So as most of you heard by now, Michael Jackson is dead.  He died June 25th 2009, personally I was a big fan of Michael’s music, however, not a huge fan of Michael!

Anyways, this blog is about making money and even though it seems rude or even a little out of taste to be talking about how to make money off a dead guy, that’s exactly what I’m going to do…

The bottom line is there are 100’s of people out there that are profiting off of his death and there isn’t any reason you shouldn’t be either.  It’s a sad and unfortunate event, but if you don’t make money from it, someone else will.

So what are some ways I’ve seen people making money off of Michael’s death?

Michael Jackson Ringtones

Of course, definitely the most popular way I’ve seen that people are taking advantage of all the Jackson traffic that is happening all over the web is offers promoting ringtones for your cellphone of Michael Jackson’s hit songs!

I’ve seen these ads being promoted everywhere!  On the search engines, on the content networks, on facebook, myspace, YouTube, just about everywhere right now!

The bottom line is believe it or not, the ringtone niche is not dead, like so many people suggest…  Ringtones are still hot and still do really well to this day, especially Michael Jackson ringtones!

Ebay Partner Network

Another method I’ve seen being used the last couple days, is affiliates using the eBay affiliate program to launch websites that promote Michael Jackson memorabilia.  I’ve seen this done several different ways, including using software like Build a Niche Store and also just implementing eBay on websites or blogs about Michael Jackson.

There are plenty of services and software out there to make promoting the eBay affiliate program easier and quicker and simply takes a search or two in google to find some!

Buying Ad Space on Jackson Blogs already out there!

The truth is, there are a lot of people that make websites and blogs about their favorite singers or actors or whatever just for the fun of it, just because it’s something they enjoy.  In fact, most blogs and websites about Jackson don’t even contain ads, including ones that get quite a bit of traffic.

It only takes a couple minutes to send out some emails offering to advertise on their website in return for a bit of cash.  Most will gladly accept and you can get some very cheap targeted traffic!

It does take a bit more work with this approach, but it can definitely be worth it if you are willing to put in the time!

Some Questions for You!

What are some other ways you’ve noticed people making a quick buck off of the death of Michael Jackson?

Do you think it’s okay or not to use a celebrities death to make money?

Have you ever used the death or tragedy of someone famous to make money?

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I talk to affiliates after affiliates that are starting to make money in this business, and one huge common problem that I hear and see from these affiliates all the time is that they are not split testing anything and if they are, they are doing it so half-butted that its not doing them any good…then they have the audacity to complain that split testing doesn’t seem to work for them…

At first when I started mentoring and consulting individuals, I thought to myself, well maybe they just don’t realize how important split testing is, but than I realized that just about every single affiliate blog out there talks about split testing ALL THE TIME!  In fact, I’ve talked about it in depth several times on this blog and touching on each aspect of split testing, whether it’s split testing landing pages, or split testing ads, split testing offers and networks, or whatever!

I’ve explained in these posts, why you need to do it, how extremely important it is, and what types of benefits it will have on your campaigns, in fact so have a ton of other bloggers like Chad from CDF Networks in which he wrote a post entitled Split Test Everything!  Jonathan Volk wrote a post on Increasing Landing Page Conversions where he talks about split testing and it’s benefits and why you need to be doing it!

I could go on and on with posts all over the internet that talk about split testing, yet there isn’t a need for me to, simply  go to any affiliate blog and type in split testing, you’ll see that it’s a subject that is talked about all the time, yet very few affiliates seem to be doing it!

Instead, they launch a campaign in a niche like payday loans, it isn’t profitable and they move on to another niche and so forth over and over wondering why they aren’t making money!  Instead, find out why you campaign is failing, whether it’s your ads, landing page, keywords, etc and split test them!  What???  You aren’t tracking each of those things to find out where your problems are?  Then you’re an even bigger idiot!!!

Quit being lazy, quit making excuses and start split testing…  I promise you if you do, you’ll drastically see increases in your profits as an affiliate marketer!

Sorry guys, I love you all, but really felt like I needed to be blunt with this one!  Hugs and Kisses!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Hey guys, real busy week this week.  We have a thing with Church of God called Camp Meeting (It’s the church organization I belong to) and I’ve been helping them setup with sound and getting all the sound stuff put together, etc.  There have been a couple great posts this last week and coming into this week that I’d like to point out as well as post some other stuff I’ve been thinking if you all don’t mind!

First off, Chad over at CDFNetworks wrote a post about Yahoo’s Competitor Spy Feature which is a feature that allows you to the top ads for any given keyword that you have.  This is a great feature as it lets you see what the big dawgs got up in the top spots to help you decide what to write for your ad copy.  I’m not sure how new of a feature this is, as like Chad, I also don’t use Yahoo’s interface too often, instead I normally use a csv file for doing all my changes…

Second, Jeremy, aka Shoemoney, wrote a post that embeded some really interesting affiliates stats that was released by AffStat.  It has some really interesting numbers and just some fun facts.  It’s 40 pages I believe, so enjoy!

Third, CPA Affiliates wrote a blog post talking about affiliates that try to rule every affiliate niche out there and that they are constantly launching campaigns after campaigns after campaigns trying to find that magic one that works for them.  Instead he suggests that you focus on a couple niches and expect to lose money at first and build it up into a profitable campaign.  It’s an interesting thought, can’t say I agree with every point he makes, but overall I like it!

Lastly, things are a little hectic right now in my life with all that’s going on with my wife and me being seperated, I’m hanging in there hoping she’ll want to work it out, but as of right now, she is saying she wants a divorce…  I’m still hanging in there and I believe that it will work out.  I love you Joy!!!

Popularity: 6% [?]

Payday Loans, Weight Loss, Credit Reports, etc are considered Big Niches, although a lot of affiliates will call these “Saturated Niches”.  What they mean by this is that there are a ton of people promoting these niches currently and that creates a lot of competition and makes it harder to compete as bid prices are normally higher!

Most affiliates are told by other affiliates (often time other new affiliates) that they should avoid these niches because there is too much competition in them and they are too saturated! This is completely and utterly false, thus my reason for this post today…

Long Tail Keywords actually have Volume!

Big niches are more saturated and there is more competition, but there is also a ton more volume and keywords that work in these niches.  In smaller niches, if you start getting into the long tail keywords of 3 or more words, you very quickly realize that you’re just not able to get any decent volume, while in bigger niches, you are able to go into these long tail keywords and still rake in the volume because there are just that many more people searching for these products or services!

There are also several other big advantages to bigger niches that most affiliates don’t take the time to think about…

More Offers to Split Test

Another great feature of bigger niches is the fact that there are tons more offers to split test within that niche.  The reason that this benefits you as an affiliate is that it allows you to have more companies that are competing against each other and really trying to make sure their offer landing pages convert really well.  Because of this, it’s very easy in these bigger niches to have Offer landing pages that convert extremely well!

In a lot of smaller niches there may be only a handful of offers and normally out of that handful of offers, there will be one big player and a couple small players in the niche.  This means that normally you’re running the same offer as most affiliates (the big player) and they have no real competition thus they aren’t constantly working on their landing pages to increase the conversion rates and stuff!

Higher Payouts!

Because most bigger niches have more advertisers wanting you to promote their product or service, the payouts tend to be quite larger than smaller niches.  This isn’t actually an advantage but what it does is that even though bid prices may be higher in “saturated” niches because the payouts are larger, it normally works out pretty decently, now I’m not saying it allows you to jump right into the short tail keywords and walk away profitable, but it does give you as good of a chance as anyone else entering the niche!

Long Term Earnings

Another nice feature of bigger niches is the fact that most of them have been around for a while, and they are going to continue to be around for a while!  Smaller niches come and go and sometimes they come and go very very quickly!  Bigger niches also tend to be a little more stable in terms of the profit they make then smaller niches for the most part!  Jonathan Volk actually wrote a little post about this today, so instead of talking about it a lot, I’m just gonna link to his post about how niches that have been around a while are longterm.

Conclusion:

So while, a lot of affiliates recommend to new affiliates to stay away from the big over-saturated niches, I say go for it, in fact, in my one on one mentoring sessions that I occasionally do, I almost always recommend new affiliates to jump into a couple big niches as their first niches!  I know you’re shocked…aren’t ya?

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This post is a bit of a rant, but I also feel it is a very important thing that many people looking to get into the affiliate business don’t even pay attention to…

First off, realize that you aren’t going to become a millionaire overnight, in fact, you most likely won’t even make money for your first couple months of trying affiliate marketing…  I know that there are tons of products and services out there that promise to make you 5,000, 20,000 or even 50,000 dollars a month if you buy their product or service, but the bottom line is that most people will never make anywhere near that kind of money because they expect it to happen overnight.

When you are first starting out you need to sit down and make a plan, you need to make an ad spend budget and you need to stick with it.  You need to do some research, find out what others are promoting, talk to some affiliate managers, etc.  Basically get to know what it is you are going to be doing, because believe it or not, most people will simply sign up for a popular network like Market Leverage, pick an offer and try to promote it by throwing a ton of money into Adwords, Yahoo, or MSN.

Don’t fill up your ad accounts with credit cards, you are taking a HUGE risk by doing so, skip some of the extras in your life (five dollar cups of coffee) and use that money instead!  Once you actually get a niche making some solid earnings, then that is a different story!

You need to realize that you are probably most likely going to lose money for your first couple of months and you need to plan accordingly to that!  You need to come up with a budget of how much you can spend, even if means you can only spend a 100 bucks a month.  You have to start somewhere and build up!

You also need to make sure you understand and know how the niche you are promoting works.  How can you promote a product or service if you don’t even know what the heck it is or does???

Pay attention to what other affilaites are doing in a niche, if there are a billion affiliates using review style landing pages to promote weight loss and one affiliate using a fake blog, why in the world would you start with a fake blog as a landing page?  Pay attention, jot down what you see, and make a plan!

The bottom line is that unless you come spend some time figuring out where you want to get to and how you are going to get there and do some research and then make a plan, you will probably fail horribly in this business…

Popularity: 18% [?]