BONUS Week in Affiliate Land

Last week, I received a commission check and immediately thought, "Darn, I'm going to have to send this back and get them to write up a new check, there's a HUGE... 3 thousand dollar " ... in my favor... error.

I then read the accompanying letter and discovered that the check amount was in fact correct - I'd come in second place in a contest I didn't even know was being held.

NICE bonus!

Then, I discovered that I'd won some prizes in the Affiliate Classroom contest, another contest in which I didn't actively participate. But I won another 300 smackers, a coaching session with my buddy Yanik Silver, some nice software, and some other goodies... cool!

You may notice that at Christmas, many merchants run contests to increase their sales volume. As a rule, I won't actively participate in sales or affiliate contests, because I don't want to be 'incentivized', or promote products merely for the sake of promoting products. I promote products that I feel are of value to my visitors, not because I want to try and win a contest. If I inadvertently win something, that's cool... and so far I've inadvertently won big screen TV's, cash, trips...

The prizes are great, so you may want to stay on the lookout for affiliate contests for products that you already promote.

I got another surprise after helping a new service get launched by partipating in a group coaching session. They sent me a VERY nice thank you gift of 2 cruise tickets.

Last but not least, I hammered out an agreement with McGraw-Hill last week. A brand-new version of the Super Affiliate Handbook will be popping up in bookstores all over North America by early next summer.

Why am I telling you about my "bonus week"?

Well, the rewards of becoming a super affiliate may surprise you and surpass what you hope or expect.

To get those rewards, you'll have to earn them by seeking out new opportunites. Lend a helping hand. Get past the 'mike-fright' and get your face or name in front of a crowd, online and off.

When you do the work (week after week after week), you'll be surprised and delighted at how opportunities and bonuses will start finding YOU!

Make 2006 the year you create your own opportunity, and I'll continue do my part to help you make it work!

Cheers,

---

Rosalind Gardner is author of the best-selling "Super Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in ONE Year Selling Other People's Stuff Online.

Super Affiliate Handbook

How to "Qualify" Your PPC Traffic

Liz sent me the following question this week.

"...when it comes to advertising, particularly PPC I'm having trouble figuring how you target certain people. I'll use an example.

When you use keyword tools like Wordtracker you see how many people are searching for a certain keyword, but very rarely do people put specifically what they are looking for, or who they are what kind of experience they have.

Let's say someone searches for the term "work from home" and let's pretend you want to target someone who wants to work from home as a graphic designer but they have very little experience...

Well, I'm sure a lot of people search for "work from home" or even "how to make money working from home" but people don't put "work from home as a graphic designer with little experience" you know what I mean?

In fact, most search terms are extremely broad, so how do you find your target market so you can advertise to them if they aren't searching specific terms?

Thanks for the good question, Liz!

Tailoring your PPC ads for your specific audience is VERY important! Untargetted traffic is a waste of your advertising budget.

For example, if you use "work from home" in your title, your ad will get clicked on by everyone who works from home.

So you'll want to speak to your audience right from the TITLE of your ad.

In the example you present, you want to attract graphic designers... so you'd want to put "Graphic Designers" or Graphic Design in your title.

Here's an example of a possible ad you might place on Google Adwords.

Graphic Designers
Work from home. Find design
jobs at DesignerJobs.com
DesignerJobs.com

If you want to weed out "freebie seekers", include the price of your item within the ad's description. So, for example you might place an ad like this:

Designer Jobs
Post your design jobs. Only $1
per listing. DesignerJobs.com
DesignerJobs.com

Hope that helps!

Ebay Coupon Codes

Jim Cockrum, author of the "Silent Sales Machine Hiding on eBay" mentioned coupon codes in his latest newsletter, so knowing we're all getting down to the wire with Christmas shopping, I thought I'd pass them along.

Until December 18th, eBay is offering the following coupons when you use your Paypal account to pay for items from specific sellers. Note: To test a coupon to make sure it works, try it on a "Buy it now" item that requires immediate payment. If the coupon does not work for you during the payment process, don't complete the transaction.

$15 off $100 - Coupon code: C23-GiftGuide
$5 off $50 - Coupon code: C22-GiftGuide
10% off (max. $25) - Coupon code: C11-GiftGuide

To learn about selling on eBay, please visit the "Auction Selling" section of NetProfitsToday.com.

CafePress Coupon Codes

Here are a few coupon codes from CafePress good until December 8th, 2005.

48-Hour Holiday shopping extravagana. Get up to 25% off any order with these coupons:

$5 off $20 or more order - Code: HOL5
$10 off $40 or more order - Code: HOL10
$25 off $100 or more order - Code: HOL25

What is CafePress?

CafePress is an online marketplace that offers sellers complete e-commerce services to independently create and sell a wide variety of products, and offers buyers unique merchandise across virtually every topic.

Create your own unique and personalized items as gifts or sell them in your own CafePress store!

Portal Feeder Launches Today

Just in case you missed the 'buzzzzz', Jason Potash's and Marc Quarles' "Portal Feeder" System launches today, December 6th, at Noon Eastern... and CLOSES 24 hours later.

A number of NPT'ers have asked me what I think about it, but like you, I only know what I've read about it through Jason's newsletters and in the Portal Feeder Blog.

Here's a snippet of what Jason had to say in his latest news update about Portal Feeder, and you've got to admit, it sounds a lot they're solidly on my 'No More Crap Affiliate sites' bandwagon...

"Right from the day Marc and I first brainstormed about the whole concept of Portal Feeder, our approach was simple...

To provide a complete end-to-end software suite with the essential training and resources, to enable marketers an efficient way to create "whitehat" content portals that survive long-term within the search engines.

And in my books, "long-term" survival in the search engines, doesn't mean 3-6 months.

Let's face it, people are getting tired of hoping on the latest get-traffic-quick product. Building a new website and then watching it crash in the search engines in 3 months, is no picnic.

In fact, it's downright frustrating.

And just like struggling to keep water out of a sinking row boat, eventually the boat sinks.

Gravity catches up and it's game over.

The same thing happens to push-button websites designed to deceive or trick the search engines.

A new breed of websites are emerging. Websites that play by the rules, contain useful information, and yet STILL generate a flood of traffic and profits.

In other words, the type of websites that visitors actually bookmark because they provide value.

And these "new breed" of websites is what Portal Feeder is all about."

Just in case you're thinking about sticking with the 'blackhat' stuff and building some more SEO sites, you should know that Google's last update, nicknamed 'Jagger' really put the screws to a number of 'designed for the engines' sites. I've been reading the 'my income was 30K last month - now it's nothing' laments on various forums.

It's also no secret that Google plans to rid the web of a lot more crap in the next few months.

So, if you're in that position, or are looking for a way to build what I call 'Theme Park' sites, you might want to check out Portal Feeder today.