I recently got interviewed by the website “Digital Marketing Revealed”. They asked me some pretty good questions and I thought I’d share the interview with everyone here.
http://digitalmarketingrevealed.com/jennifer-clason-talks-about-building-jan-roos-affiliate-sites/
Comments, questions are welcome!
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. I’ve mainly been busy and all time consumed with my WSO. Since I’ve got a little reprieve until I’m barraged with orders again, I thought I would post about making sales on Amazon.
People often ask me “Why do you promote the Amazon affiliate program when their commissions are so low?” Well it’s true, their commissions start out at just 4% and raise slowly every month depending on how many products you sell. But it’s not really about the commission amount. Amazon knows they can charge these low commissions because their site CONVERTS. Even if you have an Amazon site selling shoelaces, all you need to do is get that visitor onto Amazon.com and they will buy something – even if it’s not what you’re selling.
I generally don’t sell any products that are under $100 in retail value because I want to make higher commissions, but the fact of the matter is I actually make MORE sales on the smaller stuff that people buy. Let’s say I’ve got a site selling power drills. Maybe I will sell a few power drills each month, but I will sell more books, CDs, and other stuff that people have browsed while they are on the site. So it’s not really about what you’re selling. All you have to do is get them onto Amazon and you’ve practically got a sale.
In my WSO thread, I’ve got people who are now starting to report sales when I have just built their sites a little over a month ago. It is mindblowingly easy to make sales on Amazon. So that is why you can settle for the little commissions, they know that their site converts and they can pay you peanuts because if you send them volume, you can make a full time income.
So when you’re focusing on how low the commissions are at Amazon, don’t think of it that way. Think of how you can send more volume to them to earn a full time income stream.
I am so excited…..why? Because my site that I’ve been trying to rank with very high competition for about 3 months now JUST make it to page one of Google! I am absolutely thrilled! So I’m going to give a little tutorial on what I did to finally get this extremely hard keyword phrase (no I won’t tell you what it is) to get to page one on Google.
1. Article Marketing – I did a bit of article marketing, but not that much. I submitted probably about 5 articles total for the domain. I submit one version of my articles content to sites like EZA, Articles Base, and GoArticles, and then I spin the articles with Article Marketing Robot which blasted them to about 200-400 article sites. It’s hard to tell exactly how many sites it submitted to and how many sites actually accepted them.
2. Squidoo Lens - I made one Squidoo Lens on my main topic. I put the url to my domain in my profile and in the author box. I used Amazon on the lens, but I’m more concerned with them clicking on my URLs in my author profile than the actual Amazon on the lens. However, don’t count that out! I’ve made sales on the Amazon products in my Hub Pages…..I did not do any Hub Pages for this site however.
3. Social Bookmarking - My site has TONS of social bookmarking links. To sites I’ve never even heard of in my life. Then how did they get there? I outsourced it! My guy rocks in terms of knowing all of the bookmarking sites and he even improves the links by voting on them later to make them better. If you want to know my guy’s information, I can give it to you. Just leave me a comment and I’ll reply. He works very cheaply and I get between about 50-100 backlinks a week from him and I spend less than $10……no, seriously.
4. Video Articles - I made about 2 video articles for my site and submitted them through TubeMogul that goes out to other video sites out there including YouTube, Daily Motion, MetaCafe, Zoopy, and a few other video sites. All you have to do with TubeMogul is sign up once with an account to all of these different video places and then put your account information for each site inside of TubeMogul which will store it for the future. Upload your video and it’s off into cyberspace to about 10 different video sites!
5. Forum Profiles – I had another outsourcer that I was using before my current outsourcing guy who listed my sites on several forum profiles. I’m not really sure that forum profiles are a good resource anymore, however. This is just my personal opinion, but probably one of the first things I did with this site was submit to forum profiles, and a month later I barely had any backlinks and he submitted to thousands. Still can’t hurt I guess.
6. Scrapebox - I used to blast some blogs with Scrapebox but it’s hard to say how many of them actually “stuck”. So I’m not real certain if the Scrapebox method works or not. To me Scrapebox is sort of a lazy method to get backlinks and you push out thousands at a time and probably only about 3 stick. I’m being sarcastic, but I feel that Scrapebox is a little blog spammy.
7. Blog Comments - I actually did this myself instead of outsourcing it. I commented on the top 10 blogs for my keyword phrase and actually put a good, worthwhile comment, hand submitted on each blog. I also did this with the top .EDU blogs with my phrase and the top .GOV blogs with my phrase. I don’t know if any of these stuck, but I tried to get some .EDU and .GOV links. I also commented on other blogs that weren’t related to my topic and still used my link to my site. They say that is less effective, but to me a backlink is a backlink. How can I tell if I helped or not? I can’t.
8. Yahoo Answers – I answered some Yahoo Answers questions with a link back to my site. I’m a level 2 commenter there so I am able to post URLs. I think you have to get up to 250(?) answers before you are able to post any URLs. The thing about YA is that you don’t want to post your URL in the box where you are commenting, you want to put it in the “source” box. Very important. I know people say that YA URLs are no follow and they don’t matter, but it’s funny, Google Webmaster Tools count them as backlinks to my site.
9. Directories - I probably submitted the site to about 200 directories. I only submitted to directories that had 2+ PR and I used the IM Talk Directory Submitter to submit half manually to hundreds of directories. I say “half manually” because it already fills in your info for you. Really you just have to fill in the CAPTCHA if there is one and hit submit.
That’s about it. There have been other random sites I’ve posted my URL on, but none really worthy of a mention. I did pay for a couple services such as a one time XRUMER blast on a couple of occasions. I didn’t really see much results from them. I’ve only seen real results lately with my outsourcing guy submitting to several social bookmarking sites.
So there you go. If I can do it, you can do it too! Now to get to #1. 
Well as I said previously, my WSO (and now BFSO!) has been kicking butt that I’ve been making around $200/day with it! This has made me very proud because I have only started in mainstream Internet Marketing back in September 2010. Prior to that I was doing some adult Internet Marketing, but honestly it’s a whole different ballgame. And in all actuality, I feel GREAT to be getting out of the adult business and making money the mainstream way!
So how have I done it in just 4 short months? It’s very simple. It’s not a site I own, it’s not a system I’m using. It’s that I have discovered that some people have a need, I have the means to deliver them that need and they will pay me for it.
Really that’s all there is to it! That’s ALL there is to making money online! Even with your sites if you have product sites. People are looking for lawn mowers, you have a site about product reviews on lawn mowers, you are fulfilling their need and they’re willing to spend money on it. So put away all of the autoresponders, squeeze pages, mailing lists and sales pages – you don’t need them! That’s not ALL Internet Marketing is about! To be honest, I don’t have a single mailing list and nor I want one. I don’t want the burden of having to write a newsletter and having to set it up to bother people. That’s not my style of marketing. If that is what you do, then that’s your thing but just know that is not all their is to IM.
Anyway if you read this, feel free to comment and congratulate me! I’ll reply to all comments and I’m open to hearing your suggestions and feedback too.
Sorry for the lack of updates in awhile, I’ve been so busy with the success of my first WSO! I am living proof that there is money to be made on the Internet, I’ve sold dozens of my product just within a week or so of posting it. As you may or may not know, I lost my job in 2009. I was making over 6 figures a year between my job and a few adult sites that I had. But then this recession hit the industry hard and I was laid off. Being an indentured web servant isn’t exactly easy to find another job – especially one working from home! So I had to get on some government assistance to help me during this time. It was a really humbling experience, believe me. But now that I’ve pulled myself up and started all over from scratch with brand new sites and my banner business and my new WSO, I have no need for the government assistance anymore! I guess I’m a true “rags to riches” story. I’m absolutely thrilled to be able to support my family on my own again.
I have everyone at the Warrior Forum to thank for it. I have learned some invaluable information there that I wouldn’t have known before. I’ve only been a member since Sept. 2010, but in this short time, I have learned more than I have learned in my whole career in online marketing.
So I’m just sharing my story with you. If I can do it, YOU can do it! There is money to be made out there, you just need to figure out your niche and work hard for it. This is not a get rich quick scheme. Sometimes, I’m up in the wee hours of the morning working on my sites or my services for others.
So here is the details of my WSO – I’m building Amazon Review Minisites for people using all of the knowledge that I’ve gotten from the Amazon money making programs I have listed in my sticky post. These sites with this particular theme convert very, very well so people are ordering more than one of them. I’m giving bulk pricing to those who order more than one. Plus I do all of the on page SEO. I know a few tricks that will get better rankings than just keyword stuffing and META information. I use “Traffic Travis” to rate all of my sites built and I always get an A-A+ rating. This theme converts between 2-3% which is a pretty decent number for mainstream sites.
Do you have a list and want to sell my WSO? It’s been very popular. I am on DigiResults and you can promote my WSO on your list and once you make a sale, you get paid INSTANTLY through PayPal! You make $28/sale.
Here is my link in the DigiResults marketplace:
https://www.digiresults.com/marketplace/192
So things are definitely looking up for me! Leave me comments and tell me how you’re doing! I love to hear success stories.