This year I will earn a lot more money from all of my websites! 2010 was my best year to date by a very long way, it may surprise you that it was also the year I worked the least due to health “issues”. I tried a lot of new ideas because I knew I couldn’t work as much as I was, which wasn’t much in the first place. I basically had to work smarter, not harder. I had three different blog designs last year which all taught me a lot about how people use my site, some ideas worked really well and some concepts just flopped. I think this April will be my best month ever with blogging, I’m just getting round to finally finishing a few last ideas and from early results and testing, I’m quietly confident about the changes. (how is it quietly if I blog about is :S)

This is a new idea I had when we rolled out version 3 design, it pushed all my site down further below the fold, however I think It’s going to pay off. I have already noticed that every time I publish new content and email my readers that I make sales for Site Profit Domination which I advertise in that slot. Recently while at underground I was speaking at Lunch with Dusty who has a JailBreak Blog and he told me how he has adverts in the same place as my large banner and that they get 10 x the clicks as the sidebar, which is massive right?

People know when I’m onto a winner, check these guys out who have already followed up with similar banners.

 

Most marketers will email promotions daily, some email more then once a day, I’ve been told I should do it because it makes them money but to be honest it’s just not me, besides I struggle to find good enough products to promote once a month, daily I would say would be impossible. Here’s my new idea: Like I just said in section 1, every time I email my list, I sell more and more of my own products, I’m better of working harder on my blog monetization and publish more content so every time I email my list about a new blog post, I earn the same as I would if I was promoting a product. This may seem impossible but I really believe I’m onto something here and it really motivates me to publish more content which in turn grows my blog and makes you guys more happy.

I haven’t touched banner advertising in quite a while, I think it was mainly down to the reason that I was making so much more money from other things and I got fed up with always looking for new advertisers and working with them. This time I expect things to be different, currently I’m using BuySellAds, which is a banner advertising marketplace, I expect quite quickly to negotiate long term ad placements with other marketers I know which will end up being around 20% of my total earnings which would end up being quite a considerable amount of money.

Personally, I’m aiming to get 5 advertisers, paying a high price each, deliver them results, encourage them to agree to long term placements with 2 month warning of cancellation. Ultimately as long as I deliver, they will stay. I have decided to remove a few hundred links through out my blog to affiliate products which aren’t converting as well, which will mean banner conversions will go up. If you know that you have a set amount of money coming in every month via PayPal, then you can plan ahead a lot better and it makes business a lot less stressful.

Last year I did two reviews, one brought in over $7000 and the other nearly $9000. Why were these so successful? Firstly, product choice, I choose amazing products and ones that had pages that would convert. A big lesson for affiliate marketers here, don’t promote something if they don’t have a good sales page, you will be shooting yourself in the foot. It also tells you something about the person who created the product, often they are not taking it to seriously or because there one of those people who believe “I’m so great, I don’t need a sales page, people will be begging me for it” – that is never true.

Creating a review is pretty simple, find a product your using, it can be anything, software, sports equipment, cooking utensils, electronics, gadgets, the list is endless. What you want to do is share your own personal experiences, I like to add lot’s of images of me using it, this firstly backs me up as I’ve actually used the product as well as show them how it can be used. Every time they may be convinced to buy, make sure you have an affiliate link, so for example, under a video, under images, at the beginning and end of the post. Another great idea is to show other people actively using it, so for example if you have a car blog, show a picture of Eminem driving the particular car your reviewing. Once your site gets big enough, you can really easily get products for free to review, some company’s will automatically send you invitations and products as they release them as they need people like us to support them.

IDEA: Although not quite ethical, as long as you like the product your using, most product owners will be happy to write the review for you if you ask.