Glowleaf

The world cup is coming, and people will get crazy over betting for their national teams. Even people who don’t normally bet will happily throw some cash in the next month.

This is a worldwide event that is comparable to Christmas concerning us affiliates.

Now, my hot tip is this:
Promote Unibet. Hard.

Why is Unibet perfect for promotion?

• They have an amazing website. It is fast too.
• The site is multilingual. Screw the overpriced English speaking traffic, the world is your oyster.
• The customer is hooked. If he won’t bet, he will play Blackjack. If he gets tired of that, there are games to pass the time, etc etc.
• You get 30% lifetime, up to 40% with enough volume. It adds up longterm into some serious income.
• They are not that well known yet. Bwin, the leader in the niche, has saturated the target group regarding new signups. People who bet usually have multiple accounts in all companies. Unibet is as good as Bwin, but not that saturated yet.
• They will be releasing a great tool during the World Soccer Cup, with built in viral features and a great design. It will also be multilingual. It will be a hit, and it is coming in less than a month.

Let me repeat myself:

Promote Unibet. Hard.

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: betting, live betting, mundial 2010, soccer, sportsbook, unibet, world cup

I know every webmaster likes to put those social bookmarking buttons on his sites. Some overdo it, others make it work and get like 200 tweets and 500 facebook shares. I honestly haven’t cracked that shell yet, I don’t know how to make something that popular. What I do know on the other hand, is that “Like” works better than facebook share.

It looks like this:

and you can get it from the Facebook developer pages here. Customize it the way you want it and voila! It is ready to get slapped in your pages.

I love this little piece of code for many reasons.

1. It is minimal, and it fits every website. You cannot possibly argue with your designer about integrating this widget. I mean, come on. Even the background is transparent.
2. It shows pictures of people’s friends. I can’t even begin to talk about how awesome that is. Instead of those ugly boxes for facebook pages that show a bunch of strangers, this widget shows the users friends faces. People just want to click it.
3. It shows a count of people who liked this. Crowd mentality here, if people see that 100 others liked it, they will like it too.
4. The code geolocates to the user’s native language setting on facebook. Yea, awesome.
5. Facebook has made the “Like” feature a reflex to all casual facebook users. Put the code in the right position and visitors will like it on autopilot.
6. It actually brings traffic.
7. Sneezers (see Seth Godin) who like your page are going to bring their pack. And a pack’s interests are usually common amongst its members.
8. It is a one click deal. Even though Facebook share is optimized to the heavens for fast sharing of internet goodyness, it is still 2-3 clicks too long. This little baby is ONE CLICK. ONE.

Seriously, just try it.

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: facebook developers, facebook like, facebook share

I got some new stuff to talk about, but they were not big enough to take a post by themselves. So here is a mashup:

Feedburner has recently added a “post to twitter” feature. It is under your feed’s Publisize, Socialize.

Not a groundbreaking feature really, but what I love about it is that there is an option to pull the post’s tags and generate hashtags. Yeah, that is one nifty little feature that makes your tweets pop up in twittersearch. That of course, if you use real tags, and not the tags I use on this blog that suck…

Aweber has recently added a new form generator, with some really cool options. Time to update those crappy forms and get  web2.0

I know all you IM gurus have put the dollar sign form. Don’t. Please don’t. It is a cliche before it even got posted.

Since we are talking about forms, I am going to repeat an opinion that I wrote about a long time ago:

Your contact form only needs name, email and comment.

If you ask for more, fuck you. A few days ago I tried to contact an affiliate company I work with, and their only means was through a contact form. And that contact form required (REQUIRED) my affiliate ID and my contact details, WHILE I WAS STILL LOGGED IN THEIR SYSTEM. For fucks sake, get a programmer will ya? Needless to say, I closed the page and they never got my feedback.

Make it easy for people to reach you. Their time is precious.

One other thing I am happy with, is the new Wordpress 3. It is still in beta, so no live application of it yet, but it rocks. It simply rocks.

• It is finally a usable CMS. You can finally manage your menu easily, not jerk around with page orders and parents and css tricks.
• They finally removed that stupid random admin password during installation. I remember that this was the issue with automatic mass wordpress installations, maybe now it will become a breeze.
• There is a new theme. Who gives a shit.
• You can change headers and background pics for that new theme. Could be useful for seasonal stuff, or sponsored backgrounds?
• And there is a custom post feature, that enables you to get posting the way you want to. Nice one.
• They also say that Wordpress 3 is integrated with MU, and that from now on they will be developed in parallel. No more plugin issues? I doubt it, but we will see.

After all, code is poetry.

Popularity: 2% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: aweber, feedburner, twitter, wordpress 3

Namedrive just let me in on the Beta of  Fastpage, which is a glorified way of saying “autosites”.

In the beta, you just switch a few domains from your standard parked domain portfolio over to Fastpark. You add their keywords and categories, as normal. And then you hit “publish”.

After a few minutes, the autosites go live and you can edit them and custom tailor them to what you want.

Here is a screenshot of the beta editing interface:

As you can clearly see from the screenshot (you have to click it, duh…), you can easily and quickly change colours, columns, widgets etc. On the optimize button you can add meta data for better seo.

The current widgets are fine by themselves:

• Text adds a text box that you specify, just like in wordpress
• Blog entries does not seem to work yet
• Image uploads an image from your drive
• Widget is for custom widgets, i.e. amazon?
• Affiliate code is where you put your affiliate codes directly in the page
• Bookmark just adds the well known widget bookmark everything
• CPC ads puts a box that pulls ads like Adsense
• Chat room adds a “room” with javascript IRC goodyness.
• News pulls news articles based on a keyword you specify.
• Photos adds photos from the web based on a keyword you specify.
• RSS feed is, yes! An RSS feed you specify. Propably the most powerful feature. You can put your own site’s feeds, or product feeds with affiliate codes, or whatever.
• Search box adds a redundant search box. There is another one on top.
• Full page widgets are very powerful, they are filled with pictures and article snippets and even ads. A single one of them makes the site look like a real one. Currently, there are only a few choices but this is still beta. The themes are Lottery, Horoscope, entertainment, stocks, swimsuit models (yes, babes), recipes, soccer, mortgages, MPG ratings,  sudoku (!), flight tracking, fitness videos. They are great so far, and I am sure that upon Fastpage’s launch there will be enough to feed the world.
• Flights shows up a flights search box, with aff links. You get a part of the payout.
• Hotels, same as above.
• Jobs shows job listings, you can put in a keyword, or leave it black and let it geolocate. Yup, awesome.
• Local directory, same as above.
• Products (affiliate) pulls product feeds based on keyword, with per sale commission where as,
• Products (CPC) does the same, but you earn per click. Pretty good if you ask me.
• And finally property listings pulls data based on zip code, or if left black it geolocates.

It generally is an awesome feature, but still in the early days of beta. The interface is simple yet powerful, and it enables you to manage, optimize and monetize a large portfolio of parked domains. Especially Fastpage is a true example of set-it-and-forget-it, you do the work once, you let it work forever.

It is still early to judge results, but I suggest that you add the RSS feeds to your fastpages so that they remain fresh to the bots.

Click this to Signup at Namedrive.

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: fastpage, minisites, namedrive, parked domains, site creation

Lately I have been spending my time creating minisites. Through a lot of trial and error, I have gathered some tools that I prefer and some setups that work for me.

Of course there might be tools and plugins out there that perform better. These are just what I use.

First of all, lets talk about the concept. An affiliate minisite must:

• Be deployed in a narrow niche.
• Be automated.
• Provide revenue.
• Rank well inside its niche.

I always use wordpress, so I got the ranking a step higher right from the start. A narrow niche needs some keyword research and some planning, but in the end all you can do is to try it and see what happens.

I suggest that you get a juicy main keyword in your domain, it will help a ton with ranking.

Wordpress not only ranks well, but it also comes with a nice bunch of plugins for automating the minisite.

What I like to use are the following ones:

• Feedwordpress
• Tweet this
• Realvms
• Digg-digg
• Next gen gallery
• WP super cache
• WP e-commerce
• WFReview
• And Thesis theme, not a plugin, but it has so many abilities that it honestly counts as one. Make sure to get Thesis Open hook plugin if you use the theme, it will make your life a lot easier.

Feedwordpress syndicates RSS feeds to add to your minisite. But it is not only useful as a splog maker. It can also keep a minisite fresh with content, without looking spammy. How? By having it pull RSS feeds from social bookmarking sites. I suggest you use Digg search results RSS for juicy snippety action! And the best thing is, that it is all current and popular.

Tweet this can automatically tweet the post you publish. The newest version also auto-tweets scheduled posts, which is awesome. I use this in a technique I call, “crier”. It is simple really, you make a twitter account dedicated to your minisite. You setup the account, pic, link, background and add a few friends to it. Then you put Tweet this to tweet your new posts. That way, the twitter account acts as a crier for your minisite. It is simple, easy, and works fine.

RealVMS is one of the powerhouses. What it does, is automatically scrape youtube and embed videos in posts. All along with their comments and tags. How awesome is that? Yes, pretty awesome. Did I mention it can automatically bookmark the video to Delicious? Just add a new category, “keyword + videos” or something like that, and have the plugin add new vids daily.

Digg Digg is one of my favourite social bookmarking plugins, because of the large buttons that pull the bookmark count from the mothersite. I love it. Don’t overdo it, most sites are useless. Stick to the big ones.

Next gen gallery is well known to everyone. I use it as a little cheat, I always gather some pictures of the niche, and add them in the minisite’s gallery. I social bookmark them, and it pulls a nice bit of traffic that way, plus some image hotlinks. The fine touch is that this plugin’s widgets look amazing, I always add random thumbnails to the sidebar.

WP super cache is great for lifting the load off your server. If it works right off the bat, you are lucky. If something conflicts with this plugin, you are pretty much screwed. Everything seems to hate it. Nonetheless, it is worth trying to load it because it works amazingly well.

WP e-commerce is free, and has a premium for addons. In its basic use, it can be used to create minisites/ministores. Yes, they work great. It also has a buggy import feature, which means you can import a product feed from any affiliate network. If you pull it off, it will work like a charm. Your ministore can then be added here, which if approved, will bring a trickle of valuable traffic.

WFReview was discussed in the previous post. It is a powerhouse in regards to making minisites, and it synergises so well with the previous plugins. Trust me, if you see a minisite, with thumbnails on the sidebar, posted videos with today’s date, news snippets to Digg, and a bunch of ratings and comments on the posts you will doubt whether this is autogenerated or not. It is a premium plugin, but it is well worth it.

I know that the tricks I use are rather well known, or seem trivial. The thing is that when used all together, they amount to a nice sum of traffic and ranking to my minisite. Coupled with the right offer, the minisite is profitable.

Now, how to make the minisite profitable? Well, you really should not ask that. The monetization methods of a minisite should be made beforehand, while in the early stage of planning. Generally, I like to use 2 monetization methods, one being affiliate links, and the second being ppc, Adbrite or Adsense. If and when the minisite matures, I like to add a third monetization method, selling text links. Selling links is perfect, because it eliminates the upkeep cost of the minisite and is very stable.

The build I do to each of my minisites is rather complicated, but I will try and break it down here. This is an analysis of the points above, so I can’t help but repeat myself:

• Base articles.
• Sidebar widgets.
• Crier and auto-bookmark.
• Fresh videos.
• Fresh social news.
• PPC monetization.
• Aff text link monetization.
• Set it and forget it banners.
• Mailing list creation.
• SEO, by hotlinks, social bookmarks and tags.

Base articles, are usually 10-15 that I write or order related to the niche. They are my base SEO, and I carefully select titles, I post them with proper tags etc, and social bookmark them for the initial SEO boost. Then I just forget about them.

Sidebar widgets are the Next gen gallery thumbnail random preview, which looks very nice. Also, the recent comments widget, to show the site is active. WP-ecommerce can also show “products”, which looks very professional.

The crier is the twitter account that announces the new posts from the minisite. I sometimes add twitterfeed to this, and blend in affiliate links from some network’s RSS feed. The auto-bookmark is done by RealVMS, to delicious.

The fresh videos are put in a category, like “keyword+videos” by RealVMS.

Fresh news are usually found at http://digg.com/rss_search?s=keyword or any other social bookmarking site’s custom RSS feed.

For PPC monetization I use Adsense, a single ad space in the most prominent place, above the fold. Don’t overdo it.

Aff text link monetization is done either with:

• Hand-made pages linking to offers.
• Auto replaced keyword by WFReview to aff links.
• Product feeds turned into posts with their aff links.

Set it and forget it banners Amazon Omakase, product or category banner. I also love Unibet for casino, betting and poker banners. Their dynamic banners are constantly optimized and updated, so you don’t have to. Just add the code and let them do the rest.

Mailing list creation is done quite easily and automatically by Aweber. The lists are small, so the cost is negligible. Aweber has a signup form that is perfect for this job, the box popup that you also see on this blog. The minisite will slowly harvest those emails, and once they reach a respectable number you can blast some offers to the niche. Remember, the lists might be small, but they are targeted.

SEO is integrated in all parts of the minisite. The base articles make the foundation, the domain chosen is always with a juicy keyword in it. Auto-bookmark helps. The image gallery invites some hotlinks. The videos are embedded with their tags in the posts, which makes wordpress rank great. The RSS scrapes are relevant and have lots of variations. For the minisites that make consistent cash, I usually throw up a TNX campaign so it can rank for my keyword. That last thing works very well, but it is costly, so it is only viable on high-profit minisites.

Design tip: You can use Greenbox logo maker to make a cool looking logo for your minisite in no time. It will help sell it better.

As you can see, each minisite created that way takes a lot of thought and work to create. But you must see it as a long term investment, because each of these sites will create a revenue stream that is stable and long lasting.

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: affiliate sites, minisites, niche sites, wordpress plugins