Ass Out Cash

The research is still going on.  In my what seems to be never ending quest for the right solution I came across this site.  I honestly am not sure of the actual commissions they give, but these guys make it easy to put up a content rich video game site.

Big Fish Games has a spectacular set of tools for affiliates. I signed up, downloaded the SGS (Satellite Game System), made some changes for my niche, added some ads, and was ready to go. I am not sure how effective this will be, or how popular my niche choice is, but it was too easy not to. Since by now you are all asking, Well what is the site so we can check it out? I have nothing to hide, so I set it up at http://www.games.cheesymeat.com and the niche is cooking games.

On top of this I tried my own twist on Google AdSense Arbitrage.  Well it really isn’t, but as I mentioned in a previous article, my web site host (StartLogic) gave me $50 Google AdWords credit when I signed up.  So I figured I might as well try it out on this.

Next time – my Adword campaign for www.games.cheesymeat.com success or failure and the details

This post is going to bring the story up to date.  So I put up some domains like www.financialflattery.com strictly hoping for ad revenue.  To date I have 14 of my domains with different themes hosted.  As of today December, 14 2008.  About 2 weeks into my venture I have made exactly$.11.  Yep that’s right eleven cents.  This is the reason I started really brainstorming and hitting the research.  I guess it won’t be quite as easy as I originally thought.  On top of this, after alot of work, I see Google released Ad Sense for Domains.  Basically a domain parking setup similar to Sedo.  Is it any better I doubt it, but maybe will atleast list it in their search engine since they are taking a cut of the revenue.  I parked 2 of my domains with Google just to check it out.  Over 5 days I have had 6 views no clicks on theses 2 domains.  If you want to see what the Google pages look like, click here.  www.turbocobalt.com

So I have a few ideas I will be trying .

1. Keyword selection.  My existing sites are very broad.  Like www.cheesymeat.com is about cooking, any and all types of cooking.  I really need to break these things down into a niche.  I need to take one of my keywords and expand from there to get better rankings and a specialized crowd.  I should limit it to say Baking chocolate cakes. Then my keywords will be related to that.  Much less broad.
2. Content.  I don’t think the blog and news search results on my sites are unique enough content to get caught by Google, or yahoo.  I have looked at some of the content article generating software packages like Instant Article Wizard, or a program like Simply PLR.  HyperVRE is another program that caught my eye.  They offer a free and paid service, and seems like the real deal.  I signed up for the free service but haven’t done anything with it yet.  Here is a Case Study E-Book (right click – save as) about a guy who made piles of cash with this program.  Hopefully by next week I can talk more in depth about it.   There are alot of these out there.  Before I spend any more money I want to make some.  So for now I will be researching my content articles and writing them myself.
3. Search engine submission.  I don’t think submissions really work.  So I need back links to my site.  Back links are basically links to my site from other sites.  I am currently unsure how I am going to attack this.  I have a link from every site to my generic link page on a different site www.autoilluminate.com/list This just creates a there and back link.  I don’t think this is enough to make a difference.

I am sure there is much more, but this is where I am going to start.  My current goal.  No more money going out until there is money coming in.  How much, well anything above the .11 in 2 weeks I have so far is good.  My first goal as of today is $1.00 a day from Ad Sense.  We will consider the others bonus.

Next – I will optimize one of my domains to the above guidelines.

I keep asking myself this same thing.  Now what do I do?  I have been in this game for all of 2 weeks so far, and can’t learn and read fast enough.  Well below I will document the continuation of my quest..

So I want to be an affilliate marketer.  Last time I told you I purchased some php scripts for content generation, set up a host at StartLogic.com, and was ready to get started. My next step was to start pointing my domain names in the right direction.  I own 45 domains in total.  A couple are dedicated to my other business startup, and some are just for personal / family use.  While I was at GoDaddy.com I went ahead and bought a few more names.  I have a pretty specific niche of names, and wanted to open my self up to a few more areas of the internet.  I mentioned in an earlier blog I am a repeat customer if service is good.  GoDaddy‘s names might cost a bit more than the cheapest places on the web, but the management utilities and other features are top notch.  I went ahead and pointed the name servers of the sites I wanted to utilize to StartLogic.

Now I have my domains, my hosting and some php scripts.  I began playing with the DomainZaar script package, initially I was impressed and happy with the default layout.  This package comes with Ad Sense ready to go, but seemed to be missing something.  I began tweaking the layout to suit my needs.  I added another ad, expanded a search box, added Google Ads for search, and just generally moved things around.  I prefer the way it looks now, but the real question is is the ad placement good?  I have no idea, that is on my list of things to research.

Next time – I need more ads…….

About 2 weeks ago (early December, 2008) I was surfing around the net, and stopped at Sedo to check my parked domains.  My account was up to a whopping $12.XX after 15 months on 40 domains.  I thought to myself, this is ridiculous, I can do better than this by myself.  So it began.  Did I begin the right way.  No, I didn’t do much research I just jumped and started treading water.  So if you follow me along my affiliate learning path (it may be rather rocky) maybe together we can make a few extra bucks.  I am not trying to make millions, just make some extra cash to pay off the bills.  If we find a way to get rich, well, so be it!

Before I detail how the first 2 weeks went some background on myself.  I am a 31 year old Mechanical Design Engineer.  I don’t necessarily like my job, but it is a semi-reliable paycheck.  After all I have to feed my wife and 2 (soon to be 3) kids and dog.  I am pretty technical, I have done web design in the past, and have some limited skills in HTML, PHP, and image manipulation.  Over the last year I have been starting up my own company focused on LED lighting and technology.  Unfortunately the stock market crash put a huge delay on my startup.  Only thing missing right now is capital.

Back to the affiliate marketing.  The first thing I did was look for a script that would compile as many pages as possible in the least amount of time.  After a minimal amount of searching I purchased DomainZaar for $99. DomainZaar is capable of setting up multiple domain names with different keywords on one hosting platform.  This was a great feature for me, as I own a lot of domains and did not want to host them all individually.  I will expand on this product later.

Now I needed a place to host my sites.  My business site is hosted at StartLogic and they have treated me well for several years now.  They support PHP , MySQL, and CGI, everything I needed for my application.  They also have services included that will do automatic installation of WordPress Blog software (what you are reading right now), and OSCommerce, a very effective (and free) e-commerce solution, and more.  When I signed up there was a special running for unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited storage for $5.95 per month, they also threw in $50.00 worth of Adwords credits.  Seems like a good deal to me, and I tend to be a loyal repeat customer when treated right.

Next episode we will discuss setting up accounts with Google Adsense, ClickBank, and Commission Junction.  Plus forwarding of GoDaddy domains.