Currently Microsofts adCenter platform does not deliver as much traffic as Google or Yahoo. In my opinion that is about to change!

Microsoft is really pushing Live.com. Soon, it will be implemented into Windows Vista. This could cause a huge spike in traffic and potential customers for your campaigns. When starting a new campaign, you should try it out on adCenter. The campaign could convert like crazy, and with less competition, could turn out to be a gold mine!

If you don’t have an adCenter account, I would really recommend you sign up and at least try it out. Browse through their learning centerif you have any questions about the platform. Check out the banner at the bottom of this post, and you will get $50 in free clicks added to your account. All you have to pay for is a $5 fee to get the account activated.

Popularity: 12% [?]

If you are an affiliate marketer, and you don’t own a business you are a sole proprietor. Basically that means that everything you earn every month is your income. You can still write off certain things such as advertising costs, but incorporating yourself is good route to take.

Why would you want to incorporate yourself? It has many great advantages. Say for instance if you advertise something and then the advertiser gets upset with you because of copyright infringement. If your a sole proprietor, they can take you for everything you have. All your assets, your house car clothing…everything. However if you own a business, then all your affiliate earnings are the businesses earnings, not yours. So if you would happen to get sued from that company, all they can take is the assets of the business. If your a full time affiliate marketer, all your money would be gone however at least you would still have your house and car.

How do you incorporate? Most lawyers can do this for a small fee on top of their hourly rate, however if you make a quick search you can find plenty of online companies who will do this for a fee. Here are a couple I found:

www.legalzoom.com
www.incorporate.com
http://www.incorporatetime.com/

It is really not that expensive, and although if you were doing some shady things your affiliate network would probably kick you out first, it is still nice to have the peace of mind.

Popularity: 11% [?]

I recently tried out Bidvertiser promoting this blog, and thought I would write a review.

First off, I thought the user interface was a little confusing at first, however soon learned that it is so extremely simple. Creating a campaign is just like any other PPC engine, and won’t take you long at all.

The traffic comes quick, really quick. One thing that would worry me if I was going to spend alot of money with them is click fraud. The traffic just came way to fast, and I don’t know if I like that. However, if you have a huge budget, and are just looking for big numbers, Bidvertiser is for you. It is perfect for a new blog that needs a little boost of traffic. I read a post by John Chow about the art of the “ramp”. If you are looking for a ramp, Bidvertiser is for you! The traffic will come quickly and in huge numbers. The best part is the traffic is alot cheaper than say Google Adwords, and I have no idea if Bidvertiser has some sort of quality score system. To tell you the truth, I made one ad, and put like 6 keywords in it just for kicks to try it out, and my $50 was gone in about 30 minutes.

They also have a program where you can promote your eBay auctions through them. This I know nothing about, however click here to learn more.

It is a very nice simple system that I would recommend to any blogger! The traffic is great, and right now they are giving away $20 in free clicks just for a small test.  This is not like Yahoo! where you must deposit a certain amount of money to get the promo credit, all you have to do is enter a credit card and you get $20 free, nothing charged to you. You can find the links for the $20 in free credit in the beginning of this post, and on te sidebar. You have to sign up through one of those links to get the credit, as it is not offered from the Bidvertiser homepage. This is a must try for every blogger!

Popularity: 39% [?]

Think about it, most people in the world would love to have tons of money, and stay home all day never to work for anyone again. Well, that’s what affiliate marketing is right? All you have to do is make an Adwords campaign, let it run and your rich right? Not exactly.

 I am really getting sick of hearing about how easy affiliate marketing is and it takes 15 minutes a day to become rich. Well, maybe for some people, but not me. I work hours every day, building new campaigns, editing old ones, changing bids around while watching conversions. If its so easy, why doesn’t everyone in the world quit their jobs and become affiliate marketers? The worst part is the ebooks. I can’t stand them anymore!

So I’m just ranting because I couldn’t think of anything else to write about, and so far December has been a horrible month for some of the offers I am promoting. Tell me what you think about the stereotype about affiliate marketing being so easy.

Popularity: 8% [?]

I recently interviewed Adii from adii.co.za. He is a master at designing wordpress themes, and has done work for Unique Blog Designs. If you need a blog design, you MUST at the least consider him to do the work. By looking at his portfolio, I don’t know how you couldn’t! So, here is the interview:

When did you start your blog adii.co.za? Is it hobby or something you hope to monetize?
I started the blog in January this year and it really started out as a hobby / experiment in experiencing the whole blogging phenomenon and even though monetizing the blog has never been my first priority, I’d be lying if I said, that I didn’t even consider it!
 
Your work designing wordpress themes is amazing! What got you started in blog design?
Thanks for the kind words! I guess I’ve always felt that I’m more creative than I got credit for and blog design was an outlet for my creative energy / ideas. Fact is, that I needed to pay my own studies this past year and I had identified blog design as a viable source of income - and the business opportunities involved probably inspired me to work as hard as I have.
 
Do you do any online marketing?
Yes, I do. A big part of my online marketing campaign depends on social networking (connecting with some personalities more well-known than I am) and word of mouth - but lately, I’ve also started looking at establishing some advertising relationships around the web, whilst also sponsoring a few theme competitions with copies of my Premium News Theme.
 
Why do you think blogging has become so common?
People love to blow their own horns and have their say… Blogging allows you to do just that!
 
For someone interested in getting a premium theme designed by you, could you explain the process?
I assume that by “premium theme” you mean a custom design, right? My roots are in business strategy and a client’s goals and outcomes for the design project is thus of the utmost importance when establishing their requirements for the design. I normally combine these goals & outcomes with some kind of “visual guidance” on their part in terms of pointing me to design examples they like. And once I come up with a mockup, I generally go through a few rounds of revisions and fine-tuning the mockup.
 
Why do you think a custom unique theme is so necessary for a blog to become successful?
Simply because there is so many blogs online and you need to separate yourself from the crowd / noise!

Thanks to Adii for doing the interview! Check out his blog, and his wordpress work!
 

Popularity: 22% [?]

Most of the affiliate marketing/make money online blogs online are listed on 45n5.com, and I am happy to be listed as well. Currently, they have me listed in last place, however this is because the owners script has not run through my stats. Mark who runs the site told me that his script will run through my site in the next week, then I will be ranked.

No one knows how his script really ranks websites, however Alexa rank, Google Pagerank, and Technorati rank seem to factor in.

On top of ranking make money online blogs, 45n5.com has a great blog of their own. It’s a great site and is worth checking out!

Popularity: 6% [?]

So, reading Shoemoney’s guest posts this week, I thought I would write my own post on the same topic. So yes I did steal this topic from Shoemoney.com.

Anyone who listens to rap these days knows that most of the song lyrics are about getting money, and spending money. Many of these rappers tell stories about their drug dealing days in their songs. One rapper comes to mind, Lil Wayne. In one of his songs he says “get money invest, re-up with the rest”. A saying I often follow. Basically, if you are a drug dealer, you start out buying an OZ. Break it down and sell it in smaller portions, making more money than you paid for the OZ. Then, you reinvest all of that to get a quarter pound or whatever. (P.S. I am not a drug dealer) This same method can be true for affiliate marketing.

I remember when I first started PPC marketing. I didn’t have a credit card so I couldn’t open an AdWords account. However, I had some PayPal money, like $10 or so. So I was searching around a forum and came across a guy selling activated Adwords accounts. It is really common now, but back then it was not nearly as popular. Basically the guy buys Adwords vouchers and virtual credit cards, then activates the AdWords accounts and puts the voucher in. The account was worth $75 and was $8. I bought it. This was my first time advertising on AdWords, about 2-3 years ago. I had no idea what I was doing. I hadn’t even heard of quality score. I emailed my AM asking him what the top converting keywords were, and made 50 more keywords off the list of 10 he gave me. So I had 60 keywords. All I knew was the higher I bid the more traffic I got, however I don’t think I bid over like $.40.

So, I started to run it and it actually converted, and quickly. This was not my first PPC campaign, however my only successful one. It was about a two days and my account was depleted. I think I did 2 sales, which was $60.00 so in a sense I lost money, but since I only paid $8 for the account, it was a pretty good ROI. I got some more money in my PayPal account and I think I ended up buying around 4 more accounts, so 5 total, costing me $40.00. I did 10 sales and made $300.00. A $260.00 profit. I was happy! Here is a screenshot from my FluxAds account from way back. They still have the offer and I hear it is converting well, however I am not running it or plan on running it again.

But back to the title. Rather than being stupid and blowing the money, I reinvested all of it back into another campaign which made me alot more money. Then I reinvested that money again and so on. The point is, you really don’t need much money at all to get started, just invest some money and keep reinvesting until you are satisfied. Get money invest, re-up with the rest.

Like this post? Then Subscribe to Bernard Griffiths’ Blog.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Hey everyone, hope your Sunday was good and you got to watch plenty of football! Mine was

Anyways, everyone is looking for ways to promote their blog, business, or website. Sure, you could just put your website on Adwords like everyone else, or take a more personal approach to gaining clients/contacts. Pass out business cards! This is a great simple way to promote yourself or business and gain contacts at the same time. Think of it this way; my sister is opening a salon. It is almost done, and she is getting ready for all the grand opening promotions. When designing a business card, rather than putting her contact information on it she is writing her name and then the grand opening promotions, then passing them out everywhere. Best of all, she got them for free! Where? Vistaprint.com.

Vistaprint.com is giving away 250 free business cards, and all you have to pay is the shipping. It is like $5 I think, and the free designs they have are great. Here is a link for everyone. I know it was completely off topic, but hey today is Sunday! This is what I came up with:

Like this post? Then Subscribe to Bernard Griffiths’ Blog.

Popularity: 6% [?]

So BernardGriffiths.com is around two months old. Granted, it is very young, however in my opinion I am posting some decent content. My posts are always relative to internet marketing and blogging. There are plenty of helpful tips that make me money every month, however I don’t seem to be earning your readership.

I have like 4 readers subscribed via RSS. Not that I expect a ton of readers or anything, its just I expected more than that. So, anyone who reads this blog, please post and tell me what you would like to see more of. Maybe a complete step by step way of building a PPC campaign? Interviews with more popular bloggers? I am welcome to suggestions, and I won’t be offended.

 Someone please let me know! Thanks

Like this post? Then Subscribe to Bernard Griffiths’ Blog.

Popularity: 15% [?]

I recently signed up with Advaliant. They are a relatively new affiliate network, however are quickly becoming one of the best around. They also recently won “Best affiliate marketing campaign 2007″ from ad:tech. Read about that here.

From the week or so I have been with them, I could not have been more impressed with the overall service and support from my AM. I have never had so much help from an affiliate manager in my life, and it is an extreme relief knowing I have that kind of help. I have sent barely any traffic to them, and they are still happy to help me out with anything I need.

One of the main reasons I like them is their tracking system they have. To tell you the truth, I like DirectTrack. I don’t know why, but I really really like it. That was something I looked for when signing up for an affiliate network, if they use DirectTrack or not. However, their tracking system is great. No problems what so ever with it! They have some really great offers, and a few exclusives. It seems like they shy away from the email/zip submit offers, which I don’t mind because I never run them anyways. Weekly emails with the top performing offers, along with their epc’s is also a huge help and something I think I am going to start to look forward to.

If you want amazing service, support, and great offers, sign up with Advaliant, you will not be disappointed!

 Happy Friday everyone!

Like this post? Then Subscribe to Bernard Griffiths’ Blog.

Popularity: 18% [?]