Do Your Research!

Research Is The Key!

You have an awesome sales page and a world class product but that doesn’t mean squat if you haven’t done your research before hand.

In this weeks newsletter I am going to show you, from my own experiences how doing your research properly can mean the difference between $100 per month and $1000 per month!

Take a look at the two screen shot’s below, they are my own screens taken from two different affiliate programs that I promote. One of the products I took my time and researched, the other product was one that I threw together without doing the research – can you guess which is which? (Both show earnings for a 1 month period)

As you can see from the shots above, I wasn’t joking when I said research can make the difference between $100 and $1000 per month! I can’t stress enough how important it is to do some proper research before creating a new product, or website. The same goes for an affiliate program, there is no point promoting a product as an affiliate if nobody is looking to buy!

So with that out of the way, I am going to show you exactly how I do my research before I start a new project.

1. Get some feedback

Before you create a new website/product get some feedback first. Just because you think you have the next big thing it doesn’t mean other people will agree with you. The way I do this is by putting out some “feelers”. You can see an example by clicking here, this was one of my newsletters a few weeks ago. You will notice that I included a poll giving people a vague idea about the product and then I asked them to vote.

Another easy way is to post a brief description of your idea in some relevant forums (without spamming!) or by sending questions to your mailing list or existing website visitors.

2. Look at the competition

Chances are that you will have some competition already out there selling a similar product/service. What I always do is take a look at the competitions Alexa rank and see how much traffic they are getting, very low traffic means that there may not be a huge demand for the product, a good traffic ranking probably means you are onto something worthwhile!

3. Keyword Research

This is my personal favourite, before I even consider creating the site/product I like to see if there is any chance of me getting some search engine traffic. I think of a related keyword for my product/service that I will be promoting and then run it through Keyword Elite:

If you haven’t yet invested in Keyword Elite then you can use the free Keyword Suggestion Tool from the SEO Book to get a basic idea of how many searches that word/phrase will get each month:

http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/

A lot of searches and low competition means you are onto a winner, no searches and lots of competition means……try another keyword or move onto something else!

Taking those three simple steps BEFORE you start creating your product/website can mean the difference between success and failure.

I’m sure a lot of you have loads of other research methods that you use before starting a new project, if you do then please feel free to leave a comment and share them with us 🙂

Thanks for reading,
Dan

Do You Have A Contingency Plan?

Greetings readers, I hope you have had a nice Easter Break. Mine was perfect until I decided to watch England Vs Australia in the cricket. England might have a decent chance of winning the world cup if half the team weren’t scared of hitting a cricket ball!

But enough about cricket, I would like to welcome the new readers to this weeks newsletter. Most weeks I will publish a free newsletter on my blog on a number of different subjects, you can view my archived newsletters and navigate the site via the links on the right of the page.

This week I am going to look at an important part of any online or offline business – a contingency plan!

Put simply, have you got measures in place for when something goes wrong?

The reason for me writing about this subject is due to something that happened to me just before the Easter break. I woke up one morning to discover that I had no broadband connection, so I couldn’t check my emails, access websites and respond to customer queries.

After a chat with my ISP they assured me that my line was fine and it wasn’t a problem at their end either. After a lot of searching around I found out that the problem was actually my router, so off to the local store I went. £70 and one new router later I was back online, however all of the searching around for the problem had cost me two days of working time, not to mention the backlog of emails.

So that was 2 days without an Internet connection, what could I have done to avoid this?

The answer was staring at me in the face; I should have had a contingency plan in place! In this case my contingency plan would be to have a dial up connection to fall back on if my broadband decided to kick up a fuss again. So the very first thing I did when I was back online was find a dial up solution.

I found this emergency dial up number that you can use (UK only) but I’m sure if you look on Google you will be able to find your countries equivalent service – if you can’t find one maybe there is a gap in the market 😉

http://emergencyinternet.com/ (not an affiliate link!)

Having a dial up connection in place before my Broadband crash would have meant I could still answer emails and customer queries, all be it a bit slower than before but they would still be answered and I wouldn’t have faced the back log that I did.

So contingency plan 1:

Always have a dial up connection to fall back on if your Broadband fails. (and never buy a Belkin router, they break way too easily!)

Number 2 isn’t something that has happened to me yet, touch wood but I’m sure you will all be aware of a massive problem that could cause you no end of headaches.

What would you do if your hard drive crashed and you lost all of your data? Every website you ever created, every e-book you ever downloaded, every letter you ever composed; every picture you saved would be gone for good.

This may sound a little bit far fetched, but trust me it isn’t. A hard drive can go at any time, what’s to say you won’t get a computer virus tomorrow and have to reformat everything?

I can’t stress how important it is to have a contingency plan in place for this, you need to make sure that you make backs of all your important data on a regular basis. There are loads of ways to back up:

– Copy all files to an external drive
– Copy files to a DVD/CD
– Upload important files to your server
– Use an automated online back up system

I personally use an automated online back up system, every time I create or change a file/folder the software automatically makes an off site backup for me. I use:

www.carbonite.com (again, it’s not an affiliate link)

So contingency Plan 2:

Always back up your important files and folders, you never know when you hard drive will decide to call it a day 🙂

Those are the two main points that I wanted to make today, there are other contingency plans that you also need to consider but I felt that those were the two main one’s for now.

Others to consider would be:

– A back up hosting account if your current host goes belly up

– Details of all your business accounts, paypal passwords if something were to happen to you. Hey, I know it’s morbid but it’s something you need to consider, if something were to happen to you then you need a plan in place that would give your loved one’s the information they need.

That’s it for this week’s newsletter, I normally end by asking you to leave me any comments you may have on the article, but this week I will be ending on a rather sombre note.

A long time marketer by the name of Gary Halbert has sadly passed away. I was a long time subscriber to Gary’s newsletter as I’m sure a lot of you were as well. I’m sure you will join me in sending out our thoughts and prayers to Gary’s family.

Thanks for reading,

Regards,
Dan

How To Secure Download Links And Pages

Hello everyone, I have created this weeks newsletter from an article I wrote some time ago. I get a lot of questions about digital downloads and the best way to protect them. In the article I show you ways to  protect your download links without using a delivery script.

In the digital age more and more people have taken to selling digital products such as software, pictures, music files and eBooks over the Internet. Many of these people sell such products on their own website, once a customer has purchased the product they will be given a download link so they can download their purchase.

What a lot of these sellers don’t realise is that a lot of potential customers are downloading the product free of charge either through un-encrypted download links or insecure download directories. If you are selling digital products then I would strongly suggest that you read this article and make sure that your site is secure!

The first lesson I will show you is how to protect your download directories. Download directories are where you store your files that the customer will download after purchase, so if you were selling e-books your storage location may look like:

www.yoursite.com/e-books

If someone were to type that URL into their web browser chances are they would see a “tree view” structure of your folder. In short they would have access to all files within that folder without having to pay you a single penny!

To stop this you can create a page called “index.html” and upload it to the “e-books” folder. This means that now when someone tries to access the folder, they wont see the contents of your directory, they will see the index page you have just uploaded.

So now you have protected your file storage directory what else can you do? Well there are still a lot more tasks you can undertake to protect your files.

Zipping your files has now become more important than ever and should be used with all of your files. Google and many other search engines now crawl pdf files, word documents and other none HTML files, these are NOT SAFE! Many e-book sellers store their downloads as PDF documents.

While this may not be a problem for those adding content to their sites in the form of PDF newsletters and reports, it also means that you must never store a product you want to SELL as a PDF file (unless it is in a password-protected folder).

It gets worse. Google not only reads PDF files but converts them to HTML so that your e-book can not only be downloaded but they can get the source as well!

Now human nature being what it is means the chances are that person will now customise your e-book with their own links, compile it and sell it or give it away.

A simple way of keeping your files out of the reach of spiders is to upload them as a zip file. Search engines cannot look inside zip files (yet) and list their contents. By using zip files you can add further security by making them password protected and emailing the password separately.

A further method to protect your directories would be to protect them with a password. Many web hosting companies will offer you the ability to password protect a directory. Using password protection can limit the amount of access users have to your site. You can specify a user name and password for the directory you are protecting. Each protected directory can have multiple users (each with different passwords if you prefer) who have access to it. Additionally, the Protect Directories option can be used to remove a user’s access from a protected directory.

Even with all of these safety procedures in place, there is still no guarantee that your files wont be stolen. No matter how secure you are there are always people out there that try to find “back doors” to your links. The only 100% secure way to protect your files is to store them in a folder above your public_html or www_docs directory and then have a script send out an encrypted, expiring download link to your customer straight after payment. This is the method that I use with great success.

If you have any different methods or suggestions then please feel free to leave a comment. I would also love to hear any horror stories you may have!

Thanks for reading,
Regards,
Dan

 P.S. You may notice that I have also added a “Humour” section to this site. If you fancy a laugh then click on the “Humour” link to your left 🙂

How to set-up your own affiliate program

How to set-up your own affiliate program

Having your own affiliate program can bring a massive boost to your business. A good affiliate program could be the difference between success and failure. Imagine having an army of affiliates, all driving a constant flow of traffic to your website. Just take a look at the screenshot below, that’s a picture of my affiliate account for Auction SOS. I have highlighted the number of clicks brought in by affiliates.

That’s what a well set up affiliate program can do for you, but why do so many people include an affiliate program as an “After thought” and why do some people not offer an affiliate program at all? After doing a bit of research on the subject it turns out that a lot of people (and this could include you) would love to run an affiliate program but simply don’t know how to go about it.

That’s what I am going to cover in this week’s newsletter, I will show you how to set up your own affiliate program in a number of different ways, but first let’s start with a brief introduction about affiliate programs.

In a nutshell an affiliate program allows people to promote your website/product. Your affiliate program/script will allow your affiliates to generate a unique link that they can use to drive visitors to your site, if that visitor then buys something from your website then the affiliate will earn a percentage of the sale amount. Or in simple terms – a commission!

There are many different types of affiliate programs, so you will need to decide which type to run for your site.

Per Sale
This is the most common type of program. An affiliate will earn a commission for any sales made after the user has clicked on an affiliate link.

Multi-Tier
A multi-tier affiliate program allows users to earn commissions on a number of different levels. It acts as an incentive for current affiliates to recruit new affiliates, any new affiliates that have been referred by the original affiliate become part of the original affiliates “downline”. The original affiliate will then earn a commission every time the affiliate he/she (I’m not sexist!) recruited to the program makes a sale.

Per Click
Quite uncommon but still used occasionally. The affiliate will get paid a set amount every time their affiliate link is clicked.

Recurring
This is a popular type of program for affiliates. A recurring commission program will generate the affiliate a commission each month/day/week/year rather than a one off sale. This is generally used for services that require a monthly payment such as web hosting and membership sites.

The most common program, and probably the one that you are most interested in will be the “Per Sale model.

Article Continues below…..

That’s all well and good but I already know all of that – HOW DO I START MY OWN AFFILIATE PROGRAM!

Don’t worry, I will tell you right away 😉

There are two options for you; you can either go with your own hosted affiliate program where you handle all payments, members, banners, links etc. Or you can go and sign up at a 3rd party affiliate marketplace.

Both of these options have their advantages and disadvantages, so let’s take a look at them.

First of all let’s start with the hosted option.

You can see an example of a hosted affiliate program by clicking here.

Advantages

– You are in control of every aspect of your affiliate program
– Build up a database of affiliates
– Send out emails to your affiliates
– Run all of your affiliate programs from one central location
– Ability to pick and choose your affiliates
– View detailed statistics

Disadvantages

– Initial set-up may take some time
– Spam filters!
– Have to recruit your own affiliates
– All payments handled by you, some affiliates may be put off
– Requires webspace

Now let’s look at the affiliate marketplace option.

You can see an example of a marketplace program here. (This program is run via Clickbank)

Advantages

– All tracking and management handled by a 3rd party
– Payments sent out by the company not by you (in some cases)
– A massive army of affiliates ready to promote your product
– Quick and easy to set up
– Professional customer service (in some cases)

Disadvantages

– Some of the refund policies leave a lot to be desired, can be abused by some customers
– Limited control over your program
– Tracking stats may not be as advanced as your own hosted script
– Tracking cookies blocked by Spybot and IE7 causing lost commissions

As you can see, both options have their good and bad points. I use both hosted scripts and marketplace programs for my products. I will now give you some examples of those and how they are run.

Marketplace 1 – Clickbank

Unless you have been living under a rock then you will have heard about Clickbank. Clickbank is the world’s largest digital product marketplace and it’s dead simple to get your product listed on there!

Step 1 – Sign up for a free Clickbank account.
Step 2 – Submit a product approval request ($49.95 for the 1st product)
Step 3 – Your product is listed in the marketplace!

All of the accounting is taken care of by Clickbank; they record all sales, commissions and even send out the paychecks to you and your affiliates. One downside is the refund policy, a customer simply needs to email Clickbank and ask for a refund and Clickbank will issue the refund – no questions asked 🙁

You can have up to 100 items for sale in your Clickbank account, but if you want to let your affiliates promote all of the products, rather than just the 1st product then you need to invest in a script.

I use Adrian Ling’s Easy Click Mate and you can see it in action by clicking here – and thats not even an affiliate link!

Marketplace 2 – Paydotcom

Paydotcom (PDC) was launched by Internet Marketing “big wig” Mike Filsaime as an alternative to Clickbank. The main selling point behind Paydotcom is the cost – it’s FREE to list your 1st product in their marketplace compared to Clickbank’s $49.95 charge.

The main downside is the size of the marketplace, as the site is still quite new it doesn’t have the same affiliate user base as Clickbank, who knows what will happen in a few years when PDC grows in size but at the present time the affiliate base is no match for Clickbank. Also a major bug bare with PDC is the speed of the website, by all accounts the site has been poorly coded and this results in one of the slowest loading sites I have come across. It’s a shame because the idea is great but I think that a complete re-coding is required to fix the speed issues.

If you want to give Paydotcom a try you can do so by clicking here.

Hosted Option 1 – Post Affiliate Pro

I have been using Post Affiliate Pro now for almost two years and am currently using it to run my Auction SOS! Affiliate program. Post Affiliate Pro runs on your web server and once installed allows you to control all aspects of your affiliate program.

It gives you 100% control over everything, affiliates, sales, refunds, charge backs, banners, the list is endless!

At the time of writing a licence costs $99 for the Professional version (the version that I use) but they also offer a free version, however this comes with no technical support. The installation is simple but if you have any problems they will install it for free (paid version only)

If you want to try out Post Affiliate Pro you can do so by clicking here.

Hosted Option 2 – IDev Affiliate

I will be perfectly honest with you here, I have never used IDev affiliate but a friend of mine uses it and told me I should list it here! By all accounts it works in the same way as Post Affiliate Pro and contains a lot of the same features.

I won’t go on about it too much but if you would like to check it out then please click here.

The Last Word

One final thing to consider is making sure that you don’t already have an affiliate script already installed. I know a lot of you use my EW Portal delivery script to delivery your e-Books. You may not know this but the EW Portal also contains a built in affiliate system! You can see an example by going to my El Passo Books website and clicking on affiliates. So please don’t go out buying these other solutions if you already have one staring you in the face – it would simply be a waste of money!

I think this has to be one of my longest newsletters, I just looked down and it’s almost 5 pages long in MS Word! I should have made it into an e-Book and sold it for $7 😉

Thanks for reading; hopefully I haven’t left anything out. As always please leave me any questions or comments and I will do my best to answer them.

Thanks again,
Dan

How to display RSS feeds on your website

How to display RSS feeds on your website

Welcome to this weeks slightly delayed newsletter. You will notice that I am publishing on a Friday rather than a Thursday, is this because of the snow that has caused chaos on the UK’s travel network? Not a chance, there hasn’t even been a dusting in sunny Yorkshire although the local weather assures me there is some heavy snow on the way overnight, I’ll believe it when I see it! Anyway, enough snow related ramblings let’s move onto this weeks newsletter.

In this edition I will be covering RSS feeds and how you can use these feeds to display automatically updated content on your website.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” but is it really that simple? Well judging by the amount of RSS related questions that I am asked I’d say there is still a lot of confusion around RSS feeds.

Put in simple terms websites can produce “Feeds” (also know as RSS feeds) from their website. These “feeds” are updated every time new content is posted to the site, which means that anyone subscribing to that feed receives new content every time the site is updated.

That’s all well and good but how can these feeds help your website? Well have you ever heard of the phrase “Unique content”? Unique content is loved by the search engines, RSS feeds can be used to bring new content to your site on an hourly, daily r monthly basis.

You can display RSS feeds on just about every subject you can think of, more and more sites are giving users the option to subscribe to RSS feeds. Even this blog has an RSS feed – just click on the “RSS 2.0” link to your right. Here are just a few example feeds, I have listed the feed location and I am also displaying the Soccer feed on a seperate page; come back tomorrow and you will notice that the content has changed, remember all of this is done automatically!

– – Click here to view my page with the feeds included – –

News

http://news.google.com/?output=rss

Soccer

http://rss1.mediafed.com/feed/skysports/Football

Entertainment

http://syndication.digitalspy.co.uk/xmlcache/dsukstd.xml

Those are just a small selection of feeds taken from 3 websites; you can find RSS feeds on any subject you wish – just look out for the orange symbol as shown below.

Now you know what feeds are and how they work, how do you get them onto your website?

This is done using something called an “RSS to HTML Parser” and it is dead easy to do. All you need to do is enter the URL of the RSS feed and it will then display the latest news from that feed on your website.

Take a look at the site below, all of that site’s content is generated using RSS feeds! The owner just sit’s back and cashes her adsense cheque every month!

Leona Lewis website – Nothing to do with me 😉

The most popular parser is a script called “Weblines” but DON’T buy that (it costs around $30). My friend Jane Shread is releasing a new script sometime next week for only £12 (around $20), which does the same thing as Weblines but also allows you to format your feeds. I am actually using Jane’s script to display the sports feed above but you will have to wait until she has finished writing the instructions 😉

I will be dropping you an email about the script sometime next week. If you really can’t wait that long then feel free to go with Weblines, a search on Google will find it for you.

I will be using RSS feeds to display unique content on my new El Passo Books website that will be up sometime next week. As I said it’s a great way to add unique, self-updating content to your websites. It will save you a lot of time and the search engines will love you!

That’s it for this week’s newsletter; look out for the email with a link to the new RSS to HTML parser script.

Thanks for reading,
Regards,
Dan

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