JarretCade.net http://jarretcade.net A journey in Affiliate Marketing. Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:30:47 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 en Is YOUR Blog Worth MY Time? http://jarretcade.net/is-your-blog-worth-my-time http://jarretcade.net/is-your-blog-worth-my-time#comments Fri, 05 Sep 2008 06:23:32 +0000 Jarret http://jarretcade.net/?p=190 Have you ever asked yourself if you think that the content that you write on your blog is worth being talked about? I have several times and it is one of the reasons as to why I created the series on Google Webmaster Tools. I am just now starting to see some organic traffic from Google and while I haven’t received much feedback on the series, my goal is to inform those that are looking for information and to answer any questions that they may have. 

I started my blog because I have an interest in affiliate marketing and it is something for me to chronicle and look back upon. I can use my blog to either vent my frustrations and make posts about me losing money and at the same time I can make posts about me making money (hopefully soon). Yet at the same time as you may have noticed, I use my blog to write about what peaks my interest during that present time. Whether it be creating a Google Alert, creating a custom 404 page or anything that deals with me and the progress of the sites that I am currently working on.

If people find my posts and it helps them or gives them a different way to look at something then I have accomplished my mission. If they haven’t found their answer it would be nice if they left a comment or sent me an email asking for further information. Currently I have had only one person actually email me asking about more information and I was glad to have helped him. 

I try to make my blog worth anybody’s time that they spend here and hopefully I am doing that so far. For those of you that don’t know, all of the links on my blog pointing to other blogs or sites are NOT nofollowed. So whenever I post a keyword rich link to somebody’s site or blog, while I am passing very little PageRank if any, I still like to think that I am helping them even in a small way. That is what I believe to make a blog a worthwhile read and why I have my blog setup the way I do. (If you happen to find a link that IS nofollowed, LET ME KNOW!). 

I think people worry way too much about their PageRank and fear passing even a tiny bit of it on to anybody that they link to. Are you one of those people that don’t want to pass out PageRank? You do realize that the PageRank that you do have is only because of people that have linked back to you right? And your readers of your blog contribute their time and information to your blog, yet you aren’t willing to help them out? 

I’m not saying that I won’t comment on your blog or add to the conversations on your posts, but you can bet your ass that I would be doing a hell of a lot more commenting on your blog if you made it worth my time by helping me out with links. I recently updated my advertising page and those that have read it may have found that I will link to their site or product for free. I am not necessarily into doing a whole review post on my blog just yet, though it may happen in the very near future. But as I said on my advertising page, if you believe that your site or your product can help others and you are looking for a way to gather some precious ONE-WAY backlinks, get to know me and I WILL help you out. Ask me questions or leave comments if you don’t understand something about my posts, I will do what I can to assist you with your questions and if I can’t help you out, I can definitely get in touch with somebody that can.

Go through a few of my more recent posts, in fact some of my Weekly Review posts and you will find that I have linked to Garry Conn multiple times. Why have I done this exactly? Because I have learned a lot from Garry’s blog and when I have always asked him a question about something he always responded to me. Maybe it wasn’t right away but he did eventually respond and that is why I am more then happy to give him a few backlinks here and there.

I was recently contacted by Spencer Haws who runs a paid surveys website. He read my Weekly Review post where I mentioned that I had gotten into site flipping and he wanted to know a little bit more about it. So I responded back to him with what I knew and judging from the email I got back from him he was happy with my answer. I appreciate that he contacted me instead of just forgetting about my blog and finding another blog so within this post and some in the future I will be sending him some links.

Let’s face it, when it comes to blogs we want traffic and more importantly we want readers. We want people who are willing to communicate with others through the comments and add value and diversity to our blogs. Would you seriously continue to post knowing that you would never receive any traffic? Hell no and you probably wouldn’t keep posting if all you got were visitors and not readers.

While I am nobody special I am willing to help out others. So going back to the title of this post, is your blog worth my time?

Related Posts ]]> http://jarretcade.net/is-your-blog-worth-my-time/feed Domain Name Parking: A Diamond in the Rough? http://jarretcade.net/domain-name-parking-a-diamond-in-the-rough http://jarretcade.net/domain-name-parking-a-diamond-in-the-rough#comments Thu, 04 Sep 2008 06:50:28 +0000 Jarret http://jarretcade.net/?p=187 I have a few domain names that I have acquired over the past 2 years or so. Like most people I bought them because I had huge plans for them when I first saw them and I thought that I would turn it into some huge money maker and it would become wildly popular. Also like most people that never happened and the domain just ends up collecting dust and never getting used.

Most of the times people just park their domains in the hopes of receiving type in traffic and maybe a few clicks here and there. Unfortunately I was dumb enough not to park any of my domain names and instead just had them sitting there so that if somebody did type in the name they would receive a 404 error. Well on the 28th I finally decided to take all the domains I am not using and park them with Sedo.com. 

I had actually forgotten that I even parked the domain names and only remembered about them yesterday. So I login and check things out to see if there has been any traffic to any of the domains. What do you know, one of my domain names has gotten 93 unique visitors as of this posting! So far it is averaging 3 visits a day and had I known this I would have had it parked a long time ago.

So now I am in the process of deciding whether or not to turn this domain into something. Even something small that wouldn’t take a whole lot of time to produce. Maybe even outsource some of the content and see if I could turn it into a small passive income or a small community with a forum. With 93 unique visits, that is direct type in traffic mind you, if I had some content on the domain I could have converted that into some possible cash.

I think I may end up doing something real quick with it just to see what happens. It’s worth a shot and it could turn into something bigger then I suspected.

Do you have extra domains sitting around that you don’t have parked? If so, head on over to Sedo.com, sign up for a free account and get them parked! You could be losing money!

Related Posts ]]> http://jarretcade.net/domain-name-parking-a-diamond-in-the-rough/feed Google AdWords Does Not Play Nice http://jarretcade.net/google-adwords-does-not-play-nice http://jarretcade.net/google-adwords-does-not-play-nice#comments Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:59:57 +0000 Jarret http://jarretcade.net/?p=180 Well after trying out another very small campaign for I site that I have been trying to promote with both Yahoo and Google, I find out today that I got the slap from AdWords. I had most of my keywords set around 25 to 30 cents and now most of them are inactive sitting at 40 and 50 cents. 

Why? Because I am lazy and have not been working on trying to get the CTR up. It’s my fault and I know it, am I really concerned about it at this point? No, but I really should be. I started this site up probably around 4 months ago, when I first started this blog and I haven’t had much success with it so far. However, the site that I am using to promote the products paid me today which I was surprised. 

I have the payout set to the minimum of $100 and it is just directly deposited into my banking account. My account standing was close to $90 something and so I thought that I would never get paid. But the payment wasn’t for the full amount either, it was only for $33 and some change. So I am not sure why they decided to pay me all of a sudden, maybe they want me to move on.

I think that I am officially done with the site and I am going to just set it up for sale on sitepoint.com and see what I can get for it. Probably more then it has actually made me which would be nice.

So for any of my readers, if you are interested in trying to run a website selling digital software, hit me up with an email and I will give you the details. No reason to be discouraged just because I couldn’t get things to sell, maybe I am just not a PPC type of guy.

Related Posts ]]> http://jarretcade.net/google-adwords-does-not-play-nice/feed Another Warrior Into The Fray: Chrome http://jarretcade.net/another-warrior-into-the-fray-chrome http://jarretcade.net/another-warrior-into-the-fray-chrome#comments Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:31:13 +0000 Jarret http://jarretcade.net/?p=175 So it turns out that while I was gone over the past few days Google decided to release a browser that they had been working on. Most of you know about it by now and most of you have probably already downloaded it to test it out. 

I found out about Chrome because of the posts that Garry had made so I decided to download it as well to see what the hype was about. I wish I would have been home while it was released, I heard that Garry had received some insane traffic to his blog when he first wrote about it and I know that he is still receiving traffic about Chrome. 

So I thought that I would just share my thoughts real quick on Chrome so far. I like it for the most part and it is extremely fast loading. I somewhat like the layout, not too sure about the tabs being above everything else as I am so used to Firefox having them below everything.  I think Google should let users decide, if other toolbars and such start getting developed for Chrome, it is going to push the tabs further away. That means that you are going to have to move your mouse that much further to get to the tabs, unless Google already has hotkeys for scrolling through the tabs, not sure on that one just yet. 

I see that they kept the same feature of being able to open up links and bookmarks in a new tab with the middle mouse button. That is probably the feature that I use most out of any browser and whoever came up with it first deserves a lot of credit. But, I don’t like the fact that I cannot open up the homepage using the home button on the address bar in a new tab. I have to click on the little plus sign to open up a new tab. Plus it doesn’t go to my regular home page instead it lands on the customized home page with the thumbnails and other stuff. Don’t get me wrong, the custom page isn’t bad but if I have my homepage set to a certain site it would be nice if when I opened up a new window that it would open up my homepage.

Oh and I don’t like the status bar that doesn’t reveal the whole URL of the link that you are clicking on. I just like being able to see the full URL of where I am going to instead of seeing about half of it with some links. I am wondering if that will change and if it will be expanded across the entire window. I also like that the main domain name along with the subdomain is darkened up in the address bar compared to the rest of the URL. Gives you a nice separation and lets you see where you are actually at with a quick glance.

The one thing that I could wish for with Chrome right now is that the Web Developer Toolbar could run on it. This is something that makes it a hell of a lot easier to develop a website with and the other features that it provides are just amazing. If Chrome ends up not being able to support the Web Developer Toolbar then I am not sure I will keep it as my main browser. Viewing the source code of web pages in Chrome is a nice feature considering they color coded tags and underlined actual links inside of the source code. Though it would be nice if the source code showed up in a new window instead of a new tab.

I realize that Chrome is still in beta and that there will obviously be some changes to it made in the future but I definitely think that Google is headed in the right direction. Google has a huge user base and if they decided to start promoting Chrome they would have a good chance at competing with Microsoft and Mozilla I think. Overall I am happy with Chrome and I think I will stick with as my main browser unless I am doing some web design work in which I will use FireFox and the Web Developer Toolbar.

Related Posts ]]> http://jarretcade.net/another-warrior-into-the-fray-chrome/feed Week In Review - August 24-30 http://jarretcade.net/week-in-review-august-24-30 http://jarretcade.net/week-in-review-august-24-30#comments Sun, 31 Aug 2008 05:28:28 +0000 Jarret http://jarretcade.net/?p=170 Ok, so I know that I didn’t even get a single post made this week on the blog. Not that I have set myself a schedule that I would follow 100%, I would at least like to get 1 post a week if not 2. But I’ve been busy working on a lot of things, so what exactly have I been up to?

FaceBook Marketing Round 2!

Ok so I know that in my last weekly review I said that I was done with FaceBook for awhile. Well, that lasted about a whole week. I started up another campaign last night trying my luck with the TriSlim offer from MarketLeverage. Why did I choose this? Because I know that the weight loss niche is huge and that there is money to be made in it.

Before with all my campaigns that I have been running in PPC I have been so hesitant on spending money. Which is stupid of me and I now realize this. I can’t be afraid to lose money anymore, well lose a lot of money. I have lost money so far in everything that I have done but I am talking about losing a lot of it. Nothing in the thousands of dollars, I can’t afford that but I have been so worried about losing $10, $20, $30. It takes money to make money these days and nothing is free without some kind of consequence.

Now I am prepared to throw up to $150 at a campaign to test it out to see the traffic potential. If it takes $150 to find out the campaign or offer is a loss, then so be it. I’ll make it back eventually, I will succeed in affiliate marketing, I have the desire and drive and that will never go away.

FaceBook is the quickest way to get impressions when it comes to PPC. Even with my small campaign that I started yesterday, I ended up with over 50,000 impressions. Don’t get too excited for me though, that particular ad only got 15 clicks so I am sitting at a paltry .03% CTR. I just need to figure out the right headline and ad text. Maybe a different image but with the TriSlim offer I think I may be stuck to showing just the bottle. FaceBook is pretty restrictive and they want any image shown to relate as much as possible to the landing page. I tried using an image of a fit woman but they denied it saying it wasn’t relevant to the product. So I just changed the ad to a bottle and my ad got approved without any issues.

I know there is money to be made in FaceBook, just need to find the right combination.

Site Flipping

I’ve never personally flipped a site or started one with the intention of selling it. I actually stumbled into the situation because of an email to a friend who got me into actually creating my first affiliate site. I emailed him asking what was up and how are things going. I got an email back with an update and he gave me an offer to team up with him on a site he is working on.

I figured what the hell, might be a good chance to make some money. So we’ve teamed up and have been working on promoting the site, hopefully we can make some good money from it. The plan is to sell it within a month and then if we think that we could work well as a team then to keep on keeping on. I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t continue, we seem to get along pretty damn well.

Back From The Dead

The first site that I started up as an affiliate site, I had stopped focusing on it about 2 months ago. I only made a few sales and of course got discouraged. So instead of dedicating myself and pushing myself, I failed. I gave up too quickly, I didn’t try hard enough and now I regret it. It’s possible that had I pushed myself I could be making a ton of money with the site right now but I could have also lost a lot of money. I would have taken either of those routes instead of doing nothing.

But now I have dedicated myself to making money with the site however long it takes. It is a review site promoting software and shows 3 products. I have been contemplating whether or not to try my luck and just take it down to one product and promote that. It would give me a chance to really target my ads and campaign because I could be writing everything for just one product for the ads making them super relevant instead of having to try to fit 3 products into the ad.

Or maybe I should just target one product in the ad anyways and leave the 3 products on there? It could work although it may end up confusing people when they visit. If you can grab somebody’s attention with the ad and get them to click through thinking they are going to be presented with a product and you give them 3 options…..well then they now have to spend more time deciding on which product they want. When it comes to making a sale, you want to provide the least path of resistance to the order page. Hmmmm, I will have to think about this one as it may be more detrimental then I think, but it could end up proving extremely successful. That is the thing, you never know and that is why you must always test everything!

The Current Endeavor

I’ve been really working on my web hosting review site these past few weeks. There is a TON of money to be made with web hosting referrals and although it is a highly competitive niche I am determined to be successful with it.

Now I am not saying that it is totally unique as there are a shitload of web hosting “review” sites out there. What’s with the quotes? Because most of these review sites are fake reviews of web hosts and you never see any negative ratings or reviews from people who actually use the host. That is what sets my site apart from most of the others out there, granted there are a few other sites out there who rate web hosts by customer reviews.

I have Google Alerts setup to alert me whenever a host is mentioned that I have listed on my site, that way if somebody makes a blog post or posts something to a web site about a host, I am instantly notified about it. I’ve used this strategy to contact some blog authors asking them to visit my site and review their web host and they were kind enough to do that for me. Unfortunately, although there are millions of sites out there, there isn’t a whole lot of people posting reviews of their current web hosting providers.

Considering real user reviews are going to be the lifeblood that drives my site I need to find more. That is the whole reason why I started the site so that people could get true information about the web hosts. So I have a few ideas as to how to go about this, I am going to start implementing them this upcoming week and will surely give you a report on my hopeful success.

So I have quite the schedule to keep up with and it will definitely be keeping me busy. But I will get at least 1 blog post up next week, I am not sure exactly what it will be on. I have a few ideas floating around in my head as I was contacted this last week by a reader. So Spencer, if you decided to stick around keep an eye out for a blog post this upcoming week.

Garry Conn Is Addictive

For some of you reading my blog, you may know who Garry Conn is. For those of you that don’t you are missing out! Garry is one bad ass blogger and when it comes down to blogging there is nobody better to get advice and help from.

He is an AdSense Master and while I could keep going on and on I won’t. If you really want some great tips on blogging, you need to check out his blog.

Related Posts ]]> http://jarretcade.net/week-in-review-august-24-30/feed