Make Money Online with Brandon Hopkins

A few days ago Chris Garrett made a post titled Why I Don’t Check Rankings. Ironically enough, the post is ranked 6 for the term “check rankings”.

Unlike Garrett I check my rankings, at least daily. Why? I’m in this game to make money. There is no other reason I spend a great portion of my day writing and publishing content. As much as I like my readers, I have offline friends and don’t really need online friends. Like you, I’m here to make money, plain and simple.

I don’t care to be famous, I respond to interview questions because I want the links and traffic that come. More links, better rankings. Better rankings, more money. See where I’m going?

Garrett says, “My approach is to write for audiences. I usually have my main audience and also an overlapping audience that I hope to attract with my most recent article.” That is something I understand. My audience is a search engine. I don’t care which search engine it is, I just want them to come to my site, and love it. If they love it and I rank #1 for a niche keyword, then beautiful.

If I can get 30,000 uniques per month in my niche, but can’t make $300 I’m either wasting my time, or building something bigger. Most of the time when I exploit a particular niche and it explodes with social traffic, that traffic is completely a waste. It doesn’t convert, and social visitors don’t click ads.  Traffic isn’t my goal, my goal is where that traffic goes.  Did they click and ad?  Buy a product?  Or did they hit the back button and continue surfing?

Before I go too much further, it’s important to note that Garrett and I obviously have different plans when it comes to building a profitable online presence. I’m not even sure that is his goal, so I don’t want to criticize his methods because his goal may not be the same as mine.  Maybe he blogs for the love of blogging. I blog to give you something to read, with the hope that eventually you’ll convert to an affiliate program, buy something, or at some point become valuable through RSS subscriptions or total readership. To date, that has happened pretty well. I have a full list of ads sold, a few links here and there and a few posts that have earned me some money.

So why do I track my rankings? I want to make money. If I’m ranked #5 for a decent keyword, with some effort I can probably move that ranking up to #1 depending on the quality of the niche. If you have any #1 rankings, you know that the difference in net profit between #1 and #5 is INSANE!

In conclusion, let me tell you a story from about 3 years ago. I was ranked number 10 for a high volume keyword on MSN. Keep in mind, MSN traffic is very low compared to Google. After about 30 days I moved from #10 to #1.

At #10 position I was making about $5 per day. When I went to the #1 position, I was making over $150 a day (with MSN alone) with that one site. If I wasn’t tracking my keywords (like Chris Garrett), I never would have known that I was within striking distance. When I found out I was ranking in the #10 position for my keyword I immediately went to work and made great money.

So why do I take the time to track my sites? To make some money of course!

Do you take the time to track your keyword rankings?

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Word of mouth is a guerrilla marketing method that involves personal recommendations of services, products or businesses. Word of mouth marketing has generated a tremendous amount of buzz with affiliate marketing, mostly due to the effectiveness of this promotional technique.

According to research on consumer behavior, receiving a personal recommendation from a customer is one of the best ways to achieve as successful sale. Why? Product and service suggestions appear as more genuine, honest and trustworthy than standard advertisements.

If you want to increase your online visibility, sell more products or get more subscribers, word of mouth is a strategy you need to consider for affiliate marketing. By enlisting the help of past customers, you can dramatically increase the size of your “sales team” and draw an abundance of new customers.

Getting Started With Word Of Mouth Marketing

The first step in using word of mouth in affiliate marketing is to handpick a number of proven guerrilla marketing strategies. While you may later opt to expand into other areas using fresh ideas and techniques, focus on the tried and tested methods during the initial phases of your word of mouth marketing campaign.

No. 1 — Target Influential Customers

The best way to spread the word about your affiliate marketing offers is to get influential people to start talking about them. Spend some time exploring the web to find websites, blogs and communities devoted to your topic.

Select some target individuals and send them information designed to grab their interest. This might involve simply describing what your website does, or producing promotions that are specifically aimed at these individuals. But remember that these people probably get a lot of similar product promotions. So spend some extra time making yours appealing and personal, it will pay off in the long run. When done correctly, these influential customers can become one of your biggest sales allies. By mentioning your products in their websites, blogs and discussion boards, you can reach out to an even broader audience.

No. 2 — Give People A Reason To Talk About You

According to marketing guru Seth Godin, it is essential to give people a reason to talk about your business. “Provide something of value. The first step is recognizing that marketing is asking for someone else’s time and attention. You need to provide something worthy…when you educate or entertain other people, they’ll pay attention. If you bore them, they won’t,” Godin explains.

Consider the strengths of your affiliate marketing business, then build upon them to create outstanding word of mouth. If your site offers lots of valuable information, make sure that this content is prominent on all major pages of your site. If your affiliate offers are the best in the business, make a point of explaining exactly what makes your products or services so much better than the competition. If you have the possibility, try to exemplifying it with graphs and pictures, to make it stand out from the millions of “best deals” that are out there. By offering something of value, your customers will provide word of mouth testimonials in return.

No. 3 — Enlist The Help Of Satisfied Customers

After every completed sale, always strive to maintain contact with your customers. As part of the purchasing process, include an option for customers to receive further email offers, newsletters and promotions. Then, periodically remind your past customers about your business offerings. By staying fresh in the mind’s of your core audience, they will be more likely to promote your affiliate marketing offers to friends, family and online communities.

Some possible ways to stay in contact with past customers include creating informative email newsletters, offering special promotions or simply informing people about your latest products and offers. The key to success is to make these contacts useful and meaningful.

Always ensure that your emails display content specifically targeted to the needs of the customers. Offer something of real value in the form of information or access to affiliate offers.

No. 4 — Make It Easy for Customer To Rave

On every page of your website, include links that allow customers to email information about your affiliate marketing business to friends. This is a great way to quickly capitalize on the enthusiasm of your viewers.

Social bookmarking is another successful word of mouth tool in guerrilla marketing. Websites such as Digg, del.icio.us and StumbleUpon allow users to share their favorite sites with like-minded web viewers. By including social bookmarking links on your website, your customers can help promote your site to an even wider online audience.

No. 5 — Monitor Your Word Of Mouth Results

Finally, always try to monitor the success of your word of mouth campaigns. Start by noticing important numbers such as website traffic and affiliate sales before launching any type of new marketing strategy. Then, collect records periodically on these numbers in order to determine if your word of mouth efforts have had any impact on your affiliate marketing results.

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During the month of November, Andrew and I will be focusing as much as possible on a joint venture. Our joint venture will be all about the call center industry, especially targeting the keywords call center consultant. During November we have 3 goals:

1. 2,000 unique visitors. For the past few months this site has had about 30 uniques total.
2. $100 revenue. This site currently generates $0 revenue.
3. 150 total articles. So far we have about 6.

As the title says, we’re going to take this site from 0 (nothing) to hero (generating income) in one month. If we can do it, so can you!

I don’t know if we’ll be able to do it, but I sure do hope we can. For me, it’s fun to be working with a partner on a project like this. Andrew is an exceptional writer and we should have great success with this. I’ll keep you updated with how our goals are coming along, and if you want to help, just link to the site!

You can also view all of the posts from this project.

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