Internet Marketing - Discuss

[_Panther_]

Hey,

Is there anyone here that is into internet marketing.. creating niche websites and such?
Just wondering about the popularity of this in Trinidad..
Some well known monetization methods include adsense, chitika, amazon affiliates, infolinks etc..
What i am curious to know is how long do these payments take to reach? (Particularly amazon affiliates and adsense) on a month to month basis?
We can't receive money through paypal.. so we have to wait until it is mailed.. unless there is another way to receive the payments.
I'm asking these questions because i'd like to know what is the local experience of this growing field..and its viability as a business model.

Oh, any Tuner SBI-ers in here?

[kevcam]

I deal with Adsense and Clickbank and Amazon to some extent. Adsense is per month and payments can be received by check in mail (free) or pay $25 US monthly to have it delivered by DHL. You need to make $100 or more a month to get paid. If you start making $10,000 a month and more they will send it free. They also wire funds to accounts but T'dad is not on their list of countries.

Amazon checks are cut quarterly and is more difficult to make money because of low percentage payouts and their cookies are only for 24hrs.

Clickbank pays out fortnightly.

I basically build sites and do SEO and linkbuilding targeting keywords to get them on page 1 of Google.

I have only come across a handful of Trinis doing any of the above.

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

^ DITTO

[_Panther_]

Thanks for the input kevcam!
I'm looking to get into this field as it seems to have alot of opportunity for passive income...
Do you build a few large content focused sites or numerous made for adsense type?

[kevcam]

Smaller sites mainly but now leaning towards larger sites as the effort in maintaining rankings can be draining. There were some loopholes that were effective using smaller sites with keywords being the exact domain name and Google was ranking them easily. As of June this year Google implemented fully a Caffeine update and now these sites require more backlinking.

Please don't build Made For Adsense (MFA) sites only as Google is really frowning on these this year. You should link out to top sites in your niche or have other affiliate programs on your site. The only outgoing links should not be Adsense links. Always use unique content as much as possible on your sites.

Many people want to get into this field when they see all those ads for passive income online, making the whole thing look easy. This is not easy, especially without guidance in the beginning. This is real hard work. You have to have a strong personality and mentality.

In the beginning I spent shitloads of money on ebooks, software, membership sites etc. Paid people for services, never got it done and said goodbye to my money. When things did not work out as planned (and this happens a lot) I became despondent but I pulled through. The road was not easy.

One good forum that has a wealth load of information about IM is warriorforum.com. If you are serious you can start there. You have to be focused on which method you want to use in that forum otherwise you will be spinning top in mud. If you pick Adsense and affiliate marketing stick to that period. Save all your money from buying WSO's and just read the info in there. You could complete a Masters in IM just by reading that forum.

[Rocketraz1982]

Making a website profitable in any field is a big task, many think it easy money!!! not a chance you really do have to be on the ball with everything.. I have only just got into the area of designing sites but have had web based ecommerce experience for over a decade now and have seen the good and the bad of such sites.. they will make and break a company!!

If you make one major firetruck up with one customer it's a "big deal" not only will they tell on average 10-20 people but you can be easliy black listed via one negative forum thread. See it done many times

A niche market in a country of only 1.3 million is risky if you are not doing the build and site work yourself as this eats up a ton of cash most of which you can do yourself but does take time and patients ..

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

^ yup we've ended up with lots of patients on trinituner. Soundwave is still trying to recover.

Amazon is a grand waste of time IMO - I plan to remove that section from trinituner soon.
Adsense has proven to be the highest paying adserver we've tried, but not by any margin is it a cash cow. The payouts have been very low from Adsense and even lower since the credit crunch.
We have been using adsense for about 5 years now and it has not been any great revenue earner though it is enough that we wont want to remove it. It is passive income.
Considering that we have been averaging millions of page views a month since 2003. We now see around 8 million page views a month. Every page has at least one adsense ad. Thats alot of ad impressions!

However adsense doesnt pay out on impressions for those ads, they pay out on clicks. Our CTR for adsense is low and so the payout is low.

Good luck!

[_Panther_]

Made for Adsense types sites are a definite no-no... cause as kevcam rightly said, Google is definitely penalizing these types of sites.
Duane, the reason for Trinituner having such a low adsense payout i think is because the main audience is local no? And i'm sure they are "blind" to the adsense units..
I suppose its the type of site and your target audience that would determine the size of your adsense or amazon payouts..
For example, i'm sure that an informational website targeted towards housewives would definitely have a much higher adsense payout simply due to "ad ignorance" i.e. there would be more clicks on the ads simply because they did not know they were ads..

I am familiar with WarriorForum.. its a great place to learn.. another great site for those interested is : http://actionguide.sitesell.com/
The concept is based on Creating great content> Building Traffic> Presell> Monetize

Rocketraz1982, you're focused on Trinidad.. its the Internet!! The global marketplace!

I do wish there was more of a push towards E-commerce/ Internet Marketing in TnT...

[kevcam]

It's difficult to make significant adsense income with forum sites. They may only get 1 or 2 percent CTR and the clicks will pay low due to the nature of the sites. The repeat traffic will also eventually become blind to the ads over time.

Google News sites (I'm now getting into this) can have good traffic as well but the CTR is again low here. The difference is with these sites you can target news related to finance topics that pay out higher adsense income than Entertainment and Technology topics that get high traffic but low adsense payouts.

Informational sites can average around 15-20% CTR on good sites. Topics like Financial and Health have good payouts but it is a serious dogfight to reach the top for those keywords and also to stay at the top.

The king of adsense CTR and a good balance where you can get little traffic with high payouts and first page rankings, is a product related site. People searching for information about products click like mad. CTR here can be as high as 50%.

[bigga514]

very good ched not much too add to it
but erm duane 1 suggestion 2nr "mobile site or theme" plz
i know it look good on eyephone but the bb clan say it does stick.
on my htc all d banner loads in one shot (can send screen shots to explain).
im about to take a stab at mobile adsense for wap/mobile sites.

[boatman]

Wow. I usually check on trinituner to see what's up with my homeland and was quite pleased when I saw this thread. I have been in IM for about 5+ years now, and it has been an interesting journey. I have had no "job" for the past 2 years. XD

Lemme tell you guys upfront, adsense=bleh. It used to pay out nicely until they made some stupid changes about 2 years ago and payments have dropped drastically. I have about 80 active websites running right now for adsense income in different niches (could be less). 23 of those rank #1 in google for their search term. BUT A LOT of work has to go into doing that, trust me IM is hard work, but it pays off. Honestly instead of building a website and putting good content on it, find a hot niche, register a good domain that should appear when people search for your niche keywords put some meta tags and park it. IMHO you make the same amount in advertising revenue when people go to your parked domain and click ads. It beats all the work of adding content and ending up being disappointed with chump change. From all those websites I can say I average about 2.5k USD monthly, which isnt that bad from adsense. Bidvertiser pays out better than adsense. I have left those sites alone for a while, about 2-3 months with no work, and there is still no drop in earnings, but I'm pretty sure it will soon.
CPA is a good place to make some cash, but its heavy competition, and spamming the freaking internet. Building info/data/download sites with a CPA gateway will be profitable, but will be gone quickly, so no residual income there.
I saw someone mention clickbank, clickbank is a great tool for generating cash, most of the products you see on clickbank is usually rubbish, you won't get all the information in one IM product which there are many of. But I assume that by saying clickbank, you mean promoting products. There is a lot to be made doing that, but work as well, since many people are promoting the same product. But the trick is to jump onto new products and "prelaunched" ones and ride the hype wave and let the product sell itself for you. If you wana go a step further, make your own product and sell it on clickbank,paydotcom,click2sell or whatever. You can also sell it on the warrior forum and digital point (these guys buy anything). The advantage of this is having people promote your product! just give them a nice cut and you're set.
I created a product with a more experienced IM'er (joint venture) about a year and a half ago and he sold it on WF and DP and clickbank as well, and let's just say my half of the pie paid for my hilux and then some. But this won't actually produce residual income, since sales die down after about 6 months or so. But its all good. Real residual income will come from subscriptions/repeat sales. I have worked as an affiliate of a single company since I started IM, but has only picked up in the past 2 years for me. Once you find a good stable company and a good affiliate program you can focus your efforts. Some tips:
1. Don't spread yourself out too thin and work on a zillion projects, focus on one or 2 for the most and do a good job at it.
2. There is no such thing as easy/overnight money. You need to work for it.
3. Keep a positive attitude, and be thankful everyday.
4. Do not overwork yourself, keep healthy mind+body+relationships
5. The money is in the list.
6. most importantly; DO NOT EVER QUIT. It took me about 7 years to make it to success, and trust me, there were some places I would have quit, but I remained strong.

A little about me;
I was just like you back then, just got out of UWI, and couldnt get a real 'job' so I started looking for other opportunities. Turned to the internet, found some stuff worked on it made a little bit of cash, spent it out on liming, etc. Thought it was too hard. I then got into (sc)Amway/Quixtar, did pretty good, but i left it due to immoral things that happen in there. Then i took on IM 100% seriously....... a few years later> happy, free, moved to the US, bought a condo in Florida, fully paid for. I love boats, and bought me a Larson 350 Cabrio Cruiser (it for sale btw check FS forum in a few days).

Hope I have shed some light and been an inspiration. It is possible with determination and hard work.

If anyone would like to know anything PM me here or shoot me an email at nmonline@gmail.com
I may not reply until a day or 2 later, since I'm down under in Australia lol. Didn't know they had snow here!!!

Mazel Tov!

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

^ good read and good advice

Made for Adsense types sites are a definite no-no... cause as kevcam rightly said, Google is definitely penalizing these types of sites.
Duane, the reason for Trinituner having such a low adsense payout i think is because the main audience is local no? And i'm sure they are "blind" to the adsense units..
I suppose its the type of site and your target audience that would determine the size of your adsense or amazon payouts..
For example, i'm sure that an informational website targeted towards housewives would definitely have a much higher adsense payout simply due to "ad ignorance" i.e. there would be more clicks on the ads simply because they did not know they were ads..

yes that's it exactly. The users on trinituner are tech and internet savvy so they ignore Google ads. We do get high CTR on the local graphic banner ads though since they are more "relevant" to our users and grab more attention.

[_Panther_]

Wow, thanks boatman!
That was quite inspirational
I've been here trying to motivate myself to work on my website and one of the things keeping me back was constantly wondering.. "Will this work?!" ... "Is it really possible to make a living from the internet??" "I've never heard of any Trinis doing this..."
All of those doubts have been put to rest thanks to this thread
Back to "work" then!

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

^ Yes you can!!!!

I run a website since 2000 and fulltime since 2004. But I've never really put much attention toward IM ad servers.