1. Goodbye to Silence…my PLR interview.
2. Goodbye forum.
3. Affiliate cookie setting.
4. Free IQ – yes or no?
5. Slick salesmen in action.
6. Residual earnings from low-traffic sites.
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I’ve always been a bit on the shy side when it comes to talking, turning down all offers to speak at seminars or do phone interviews.
But, after years of working from home with no one to talk to all day, perhaps things could be changing a little.
About a year ago, at Jim Edwards Ebook Creation Workshop in London, I had a chat with a nice bloke called Jon Anderson, who asked me if I’d take part in a teleconference he was organizing to discuss PLR (private label rights) content.
I said no.
Not because I’ve got nothing to say on PLR (I’m a big user of PLR articles and public domain content) but because I just hate talking on the telephone.
I’ve got no idea why. Unless it’s something to do with growing up in a phoneless household (we were dirt poor, but happy).
Anyway a couple of months ago, back over in England again, PLR expert Jon came to the vacation house I’d rented in Windsor (right next to the Queens little weekend pad, Windsor Castle) to interview me in person.
The interview – one of the few I’ve ever done – is mainly, but not totally, about PLR. And apparently, according to the testimonials on the download site, it’s really good. It seems that I revealed rather more of my techniques for getting and using PLR content than I meant to.
Private label is an area that has changed over the last year. Most sites built with PLR articles just don’t do as well in the search engines. But mine still do great. And its not because I spent a lot of time rewriting them, or run them through article rewriting software.
I reveal what I do in the interview 
But what’s perhaps just as good as listening to my poor enunciation, and strange Northern England with a touch of Outback Australian accent, is that you can make a few dollars with it. Jon is selling the 35 minute interview for a low $17 and the affiliate program pays out 100% commissions instantly to your Paypal account.
As far as I know only Jon has promoted it, so there’s potential there for you to make some sales.
Here’s the link: Phil Wiley PLR interview – link removed. Sorry it’s no longer available.
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2. Goodbye Forum.
Once upon a time, before it got hacked, attacked, and destroyed, my forum at ozemedia.com/forum was one of the biggest around, hovering in the top 3 or 4000 sites on Alexa.
After the attack I moved it to affiliatetalkforum.com, and although it never proved as popular, it still gained 2000+ members.
Sadly the database driven site crashed a couple of weeks ago, and all attempts to rescue it have failed. According to the web host the hard drive on the server was destroyed and so were the backups
To quote from the webhosts support (which I finally made contact with after days of trying)
———–
I am hoping and praying that you have a backup of this forum, as
this hard drive took a dump and is being shipped to me to try and
retrieve any and all data from it. As the RAID wasn’t working either
and all staff have been fired accordingly.
———–
Fired all the staff? Sounds a bit b/s to me.
Anyhow…seeing everything has been lost I’m going to leave it closed for now. Who knows, one day it might rise from the ashes. But for now, a sad Goodbye.
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3. Affiliate cookie setting.
On another forum last week there was a discussion on how affiliate merchants should deal with affiliate cookies.
The infamous Martin Avis wrote “I have never understood the logic behind the idea that the first referrer should get the commission. As Mike and Jon say, the sale is not made until the customer is prompted into action – and it should be the person who has prompted the action who should be rewarded every time.”
Although in theory I agree that affiliate programs should be set up that way, I do see some problems with it.
Here’s what I wrote in reply:
“While I agree with you, Martin, cookie overwriting is a problem to consider. Depending on what market you’re targeting, many thousands of your potential customers could have software like Zango on their computers which overwrites your affiliate cookie at the last minute.
“Cookie stuffing software, which is used by an unknown number of affiliates, can drop dozens of cookies onto a persons computer at once, so that’s also a problem.
“I think the fairest way to do it would be to set a cookie lock-in period where a cookie set by an affiliate link can’t be overwritten for a week or ten days or something.
“This would stop the last minute overwrite problem, plus give the potential customers you send a little time to think about the purchase.
“Example – perhaps you’re one of the first people to promote some new software, in your case via your newsletter, and one of your readers goes and takes a look and wants to buy but delays the purchase for some reason (to come back and have a better read of the sales letter, to wait until payday a few days later, to talk to their wife/husband about it, to read what other people on the net are saying about it) and then next day everyman and his dog are promoting it and they’re swamped with emails which perhaps don’t name the product, they could easily click through from someone else’s email thinking “oh yes, this is what I’m going to buy from Martin” and buy it right then but without your cookie.
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4. Free IQ – yes or no?
By coincidence, the cookie settings on a new site called Free IQ, which launched today I believe, also have a sort of cookie lock-in period.
—————–
Quote: if you refer a person to Free IQ and they sign up a free
account, then that person is signed up as your customer; you’ll be
paid an affiliate commission for any purchase that person makes
for an entire year with or without a tracking cookie!
The only exception to this rule is when another Affiliate later refers
the same person with a tracking cookie from their own web site then
that Affiliate would be paid on a purchase made in that session only.
Otherwise, future purchases result in an affiliate commission for you
because you first referred the customer.
—————–
You’ll probably get plenty of emails about Free IQ today. I’m not going to follow the herd and hype it up, but their 2-tier affiliate program could possibly be worth signing up for.
(sorry, it no longer exists)
If you haven’t yet seen it, Free IQ is a new site combining ecommerce with the YouTube concept.
Like YouTube you can take the videos and run them on your own sites, but if someone clicks through and makes a purchase you get paid an affiliate commission.
It’s early days yet, but it looks interesting.
The big danger though is that the site will end up filled with nothing but marketing hype and promos. Already I see that at least one big name marketer has managed to get a full product sales letter up there in his profile area
One thing about the affiliate program that I didn’t like (but they’re pushing as one of the main affiliate features) is that you earn commissions “on anything purchased by that customer on Free IQ, for an entire year”.
So what happens if this site turns into a huge hit and that person you refer keeps buying for years? Too bad for you.
Anyway, that aside, the affiliate payout, for referring customers who buy products on Free IQ, is between 25-45% of the sale (as set by the content provider). Then there’s a flat 5% on the second tier.
If you refer a content provider you will receive 1% of all sales made by that content provider for the first year. And there’s a 0.5% second tier with this.
Free IQ has got potential.
Note: I was obviously wrong about it’s potential because, editing this 5 years later it has completely vanished from the web.
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5. Slick salesmen in action.
Just got back from a few days (shopping,cultural, and dining break) in the big city. You tend to do that kind of thing when you live in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from anything but beaches and mountains and vast, nearly empty, plains.
After a happy few hours in Borders, buying big bagfuls of books and magazines (including Business 2, Revenue, and Inc which I can’t get in my remote part of Australia) I got back to the Hilton and guess who got into the lift with me?
Paris! And would you believe that she offered to help me with my bags.
Only kidding. Just seeing if you’re paying attention here
Actually, no-one got into the lift with me; so because my hands were full I stabbed at the lift buttons with my elbow and accidentally got the function room floor before hitting the correct button. When the doors briefly opened on the function floor I saw a sign that grabbed my attention:
“Internet Marketing Seminar”
Now I’ve been feeling a bit seminar deprived ( I had to miss out on flying to Yaniks Underground seminar in Washington a couple of weeks ago because my globetrotting daughter Kate came over from England to show off her new boyfriend) so when I saw the seminar sign I decided to crash it and see if any of my American “guru” friends were there.
After freshening up I went back down to the function room floor and walked straight into what was obviously a major pitch fest and not a guru in sight,
On stage the presenter, with a big screen behind him, was talking basic stuff, explaining what Alexa was, and fumbling over an attempt to show Yahoo at number one while suggesting that the software on sale at the seminar would help propel you to the top of everything.
But the real action was off-stage, where slick looking salesmen in suits were leading couples to the back of the room, or outside into a lobby area, and smoothly getting the couples to sign on the dotted line.
LOTS of people were signing up for whatever was being sold. People who looked like they ran small businesses, but didn’t appear to have much clue about the Internet.
As a person more used to laid back internet marketing seminars and workshops, the whole thing seemed designed to #%$#$^#^&^ #@$%@%$@#%%$
Sorry, just had to censor myself there. I’ve got no desire to be sued.
The company signing people up left, right, and center are called StoresOnline. They have quite an interesting history which you can read about at this Google link
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6. Residual earnings from low-traffic sites.
When I first met Matt Garrett, in a pub in London a few years ago, he was just starting out on the net. But I could tell, mainly from his enthusiasm and energy, that he was going to do well.
Like many of us at the time, he jumped head first into building Adsense sites, and he did really well. If Matt was the type to wear gold chains he’d have been so weighed down with them that he’d hardly be able to walk.
Life was good.
Then, as you know, life got hard for people relying on Adsense, so Matt started thinking of ways to boost the income from his sites.
A couple of weeks ago he sent me a book he’s written about a very simple system for building websites that can earn you an ongoing residual income.
He’s called it “Lazy Git Marketing” and although I don’t like the title I do like the ideas he’s come up with.
He thought up a simple, but very effective, way of earning an ongoing monthly income from low-traffic sites.
In the book he shows you how to build these sites quickly and generate ongoing revenue from them.
I’ve never seen any else write about what he’s doing.
ok, that’s it for this issue. Thanks for reading.
phil
ps. don’t forget my interview back up at the top