Contents

1. Introduction
2. Fr33bies
3. Marketing and Tech Tips
4. Business Programs
5. Paid Email/Survey/Surf

Introduction

A big welcome to all new subscribers. I hope you enjoy my home business tips and feedback.

Okay, this issue is really really late. But it's a biggie, and definitely worth it, if you look into SFI again. The new 2x12 structure is a stunner!

While reading the SlashDot interview with a Google rep, I heard about Google's PigeonRank. Read about it here to learn how Google really calculates it's PR.

Fr33bies

Remember about a year ago, Joe Kumar's book "30 Days to Internet Marketing Success"?. Well, one unhappy camper has made a free copy available here. You can look at the little history link at the bottom, or else go straight to ListDotCom for the report and a bunch of other freebies. There's a few screens to get through, but it's worth it.

And the fantastic 12 Days of Christmas promotion is on again, with fantastic free gifts for the 12 days leading to Christmas.

Marketing and Tech Tips

One nice guy was signing up for most of my free programs the other day, and was asking for help in setting up his first website. I gave him a handsome skeleton (if I do say so myself), but also got on a roll, and created a whole new website FREE to anyone who signs up to Kiosk under me. Check it out at SimpleStart.

According to my Overture statistics, I spent around $1.50 promoting Best Australian Online Shopping, at 10c per click last month. Thanks to some very nice customers who like shopping online, I'm starting to get some nice commissions from CommissionMonster . Now that's a good return on advertising. I really do like Overture. Even if you do have to wait for them to manually review new keywords. There's just not as much competition as there is at Google.

So, obviously more emphasis on affiliate programs would be financially rewarding. A fresh visit to Associate Programs was definitely required. I learnt about some new competitors for Adsense, checked out their forum, and decided on a new affiliate program for Dogs Only. But with the lead time for a free position on Google, it's worth doing submissions while you develop, instead of waiting for the final product.

I spent much too much time at the Associate Programs forum, but found this very useful post about redirecting links using htaccess, by Allan here

Being an Aussie, I obviously didn't make it to the US for the Commission Junction University. But a talk by James Martell was apparently a hit. Here’s James Martell’s 10 Rules for affiliate marketing success:

Rule 1: Think pages not sites.
Rule 2: Create a keyword list
Rule 3: Build a single page around every keyword
Rule 4: Follow a keyword density formula
Rule 5: Publish excellent content
Rule 6: Organize internal links strategically
Rule 7: Use my PAD technique (think of this as an alternative to manually building inbound links)
Rule 8: Develop a few product only pages for each site
Rule 9: Plan a great site map
Rule 10: Set a financial goal for your site before you build it

SiteSell announced a new tool - SearchIt. Extreeeemly useful. you know all those options you forget about at Google and Yahoo - like "related" and "allinurl" - well, SearchIt has a menu that lets you decide where and what to search for. Standard searches, competitor keywords, backlinks - everything you could need. And for free!!

I subscribe to a lot of other newsletters, and one from Mark Hendricks had this case study:

I did a three step mailout. First mailout I endorsed the product - it yielded some sales Second mailout, I reminded people that I mailed them a few days ago about the endorsed product and told them to go check it out if they missed it or to take another look - more sales Third mailout, I told them they had 24 hours to get there before the special deal I arranged for them expires, and that they could get some extra unannounced bonuses too - even more sales Want to know the final results? Out of all the sales made, here's the percentage breakdown per mailing: Mailing one - 10 percent Mailing two - 45 percent Mailing three - 45 percent Did you fully understand what happened here? 90 percent of all the sales were made from the second and third mailouts. I increased my sales by 900 percent (9 times) just by sending out two extra emails that took me about 5 minutes each to write and send. Next time you do any kind of promotion, make sure you send a few reminders in a series of communications, whether it be emails, postcards, letters, phone calls, whatever - people need to see, hear, feel, more than once before the majority will respond.

Business Programs

SmartWebMarketer has now been superceded by the multiple income stream program Emarketing Extreme. Heaps of downloads, training and a forced matrix. Just started in December.

NetWealthCreator seems to finally have their system ready for the big time. They are asking everyone to login and confirm their membership in the next few weeks, as they will be using it to verify Activity Points, Advertising Commissions, Upgrades & Other Purchases and allow them to start making payments. So if you are a member, I encourage you to login and confirm your email address and other details.

KioskLeads had to close down, solely because of false complaints. A couple of spam complaints out of millions of emails was enough to close the program. And these were legitimate opt-ins with addresses, phone numbers and IP details. Some people just like causing problems. It's a pity, as KioskLeads was a very nice way of increasing subscriber numbers. They even mailed me one last commission payment this week, as they wrapped it all up.

But Kiosk is still going strong, with it's lovely 4x10 forced matrix. I'm adding even more sites this month. And their big news is HOTCONFERENCE. Fantastic new in-house developed conference software that is miles cheaper than elsewhere. Run your own conference meetings, with whiteboard, voice and more. Excellent use of VOIP. Great for long-distance relationships and businesses. Download a copy here

As an Aussie, I like keeping an eye on other Aussie competitors. So this month I checked out a few so-called Australian hosting companies. These two both had the words "hosting" and either "OZ" or "Australian" in their title and domain name. Finding: NEITHER of them was actually hosting in Australia. One was Texas, and the other was California. I think that's misleading. And they still weren't competitive with Kiosk

And my #1 program is adding more products in the next month. Dog Treats and Telecommunications products. Why would anyone not be with this company? Get those nasty toxic products out of your house and go with this environmentally-friendly company.

But the absolute big news is the announcement by SFI. Effective 1 January there are some stupendous changes coming. The biggest is the 2x12 T-net network for upgraded members. You must be upgraded/MIQ on December 31st, 2004 to secure the best possible position in T-Net when it is built in January. If you have not previously joined SFI, there is an initial 30 days to see how it works, without losing a place in the network. Of course, you can always stay a free member of SFI if you like, but honestly, with the new system, why would you?

Paid Email/Survey/Surf

I finally got Adsense approved on A Get Paid Site, after removing all the competing advertising. And financially, it's been worth it. Better than AdOptimal and Compact Banner for me, as those sites prefer US traffic. I can't emphasize how valuable it is to build content sites. And on 1 Dec I got my first Google cheque. Very nice.

The big news was the change at MikesPaid4Email. Way past it's heyday, they've finally jumped the shark. Changing the name to Quantum-rewards, retrospectively removing signup bonuses, and turning into more of a rewards program. Some intriguing conditions before you could get payout, if you had any owing from Mikes.

This mirrors the changes at Annies in August where inherited debt was erased. The lesson to learn, is to avoid programs with a sizeable starting bonus. This creates instant, unearned debt for a program, and is the single biggest thing to avoid in GPTR programs.

An interesting brand new program from Mike Glaspie called Zabang. Mike has a long and public profile in internet marketing. The man behind bannersgomlm and numerous other programs, polarises people due to his involvement in certain programs. Yes, in the past I had blindly followed him into two paid programs, and in retrospect, wish I hadn't.

The blurb: The cornerstone site of Zabang is a "tier 1" search engine called Zabang.com, and it's ultimate goal is nothing less than to topple Google itself from the search-engine throne...Mike is also creating a companion site to Zabang called ZabangMail. ZabangMail.com will offer 100% spam-free, free email accounts. For the sake of the free email, I'm going to check it out. Zabang