Aweber Mailing List Review

In my posting here about building a mailing list I wrote that I started using Aweber for this purpose. Now a few months later I have to come back and say how easy it is to use Aweber and how impressed I am with the results. My mailing list is still small, but it is growing past 40 members already. That is not a large number, but considering that I had only 1 person unsubscribe so far this is working out good. I already have a total of 10 message pre-programmed that go out every 4-5 days automatically. Every other message contains information about products or services with a link. These are cloaked affiliate links and slowly but surely I am seeing the first income from my newsletters coming in.

My content writer delivers 1 or 2 articles per week that I add to my list of pre-programmed messages now and I hope to reach 20 messages before the year is over (it is end of November today). Aweber provides great stats on my messages, which is very helpful. All newsletter messages come with a HTML version and a text version and I am also seeing how my messages eventually appear for SPAM filters. That is a great tool as it helps to write the messages in a way so that they do not get caught in SPAM filter.

Conclusion: Aweber is a great tool to build a mailing list. I could kick myself in the butt for not using it earlier. Check out their complete feature list here.

It is 2008 (almost 2009) – Yahoo!, wake up

You would think that with how the Internet evolves many websites adapt and improve – especially when it comes to increasing their online revenue. One company that is consistently NOT doing this is Yahoo. I already wrote a quick piece of advice towards the future CEO of Yahoo, but I think it can never hurt to send a message twice if it is really important.

Yahoo Search Marketing – wake f…ing up. I submitted new campaigns yesterday and I can’t pull the trigger, because all my ads are still shown as editorial pending. Come on, Yahoo. How do you expect us to spend money with you if you make it so freakin’ complicated and difficult. The same campaign on MSN is already happily at work. So, my Yahoo campaigns are still paused or better on hold. MSN can do it. Adwords does it for a super long time already, but Yahoo …

Read Your SPAM Comments

SPAM is annoying, but it can also be a good source of information for you as a PPC marketer. One of my other blogs got flooded with new SPAM comments that Askimet did not pick up. But instead of just deleting I used the SPAM subject line and punched it into Google. You can tell these guys are pro’s – first of all they bypass Askimet SPAM protection and then it seems like these are actually pretty good keywords for PPC traffic. No, I am not talking about cheap Viagra SPAM or so – but keywords for credit card offers and car insurance. I checked the Google Adwords keywords tool and the keywords show decent search volume – but not many competitors. This will not give you an entire campaign, but it can be a good way to start building out a new campaign.

Advice for the future CEO of Yahoo!

Jerry Yang is stepping down from being CEO of Yahoo. That is good news in my opinion. But first I have to thank him, because he made me some good money. I had bought Yahoo stock shortly before Microsoft made the unsolicited acquisition offer and sold it with about $10 gain per share.

Anyway – here is my advice for the new CEO (yet to be determined). Please look at Yahoo Search Marketing in more detail and make necessary changes so that it becomes a competitive product. I am saying this as a publisher and as an advertiser. Why do I need a Gold Account for YSM? I want to spend money on your network and you won’t let me or at least make it very painful. Give me an import functionality for my campaigns. It is retarded just to offer it to Gold account members. Also, bring out a client software like Adwords Editor or MSN Desktop Manager for Adcenter. I will always prefer MSN Adcenter over YSM because it is so much easier to work with. If you provide more and better tools for advertisers, you might actually make more money because it is easier for us to spend it.

On the publisher side of things – fix the ad targeting. I removed YPN ad from almost all my sites because of irrelevant ads being displayed. Google Adsense on the other side is top notch. Hint to CEO: If we can display more ads, you can earn more money because you can offer more inventory and generate more revenue.

Those are just 2 issues, but I think they are critical to the future success (or failure) of Yahoo.

Thank You, Google

Good job from Google’s Webmaster team. An old domain I pretty much had forgotten about was subject to attack and unfortunately that attach succeeded. I was (I still am) using Wordpress and of course that installation was outdated and open for malware injection.

Today I received an email from the Webmaster Team about the domain with the notification about infection and that it was temporarily removed from the index when being searched for. I took appropriate action right away and that website is now fully up to date. I had already protected the wp-admin folder with a custom .htaccess file when the site went online, but of course that was not enough.

I spent the last 30 minutes reviewing all my websites that run Wordpress and have them upgraded if necessary. 90 percent were up to date, so it was fairly easy. I also updated my spreadsheet that I maintain to keep track which of my domains run Wordpress.

So, the above issue was clearly my fault and I really appreciate the work Google has done to notify webmasters of issues. Thank you, Google.

Payday – Affiliate Marketing

I have been venturing into many areas with my affiliate marketing and PPC efforts. October was a very successful month for me. However, I have not been able to maintain that level and some of my campaigns have died off with the end of the election here in the US. It’s not fully back to square #1, but I am planning a little more long-term now. One of my projects is to break into the Payday Loan Market. So, there is a lot of research I am doing. I am looking at sample sites like rushpayday.com, directdepositpayday.com or smallloansonline.com. (PS: The links are nofollow) The first two are actual provider of Payday Loans or an affiliates with a white lable offer. The third one is clearly an affiliate site. So, for me that means to start with something like the third site and then move up to a white label or private offer if I can break into this market as an affiliate.

A second niche I am attacking is the credit report market. Another high volume niche, but extremely competitive. I have one site going already and did some PPC, but I am kinda stuck and barely breaking even. Another niche I am active in is finally working out good. I had started with PPC traffic to it, but lost a lot of money. However, I also did SEO the website right from the start and that is now paying off. The profit might even go into the $x,xxx’s depending on how things go. I might take another attack at PPC with this. We will see.

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