RevenueQuest

So I finally decided to create my own, personal blog: RunPD.com. I will mainly post about my athletic career there and keep RevenueQuest more professional/affiliate marketing oriented.

Speaking of affiliate marketing, now is a good time to fill you in on where I am at. School has been as busy as ever and affiliate marketing is very limited these days. Currently, I am not running any PPC campaigns and the only traffic I am getting to my offer pages is via search engines. This would be great if the volume was there, but it isn’t.

Like the last few summers, I should have some time to put into affiliate marketing and get something going again…

Almost 18 months ago I wondered how long it would take Google to pass up Yahoo! on Alexa’s rankings. Yesterday I noticed that it finally happened. Google is now the #1 most visited website in the world! (according to Alexa)

It is interesting to note that Google owns two other sites in the top-10, Youtube and Blogger.com. Pretty impressive.

Last week I was lucky enough to finish up my taxes and sent them away to the US Treasury and the Franchise Tax Board of California. Last year was definitely the most I have ever made from affiliate marketing and I wanted to be a good citizen and pay my taxes. Since my total profits came out to be less than $10k, I thought I would pay very little. I mean, Obama is looking out for me, right?

Wrong

Self Employment screwed me. Many people that are making lots of money online incorporate or form an LLC to avoid these high taxes. In the future, if I start to make much more money, I will without a doubt incorporate.

In my 2009 goals, I said that I wanted to start networking more with other people involved in the affiliate marketing industry. Today, I have reason #1 why it has helped to network.

So one of my friends recently got an email from a senior member of the Facebook advertising team. The email was sent because Facebook wants my buddy to spend more money with them. Using this new hook-up, my buddy asked if my Facebook daily budget could be bumped (It is currently at $250 and I have hit that several times). Within 5 minutes, I get an email saying, “We recently increased the daily spend limit on your Facebook Ads account to $5,000.00.”

Nice! Now I better go spend some money on Facebook… and get my credit card limit raised while I am at it.

As many people know, single-page landing pages generally don’t work anymore. Adwords slaps any site they think is just a sales page and does not offer anything to the visitor. They are more worried about what they call “user experience” then profit… Google and Facebook must be buddy-buddy.

For a while now, it has been recommended that landing pages have articles, contact page, privacy policy, etc. Adding these pages makes your site look legit to both Google (or Yahoo!, MSN) and the visitor. I have also had some success with generating leads with the contact page.

Some people that visit your landing page may not be completely sold. They may have some questions and a contact page is a perfect place for them to ask. You then have another chance to sell that visitor on your product. Answer their question to the best of your ability (Don’t lie. If you don’t know the answer, show them where they can find one.) and maybe include some elegant pros that will get them to wip out their credit card.

A Simple Contact Page

If you don’t already have a contact page, here is a simple one you can use. Put this code on your contact page (ie. www.yourdomain.com/contact.php):

  <form method=”post” action=”sendmail.php”>
<table width=”500″>
<tr>
<td valign=”top”>Name:</td><td><input type=”text” size=”30″ name=”name” /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign=”top”>E-mail:</td><td><input type=”text” size=”30″ name=”email” /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign=”top”>Comments:</td>
<td><textarea cols=”50″ rows=”8″ name=”comments”></textarea></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td><input type=”submit” value=”Submit” /></td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>

And then save this as “sendmail.php”:

<?
//send us your mail

mail(’you@yourdomain.com’,'Subject of the email’,$comments,’From: ‘.$name.’ <’.$email.’>’);
header( ‘Location: http://www.yourdomain.com’ ); // where they go after the message is sent

?>

I’ve been thinking about what my goals for the new year should be. Setting attainable goals is important to reach new levels of success in everything that you do; whether it be sports, school, or affiliate marketing.

1. Income of $20,000+

The last few months I have been thinking a lot about what I am going to do after I graduate. Making a living in affiliate marketing would be great, but it just doesn’t seem like a very consistent career. If I can make $20k this year while going to school and running, it will show me that there is a potential to continue affiliate marketing post graduation — at least partime.

2. No long breaks

I think this blog has had some helpful posts. Unfortunately, it has never really “taken off” and I think the main reason for that is inconsistent posting. I’m not going to make a specific goal of posting exactly every 7 days… instead this subjective goal will hopefully keep me in line.

3. Network

I would like to get to know more people involved in affiliate marketing. Maybe I will even make a trip to one of the big gatherings like Affiliate Summit.

I have three big goals to work on. $20k is about $55/day and I’m already behind.