In case you are wondering, Amazon and the state of California have come to an agreement and I expect my Amazon Associates account to be reinstated any day now. So I still plan on having an Amazon Christmas. But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop using VigLink. Especially now that they have opened up Link Insertion to everyone.  VigLink is an affiliate program that is affiliated with Amazon, eBay, Commission Junction and many of the other top affiliate companies.

If you want to know if a specific merchant is affiliated with VigLink, you can use the Merchant Coverage tool, which allows you to insert the url of the affiliate product and check whether it is affiliated or not. Some advantages of using VigLink is that they are a big top tier affiliate, which means that they get the top commission, whereas a small affiliate may get 4% from Amazon while Viglink will get 8%. Because many affiliates pay percentages based on sales volume. Viglink will take out 25% of your commissions so you need to do the math to decide if this is viable for you.

What makes VigLink really useful is the ease of use. To enable VigLink on a site all you have to do is copy the VigLink code and paste it before the closing </body> tag on your site. In WordPress this would be in footer.php. Once you have the code installed all you have to do is link to any item that VigLink has an affiliated relationship with and when the user clicks on it VigLink will give you credit for that click. You don’t actually have to insert any affiliate code in the link. Just a plain old text link and you are affiliated.

VigLink has two great features that you can enable before you install your code which will make VigLink even more useful. The first one is Affiliation, which enables VigLink to override links that are already affiliated. This was really useful for me when I was switching my Amazon links to VigLink. Instead of redoing all of my Amazon links all I had to do was check the VigLink Affiliation button and VigLink automatically reaffiliated my Amazon links to VigLink Amazon links. When my Amazon Associates account is restored I will just deselect the reaffiliate button and then my Amazon links will back to my associates account.

But I won’t be removing the VigLink code because it is great for links that aren’t affiliated. Before this gets too confusing let me clear things up. By affiliated we mean that the link has affiliate code in it, so that as the publisher we get credit when a site visitor clicks on a link. If your site is full of your own affiliate links you can still use VigLink because it won’t touch those links already affiliated. It will only add affiliate links to products and services that don’t have an affiliations.

If you choose to use the reaffiliate function it currently only works on Amazon and eBay links. But this is great for people who have sites that are heavily monetized with Amazon or eBay and for some reason don’t have those affiliate accounts anymore. The coolest new feature of VigLink is the Link Insertion program. When you enable link insertion you don’t even have to create links. VigLink will automatically create links for products and services that they are affiliated with when they are mentioned on your site.

Just think of how convenient this would be for forum owners or someone who has a large guest post site that is not monetized. Normally I don’t want to share my commissions with another company, but VigLink can be a great addition to anyone’s affiliate arsenal.

Hopefully we will be able to assist you in finding freelance online writing jobs. If you are looking for writers for your web projects, feel free to use the contact form on the writing jobs page, to get your listing posted.

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 Update: I took the writing job page down. Because all jobs are currently filled.

Amit has recently returned from speaking at Affiliate Summit Boston. And he posted a link to a slide show from his talk. It’s posted at a site called slideshare, which is also worth checking out. In order to download the file you will need to register. But the site is worth checking out because it also has some other cool presentations.

photo credit: Mars Hill Church Seattle

The definition of a recession is when there is a decline in gross domestic product or negative real economic growth for two or more successive quarters of  a year. Some predictors of a recession are stock market drops and an increase in unemployment.

Experts argue whether we are in a recession or heading into one. Some even feel this is just a correction of the economy and housing market, resulting from the sub prime mortgage crisis. Never the less businesses are tightening their belts. Budget cuts and layoffs are all around us.

So what can we do? Well we could just keep on spending to stimulate the economy. Although I’d rather play it a little safer and use this as an opportunity to examine my financial habits. This might be a good time to take stock and spend a little less and try to earn a little more.

The free wheeling days of people taking equity out of their homes and buying things they don’t need may be gone. But there are still plenty of money making opportunities out there. Chad of CDF Networks recently created this post about CPA offers to run in a recession.

Hopefully common sense will prevail and this recession will just be a bump in the road and an opportunity for people to make better decisions with their finances in the future. Instead of panicking let’s focus on being a little smarter with our futures.

photo credit: Edwin Dalorzo

I’m getting quite a collection of E-books. If I ever lose Internet access I’ll still have plenty of reading on my computer. Matt Jones from Blogging Fingers has written a new E-book on Strategies For Blog Monetization. You can download it for free on his site.

Plus 10 people who download the E-book will win FruitfulTime TaskManager to do list software. I haven’t read the E-book or tried the software yet. But I plan to. Best of luck with your blog monetization and time management. Emma

I’ve also discovered that there is something called a GAP exam. Where if one passes and maintains a certain dollar amount in an AdWords account for 90 days, it’s possible to become a Google AdWords Professional. I’ve also read almost every post on ZacJohnson.com.

I’ve also implemented a test on AdCenter and the Google AdWords content network. Where I’ve purchased a domain from GoDaddy, and redirected it to one of the affiliate landing pages offered on neverblueAds. This is a test of that particular program to see if I should invest the time to create a landing page on that product to promote it more. It’s also a learning experience for me

My first AdWords Campaign to promote my Subscriber Contest, did generate clicks to my site. And my Subscribers did increase a bit. I’m not sure if the Ads generated subscribers. But there were a lot of impressions as well. So that was probably worth the learning experience and the exposure. I set up a small budget and just used that campaign as a practice run.

Basic AdWord Definitions:

• CPC – cost-per-click – AdWords charges you for each click received.

• Quality Score – Measuring your quality of keyword and ad to determine your minimum bid price. Determined by Clickthrough rate, relevance of ad text, historical keyword performance, and other factors. The higher your Quality Score the lower your minimum bid.

• Minimum Bid – Amount assigned to keyword based on Quality Score. Least amount you pay-per-click in order for your keyword to show ads.

• Clickthrough Rate (CTR) – Calculated as Number of ad clicks/number of impressions X 100. The more relevant the ads, the more users will click, resulting in higher Clickthrough rates.

I’ve mostly learned that I have a lot more to learn. I’m going to keep studying and trying out new techniques. I’ve been finding some good information in Super Affiliate Mindset lately and it’s quickly becoming on of my favorite blogs. Here are 3 more posts that are worth checking out.

• Take the Plunge…Part II

• How the Heavy Hitters do Adwords…Part II

• How the Heavy Hitters do Adwords…Part III

Currently it is displaying my link to neverblueAds. But, for 5$ a week you can have your banner ad displayed in that spot. Just click on “show your ad here”, under the banner.

The next advertising option that has been getting some attention lately is Project Wonderful. Project Wonderful uses something called an Infinite Auction to price the ads. The pricing starts at 0$ therefore I have six 125 x125 squares available for free.

This seems like a pretty good deal. So if anyone would like to display a 125 x125 ad on my site for free. Now is your chance. Just click on the spot and take it from there.

I went for the starter edition with one ad. I used the keyword tool to find the phrase “win free stuff”. I used only this one keyword phrase, and set a budget of 50$ for the month. This is just an experiment to start learning about using AdWords.

Like I’ve said before, finding out what works for you, through trial and error, is a big part of the learning process. So eventually we have to just start trying things to see what works. Although it doesn’t hurt to learn as much as possible.

The Google learning center offers multimedia AdWords lessons, complete with quizzes at the end. So I guess I’ll work through these before I kick off another campaign.

• Google AdWords Learning Center 

Here are some more advanced resources that should help us get started:

• The Super Affiliate’s Guide To PPC Marketing
• The Super Affiliates Guide To PPC Marketing on Microsoft AdCenter

Another Useful Web Site:

• CDF Networks

And just for fun, Mark Weilgus of 45n5, is making videos about his new PPC learning campaigns.

• A Newbie PPC Campaign – The First 24 Hours
• PPC Rockstar – Send Them Home
• Business Card Rapper – VistaPrint Review
• PPC Rockstar – Cards And Gardens

That should be enough to keep me and anyone else, new to PPC busy for awhile. I’ll get back to you about my campaign and let you know what I received for my 50$.

In case you’ve recently noticed. I don’t have any AdSense ads on this site. I’m still a fan of AdSense and I plan on using it for some niche sites I’m developing. But I recently found out that I was smart priced and AdSense isn’t the best monetization choice for this blog.

If you don’t know what smart pricing is you should probably read Courtney Tuttle’s great article How To Get Worthless AdSense Clicks. If one of your sites is smart priced then your entire account will be. In order to get the maximum price for your clicks you need at least a 3% CTR. So if you have a blog about blogging, and no one clicks on your ads, then all of your sites will be smart priced.

Therefore, I needed to remove my AdSense and replace it with something else. I was recently accepted into the NeverBlueAds program. So I will be experimenting with some of their offerings. NeverBlueAds has a lot of options and is really easy to implement. There are several different campaigns that I am interested in. So you should be hearing more about this in the future.

If you are interested in testing the waters of some other affiliate programs, you might want to sign up for NeverBlueAds. Signing up is easy. One thing, that you shouldn’t be worried about, is that once you sign up an account representative actually calls you on the phone and speaks to you. Your account won’t be approved until that conversation happens.

This almost scared me away. But I left my number anyway. Once they called they just asked about my sites, and traffic levels, and marketing techniques. They just want to screen the applicants to make sure they get quality publishers. Then after the conversation, they approve you, and you get an email with your passwords, and you are good to go.

Zac Johnson gives an example of one way to do this in his Super Affiliate’s Guide to PPC Marketing. Mark over at 45n5 actually gave this a shot and shares his adventures in his PPC journal post. Affiliate marketing through PPC is worth looking into. But be realistic about the learning curve, and all the time and effort involved in developing a successful campaign.

If promoting affiliate sites is something your interested in NeverBlueAds has been getting a lot of attention lately. In fact they are sponsoring a contest over at Matthew Henrickson’s, Blog About Your Blog. During this contest 3 lucky people will win 100$, complements of Never Blue Ads. Here is the prize list:

First-Third Place 100$ Winners from NeverBlueAds
Fourth Place Website Review on this blog by Adsense Tracker
Fifth Place 25$ from Blogging4Everyone
Sixth Place Website Review from Nspeaks
Seventh Place Website Review from SelectIndex
Eighth Place Featured Blog Spot on A Links Blog

This contest ends at midnight on December 17th. I can’t really promote something without checking it out so I signed up for Never Blue Ads. I haven’t been accepted yet. Apparently their rep actually calls you on the phone to let you know if your accepted or not.

As usual, as I find out  more I’ll let you know how it goes. Is being part of Never Blue Ads worth getting a phone call? Is promoting affiliate programs worth the time and effort? Time will tell.

Update: Jason from Never Blue Ads called and I was accepted into the program.

Besides Amazon Never Blue will be my first venture into affiliate marketing. I’ll keep you posted.