Marketer Explains How He Made $438 From A Single Article With $1 Investment And An Hour Of Work

I love these types of success stories. While $438 may seem like a small amount of money to some of you, there are a lot of people out there that could really use an extra couple hundred dollars a month.

Problog from the Warrior Forum writes:

“1. First you’ll need an Amazon Associates account for this method to work.

2. Next you’ll need to create an article but not just any affiliate promotional article – it has to be an article that appeals to a wide range of readers. I’ll tell you exactly what topic I used – “Top 20 Weirdest Items on Amazon”; the reason I chose this topic is because it has the potential to go viral which it did. I wrote it myself but if you are not very good at writing you should outsource it. I used only plain text links like this:

20. {Funny commentary about product}{Affiliate link – plain text}

19. {Funny commentary about product}{Affiliate link – plain text}

etc.

If you guys want to see my actual blog let me know and I’ll post a link to it for you to see exactly how it looks.

Do not use image links or people won’t be as tempted to click and see the actual product.

3. I set up a free blogger blog for this but you can easily use your own hosting if you have it. At the time I just wanted to create something quickly so I went with blogger.

4. Publish your article and set up your social buttons like Share on Facebook, Digg, Twitter, etc.

5. Now you need traffic; what I did was I went to Mturk and posted a hit – Digg my post for 1 cent, that makes 100 Diggs for $1. For those of you who don’t know what Mturk is it’s a place where you can post small tasks – hits, for people to complete for just cents. Now, posting tasks like these isn’t really allowed on Mturk but I’ve seen many people do it and I’ve done it many times myself but last time I received an email from them to remove my hit so it would be a good idea to find an alternative for Mturk. I did some research and found that there are a few people on Fiverr that will get you 100 Diggs. The goal is to have your story on the first page of Digg.

My story quickly became viral, people were sharing it on Facebook and forums so I got $438 in my Associates account for that month from just that one article. Not bad for an hour of work.

Now, don’t just go and everybody write the same article about the weirdest items on Amazon, come up with something original and something that a lot of people will find interesting. Hope this will help some of you make some cash.”

These types of articles would be great to use in conjunction with my 2800+ visitors a day traffic strategy!

Is This The End Of The Web?

While the video may be a bit alarmist, Ryan Diess makes some great points. The Digital Marketer Lab sounds awesome too! Watch the video and tell me what you think.

Marketer Reveals 10 Tricks To Making Over $1,000 A Month With Amazon

A marketer over at the Warrior Forum who claims to make over $1,000 every month from Amazon has revealed some of his tricks. Making money as an Amazon associate is something I never looked into much because of their low commissions, but this forum post has me wondering if I should dabble in the Amazon world.

“- Create a variety of sites, but there are two types of products you should focus on, high volume and big ticket.

- Create high volume products sales sites (think razor blade and handle type products, things people NEED) to market products that people NEED to buy, and buy on a monthly basis.

- Once you have traffic to your high volume product sites tell people to buy in bulk this simple trick will turn a person from buying 1 item, to 10 items and your commission from $1 to $10! People actually read your posts, and a little push is all they need to spend more.

- You want to create sites for small ticket items to increase your payout. Amazon has a tier for their commission, you have to sell over a certain amount of products to reach 7%, 7.5%, 8% etc. Sell a lot of small ticket items to increase the payout for your big ticket items.

- Also create sites for big ticket items. You may only sell one or two laptops a per week, but getting $25 commission is pretty sweet!

- Know the payouts – some items have a cap on the commission, or lower payouts. Electronics generally have a 4% commission, but other big ticket items pay upwards of 7%.

- Avoid the cap – Some items are capped, when I sell the computer the most I can make is $25, when I sell a treadmill I can make up to $100.

- Try to make sites around what people like to buy online and are expensive. What do you buy online, or look for online, stuff that is small and expensive are more likely to be bought online like watches, sunglasses, video games etc. These are good things to make sites about (an authority domain around video games would KILL on amazon).

- Convince people to buy – before I post the affiliate link I like to remind people of the benefits of buying online, stuff like better prices, more shopping options, free shipping, delivery right to your front door. This likely pushes a few extra people to buy that normally might now.

- Your affiliate links are important. I find the best conversion is in text links, and adding the affiliate link to the images. A little buy now button in your image will help increase clickthroughs. Really all you want to do is send people to Amazon, who knows what they will buy.”

Lijit: Adsense Alternative For Mid-Sized Publishers

This looks promising. I too hate the fact you can never reach Google when something goes wrong. How refreshing it would be if we could actually reach a real live person!

WebProNews Reports:

“Not surprisingly, many businesses use Google’s AdSense platform to make money. It has given many publishers a tried-and-true monetization model to fall back on, so they can focus on the editorial side of the business.

Although Google has been very successful with its AdSense platform, it is known for targeting, primarily, large publishers. For this reason, Lijit Networks is aiming to provide an alternative to AdSense and reach out, specifically, to mid-sized publishers.

The company has provided publishers with audience engagement and analytics tools since 2006, but it added a monetization feature earlier this year. Since Q4 2010, transactions on the advertising platform have grown 74 percent. Lijit also recently closed a $10 million round of financing in order to expand its platform and compete directly with Google.

Todd Vernon, the CEO and founder of Lijit, told us that publishers, especially in the mid-sized marketplace, tell them that Google isn’t performing to its users’ expectations.

‘What we hear, time and time again, is, ‘when there’s something wrong, I can’t get a hold of Google… they only provide me error messages… I can’t actually talk to a human,’’ he said.

Because Lijit is reaching out to a niche market, it believes it can take on the advertising giant.

‘At the end of the day, they’re [Google] vulnerable in this area,’ pointed out Vernon. ‘Google’s not known for customer service,’ he added.

As for how Lijit plans to take on this endeavor, Vernon said, ‘We just want to have more relationships with more publishers in niche content areas that we know how to monetize that others probably won’t do as good a job with.’

Do you think Lijit can successfully take on Google?”

6 Ways To Make Money With Your Website Or Blog

Times are tough for a lot of people right now. This is why it is crucial that you work smarter instead of harder. Below are a few ideas to get you started making money on-line using your website or blog.

1. Promote a product-One of the easiest ways to get started making money on-line is by becoming an affiliate of a particular product and then using your website or blog to promote it. Becoming an affiliate simply means for every product you are responsible for selling, you get a commission.

Your job is to send folks to the affiliate website which will then work to sell the visitor the product. It can be hard work, but once you get the hang of it, you can make some consistent money using this technique.

2. Build a list-This goes a long with promoting a product, but takes it one step further. You see, it’s a proven fact that most people will not buy what you’re selling upon first visit. However, if you’re offering something for FREE then many more people are going to take action, even if it means they have to enter their email address.

This of course gives you the opportunity to follow up with your prospect via email and build a relationship while simultaneously soft-selling them, which will undoubtedly have a positive impact on your bottom line.

3. Sell Advertising Space-Website traffic is valuable, and if you are getting lots of visitors to your site, businesses will pay to get in front of that crowd. Simply charging others to advertise on your site is a great way to monetize your online efforts. Banner or text ads sell easily on website that has consistent traffic.

4. Promote Yourself-If you offer professional services, another great way to monetize your blog or website is to sell yourself. Let others know about what you do and how you can help them. Many people have used their personal blogs and websites to develop significant client bases just by showcasing their talents and services and letting others know how they can be hired.

5. Charge Subscription Fees-A website worth visiting on a regular basis just might be one worth paying for. Depending on the type of content you are offering, your core audience may wish to pay to become an exclusive member of the site. This can be done by offering upgraded features that are only available to those that pay and will help to give paying members the feeling of being in a special club. A membership based website can, in time, turn into a significant source of ongoing revenue. Keep the content fresh and active and your members happy and reap the rewards!

6. Build it, Sell it!-Some people like to have the job done FOR them…so, building a website or blog and developing regular traffic and then selling the website or blog is a great way to earn money on-line. Depending on how in depth and content rich the site is coupled with how many regular visitors it gets will determine the price but websites that are built and sold regularly command thousands of dollars to interested buyers.

For those savvy business people out there, you may have already realized, you can actually combine several or ALL of these tactics to maximize the amount of income potential you earn from any one website or blog. The opportunities on-line are there, just take your time, build quality content driven websites or blogs, and monetize them for potentially significant profits.

Contact Us Today And We’ll Walk You Through The Process Of Monetization!