The cookie ensures that if the visitor ‘belongs to’ or was ‘referred by’ a link from your website, that you will be credited with the affiliate sale should that visitor return to the affiliate site within a given timeframe and make a purchase. Generally cookies may last any amount of time, called the cookie length.  These lengths vary, but are typically 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days. And if you are still wondering about the term cookie, it is just a snippet of data that is automatically placed on a visitor’s website and it is totally harmless.

As an astute affiliate marketer, one of the items that you need to evaluate anytime you are considering joining a new affiliate program is the cookie length of that program. The longer the length, the more time a visitor has to return to the affiliate site and make a purchase for which you will receive a commission. Naturally, it is wise to choose affiliate programs that have cookies that last a long time. Some programs even offer lifetime cookies.

Generally, I like programs that offer lifetime cookies, however there is one downside to only joining affiliate programs that offer lifetime cookies and that is, assuming you are not the first affiliate to refer a particular visitor, you may be sending visitors to the program that have already been referred by or ‘belong to’ someone else. This could be especially true if the program that you are promoting is particularly popular. So there is a downside to only choosing programs that offer lifetime cookies that you should be aware of.

On the other hand, some prgrams offer very short cookies and some do not even tag the visitors you refer at all. In most cases, these types of affiliate programs should not be promoted. It is widely known that visitors often do not make a purchase on the first visit to a store (or in this case an affiliate website) so why refer them to a website that will not give you credit when they return to the site to make a purchase at a later date. It is just bad affiliate marketing to even waste your time promoting such programs.

Finally, there are different ways cookies may be manually deleted by the user so even ‘lifetime’ cookies may not necessarily last forever. Choose a good combination of affiliate programs that integrate well with your content and select programs to promote that offer varying cookie lengths. After you have achieved some success and made some affiliate sales, you will be able to tell which programs are working best for your site and which types of cookies work best with your visitors. Anyway, just remember the old Sesame Street song, “C is for cookie…” the next time you are perusing affiliate programs to join and think about this article from KillerIncome.net when it comes to selecting which affiliate programs you ultimately decide to promote on your website to ensure that you select a good mix of programs offering varying cookie lengths.

If you enjoyed this article and find the posts on KillerIncome.net useful and informative, please subscribe to my RSS feed.

I have decided to no longer include any other non-affiliate income in these reports since this is an affiliate marketing blog.  In addition, I wondered whether to only include income once a check was received. As many affiliates know, some affiliate programs have income thresholds (like Google Adsense) and checks are not disbursed until a certain amount of earnings has accrued. I have decided to include any and all earnings earned (whether they are received or not) during the calendar month. This is relatively easy as most programs let you run a date range report. Finalyy, please remember that my earnings come from my network of affiliate sites and not simply from this blog.  So, without further adieu…

May 2008 Affiliate Earnings: $79.10

Quite a drop from last month, but I am only including affiliate earnings and only money earned between My 1, 2008 and May 31, 2008. So where di this windfall come from?

 Adsense: $16.84

I use Adsense on FreeMusicVideos.net, Concerts.ws and MusicGearPlus.com. I have not had any time to promote these sites in awhile, but will still take what I can get, Once my time frees up a bit I will definitely increase their exposure.

 Affiliate Programs: $62.26

Although I run several different affiliate programs throughout my network, these earnings were from sites within the Friendfinder.com network, which I promote exclusively on WebPersonalsOnline.com, as well as a couple of niche dating sites I also promote. I also run Match.com and Yahoo Personals, but was not able to earn anything from these programs in May.

Finally, on this blog - despite gaining several new links, appearing in the SERPs for some search terms, and averaging about twenty unique visitors per day, I have not earned any money from the affiliate programs promoted here. I have a good feeling that will change in June.

So, although May was excruciatingly slow and I have not posted nearly as much as I wanted to I did spend my time productively as a good affiliate should. So what have I been up to? You’ll have to read my next post to find out what I have been doing and why I expect the effort I put in last month to really explode my affiliate earnings in June.  One final comment: While I certainly hope to make money from this blog, it is not my main source of affiliate income, but more of a vehicle to explain what I am doing on my other sites to monetize them and increase their earnings.

CTR is calculated by dividing the number of times a user clicked one of your affiliate links (or banners etc.) by the number of times that particular link was served (called impressions). For example, suppose you have placed a banner advertisement on a website and that banner was served one thousand times (1000 impressions) and clicked on ten times (10 clicks). The resulting Click Through rate (CTR) would be 10/1000 = .01 and since CTR is usually expressed as a percentage, just multiply .01 x 100 = 1%. One important thing to remember is that CTR is calculated based on number of clicks even if those clicks all came from the same visitor!  Even still, in order to increase your affiliate earnings one of the first things you want to do is increase your CTR.

According to Value Click Media, ”a typical CTR (for a banner ad) is 0.5% (1 in 200).” This means that there is one click for every 200 impressions. Looking at MY Match.com CTR (for Match.com affiliate advertisements placed on WebPersonalsOnline.com) in the above image, you can see that the CTR I achieved for April was 20.67%, just over forty times the typical banner ad CTR! Clearly these results weren’t achieved using banners alone. Let’s take a look at another statistic from April for WebPersonalsOnline.com to see if there is even more to the story.

The next screenshot breaks down the 20.67% CTR to the two types of advertisements used to achieve this click-thru-rate, Banners and Searchboxes.  If you analyze the CTR for each type of ad, you’ll see I was still able to achieve a CTR greater than 5% for my banners (over ten times a typical banner CTR of .5%) and a whopping 52.44% CTR for my Searchbox advertisements! This CTR is almost one hundred and five times

better than the typcial banner CTR of .5% (according to Value Click Media). Certainly, there is more to earning real money as an affiliate than simply placing some banners on your website. Let’s analyze how I achieved such a high CTR.

My banner CTR of over 5% is pretty good. I achieved this by using non-standard size banners and also by embedding 300×250 size banners into many of my articles. Also, in addition to the standard 468×60 size banner that is common on many web pages, I also used 728×90 sized banners (sometimes called leaderboards) and vertical 160×600 sized banners, also known as skyscrapers. By using non-conventional sized banners and experimenting with embedding banners directly in my articles, as well as keeping the banners highly targeted to my visitors, I was able to achieve a CTR better than ten times the typical banner CTR.

But the real story is the 52.44% CTR I achieved by using Searcbox ads. The Match.com affiliate program (through Linkshare) offers convenient SearchBoxes that affiliates can embed directly into their web pages. These Search Boxes contain my affiliate URL so that whenever a visitor uses one of these search boxes on my online dating site to browse the profiles of Match.com members, I get credit for the referral.

The CTR is so high because the visitors to my site are all interested in online dating and checking out the photos of single men and women on Match. Although I’d like to think everyone is coming to my website to read the in-depth articles on internet dating and relationships, my goal as an affiliate is to get them to Match.com so I get credit for the referral. I use a Search Box centered in the upper-middle of each of my articles on WebPersonalsOnline.com and this appeals to the curiosity of my visitors. And, hey, it’s free to look. I imagine most of my visitors never read any of my articles all the way through and that’s fine with me!

So, what can you learn about increasing your CTR from my ‘case-study’? First, typical banner CTR is very low. This is generally for conventional sized banners placed in typical spots on the web page. You can improve your banner CTR simply by experimenting with non-typical banner sizes and placements. Second, look for affiliate programs that offer more than the simple banner ot text-link affiliate links. Specialty links, such as the Seachbox described above can totally annihilate the typical Click Through Rate(s) achieved by most affiliates using conventional linking methods. The search boxes work especially well for online dating sites because eveybody wants to see what the members look like, who are the good-looking guys, how many hot girls are there on the site, who are the newest members etc.

So, just remember to try different things, experiment with different linking options and try to find affiliate programs that give you many different link choices for getting your visitors to the affiliate website. Experiment, experiment, experiment and analyze the results you are getting to see if there is aanything you can do to improve those results. To be a successful affiliate does not require rocket science, but it does require a little testing, experimentation, and analysis.

Technorati Tags:  CTR, how to increase CTR, affiliate marketing, increase affiliate links CTR, CTR analysis, how to improve CTR, affiliate CTR

April 2008 Affiliate Earnings: $158.77

Now, I know that might not sound too impressive given that I have several sites in my network, but let’s break these earnings down and do some analysis on how they were achieved and where they came from, as well as why they weren’t higher.

Adsense: $106.23

I run Adsense on three of the sites in my network. These include FreeMusicVideos.net, Concerts.ws, and MusicGearPlus.com. (Note: I also used to run Adsense on 39j.net, but I recently sold this site so I no longer consider it part of my network). Of the three sites, FreeMusicVideos.net was the largest Adsense earner, earning approximately 50% of the April Adsense income. MusicGearPlus.com and Concerts.ws earned approximately 25% of the Adsense revenue each. Again, not the most impressive earnings, but consider I have not worked on or promoted ANY of the three aforementioned sites in about one year!

Affiliate Programs: $52.54

So what programs did the best and from which sites did these earnings come? One hundred percent of the earnings from affiliate programs came from Friendfinder.com, which is one of the dating affiliate sites I promote on WebPersonalsOnline.com. Now, I also promote Match.com (through Linkshare) on my online personals site, as well as Yahoo Personals (through Commission Junction). I actually did have earnings of $39.99 from Match.com, but these were reversed because in the month of March I received a check from Linkshare for Match.com earnings in the amount of $77.49 after which they had to issue the customer a refund. Although I was never formally notified, I believe Linkshare is reversing my commissions until I ‘make up’ that $77.49.  If I am correct, I still have $77.49 - $39.99 = $37.50 to go. Hopefully I will make that up soon.

Why didn’t I earn more form WebPersonalsOnline.com? Two reasons, I think. I have not gotten any links recently and it is the ONLY site in my affiliate network not hosted with HostGator. I think that periodic downtimes at my ‘other’ hosting company, although brief, have caused the site to suffer slightly. HostGator is much more reliable and responsive. One final comment about the affiliate earnings from FriendFinder.com - I have actually earned slightly more from them in the month of April, but they have a $50 payout threshold on EACH of the sites in their network, so while I actually earned about ten dollars and change from Amigos.com and just over twelve dollars from AsiaFriendFinder.com, the earnings I am posting here are from checks I received in the month of April. I debated on this for awhile and could not decide if I should show April Income in this report as the total checks received, what my affiliate stats were showing by month’s end, or whatever. PLEASE let me know how you would like to see my income stats reported in futue posts!

Other Affiliate Programs: $0.00

So what other affiliate programs do I promote? On FreeMusicVideos.net, I promote iTunes, RocketProfit (RingTones) and CDUniverse. None of these programs earned me any money in the month of April. On WebPersonalsOnline.com, I recently added Yahoo Personals and I also promote a couple niche dating sites. None of these earned me any money, either.

So what about KillerIncome.net?

I am sad to say that in the first full month of this affiliate marketing blog’s existence, it did not earn any money. On the blog, I am currently promoting HostGator, Aaron Wall’s SEO Book, Revolution WordPress Themes, and GoDaddy Domain Registration (through Commission Junction). Unfortunately, I was not able to turn a commission from any of these programs in my first month.

I am quite happy with the growth of the blog in its first month in terms of the posts I created, the number of indexed pages in Google, and some of the relationships I have formed with other bloggers. On the flip side, I really wanted to have some affiliate earnings from this blog in its first full month. I did consider running Adsense on here since I believe that is the most likely option for earning something from a new site, but I am more interested in making money through the use of affiliate programs on this blog.

Other Online Income: $657.59

Other ways I generate income online, include the buying and selling websites, domain name flipping and domain parking. I sold my site 39j.net, as well as one of my domain names and earned some other income from parking the rest of my domains at Sedo. I didn’t know whether or not I should mention these other income sources, but since I was negotiating the sale of the website and the domain name, it did take away some time I would have otherwise had to work on my sites.

Total Online Earnings for April: $816.36

So, all in all, not a bad month in terms of earnings, but disappointing in terms of my affiliate revenue.

Some final thoughts.

In May, I plan on continuing to add content to this blog. I also plan on promoting KillerIncome.net more than I have thus far (I have an upcoming post in which I will share my strategy for this). I also need to gain more incoming links for WebPersonalsOnline.com, especially to more of the site’s internal pages. That site has over forty pages of content now and 90% of the traffic is to the Home Page and Two Articles Pages. Why? The Home Page is the page that is most linked to, but the two article pages that get the brunt of the traffic also received inbound links. None of the other pages have links coming from elsewhere.

So, between that and posting more on KillerIncome.net, plus a short vacation I will probably not have time to work on the other sites much. At least they still earn some Adsense money without me doing anything, which is nice!

So, now I leave it up to each of you. Please provide some comments on the following:

What constitutes ‘monthly income?’

Is it the checks I receive from affiliate programs in that month. Is it simply the change in affiliate stats from the first day of the month to the last day of the month even if I don’t receive a check for those earnings for several months? Should I post pictures of the checks? I thought about doing this and will probably post pictures of any checks I receive this month in my next report.

Should I include earnings from other sources?

Should I ALSO include income received from website and domain name sales, as well as domain parking income?

I would really appreciate some feedback from anybody who is reading this blog. What would be the most useful way to present this information and what other things would you like to see in my upcoming monthly income posts? Thanks for reading!

Technorati Tags: blog income report, affiliate earnings, website income, monthly earnings, make money online

WebPersonalsOnline.com
This is my online dating site. I have had it for about a year and a half.  I got started with internet marketing in the online dating arena and so it continues to hold a special place in my heart. I started this site from scratch and developed it completely myself using FrontPage. It is mainly an affiliate site of Match.com, Yahoo Personals and sites in the Friendfinder affiliate network, along with some niche dating sites. It’s unique selling proposition (and I use that term loosely ) is that, unlike other dating affiliate sites, it is not merely a review of the big affiliate sites nor is it just a buch of links pages to other dating affiliate sites. This site is chock full of original online dating content created by yours truly. Does it make any money and how much? You’ll have to come back in a day or so after I post my first Income Report in which I will break down the earnings of all of my sites (including this blog) and review what I am doing right, the mistakes I have made, and what I can do better in order to bring my online earnings up to the next level.

FreeMusicVideos.net
The name pretty much sums up what this site is all about. Visitors can watch free music videos. I purchased this site about one year ago mainly because I thought the domain name, although long, was pretty valuable compared to what the seller was asking for it. Since it came with a fully developed site, that was just a bonus.  The site is developed in wickedly sick PHP that is so far above my head it’s not funny. I do know *some* PHP as you’ll see from the next site in my network. The site makes use of RocketProfit and CD Universe affiliate programs, as well as Adsense. I don’t do anything to this site, users just copy and paste the music video codes into the MySpace or other social networking pages and the site gets a link back each time this is done.

Concerts.ws
The third website in my network is Concerts.ws. I did not start this site from scratch, but I have done some development on it myself and it is much larger now than the few pages it was when I bought it. Again, I liked the domain name so I bought it from the seller who had thrown up a few pages to get some Adsense earnings. This site has been kind of  a pet project for me and I used it as a testing ground to expand my knowledge of PHP development.  All of the subpages on this site (save for the few the original owner developed) are based on a PHP page structure I created. New pages are added pretty fast simply by adding the artist’s details to certain required fields in the artist’s database. This is my first database-driven site using PHP and, although it does not have a Content Management System (CMS) like all of us lazy fools have here on our fabulous WordPress sites, it has been invaluable as far as learning exactly HOW database driven sites are developed using PHP. I just think it’s so cool to be able to go into the database, add a few required fields and out comes a page like this–>Chris Daughtry Concert Tickets, which took me all of five minutes to produce. I can feel some basic PHP posts coming to satisfy the nerds (like me) in the audience. I use Adsense and the TicketsNow affiliate program to monetize this site. Read my next post to see how much this site makes.

MusicGearPlus.com
This website is pretty much a ZZOUNDS Affiliate Site, although I do have some Adsense on it. I purchased this site about one year ago and just don’t have time to devote to it. The site is a database driven PHP site that integrates nicely with the musical equipment feeds from ZZOUNDS.com, but I really never promote it and it is still sitting with a PR0 on it due to my lack of attention to it. I may be unloading this site in the near future as I devote more time to this blog, Concerts.ws and another site I have in development. This site really needs someone who can write great reviews of the musical equipment that it is advertising. I do play guitar and bass, but I don’t have the time to review new musical products and post in-depth reviews and the site is definitely suffering due to this.

39j.net
Basically, this site is a paid link directory site that runs on a script the name of which I can’t remeber off the top of my head. It also has some Adsense on it. Since I had not been promoting this site recently, I decided to sell it and it has, in fact, recently sold. You may be wondering how much it sold for and I’ll tell you…in my next post in about a day or so when I post my first ever monthly income report. Come back then to read all the gory earnings details of my online empire.

So that’s it. Those are my affiliate sites. Since I have recent sold 39j.net and will probably try to unload MusicGearPlus.com next month, my intention is to continue to develop WebPersonalsOnline.com, this blog of course, and I really want to expand and promote Concerts.ws because I think that site has a lot of potential.  There certainly is a lot of competition in the online dating and concert ticket sites, but I was never one to let that stop me from trying my hand at making money in those areas and I still think that if you have a good site, a unique idea and promote, promote, promote you can earn money in in the more ’saturated’ niches online.

Since this may not be the case, I wanted to write a quick post about the two essential steps that eveyone must do prior to starting their new WordPress blog or website. Namely, register a domain name and set-up web hosting. Since this post is aimed at helping absolute beginners  gain the necessary knowledge and confidence to register a domain name and set up web hosting for it, I am not going to go into much detail other than to provide the necessary steps.

Step 1) Register Domain Name.

Since you can not host a website without a domain, the first essential step is to register a domain name. This is quite easy to do. Simply visit any domain name registrar. I use GoDaddy for most of my domain name registration because they are reliable, inexpensive and secure, however other Registrars, such as Network Solutions and Namecheap will work, as well. Once you open a free account with the Registrar, you can then start typing in various domain names to see if any are available. Once you find one, purchase it and it will be added to your account.

Step 2) Find a hosting plan that meets your needs. That sounds more complicated than it is. Really, I would recommend that you purchase a hosting plan that offers cpanel, Fantastico and sufficient bandwidth and storage for your purposes. HostGator, where I am currently hosting this blog, offers three plans (Hatchling, Baby and Swamp) ranging in price from $4.95 to $12.95 per month). Unless you will be uploading tons of video or pushing massive amounts of data, either of the lower-priced plans should suffice. When you sign up for hosting they will ask you what your domain name is - so remember it!

Step 2a) Choose either Linux or Windows Hosting. Without getting into too much detail, I recommend you choose Linux (Unix) hosting. It is more universal and will cause you less grief down the road.

Step 3) Once you sign up for web hosting you will receive an email from your hosting company telling you what to set your Name Servers to. Think of Name Servers as the way you tell your domain name which hosting company will be hosting the website you develop on that domain.  Once you receive the email from your web host informing you of the Name Servers, simply log back into your GoDaddy Account, click Domains->My Domains from the top menu. This will bring up a list of the domains you have registered with this particular Registrar, click the domain name you will use to build your site. Finally choose from along the top icons, the icon labeled ‘NameServers’.

Step 4) You will normally be setting two Name Servers - a primary Name Server and a Secondary Name Server. The secondary one is basically a back-up for the first one. When you go into your Name Servers area, you will have two text boxes, one in which you enter the name of the first Name Server your hosting company sent you and the second is where you enter the name of the Seconday Name Server. Name Server names are usually in the form of: NS1.HOSTGATOR.COM/NS2.HOSTGATOR.COM.

Step 5) Wait. It usually takes a certain amount of time before the domain recognizes the server.

That’s it. Five simple steps and you will have accomplished registering a domain name and setting up hosting for that domain. Once you’ve completed these two essential items, you can then perform a simple three-step install of WordPress using Fantastico and you’ll be ready to start developing your WordPress site.

Technorati Tags: register a domain name, web hosting, domain name registration, web hosting for beginners, how to set up web hosting

For example, suppose you have a blog that spans many diverse topics.  Ideally, you may want to get general advertisers to this type of site, but until your traffic reaches a certain level, that just might not be possible.  An alternative would be to promote many different affiliate programs and try to integrate each different program with the different topics of your diverse posts.  For example, you have a post about health and fitness, you find an affiliate program or programs related to that topic and you mention them within that specific post.  You have another post about your pets and you offer pet-related products through an affiliate program in that post. You get the idea. 

The key, as I mentioned previously in my post, Affiliate Marketing for Beginning Bloggers is to promote affiliate programs that are related to the subject of your website (or in this case each indivdual post since the post topics are so diverse) and integrate these into your content. In this scenario, I do not think it would be feasible to try every different affiliate program prior to adding the program’s links to your site because there are just too many different topics covered and, as a result, you will be using many different affiliate programs throughout your site.

In the case of a site that is a little more focused, like this blog for example, where many of the post topics focus on building profitable WordPress sites, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Affiliate Marketing it is a little easier to narrow down the range of affiliate advertisers being promoted to simply the best ones that I have found related to each of the specific categories on which this site is focused.

You should be able to see from the 125×125 banner ads to the above right, as well as from my other posts, that I am currently promoting HostGator Web Hosting, Aaron Wall’s SEO Book, GoDaddy Domain Registration and Revolution WordPress Themes.  Each of these programs complements the main focus of this site, integrates extremely well with the posts I have written thus far, and should be extremely beneficial to any of my visitors.  But the question remains: Have I tried each of the products and/or services being offered by the affiliate programs I am currently promoting on KillerIncome.net?

I am currently hosting this blog using HostGator Web Hosting and I host each of my other websites (except for WebPersonalsOnline.com) with HostGator, as well.  They are reliable, affordable and have excellent customer service. I use and fully endorse them.

I am also a big fan of Aaron Wall and his SEO Book. I think this book is one of the most valuable resources for learning Search Engine Optimization and Aaron really practices what he preaches.  I am using many of his techniques on this blog, as well as my other websites.

In addition to website marketing, I also am an avid collector of domain names. While I use several different Registrars, GoDaddy is one that I particularly like because you can find some excellent domain name registration bargains there and their website and domain management area is very user-friendly. As you can see, this program also fits in well with my site content, as well. After all, the first step to starting any online business is registering a domain name. Some of you may know that GoDaddy also offers web hosting, in addition to domain name registering. I do not use GoDaddy web hosting and am not at all familiar with the quality of their web hosting solutions so I do not endorse GoDaddy’s hosting services on this site.

Finally, you may have noticed that I am not currently using a Revolution Custom WordPress Theme on this site and yet I am promoting them. I think that their themes are some of the most attractive around and I would eventually like to use one of their themes on this site.  As a new WordPress blogger, I was not comfortable paying a couple hundred dollars for an upscale theme until I was comfortable changing my default WordPress theme to a custome theme and became more familiar with running a WordPress site.  It is my intention to upgrade my theme eventually and Revolution is where I will purchase my new theme.  My goal is to first earn the money from this blog prior to ‘treating’ myself to a high-end custom theme for this blog.

So, what do you think? Is it necessary to test each affiliate program’s product or service before adding their links to our sites? Is it wrong to advertise the products of a program that we are not currently using? Can you think of examples like the one mentioned above where it just may not be feasible to test each affiliate program? Anyway, this was just something that was on my mind and I wanted to present it in a post.  Thanks for reading.

The conclusion was that each subscriber to an MMO blog was worth $18.42. This was especially exciting to me, as a new blogger, because it enabled me, at least in a round about way, to get some notion of what THIS blog is currently worth. Let’s do some math…

Assuming each subscriber is worth $18.42, all I had to do was take the number of subscribers to KillerIncome.net and multiply by $18.42. As you can see, I have exactly one subscriber - forget for the moment that it is probably me - and if I multiply 1 subscriber x $18.42 = $18.42, I can conclude that this blog is worth $18.42! Astounding.

But you may be wondering why I am so excited about this seemingly insignificant revelation. Well, mainly because $18.42 is about $17.46 more than I originally thought this blog was worth. How would you like to have an asset that was worth seventeen times what you thought it was worth. Let’s say your house, for example. Maybe you thought your house was worth 300k; if it were worth seventeen times this amount, your house would be valued at just over five million dollars! Holy crap, right?

Also, now that I can estimate that this blog is worth over eighteen dollars, all I need to do is build one-thousand more blogs with one subscriber each (it really didn’t take me that long) and I’ll make eigthteen grand. I’ll be able to buy a Saturn. Wow! Just think once I’ve replicated my success 10,000 times - now you’re talking about real money. Is this possible? You betcha!

All kidding aside, the post by Mark was pretty cool and fun to read, but as I said in my previous post about why I consider organic search engine traffic to be superior to RSS subscriber traffic, I think creating blog valuations solely based on subscriber count is a flawed way of estimating blog value - no matter what niche the blog is in. Suppose you had two similar blogs for sale. Blog A has 23,000 RSS subscribers and makes 5k per month, while Blog B has 200 RSS subscribers and makes 6k per month. Personally, I would prefer to own Blog B because B’s income, presumably, comes from organic search engine traffic, which is easier to sustain, easier to monetize, and more independent of the blog owner.

So, how much do you think your blog is worth and why? Check out Mark’s post over at 45n5.com to see what some other make money online blogs are being valued at. And while you’re doing that, I’ll be taking my $18.42 to the bank!

RSS readers, while certainly loyal followers of a blog (or the blogger) they patronize usually come by because they are interested in what you (or I) have to say. This is nice, but in most cases, especially in the case of ‘general topic’ blogs, the subscribers subscribe because they are entertained by the blogger. While there is certainly nothing wrong with that, these visitors are not ending up at their blog(s) of choice because they are looking to fill a need, they generally wind up at your blog (or my blog) to see what we have to say or to be entertained by us.

You might be saying to yourself, “So what if my visitors are not coming by to fill a specific need, they’re still visitors and the more visitors (i.e. traffic) I have, the more money I’ll make.” Unfortunately, there is a slight flaw in that logic. If you are an affiliate marketer, you especially want people visiting your blog or website who ARE looking to fill a need. Why? Because these are the people who are most likely to become customers of the affiliate program(s) you are promoting because you will wisely choose programs that are going to fill the specific needs of your visitors. One of the first things to realize about affiliate marketing is that one of the ways to determine which program(s) to promote is by asking yourself how people are getting to the area of your site in which you are promoting these programs.

That might sound a little bit like, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” But it is very important.  If you can understand the need that visitors have who wind up on a certain page or area of your site, then you can promote affiliate programs on that page or area to fill that need. This is incredibly important because the combination of understanding the needs of your visitors/offering affiliate programs that solve these needs is one of the keys to successful affiliate marketing online.

So where does organic search engine traffic fit in and why is this type of traffic generally better than repeat visitors (RSS subscribers)? As I mentioned above, RSS subscribers may be visiting to hear what you have to say or be entertained by you. They come by certainly because they find our posts useful and probably do derive some benefit from them. However, they are not usually trying to fulfill a specific need and therefore are not as susceptible to our affiliate offers. That means the conversion ratio we can expect from our RSS subscriber traffic is typically much lower than from our other kind of traffic - the organic search engine traffic.

This is easy to understand by looking at a quick example of how the ‘internet search process’ works.  Suppose a typical internet surfer is thinking about starting a WordPress blog like this one. This person realizes that they will require hosting for their new WordPress blog and decides to enter the search phrase ‘reliable hosting solution for WordPress blogs’.  If you think about the keyphrase the surfer just typed in, you may notice something interesting.  They are looking for a hosting provider for the new WordPress blog they are contemplating (this is their need). Lo and behold, one of the first pages that shows up in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) is one of my former posts where I talked about installing WordPress using Fantastico and discussed hosting providers that offer this nifty little script and endorsed the Web Hosting Service that I use for this blog, as well as some of my other sites. I am basically offering a solution to this person’s ‘problem’ or need and they will probably at least check out the hosting company I recommended.

Think about that visitor for a moment. They found this site by performing an Internet search via a search engine, wound up here because I discussed a potential solution to their problem (i.e. their need), and are much more likely to become a customer of the hosting affiliate program I endorsed than my typical RSS subscriber who comes by to ’see what’s going on’ or ‘for entertainment’ or to gather some ‘general affiliate marketing ideas’. It is no secret that the organic search engine visitor is potentially a much more profitable customer than a blog’s everyday RSS readers. This person may never subscribe to my RSS feed.

In addition to this, RSS readers may stop subscribing if your posting frequency decreases because, to maintain these everyday visitors, it is usually necessary to provide them with new material on a pretty consistent basis. Contrast this with a timeless post that ranks well in the search engines and draws hundreds or even thousands of potentially new customers every month. Now, there is no doubt that your RSS subscribers can become customers of your affiliate programs, but once they are, then what? The lifeblood of any affiliate marketer is the ability to consistently bring in new customers to the programs she endorses. What’s even worse is when all of the blogs within a certain niche promote the same affiliate programs and your RSS subscribers are simply a subset of the RSS subscribers of one of the more popular blogs in your niche and have ALREADY become customers of the affiliate program being endorsed by you THROUGH the affiliate links of someone else!

Finally, your RSS subscribers may become conditioned to seeing your ads or not clicking your links simply due to the fact that they LOOK at your same pages day after day and week after week. Simply by serving your pages in front of a fresh new visitor you have increased the likelihood of one of your advertisments or promotions succeeding. And where do we get fresh new visitors from? That’s right, organic search engine traffic!

It’s interesting to me to see the valuation metrics placed on blogs, especially within a niche, and what’s a little ‘not right’ is the fact that the blogs with the highest RSS readership base are valued the highest. When, in my humble opinion, this type of visitor is the 1) least likely to stick around if the blog is sold (i.e. loyal to the blogger not to the blog), 2) the least likely to become a customer of affiliate programs being endorsed by the blogger, and 3) the most difficult to maintain (i.e. it’s usually necessary to post quite frequently to keep this visitor coming back).

Compare this to the typical organic search engine visitor who 1) Visits because they have a need to fill that your site, or a program being offered on your site, just might fill, 2) is more likely to use a product or service endorsed on your site to fill that need, 3) does not require daily posts to attract, and 4) will still end up on your blog even if it ends up being sold because of the great SERPs your posts have achieved.

So, what kind of traffic would you prefer? The Organic Search Engine Traffic or the RSS Subscriber traffic? You can clearly see which type I prefer. Naturally, having BOTH types of traffic is the most desirable result and I certainly do not think it is necessary to sacrifice one for the other. But I want the traffic that will most likely convert and the type that I do not have to become a slave to my blog to maintain. WHat kind of traffic do you want?

Another idea that I have read on other people’s blogs is to do something unique and creative - basically, to think ‘Outside the Box’. Well, this is certainly one I haven’t seen before. My idea is to let other blog owners advertise for free on this blog. You heard me right - advertise for FREE!

The first question you may be asking yourself is:

Why would I want to advertise - even for free - on such a new blog? It can hardly be receiving any traffic. Well, that’s true, but this site still gets about 10-15 unique visitors per day. In addition, I post frequently and fully expect that my daily visitors and RSS subscribers will increase during the time you are advertising on this site. Perhaps they will increase dramatically and you will be the beneficiary of this.

How long will this last? Again, I haven’t thought that much about it, but at least a couple months. If I like you and your blog, maybe I’ll just keep your advertisement up indefinitely. Maybe this site will become bigger than John Chow’s head and then you can say that you are paying NOTHING to have your banner on such a popular and heavily trafficked site.

What type of advertisement can it be? It must be a 125×125 banner ad ONLY. It will go into rotation with the other 125×125 banners to the right.

How many free advertisers will I allow? Well, three of the existing ads are my affiliate programs (which I want to keep up), but I could add a third row of three 125×125 banners, so six free advertisements in all.

How is it going to work, what are the details? I am just kind of cooking them up as I go along, but here is what I have come up with so far. In order to advertise on this blog for FREE, you must do the following:

1) Leave a useful comment below this post having something to do with this blog. It must be a few sentences long and may be either a comment related to a recent post, constructive criticism, or something of that nature. Include your link so I can check out your blog.

2) Join my RSS Feed

3) Add KillerIncome.net to your BlogRoll

4) Send an email to killerincome @ yahoo.com with the subject: Advertise for Free

I will determine which six advertisers I allow to advertise for free on KillerIncome.net by how accurately you follow the above instructions, how useful I find your blog, and how detailed the comment(s) are that you leave on this blog.

Once you are selected, you must provide the URL of your 125×125 banner (please host this on your site) via email, as well as the URL that you would like your advertisement to link to.  One final note: sites that promote hatred, pornography, gambling, or drugs will not be considered.

Happy Advertising!