Glowleaf

I frequently read the wickedfire forum. I have learned a lot from there, and I have met people who make some parts of my affiliate business a breeze.

The majority there, are US affiliates. Everytime someone writes something like “the niche I am targeting has 1 million results, how long till I rank?” I start to laugh. I feel sorry for them, especially for the noobs, because they dive in an over-saturated market, where competition is everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t brag about being smarter, I just laugh because in my target area, untapped niches are like continents.

It seems as if every project I throw up there, simply ranks in no time. Not because I am doing something special, I do the normal seo and linkbuilding stuff everyone else does. The reason for that, is quite simply, the fact that the competition isn’t there. And even if it is, its rare that I find another webmaster who knows his job (usually, when such a person shows up, we just have a silent agreement of sharing the top 10, 50/50 shares).

Another factor, is the Greek alphabet. You know, the funny letters we use: “μαλακας”

Since the ascii code for this: “Aa” and for this :”Αα” are different, this makes for a completely different game. Where English affiliates try to rank for 1.2 million results, I only have to rank for 300.000 results.

Here comes the downside as well. No competition, means no affiliate networks to work with! We have almost zero CPA offers, users are reluctant to put their credit card online. Half the work I do is simple translation, since a lot of Greek surfers know little or no English. And, I repeat, no affiliate networks at all. Only independent merchants, who are (I am not kidding) around 20. That number includes all niches. Almost every webmaster uses adsense to monetize, simply because there is not much of anything else.

I don’t even have to tell you how few people ever heard of affiliate marketing…

The first check I got, was from CJ. When I took it to the bank to cash it out, 3 employees gathered over the check, including the manager, to discuss whether this was a legitimate check or not. The check said in bold letters: “Bank Of America”. So they decided to make 4 phone calls to verify the validity of the bank. They finally accepted it after 25 minutes, 4 phone calls, and a group vote (still not kidding).

Anyway, my point is this. If you are in a country where affiliate marketing is still at early stages, you have to jump right in. Forget making US campaigns etc, sending traffic to US offers, trying to outrank people in English results.

Here are some of the reasons you should focus on your country:

• Domains. DOMAINS. There are so many unregistered golden tld domains, you will slam your head on the wall in a few years if you don’t invest in domains.
• Keywords. Cheaper clicks, better ROI.
• SERP rankings. Much, much easier to rank for quality terms.
• Few affiliates, getting more from the merchants. Think of it. You are a merchant, and you have 15-20 affiliates sending in shit. Then comes an advanced affiliate, who brings in another paycheck. Who are you gonna pamper?
• Make your own affiliate offer. Seriously. Its much easier than you think.
• Practically every professional and well maintained site becomes authority. I’ve seen it happen here so many times…
• Sell your webuilding/SEO services as if they were made of gold. You can rip off sooooooooo many people. Still, if you don’t wanna rip them off, it still is easier to find clients. And overcharge them. A bit.

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Popularity: 16% [?]

written by admin

Have you read eli’s seo empire post? If not, you should read it now.

Its what every wannabe affiliate should have read before he even tried putting up his first affiliate link.

Here is my version of the seo empire. I am not trying to copy eli’s post, I am simply trying to show you, how I took eli’s concept and turned it into my creation. (I do tend to turn everything to my own, unique, twisted way). I will not regurgitate everything he says there, so I suggest you read his post as well.

All the information I am sharing here, is simply what I wished someone would tell me when I began affiliate marketing.

First of all, you need a solid foundation, as eli says. A solid foundation means a VPS. It is ok to start off with shared hosting, to lower the starting costs, but you need to make the switch as fast as possible. A 150$ per month cost might sound hefty at first, but you can use that as your starting point. I mean, make your goal to make 150$ per month to pay off the vps cost. It is much easier than you think.

For a good, solid, allaround hosting plan see webmasters.com. They offer a cheap shared hosting service which has more options than what you can think of. The only thing I did not manage to install on that package is wordpress mu.

For VPS servers, you can look around the net. What I use is this

Next, you need a service that allows you to register domains, and bulk modify them. I suggest Moniker, its what I use, and I suggest you do too.

For non US affiliates, you should find a registrar that allows you to mass register and mass modify your domain tld as well. For example, I have a lot of .gr domains, and in the beginning I didnt find a registrar with a good interface, and it made it a nightmare switching dns and managing my portfolio.

I dont even need to tell you, you need a paypal account set up, and a credit card, with internet banking preferably. You also need to organize everything, your notes and your passwords, because if you dont, you will be in chaos in no time.

What you need to start with are autogenerated pages. Lots of them. When I say lots, I mean hundreds of thousands. Pick your niche, e.g credit reports, buy a couple of cheap info domains with some relevant keywords, and start generating and uploading.

You can use a lot of tools to generate the pages, a free solution is yacg. What I recommend is rssevolution, a paid alternative. Check out this post, to see how to make the pages easy to manage. You need to make everything with php includes, so you can switch ads and links easily. The structure I use is this:

I have for example credit-report.info. I generate 30-50.000 pages with rssevolution, with a custom template of course to eliminate footprints. I include 4 files from the root domain, advertical.php, adhorizontal.php, wannacookie.php, and linkz.php.

By doing that, I am able to easily change the content of 50.000 pages, simply by changing 4 files. For example, you start off with one domain, about credit. You put up adsense on it (the bids are killer) and some lead offers. You write or buy some articles, and you let it rank. You put up the link inside the scraped pages, and as they get indexed, the links with the anchor you want to rank for get indexed as well.

Then at some point, you make a second site. Instead of starting at zero, you simply go to your linkz.php file, and add the second domain as well. If 5000 out of the pages are indexed, that means 5000 instant backlinks, before you even start developing the site. (hint, go for inline links, google takes into consideration the text close to the link as well, not only the anchor text).

The cookie php is selfexplanatory, just iframe an affiliate link. The only ones that work are ebay and amazon. Even though people say that amazon hunts down cookiestuffers, I have yet to be banned. Their one day cookie will give you not much though. You need to be really lucky about it. A better alternative I have found is ebay, but you will be banned a lot. And I mean a lot…

For the ad phps I suggest you do not use adsense, cause you will get banned easily. Use adbrite, or, better yet, peakclick. You can also mix ppc with affiliate, one ad for ppc, the other for an affiliate banner.

Then come the splogs. You need splogs. Lots of them. They are the best for ranking. They ping, they get backlnks without you doing anything, they get indexed in no time, they give you link juice for your big projects. Splogs are a major part of your foundation for your seo empire. One reason I said earlier to go for VPS, is that splogs will quickly tear your shared hosting to pieces. The bet I have done without bringing down the whole server, (and making the hosting company nag me because the other hosted sites where pissed) is 10 splogs. Trust me, you need more, much more.

Infact, at some point, you should buy bulk info’s (500 or so) and splog them all.

Now, you could build splogs one by one, and at some point, you will be able to set up a new splog in 5 minutes, but its tedious work, and a life saver I have found is blogsolution. It makes managing a huge network of splogs a breeze, and the support is excellent, as well as the fora. Bear in mind though, blogsolution can bring down a dedicated server as well. Something like 100 splogs will be marginal for a normal VPS. An important feature of blogsolution is the easy interface, the cloaking feature, and the fact that it uses its own blogging software, so if you do it smart, you will have no footprints whatsoever. You can even import wp templates, though I havent tried that feature yet.

If you decide to make splogs by hand, you need to scout the net for at least 10 wp templates. Clean them from any footprints, and links at the footer, and start varying the templates among the blogs.

Then use the concept I said earlier, about making everything modular. An easy way to make splogs modular is to make them scrape the normal feed, but also make a master blog, only for link insertion. Set up the splogs to scrape the master blog’s rss feed (its usually www.masterblog.com/feed). That way, you can simply login to your master blog, post links with the anchor text you want, and it will all get scraped by your splogs and indexed. This is very good for putting pages in the index, and indexing parked domains as well.

So, that is all. This is how I built my foundation. Now go and make yours.

Popularity: 25% [?]

written by admin

Today I made some phone calls, selling banner space to my site, to other businesses in the same niche.

And I made a realization: I am selling them, what was already theirs for a good solid 10 years now. 10 years in the internet life is like a millenia. These businesses owned the top 10 results for years, and I showed up out of nowhere, grabbed the top spot, and now I am selling them an overpriced banner slot. Its so shitty I love it.

Now, I am thinking of doing the same in other business niches. I am gonna forget about affiliate offers, the regular high volume niches etc for a while. These businesses cannot sell from affiliate networks, but they are paying big cash to show up on buyers monitors.

The key here, is experience. Weigh the niche, build it proper, spam the shit out of it. Link build it, make sure it gets to the top spot when google lifts the filters, and simply own the first place before google even indexes you.

A little tip is: Try to market to the businesses who already buy banners and adwords, but who don’t know shit about seo.

Quoting Sun Tzu, The Art of War:

A battle is won before the swords unsheath.  

Popularity: 29% [?]

written by admin

I recently started a forum, dedicated to Greek affiliates. If you are one of them, or want to become one, hop over to Glowleaf Greek affiliate marketing forum and signup there.

 Please do not post comments in Greek in this blog, as some of you have. Glowleaf.net is purely English. I do not want to delete comments. Anything you want to ask me in Greek, post it at the forum, or email me at glowleaf@gmail.com

I am also reposting here an offer I made at the forum as well:

I am willing to teach to 5 people, the basics of affiliate marketing. The applicants will have to dedicate some time and money into it (I am not making any money out of this venture), so only determined people please. I am willing to hold their hand until they make 100 euro. Then, you are on your own.

More details can be found at the forum 

Popularity: 25% [?]

written by admin

A photo site of mine, got some stumbles from people who liked it. And it got 300 uniques per day from stumble alone.

Then I got greedy, and put up an ad. The traffic plummeted to 5 stumble visits. Then I removed the ad, and it is now slowly growing back.

Popularity: 17% [?]

written by admin

After a lot of thought, I have decided to launch a Greek-only affiliate forum.

The decision came to me due to the complete lack of something else in that area.

Why am I writing it here then, you might ask? Well, its my blog, I can write what I want! But to be serious, I will post what difficulties come up, how the setup is made, what issues pop up, and how I dealt with them. It might even help some webmaster create a similar affiliate forum for his country.

Since the .gr domain registration is simply shitty, and it takes 15 days (edit: 37 days ffs) to get your domain, I am currently writing content, the first guides and posts to put in the forum. I have also written the purpose of the forum, as well as the guidelines I want people to follow. I think that you need to give people an idea of your vision, so it may move in that direction.

I chose the .gr domain because I know that google favors local domains in the equivalent google engine, in my case, google.gr

I will also use google webmaster tools, and geotarget my domain to Greece and Cyprus, and countries where Greeks live, like Germany and England.

The Glowleaf Project will launch soon, and I will keep you updated.

Popularity: 68% [?]

written by admin

• Setting affiliate offers to open in a new window. If you are promoting a product, chances are that you are targeting stupid people. Make stupid people think that the transition is seamless, i.e. the product is yours. Stick to the merchant’s template and colors.
• Getting a keyword rich domain instead of a brandable one. Brand, brand, brand. When you tell someone go register a domain, do you tell them to go to “best-online-domain-registration”, or “Moniker”? Rule of thumb: Keyword rich domains are for splogs, brandable domains are for sites.
• Doing what everyone else is doing. In a saturated market, do you really expect to get a piece of the pie with the same tactics as everyone else? Be competitive for a change!
• Putting adsense on their corporate site. Point discussed in http://www.glowleaf.net/taking-visitors-from-your-competitors/
• Giving nothing for free. Internet is based on freebies. Free info, free memberships, free tips, free guides, free downloads. You need a substantial reader base to sell them something, so create that readership first with freebies, and then charge them when they are hooked. Pairing up a freebie with a sale always works. Just take a look at the supermarket shelves.
• Not using a tool that saves time. Never, ever use something that takes more time than it should. Use cms for your sites, find templates instead of creating them, use big affiliate networks instead of working with individual merchants. If there is something that does the job faster but sloppier than something else, use it.
• Targeting international visitors. The internet is much bigger than you think. So is the world. Dont expect to reach out to everyone with a single site or offer. Go for the people you know, those that you can understand their mindset. Convincing a Greek to put his credit card online is 100 times harder than it is to convince an American. The former is just not used to online purchases. He will happily click through 12 ads though.
• Not letting their page mature. Every site will take from 6 months to a year to reach its true potential. Do not expect results in a week. Be patient, keep building, keep on linking, and if necessary work on another project to take your mind off the first one. Results can take time.
• Not monetizing right from the start. You dont need thousands of visitors to make a sale. Set up your site to look exactly how you want it to look in 2 years. Think big, monetize right away. Dont overdo it though.
• Relying on a single project, or a myriad small ones. Both concepts are wrong. You need 2 big projects to work on. No more, no less. Do work on small projects, but make sure they take as little as possible of your time.

Popularity: 29% [?]

written by admin

The good thing about the internet, is that anyone can write their opinion, and express their view on a subject matter.

The bad thing about the internet, is that anyone can write their opinion, and express their view on a subject matter.

Once you have been a webmaster for a few years, you soon realize that writing content is the most tedious task. If the website’s subject is a hobby of yours, you will come up with occasional bursts of insight and create a good piece of content every now and then. To keep up though with the other 2428 sites in your niche, you need to come up with a way of generating content.

There are two ways to do this, either outsourcing on content writers, or providing users with a platform of sharing their own creations. Think of it: pure, original, keyword rich, on-the-subject content generated every day, every hour, every minute without you raising your finger.

The reality is a little bit different though. Only 5% of what people write will be of any use and value, and only 5% of the people will actually contribute something. The rest will be simply, pure and utter crap.

To make things worse, there come the moderation burdens. People will behave badly, and on the internet its so much easier to show your bad side. Then there is spam to look out for, people self promoting, plain assholes who take up your time, and idiots who cannot find the submit button.

In the end, it is worth it though. Creating a community is hard work, and it takes a long time to pay off, but it grows exponentially after it reaches a critical mass. A vibrant community also makes you feel proud. There will be shitheads who will ruin your day, but you will discover marvelous individuals who really know what they are talking about.  You can even make friends.

On a practical note, I will not regurgitate the articles out there, telling you how to create a community. Go to webmasterworld.com and find the great threads on how to kick start your community.

Popularity: 32% [?]

written by admin

Up to now, I frowned upon stupid thingies like podcasts and stumbles. Until I stumbled (pun intended) on BizPodTv.com

I really liked the service. The concept is, they publish a 3 minute podcast, with news that interest internet entrepreneurs, freelancers, affiliate marketers etc. All of us, basically. A cute blonde Briton named Ally, hosts the “news”, and with a quirky tone plus clever humor she highlights what is happening in “our” world. The show also has genuine interviews from entrepreneurs whose biz is internet based, or odd in any way. Not unlike… us.

Definately worth a view, and a sure way to entertain, inform, inspire. Keep watching. Turn off your damn TV and watch something worthwhile. Also, on a more serious and informative tone, you can check out smallbizpod.co.uk/

Popularity: 24% [?]

written by admin

There is a known book on amazon, called “The only things you really need to know, is what you learned at kindergarten”.

There are many aspects of life, where that phrase is true. While our generation grew up with Walt Disney characters, we were introduced to the filthy-rich and heartless Uncle Scrooge.

I recall reading him say in a comic, regarding his early business adventures at Clondyke, where the “gold-fever” raged:

“When everyone is digging for gold, sell shovels.”

This phrase will ring true to your ears if you have been in any industry for a few years.

For example, for all you Rich Dad fans, that is the trick he uses. He sold books telling people how to get rich, to make him rich.

If you dont believe me, look at wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kiyosaki

A quick search at “make money online” will show you that many embrace that tactic, and make money telling people how to make money, or selling them the tools to “succeed”. Its like the SBI crap I have an ad for to the right.

Dont fall for it. Dont buy ebooks, dont buy get rich quick programs and schemes. They will make money, but to the people who sell it to you, not for you.

You can find more than enough information, tips and tricks browsing fora and blogs. Some people like eli at bluehatseo give out much more than they should. Of course, he gives out a trick only after he has squeezed every drop off it, but simply reading his techniques and trying some of them puts you in the correct mindframe to look for similar opportunities yourself.

So, how can you make money online? There are only two ways.

First, is to present yourself as an expert, a guru, and sell ebooks and other crap to gullible people.

A way to do this properly, is to create products that actually help people make money. Think Wordpress, Xrumer, Vbulletin, Commission Junction, eBay, Excel, Photoshop and numerous others.

Secondly you can take this seriously, have a business plan, treat it as a business, make investments, look for long-term benefits and build solid foundations. Also, never give up. Quitters are losers.

Its up to you to choose.

Popularity: 25% [?]

written by admin