Super Affiliate Marketing Blog

As an internet marketer I’m sure you have heard the term “summer slowdown”. Generally this starts in or around late May or early June. It’s when site owners notice traffic and revenue dips because here in Northern Hemisphere, it’s summertime. What does that have to do with anything you say? Well, for one, people tend to leave their houses more and spend a lot more time outside doing warm weather, summertime activities. That means less people online surfing, buying, clicking, filling things out to make us money.

So is there such thing as a Summer Slowdown? Up until this year, I would have said yes. There has definitely been drops in revenue and traffic, but nothing super substantial. Then again, that may depend on how you get your traffic or the niche of your site. Obviously if you have a site about Hockey or some type of winter sport, you will get more traffic when the cold weather comes back, rather than in the summer when people could care less about being cold. But what about for sites that don’t cater to those types of topics? Do they still feel the slowdown creeping their way?

What changed my mind about it this year is that I am busier this summer than any other time I have ever been in my entire career as an internet marketer. I was trying to figure it out too, but couldn’t come up with anything good to base it on. Right now, as soon as one of my projects starts to slow down, we are made offers for new, bigger and better ones. It’s like a never ending conveyer belt of new projects. But hey, I’m not complaining, because it means more fun, money and new industries to capitalize in.

Usuaully in the Summer I go to Aruba for a few weeks and just relax on the beach for days straight, letting all of my problems, and stress melt away. So far, I haven’t even been able to make the conferences I originally planned on attending because of the fact that we have so many simultaneous projects running now. The earliest I can get away and go to Aruba is September. I know, you feel just oh so bad for me. But vacations are a definite part of your success as an internet marketer. Everyone has stress that they need to get away from. The toughest part is my internet withdrawal that I get when I’m out there. I can take a laptop and work on the beach if I really wanted, but that kind of defeats the whole purpose of going on vacation.

So back to the post. Do you feel a summer slowdown with your revenues and traffic? I definitely see some signs of it on a few of our sites, but nothing to write home about. Definitely not like it was years ago. I think part of the reason that there isn’t such a huge drop in traffic and revenue is because people are more easily connected to the internet now. It’s no longer just a fun thing to get onto. People depend on it for tons of things in their daily life. Gone are the days of explaining to your folks what email is, or how to find something online that they are looking for. People, consumers really, are a lot more educated on these topics. Most mobile phones have browsers on them, and if you run a site that caters to the myspace crowd, well, that place is addicting to over 50% of their users, so those kids are ALWAYS looking for things online regardless of the weather or activities outside.

Where am I going with this? I’m not really sure, but I have been noticing a steady increase over the years of less and less of a summer slowdown. I do hope that someday it will not even effect me or my stats so that I can’t tell it’s summer unless I look outside (but who has time for that!?).

Anyhow, enjoy your summer everyone. August is almost here, which means summer is going to be over in 1.5-2 months.

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This is my first reference to “Web 2.0″. When I first read about it, I thought it was a much easier name for the almost shameful downfall of the dot-com era. I guess we are in part 2 already of that phase, and thankfully things have been looking up since 2003. Advertising spending is up, users with broadband around the world is on the rise, technology connects us around the globe more than ever, and best of all as an internet marketer, commissions are finally balanced out and looking good for the long haul.

So what is the next big thing to look out for in this second phase of making money online? Two words. PPC Arbitrage.

If you’ve never heard of PPC arbitrage let me just give you the gist of what it’s about. Very simply put, it’s like the stock market. Your main objective is to buy low and sell high, for maximum profit. Same thing here. Internet marketers are buying cheap traffic, and sending it to their sites with contextual ads on it, from such places as AdSense or YPN, thus converting the $0.05 clicks into $0.25 clicks. Of course, not every cheap click that comes to your site will result in another clickthrough on your ads, thus turning a large profit. But for the most part, it’s very simple to do, and just about anyone with a brain and a bank account can do it.

Now why is this the next big thing? Well, it has been around for a while now, but it hasn’t gotten much attention like the other things that the quick cash guys are focusing on. Some examples of previous “big things” are ringtones, myspace resource sites, arcade sites, dating sites, etc. All of those examples have been big over the last two or three years at most. The reason why it’s the next big thing is because unlike the examples mentioned before, PPC arbitrage is not limited to one sector. In fact, you can literally make a living out of it, and still never be able to conquer every niche in the world with it. There are hundreds of sources to buy extremely cheap traffic at, and then convert it over to your site with ads from the big three. Using PPC arbitrage you can even increase your overall revenue not only with ppc ads on your site, but with CPM and CPA ads too, all working together and maximizing profits to your site’s fullest potential.

PPC arbitrage is still in Web 1.0 for the most part though. This is because most people practicing it are lazy bastards that make a 2:1 - 3:1 on their investment and are fine with it and move on. These webmasters also follow the lame rules of splashing some content here and there, sticking a few obvious ads around, crossing your fingers and hoping for clicks. Or even worse.. the absolute lazy route is to just stick a premade search interface on the site, and let the clicks register as a middleman where their site acts as a small portal or even obstacle for the user to continue searching for the information they were originally seeking at the engine that they clicked in from to your site at. These are definitely Web 1.0 ways to make money. Do they work? You bet they do. By all means, if you want, you can continue playing it safe and going this route. You will definitely make money.

But what about those people that are like me. That don’t like to follow the rules that everyone else goes by. That has a sense of creativity and isn’t afraid to be innovative with it. Well, for you guys and girls, welcome to Web 2.0 for PPC arbitrage. The best way to make money from buying low and selling high is to have as many of those cheap clicks converting into something, instead of just wishing for it, you can now take charge and do it! The secret is in the source of the traffic and the design of the pages. Who says you have to label your ads AS ads themselves. When using AdSense or YPN, it says “Ads by Gooooogle” or “Ads by Yahoo!”. Alright, those we can’t change, but who says we can’t hide them and make the colors different so that not only do the colors of the link look like text on the site, but the ads don’t look like ads at all. Both networks have some pretty good targets up to let you really take advantage of earning as much as possible from every clickthrough. If the person coming to your site wants to find some information about a lawyer in New York City, why would you should them blatant ads that scream out “Look at me, I’m an ad!”. No way, you want to convince them that this text here is where they can find more information on the topic that they are searching for.. and it just so happens that it also may be an ad. I know a lot of people won’t agree with my way of thinking or lack of ethics on the matter, but in all honesty, there are tens of millions of niches out there with quite possibly the cheapest traffic ever on the smaller engines like Searchfeed.com and 7search.com to send that traffic to any page with cleverly disguised ads on your page that are 100% relevant to your content, but don’t look like ads at all that can increase your overall CTR and make you a much nicer profit.

Just a simple example of some sites and how they compare with the 1.0 to 2.0 tactics.. The lazy ones with the portals on their pages, and no real content would get 1000 uniques, and maybe get about 50 clicks on their ads, whereas a 2.0 would get that same 1000 uniques, but generate a sweet 400-600 clicks. I promise if you try it out and position your ads from more of an out of the box approach you will see what I’m talking about.

I’d also like to mention that the more original and unique your actual layout is, and how the ads are positioned around SOME content (doesn’t have to be a real plentiful site of it), and toss in a few images near the ads, you will see much larger income bursts and CTR’s than compared to just a domain with a portal on it. Try it and see even, and come back here and report on it. Spend $200 total. $100 for each site, spread it out over 2 domains on the same engines.

That’s all for now, you will definitely see more posts on PPC arbitrage from me, because it’s fast becomming my new hobby and day job.

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I posted this on WickedFire, but it hasn’t been looked at much, so I figured you readers here would benefit from it too.. They are totally random, taken from one of my 6 million+ keyword list banks. I better hear about some good uses that you’ve put these niches to. All of the niches listed below are pretty untapped, and so goddamn easy to rank for and make at least $20/day with. Get off your asses you lazy bums and start making money!

Enjoy.

Grab them while they’re hot boys and girls!

1. filtered water coolers
2. motorola batteries
3. reduce utility bills
4. teeth whitening
5. ice fishing
6. christmas party favors
7. penny stocks
8. dell computer parts
9. water beds
10. dutch gardens
11. document scanning software
12. UPS jobs
13. car accident lawyers
14. patent management
15. massage classes
16. motorcycle batteries
17. business plan software
18. carpet installation
19. carbon brushes
20. soy candles
21. luggage locks
22. ways to save for college
23. magic tricks
24. coin appraisals
25. real estate notes

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I’m not sure who coined the dark side of SEO as Blackhat “BH”, but I have a feeling it derives from the white hat and black hat label from the early hacker days. Because most people nowadays see hackers as someone who is evil and malicious, but really a hacker was just someone trying to learn more about computers, and gain more insight into it. Obviously once malicious hacking took place, it gave the term, “hacker” a really bad rep, so the good guys labeled the bad guys as black hatters, and themselves as white hatters.

Now, it’s a pretty well known fact that I for one am not against BH’s. In fact, I consider myself pretty well versed in the dark arts of seo. This isn’t like Star Wars where if you drift over to the dark side, you can never come back to the good side. It doesn’t work like that, even though most people think so. I am a firm believer that to be absolutely amazing in the entire art of SEO (because it truly is an art to master) you must know both sides, white and black. For people that swear by only knowing white hat seo and never meddling in black hat, they are either lying, because everyone gets curious sometime (and let’s not forget, some tactics labeled BH now at some point was considered legal and WH years ago) or they are selling themselves short by not learning as much as they can about SEO.

I think people need to learn both parts. Even if they are so anti-black hat seo, it’s something you have to learn just to know or seperate your methods and tactics with when optimizing a website for the search engines; And that’s another thing I’d like to get into. On WickedFire, someone posted some questions about what were the differences between white and black hat. Shoemoney made a very valid point, and said that he considers ALL SEO as a BH. Which he is absolutely right about. I don’t care if you are the straightest most ethical person in the world. If you are utilizing SEO on your sites, you are in turn using what should be considered BH. I say this because BH is defined as a way to manipulate the search engines to rank your site better. There are many forms of BH, but just like the hackers in the 80’s, every bad or evil part of seo is now dubbed as BH. I have to disagree, because when you are manipulating the engines to rank better for whatever keywords or industry your site is in, even if you are following every safe WH method, you are still manipulating the site so that you rank better in the engines. That right there is content and site manipulation with the intentions of changing your site and it’s content so that you can do better than the competition. Sorry if this sounds a bit confusing, but when you think about it, if you made your site for PEOPLE to look at and read and buy all of your crap and click on stuff, then you wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about what some search engine thought. Which is another issue, if the engines weren’t traffic powerhouses, and sites weren’t governed by their keywords, then no one would care about how their site looked for a bunch of spiders. They would make their site look as beautiful and conversion friendly as possible. This is actually how sites were back before the Florida update, and also back in the dot-com bubble days. I wouldn’t call sites like that very appealing to the standards of today, but back then, sites were developed and designed with people in mind, not search engines. Sites were flashy, had tons of those annoying gif’s that you only find being used on myspace profiles now, and all sorts of other crap. But the bottom line, was that these sites were made to convert people to whatever was being sold, and to feed information to people without a huge revenue intention.

But all of that changed when search engines started to become the place to find information and websites, especially when you couldn’t remember the name, or the type-ins you’d try didn’t produce a website. Back then, all you had to do was either submit the sites to the big engines (AltaVista, HotBot, Excite, Netscape) send a few links with your keyword as the anchor text, and stuff some keywords into the content and poof, you’d get a top 10 spot for any keyword you liked. This is where SEO first started, and while everything except maybe linking is mentioned is now considered BH or keyword stuffing spam, this is what SEO was considered.

So without writing another novel on the topic, the point I wanted to stress was that not all BH tactics are bad. In fact, I think each one serves it’s own purpose for a specific job. If you don’t agree with it, fine, that’s your loss. But to consider yourself holier than thou because you won’t do it, that’s just bullshit, and you’re the one losing out, not the BH guy. So whether you’re going to cloak, link spam, keyword stuff, or just dominate the shit out of some search engines for a few niches, go for it, and don’t feel bad. Because what is WH today, may be considered BH tomorrow.

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The day has come, WickedFire.com Forum has officially surpassed the 1,000 member mark today. The forum is just about 3 weeks old too. I never thought it would explode so quickly either. Feedback about the forum is absolutely tremendous too. People all over the place are plugging it and calling it one of the best new forums around. Most people like it because of the laid back, no bullshit appeal. Webmasters finally have a place to hang out where they can discuss just about anything they’ve been held back on before at other forums. Not saying this is going to replace all of the bigger ones out there, but it definitely does provide a nice alternative outlet for the more hostile/sarcastic chatter webmasters in the industry.

Some notable plugs include that of Beth Kirsch from Lowermybills.com who writes for Revenews.com, Lee Dodd from EarnersForum.com, ShoeMoney on his WebmasterRadio.fm radio show, Shawn Collins from AffiliateTip.com, Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com and tons more.

There are also tons of lurkers who email me with comments and questions. I wish they’d join and become active within the community, but I’m in no rush to have a huge member list. I like the direction the forum as a community is heading, so I’ve decided (from the start) not to apply SEO to the forum. I’d much rather it stay as a fun and viral place to hang out at. We’ll be adding new mods to the forum too, who are all experts in their own realm or niche. These aren’t going to be just some random friends, but people who you have heard of and trust when it comes to advice and wisdom.
Some upcoming additions include a full resource section, industry news feeds, free software/scripts area, and small blog network. I feel that WickedFire has the potential to be a one stop resource for all of your internet marketing needs. Let’s not forget that there will be a paid premium section on the forum that will hopefully kill off every nonsense ebook on the market. The premium section will have a completely unique and original format too. Webmasters who become members WILL make money. There is no question about it. It’s not going to be open to everyone either. There will be a limited number of monthly spots, and a screening process. It’s really not for every Joe Shmoe out there looking to make millions, only for those serious and ready to work hard like I do to make it to where I am today.

In closing, I really am proud of where the site is after this short period of time, and I must say, it’s a lot of fun to run and be apart of. I know many people who are members have been using it as their primary forum to hang out on, and that right there makes it all worth it for me, to know that people are sharing ideas and information without any censorship or crap.

If you haven’t already joined, visit us at www.wickedfire.com. Enjoy the Summer (Winter for the Aussies)!

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