The two way road of business

When people actually do business together it shows cooperation, teamwork, collaboration, and good ethics. There are some relationships in business that are this way, and there are some out there that think creating good business is a one way lane. I’m here to tell you that if you run yourself down this one way lane, you will burn, and you will crash. On the other hand, people who understand that creating good relationships are centered on the “give and take” conduct.

There have been many instances where I’ve worked with people in the past and eventually generated a good revenue stream. The relationship was good, the communication was there, but when it came down to reciprocating business together they didn’t think twice to bail. This is not only frustrating, but puts you on an untrusting level for any other person you view as potential partners.

There have also been instances where my relationship was very generous from both parties. If I ever needed any suggestions or help with something I knew I could go to them and have no problem getting what I need. And I would like to think that I was able to provide my partner with any experience or knowledge to better themselves. This relationship has lasted years and our partnership has been prosperous.

What it boils down to is, building a partnership in order to conduct long term big business, is never a one way road. If you’re thinking of using a person for what they have, and not being reciprocal, chances are then, you’ll burn through partners faster than sage grass on fire, and your reputation only diminishes each time until eventually you’re not in business.

Take a minute to think about what it is you have to contribute to your current partnerships and ask yourself who you haven’t been able to share this with.

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

Kahlil Gibran (1883 – 1931)

What do we already know about affiliate marketing?

There’s plenty of information on the super highway on how to make money online, how to make money BLOGGING, and how to make money while sitting on your ass and hitting the refresh button.

The truth of the matter is there’s no easy way to get a turn-key product and make money on the web. There’s hard work, patience, concentration, attention to detail, and most of all, patience (as previously stated.)

Firstly, if you think you just bought a domain name and applied to a couple affiliate programs and got approved doesn’t mean you’re going to start making money right away. There are so many more steps involved before you start making your first dollar as an affiliate.

The first thing I suggest to do is make sure this is something you’re willing to commit to. This isn’t just something that you can work on for 20 minutes and come back to later; it’ll take you YEARS to make money rather than months. With that said, make sure what you’re going to promote is something you have a good amount of knowledge about. Look at your hobbies, something you might have excelled in school, or even something you’re simply surrounded by on a daily basis. The primary and most useful tool for making money on the internet is your personal knowledge about a specific product or niche; trust me, you’re going to need every ounce for your content.

My second suggestion as a beginning affiliate is to LEARN CODE. The more HTML, PHP, XML etc. code you know will only help make the entire process easier. Once you’ve crammed as much <?gibberish?> as possible, take it to the streets. Practice layouts, links, iframes, pops (enter and exit), tags. Tags are going to be something you’ll want to focus on very closely.

Now with those two initial steps into how to make money online, figure the rest out. If you have any roadblocks, feel free to visit any helpful resources you’re available to, including MYSELF.

David vs. Goliath

There has been much discussion about how to stretch and maintain a good ROI while utilizing some of the smaller players in the search engine field. Not too long ago, search engines were thought to be very promising and people were seeking significant additional sources of revenue. With all of the intense high bidding wars on the main search engines including Google, Yahoo, and MSN, the lovely group at Marketing Experiments has taken a look at the smaller search engines to see if they are able to stack up to the ‘Big Boys’.
The results were a little surprising. Against seven search engines with four campaigns they found there was very little traffic compared to the monsters like Google. The conversion rate of the best performing engine was more than 50% higher than that of the second best, and almost four times than that of the third best. However, the conversion rate for the best search engine was a shocking 3.16%. That’s right, of the whopping 410 clicks generated on that search engine, there were only 13 leads generated. Overall Marketing Experiments spent $584.76 for ads placed on that specific search engine with earnings of $292.38 in a CPA (cost-per-action) model.
These results are disappointing to say the least, and show that the CPA earned from one of the smaller engines was 43.4% lower than that for Google over the same time period. They were also 59.2% lower than Overture (Yahoo!). Traffic may have a big play in these results as well, but this just goes to show you that there are precautions to be taken while getting your campaigns off the ground. If you are contemplating using a smaller search engine, some of the precautions to look for include:
• Approach smaller PPC engines with caution.
• Test everything on a few different search engines to determine which will be the most profitable for you.
• If an ad you are running on a specific search engine comes close to profitability, test different ads and see if you can increase your click-through rate.
• If you do isolate one or more search engines that can deliver a positive ROI, make sure those engines have sufficient reach. If you are achieving only a handful of sales each month, the profits earned may not make up for the cost of setting up, testing and managing that specific campaign.