Tag: affilate marketing

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Affiliate Marketing HubPages Making Money Online

eBay Rule Change Leaves Blogger, HubPages, Squidoo Out in the Cold

eBay Bans Blogger etc

Its official – as of 1 August 2009 you cannot not use eBay (EPN) to monetize Blogger (blogspot) blogs, HubPages hubs or Squidoo lenses or InfoBarrel articles. This one is a bit a of a shocker – the time frame of less than two weeks is pretty bad too. Actually eBay will tell you that they “told you so” back in May when they mentioned that both:

Ad Networks:  Using any graphical ad network to place eBay ads (ads that go directly to an eBay domain) on websites not directly under the publishers’ control…Sub-affiliates:  Any arrangement where publishers distribute their earnings from eBay Partner Network to other publishers.

were no longer acceptable to EPN. Source EPN Official Blog.

The Ad Networks paragraph reflects the HubPages and Blogger business models, the Sub-affiliate model reflects the Squidoo model.

This is a huge change and will take some affiliates out of business and for many more will mean that they will take a huge income hit while they rebuild their business.

Is eBay evil?

Is  eBay is bad, ugly nasty company who treats their sellers like dirt and their affiliates worse? Nope, the point is that nothing has changed: he who has the gold makes the rules.  eBay would rather the buyer bought from direct from them – they don’t really want to pay affiliates – it costs them money.

No eBay isn’t evil – they are in business and they have, and will continue to make business decisions with their own best interests in heart, the interests of the shareholders, not the interests of their affiliates.

Is Building Your Business on Free Sites Bad?

Using sites such as blogger (blogspot) and HubPages meant that you could make money from eBay affiliate commissions without investing any of your own. Now don’t get me wrong – I think making money for nothing down is fantastic! But it leaves you doubly vulnerable – either the affiliate or the website you are using (or as they say these days “the Web2.0 property”) could change the rules, ban your account – and you are back to where you were with nothing.  Don’t put all your eggs in one basket : ironically when I used to invest in property for passive income I used to say the same thing:

Build a diversified business
Build a diversified business

Diversification is Everything

If you have built a successful income stream from eBay affiliate sales on blogger and hubpages is this the end? Yes for eBay – time to move on – with blogger blogs you have the option to self-host them (yes blogger does have a self-hosting option same as WordPress) which is probably the quickest option, but if that involves a change of url there is going to be some work involved. Alternatively it will the time to move to self-hosted WordPress.

The other option is to leave the blogger blog where it is and change the monetisation method. Its unlikely that Adsense will work well for an eBay niche but it does sometimes – double check- Amazon is the obvious option but there are literally dozens of others. I have just signed up with Chikita and I quite like what I am seeing with it too.

I expect that Hubpages will come up with something to ease the pain of the transition but obviously the only real option there is either Amazon or a relevant affiliate product.

Once I have my income level up to full-time – my aim is simple – I don’t want any one affiliate to be contributing more than 20% of that income -its just too risky and this is a case example of why!

Where do you stand – how does the eBay change of heart over blogger blogs and HubPages affect your business?

Photo Credit

Categories
Making Money Online Online Business

Passive Income and Online Friends and Competition

There is a great debate about how much those of us who build online passive income sites as to how much you reveal of your niches. There is every opinion out there – some people don’t care who finds their sites – others go to great lengths to conceal their niches.

1070365_friends_foreverIts at tricky balance in my opinion and part of the answer lies in people’s underlying personalities and some in their business model. Its an issue that anyone doing passive income blogging has to deal with at some point though.

I resisted the idea of having multiple online personas for a long time. Eventually though I realised that I wanted to start a couple of new personas on hubpages for the hubchallenge – having a few more profile pages which I could link to my sites seeemed like a good idea. Then of course if I build backlinks to those hubs from other sites such as article directories then I need the same persona to link there, and so it goes as they say.

Here’s some points that people do confuse themselves with – who are you hiding from Google or your competitors. If you are running Adsense you are not hiding from Google because the sites are linked with your pub-id – you might as well run Analytics as  well and use a gmail address.

If you are monetizing with Affiliate sales or otherwise yes you can “hide” from Google – though if determined they will still track you down unless other people own your sites, as a domain registrar they have access to this information even if you have privacy enabled.

What do you do – do you think hiding your niches is important – do you make a cursory effort to do this – or do you think its really important and you go to some effort and expense to do so?

Categories
Marketing Online Business Rants

Marketing: My Struggle

Marketing and I have come a long way in the last year – its possibly one of the most important insights have got to this making money online game!


Picadilly Circus
Originally uploaded by msmail

My first degree is in science and analysis is one of my strengths. Twenty years after my first degree and I did a graduate business diploma and was horrified by some of the courses. Marketing was the worst: they had “laws” about how to sell. I remember a big argument I had with a rather shrill marketing lecturer when I challenged her contention that you sell the dream not the product. She claimed it was a law: I pointed out, correctly I believe to this day, that it was an unproven hypothesis or even just a statement, it wasn’t a law. The fact that the apple will drop from the tree is a law, that the sun will rise tomorrow at a certain time is a law: that I will buy a certain brand of toothpaste because it will help me make friends – is, to be blunt, and I was, an un-tested theory. I lost the argument though: she had the microphone and no one else in the class could understand the difference between a law and a marketing hypothesis!

That pretty much sealed my view on the marketing industry. Self-serving, lacking in rigour and a waste of space. I continued to ignore marketing and scorn it. I understand the appeal of consumer products to kids and even to those who lack the basics of life: my first car will always live in my heart – because it was my first taste of freedom! Now cars are just a form of transport: I buy the one that best fits my needs and the price I can afford to pay cash for. I am a car salesman’s nightmare 🙂

So then I decide to become an online marketer – logical right? Its taken me about a year to figure out that is what I am you see. I thought I was going to develop a website and people were going to be so impressed with my wonderful content and I would make money. How was I going to make money – well I was a little hazy on that point: but the wonderful content is still there on my over-30’s independent travel site

You see I couldn’t be a marketer, that’s as a bad as being real estate sales agent isn’t it? And remember I don’t understand marketing or think its worthwhile. Real estate I know a bit about: a lot really, more than most of the agents I have dealt with as a customer. I still use agents to help me buy property though. Why? Because the top 2% of agents that I trust are very,very good at property and know the market inside out. Sometimes they have told me to run not walk from a deal, and I have. Now they are not the agents who win the top agents awards – which are really top commission earners awards. But they are long-term agents who make a comfortable living doing it. They know their product so I turn into their repeat customer.

That’s the sort of marketer I’m going to be online. I am going to be a good and ethical one. I won’t make a $20,000/month doing it – but that was never my aim. Half that amount would see me comfortable for life. And yes you have to sell something to make a living online! That’s how you get paid ! Duh! It just took a while for me to figure it out!

Categories
Affiliate Marketing

RevResponse – A different Type fo Affiliate

I have a confession – I am not very good as an affiliate marketer. For one I won’t promote anything I don’t actually use myself – and for two most of the stuff I use is free – so no commission – like Q10 Retro Text Editor.

So its taken me a while to check out RevResponse – and I only really have because I saw a write up from people like Terry’s – Make MoneyOnline and Grizz’s Make Money Blogging In fact when I clicked through I realised that I recognised the site – I had used it before as a consumer so it must be good!

So what’s RevResponse and why do I like it? Well is different, its useful – and its FREE! How good is that? Here’s how it works – RevResponse has a wide range of business and professional magazines on offer – for FREE – yes no catch. You do have to fill in all the contact information and for some offers you have to reside in the right country, but if you are eligible you receive the magazines free.

For you greenies: no trees dies – these are e-magazines – so they are delivered straight to your inbox in pdf format. And the range of topics is impressive not just finance and business but utilities, food and beverage, packaging, to transportation and travel. They really do have a full-range of options.

For those of you not resident in the US check towards the bottom of the main pages on the left for “International Eligible” to avoid frustration.

And yes: if you do click through and sign up I do get a small commission – but you’re not paying it so its all good!