First Affiliate Income

I wrote this letter and plan to give it to the officer in charge at the Department of Trade and Industry, in EDSA, Mandaluyong, near Mega Mall and Star Mall.

What do you think?

-

This is in regard to our bad experience in transacting with your agency this week. I would like to share it with you in the hopes that they are addressed:

1. Last Monday, June 1, 2009, we went to DTI in Highway 54 to have my wife’s business registration fixed (change of name and change of address). The guard did not allow us to talk to the staff and assisted us himself. We were told to write an affidavit of cancellation of business name. Good thing there were clearer details on the DTI website, which I looked up later that night.
2. Yesterday, Wednesday, me and my pregnant wife went back to the same DTI after spending more than P100 and the whole morning to have the affidavit notarized. We were instructed by the guard to sit in line.
3. When it was my wife’s turn, the affidavit was rejected as the staff informed us that our reason was ambiguous– I wrote the reason as the registration was unused and unutilized since it was registered in 2007.
4. Upon pleading with the staff for reconsideration since my wife was pregnant, her only reply was that there was an express lane for pregnant women, and that we can come back on the same day;
5. and that we’re not supposed to ask the guards for help.

Here are my comments:

1. The guard doesn’t know the correct procedure. Instead of helping us, the matter was made worse by giving incomplete (or wrong) instructions.
2. The guard doesn’t know that a special lane is available for pregnant women.
3. I am not a lawyer, but as far as I know, an affidavit is a sworn statement of fact. How can it be rejected if it contains truth, or there are missing specifics that the agency requires.
4. If the DTI is requiring specific reasons for the affidavit, why not provide templates so as not to waste time, money, patience and confidence of aspiring entrepreneurs?
5. If the guard is not authorized to answer questions, why are they preventing people from asking the right people?
6. The staff blamed us for following the guard’s instructions. Instead of showing courtesy, this DTI staff has shown indifference and callousness to our situation.

I do believe that entrepreneurship is a key to economic recovery. But with this experience, how can one be encouraged?

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on DTI
• Hard Drive Recovery by DTI Data - IMTRONSYS
• DTI heightens monitoring of school supplies' prices | The …
• SEC is now under DTI from Department of Finance

Technorati Tags: DTI

StoredApps.com, the site we developed in-house with SEO optimized techniques is now a few months old. Without any major SEO efforts other than what’s built in to the site, plus a few blogs we did manually, here’s the analytics snapshot:

As you can see, visitors per day are rising. Now at around 100 a day, most visitors come from the USA. Traffic sources are mostly via search engines at 60% with around 500 keywords and rising.

I think we can increase visitors further by doing organic SEO and advertising. I’ll post more details on this in the future.

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on iphone apps
• Android Market vs. iPhone App Store: The First 24 Hours
• Developing Native iPhone Applications Can Be Challenging for the …
• iPhone App to Remotely Control Your iPhone
• 8 iPhone Apps I’m Still Using and 8 I’m Not

Technorati Tags: iphone apps

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on app store
• Android Market vs. iPhone App Store: The First 24 Hours
• Latest news: RIM announces app store for BlackBerry smartphones
• Android Market vs App Store : The fight is ON !
• What’s On Removed From the iTunes App Store

• Related Blogs on iphone apps
• Android Market vs. iPhone App Store: The First 24 Hours
• Developing Native iPhone Applications Can Be Challenging for the …
• iPhone App to Remotely Control Your iPhone
• 8 iPhone Apps I’m Still Using and 8 I’m Not

Technorati Tags: app store, iphone apps

Today I made my first sale. I received $27 for an order of 2 headsets exactly 1 week after starting the experiment! Here’s how I did it and hopefully, the orders come in steadily from now on:

• I sent a popular blogger some samples for review.
• I commented on blogspot blogs with the topic “iPhone Headset” linking to my blog

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on first sale
• The CbsoP Cafe Press Store has it’s first sale!

Technorati Tags: first sale

I have something new to try… selling a product on the web.

My iPhone’s original headset (a.k.a. earphones) wore out quickly and I had difficulty finding a replacement. Most third-party brands such as Sony and Pioneer don’t have plug that fit my phone. Those that have a compatible plug didn’t come with the in-line microphone + clicker remote of the original.

I eventually found a supplier abroad and purchased a few dozen. Recognizing the difficulty I faced in sourcing a replacement, I’m sure that some of the 10 million new iPhone users would have the same problem.

Now that I have the headsets in stock, I needed a new domain name to sell them from. Here’s what my research concluded with:

Click to enlarge

According to Google Insight for Search, the “iphone headset” search term got the most hits overall, mostly from the USA–my target market. I immediately snapped up myiphoneheadsets.com since that’s the closest domain name I can find that matched the search term. And since Google will display results for both the singular and plural forms, I opted for the plural version of the name.

I have finished setting up my iPhone headset selling site. I’m now promoting the site via entries in squidoo.com and hubpages.com. I also added adsense ads in case visitors want something else.

I’m now setting up AdWords placements. With the knowledge I’ve learned from previous experiments, I can now easily set up ads optimized for my product.

Now, all we have to do is wait. I wonder how long until I sold all the iPhone headsets I ordered.

My theory was right. My experiment is a success.

 As a recap, I realized that you can potentially earn a lot of money in domaining by advertising in adwords, and monetizing via ads (I used adsense in my experiment).

I selected relevant keywords and made ad placements in adwords. I chose $0.02 as my maximum (the amount I’m willing to pay to have my ad shown, but I only pay when it is clicked) and had a daily budget of $10. The higher the daily budget, the more frequent the ad will be displayed.

I then added ads to my free sms page and waited. After a day of experiments, here are the results:

PORTION REMOVE DUE TO POSSIBLE ADSENSE TERMS VIOLATION

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on adsense
• Ebay-Adsense-Clickbank
• Share Adsense Revenue And Get Paid For Your Articles — by DAVID COWLEY
• Free Ringtones

• Related Blogs on adwords
• Google Adwords Goes Wrong
• adwords google adwords webmaster webmasterworld
• Google Adwords Advertisers Put RSS Ads on Specific RSS Feeds

• Related Blogs on experiment
• Vlog #8 Hot-N-Sexy for Jake!!!

Technorati Tags: adsense, adwords, experiment

I was reading about this guy earning 500,000 on the Internet via domaining and wondered how he was able to achieve it. After a careful analysis of the story, my adwords experience, and some ads on my site, I may have discovered how it can be done (or at least, a way to replicate it).

First Discovery - Cheap traffic

While working on my adwords campaign, I discovered that I can place ads for as low as $0.04 (and in some cases, even $0.03) or P1.80 per click at current exchage rates.

Since my site requires registration, I see new members as a captured market that will keep visiting the site and generating income via ad clicks in the long term. This justifies the expense of the advertising.

Indeed, my site now earns 3x as much, and with much more activity.

Second Discovery - Return on Investment

My site now earns $2.00 on average. As against $0.50 it did previously. However, ad clicks are way up from a previous 10+ to the now 50+ per day. I know that my pages have not been optimized for adsense, so the value of ads being displayed are probably the lowest. But since the clicks are there, just by optimizing my pages should increase my ad income significantly.

Third Discovery - Parked Domains in ads

While surfing the web, I often encounter interesting adwords placements, which I sometimes visit. One such site is chickka.com. This site is capitalizing on the popularity of SMS sending application chikka and is filled with adsense ads.

Piecing it all Together

Then came the realization…

What if I bought cheap domain names that are have close resemblance to popular products, services or brands, fill them with ads, and buy adwords placements at the lowest prices allowed, what will happen?

That’s what I think is being done and I’m now experimenting on that possibility.

Here’s what I’m doing now…

I created a simple Free SMS to the Philippines page surrounded by ads. The ads are strategically placed so that a user is likely to click on the ads ‘accidentally’ while filling the form. This gives me a higher possibility of generating ad revenue.

Next, I bought placements in adwords. I targetted online gaming sites frequented by teenagers. These same teenagers are also avid texters that often broadcast SMS to their friends. The ideal target market for my form.

Finally, I placed a $0.04 limit on the per click price that I’m willing to pay.

If I generate 0.05 in ad income for every $0.04 I spend, I still come out profitable. We’ll see how it goes in a few days.

Technorati Tags: adsense, domaining

I have started experimenting the use of Adwords and landing pages and here’s what I did…

Using the variants of the keywords ‘free sms’, I started an adwords campaign. I use Google’s Keyword Tool to find the related keywords and added it to my list. This will trigger my ads to display when the user uses those words in their search query.

I also created a landing page that is related to the keywords I’m targeting. I believe this to be important step that will improve results. Here’s the landing page:

free text landing page

Since starting with adwords, my site’s activity has increased by around 300% and I have 20 new members a day. My adsense earnings is still low, but from $0.20 a day average, it has increased to $2.00 a day. The clicks increased in a big way from <20 to 60 a day, so improving my content should improve the income for clicks.

Now that I have figured out how to use Adwords and landing pages to my advantage, let’s see how we can take advantage of this in my other projects.

Technorati Tags: adsense, adwords, landing pages

Hello and welcome!

I am new to the world of affiliate marketing and this blog will try to chronicle my experiences in achieving my goal of generating my first US$100 over the web. I plan to post the materials I read and the tools I use to reach this objective and I hope you can join me.