I have quit affiliate marketing

At least that is what alot of people have been emailing to aks me :

“Hi Frank
I have noticed you haven’t been active on A4U for quite some time now and was wondering if you were just busy or have quit affiliate marketing all together”

“Hello Frank
How are you ? I hope I am wrong but I have heard rumours that you have quit in affiliating to pursue other things, is it true ?”

Now to answer both questions and all the other doubts in one answer – I HAVE NOT QUIT AFFILIATE MARKETING

So where have I been since my last post on 13th August 2009 ? well various things have happened over the last 2 months including

1. Kids summer holidays – Decided to take some time off to spend with the family.
2. I have been slowly dropping my clients away to concentrate on all my own projects full time
3. I have developed and also launched 2 big sites
4. I have been establishing reputable and trustworthy partners to start joint ventures with, on some of my premium domain names
5. I have been investing in more premium domain names and working towards a structured work plan for the next 12 months

To answer another common question I have been asked frequently as of late – YES I WILL BE ATTENDING THE A4UEXPO THIS YEAR

I will also be making more regular updates to my blog with new ideas / challenges and help for people to show you ways to make money online.

Anyway enough now – I will see you at the expo.

facebook gone wrong

Here is something that made me chuckle yesterday

Ouch !! make sure you check who your friends are, before making statements like that ha ha !

Ps my long awaited update will be here soon – been a hectic few weeks ! phew !

yes I am still alive – update on my affiliate marketing experiment is coming later today

Phew 9 days and lots of comments to approve ! I have been so busy the last week or so, my blog has been neglected, but fear not I will be giving you a nice update of my affiliate marketing experiement, making 1 or 2 new blog posts and also answering all your comments from the last few days.

Keep your eyes peeled !

my heart is in this 100%

I was recently approached by Heart Internet to give an interview for them to send out to their 100,000+ newsletter readers,  detailing ways on how to make money and monetise their websites using affiliate marketing.

You can read the interview here

Enjoy

A little thank you and also a sunday niche !

A few weeks ago I was contacted by someone called Jim Kinloch, who had read my posts on the a4u forum and asked if I would be interested in promoting their campaign for old newspapers, he also commented that he knew I was busy and probably wouldn’t have the time to look at it – unfortunately he was 100% correct, and I replied back that I had too much on my plate at present, but would re look into it at a later date and directed Jim to my blog.

A few days later, Jim contacted me again commenting that he had seen my blog post that I have recently celebrated my first wedding anniversary and as a thank you for all the effort and advice I have given people on a4u, for me to choose a complimentary gift ! I was touched, as I never expected such a kind gesture as it is quite rare where I get any real reward for anything I contribute to the affiliate community, so it was a very nice gesture. I chose a backdated newspaper from the day my wife was born. A few days later it arrived and my wife was over the moon with the gift, and it was quite funny reading the news from the day she was born (all those years ago !).

I looked more into this niche and found it a little bit gutting that I do not have time to do something with it, as I believe it is a quite a niche product and could do well as it is starting at 12% and the gift I chose for my wife was £40 so it would be almost £5 commission per sale which is great !

So as a thankyou to Jim and also to give others the opportunity to take advantage of this, here are a couple of niche domains (with search traffic according to the google tool) which could do well with this affiliate program.

birthdaynewspapers / org / uk
oldnewspapers /org / uk
birthdatenewspapers / org / uk
historicnewspapers / org / uk

Email Jim by clicking here and mention this blog post, and he will get you approved on the program (which is on the fantastic webgains) straight away !

18 inch tyres – Saturday niche domain name for you

Phew what a busy week ! haven’t stopped with various things, so I haven’t had the time to blog much.

Anyway, after seeing this I decided to post a “Saturday” niche domain here for you.

18inchtyres / co / uk is the niche (all extensions are available even the .com) now this only gets 720 exact according to the google tool, but with the Mytyres affiliate program paying 3% commission and the average price for a set of 4 x 18 inch tyres being a good few £££ there is scope for some decent commissions to be made and the competition in the serps is very very weak for this and other keywords.

Plus mytyres are the cheapest place around for 18 inch tyres or any size tyres for that matter so if you use your head and do the maths, this will create lots of niche’s for you to tackle.

Good luck and look forward to seeing any which are made as a result of this post. ps Don’t expect to get rich from this domain name, but it could give you some extra cash to spend on your families for a little amount of work.

Buying 18 inch tyres and wheels will NOT improve your car's overall look, if it currently resembles this

Domain name addiction

So I just got a batch of domain names which need to renewed (.co.uk names are due for renewal every 2 years) Now I looked down the list and there was 14 names which need to be renewed in july 2009. Not too bad I thought, then I looked at the names and out of the 14 names I have only developed one of them in 2 years !!!!

However I am not alone- after speaking to lots of other people in this industry, it appears that this is normal practice in this game !

It isn’t all doom and gloom, as good .co.uk domains will always rise in value as they become more rare to purchase for registration fee. Just take a look at Domain Prices and see how much some domain names sell for. Alan the owner of acorn domains (another fantastic resource for us doman name addicts to meet up) does a great job in keeping this site updated, and it is great for people who have investments in premium generic domains, as it shows proof of domain name sales to people who do not understand the value of domain names, and also how important they can be to a business.

Now don’t get me wrong, every domain name is not valuable but it makes me think twice when I see my domain renewals and worry that if I let them drop, the may become be valuable in the near future and I will have missed out on an opportunity.

Take tradeexperts.co.uk for example. A nice domain which is an excellent name for a website offering all the details of the best tradesmen over the UK. I had an offer late last year for £500 for the name, and I declined it. The name came up for renewal last month, and once again I paid the £6 registration fee to renew it for the next 2 years, as someone has already shown interest in the name. The name is still undeveloped and will never be developed by myself, so should I have taken the £500 ? But then I have telecommunicate.co.uk which was due for renewal 2 weeks ago, and I am going to let it drop, much to my dislike.

Don’t get me wrong I have made a VERY healthy profit from selling some domain names over the years, and only yesterday a friend of mine messaged me asking what he should do with a domain he bought. He bought it approx 6 months ago for £1,000 and he has now been offered £2,000 for the name and he hasn’t even done anything with it, and this is a growing trend as domains become rarer.

Domain name addiction is something which takes up quite a bit of my time, I have 100’s of good domain names sitting there undeveloped but I still look for more domain names to invest in. It isn’t a “bad” addiction as such, but you need to have an eye for the market (which luckily I feel I have got, after buying and selling domains for a few years from £xx to mid £xx,xxx level )

I would be interested to hear comments from other domain name addicts and what reasons they keep buying names and not developing them and just hoard them away.

A little affiliate marketing experiment for you all

Ok after the success of my HUGE niche affiliate marketing thread on A4u forum (link) I decided to do an experiment with a brand new domain and in the public eye, so I can chart my progress and see how well this works.

At approx 6.30pm tonight I registered facing bankruptcy (which was a very nice available to register .co.uk domain name !) and I have spend just over 1 hour building the site.

I am not adding any backlinks, apart from the one above and I am also using this blog post to get the site indexed.

According to the Google keyword estimator “facing bankruptcy” gets 1000 exact match searches a month. Not bad at all for a “debt” type keyword with little competition and the domain name being available to register.

The idea behind this site, is that if someone is “facing bankruptcy” and typing this into a search engine, there is a good chance that they are looking for alternative methods to bankruptcy.

The site presents the visitor with reasons against bankruptcy (visually with red crosses) and why an IVA could suit them better (green ticks).

I will be updating this blog post to keep you updated with progress on search engine positions, how long it took to get it indexed and time spent so far – 1 hour 23 mins (including this blog post)
Money spent so far – £6.93 on domain name

This goes to show that if you do enough thinking and research, there are good names available to register and can make money if you think out of the box !

Wish me luck !

RIP Michael Jackson

I have woken up this morning to the most shocking news that I have heard in years – Michael Jackson is dead. I am writing this post in absolute shock and sadness. He was my all time favorite music artist of all time, and I have never got tired of his music. Regardless of the rumours, no-one can take away the fantastic music he created over the years.

I am totally lost for words to write anything else, but all I know is, it is the biggest  loss to music of all time. My thoughts are with his children at this time.

Rest in peace Michael Jackson

offline advertising – a cheaper alternative to PPC ?

I have been wanting to trial this properly for some time now, and after doing some basic maths, it appears that this could be very profitable if done in the right industries and in the right ways.

One of my first ventures was running a local community magazine, and it was very surprising the response rate I got from various things in that for both local businesses and websites.

If done correctly, it is possible to make money where ever you are, or what ever you are doing

Example
From memory, I think the average response rate from a flyer is 1% (some quote a 2-3% response rate, but I prefer to be as pesemistic as possible) so let me show you an example of how using this could effect your ROI.

There are thousands of offers for 5000 x A5 full colour double sided flyers, for as little as £100 if you look around on Google. Couple this with a flyer distributer who will deliver a leaflet for approx £30 per 1000 leaflets, that makes it £250 for 5000 leaflets delivered through peoples doors.

For maximum ROI, you need to concentrate on a product which is lead based, such as loans, debt consolidation, iva etc as they will all pay you just on someones information received and NOT the physical sale of the product.

Lets say that a Debt Consolidation lead will give you £50 per lead.

1% success rate from a flyer = 5000/100 = 50.
So 1% success rate would be 50 applications.
50 applications x £50 a lead = £2,500 from a £250 initial investment.

Not bad I am sure you will agree ! however it isn’t as easy as just that, as you will need to plan your areas where you target the leaflet drops to specific demographics. For example there is no point in targetting sheltered accommodation with a bunch of leaflets, as they will very unlikely have a computer to action your website.

To break even you would only need 5 leads from 5000 flyers to cover all your costs (this is only a 0.1% response rate)

I shall be trialling this out in the next few weeks, so I will report back with my findings then, but if you use your head and think outside the box, this really could make you some fantastic ROI and with very little effort at all.

TIP 1 : If you can afford to pay a little bit extra, pay for a “single flyer drop” – this means the distributor will deliver ONLY your leaflet through a door at once, instead of a “multi flyer drop” where your flyer will be posted through doors with another 3 or 4 leaflets. You are virtually guaranteed to have a better success rate doing it this way.

TIP 2 : You may think you can save yourself £150 and deliver the flyers yourself. To deliver all 5000 will take you a good few days, and is viable if you can spare the time and don’t mind all the walking, but from experience I would prefer to pay someone the £150.

Good luck and if you do trial this out, I would love to hear your results.