Took it a little easier than normal last week, spending quite a lot of my free time celebrating our independence by joining my son in blowing some things up and setting other things ablaze. The 4th definitely brings out the inner child in me! Nevertheless, I did manage to get some work done:

• Started doing what I do with the reports my outsourcer returned to me, and managed to set up 45 landing pages. The other 35 will be done this week, and then I will work to blast away at ‘em.
• Working ahead on my online class before we take off for vacation in a couple weeks. I still will probably have to do a little work on the road, but hoping I’ll be able to finish it up while riding through a bit of emptiness. If it takes much more than that, it just ain’t getting done, I’m on vacation. I’m at that point in life that what kind of grade I get in class really matters all that much anyway…
• Did some work building out a couple long neglected domains. I’ve been playing around with a trial of Market Samurai and the Nanocontext concept, and realized I have a couple domains with some pretty substantial Adsense potential.

Oh, and for a great bit of thought on independence, check out the inimitable Johnny B. Truant’s latest post! Hell, check out all of Johnny’s stuff — makes for some inspirational if irreverent reads. My favorite type…

[What is this all about?]

Oops, another bout of this winter’s crazy weather has me trapped at home, and my days all messed up. And I let this out initially unadulterated. Despite what it might have said a few hours ago, as a matter of fact, I did accomplish a thing or two towards my goal this week!

1. Blasted away with another six new mini sites while trapped here in the countryside.
2. Quite a bit of stats trolling, ending up with me killing off a handful of fairly high traffic, low-converting mini sites. Already seeing a pretty substantial uptick in per-click earnings from those changes!
3. Continuing my nanoblogging projects. I still overthink this process, but I’m getting better. Plus, I’m learning a fair amount on a few niches I’m interested in anyway!

Not altogether bad for suffering through the continuing doldrums of Winter 2010 with a massive head cold! ‘cept for that losing-track-of-a-day thing…

[What is this all about?]

While deciding on the path I want to take with any marketing efforts via the big G following my latest slap, my Yahoo Search Marketing and MS AdCenter campaigns have been trucking along just fine. In fact, I can now see how well these two lowly competitors actually convert, and it has me thinking I should spend a little time focusing here rather than working too hard trying to appease the Adwords gods.

The last few days, I’ve been doing a fair amount of bid tweaking and setting up ad split tests, and while I really appreciate how well my Yahoo efforts are doing, someone over there needs to build a desktop editor to speed up this process! I probably could have tripled my adspend with them by now if I wasn’t so hamstrung by doing things in the web interface.

Anyone know of a third party app that interfaces with ‘em, preferably one that doesn’t cost a fortune?

Looks like I picked a good time to be promoting UK items. eBay just sent me the following:

photo credit: vissago

Christmas is coming and it’s the busiest time of year for eBay.co.uk, as everyone rushes to buy their presents and stock up on festive goodies. The eBay UK Affiliate team want to encourage you to send even more quality traffic to eBay.co.uk across this period, so we’re giving you the chance to earn a 20% bonus and you could even win a Nintendo Wii!

How to earn your 20% bonus

We have set targets based on the Winning Bid and BIN Revenue you generated for eBay.co.uk in September and if you beat these targets, you will earn a 20% Rev Share bonus, which will be paid to you in January.

I have had an ultra tiny, UK-specific niche BANS site running for quite a while that I’ve done next to zero as far as promotion, so I do have a target to beat. And that target looks to be just over two bucks. Total. For the month.

Since the blasts to my UK-targeted mini money sites are averaging somewhere in the seventeen bucks a day range right now, I’m thinking I may just be able to top September and get in on this bonus…

Looking at my calendar, I see that that favorite time of year for just about anyone selling just about anything coming into sight. Which just serves as a reminder that it is time to get cracking again.

I did accomplish my big goal of 100 blast goal by my September 28th deadline. And am, quite honestly, thrilled to have gotten such massive action done. But I have also been mostly resting on my laurels since then. In that time, my main accomplishment has been putting together a spreadsheet that allows me to more easily track whether my blasts are profitable or not. Which surely is an important thing. But also surely not a four day job, even at the part time rate I’m devoting to this endeavor!

It would be nice to have maybe triple that number of blasts out there to greet those shoppers hitting the mall that is on their desk. And four day breaks ain’t going to get it done, now is it?

Let’s see if I can bust out another 50 by this time next week, shall we? It’s time to see how productive I can make October.

There most definitely is money still to be made as an eBay affiliate. Last month was, by a long shot, my most profitable month as one.

photo credit: ethorson

That said, my future eBay efforts will likely not involve creating any more BANS sites. I’ll certainly keep my current BANS sites as they are as long as they continue to make a profit. For instance, I have one site that I literally have not touched since I set it up last November that has made me a couple thousand, and it is about to hit its peak season again. Why mess with it?

But I just do not much care for building sites the BANS way anymore. Nothing wrong with the software, but I have found ways I just like better.

Off On Tangents

I have gone off onto a couple different tangents as far as eBay affiliate stuff:

• For sites built to get search engine traffic, I’m using a great little product called phpBay. It lets me take a WordPress blog and quickly turn it into a store. With the billion or so themes available for WordPress, I can make it look however I want.
• Lately I’ve been focusing on using Adwords to drive traffic to eBay mini sites. I used the API version of phpBay to build mini sites specifically for PPC campaigns. If you happen to join Earn $1k A Day, I can’t recommend these three threads more highly to give you some truly astounding ideas along these lines:
  1. My First 1K day, now 2nd and 3rd
  2. Questions for Gary
  3. How I choose my keywords from ebay listing titles

  I’ve been following Gary’s system since midway through September, and am more than thrilled with the results I’ve gotten so far.

Tool Recommendations

Here are a few recommendations for tools I use I’ve found particularly useful as an eBay affiliate:

• Irregardless of the route you’re taking, finding a good niche is a given. I really like Hot Item Finder to find what is actually selling on eBay. I’ve hit on some truly oddball niches using it that have done very well for me so far.
• Some software to pull eBay listings and format ‘em with your affiliate links. Whether it’s BANS or phpBay or any of the other eBay affiliate scripts out there.

Those are really my only indispensables. Now that I’ve gotten into pay-per-click to get traffic to my mini sites, I’ll tack on two more, but if you’re not going into PPC right now, ignore ‘em:

• Keyword Transformer to let me easily set up keyword tracking.
• My membership at Campaign Blast. This site has really kicked me in the pants. I set up 44 mini money sites in around a week recently because of this membership. And will probably put up another 60 in the next.

End of the Day Job?

So, have I made enough to replace the day job yet?

Well, no. At least, not yet. But last month certainly reduced the multiples required to do so!

Seeing results really gets you motivated…

So I set a SMART goal of a cool 100 campaign blasts by this 28th of this month in early August, and what do you know, we’re creeping up on that date. With less than a week to go, I still have about 40 to go. What can I say? It was a lazy September…

That said, I easily have that number of potential campaigns to pick from mostly fleshed out in text files on my thumbdrive. But quite honestly, I may just make these last forty straight to quick eBay niche landing pages. My little experiment with them seems to be going well, with a few winning campaigns in the mix already and covering the experiment’s total ad spend so far. Cut some non-performers, optimize those winners, and I see some great things going forward.

While I got a half dozen done this afternoon, I didn’t get much accomplished on those last 40 tonight. My son insisted we build tunnels with blocks and race tennis balls through them for a couple hours. And who am I to argue?

That, and I left my thumbdrive with all my campaign info in my work PC, so I’m flying blind anyway.

So I’ve been experimenting with my campaign blasting in the last couple days, attempting to drive traffic to a series of very niche-specific eBay affiliate landing pages rather than direct to merchant.

And so far so good. I’m seeing a fair number of clicks. Plus, I’m not freaking out by blowing through my daily ad spend budget in a couple hours or anything. But even with me taking it slow and steady, it sure would be nice to get a quick read on any successful campaigns.

But no, EPN has decided that just as I start paying for traffic, they’re going to delay reporting the prior day’s results from my standard 7pm or so until several hours later. Tonight is yet another night where midnight has come and gone, and I still don’t know if anything converted from the prior day.

I see all kinds of people freaking out over recent events, but I love ya’ EPN.

• Your program converts well.
• I don’t have to harass anyone to get paid.
• Your API is a snap to play around in.
• The potential niches I can try out are essentially infinite.

But sheesh, let me know where I’m wasting money already…

Sometimes, having too many things on your plate can be a good thing.

The last few days have seen the rollout of the eBay Partners Network aka eBay‘s in-house affiliate program. Being mildly brain damaged from it being tax season, I decided I’d put off any serious work at getting the portions of my sites that use eBay converted to the new, non-CJ program until, oh, the 16th. Or maybe the 20th — let a few brain cells grow back and all.

And honestly, even if the switchover date was June 1st rather than April 1st, I still would have held off. I don’t generally enjoy being a beta tester. With something this major — and I’d call switching over quite likely the largest affiliate program out there to an in-house program a major undertaking — problems are bound to pop up. And of course, they did, and likely will for awhile yet. Such as:

• Like the on-the-ball developers that they are, Kevin & Adam from Build A Niche Store had code ready to go when eBay threw the switch. Of course, since they really had no way of fully testing it before the system was actually up and running, there were a handful of bugs. That they were cleared up in no time is a testament to their attentions.
• Just today we see an extended bit of trouble with the eBay RSS feed (which many affiliates use). Namely, that they were slow as molasses. Oh, and that they were apparently not passing along your affiliate IDs. You know, just little things…

photo credit: RichieC

I did upgrade one of my sites to the new system, more to play than anything. Went smooth as could be. Of course, it’s essentially a new BANS site, so I wasn’t concerned about wasting the almost nonexistent traffic it draws right now.

What really gets me is the reactions I’ve seen online about these little snafus. Ranting and raving and foaming at the mouth and the-sky-is-falling-the-sky-is-falling. Someone needs a lesson in the law of attraction. I’ll just take it as my periodic reminder that time spent on most forums is a wasteful distraction to actually getting anything done.

Oh, and ROCK CHALK JAYHAWK! They sure tried their best to make it interesting, didn’t they!

Not getting much accomplished because of a little internal warfare, aka a heavy winter cold. It’s been ten days or so of this damn thing, but I think we’ve finally got the invaders in retreat.

I’ve decided to temporarily hold off on my grand plans until the fog encasing my mind lifts. After all, I hate to throw money at things that don’t make any sense when I’m thinking straight. But I’ve got quite a number of possibilities in my idea box, so I imagine shortly my domain stable is going to be expanding.

One thing I have been accomplishing is signing up for quite a few affiliate networks. It really is amazing how many different programs are out there. And the differences in payouts on the same programs from affiliate network to affiliate network is definitely something to look into if you are going to get into online marketing in any serious way.

The latest I’ve been messing around with is NetShops, which runs a network of online stores, all with pretty decent payouts (generally the 10-15% range). What I find really interesting is their datafeeds, and how simple they make accessing them. A little experimentation with these on the minisites (as well as the BANS sites) is definitely in order!