A Couple New Domain Development Projects

As mentioned in a previous post about high dollar affiliate programs and possible lost revenue, I have been working on researching affiliate programs that generate higher dollar revenue than typical PPC or product affiliates on Amazon, etc.

As part of this I have also been making it a point to develop a smaller number of sites into larger sites. Although I am still not close to done on either of these development projects I thought I would talk about which sites I have started down full development process on.

Both of these sites are being developed using content mainly from TextBroker.com and using Wordpress themes from iThemes.com. (Neither of those are affiliate links, but are products that I use daily at this point.)

The first site, PrivateJetCost.com, is a project focused on private jets and either booking or fractional jet ownership, I mentioned this site in my TextBroker.com post comments. Although I currently have Adsense on the pages as the site progresses it will be focused almost exclusively on affiliate revenue.

Currently I have affiliate approval from the two programs I submitted to and am working on implementing the second one. The goal is to provide a content rich site and continue to add new content weekly. This is not a site that will sit dead, for a competitive industry such as this the "set it and forget it" mini-site model will not work. On a side note, thanks to Melly Walker for the work on the logo and header. She also did a few articles for the site and she provided great work on the logo for the next site as well.

The second site, which is a little behind PrivateJetCost.com, is RetirementSeminars.com. The content is just coming in for this site, the site will also have content added weekly and is starting with Adsense as I determine the revenue path for this domain name.

There are many options so it is not a matter of not having a good path, its a matter of finding the best path. Retirement seminars are big business, especially as the baby boomer generation marches towards retirement in this tough economy. Once again, this is a site that will not benefit from sitting still. There will be an event calendar and directory added after the initial site content is complete but for now its all about article content.

Although these sites will have hundreds of pages of content as they move forward these are really smaller projects compared to another project that will be announced in the very near future. There is some fun stuff going on that I cannot wait to talk about.

Are We Affiliate Marketing Hypocrites

Shane (from DomainShane.com) left a good comment on a post I did earlier today (The Art Of SEO) about using affiliate links in blog posts and the risk of starting to seem like an affiliate marketer and then no one believing what you have to say anymore. He was not saying that I was necassarily doing that but did mention that people do start to be turned off when affiliate links are used.

I get that, and funny enough recently I even went back to some old posts and removed affiliate links to certain products that I do not actually use (or use no longer) so it was funny to think about how that relates to a post I did where I actually believed in the products I had links too. (Before you start looking I am sure there are some stragglers left but I did try to remove those from products I do not use).

Are we hypocrites when it comes to affiliate links? We as domainers and web developers like to talk about monetizing our traffic, etc but when we see one of our own actually make money off of something they actually used and recommended why do we complain. I have to be honest I have actually had the same thought when I went to other peoples blogs and realized we are a bit hypocritical when we dismiss domain bloggers for having affiliate links in their posts.

The funny part is that the money I make off affiliates is so low because I really do not use them all that much, most of the advertisers on my blog are paid spots, there are some affiliate spots but all of them are actually products or services I use.

So, is it wrong to actually profit from content that I, or other bloggers, generate (for free) when I actually believe in a product, is it wrong for a fellow blogger to benefit from affiliate links on their blog?

I guess what I am saying is that with all the talk about monetizing traffic most of us have sites out there with affiliate revenue coming from them and I guarantee that most of us have never used the products on those sites so why is it wrong for a blogger when they actually believe in the product?

This post is not really about me or my specific post, it just brought up some hypocrisy that I have had happen a couple times, my Hostgator post about upgrading servers and the great service I got from them also had the same conversation come up. Weird that people think it is wrong to have affiliate links in when you are actually saying things you experienced but they do not have a problem with it on sites they have developed themselves when they have not used the products.

Affiliate Convention Day One Closes With Great Keynote By Danny Sullivan

What a great day, met a ton of very interesting people and picked up some VERY interesting tips from some of the top affiliate marketing people on the web as well as SEO company leaders and experts.

Got to meet the Thought Convergence team (caught Ammar Kubba at sign in by luck). Very small domainer showing at the conference but I would encourage anyone that is looking to build the monetization side of their business to attend one of these in the future. Even if you are an expert at traffic monetization you will find useful tips and the networking was great.

A few notes before we head out for dinner, these are all comments and thoughts put out by leaders in the industry (all paraphrased and not exact quotes, it is my fault if something is lost in translation), much of this is info we know all ready but it is always good to repeat so we do not forget what is happening:

Social media is starting to give search a run for its money (paraphrasing), although search is not disappearing anytime soon people telling their friends about products converts better.

If you have affiliate sites do not put 10 links in 1 page. Just do not, Google knows (I am sure we all know this already but we all can be guilty of it). Although people that do land on it may click fact of the matter is your revenue will drop because you get less traffic because the big G is not stupid.

Even though know one can every confirm it there was at least some thinking by Danny Sullivan from SearchEngineLand.com that it would make sense for Google to give preference to Adsense users since they know the quality of the traffic and can thus determine ranking in search. This is not to say it is happening but it would make sense.

What your search traffic and tweak your campaigns accordingly, some really cool ideas about how to take advantage of Google Custom Search, before I give the details I want to test and will let you know the details if it works. This came from a guy that once ranked above Google for the term Google Webmaster Guidelines and has been linked to buy Matt Cutts. He knows his stuff.

A really great point Danny Sullivan made in relation to Rupert Murdoch wanting Google to pay for indexing his news sites is that the newspapers and news sites never pay to have people quoted in articles and never link back to the person quoted. Seems like the news sites are being a little hypocritical. Very good point.

Also, on the topic of the WSJ not being able to convert the millions of visitors they get from Google, shouldn't they hire somebody that can figure that out, shouldn't they have people that know how to make money of visitors (some sarcasm there).

SEO firms are turning more and more into conversion analysts as most customers do not know what to do with the targeted traffic once they receive it, this is something I have posted on a couple times.

Got to see Hamlet Batista talk about his success doing $923K in PROFITS from viagra affiliates over a few year period of time (letter confirming shown from the affiliate company). By proper link building he made it to the first page of Google for the term Viagra but started with long tail terms. Oh yeah, NO PAID ADVERTISING.

Research what the competitors are doing before you launch, figure out what they are doing and emulate it. If they are paying thousands for ads over a period of a few weeks something is converting....

I hear Morgan typing away, I know he is typing up a great post so I will let him fill you in on the rest of the details. There is so much to tell but only so much this little mind can remember.

We are headed out to the Affiliate Bash at the Aqualounge in Beverly Hills, Jason Thompson from DNPimping is going, and more importantly Shock G from Digital Underground is doing a whole set (OLD SCHOOL HIP HOP!!!! Humpty Dance).