Affiliate Marketing Update : Things Are Moving Faster Than I Expected

I am still in the process of writing keyword-rich articles in my niche and on monday I submitted my first 3 articles to Ezine Articles. I did this before having all my articles written because I knew that it might take a while (usually up to a week) for them to approve my articles and also to upgrage my author account to platinum (where I get to submit an unlimited amount of quality articles instead of just 10 with basic membership - this upgrade is free once you have 10 articles on their directory that meets their quality standards).

Since I had already 8 articles on the site that I had submitted previously on different topics (3 of them have been removed but they still count in the total of published articles), I thought I would have to wait a few days before my articles were approved and my author status upgraded but Ezine Articles published my articles and upgraded my membership in less than 24 hours, which took me by surprise.

I now have 8 articles written for my niche (3 of them published) and I also spent a little time adding some content to my blog: I did not want to have people reading my articles, and then clicking on my links to be brought to a crappy site that looked more like a blatant sales page than a website that was supposed to help them find the information they were looking for (so yes, I did stray a little from the method I am following, just trying to make it better).

I found out that I can make my blog look more like a website by adding pages so I am planning to add more but the most important thing for me today is to write another 2 articles to bring my total up to 10.

Once this is done, the most difficult part of my affiliate marketing campaign will be over but there are still a number of things that will need to be done. This is time-consuming, but so is having a full-time job. I am just hoping that a little revenue will come my way at the end of all this.

I Am Giving Affiliate Marketing Another Go

I came across some free videos about a week ago on how to make money selling affiliate products using article marketing.

I have already tried this and made a little money from promoting a couple of products using Squidoo and a few articles but I did not really push it and even though I had studied a few methods, I did not really follow them to the letter. This time I am going to follow every step without getting distracted in the middle of a campaign.

I have already selected a list of keywords, written 1 article and set up a blog to use as a landing page. I still need to write lots more articles and publish them on article directories as well as promote them and then wait and see if I make any sales. I am aiming for my first 10 articles to be written by the end of next week, even though I may get delayed by the kids being on their Easter holidays but if I manage to write 2 articles a day for the next 5 days I should then be able to do my rewrites and article submissions by the end of the following week.

If you are interested in taking a look at this method that claims you can make $100 a day online using it, here is the link I followed to get my free videos: it requires following someone on Twitter and sending an update; you will see the intructions when you visit the link.  

I wish I could share the method on this blog but I guess it would be a copyright violation; don't worry though, I will post regular updates on how I am doing. I don't expect to earn $100 a day as the videos claim, but I would be happy enough if I could make $10 a day for a start after I have all my articles published.

Save Money On White Goods With Online Vouchers

Pigsback.com is a website that lets you enter free competitions to win great prizes and print vouchers for products that you can buy in most shops in Ireland and the UK.

Usually you can get between 10c and €1.00 off branded grocery items, which often are no good to me because I do most of my shopping in discount stores that don't sell these brands but today I came across an offer for huge discounts on white goods from Expert, an Irish company that sells electrical goods.

If you were thinking of buying a washing machine, a dishwasher or a dryer, check out first the competition page where you can win an LCD TV from Expert (it can't hurt to enter that either!) and follow the link to view the partner offer that will bring you to a page where you can print vouchers ranging from €48.00 to €71.00 on these products from Expert.

I know that if I had a printer and space for a dryer, I would just jump at the chance to buy a dryer using their voucher!

If you have never heard of Pigsback.com, I urge you to take a look and join their website, registration is free and even if you don't buy anything from their partner websites, you get the chance to earn points just by visiting some pages for 10 seconds and also by answering a few weekly quizzes. Even without buying anything, I usually earn on average 50 points every week and that's only by visiting the site once a week for about 10 minutes; I redeemed their points for a book (The Girl With A Dragon Tatoo) that I received last week in perfect condition. You can redeem your points for lots of different products such as books, mobile phone credit, cute Pigsback merchandise, charity donations and money off vouchers for DVD rentals, restaurants, salons, etc.

If you are living in Ireland or the UK, you can join Pigsback.com here if you haven't already done so.

Earn Money For Shopping Online At Fatcheese

I joined my very first cashback website yesterday, you know, the sort of website that allows you to earn money back on your online shopping when you access one of their partner websites through one of their links.

In the past I have had trouble finding a cashback website that allows people from outside the U.S. to earn money and  Fatcheese is the first one I have come across that works even for Irish shoppers. I haven't done much online shopping but looking at the wide selection of participating websites, this could all change very soon.

Fatcheese is a cashback website based in the UK but they now also have a branch in Ireland (good news for me!). They have offers from about every known company that has a website and trades in Ireland and the UK. Some of their partner sites are Tesco, O2, Vodafone, Dell, Dorothy Perkins, Pixmania, Sky TV, Aviva, Mothercare, Air France, Amazon, Ebay and lots more.

If you do any online shopping at all, check them out, you can even earn money back by ordering a takeaway; and even if you don't shop online that much, Fatcheese also has a few offers that don't require you to spend any money or to give them your credit card details: I earned €5 yesterday just by completing free offers.

A cashback website: what better way to beat the credit crunch? If you'd like to join them or just to take a look, just click through to http://www.fatcheese.ie/?referrer=30002081 and happy online shopping!

To Kleeneze Or not To Kleeneze?

One of my neighbours was trying to introduce me to Kleeneze last week. She is a very nice lady and also very persuasive but I'm just not sure about this.

Kleeneze is a company that sells mostly cleaning products, but they have a selection of other products as well, basically anything that you need around the home; I went through their catalogues a few times but I always thought their stuff was really expensive and was never tempted to buy anything from them.


At first I was interested by the opportunity to earn money by putting catalogues through letterboxes and picking them up (hopefully with some orders) a few days later, but the more I think about it and the less this seems attractive to me: the fact that Kleeneze agents have to buy the catalogues from the company seems a bit dodgy to me and I know that I am bound to find people who will just throw them in the bin instead of giving them back if they haven't seen anything they'd like to buy from the catalogues, and that is assuming that they'll even look at the catalogues. Also, I am sure some people will tell me to F*** off.

By the time I manage to sell anything from Kleeneze, I bet the catalogues will be out of date and I would have to spend more money to get up to date ones, especially since I know there are at least 2 other people doing the same thing in the area where I live.

Well, I guess that I'll just have to say no: as I read in one of the forums I am a member of, Kleeneze probably just earn most of their profits selling the catalogues to the agents as opposed to selling their products to the customers. I need to spend more time blogging and less time wondering about offline opportunities that look too much like scams!

Unicef Master Card Lottery Scam

 

Ever get anything like this in the post? This one says I have won €1,415,810.00. Yeah, right!

Unfortunately, I have never entered any such lottery and I didn’t even have to Google “Unicef Master Card Lottery scam” to know that there is no such thing as the Unicef Master Card Lottery, and if there was, I bet they could think of more charitable causes than me to give their money to, like, oh, I don’t know: I’ll take a wild guess and say maybe help feed starving children in poor countries?

Of course this letter was accompanied by a form to fill with my personal and banking details. I know you’ve been told this dozens of times but it doesn’t hurt to say it again: don’t get caught, never give personal information to anyone you don’t know.

By all means if you can afford it, donate to Unicef, they are a very worthy cause. I really wish low-life crooks didn’t use the names of reputable charities in vain; worse, much worse than blaspheming!

Save Money With Free Books Online

Some say chocolate is better than sex; well, in my opinion, reading a good book is better than chocolate (even though I have never had sex while reading a book and eating chocolate all at the same time).

This is a bit of a hypocrite post coming from someone like me who fantasizes everyday of making money from writing books, but for those who love reading but can't afford to buy books, here are a few simple (and really cheap) ways to indulge in my favourite hobby:

1- Libraries:
I'm not sure about other countries, but in Ireland a yearly subscription only costs €5.00 and adults can borrow up to 4 books every 3 weeks. Children can only borrow 3 books for a period of 3 weeks in my local library but it is free for them.

There is a wide variety of books available to borrow as even though my local library is quite small, it looks like they renew their stock quite often. I have read about half of John Grisham's thrillers, laughed at lots of chick-lit novels (not that I'm very proud of being entertained by Marian Keyes or Sophie Kinsella's writing but let's not be a snob, I can't help it if I like it!) and discovered the dark side of modern Ireland with Ken Bruen thanks to my local library.

As to my 8 year-old daughter who is a hard-to-please avid reader, she came home with 3 Horrid Henry books last Saturday that she couldn't put down (except for when she had to eat, sleep and go to school); 3 weeks before that she was enjoying one of Enid Blyton's Amelia Jane books.

2- Project Gutenberg:
If you like classics or want to re-read some of your childhood's books online for free, head to Project Gutenberg, a site that claims to have the largest library of free ebooks. This site contains only books that have their copyright expired so even though laws may be different elsewhere, it is legal for the majority of people in the Western World to download them on a computer or e-reader, and the books can also be read online on the website (no downloading involved).

Again there is a huge choice of authors here, from Jane Austen to Mark Twain. All of the listed authors are already dead, so if you feel guilty about not paying to read a book you can always donate to Project Gutenberg through Paypal. What's the point in buying books that are only going to make the editors richer since the authors can't benefit from the sale of their books anymore?

3- Free Online Books For Children:
When you've run out of bedtime stories, you might want to check out Children's Storybooks Online. Since the children's books on the previous site are a bit out of date and will seem boring to young children, the little ones will certainly enjoy these better.

4- Online Bookswapping:
Instead of letting dust gather on the books you own and don't want to read anymore, why not exchange them? If you have friends or relatives who like to read you can offer to do this offline and if not, register with a site such as Bookmooch.com or Bookswap.ie and start swapping.


Disclaimer: please check the laws of your country before downloading books or other content from the Internet. Registering with any of the websites featured in this article is at the user's own risks.