Nov 01

Insanity means doing the same thing over and over, while expecting different results

Doodling, Mind over Pixels, WebWriMo challenge No Comments »

Take a “walk” around the fora and the blogosphere of affiliate marketing. You will see the same talks, the same techniques, and the same old crap. Stuff that maybe worked 2 years ago, which is a lifetime on the internet, or that may have never worked at all.

There are exceptions though, some serious discussions, new techniques and semi-automation.

I mentioned in an older post, that affiliate marketing in Greece is almost nonexistant. Honestly, I don’t remember my first contact with the concept of making money online as an affiliate. I got fascinated by it, and started reading and trying stuff like crazy.

The problem was that I was looking at the techniques I read, and tried to replicate them. US ppc campaigns to CPA offers, minisites on mininiches, adsense arbitrage, and the list goes on and on.

Only when I sat down and brainstormed ideas did I actually make a successful campaign. Of course, my trial and error had given me the necessary experience to come up with ideas of my own.

Now, I write my own manual.

Many techniques that I invented, I post them here. Most of them work fine, some don’t work at all, some just need the right circumstances, a sweetspot. Some work fine, but need a little secret hint to really blow up in your face.

Why am I doing this? Well, the internet is much bigger than you think. Sure, I might stumble on a competitor who uses my technique, that I uploaded here. Big deal, I am the inventor, I will find more tricks. The challenge even makes it fun.

But the most important thing is that I don’t do what everyone else is doing. Chances of tripping on a technique of my own are slim, because the guys that read this blog use them on over-competitive niches, acai offers, poker, the same old shit.

And even on those niches that I work on, I take a completely different approach than any other single competitor. 

Use you brain people. Laugh at those who use the same old tricks. Try everything, and create your own technique. Look at what people in other areas are doing, in television advertisments, in radio, in product promotion. Especially in the porn biz, these guys are always 2 years ahead of the curve. I am being serious on that.

But most importantly, screw everyone else’s opinion, and do what your guts tell you to do.

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written by Glowleaf \\ tags: , , ,

Nov 01

WebWriMo (what the hell is that?)

Blogs, Doodling, WebWriMo challenge 2 Comments »

Just to prove how mad we are, we decided to do our own version of a Writing Month contest, one I had never heard of before today. Oh, wait, found it, it is called National Novel Writing month or NaNoWriMo for short.

This is blind ape’s idea. He posted it on Wickedfire.

Anyway, the challenge is to write 50.000 words until the end of the month. An average of 2000 every day, leaving some room for slacking. And instead of trying to write a novel, we will write content for our websites!

Yes, we are crazy, I know. Of course, if you want, you can join as well.

What do we win? Nothing at all. But you know what they say, content is king yadda yadda. I decided to post only on glowleaf.net instead of other sites I own as well and I will keep the wordcount at my blog’s tagline.

What if you don’t care about this? Well, since you are already reading my blog, you show interest in my posts. Now I will finally write down those 20 post ideas I have had for so long… For your pleasure only.

Trust me, you do not want to miss this. Hit my big bad RSS button.

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written by Glowleaf \\ tags: ,

Nov 01

ROI for dummies

Doodling, Mind over Pixels, Moniez, Noobs, WebWriMo challenge No Comments »

ROI is another simple concept, and one very important as well. In order to calculate the cashflow in your investments, you need to understand ROI perfectly as well.

So, how do we calculate ROI? Lets give an example. ROI means Return On Investment, and means how much of our initial money that we invested does the asset give back, every year. Yes, the default timeframe for ROI is a year, so we have to separate “monthly ROI” from “yearly ROI”.

Investments in general have a small ROI, something like 10-20%. They also have a big capital investment.

For example, you need to pay 400.000$ for a house, and you rent it out for 1000$ a month. 12 x 1000 = 12.000

12.000 / 400.000 = 0.03 or 3%

ROI = 3%, which means that every year, we get back 3% of our initial capital that we invested. Yes, it sucks.

Thankfully, the internet gives us opportunities for mind boggling ROI figures. Those doing PPC for example are hitting 200-400% daily ROI. Domainers sometimes get even 1000% ROI. Of course, the cash invested are much less than real estate, but if you can scale it, you can make it a business.

On the Cashflow post, I wrote as an example buying a website for 500$ that makes you 80$ per month. That is 16% monthly ROI, and it means that in 7 months, you will have earned your initial capital back, and the rest is pure profit from that point on.

Calculating the monthly ROI of your small investments, will allow you to write down a timeline of when they pay off themselves completely. When an investment pays itself off, then it is time to buy a new asset. Try to limit the number of unpaid off investments to 2 or 3 maximum, simply because, shit happens. Don’t be afraid to “float” though, its part of taking the risk. And business means risk.

Another rule of thumb is to focus on investments in a niche, so you can leverage one over the other, and also work with the same marketplaces. Also, people will start to know you, and if you are a good trader, you will make your life easier by enjoying smooth transactions and referrals. In addition, becoming an expert in a niche makes your mind recognize the pitfalls and opportunities instantly. The biggest advantage in any conflict is fighting on familiar territory…

Domains can also give juicy ROI. A 30-50% monthly ROI is quite possible for an undervalued domain sale, if you look hard enough. Having an eye on the marketplace for opportunities is essential, especially at your asset building phase.

If you train yourself to calculate everything according to ROI, you will be able to whip up numbers and opportunities instantly. You can separate your finances, reduce the liabilities, turn them into assets or if that is impossible, simply cut the slack.

ROI can also be negative as well. Try to figure out your car’s ROI, do that now.

Yes, it is a big negative number. Exactly. Of course, no one said to sell your car, or that it is not essential, but at least you understand that it is a liability, and not an asset, like many stupid sheep believe. Recognizing it as a liability, allows you to find assets to pay off the monthly cost of you car. 

And that is the big deal actually. If you can build an asset, to pay off each and every one of your liabilities, you are rich. Think about it.

Of course it is not that easy. But its a start. Have that as your goal, and if you get even to 50%, you are making half your paycheck through your assets.

Stay tuned, next post is on investing online.

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written by Glowleaf \\ tags: , , , ,

Oct 28

10 sexy affiliate marketing blogs

Blogs, Internet Marketing 20 Comments »

Here are some great reads. If you read SEO blogs, you will know most of them, but you may have missed some.

HINT: the linked posts are great as well. Don’t overlook them.

Here it goes:

Google Webmaster Central Blog

A blog where the editors try to explain to the webmaster community exactly why Google did that stupid thing that tears down your business. You just have to read it if you are in this biz. It’s like taxes.

Blue Hat SEO

Eli is like your professor at school who rants about a subject, and you understand what he said 8 years later. A must read for advanced affiliates, his blog is like the advanced handbook in affiliate marketing. Strangely, his posts at wickedfire make perfect sense. Fishy…

Slightly Shady SEO

He is Xmcp (no idea what it means). He is an SEO. He is probably younger than you. He blends blackhat and whitehat techn…

Aww Fuck it. He is very helpful, knows his stuff, and talks as if someone added 20 years on his back. Recently became a mod on wickedfire, and helps out in most of the serious questions posted there. Definately worth a read. I call him XMasCuPcake…

CDF Networks

No idea who this guy is, but his posts are always short and concise, unlike mine. Good reads on the older posts and every new post is a promise for the future ones.

FutureNow’s GrokDotCom

Ok its not affiliate, its marketing online. But the posts are amazing reads for the serious affiliate, and lets face it, no matter how badass you think you are, with no marketing skills, you fail.

Seocracy

Amazing techniques, posts, ideas etc. Never updates unfortunately…

Nicky Cakes

The 3rd person writing is horrible. He is annoying. He shares real money making techniques. His replies are useful. And he hosts an IRC channel at irc.freenode.net #cakes.

Graywolf’s SEO blog

Occasional good posts, and I agree with him on so many levels that it is frightening.

SEO Black Hat

Very posse, but sometimes has a post worth the read, like the one linked. Creator of the “black hole” technique with which I wholeheartedly disagree.

Sugarrae

She is fucking amazing. Her advice is solid, well written and to the point. Plus she has metaphorical balls.

Ok, I lied. The blogs are more than 10…

SeoMoz

FFS no…

DoshDosh

I like this blog a lot. Maybe its the cute manga faces, maybe the great value in its posts. Maybe the cutesy name. I dont know. Everytime I read a post on DoshDosh, I feel warm, educated, smarter and very fuzzy inside…

SEO Theory

Very nice information here, articles that really zap your mind, although sometimes he rants too much. But it is still worth it, I think the whole blog has nothing to be jealous of an SEO book.

SEOBook

I left this one for last, simply because it is the best one. SeoBook has a great ranking checker plugin for firefox, called *shock* Rankchecker plugin for Firefox. Amazing articles on SEO news, algorithm shifts, marketing ideas and mindframe. Every post is a direct hit.

And finally, not related to affiliate marketing, but totally related to marketing, 

Seth Godin’s Blog

I cannot even begin why this blog rocks. Anyway, Seth Godin posts daily here, ranting about everything from the marketer’s point of view.

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written by Glowleaf \\ tags: , ,

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