The show is coming up. Please find a preview article from DNjournal.com:
2010 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Las Vegas Preview: Our Interview With Show Promoter Rick Latona
By Ron Jackson
There have been many landmark shows in the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. series since it began in October 2004. The upcoming show at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas January 21-23 promises to be still another one as the Rick Latona team takes over production of the U.S. show for the first time.
Sorry for the absence, but future posts will make up for it, we promise!
We recently came across a theme for Wordpress called Thesis – If you have thought about using Wordpress or building a website you should start here (unless if you are a developer, who has a ton of time on your hands, then you are on your own). The Thesis theme fills a void that is left between developers and casual Wordpress users who have a basic overview of HTML. On one side you can be a developer and manipulate Wordpress to however you would like and on the other side if you are not, you are limited to the basic look and feels that developers create with their templates. This is the first time that we have seen a theme fall into the middle – if you know basic HTML, you can tweak the attributes of the the theme in minutes to have the theme look and feel the way that you want it to. Thesis is the predecessor to Cutline and we must say blows it and any other Wordpress themes that we have seen out of the water. The secret behind the Thesis theme is the flexibility that is provided by using the OpenHooks plugin (which comes as part of download package).
Yahoo! has been trying to catch up to Google for sometime now, specifically in the area of advertising revenue. CWire recently gave the Yahoo! publisher contextual link platform a try on our site. This platform has some interesting features that may give Google a run for their money and is an excellent alternative to Adsense for monetizing your website or blog.
The Yahoo! Publisher platform gets a 10 for ease of use. That along with the ability to use other publisher interfaces is a major plus for blogs like CWire. For example, you can easily submit your website for inclusion into Yahoo!’s search engine and you can also easily submit your feed for inclusion in their RSS feed directories. These tools are all under the heading “Drive Traffic” – you cant beat that!
Yahoo Publisher vs. Google Adsense Summary
For Publishers: The only downside to Yahoo! publisher is that there are simply not as many advertisers as there are on the Google Adwords platform (which means that ads may not be as relevant to your pages). However, several anecdotal studies by blogs have show that the payouts are competitive to Adsense. For Advertisers: The flip side to the above, is it may create a buying opportunity if you are looking to advertise your site or service via purchasing keywords. In fact, Yahoo is currently offering advertisers a $25 credit just for signing up. If you have ever thought about buying keywords before, this may be the time to do it – or at least give it a shot!
Note: Do not use BOTH Adsense and Yahoo Publisher on the same pages of your site/blog. Their terms of use strictly forbid this!
In our never ending quest to make cwire a great resource for internet entrepreneurs, we are proud to announce two new tools to the cwire website.
Internet Monetization Calculator – Although the math is not too complicated, we created a simple tool that allows you to compare the different ways to monetize your website (CPM, CPA & CPC) and allows for you to calculate potential earnings.
I recently had the chance to check out WordZe, a new keyword research tool aimed at helping those in the affiliate marketing business. WordZe offers many interesting and useful tools to analyze keyword search trends, to find competitive sites given certain keywords, and many others.
I have been thinking of developing a few websites related to flowers to take advantage of search traffic for events such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, etc and used the tools WordZe had to offer to refine my ideas. In particular, I was interested to know the search volume for the word “color”, pertaining to flower, or more in particularly rose colors. Using WordZe’s keyword trends search feature, I was able to obtain some interesting results:
Chitika eMiniMalls offer a new alternative to Google’s Adsense for contextual Pay-Per-Click advertising. By inserting their provided Javascript code, similar to how AdSense works, a contextual advertisement will be generated as can be seen below in this post. Chitika offers all of the similar customizations that AdSense does, allowing you to customize ad size, colours, and even allows you to turn the contextual engine off so that it may run alongside AdSense.
From my initial experience with running eMiniMalls on the dynamically generated CyberWyre news pages, I have noticed a much higher than average payout per click however click-through rates are noticeably lower. Registration with Chitika was a breeze and I was up & running within a few minutes of being approved. Payouts are sent monthly via PayPal with a $10 minimum or cheque with a $50 minimum.
[eminimall] Example of Chitika eMiniMall in action
Configuring Chitika eMiniMalls in WordPress
Inserting eMiniMalls in WordPress is a breeze with the Chitika-provided plugins. From within the plugin, every option concerning your advertisement may be customized; This certainly saves time from re-visiting the Chitika website, generating new JavaScript code and re-inserting it, as is necessary for AdSense. Inserting the eMiniMall is as easy as inserting the text “[ eMiniMall ]” into your blog entry. A WordPress Sidebar plugin is also provided.
Using Chitika eMiniMalls alongside Google AdSense
Google has a very strict policy to not include any other competing contextual advertising system on the same page that AdSense ads are served on. Chitika makes dealing with this issue very simple. In the control panel for your eMiniMall, you have the option to turn-on, or off the contextual system as can be seen in the screen capture below.
Sites Best Suited for eMiniMalls
Chitika eMiniMalls are specifically geared towards marketing products for purchase through the Internet; whereas AdSense not only advertises products but services, and other websites as well. Due to this fact, eMiniMalls will perform best on sites which users could directly relate to the products being offered. A perfect example for this would be a golf blog offering Chitika eMiniMalls to compare prices for a set of clubs, or a new golf bag.
Overall I am very excited to be trying out Chitika eMiniMallls and will report on my successes in a few weeks. Until then, I recommend that you too check them out and see how they perform on your site as well.
I just logged into my Text Link Ads affiliate statistics and found that they have recently significantly improved their reporting for affiliates. This improved reporting has let me look into the past and see exactly where each referral came from, the date it was received and most importantly, lets me understand which affiliate links are converting well and which I should remove.
Below is a screen capture of this updated reporting.
For those TLA affiliates out there, check out these new stats and you might be surprised where you’ve been getting referrals from.
Forget Thanksgiving — anyone who goes Christmas shopping in November is crazy as far as I’m concerned. The first of December marks the beginning of Christmas season for me — the tree goes up, the weather sharply cools down, and I start to plan my shopping. Like every year before it, this year will make new records for the amount of Christmas purchases which are made online. Like every year before it, this year is the best year to start selling online through affiliate programs and make a few extra bucks to pay for those “must-have” gifts that you’ll need to purchase for that special someone, or even yourself.
I’ve spent months reading about affiliate marketing, perusing forums and trying to learn from others who claim to be making upwards of $10,000/month from this stuff. I still haven’t quite figured it out but I’m getting closer, and I wanted to share some of this knowledge with you.
The Basics of Affiliate Marketing
Well, it really isn’t too complicated in theory. You refer someone to a product through a link, and if they make a purchase you receive a kickback. It might be a couple bucks, it might be a couple hundred bucks, it all depends on the terms of the referral program and the size of the purchase. The real work in affiliate marketing is actually marketing someone else’s product. This includes developing a nice brochure-ware website/blog, answering customer questions, and generating traffic to your site. From what I’ve learned, this is the basic process flow for succeeding in this line of business, and the direction I intend to take this holiday season with my own attempts.
Affiliate Marketing To-Do List
1) Find a product you want to market
2) Design a nice website / blog describing the product and provide something of value to the reader regarding this item. A good suggestion is to write a detailed, honest review of the product you are selling.
3) Promote your website on Google AdWords. Find inexpensive keywords to market your site which have a CPC is less than the average return you will see per visitor to your site. More on this later.
Our friends at Text Link Ads have recently announced a new service to help link potential advertisers with authors of successful blogs in a way which has not yet been done. The general theory is that as people become more and more accustomed to seeing advertisements on websites, they become more immune to them and naturally begin to block them out. But what if an entire blog entry was an advertisement in disguise?
Welcome to ReviewME, a new pay-to-review service which allows potential advertisers to browse the inventory of available blogs and select the one site which they would like to have their review featured on. The advertiser will then contact the blog author through the ReviewME website and request for a review to be written and arrange for payment.
Loading ...