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Hello, folks!

Today I would like to share my experience… from yesterday.

Yesterday I put up a brand new affiliate marketing campaign and I made $834 off of it in about 12 hours. It only took me one hour to set everything up.

So how did it happen?

Well, I keep my eye on the “trends”. I try to keep up with what’s hot today, what’s on the news, what sells… Google Trends and Digg are the main sources for this kind of information, watching new on TV doesn’t hurt either (although you can look at Google News instead).

Yesterday I was going through the blogs that I subscribed to, just looking over the news and on one of the blogs there was a mention that Hostgator had a 75% sale that day only!
The Black Friday 75% OFF Sale on all of their hosting plans.

Since I am a loyal and satisfied customer of Hostgator, I thought the sale would be a great reason to promote this company… knowing that I get paid $119 per sale was another reason.

So I wrote up a quick and short post on my blog about it and gave my affiliate link to Hostgator site. Then I submitted my blog to Pingoat and Pingomatic, also DIGG.com, I also mentioned it on Twitter.

Then I posted a thread about it right here on WA – now I was able to get a few sales from here because I have been an active member and people have seen my posts before – which kind of helps with the trust issue, if a NEW member would have posted it – I am not sure if the outcome would have been the same. In the thread I offered 2 links; my affiliate link and the NON-affiliate link because my goal was not to make the money but to help people save money, 75% OFF is a pretty big discount. If someone didn’t want to buy through my link for whatever reason – well I didn’t force them too.

A few hours later I checked my blog stats and noticed some traffic from Google, here are the keywords from which I got the traffic:

hostgator 75% - (position #4)
hostgator 75% off – (position #5 and 7)
hostgator 75% sale (position #3)
hostgator black friday (position #2 and 3)
host gator black friday position #5
host gator 75% position #6
host gator 75% sale (position #3)

My blog ranked twice, the rest of the rankings were my DIGG post. This is why I love digg, it could get you the first page results in minutes.

So it seems like a lot of people have heard about this Hostgator Sale and GOOGLED it,,, and I was right there on the first page.

Now, I only made 7 sales, but it’s still over $800 in one single day, to be more specific in 12 hours and it only took about one hour of time to set all this up.

So what is the moral of the story?
Hot trends could be very profitable. They will not last for a long time, but they could give you a little boost and make you a few extra $. When you stumble across a HOT trend, try to find a very compelling offer for the people who are after the trend and deliver it to them. That hostgator offer was easy to sell because it truly was a great offer in the eyes of people who needed webhosting. Where else could you get a very reliable and reputable hosting plan with Unlimited bandwidth, Unlimited domains and free 24/7 support for $27/year (or $71 per year)? It was a no-brainer for those who needed hosting, and I delivered it.

Keep your eyes open for hot trends,

Best of Success,

Alex

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Hello, folks!

Today Hostgator is running a special Black Friday offer! They are giving away a 75% discount on their plans!
So the ‘BABY’ plan (Unlimited bandwidth, unlimited domains…) is about $27 today instead of the regular $120! This is the first time ever they run such a huge discount! The deal is good even for 3 year contracts, where you will pay about $71 instead of $350! They even offer reseller accounts at 75% OFF!

Use the coupon code ‘LUCKY’

Here is the link: HostGator Hosting

update: If you see this post AFTER November 28th, unfortunately the offer has expired. HOWEVER, you can get a 20% discount on all Hostgator plans using the code ‘SNOWMAN’

Alex

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Hello, folks!

I am about to tell you a story of how I made a little over $1,100 in less than 2 hours and how YOU can do the same even if you are a newbie. It does take very little technical knowledge and if I say something technical that you do not know how to do - just Google it, that’s what I did.

This idea has been posted MANY times on this forum and many other IM forums, it’s about taking your online business offline.

I was driving home from (I really don’t remember where) about two weeks ago and I noticed this small office with a huge window, they had many led signs displayed and projecting whole bunch of different lights. I figured those were for sale, so I stopped and walked in.

The owner welcomed me and ask if he could help me with anything.

- How is business? - I asked.
- Not too well, replied the owner of the store.

He then proceeded telling me a little more about the business. They sold led displays to businesses, schools, hospitals and so on. I asked if they had a website and as we’re in 2008, they did have a website just like many other businesses. The owner told me their website does not bring new customers but serves a purpose of showcasing the products to existing clients and to those who walked in at some point of time and took a business card with the website mentioned on it.

I told the guy that I could possibly help him get customers from the Internet, I proceeded by explaining the benefits of being in the top results of search engines, then I asked him how exactly those products are called and asked him to use his computer.

So I typed: WHATEVER THE PRODUCT Montreal. Then I tried Monteal WHATEVER THE PRODUCT - sure enough his website was nowhere to be found in the first 5 pages of Goolge, I didn’t check any further. In fact most results were somewhat irrelevant and those that were relevant seemed to be there by pure luck.

I made an offer the owner could not refuse.

I offered him to build a brand new site that would rank at least in the top 5 results for any keyword phrase he wants. I would charge him $1,000 ONLY if this happens and he agreed. I also asked him to purchase a domain name (that I already had in mind) and a cheap hosting plan - this cost him under $10. (Since he picked a monthly payment plan for the hosting, possibility to cancel any time and the first month was only $0.01). I also asked him to write the name of the top 5 products he sold, detailed description of each product and take a photo of each product. We drafted a quick contract, signed it and I went home. All this took about 30-40 minutes.

In 2 days I received an e-mail with all the information I requested. I logged into his hosting cPanel, uploaded Wordpress, uploaded a few free WP themes that I though would match the business, I also uploaded ALL-IN-ONE-SEO-PACK plug-in for WP and the sitemap plug-in. I created 5 pages, each with the name of the product I made sure to fill out all of the All-In-One-Seo fields with relevant information - so title of the page, description and keywords/tags. In about 30 minutes the site was complete.

I left it alone for a week, hoping to have the time to work on some backlinks, but as I was trying to see if Google indexed it - it appeared on the first page of the results for all 5 keyword phrases. That’s not all. Each keyword phrase was ranked as a result #1 and #2! Now, this might be surprising for some of you, but the truth is, when you are doing this for a local business you put the name of the city in the search - which makes ranking on top MUCH easier for MOST businesses.

Anyways, I went to see that guy the very next day, showed him the results which made him speechless and $1,000 poorer. Yes, folks that was it.

Now, you say - it’s only $1,000 - but the title says $1,300!
Pretty simple. The hosting he purchased - it was through my affiliate link which gave me a $100 commission (Hostgator on CJ). Before leaving the office I offered him a consultation for…. $200. In 15 minutes I told him about keeping his site on #1 spot by building backlinks. I explained the theory of article marketing - this took about 20-30 minutes.

A week later I received a call from this guy, thanking me once again. In one week this brand new simple WP website (… blog, really) brought him 2 new customers and a profit of $3,000.

… Should I have charged him more for such service? Probably… but it was the first time I tried anything like this and it was so spontaneous - I though even $1,000 was too much to ask. I’ll know better next time. However, It was a great experience and he already referred me to a friend of his who owns several used cars dealerships…

So, it is that simple. As you can see nothing technical in it. Or at least nothing that you can’t find a video tutorial for on Youtube. I am not a good face-to-face salesman, my offer was just too good to turn down. I promised results or it was free. The only expense I asked for was under $10 for the domain name + 1 month hosting. I am sure some businesses will turn me down - and this was my fear that always kept me away from trying such thing, but for some reason I had a good feeling about these guys, so I walked in with a smile and well… made $1,300 in under 2 hours.

You can do it as well, I am sure of it.

Alex

p.s. COMMENTS Greatly appreciated!

You visited a few times and I would appreciate your thoughts on this post, why not comment?

Hello, folks!

Today I got 15 e-mails from Paypal and apparently today I lost almost $150 - renewing domain names I didn’t even want! So I started digging deeper into my Internet Marketing expenses and I found a bunch which I could eliminate, here is the list of top 5!

1. Renewing Domain Names

About 1 year ago I registered a lot of $1.99 .INFO domain names - because I had many different ideas and wanted to use those cheap domain names for testing… unfortunately I did not know that most domain name resellers renew your d0main names automatically. When these .info domain names are renewed - you actually pay almost 10$ per name instead of $1.99. So I went into my account and set almost all of my domain to MANUAL renewal. I made sure they my ESTABLISHED website domains are set on AUTO-RENEW.

2. Hosting

When I first started my Internet Marketing venture I purchased a web hosting plan. $120/year seemed reasonable, but I could only host one website, so when I needed to start a new website I purchased another hosting plan and so on… Eventually I ended up with 5 hosting plans costing me $600 and not only that! I also had to log in into each hosting account separately when I wanted to edit my website. Eventually I stumbled across Host Gator, where at 8$ per month I can host UNLIMITED number of domain names, unlimited disc space and unlimited bandwidth! They also offer great support and I haven’t seen one single downtime so far. Now I have 10 websites - which could have cost me over $1,200 per year in hosting alone, it now costs me under $100/year and all the websites are in ONE account - which saves a lot of time.

3. Monthly Memberships

1 year ago when I didn’t know anything about making money online I signed up to many paid membership sites and forums, I didn’t log-in to most of them since. Some were simply useless and others just weren’t my cup of tea. Sure, most cost me $20-$40/month… Let’s do the average at $30/month at 10 websites = $300/month waste! In one single year it adds up to $3,600. I have been a member of Wealthy Affiliate Community for over a year now, and this membership program offers me more than all those other paid memberships together - and it only costs me $1/day, why would I keep the others?

4. Stop Buying Junk

I often find myself an amazing sales letter about getting lots of free traffic to your website and sure enough I purchase that amazing $47 e-book just to find out there is nothing new. Great sales page doesn’t mean a great product, besides you most likely know all those “tips and tricks” on getting more free traffic, don’t spend money on it! If you want tips on getting free traffic, you can read some of the posts from this very blog: Free TV Traffic, Dominate Google’s First Page, How to Get Backlinks… Submit articles to EzineArticles.com, make HubPages, Squidoo Lenses, use Twitter, Youtube… Free Traffic right there and I am not even charging you for it.

5. Invest in Good Education

I just told you about not spending any more money on e-books, programs and the rest… However, there are a few things you should consider purchasing. If you are new to PPC (Paid Advertising) - You should definitely learn as much as you can about it, otherwise you are likely to lose a good chunk of money. There is a video course to PPC I could recommend; James Shramko’s Double Digit CTR. An amazing video guide to successful PPC marketing at a measly $39! I have purchased about 15 PPC guides so far, some at over $100 but this video course beats them all.

With these simple tricks I was able to save over $5,000 this year alone - I hope it helps you to save some money as well,

Alex