?

  Many thanks
  David
  http://hubpages.com/hub/MAKING-MONEY-ONLINE—Will-You-Put-Your-Money-Where-Your-Mouth-Is

• 14 Len R. // Jun 12, 2008 at 2:13 pm

  Chris,

  Thanks for this,

  Especially the pre made templates, and I agree about making software, if you could show us how to do this, it would be great.

  Thank you,

  Len

• 15 Jeremy Hier // Jun 12, 2008 at 3:06 pm

  I also want to learn how to make software too.

  Jeremy

• 16 pyrmont // Jun 12, 2008 at 3:08 pm

  I am looking forward to those reports.

  Esp the Google Proof One!

• 17 Ann // Jun 12, 2008 at 4:06 pm

  I definetely agree with Morgan on points 1-4

• 18 Jeremy Hier // Jun 12, 2008 at 4:11 pm

  Chris,

  Could you give us an idea about the cost
  of your coaching course.

  Jeremy

• 19 Jeremy Hier // Jun 12, 2008 at 4:21 pm

  Chris,

  Are you using Web 2.0:

  Facebook
  MySpace
  Twitter
  Digg
  Stumbleupon
  Propeller
  Social Bookmarking

  Jeremy

• 20 admin // Jun 12, 2008 at 4:22 pm

  Thanks everyone for your added input.

  Alex Miller - great point - that’s an important one. I’ll tack that on the board as well…

  Morgan - EXCELLENT points. This should be made available, for sure. People may not “want” to know this (as in it’s not as sexy as, say, “traffic generation”), but it’s crucial to anyone who’s actually planning on building something for real.

  Also, in regards to using PLR - that’s a great topic as well. Most people have no idea how much money is sitting on their hard drive, rotting.

  Cheetu & Jeremy - Yes, this needs to be covered in more detail, especially in regards to making toolbars and how to choose niches that work for this.

  Mike Russel - I can relate a little bit to what you’re saying, but “information overload” isn’t the fault of those providing the information - unless they’re doing it on purpose, which 99% aren’t. However, I’ll be building ALL of these reports so that they’re easily actionable and part of an overall, complimentary aim - the building of an actual authority center in a niche market.

  Hi Big Al - That’s the beauty of the mini-site strategy. It does provide results relatively quickly, while also building a small asset, which can later be scaled into something more substantial.

  Wilson - GREAT idea. Something like “5 Easily-Avoidable Mistakes That Cost Me a Small Fortune”. And at my rate, it would probably be a series of reports on this topic

  David - Good point. As with Mike Russel’s comment, perhaps what I could do is create a realistic weekly action-plan where it would offer itineraries that were broken down by importance - where, for example, no matter what else you do, if you MAKE SURE that ____, ____, and ____ occurs, your business will grow, etc.

  Len R - I agree, I think a lot of people will benefit from an in-depth “cookie cutter” site package where they just insert their own content and away they go.

  Ann - Thanks for confirming that

• 21 admin // Jun 12, 2008 at 4:31 pm

  Hi Jeremy,

  I’ll answer your two latest questions…

  Re: Coaching course:
  ————————–

  This will be delivered ‘membernaire’ style, but will be largely comprised of action-checklists and video training. It will be a far cry from getting a short little article each week.

  This will be designed to be a serious (and profitable) kick in the ass for anyone who wants to actually see their desired results materialize from affiliate marketing.

  I tend to go a little overboard on content sometimes though, so I’ll be trying to make sure everything I put out for the weekly lessons is still “actionable” by the time I go through everything.

  Essentially, I’ll build this so that if someone were to ACTUALLY follow-allong and do the tasks laid out in front of them, then in 6 months time, they’ll have built a business with the capacity to generate $100,000+ per year in revenue.

  I want to be careful about “guaranteeing” that, but it’s more than possible (I know), and will depend on the niche, the products promoted and the person’s business acumen.

  I’ll be revealing more about it very shortly…

  —–

  Re: Facebook, social stuff, etc.

  Honestly, no not really.

  I use Zimbio, Squidoo and occasionally Digg to help get stuff indexed.

  I like YouTube though. Excellent way to generate more traffic, and it’s targeted once the serps pick it up, and even somewhat before that too.

  The social web is still in its infancy.

  Content is still king of the castle.

  -Chris

• 22 Tom // Jun 12, 2008 at 6:52 pm

  What about the correct way to use article marketing and mini-sites as a start up business plan?

• 23 Jackie Beem // Jun 12, 2008 at 7:05 pm

  Chris,
  Last night I started to respond to your previous post but after reading the comments I saw that so many others had already expressed what I would have said.
  I have a few adsense sites up and making money, one site with my own ebook which is plunking along with some sales.
  I did my first affiliate site after reading your “Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate”. It is fairly new and so far no sales from it.
  I think my frustration with most of the internet marketing material that I have purchased is that they seem to leave you hanging. They tell you how to technically do something like build a mini-site, set up a blog, place your adsense ads on your site and then maybe a few blurbs about how to get traffic (article marketing, emails, squidoo, etc.).
  But then it is ok, now go pick a profitable niche, build your site and get yourself some traffic.
  No one ever truly tells you how to pick a very profitable niche. Not everyone has the gift of gab and can just real off content and articles like a printing press. Not everyone is a born salesman. And traffic is just another beast in itself.
  I have a programming background so the techy stuff comes easy to me. For some I’m sure that is a steep learning curve also.
  My experience has been that few of the products actually live up to their sales letters.
  On the flip site to provide the training and knowledge on everything that one needs to be successful requires a lot of someone’s time and therefore can be expense (and rightfully so) yet out of reach for a newbie just starting out.
  A good example of a skill that a lot of people lack is your ability to compile all of these comments into 9 very good report titles that will sell.
  So, not sure there is anything useful here to you but it’s said.
  Just one more thing. I know videos are the thing and I think they have their good points for some things, like showing how to do something specific. But, they also have their downside. They eat up bandwidth. You can’t make notes on them like a printed PDF. You can’t read them while waiting at the dentist office like a printed PDF. It is harder to go back and find a specific point that you want to review. I can read faster than most people can talk on the videos. Therefore, my vote is for the content to be in both formats or just PDF.

  Thanks for listening.

  Jackie

• 24 Greg R // Jun 12, 2008 at 7:28 pm

  Chris,

  If you have a squeeze page that is part of an affiliate product promotion and you are offering a free report or email course - Were do you send the person who opts in? To just a thankyou page or to the affiliate product’s webpage that you are trying to promote? I’m sorry if I should have asked this on the other post but I wasn’t sure if you were still monitoring it.

  Thanks,
  Greg R

• 25 admin // Jun 12, 2008 at 11:29 pm

  Tom - I’ll be sure to address that in my content

  Jackie - Very good points, and I know what you’re saying. Pre-selling and ACTUAL niches will be discussed. Also, I intend to distribute PDF transcripts of the movies. I’ll basically be reading them ON the movies…

  Greg R - Normally, I’d suggest to your own thank-you page. You may lose front-end conversion initially, but I think your list will have a better “first impression”

  Thanks for the feedback!

  -Chris

• 26 David K // Jun 12, 2008 at 11:58 pm

  Hey Chris,

  About 2 months ago you mailed your customer list and promoted a product that builds stores using data feeds. I emailed you back and recommended Pop Shops as I thought it was a better alternative. You replied … thanked me and said you never heard of it. I sure would value your opinion of Pop Shops and did you ever use them?

  Pop Shops might be great for a lot of people who are struggling here.

  David K

• 27 Jeremy Hier // Jun 13, 2008 at 12:22 pm

  Chris,

  When will your linking report be ready.

  6monthsto6figures.com sounds good.

  Jeremy

• 28 Jeremy Hier // Jun 13, 2008 at 12:30 pm

  Chris,

  Please include information about setting up hosting
  and add-on domains, or sub-domains.

  When I first started online I thought for every new site I built I needed a new hosting account.

  Now I’m using add-on domains, I’m finding those add-on domains get indexed faster.

  How do you think about add-on domains.
  Do you use them when testing many mini-sites.

  Jeremy

• 29 Trevor // Jun 15, 2008 at 6:53 pm

  Chris…

  An in-depth mini course on how to create basic free-ware applications for maximum conversion would be excellent.

  You could(should) also include a section on how to set up your own shareware application side business, that deals with real (register after the free trial) type software and not just free-ware money generators I know you mentioned it briefly in your book, but I am personally more interested in this way of dealing with software in the long run after I finish cleaning up with the free-ware method

  Thanks Chris you’re awesome

• 30 John // Jun 15, 2008 at 9:24 pm

  Hey Chris;

  How about something on putting an effective e-store in one’s site or something on how to build a membership site.

  John

• 31 Jeremy Hier // Jun 16, 2008 at 11:35 am

  Hey John,

  Nice site about teaching in Japan.
  How do you get your adsense ads to look so good.

  Your adsense links seems to be bigger and use a different font. I looked at your source code, but I don’t see a way to change the size or font.

  Is it because you are using a different ad format than I.

  My site with adsense looks like this;

  http://www.powerfulportablegenerators.com/generacportablegenerator.htm

  Jeremy

• 32 Kurt Naulaerts // Jun 18, 2008 at 1:31 am

  Chris,

  If you create these comprehensive reports and we are able to apply the strategies then I believe we’re on our way to full time income. So I would say, start writing them asap so that I can get my hands on them.

  By the way, doesn’t your book cover all this?

• 33 John // Jun 19, 2008 at 5:26 am

  Hi Jeremy,
  I don’t want to hi-jack this thread. I’d be
  more than happy to discuss things.
  You can contact me through my site.

  Thanks for the kind comments

  John

• 34 Jeremy Hier // Jun 19, 2008 at 5:04 pm

  Thanks John,

  I looked around, didn’t see any contact info.
  Mine is myfullname@gmail.com

  Jeremy

• 35 Jeremy Hier // Jun 20, 2008 at 8:11 am

  where can I contact you John.

  thanks, Jeremy

• 36 Sally // Jun 27, 2008 at 3:14 am

  Hey Chris

  Look forward to your future reports, you seem to have every topic covered!

  Sally

• 37 Andrew Witherspoon // Jun 29, 2008 at 4:23 pm

  Chris,
  From the video you sent about the Registry site that you built based on the ebook I found the actual site - WOW!

  That site has a ranking of 350, 000, about 2500 incoming links and a Google rank of 4. Congrats!

  Questions.
  How long ago did you build that and can I use the template for my own site at http://www.antispywareremove.info

  Also, what is the deal with the pages having php extensions, is it the java code I see in the source code?

  Anyway, looking forward to the reports you promised us and I will be getting your Conduit report some time next week.

  thanks a lot!

• 38 Scott Million // Jun 29, 2008 at 9:08 pm

  Hi Chris, just sold another copy your Lazy Marketer

  Question on your Conduit Report:

  You mention using subdomains as building a massive authoritative site. What did you mean by this?

  I thought subdomains were treated as their “own domain” and didn’t provide any authority or link juice to/from the main domain (other than if you link them together).

  Could you elaborate on this?

  Thanks,

  Scott Million

• 39 Richard Peck // Jun 30, 2008 at 4:14 pm

  Scott - I haven’t seen the report but if you want to build a big site that has lots of SE juice then sub domains are a good way to go.

  Because Google sees your “site” as being the “domain” I.E google.com or yahoo.com - it treats everything under that domain as equal.

  Think of Yahoo’s whole range of web products. They all come under sub domains and they seem to do alright in the SE’s.

• 40 Mark D // Jul 1, 2008 at 3:51 pm

  Hey Chris,

  I think basically where I am stuck is how to build a high-converting static site…and the header graphics and such which is why I have been sticking to blogs…but I tend to agree with you…blogs aren’t great converters

  So the tech stuff is what gets me…I can usually follow the marketing stuff well.

  Also, staying on page 1 of google. I can get Digg posts and RSS feeds on page 1 pretty easy but haven’t been able to get my sites a permanent presence on there.

  I’ll check out your new report in the meantime

• 41 Scott Million // Jul 1, 2008 at 4:32 pm

  Interesting. So, if I had a general themed site like “animal training” or something and it got a ton of link juice… then I created
  dogs. animaltraining. com
  cats. animaltraining. com

  etc. each one of those would have just as much authority? or are you splitting the juice between the subdomains (so if my main domain had PR 6 they’d all now have PR 2-4)?

  Also, can you use the same layout for these subdomains or do you get penalized for similar code across subdomains (read that somewhere).

  Thanks for the help Richard.

• 42 Scott Million // Jul 1, 2008 at 4:34 pm

  by the way… Chris, why not start a Lazy Marketer forum? I think it would be awesome to trade success tips between others who utilize your SEO/review (conduit) method approach…

• 43 Trevor // Jul 2, 2008 at 12:01 am

  Yeah a forum would kick ass

• 44 Adam // Jul 4, 2008 at 7:00 am

  Hi Chris,

  First of all, your last blog post plus all your comments has to be one of the best IM posts I’ve ever read

  One thing that a lot of marketers don’t use very much, but I feel can add TONS and I mean TONS of value is case studies.

  I would love to get full case studies documenting every step you take with some sites (brand new).

  I’m looking forward to your reports, I’m sure they’ll be excellent as all your stuff is but if you want to know what I personally would like the most…complete, no hold back case studies.

  Plus what Scott suggested above about a forum

  Look forward to all the new content your working on, should be excellent!

• 45 Scott Million // Jul 7, 2008 at 3:23 am

  Hey, if you guys are looking for an example of a conduit site that makes $1,000s/mo then check out http://www.nextadvisor.com/

  I was doing some research on non-clickbank products to promote and I came across this site, which makes most of its money via Pay-Per-Click. While Chris doesn’t use PPC as much as other methods (not sure if he uses it at all), this goes to prove how powerful the conduit method is where someone can be making enough to hold the top 3 positions in Google Adwords for competitive product keywords (often the most expensive)…. my eyes have been opened and I’m opening the doors to my first product keyword only website and I’m so pumped! Good luck guys!

• 46 Cinjon // Jul 8, 2008 at 10:28 am

  How to get Google Sandboxed: My last two Minisites launched over 2 mos ago and still have a Grey page rank (not even zero). I noticed that one site acquired over 2400+ backlinks in a little over a week. Right after completion & launching of the site I did the following: 1) WSO 400 link submission service. 2) Ledger 3-Way links, and 3) Bookmarked about 20 social sites. For some reason, several hundred links come from the same domain - as if my site infiltrated every page of that site. Definitely not natural. Now we just have to see how long the minisite dormancy will last. I thought of just buying another domain and re-launching, but the hosting info would probably rat me out. Incidentally, these minisites are all over MSN & Yahoo, but the traffic is real dim.

• 47 Scott Million // Jul 9, 2008 at 7:00 pm

  Chris, did you get your site layout idea for healthproductreports.com from http://www.thecellulitereport.com/cellex-c-cellulite-review-and-consumer-feedback.html ?

  Very similar…erie

• 48 admin // Jul 9, 2008 at 7:36 pm

  Scott,

  No - it looks like that person took action on the Conduit Method very quickly.

  Good on them.

  -Chris

• 49 No More Compromise // Jul 16, 2008 at 12:58 pm

  What PPC Marketing Can Teach You About Monetizing Your Content Site…

  We marketers tend to see pay per click marketing (PPC) as something completely different to search engine marketing (SEM) with content sites.
  With PPC you’re sending visitors to a landing page and then, hopefully, onto a merchant page or CPA offe…

• 50 Charlotte Brooks // Jul 17, 2008 at 11:31 am

  I’m thinking about getting into the affiliate marketing. I was just wondering with the current status of the economy how is it affecting affiliate marketing? Is it a good time to get into affiliate marketing?

• 51 Ivan // Aug 14, 2008 at 10:57 am

  Hey I have started promoting all your reports and EVERY one loves them. I have made my first sales thanks to you. If this keeps making me money I might just make a Conduit site on your reports. =] thats if you plan on launching a lot more? let me know.

• 52 admin // Aug 14, 2008 at 11:39 am

  Right on Ivan,

  Well, you can make a conduit site with my stuff I suppose, but I also encourage you to get into other markets and expand your base.

  I am glad that people like my products and that it’s been a good experience for you.

  But in terms of affiliate assets - you’ll want to diversify.

  Thanks!

  -Chris

• 53 Ivan // Aug 15, 2008 at 11:39 pm

  I was thinking of assembling a huge Conduit site on the “work at home niche”. I think that if I review every new program released I should be able to get some good traffic going. You think that could work? If not I was thinking about one of your suggestions in the bonus report.

  Their are really a number of things i can do with the ‘Conduit’ method I think I’m just having a hard time choosing.

  Also I got a Squidoo lens to promote your stuff, I am right under you for a number of keywords.

  http://www.squidoo.com/vipconfessions

  Your feedback would be great

• 54 pyrmont sydney // Aug 23, 2008 at 11:12 am

  Will affiliate marketing survive a shrinking economy? Ooops maybe someone asked this..oh well

• 55 Steve // Oct 6, 2008 at 10:52 am

  Hey Chris …firstly, thanks for a crackin’ ‘Confessions’ report - excellent info, and well worth the money …certainly happy to recommend to as many as poss.

  One quick question now…

  In your first chapter when you refer to keyword research, the keywords you list as your product-focused examples have some very low monthly search results (like just 2 searches a day in some cases). This seems very low results and so strange to target and somewhat contradicts your point of “tapping into massive, existing demand”?

  Any reason why your don’t take into account the ‘exact search’ volumes? Surely if you don’t, you could be in danger of taking a product and building a mini-site that no-one is searching for what’s there in any volume?

  Really appreciate your thoughts?

  Kind regards, Steve.

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