My Favorite Affiliate Network is …

I am reviewing how successful I have been with the different affiliate networks and one that delivers very consistently for me is Markethealth.com. As the name suggests this network mainly serves the health related market with affiliate options and since I have a few health related websites it is a great match for me. For one product I even built an entire website that has generated low $x,xxx.xx in profit for me.

Here is the biggest benefit I see with Markethealth.com – stability. While I promote health related products from many affiliate networks this one is the most stable one. Why? I do not have to worry about products constantly reaching their cap or being pulled and then my affiliate links being redirected to some obscure product that does not convert. The products I promote are consistent performers and convert very well for me. The payouts are top notch and if you bring in a lot of volume your commission is not written in stone and will adjust.

There is not a lot of activity in regards to an account manager, but whenever I contacted support for help I was helped in a very timely fashion. However, each product is well supported with existing tools for affiliates – including javascript links, plenty of banners, free content (non-unique), or complete websites pretty much ready to upload (non-unique). These tools help out a lot and save you a lot of time.

You can receive your payments via check, Paypal or Debit Card Deposit. I have not inquired about wires, but would assume that with enough volume this might be an option, too. Products range from weight loss products like acai berry, colon cleansing, and others to fitness and exercise programs and much more. Definitely worth checking out.

Conclusion: While Markethealth is well known in the industry, you do not see it as often mentioned in blogs or forums like other networks. However, the quality of this network is top notch and it performs very well for me. One of my goals for 2009 is to increase my volume with Markethealth significantly.

The ABC’s of Time Management

Time Management is important if you want to be successful. If you work full-time for yourself you might feel you have plenty of time for everything, but it is a common fact that bad habits will get you sooner than later and in the end you will be leaving money on the table. From my experience Internet Marketers who worked part-time for a long time first then go full-time show much better time management skills compared to someone going full-time cold turkey. Why? If you are already working an 8-10 hour day in a normal job + your part-time business you have to be much more efficient to be successful. If you do this for time long enough this necessity actually becomes a valuable skill. As a successful part-time marketer you cannot just dooze away into lala-land of instant messaging, online gaming, or reading forums and blogs all day long. If you would, your success would suffer. As a full-time marketer, do you work 14 hour days maybe? Look at your habits of what you really do during the day and discover eventually why you could be even more successful if changing some behavior and habits.

A biggie for me was to turn my Blackberry to the “quiet” profile. No more vibrating, no more phone calls ringing through. The interruptions of my work processes suddenly got reduced dramatically and the output of work increased. Unless I am waiting for an urgent email, I check my emails briefly once every 60-90 minutes. Believe it or not, but this works great – once you get past the initial paranoia of missing out.

By all means, instant messaging is a great tool. Instant chats with friends, family, and affiliate managers are awesome. But IM (instant messaging) is also a big distraction or interruption in regards to your work. Being visible and available invites people to “ping” you and before you know it you chatted another 15-30 minutes about some non-work related stuff. Make it a habit to set the IM status to “DO not Disturb” or go invisible completely and ignore any incoming message. Even better, log out of your IM client and turn it back on for 15 minutes every 2 hours. Or schedule (and communicate that schedule) a fixed time during the day when you are available on instant messaging. Then be available for an hour and cover anything you need. Again, with these steps in place your productivity should go high up during the same time of being less connected.

Checking your income stats. Does your Firefox Web Browser has the infamous Google Adsense plugin that shows you income from Google Adsense? Or do you have any toolbars installed that show your affiliate income up to the minute? Unless you are monitoring an extremely busy PPC campaign with high volume for testing, chances are you do not need to know your income every minute. If you are honest and sum up how often you check stats, you easily might spend an hour or more per day just to see how much money you made. This one hour or more could be easily be used to make more money. I usually check my stats in the evenings – in most cases PPC campaigns are paused and numbers are stable. The day is winding down and overall movements in income will be slower and less dramatically than during the day.

There you have it. With a few simple tricks you can still cover all your needs in regards to communication and information, but at the same time be much more productive and earn even more money without spending more time in your office as needed.

Consolidating Websites and Domains

I reviewed my list of websites and domains that I have and found several that were overlapping or where the initial reason I had published the website changed over time and that it would be better to operate under a different brand name. I came up with a list of domain names and websites and then started matching them together. I see great advantage in this step as it allows me to combine forces of 2 websites into one.

As an example I had started a weight loss related website 2 years ago, but it limited me know to a single weight loss program. While it worked great for 1.5 years, the last 6 months have been horrible with no more conversions. I have a second site in that niche that is more generic in naming and branding and allows me to promote more products. One Wordpress installation and a few 301 permanent redirects later the newer, more generic site hosts an exact copy of the older weight loss website. The 301 redirect makes sure Google will not punish me for duplicate content and it will redirect visitors to the same content just on the new domain name. The new domain name will gain some trust (to a small degree) and should rank soon similiar to the old website.

In the long run it should help combining 2 sites into one as my workload will be less and I can be more productive. It should also help in regards to income and that is not a bad thing during these days.

Mapping Out 2009

No, this is not a list of goals for the next or maybe it is, but not really. Over the last 2 months I realized that my workload is spread out quite a bit and I want to achieve a lot for 2009. So, I have centralize and automate and outsource tasks to become more efficient. I also want to have a better plan available for what I need to do where and work less day to day figuring out what needs to be done. I want to continue to be prepared for the ongoing recession by not being limited to one or two industries or niche markets in case one goes south and tanks with the economy.

So, I am mapping out the year 2009 and how I want to approach it. I am picking 4-5 different niches and will concentrate on those. I do have websites in many niches and so I am building a list of which websites have the best income currently and the most potential to increase this income. That list should end at around 10-12 websites – some well established and some newer ones.

I am writing down tasks that I need to accomplish to increase traffic and income. I am listing things I do want to improve on those websites – be it design or better usage of ad placements. I am preparing outsoure orders and review existing ones. 2008 was a good year as I found a very reliable article writer that delivers good content for $5 per article – and able to increase the output (currently 10 articles per week). And best of all – the writer is located in North America, so that I do not have to deal with crappy content coming out of India by so-called “natural English speakers”.

With the detailed map and list of things I want to do, I can then drill down to tasks on a daily level and combine work, too (example: SEO or upgrading Wordpress blogs, etc.). I also know early on what to work on during the week and plan accordingly. That allows me set my mind to right topic and “think” that topic all week. The result should be more detailed work with less distractions.

So, I think 2009 will be a great year and I will see an increase in income if things work out the way I hope. I also have to change my mindset and instead of aiming low, shoot for the sky and act accordingly. This will increase my risk and my financial exposure, but it also increases my income potential dramatically. I wrote about my Adsense income earlier this week and how dependent I was on that at one point and how that has changed. But the process is not done yet and I am highly motivated to move forward and to put in more work accordingly.

I am maintaining my list in Excel 2007* and will print it out weekly. Having a hard copy is a good way to take notes and write down thoughts. I can then easily transfer those into a clean state into the original file and print it out again. Rinse and repeat.

To a great Year 2009 – Cheers

*Excel 2007: I just saw the low ratings people gave Office 2007 at Amazon and how many people whine about what changed. I have used every single version of Excel and Office since 1997 and yes – there are some differences, but all that whining over at Amazon – geeez. I actually love Office 2007. Sure, there is a small learning curve, but I am so much more productive with 2007 compared to 2003 …

Adsense Revenue Up

Yeah, I am still making money from Google Adsense and after seeing what one little change did I am almost mad how much money I left at the table for years. Before I made the change described here December seemed to be on track to be a very weak month for me. December is always weak for my Adsense income, but with the economy in the toilet it was on track to be the worst December on record for my Adsense monies.

Well, fast forward and I can say that the change I made by replacing one 728×90 Adsense unit with Two 336×280 units has increased my daily income from that one website by 40% on average. As a matter of fact December might be outperforming any other month of 2008 with income from Google Adsense.

Many webmasters and affiliates always talk bad about Google Adsense and in some ways those negative aspects are true. However, Google Adsense has a place in a solid business plan as long as you do not make it your main source of income. 1.5-2 years ago Adsense was good for about 80% of my income from my business at one point. I am still making similar dollar amounts like back then from Adsense, but Google Adsense now does only account for maybe 40% of my overall online income. It was my goal for 2008 to reduce my dependency from Adsense income and that is also my goal for 2009. Income from Affiliate Marketing has increased accordingly and my business could now fully survive if Adsense would go away (for whatever reason). Sure, it would hurt initially, but the dependency is gone.

My Adsense income is helpful as it provides me with funds to expand my affiliate marketing efforts. I can spend money where I need it to grow my business without taking on debt or cutting into my cash flow and cash reserve.

Can Your Business survive if you are sick or absent?

Will your business survive without any major damage in case you are sick or out of commission for a while? I have been traveling this month and then got sick upon my return right before Christmas and honestly – I have not done anything other than writing 4 or 5 blog posts during that time since December 12th. Sure, I checked my emails and financial stats, but overall everything runs on auto-pilot and that is not bad in a situation where you have limited access to the Internet or when illness really takes you down.

When I built my business it was always designed to be secondary to my full-time job (computer systems administrator at that time). I built it with the mindset that if the full-time job pays the bills, it has higher priority. If the business would pay the bills, it would get higher priority. You get the idea. Anyway – I designed the business based on the idea that it needs to run on auto-pilot with little or no intervention at all for a while and that is serving me well up to today. Sure, the business will not grow itself during that time, but that is expected.

As a business grows you often find yourself “married” to the business. PPC campaigns might need daily ‘massaging’ and maintenance as otherwise you might lose a lot of money. Or do you manually need to update websites or maintain online presence in a forum or chat room to keep things going? If that is the case you cannot just get sick for a few days and turn on hibernation and recovery mode. You are forced to be online and work as otherwise your business would suffer. This might be Ok for a while, but long-term you need to plan ahead and design your business processes accordingly. Example: I run a large vBulletin forum with 5,000 visitors per day. There is always the need for assistance in many ways. For years I did it all myself, but at one point I realized that did not work. Initially it was hard to trust someone else, but by now I have moderators “working” (volunteering) for me and I can easily disappear for a week knowing my forum is in good hands. This was a good learning process for me and I started using automation where possible. As another example I use Sunday nights to post a lot of content to several websites. The content is pre-scheduled and then published upon the scheduled date. This makes the websites look like their are being updated almost daily. Except for one website everything is designed with very little need for personal contact with website visitors. This one specific website however, can be adjusted for when I am gone. Revenue, while delivering a high ROI, is sporadic with bursts in traffic here and there. The financial impact is minimal and does not really affect me.

This business model will not work for everyone, but now that I am still feeling sick with no motivation of doing really work, I am glad that I can lean back recover knowing that my business is waiting for me and that I do not have to sweat about possible problems or issues costing me thousands of dollars.

PS: I hate traveling for one reason – too many people among the way trying to make you sick . It also does not help sitting in an airplane with a broken AC that left the section I was sitting in with 45-55 degree (Fahrenheit) temperatures. 9 hours of cold temperatures just don’t help you …

Next Page »