ZillionBits-Its about number$ and te<h^0!0gy

I’ve long been a member of Amazon’s affiliate program, One of the new features available via the Amazon Associates program is the Amazon aStore, which Darren Rowse already reviewed, but here’s the quick summary: an aStore is an Amazon-hosted website that displays Amazon products chosen by the associate. It can be customized to a certain degree to let the visitor also see categories of products, but it really needs more customization capabilities. All product information comes from Amazon’s databases, of course, and any purchases made through an aStore earn the affiliate a commission. The idea is to make it easy to build a featured set of products and include it on an associate’s website with no programming required. (If you’re willing to invest some time and do some programming, however, you’re better off looking at Amazon Web Services, you’ll get much more control that way.

Anyhow, I was wondering if it was possible to integrate AdSense into an Amazon aStore, so I did some experimentation and came up with The HDTV Shoppe (opens a new window).

I’m constantly intrigued by the clever ideas I see and hear about that people are using for viral marketing and linkbait. While it’s only loosely related to affiliate marketing, the concept of linkbait and starting an “Idea Virus” is definitely one that can be used to generate affiliate and/or advertising income on the Internet. I’m posting a list of example linkbait and viral marketing successes here to help people get their own ideas flowing.

1. All My Life For Sale - This was originally just a guy named John Freyer who decided to sell literally everything he owned on eBay. Now it’s a website, a hardcover book, and a piece of performance art that’s on display at multiple museums.

2. One Red Paperclip - Kyle MacDonald posted an offer on CraigsList to trade a red paperclip for something “bigger and better”. Since then he has traded up 14 times, and just finished a trade to get a house. According to the Sitemeter on his website, he’s receiving close to 200,000 visits to his website daily. If you assume that he’s earning an average of $1 CPM for those Google Adsense ads he’s got running on the site, then he’s earning $6k per month just from that advertising. (And that $1 figure is a total wild guess on my part - it would be much more or much less than that.) Read the rest of this entry »

Following on from here, perhaps the two most common questions I’ve seen people ask, when it comes to evaluating PHP applications are;

• Does it loook good?
• Is it easy to install?

Now not everyone is a programmer or a system administrator—”normal human beings” rank these highly because they relate directly to the two most pressing problems they’re facing: they want a site which is visually attractive and, with limited technical expertise, installation can be a significant hurdle to overcome.

But when it comes to security or maintenance, those requirements rank pretty low down. So here’s some different things to think about, following on from this talk (PDF) on page 19, which I’d argue rank much higher when evaluating a project you plan to use (further suggestions appreciated).

Note that in an ideal world you’d have time and expertise on hand to do a full code review but in reality that’s not going to happen so what I’m suggesting here is meant as a reasonable compromise to help you build up a “ballpark” feeling for an application without making a huge effort.

Search Engine Journal’s Loren Baker has written up a case study on “linkbaiting.” According to Baker’s interesting post:

“Link baiting (or linkbaiting) is the emerging art of building a useful tool, writing an interesting article, or running a newsworthy ‘event’ on a web site which naturally attracts links.”

The case study cites examples of linkbaiting:

“…running a contest which includes multiple sites (such as blog contests or niche site award contests), testing a new advertising format… and throwing a wrench into a breaking or popular news story via attacks, a new spin, or a dash of humor. If anything, the social web and blogosphere have made linkbaiting a reality which only existed for a select few who already enjoyed broad reach and incredible viral marketing skills years ago.”

In other words, linkbaiting is simply viral marketing that attracts backlinks quickly - something that’s an integral part of the business model we use for our step-by-step virtual training in Affiliate Classroom. Read the rest of this entry »