I hate typing up promotional emails. It is a necessary evil of the business though, so I trudge through it.

Fortunately, I just found some help – a set of Clickbank Email Sets from Greg Lloyd. I say “Sets” because it is 180 messages – 3 messages each promoting 60 of the hottest Clickbank products.

The salespage describes the emails best…

First, each Subject Line has been crafted carefully to create curiosity and high open rates… then we get into the body of the messages…

1) …The first Message in each set puts readers into an attentive state by building rapport, drawing them into the copy, introducing the product and communicating the BIG benefit of the product, suspending their skepticism long enough, to make them immensely curious so they click-through to the site to learn more …

But as we all know… sending a single message gets some sales, but over 60% of the real profits come from the ‘follow-ups’. So I created 2 additional messages for each product being promoted, using a specific and proven successful method, that helps close even more sales for you automatically.

2) …The second Message puts them into an attentive state by using Q&A’s about the product and answers any objections they may have so that they are pre-disposed to order the product now that their questions are answered…

3) …The third Message puts them into a attentive state by using bullet points to drive home important benefits so they click-through to order immediately…

The copy in each message series is CAREFULLY CRAFTED for MAXIMUM DESIRED RESPONSE and ENGAGING! Your subscribers will love them and ACT ON them.

…and these can be used as blog posts, postcard mailers, whatever. Just plug in your ClickBank ID and you’re ready to go!

Cost? 7 measly bucks. And you get a ready-to-go redirect file (HTML and PHP) and PLR!

Check out the Clickbank Email Sets now!

The very popular eBay affiliate program is breaking free of Commission Junction as of April 1, 2008.

Here’s the email I received about it:

We are excited to announce eBay’s new global affiliate platform: the eBay Partner Network.

The new platform will go live on April 1st, 2008 PST, at which point eBay will no longer be running its affiliate program through Commission Junction. Beginning April 1st, affiliates should register with eBay Partner Network and migrate their links from CJ to the new platform.

While CJ and ValueClick have been valuable partners to eBay throughout the years, we’ve decided to give our affiliate community a customized experience for eBay affiliates.

All the great tools and benefits of working with the eBay program will remain the same – access to the Editor Kit and affiliate API, the flexible destination tool, the great payout structure. In addition, the eBay partner network will provide several new features:
• Easy global registration to multiple countries simultaneously
• New, targeted banners and rich media creatives
• New landing page optimization and geo-targeting capabilities
• More detailed reporting capabilities for eBay’s programs

The eBay Partner Network and Commission Junction will run in parallel for one month through this process, so please plan to complete your migration by May 1st, 2008.

You can receive an additional 5% bonus for all traffic tracked through eBay Partner Network in April 2008 (bonus applicable to traffic sent to Half.com and US, UK, Australia, Canada, Italy, India and Spain eBay sites). The sooner you migrate, the more you’ll earn! Just:
• Register with eBay Partner Network on April 1, 2008
• Confirm your registration, and obtain your new identifiers
• Update your links with your new identifiers.
• Reminder: Please plan to complete migration by May 1, 2008.

You will receive more information and step by step directions for the transition on April 1st. A special help desk to answer your questions about migration will also be available starting April 1st. You can find more details, including a list of programs that will be affected, at http://affiliates.ebay.com.

My feelings? While I really like Commission Junction, I’m excited to see that eBay is taking an initiative to manage their own affiliate program, especially as they expand the eBay brand across more and more niches. I can only hope that their reporting tools are on par with CJ’s.

Here’s the link: sign up on April 1! – http://affiliates.ebay.com

Adobe is working with Yahoo to integrate Yahoo PPC ads in PDF content. While this isn’t a revolutionary move, it does open up new possibilities for those who publish and distribute newsletters, reports, and – oh yes – eBooks. Like Y! Search Marketing ads (Yahoo’s answer to Google’s Adsense), participation will be free to publishers, and revenue will be split between the publisher, Adobe, and Yahoo. So wipe the dust off of all the PLR stuff you have on your hard drive and get busy! More on this at CNN Money… 

In my last post, I told you where you could get Camtasia Studio for free. I hope you grabbed your copy – I really don’t know how long that promotion is going to last!Now that you have Camtasia, do you know how you are going to use it?I’ve got an idea for you – pick up Kevin Riley’s Recipe For Camtasia Videos. It’s an awesome guide to making spectacular desktop videos with Camtasia.I don’t have to tell you how popular YouTube is. One entertaining or quirky video can lead to thousands of hits on your website…and if you are selling something, lotsa sales!Kevin has been using Camtasia and putting marketing material up on YouTube for quite some time. He makes a pretty decent living promoting that way, and he definitely knows his stuff. The price is only $9.95. So, take a little of that money I just saved you for Camtasia (hehehehe) and grab Recipe For Camtasia Videos now. You’re gonna love it!

An interesting post came up not too long ago on one of the internet marketing forums I frequent.

“Would you be happy making $100 a day”?

The answers to this question varied wildly. Some people approached ecstatic in their “YES” replies. Life could end if they made $100 a day!
Others indicated that they would not be at all content with a mere $100 a day. (These are the ones that -might- be satisfied with $100 an hour, or even a minute.)

Then, there were the ones that spoke to $100 a day being nice, but it would be a stepping stone to greater things. (GOOD answer, friends.)

Just so happens that this question came from someone I respect, Willie Crawford – and I had a hunch he was up to something.

…And I was right. Not long after that post, Willie and his “insider circle” released a wonderful ebook, simply called “20 Ways To Make $100 A Day Online”.

Of course, I bought it immediately. After reading it, I realized that Willie is slowly changing the face of the Internet Marketing world by releasing titles such as this. Here are 20 precise blueprints, from already successful entrepreneurs, outlined in this 247 page (yes, really) PDF. Not pie-in-the-sky blueprints promising millions, actual step-by-step instructions on building your own business online.

This ebook makes a lot of similar titles I’ve read look like digital trash. It has definitely made my short list of titles to keep close by.

5 stars for both short term income and long term business building.
Check out 20 Ways To Make $100 A Day Online today!

…has changed hands.

WordPress Affiliate Pro is a top-notch plugin originally developed by Catalin Ionescu. I originally got it on a special one-time deal some time ago…and fell in love with it.

In short, WordPress Affiliate Pro makes promoting affiliate programs a snap to do in WordPress. No programming, no static redirects, no nothing – it is easy to install and easier to use…plug in your keyword and the link you want it to link to, click save, and…done. It’s a snap.

It recently changed hands. It’s now run by Daniel Turner and Mark Lindsay. I like the look of the new salespage, and it would appear that the new team is going to take this further than it has been before – I’m excited to see what’s in store.

Take a look now – WordPress Affiliate Pro – you won’t regret it one bit. Cash in and make your blog make cash for you!

Today’s lesson – be careful who you get PLR (Private Label Rights) material from.

PLR material is a great way to get started with a product you can make all your own. Generally, PLR material is a report or ebook that you can totally edit and put your name on. Add material, reword or rewrite, and there you go – your own product, ready to go.

Too often, though, marketers will put out PLR material that is really badly written. I once bought a PLR product that really looked awesome in the salesletter department. I paid about 400 for this product. I figured the price tag was worth it, since it was a niche topic that wasn’t very common at the time, and it was over 100 pages. So I ordered…

Once I got it and cracked it open, however, I found that there was only about 10 pages of useful material. The rest was filler. Many pages were just rewritten versions of prior pages, like the author was trying to set a World Thesaurus Record. I would say roughly 80 percent of the ebook had no “flow” and made no sense.  The sad thing is that this was purchased from a fairly well known marketer, who has…erm…had a good reputation (my opinion, anyway). Once bitten…*sigh*

So, be wary when you purchase PLR materials. There are only 2 or 3 people that I will regularly buy PLR content from nowadays.

Just follow my friend’s advice: “When you polish a turd, you wind up with a really clean turd.”

A PLR tip: If you buy a PLR in a particular format, change it to another. For example, I’m in the process of creating an audio product from a PLR report I picked up. It’s a good way to increase both value and originality of the product.

I’ll bet you are and you don’t even really know it.

Have you ever seen the “Public service” ads by Google where Adsense should be? This means that there are either no ads for the context on your page, or the page hasn’t been indexed by the Adsense gods yet. In either case, you’re losing click money because those PSA (Public Service Advertisements) don’t pay.

Enter Alternate URL Ads.

They take those nasty PSA’s and replace them with revenue generating ads from Searchfeed. All you need is a Searchfeed account, and an Alternate URL Ads account – both free. Take a look at this, it is quite cool. Alternate URL Ads has a lost revenue calculator on their site. I plugged in my figures, and I found out I’m losing over $800 a year in click revenue. 800 bucks! That’s quite a bit – and I don’t really make a killing with Adsense anyway.

Get to Searchfeed and then Alternate URL Ads now and sign up. You can only gain from this.
-Dave

I get emails frequently from individuals who are looking to make some money online. Any money. Now. Quickly. For some it is a necessity. For others it’s because they’ve been struggling for so long to make anything online that they are desperate to just make a dime, they need that morale booster. I feel you – been there done that. Recently, Willie Crawford (LOVE this guy) put out a *dirt cheap* report called Really Fast Money that I loved, and recommended to anyone in this position. I’ve found another potential gem that I’d like to share with you.

I was recently turned on to a website called CashCrate. It is a “Get Paid To…” type site. Briefly, you sign up for the site, and start completing the offers within. It’s completely free to join in on, and 90 percent of the offers do not require any sort of payment information of credit card. Most of the things I’ve seen in there are trials, surveys, etc.

Normally I am -very- skeptical of the “Get Paid To” market. They all sound too good to be true. Well, I’ve been at it for 27 minutes now, and I’ve already recorded almost $10 in my account…and they pay out at $10 (a very low threshold for a site such as this). Most of these offers pay less than 5 dollars per – 50 cents here, 2 dollars there – low amounts. Granted, I’ll have to wait until next month to get paid, but this is a very interesting concept that, if it works, has the potential for creating a very decent residual income. So…is CashCrate worth it? I’m going to do some more offers and see. I figure if I do one or two of these a day, I could ramp up some decent bank in there before payout time. I’ll keep an eye on this one, so follow along.

Ratings:
Long Term Business: Potentially, due to the affiliate program.
Short Term Cash: Potentially. Although it takes a month to get paid.
Ease: Excellent, no complaints so far.
Overall: This has promise, if it lives up. Time will tell.

Clickbank now has a recurring payment option. So, if you were thinking about using PayPal or 2CO for recurring payments, you have another option.

What it costs you:
Initial Bill = 7.5% + $1
Rebill (less than $40) = 9.9%

So, now is the time to fire up that membership site that you have been thinking about, and enjoy the reliability of Clickbank. The drawback? They still only pay by check…but it’s nice getting a regular check in hand!

http://www.clickbank.com – take a look now!

In the world of internet marketing, there are ample opportunities to make money by writing reviews and embedding your affiliate links in the review. But, how can you get the advantage of being one of the first to publish a review? Offer your services as a beta tester. Visit some of the more popular IM forums (Warriors come to mind) and become an active member. It may take a little time, but get to know some people in the forum. The next time someone makes a post like “I’ve made some software and I’m looking for testers”, jump on it. Get the software, test it, provide feedback, and discuss the affiliate program with the author. There is a good chance that there is one already in place. So, write a good review of the product, and sit on it until the minute it launches. Take your review and post it to as many article sites you can (make sure that they allow affiliate links in the article). That way, you get a jump on everyone else, and your article will most likely hit the engines first…creating nice affiliate commissions for you!

Thanks for viewing!
-Dave

You may find that I do quite a few posts about blogging. Why? Blogging is simply one of the best ways to get your message out. Small companies to large enterprises have started some sort of blogging – they realize that the search engines love it, and so do their customers.

I’ve been looking around for a good Contact Form plugin for WordPress, and I think I finally found one. Douglas Karr has significantly modified an existing plugin and posted it at his blog, here. Spam is all but eliminated by an actual challenge-response question, that you can set in the options panel. I’ve just installed this plugin and activated it on a couple of my blogs, so we’ll have to see how well it works. It’s really easy to configure (as is most everything else in WordPress), so if you’ve been needing a good contact form for your blog (and what business doesn’t?!?), go grab it. It’s “Donation-ware” – meaning it is free, but Doug welcomes donations.