Affiliate HipHop

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Listen, Laugh and Enjoy…

LYRICS
I’ve always wanted to make money on the internet
Makin mill-eee-ans bein an affiliate
Watch the screen and watch the mother fuckin ends come in
Thats what wicked fire forum members recommend

Make a dollar a day, on a site
thats arbitrage from my moms garage
it looks like a first graders art collage
but thats why they click, the site looks like shit

now if i do that, again and again,
I’ll have enough money for my car and my rent
No wait, I can buy my own place,
Quit my job, make this a full time gig

cause day jobs are like teeth - im pullin em
so i got a forum skinned on vbulletin
im moderatin from an island in ????????
work from home so i’m lookin like a hood-ul-um

on wicked fire talkin nitch or neesh
with my laptop and a bitch at the beach
hittin my peak,
to my old boss - suck deez nuts damnit
myspace spammin from a beach front hammock

thats my office, makin oceans 11 profits
without bein an armed convict
i climbed everest, “i made it yo”
broadcast it on webmaster radio


when i started, all i did was lose money
now i’m on the way to bein runner up to shoemoney
i’m too hungry, i thirst for knowledge
but the only think i know is where i got it

see-i don’t know anything about anything
everything i knows nonsense, i scrape content,
do what jon says, post it rss
and put my focus on some hot blondes breasts

it all started from a thread by mook-jon
tried what he did, but my head was pooped on

bank roll shrunk, wallet skinny like a coke head,
sold my car and had to buy a fuckin mo-ped
sold that, bought keds from pay less
made it kinda hard to get girls to say yes

now i eat lunch with trump and bill gates
post my income but the trolls will still hate
reminisce - when i got my first check way back
6 months, 50 bucks wut a worseless asshat

the problem with this track is that none of its true
i’m only makin pennies, i’m the #1 newb
want to make a mil but then look what i do
dick around like i really got nothing to do

i waste time by makin rhymes like this
and every other minute doin adsense checks
askin stupid questions til the admins flip
then wonder why i’m poor and my ass ain’t rich

i can make a mil with beats hooks and rhymes
im readin all about it in a e-book online
if it works out my life will be nice
and i can sell you that book for a discounted price

man that get rich quick shit doesn’t exist
admit if you’re lookin for IT and just QUIT
i’m peacin out, i hope ya laughin at this rap thing
now hook a brother up with a mother fuckin back link!

Big news coming…

My next post will likely be my best one yet… and have virtually nothing to do with my project.  But, I promise you’ll enjoy it, for better or worseless!

The real purpose of THIS post was to embed my Technorati info to claim this blog!

Technorati Profile

Disaster Strikes - I’m Striking Back

Last week disaster struck.  I wanted to learn how to install vBulletin and try to teach myself about the software a little more in-depth.  I bought another lifetime license and began plugging away to install it to a new domain.  Through the mistakes and troubleshooting I tried, I managed to install the domain overtop of my existing forum!  This is the forum I paid about $1,000 for and neither myself or my developer had any backups to restore it!

I paid my designer to get the forum back up and used this time to put marketing into place.  One of these methods involved buying AdderRobot to do some MySpace marketing.  I went to iStockPhoto and bought a profile picture, spent a ton of time on the profile and put the AdderRobot to work.  The following day I was banned from MySpace.  Son Of A Gun!  Things just have not been going right.

In my frustration, I told my designer I wanted to pay him outright for the 2nd forum skin and pay him to install that and another forum that I wouldn’t have skinned.  Then I realized I hadn’t paid my rent/car/insurance for the month and had to dip into my savings account.  (Ugh)  At least I have a few sites working out and I’m making like 10 bucks a day, right?

I then read about how Google altered their Adwords algorhythym to include something they call a “Quality Score”.  Basically, Google judges the content of the landing page you send visitors to through Adwords.  If it is poor (hello arbitrage) then they increase the minimum bid you must make in order to have your ads shown.  This effected me in two main ways:

1) My ads were shown much less because the quality score issue pushed the minimum bid needed above my maximum bid limit for certain keywords.

2) When users did click, the average CPC went up, meaning more expenses and less profit per click. 

The result? All-time lows in revenue and profits.  For example, today I had revenues of 75 CENTS!  That’s right… cents.  I don’t even want to check adwords because I’m sure my expenses exceeded this.  It’s really dissappointing.

But, as the title shows, I’m fighting back.  I’ve got my forum up and running and am starting to build membership.  I’ve got another sports related site up, a sports related forum on the way and another forum that I have fully skinned that will be coming within a few weeks.  These should be “communities” that aren’t so reliant on driving traffic with adwords and hopefully they will sustain and grow traffic.

I’ve also got a HUGE partnership in the works that could turn out being a tremendous success.  Wherein arbitrage you drive lowcost traffic to a website for the sole purpose of getting them to click an ad, I’m going to be promoting affiliate arbitrage where the sole idea is to drive traffic to make sales or PPA (pay per action).  We’ll be looking at over automating over 50,000 niches which, according to our plans, won’t be too difficult to put together.  The difficult part is creating adwords campaigns for each of these niches.  Is there a way to auto-generate keyword lists and automate the creation of the campaigns in adwords?  If you know of a way to do this and can share, that would be amazing!

I’ve now spent a decent amount of money on several sites and I doubt I’ll see any measurable results for at least a month while I build membership/traffic.  I’m getting antsy and I’m dissappointed in the roadblocks I’m facing.  But, I’m still working hard and I have a positive outlook on how this is all turning out.  I think I’m going to stay away from the arbitrage BS sites because Google is actively attempting to ban/diminish their presence.  A single google update could leave you in the dust.  However, by building a useful resource that people link to and keep coming back to, you’re helping to anchor your position as a valuable tool instead of just a home for ads (which google frowns upon).

Ton of hard work ahead of me.  Keep your fingers crossed I have some goodluck streaks because this bad luck is pissing me off.  But oh yeah, at church the other day I heard a poem which stuck in my head.  I was irately frustrated and it actually helped calm me down and put things in perspective:

God grant me the serenity,
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Sept/Oct Profit

September
Adsense Revenue: $234.71
Azoogle: $33.50 (ringtones)
—————————-
Adwords Expenses: $83.41
—————————-
Profit: $184.80

Not great but not terrible.  Moving into October, I increased the bids on one of my keywords from $.10 to $.15 and exchanged an adsense bar for a Mortgage Aff Offer. Here were the results:

October
Adsense Revenue: $390.49
Azoogle: $0
—————————–
Adwords Expenses: $186.24
—————————–
Profit: $204.25

Not a great improvement from month to month, but the sites remained pretty much static. I was surpised that in September I basically made 1 ring tone sale for every 100 clicks on the ad.  That’s not great as it is considering the site is music related, but in October I had 652 clicks from the same site and didn’t change a thing and recieved absolutely ZERO leads. Something is messed up there, and I will be changing out ringtones for a Wal-Mart gift card offer or something similar.  Unfortunately, much of the traffic on this site is overseas.

I’m not happy with the increase from September to October and I’m not optimistic looking at November.  I need to get the outlines of about 10 sites or so up in November and add content throughout.  But, I have my hands full with these 2 forums and I think my “eyes are bigger than my stomach” if you will.

My other concern is that my ROI went from almost 2:1 in September to much less than 2:1.  This is a combination of the Azoogle Offer not converting and raising the CPC to $.15 with little extra revenue to show for it.  Keep in mind these are two different sites of which I speak.

So… I’ve spent a ton of time today blogging because I’ve had so much going on in my head.  Now, I’ve got to make stuff happen so I can have a much better earnings post on December 1st.  Capisco? Sounds good.

Here goes nothing…

Rules For Living

Over a decade ago, I did a school project on President James Garfield.  If you don’t know him it’s because he was only in office for about 6 months and then was assassinated.  In any case, when he was a youngster, an elderly man gave him a list of rules to live by which he cherished until the end of his life.  I had this hanging on my wall for years and dug it out just now to put my life in perspective.

Rules For Living
By James A. Garfield

Personally, I would change “no” drinks to “less” drinks.  But, besides that I’m going to start focusing on this again.

Creating Good Habits

I just got back from work, loosened my necktie and unbuttoned my shirt.  A quick glance around my room reaks of bad habits: unfolded clean laundry mixed with a sea of dirty laundry.  Yesterday’s lunch dishes on my desk.  A flock of diet coke cans on my dresser.  A huge pile of unsorted mail from the previous month.  The list goes on and on.

A few months ago I won $350 from my buddies father and his neighborhood friends in a 20 person poker tournament.  They play every omnth and I haven’t been since - they begged me to come back tonight.  I also have a kickball game tonight - I play in a local league of 20-somethings at a local park.  Of course, drinking before, during and after is half the fun.  I canceled both of these engagements tonight to be here with you!  Actually, that’s a lie… I need to start creating some good, productive habits.  Eureka.

 I’m going to start making a list on an index card each night reminding me exactly what I need to get accomplished the next day and I’ll keep it in my pocket the following day.  I think I’ll file these away each night in a little box, to remind me of my progress.  Hopefully it will become a habit.

The thing is, I need to be able to FIND this index card box and I think it would blend in with the big steaming piece of shit otherwise known as my room.  So, for the next few hours, I’m going to get my life together and clean this god forbidden place.  I’ll finish up this post and then put together my report for Sept/Oct earnings…

Okay I’m back.  When good habits become routine, productivy is maximized.  This is the point I’m trying to get across.  So much times is wasted by digging through piles, folding wrinkled clothes, picking up random trash… all this wasted time could be used much more productively (and I wouldn’t be embarrassed to take a girl home from the bar)!

Alright, time to work on these income reports!

Lots to talk about…

Well, a TON of stuff has gone on since my last post and I’m going to discuss:

  1. Photoshop Splicing to Dreamweaver Templates
  2. Adwords
  3. Finding Links
  4. Forum #1
  5. New Projects / Niches

PHOTOSHOP SPLICING TO DREAMWEAVER TEMPLATES
So a friend from WickedFire recently sent me a link about how to design a site in Photoshop, Import it to ImageReady and send it, as-is, to Dreamweaver.  You can find the tutorial here, and clicking “Super Tutorial” at the bottom.

After going through the tutorial I was absolutely elated.  This is exactly what I was looking for!  It gave me the ability to design a beautiful website with the exact page layout I was looking for!  I immediately took one of my “up-and-coming” ideas and spent all day designing the website, putting it into Dreamweaver and filling in the relevant content that I had.

In my haste, I designed the site poorly.  It has some MAJOR flaws that could have EASILY been fixed.  For example, each page should have a link back to the site’s homepage - forgot that.  Also, this was to be a content site but my layout didn’t allow for additional links and articles that I would prepare in the future.  Worst of all I realized this golden tactic of designing in Photoshop and editing in Dreamweaver had a major flaw: the content areas of my site wouldn’t strectch to fit my content.  Designing the site 600px high prevented me from putting too much content one page.  With a content site the focus should be on the content!

While this method would still be foolproof for 1page arbitrage sites, it is a disaster for content sites.  Obviously, there is a way to use CSS/HTML/XHTML/PHP to make these varoius content areas more flexible.  That’s the funny thing… I thought I found the Golden Bullet that would allow me to utilize my Photoshop skills without having to know the web coding/programming to go along with it (I don’t know much).

Learning this Photoshop technique will prove invaluable for future projects.  I’ll also be learning how to utilize this technique with a greater focus on content flexibility.  Perhaps most importantly, I learned that I should get out a pad and draw the layout of my website before diving in head first.

ADWORDS
I put together an Adwords campaign for this site (even though flawed) and another site I recently developed using the same method.  I basically but in my “generic” keyword terms and added every keyword google recommended.  I only created 1 ad for the entire campaign.

The next day, I saw my CTR on google was absolutely horrendous!  But, I did learn something very interesting.  The keywords that received the most impressions were not at all what I thought they would be.  Of course, for this reason, my ad content was terrible so I received no clicks.  Over the next couple days I’ll be writing ads specifically for these high impression keywords to see if I can not only increase CTR, but also conversions.  It may also open my eyes to new niches I wouldn’t have previously noticed.

The interesting thing about niches is that all these keyword tools predict how many impressions and searches each one has.  But, actually putting these keywords into an Adwords campaign yielded completely different results.

I need to spend more time in Adwords.  I spent a lot of time on these 2 sites and I was eager to throw in a ton of keywords and watch the machines do the money making work.  Not so fast: I need to spend just as much money making relevant ad campaigns with MANY different ads targeted to the different keyword ‘baskets’.

LINKS
The same goes for links.  I searched around last night for about 30 minutes trying to find different forums/blogs and the like to post my URLs.  At the end of the 30 minutes I had 0 links and gave up.  The fun for me was in developing the idea and the website and I expected the money to just roll in.  Well, while creating the concept and site was hard work, the hard work doesn’t end there.  This weekend I will be spending a good amount of time finding backlinks for these sites and optimizing my adwords campaign.  However, I’m still not sure if I will be redesigning the sites to fix the insufficiencies and providing room for growth.

FORUM #1
Again, the project is up and running and looks beautiful and I have set the launch date for November 10th!  Unfortunately, I have found it difficult navigating vBulletin to have the site looking EXACTLY how I want it.  I have also done very little to put pre-promotion systems in place.  These are two HUGE mistakes… I need this time to plan to make sure everything runs smoothly during the launch.  Again, this seems like a case of, “alright, I got the site up now just give me my money damnit!”  The hard work is only beginning once the site is live.

This weekend Forum #1 will be my main priority.  I’ll also be asking friends and family to sign up for the forum and contribute a few unique posts so it looks somewhat “friendly” for first time visitors.  Nobody wants to become a member of an empty forum.  Well… some people DO like going to the movie theatre alone… but I’m not one of them!  Are you?

NEW PROJECTS / NICHES
I have a few large scale sites in mind that will take a large sum of money and time to get up and running.  I don’t have the resources to do this as of now.  Unfortunately, I have a lack of “content site” ideas in the queue.  I’m realizing that in order to fund these large projects I’m going to need my existing projects and smaller projects to profit.

Over the next week I’ll be brainstorming ideas for content sites for up and coming projects.  I haven’t decided if I should register a new domain name for each yet.  I suppose that depends on the nature of the site.  I’m also waiting to develop any more arbitrage sites until I can find a way to “automate” the process.  So, I’ll be researching this as it will be a great investment of time.  I’d also like to use this Photoshop/Dreamweaver technique to create some vBulletin forums of my own (I’m paying $1k a pop now!)  I guess getting deep into the vBulletin of my existing forum will help me prepare for this.

I’ve got a lot on my plate!  My next post will be a review of my Sept/Oct profits, so stay posted!  Here goes nothing…