Hey Guys, so as most of you have noticed by now I’m sure (since you’re here) I’ve been doing some updates to the Click Consultants Theme and how it looks, where things are, etc.  The biggest thing I wanted to accomplish was to get the content up higher so I removed the three big boxes from the top which had the RSS feed subscribe, recent articles, and most popular articles.  Of course all of these features are still on the site, they are just in different spots now!

You’ll also notice that I’ve added a bar right under the Click Consultants logo which has my list of recommend CPA Networks and Favorite Keyword Tools.  I constantly have people ask me which networks and tools I use so I thought by just having a list at the top it would eliminate (hopefully ) everyone having to ask me.  I’ll keep it updated so if I find a better keyword tool, I’ll remove whichever one I’m no longer using and put up the new one.  The same goes for the CPA networks in the top bar.

I’ve removed some different blog widgets that I don’t feel were doing any good for the blog (at all) and have just been too lazy to get them taken off.  To be more precise, I’ve removed 2 widgets including Entrecard and Blog Rush.  Neither of these provided any “real” traffic to the site and just took up space promoting some lame service.

I’ve added a couple new things in the sidebar to take their place.  I’ve added a Poll which I’ll be keeping updated with just some simple questions, so make sure you check that out.  Also, I’ve added a Friend Me section where you can add me as a friend on some different services including Youtube, Viddler, Twitter, Facebook, etc.  I look foward to your friend requests and adds!

I still have several things I want to do before I can say that the Theme is 100% complete (at least for the time being) but it may take me a couple days to finish up these small things.  Which small things you ask?  I’m going to be redoing the categories of this site as when I started this blog I’ll be honest, I didn’t know crap about blogs and I used my categories more like Tags instead of Categories.  In fact, I don’t even put my articles in Categories besides the default Affiliate Marketing one because nothing ever seems to fit anywhere and I didn’t want to have 100+ categories!

Anyways, so look out for a couple more subtle changes and I hope you guys like the new changes that have been happening around here.  Next up is the CC Forums, tons of new content and stuff coming out soon!  Almost got it all completed!

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Hey guys, this is the second post of my series I’m doing on ways that you can make money from your affiliate landing pages, sites, etc besides just from whatever affiliate offer you are promoting.  This series hopes to not only increase your income, but also open your eyes to realize there are many ways to “scale” a campaign or niche besides just more traffic!

You should always be experimenting on ways to increase profits from the same amount of visitors!  It’s part of your split testing you should be doing!  Just split testing landing pages, ads, etc isn’t enough!  You must test everything!!!  Of course, each of these topics (ideas) I touch on during this series may or may not work for you and you must realize that it’s up to you to do the testing for each niche.

Anyways, now that I’ve said that, I want to go ahead and move into the topic of today’s blog post and that is contextual advertising.  When I say contextual advertising I’m talking about programs like Google Adsense, AuctionAds, etc.  Basically I mean any program that will allow you to get ads on your site that are related to your niche.  Some work better for certain niches, so again, it’s up to you to test! (Don’t you love all the testing that is involved in affiliate marketing?)

So how could you incorporate these types of ads into your landing pages or sites?  Well, it’s quite simple really…

When you create your affiliate sites, you should be including articles that are related to your niche in order to help increase visitors via organic traffic and also to help improve your quality score and raise it for pay per click traffic.  Not only should you have articles that you started the site with, but you should also be adding fresh content weekly (in my opinion).  If you’re doing this, then before long you’ll have tons of articles on your site.

Now you may very well have a couple banners, buttons, or links going to the offer page from these articles and those might do well, but why couldn’t you also include some adsense ads or auctionads (if you’re promoting a product) within the articles or at the end for those people that may come to your site via organic traffic and not follow through to the offer page?

Now like the newsletter signup issue, using this method can very well and probably will lower your conversion rate on your offer.  Although, again if you remember what I said in the first article, the goal is to make up for the loss in conversion rate to the offer by making more than what you’d lose from the lower conversion rate.  This may not work in all niches just like the newsletter signup may not work in all niches.

What are some different ways you could test doing this without hurting your conversion rate?

• Try adding the Ads only on article pages, not on your main landing pages!
• Try placing the Ads away from the top of the page, either the middle or the bottom only!
• Try different Ad programs, Adsense, AuctionAds, Direct Ad Sales, etc.
• Make sure to blend all ads as best as possible!
• Instead of on all article pages, maybe only place them on article pages you know receive a lot of organic traffic or article pages that have a low conversion rate to the offer page.

Hopefully this series is getting your brains ticking and thinking of some other ways you could increase your profits from your affiliate sites!  Again, this may not work on all niches, so make sure you test it slowly before doing it large scale on a niche.

Please subscribe to my blog to make sure you don’t miss Part Three of Besides Your Affiliate Offer How Can You Make Money?

Other Parts of This Series:

Part One - Using Newsletters On Affiliate Sites

Part Three - Using RSS Advertising on Affiliate Sites

Popularity: 10% [?]

Hey guys, so if you read my last post on using newsletters sign ups to increase profits, you noticed I’m sure, that I never actually mentioned which software I use to send out my newsletters, track my subscribers, send out autoresponders, etc.  To be completely honest, the reason I didn’t is because I didn’t even think of including it in the post.  Anyways, since I was asked in the comments which software I use, I decided to dedicate a post on which newsletter software I use and why!

When I first started affiliate marketing and building email lists, I used a free newsletter service, however, I quickly realized that with free comes lack of features and reliability.  So after only a couple months I switched over to a paid newsletter software and honestly I haven’t been disappointed in the least with it and still continue to use it two years later!

Okay, enough of the dramatic hype…what software am I using?  Actually, I’m using what most others use, Aweber!  I know, you’re shocked aren’t you?  Aweber has continued to provide me with the best features and reliability of email delivery (for the price) out of all the services I’ve tried.  They definitely give you the best bang for your buck at only 19 dollars a month to start!  The pricing increases depending on how many subscribers you have, but the more subscribers you have the more money you’d be banking anyways, so it honestly shouldn’t be a problem.

Another great thing I love about Aweber is that they boast a 99% email deliver rate, thus ensuring your emails meet their destination.  If email’s aren’t getting to your subscribers you’re losing money!!!

Aweber also offers all the other great features you’d expect from a huge company only they offer them at a price that is much cheaper than most others!  They include features like schedule newsletters, autoresponders, signup forms for your website, unlimited campaigns, and much more.  Check out their feature page for more information on all the different features they have available.

If you’re sitting there thinking to yourself that I’m sitting here trying to get you to signup for Aweber under my affiliate link so that I can make some extra bank, you’d be absolutely correct!  However, that doesn’t mean that Aweber isn’t truly a great newsletter service and a service that you should be using if you’re trying to build up your own email lists!  So quit making excuses for not purchasing this software and just do it!

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I’ve decided to start a new blog post series which is basically about ways you can make money from your affiliate marketing efforts besides just from the normal way of buying some PPC traffic, sending it to a landing page, website, etc and then sending it to an offer which if they complete you’ll get paid!

There are several other ways out there to make money from your efforts on top of what you’ll get if they fill out the offer.  Some work better for certain niches, but I’m just here to give you the information, the testing is up to you!!!

The first topic I’m going to touch on in this series is…

Signing your visitors up for a Newsletter!

While it’s great getting a visitor to complete an offer so that you can make some bank, sometimes depending on the niche, it could be wiser to not only try to pitch them the offer, but also try to get them to sign up for a newsletter pertaining to your niche.

Signing visitors up for a newsletter allows you to pitch products or services to each visitor more than once!  So instead of a visitor filling out one offer for $5 dollars, they may end up filling out 3 offers for $5 dollars EACH!!!  This means more bank in your pocket for the same price you paid for that visitor.

Now, there is also one MAJOR downside to offering a newsletter sign up on an affiliate page.  I know half of you were already thinking it and were just waiting to finish reading this so you could post it in the comments, but I’m gonna beat you to it! (haha)  The big downside to offering a newsletter sign up is the fact that you could hurt your conversions if you don’t do it correctly!

Instead of trying to tell you all the ways that you shouldn’t offer a newsletter sign up, I’m gonna give you some pointers on things to try out to make sure you keep your conversions as high as possible while collecting those valuable email addresses.

One thing you need to realize however, is that you most likely won’t be able to keep the same exact conversion rate you had before you started offering a newsletter sign up.  The goal is to keep it as high as possible, but realize that it dropping a bit isn’t going to hurt you as long as you are building a good solid list that you can send offers to regularly to more than make up for the loss!

Here are some ways you can keep your conversion rate high while still offering a newsletter sign up.

• Try having it as a pop-under or pop-up when they click from your landing page to the offer page.
• Offering a free report or e-book on your niche which will bring up your offer again in it.  That way if they leave your page after signing up for the newsletter but not completing the offer, you can try to get them to one last time!  You’d be surprised at how well this actually works!
• Automatically send them to the offer page after they sign up for your newsletter!  Don’t send them back to your landing page only for them to have to click on another button to go to the offer page!

Of course there are many other things you can try and test in order to make sure you’re receiving the highest conversion rate possible when trying to collect names and emails, but hopefully these ideas can get you started.

If you haven’t subscribed make sure you do so or you will miss the next couple parts of this series where I’ll explain more ways you can increase your revenue besides just from your affiliate offer you’re promoting.

Other Parts of This Series:

Part Two - Using Contextual Advertising on Affiliate Sites

Part Three - Using RSS Ads on Affiliate Sites

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Most affiliates only think of the short term when it comes to their business. They simply want to make as much as they can as quickly as they can and often times they don’t think of the future. What does affiliate marketing have to hold in the future? How can you ensure that you’ll be able to create an income that will last for years in this niche?

This video hopes to answer some of the different directions that you can take your affiliate business as you start to plan for the road ahead and where you’ll be in 1 year, 2 years, or even 5 years from now!

Popularity: 12% [?]