How To Be Safe Buying From Ali Express

How To Be Safe Buying From Ali Express

by | May 28, 2020 | Affiliate, Ecommerce, Guides

6 Ways to Safeguard Yourself When Buying on Alibaba

When doing business overseas you want to learn to protect yourself against loss. You want to be able to avoid scams and middle-men as well as getting substandard products. While there is no one solution that is totally infallible, using a few simple guidelines can prove to be very effective.

I use AliExpress and Ali Baba A LOT! I even bought my girlfreinds birthday present from Ali Express

Here are her birthday socks haha

ali express printed socks

 

At first she was sad because she had sloth feet but she warmed up to these printed socks and now she has a collection of monster feet printed socks.  That my friends is the power of Ali Express, people buy random stuff online to pass time, have a laugh and to spend their hard earned money. This si where we come in with our ecommerce stores and product promotions. 

Here are a few things you can do to help yourself when dealing with overseas suppliers –

1. Verifiy Your New Supply Partner

Believe it or not Alibaba has put a verification program of their own into place. It gives you several different levels of verification. They have 3 levels of verification all total and the chart down below goes into it a little deeper. The verification badges appearing on the product list as well as supplier profiles help give you an idea of what kind of vendor you’re dealing with. Having a look at these badges is a good was to start your search.

 

2. Ask Questions Around The Product Nothing is as it Appears

As your search begins to narrow down and you have weeded out most of the competition, it’s time to get down to some more serious types of questions. Request a copy of a business license to verify who they are, or maybe even a phone number and then call it right away.

Contact them on Skype or their main contact channel and request some sample products. You can get variations like red or blue etc. This helps you see what type of communication you will have with the person who will be handling the product and shipping process of your business.

You should feel totally free to ask any questions that pop into your head. It’s not too far fetched to have somebody at the factory snap a selfie and send it to you while on the factory floor. You could have them include a copy of today’s newspaper as well as a product of theirs. Of course, you don’t want to push them away either. Too much distrust will only breed and foster more distrust. It’s wise to be cautious but not overly distrustful.

If you plan to scale you need a solid partner and someone who has clear communication with you. What if you had the biggest front end sales month ever for your store and corona virus 2 hits and you need answers on shipping and delivery dates as well as inventory levels. You need clear communication.

 

3. Get Some Product Samples First

It’s just good common sense to check out some samples prior to committing to any large amount of inventory and money. You should get the samples in order to verify the ‘quality’ of the products for yourself. You can even contact them using a fake name and email address.

You 100% need to get the products before you sell them. This helps you see what the delivery time is like, what the boxing or packaging lookslike and most impoirtanly what the actual product looks and feels like.

I wont promote any products that I havent at least had a play with to test its quality.

Bonus tip – use this to film unboxing videos and product demos 🙂

4. Things That Seem Too Good to be True

Everyone has heard that when this happens things usually are too good to be that true and usually aren’t. Be wary of promises and prices that run up your skeptic meter.

You can read reviews of past buyers to get a quick pulse check on that product and the vendor.

Never be afraid to walk away from any deal that doesn’t ‘smell’ right. You are the buyer and Ali Express is a buyers market.

5. Get It In Your Hands & Try To Break It

Your dropshipping products are going to fail if you dont know the quality of what you are selling. My advice and its saved my butt more times than not is to get that product in your hands.

Now you have it you should try being a little rough with the product to stress test the product. You may need to buy 2 or 3 of the same products. You do this because you can really nail your product descriptions and features benefits descriptors by knowing the limits.

If it breaks and you only just picked it up then change the product or find a better manufacturer.

6. Use A Pen Name Account To Buy & Review

I would never be buying items from Ali Express with my real account. I say this because as you build success you will naturally attract trolls and copycats. This can not be avoided.

Use a throw away email account where the name is random and not your name or your business name. These manufacturers on Ali Express need reviews to help their businesses and you should be leaving reviews out of courtesy.

But you also need to be safe with your behaviour online. Use a random profile to leave reviews. Keep safe and this allows you to shop and review unkown to any copycats.

I love dropshipping and ecommerce, but you need to be smart when using these latforms. Esopecially for the long term play. I hope this helps you get more from Ali Express. Enjoy.

How To Be Safe Buying From Ali Express

How To Be Safe Buying From Ali Express

by

6 Ways to Safeguard Yourself When Buying on Alibaba When doing business overseas you want to learn to protect yourself against loss. You want to be able to avoid scams and middle-men as well as getting substandard products. While there is no one solution that is...

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10 Ways To Monetize A Blog

10 Ways To Monetize A Blog

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10 Ways To Monetize A Blog

10 Ways To Monetize A Blog

by | May 17, 2020 | Affiliate, Guides, Paid Ads, Reviews

What is the trend with people building websites and then making a living from them? You may have asked this question before. Its a real things.

Is it to share some knowledge that we have or is it to make money? People build websites for many reasons. I like to provide my visitors with good quality content so that they will come back to my website.I also love to train and educate people about how they can change their lifestyle by working online.

We all would like to make more money, and you can learn how to monetise your website to do that.

 

Here are 10 ways that bloggers can monetise their websites:

1. Google AdSense

 

This is a form of banner advertising where you allow websites to place their advertising banners on your website through the use of the Google display network.

You are paid per impression or per click on each banner. Google AdSense is one way you can monetise your website. Once you have your website up and running, go to Google AdSense and sign up for an account. You will have the chance to make some good money. Let’s say that your website is getting traffic every day; you could easily make a dollar a day.

You can then expand that to 20 pages and easily turn into $20 a day. That would come to $600 a month of extra income into your pocket. What if you did this two, three, five or ten times? Meaning, you have ten websites with targeted traffic every day.

Can you see the potential? That’s $6000 a month. This is not going to be easy and will take you some work to get it set up. I do need to let you know that this is going to take time. It might take you a year to get this all going, but once it is done with all your blood, sweat and tears, you’ll be able to kick back and enjoy the fruits of your hard work and labour.

Learn how to monetise your website, and you could make some good money. Lots of people are doing it, why not you?

 

2. Display Advertising

Very similar to Google Adsense but different in the sense that you dont involve Google. If your website deals with a unique topic, you might find it hard to attract contextual advertisements. In such cases, you could try display ads. These ads pay per view, and not per click. While using multiple ads and service providers could help you make a respectable amount of money, you should make sure that you don’t use a lot of display ads.

Too many, and it could affect the load time and overall look of your website, lowering some visitors it attracts. Display advertising now offers advertisers more opportunities to more clearly define who will see an ad. With behavioural targeting options, you can have your ads served up to consumers who have visited certain other websites or performed certain actions online.

With psychographic and demographic targeting, you can serve ads only to people who fit specific consumer profiles regarding age, household income, gender, and many other variables.

3. Contextual Advertising

 

This form of promotion and hype is known to the web market as contextual advertising. More than a simple publicity strategy, contextual advertising is aimed to relate directly to the gist of the page on which it is posted. Being a targeted marketing sub-form, promotions and ads are placed to reach the most number of site viewers and customers.

In contextual advertising, advertisements themselves are sorted and served by programmed software and systems based on the displayed content of a particular web page. If you happen to view a site about health and you come across ads for weight-loss programs and food supplement products, it is more likely that the page is utilising contextual advertising.

For this modern form of advertising strategy to complete, a contextual advertising system performs thorough automated scans of website texts, highlights keywords and then returns ads to the web page based on perceived content.

These advertisements can either be automatically linked to an on-page layout, or it could also take the form of pop-up ads. To prove the success of such platform, even search engines also make use of contextual advertising to put on-view promotions and ads on search results pages.

Based on the user’s query, the system automatically delivers the information along with the ads promptly, the reason why this marketing form is dubbed as a cost-effective and efficient technique.

This is in a way a combination fo teh first 2 points. This is an effective method for advertisers to get more focus targeting for their offers.

4. Affiliate Marketing

 

Using affiliate links is one of the oldest ways of website monetisation. No matter what your site or blog is about, there will be companies which sell complimenting products. Internet marketing is one of the best ways to reach a very diverse audience.

Years ago, you were limited as to who you could reach with your product advertisements. With so many people from all over the world online, you can now market your products, literally, to the ends of the earth.

Stay focused on the content offered on your site. Do not compromise your content to better cater to the affiliate programs you are using because it will cause you to lose your readers.

If you lose the readers, you lose the opportunity to make any money off of the ads that you have on your site.

Read more:

5. Product Reviews

 

Integral with any high-performance product review is how well it can presell the reader, and that is completely different from selling the reader. The biggest advantage of effective preselling is that you won’t face the typical objections that are usually faced with prospects as you’re not doing any direct selling.

It is not difficult at all to create killer reviews, and you just have to be willing to learn them and do some work. We have put together a few essential facts about creating product reviews using solid preselling methods. Understand that a product review is not a sales pitch; you can’t fill in all the hype and drama into your product review and expect it to work.

You can review these product types:

  • Digital products
  • eBooks
  • Online courses
  • Physical products
  • Services
  • Locations & destinations
  • Entertainment
  • All the things 😉

Your review’s job is to convince your target audience that the product is right for them without actually selling to them. You can make a better impression with the reader when you add your honest feelings including anything you found that is less than positive.

Every good product review that focuses on the needs of the reader will perform better in the long run. We recommend that you discuss the negative aspects of the product in addition to the obvious positive ones. Don’t just sugarcoat things to make the review highly positive as that may look misleading to your readers.

So many people and marketers are afraid that if they talk about the wrong things, then that will hurt sales. We think you will be surprised to find that folks love it when they find someone who is willing to be open.

 

6. Whitelabel Products and Sell Your Own

 

You could sell your products to make money out of your website. Selling items such as eBooks, DVDs, etc. is a great way to make money since you get a full income from them. At the same time, such merchandise also helps promote you as an expert in the field.

However, it takes time and effort to create quality products and effectively market them.

You can speed up the process by working with a whitelabel vendor who already has mass volume of teh product but needs some help selling their stock. They will work with you on some minor customisations of their product so it feels more like a new “version” of their main product. This is a fantasic way to get sales without having to spend months in R&D.

I love whitelabel it saves a lot of time and with some imagination you can take a winning product customise it and sell it as your own.

7. Using in Text Advertisements

 

You’ve likely seen these on different websites while browsing. Rather than putting up ads on your site, these ads are randomly placed within the text of your site’s posts and pages.

There are a few different high quality in text advertising networks out there which make it simple to start making money from in-text ads as all you have to do is add a line of code to your site and tell them where you want your checks sent. The most profitable way to monetise your web page or blog is to know your customers and create products that help them.

Learn how to monetise your websites and use all the tools available so that way, you will have a better chance at success. You would be missing out by not taking advantage of these paid advertisers.

8. Banner Advertisements

Banner ads have existed for almost as long as the Internet has. Banner ads give a great return on their investment as long as you don’t make the mistakes that many marketers are making.

If you read on, you will discover some ways to optimise your results and build an excellent banner ad campaign. As someone who works with websites and blogs, you should always remember to make sure your advertising banners represent your blog or site, matching up perfectly with it in every way.

Your banner ad must be persuasive as your site should be; it’s not a minor point. Having the design of your ad be compatible with your site means you won’t have to change the look of it every time you put another new banner ad up on the web.

All you should need to do is create new text, and you should have a fresh new banner ad. It also will assure the fact there’s a flow to your ad. When you choose to work with banner advertising you don’t want to allow them to be outdated, so to continue to have a great traffic flow you must keep your banners fresh. A perfect example of the negative effect on customers of an outdated banner would be the promotion of a sale which already is over.

Quite simply, they will stop coming to your site to purchase anything. It’s pretty basic thinking; if you don’t care enough to keep your ads current, nobody’s going to trust your products or service either. Regularly updated banners allow you to drive more traffic to your site, promote new products and get better overall results from your efforts. An easy way to keep your banner ads fresh looking is to switch colours or designs once in a while.

There are those who choose to change their ads monthly, and those who do it less frequently. The point is the more frequent changes are made to your ads, the more you’ll be receiving conversions. Usually a change each month will be adequate to freshen up your banners.

Don’t forget that you can use your banner ads,in social posts, forums, emails and many more places. All it takes is a little imagination.

9. Targeted Content Ads

This method aims to take conventional advertising a step further wherein an ad is triggered by the consumer’s search. A typical keyword has a title (of about 25 characters) and a text (that has about 35 characters). Within the short space that’s provided, the advertiser explains the benefits of his products over his competitor.

Using content-targeted advertising has the advantage of generating more revenues for the advertisers. This is due to the fact that targeted ads increase its relevancy. So even if the number of ads is decreased or limited in frequency, it can still influence more people.

Another advantageous benefit of this form of advertising is the immediate showing of data and content that is otherwise limited by time and geography in traditional advertising. The ads can also be easily customised so it can quickly adapt to a changing audience demand or preference.

Content targeted advertising matches the context of the ad or the interests of the users to that of the advertisement. This allows more interest to be generated for an advertised product or service which in turn generates more sales conversion.

The utility of targeted advertising can further be enhanced by dynamically linking the most applicable contents which are taken from various sources such as YouTube video clips, RSS feeds and Wikipedia articles. At present, many businesses have profited from this form of advertising that it has made this Google creation very popular throughout the internet.

No other platform enables small businesses to compete with multinationals and Fortune 500 companies.

10. GoFund Me Type Donations

If you have a large, dedicated fan base, you could consider asking for donations. However, it is important to ensure that you don’t come across as greedy. I really like how Patreon, Indigogo and some Go Fund Me campaigns are setup where its super clear for funders to see the roadmap or the plan for the donation.

Place your donate button out of the way and avoid it altogether if you already have a lot of ads on your website. You have to get people to visit your site first, or that donate button is useless.

And before you do even that, your site’s donate button and donation form has to be designed in such a way that, once inspired, people will follow through with the donation. Great stories, emotional writing, and amazing media are not enough to get people to complete the donation process if your donate button is hidden, or your donation page a confusing mess.

I know Ive spent a bit on Patreon and Indigogo helping businesses take the next step with crowd funding. I do want to stress that having a worthy cause is a must. I might make a off the shoulder comment that it seems more and more people are putting up donations pages with no clear purpoise why. This worries me that people are just cashing in on the opportunity.

If you see a Go Fund Me on this blog it will be to buy a small tropical island away from all the noise of big cities.

 

Key Takeaway

Use your imagination to think a little diufferently and try new things on your blog. These 10 tips are tried and tested they work and they allow you to get paid while you build a bigger asset.

 

Well thats the end of the 10 tips but thats not the end of the opportunities available to you. I hope you have enjoyed this list of website money making tactics. As always if you have enjoyed this content like it share it and help me spread the word.

 

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How To Be Safe Buying From Ali Express

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How To Beat Amazon Affiliate Commission Drops

How To Beat Amazon Affiliate Commission Drops

by | Apr 15, 2020 | Affiliate, Business, Guides

Amazon made some big changes early this morning causing ripples throughout the affiliate community. I honestly think if you didnt see this coming then you need to now take control of your revenue. I made big moves away from Amazon in late 2016 after they blundered a big investment in Amazon FBA and made some bogus claims against my Amazon associates account. 

I opened my eyes and looked for other alternatives. They do exist and they are always better to work with than a huge corporation who at any moment can screw its affiliates. Funny enough the screwing happened in the early hours this morning.

 

Summary of what happened:

assive fee changes for some categories on the Amazon Associates program, starting on 21st April.
Home improvement, Garden, Pets,Beauty and more go from 8% to 3% Ive added a change table so you can see what the commissions were and what they are as of 21st April 2020.
To change table  by Amazon – Heartbreak link

The Opportunity For Amazon Affiliates To Pivot

Amazon associates program is not the only revenue stream for affiliate sales. There are so many more opportunities available and Ill show you some of the better places to get affiliate deals setup.

I would suggest taking the approach of diversify your revenue stream just like COVID-19 taught us that things can change. Never leave all your eggs in one basket, make moves to secure multiple revenue streams and this works for affiliates as well. Look at using multiple affiliate programs to monetise your websites.

Think of these platforms like Landlords:

  • Google
  • YouTube
  • Amazon
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Bing
  • Pinterest

You dont control them, you cant control them. All you can do is play by their rules and hope they dont change the rules on you after you have invested time and money building your empire around their goal posts. These are goal posts that move when they say they need to move.

Google will make algo updates and ruin yoru organic strategy overnight.

Facebook will create social engagement changes so you can no longer bait people to click and share your pormotions.

Instagram will hide your engagement metrics so people have to do more things to engage with yoru content making it less rewarding for them.

YouTube can ban your account because you posted more videos in one day than they think you should. The list goes on about how you can loose everything because of these platforms changing their goal posts.

I actively search for new affiliate programs every 6 months in my niches and I would ask you to do similar. Book a date in your calendar and set it to 6 month reoccurring and do the searching you will be suprised at what you find.

My Advice: Consider expanding your site’s potential profit by diversifying your affiliate networks.

Amazon being a big orange bag of dried up apricots is not the end of the world. In fact there are other alternatives and I went through this process when I swore off Amazon when they F#@cked me over back in late 2016.

Here is a roundup of the affiliate networks I would suggest you look at joining to get that loss of revenue back while still selling from your site you were using with Amazon. Each network has strengths and weaknesses and different terms, I found most are decent enough and when you can verify traffic results and sales your almost set to renegotiate your percentage of commission that you get for a sale #winning.

Check them out below.

How to find affiliate programs?

I would always start by searching Google first. a simple query like “Pet food affiliate programs” is a good starting point.
you can search Google using the term “<brand> affiliate” and you will have a range of affiliate program options in most cases. 
Like to have the tech do that for you? I have a solution. You can also try searching platforms like odigger.com and  affi.io.

 

10 Other Affiliate Networks and Programs

 

Clickbank

The staple in naffiliate marketing and where I began my journey into promoting other peoples products. Clickbank is a well-known name withmore than 20 years online maketing history they are the belly of teh beast. Clickbank has developed a reputation for relatively high commissions ranging 10-75% and a name that pays on time everyy time. They say they have reach of more than 200 million customerbase

Clickbank comes with a learning hub for beginenrs, very functional analytics dashboard, extended oppotunity for partnerships and has many reoccurring commissions offerings.

This is a great starting point for beginners and really should be in everyones marketing arsenal.

CJ Affiliate by Conversant

CJ Affiliate are a big player with a LOT of offers. They are a massive affiliate network that works with and promotes products and companies all over the globe, I am suprised by some names that keep popping up in the dashboard of local companies near my home city. Its a suprise to see but just goes to show the power of online marketing.

I love the simplicity of the affiliate dashboard and search functions for finding those winning offers. They have history and expereince o their side and it shows. Great expereince with them so far and Ive been really impressed with thier dropshipping component. They have extended features for more expereinced affiliates called “premier” where you can earn $10k a month and upwards. 

This is free to sign up to and a great starting point for beginners, the more expereinced marketers will thrive with this platform.

 

Rakuten Marketing

Hosting a library of household names think Best Buy, Lacoste, Wal-Mart, Macy’s, and the like this is a one stop shop for affiliates who want to promote more retail type offers. Think big machine style affiliate marketing, they say they have pushed over 120 million orders a year and growing.

They have sme high profile industry awards thrown their way thanks to mThink, they picked up Best Affiliate Network seven years running. 

Rakuten manages the quality and reliability of products and services being promoted. I found this platform a little clunky to use and staying on top of it was a chore. Useful to be part of and you can find amazing offers that do convert really well.

This is good for beginners who want to test the general retail sales offers and clothing etc. Really decent network of offers available but I just found the dashboard clunky, that does not mean the program stinks. Very much worth your time to join and start promoting sales offers.

eBay Partner Network

If you’re already familiar with Amazon’s affiliate network platform, adding eBay’s affiliate program into the mix should be fairly easy to do. With 1.2 billion listings on eBay, there is certainly a wide array of options to choose from, and potential to make money. For Australians eBay is the choice to buy online before Amazon.

On the flip side, eBay’s payment structure could be a deterrent, as the percentage commission in comparison to other programs is smaller (50 to 70 percent), and partners are only paid monthly. This is part of why the platform doesnt have my undying support. I would say use it more but the payouts and structures are not enticing enough for me to focus efforts on here.

This is best for those who liked Amazon associates program. Very similar experience and offerings.

Ive used this damage report before and I have a feeling that 2020 will be the year that I absolutely wear the colour out of this image. Every week its like getting a speeding fine when driving on the freeway. 

Avangate

I like promoting digital info products and downloadables. This is where Avangate comes in to play, a very simple to utilise platform that removes a lot of cumbersome fiddling with settings and crap you just dont need to be doing.

They have a decent sized database roughly 22,000 software products available. They pay pretty good commission rates and have a pretty extensive network of partners. This wont be the best fit for people selling physical products.

 

Shareasale

Shareasale has been around for 18 years and works with more than 4,000 merchants across a wide range of product categories. I like this platform for the range of options it provides. Ive made a lot of money with Shareasale and find them a solid platform for affiliates.

The actual support team are legends they actually take time to help you and keep it real. No slick sales or anyone pulling te ewool over your eyes, the typical internet marketer and affiliate manager stereotype. I give them props for doing a great job consitantly.

Great for beginners to advanced.

GiddyUp

Billed as an “exclusive performance marketing agency,” GiddyUp works with “innovative and disruptive brands” around the world. This site is particularly attractive for affiliates who are working in more obscure or highly specific niches.

Their GiddyUp Publisher program allows affiliates to get weekly Net 5 payments on every offer, and all campaigns are tested and optimized before they go live.

JVZoo

JVZoo is a software as a service (SaaS) company that focuses mostly on online or digital products. It is free to sign up and use JVZoo, and their “newbie-friendly” site design and signup process help facilitate and teach those who might be fairly new to affiliate marketing how to really get going without a lot of risk.

Some of the benefits of using JVZoo are up to 100 percent instant commissions one of the only platforms where you will be getting 100% of the sale. Dashboards show real time tracking of your commissions and alerts on purchase notifications.

This platform gets a bad wrap because a lot of vendors are sharks, they create software thats not complete so that it can be resold in 6-12 months rebranded for another cash grab. Ive lost count of software Ive purchased through JVZoo where Ive had to contact the vendor about support or functional assistance because the domain is down or the logins not working or the entire screen of the dashboard is messed up. All fun with JVZoo.

This network is a headache but it also does have some sweet deals available. You just need to know how to spot the sharks from the actual marketers.

This is for beginners and advanced marketers. Please check your vendor and offer before putting your name behind it as a suggested action from me.

Avantlink

Avantlink is all about data, customization, and better understanding the relationship between the products you promote, how you go about marketing them, and making adjustments so as to better reap the benefits of your work. The Avantlink network is connected with hundreds of merchant partners to work with across different fields, so many different kinds of affiliate marketers may find options there.

With dedicated international affiliate networks, product-level tools, and custom tracking links, you can make sure you are being focused with your time and efforts.

FlexOffers

FlexOffers connects you with more than 12,500 affiliate programs and lists just on 5,000 premo advertisers. You can find a host of categories to promote using FlexOffers.

Apart from its partners, FlexOffers also has a sleek interface for tracking your account, as well as on-call support for publishers.

 

skimlinks affiliate program

Skimlinks

Similar to Sovrn, Skimlinks will create affiliate links in your content automatically for you. For content that’s created without your involvement (like a forum), this might be a good option.

You can also insert links manually as well. They currently have over 24,000 merchants they work with, so I recommend you signup for this one as well. They have a wide range of niche markets.

Bonus Affiliate Marketing Tactic

Another strategy I’ve used is to contact individual companies and ask about their affiliate programs. Not every company will have an affiliate program but if you can explain the benefits to them you can often twist their arm and get them setup with a program.

Some companies run in-house affiliate programs, which means they have a select few affiliates that they work with. Such companies can be quite profitable to work with as you’ll be competing with way less affiliates.

reaching out to these companies to set up a private affiliate deal with them. These can often be worth far more than going with an affiliate network’s offer, as the payouts can be higher.

If they don’t have an affiliate program, you can offer to set one up for them using a tool like http://reversion.com/

Diversifying Your Affiliate Networks Matters

Being in the online business world, you probably already know that things change pretty quickly and that having flexibility is key to success. When it comes to affiliate marketing, that remains true.

If you haven’t already, expanding your potential profit by diversifying your affiliate networks is a great way to build in additional revenue streams for your business. Before diving into any one in particular, make sure to do some research on the program or network to confirm its legitimacy, potential for profit, and alignment with the types of products and services highlighted on your website.

 

Despite the affiliate program you use you should have a niche where you have the knowledge and advantage to produce great content that you can layer monetization opportunities over that content to make you money. Your business goals can bend a little to accommodate the alternative affiliate marketing network that you have added. This will be a new opportunity to try new things and it might just be the wake up call that you needed. Thanks Jeff.

The learning from this move by Amazon remains the same as I say again and again diversify your revenue streams, and do not forget to diversify your traffic channels. This works for using several affiliate networks to make money from yoru website because if one (Amazon) goes down you will still have 2 or 3 programs making you money until you can replace the one that went down.

This is a smart lesson for website owners and online marketers to be more involved in your asset management. Take more control of your asset to keep it future proof against thrid party interference.

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How To Sell Products While In Lockdown

How To Sell Products While In Lockdown

by | Apr 3, 2020 | Affiliate, Business, Ecommerce, Marketing

Being in lockdown is tough the isolation and confinment can get to you. That good news is that everyone else is feeling just like you. Theres all these people stuck at home with nowhere to be and noo where to go.

My focus for the last 7 days has been to jump on opportunity.

“My team and I have been researching products and marketplaces that you can “buy low, sell high.”

I’ve spent the last week scanning the usual suspects trying to understand market demand for this current moment. It was a painstaking task but very important.

My Research Grounds:

  • Marketplaces
  • Amazon
  • Ebay
  • AliExpress
  • Pinterest
  • Facebook Marketplace
  • Empire Flippers
  • Flippa
  • Gumtree
  • Other domain sales platforms

My research produced some really good results and I want to share some of what I found with you here today. Ive found a lot of business categories where you can buy businesses at an all time low. I know this may sound like the behaviour of a vulture but its just business.

I’ve been pretty keen to shift non essential tasks and projects to the side so that I could dig my teeth into the shift in the market. Theres something unusual and almost once in a lifetime happening right now. I know Ive not been through any other world changing event to the scale of this corona virus.

My thoughts originally were to use this for my own portfoilios benefiet but then its better to share so we all get a slice of that cheese. I know a lot of people are in struggletown with businesses collappsing and money running dry.

>> See post about building a resilient business.

There is a huge shift in how people are using online search now and the daily habits of each user. This is new territory for all of us especially online marketers. Ive seen some crazy stuff growing in popularity and search interest thanks to Google trends. At times like this its important to keep your head on the swivel.

 Below I will list what Ive seen and what you can use to sell more while isolated at home.

If you are looking for something to do in quarantine that can make you online money…

Or if you are stuck inside looking for a new side hustle that will make you teh money you want for your next project this is for you…

Or like millions of people and my girlfriend you just got laid off and you need something right now to keep the lights on…

Then I can help you with a strategy thats stood the test of time the “buy low, sell high” tactic will give you some ideas that start you on your online journey.

Here are 3 things that people are flipping right now for fun and profit:

1. Trading Cards.

In my younger years collecting and trading NBA basketball cards was my addiction. Collecting all the rookie cards of the big players took most of my after hours time when I wasnt actually playing ball.

But the unique situation we are in is that all major sports leagues are in exile sadly. So what type of trading cards can be used in this corona virus time? Suprisingly still sporting cards and battle cards.

Most sporting team cards are still growing in popularity the weird thing is with the seasons suspended these leagues are still growing in populaity. There are millions of people at home and what do you think the TV networks are doing? they are showing replays and sports from the past. This is what is helping propell the rising interest in these trading cards.

>> Buy Michael Jordans 20k pointc club card on Ebay.

Michael Jordans rookie basketball card

Ive never been a magic cards collecter guy, Ive got friends who are huge dungeons and dragons nerds, White Dwarf and Magic The Gathering card collectors. These card collections are exploding right now so how can you pivot to include trading cards in yoru product sales? can you make a set of cards on your industry.

I’m seeing huge popularity spikes in this niche. Think of all the dads stuck at home and the lack of live sport on TV, and then think what is one really great way for parents to bond with their kids? sports of course. With the parents and kids at home trading cards with popular sporting stars is one sure fire way to strengthen a bond by using sports trading cards. Kids also love those battle cards and using pwoerups and level up type cards, this is like old school pokemon but with cards.

PLUS… due to the economic slowdown, a lot of collectors are strapped for cash, which means that you can “buy low” right now. This is a perfect product for our buy low sell high strategy.

Proof is in the search results:

NBA trading cards

Just look at those prices for a basketball card. Crazy money for a trading card.

Trading card money is made in two ways:

This niche is one for collectors so finding and collecting full sets is a valuable focus and also finding those rare cards, limited print cards and the big stars rookie cards.

Another tactic is a little more of a gamble but buying stars that are about to rise as as valuable or popular players. This can be a little harder in oru current now because the players are sidelined. But there is big money in flipping these cards much like stocks the players tsock value rises and falls as their performance reflects on impact.

2. Designer hand bags & Perfume.

Weirdly as we are all self isolating and social distancing so why would someone need a designer handbag it boggles the mind. I’m not a fancy guy I really enjoy thrifty shopping and functionality of clothing and accessories. My girlfriend HATES when I buy clothing and accessories based on functionality 😆.

Designer Handbags and Perfume are spiking to all time highs right now. Ive seen post after post after post around these items being hunted online. I get that all the stores that sell these are closed except pharmacies or chemists but they sell knock off garbage perfumes not designer.

When shoppers cant get hold of products they want that product goes into high demand. There are still a lot of people who have excess money that they want to offload and dont forget about people pre corona virus who were excessive shoppers who now have to commit to getting their retail therapy online. 

With designer handbags and name brand perfumes being a huge interest all you need to do is know where to look to find these items at wholesale prices. There is so much fraud in the space that finding real, authentic fragrances can be a challenge so dont just go to AliExpress and get that channels perfume because its a knock off and can get you into all kinds of problems. This does present a real opportunity for selling the real brands and NOT cheap immitation handbags and fragrances.

My advice is to take 2 angles for this and present yourself as a wholesale buyer, liquidator and bulk buyer of goods and look for auctions, liquidations and wholesale places for opportunities. Most people who do this normally may be laid off or on leave.

The second angle is as a seller and store owner of a store that sells these things.

The overview of how this works:

  • Know where to look for these products
  • Know what brands are in demand
  • Buying at a low price
  • Know what marketplaces to be promoting that you have these products
  • Negotiating and promoting your webpages where you will sell these items
  • Sell product at a higher price than you paid for it

Some search terms you can optimise your web pages for:

  • Designer handbag
  • [name brand] handbag
  • Handbag [name brand]
  • [name brand] perfume
  • perfume [name brand]
  • buy [name brand] online

There are entire markets and buyer types to flip high end colognes, designer handbags and perfumes to. I am far from the target market so this niche was new for me to be diving into but the riches are in the niches and as far as I can tell this niche is ripe for the picking. There were so many people searching for and asking for these products that it would be hard not to make money if you have the actual products.

This right now presents a very rare opportunity for you to buy low priced items and sell high on your website to an already hungry to purchase audience.

THIS is a perfect product for our tactic of buying low and selling high. I hope you can start to see the shift in perspective of how Im looking at the markets now.

This bag is a Christian Dior designer handbag that retails for $6,462 see actual handbag here.

3. Buying Businesses and Websites.

I love domain flipping and business flips. These have been a huge part of my income over the last 3 years. In a nutshell I buy a website or business at a low investment price and perfrom some work to these websites using my onlien marketing skills to create a website that now functions as a high converting store or lead generating website.

>> If you want to work with me on a website or business you own contact me here.

This is the perfect time to start looking for investment opportunities. A lot of businesses have closed or are closing their business down. There are also a lot of websites that people who used to have employment that no longer do and c an not sustain teh fees for running and managing websites. This is a sad reality of what this virus has done to the economy. 

I would look at Flippa, Gumtree, Shopify Exchange or FE International and look for businesses for sale. The filters will help you navigate to the most relevant opportunities for you. I set filters ranging from $3,000-120,000 so I have a range of business types.

Now this is a longer play and not a buy today and flip tomorrow unless you work very fast. This takes me riughly 2-4 months to get my hands on teh new purchase and make some cosmetic edits and some backend changes to get that site healthy and looking good. I also like to track activity on teh front end of the website buy adding Google Analytics and reviewing any affiliate programs, ecommerce settings or existing CRM type sale systems.

My process revolves around taking something that is not working for someone else and refining what they have on the front end. It needs to look nice for people using the website. I like to then focus on backend adjustments to make sure the website is Google friendly and in good health. Once Ive done these two steps my entire focus on the UX and conversion rates of the website. 

When I am happy with the data I have and the visitor engagement is looking healthy I will start to get the site ready to flip for a much bigger payday.

This is my 3 tips for selling online while locked down and self isolating but still making money. I use the buy low and sell high method in dropshipping and site flipping all the time and its made me a lot of money 💰💰

I’m focused on businesses that are fun to build, regardless of what the economy is doing.

Ill be setting up a mini course on how I do this so people can see the step by step process to take control of their lifestyle and finances. Stay Tuned. If you want to do this on your own, you can totally do that too.

Take note take action and take advantage of the market. If you liked this drop a comment, share it or show me your results in a month or two ✌️.

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What blog types are the best for affiliates

What blog types are the best for affiliates

by | Mar 20, 2020 | Affiliate, SEO

Types of Blogs You Can Use and Best Use Case Examples

As affiliate marketers we make a lot of our money from review type content, but what else can you use to to make money on your blog. Let’s go through a few examples and how you can best use them.


Types of Blog Posts That You Can Use
1 The Review
2 The Controversial Post
3 The Behind the Scenes
4 The How-To Guide
5 The Personal Experience
6 The Seasonal Time Based Post
7 The Practical Motivation Post

8 The Listicle Roundup 



My Types of Blog Post That Can Make You Money 


Lets expand on each point listed here so you get a clear understanding of how important each one is and the best use case for them on your money webpages.


1 The Classic Review & Recommendation Article


The goal of these blog types is to build confidence in the product or service by reviewing what it has on offer, the features benefits and drawbacks. You can review or recommend ANYTHING there is no limit to how much to review or what you can review.

Works really well when you know people may be on the fence about shelling out if the sales page is a bit vague of detail. The opportunity is then showing the readers what it looks like when you get it when its a physical product. If it is software or digital based readers love to see what it looks like after you log in. You can then show them any really cool features or really crap features like freezes often or does not do what it said it would.

Best Use Case: ANYTHING 


2 The Controversial Article 
As people we love a little bit of drama to distract us. We enjoy it even more if it’s someone else’s drama and when theres a controversial headline, claim or statement we seem to pay close attention to it. The goal of these types of articles is to generate discussions and debates from people either for something or against this is no place for fence sitters.

How does this work?
It works by taking something or someone that has an audience or a following and writing about something that will get the followers attention or get the haters attention. Once you have the attention of either side the article will be shared and engaged with by members of one side of the statement, this will then get the attention of the people from the other side of the statement and a debate between the various standpoints or features takes place.

Example: Why I Think Google Sheets Is Superior to Microsoft Excel

In the above example Im calling out all the Microsoft excel fans and waving my opinion of how much better Google Sheets is as a tool. This will make excel fans want to state how bad my choice was and how inferior Google sheets is in comparison. But the Google sheets lovers will add their feelings about how amazing Google sheets is and why its better because of XYZ features. 

Best Use Case: Promote only the strongest  offers in these articles. You need to be careful that this does not backfire in your face because of the opposing statements and left wing comments from the against camp.

My Secret Sauce Tip: Don’t promote any offer and use this article type to build your list and link in to your other pages that have offers for both of the products or services you wrote about in the controversial article.

Other examples might include
> Challenging popular opinions
> Sharing unpopular statements
> Highlighting shady or outdated industry practices
> Write about things that were hyped up but didnt actually work
> Write about changes you want made
> Write like your writing a letter to the person who peeved you off



3 The Behind The Scenes Post
I really enjoy these types of posts and think they really do grab your attention. When someone you follow online reveals more about their home life or gives you a tour of their office as an example you get drawn in because you want to know what is that persons life really like. We live in an age where AI, VR and a lot of special effects can be anywhere at any given moment so seeing some REAL behind the scenes stuff is highly entertaining.

Ive posted before about showing the storage containers for my ecommerce businesses and the packaging order process. I also showed what my studio looks like with all the mess of thousands of packets of product everywhere. The readers really enjoyed that article and the short video. This showed that I am an actual ecommerce store owner, I do order product and inventory and do have a storage facility. This works towards building more trust that I do what I say and am on the journey with the reader.

Best Use Case: Promoting training courses, masterminds and templates, how to guides.

Other Examples:
> Whats in your backpack
> Whats your phone look like
> Whats on your computer desktop/laptop screen
> What video/podcast recording gear do you use
> What does your garage look like
> What does your house look like
> Morning routines and rituals


4 The How-To Educational Guide Article
Another of my fav types of blog posts because they can really help people overcome obstacles. These are great for beginner audiences and medium level followings to get the roadmap to success or the final pat of the puzzle. This can also help you to generate really good case studies when the readers follow your steps and take action. You can promote more here because your audience is invested in learning and are hungry for information.

Best Use Case: Training, Masterminds, Guides, Templates, Scripts, Roadmaps and over the shoulder style offers.


5 The Personal Experience Article  
You can really use this type of blog post to your advantage because its coming from YOU and YOU are putting your face behind something. There is no higher trust signal than YOU holding the new backpack you are promoting saying how amazing it was on your recent trip to the Gold Coast. People see YOU and they see the product in your hands meaning YOU actually used it and YOU give it a 5 star rating.

Best Use Case: Anything will work with this type of post because you used it, and you can show how it helped you.


6 The Seasonal Time Based Post
You need to be quite active online and have a good reading on your niche for this one to work well. Having your finger on the pulse of your niche can help you get a headstart on others. You want to be using time based or season based activities and events to base topics around them, Black Friday is the most obvious choice for online marketers as its a HUGE money grab.
 

I do like the year ahead predictions or looking back at the year reviews of what worked what didnt. These are really good for people following your journey and walking in your footsteps so you can make recommendations and lead into your review posts that then promote specific deals and offers. 

If I was to use online marketing as an example the easiest wins for me would be keeping tabs on Google Updates and promoting software and tools to help manage this problem better or Facebooks ever changing algorithm would be an easy recommendation to join a specific training course or mastermind that deals primarily with Facebook Ads.

Best Use Case: Building a calendar of events, holiday and seasons that you can promote offers using one of them as the reason or feature topic of why you are promoting the offer.

Other Examples:
> Deals per season
> Viral trends and why these worked articles
> Holiday & Event based posts
> Year month week predictions
> Be the first to release industry news


7 The Practical Motivation Post

Good marketing is really just clever storytelling if we were to break it down to the nuts and bolts of it. These do work very well especially if you have got results doing it or using the system and what not. You can use long form when its a more personal recommendation, allowing you to build a story into the content to help get your reasons across. 

If you have had anything inspire you, motivate you and just make your life easier then you can 100% promote it because it has helped you do something better. Mentally, physically and emotionally. These offers can get a lot of engagement especially from likeminded people in your audience.

Best Use Case: Promoting training courses and mastermind type offers.


8 The Listicle Roundup Article 
This is a really good way to cover off multiple affiliate offers in one post but not come across to aggressive in your pitch. If every recommendation and listed item has an affiliate link listed it may be overbearing for readers.

You would gather up roughly 7-10 of the best things, things being products, services, tools basically anything and create a list. You then review your list to what makes the best sense to be 1, 2 and 3 and why you are promoting them first these are your main money makers. The listicle works really well and you can use a similar principle with roundups and summaries to make some offer promotions. The really nice thing about listicles is you can break them up very easily so readers can digest the parts that they want.


Best Use Case:  Top 10 VPNs, These 7 Email tools or We selected these 5 finance coaching programs can work wonders. Use good content and high quality images. Identify the ones that have the most brand name traffic or search volume and highest payout and you can use them as the ones that you use your affiliate link on. 

My Secret Sauce Tip: Don’t link every listed item, only list the top 2 per category and only mention the brand name of the others with no link. Some companies have an SEO outreach team who monitors brand name mentions and may reach out to you to get a backlink listed. You can use this as an intro to people in that company or to get listed on the company website however you negotiate the deal.


Conclusion
Just having these different types of blogs wont be enough to make you money each blog still needs some basic SEO love. You will need to add some focus keywords and search intent analysis to get them ranking high enough for people to find and click on them.

I also suggest typing in similar topics, keywords and seeing what actually shows up first so you know the type of content to make and if you need more video content or meme based images. This really helps you know what is working and what people want to see. The best thing you can do is to get that posts live on your blog and come back and optimise them later. I do this on this blog and publish often with no images and then come back once Ive picked the images and decided where I want to internal link to so that the page makes sense and the layout is easy to read.

Pick some types of blogs write them out and make some money. Get those Click Bucks.

How To Be Safe Buying From Ali Express

How To Be Safe Buying From Ali Express

6 Ways to Safeguard Yourself When Buying on Alibaba When doing business overseas you want to learn to protect yourself against loss. You want to be able to avoid scams and middle-men as well as getting substandard products. While there is no one solution that is...

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read more
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read more

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