General ClickBank Guide

I’ll hold my hands up now, I’m not a big user of ClickBank. I still remember signing up years ago and seeing the awful layout and design which put me off. I remembered looking through the spammy listings and thought no way would my users be interested in these types of offers (created by marketers and ebook writers).

Since then, the site has been redesigned. Listings have been made simplier through re-ordering by popularity and Total $ and I’ve been pleasantly surprised.

I’ve seen guys like Shoemoney who recently launched his ShoemoneyX course via ClickBank rather than manage it directly…but why?

It’s because ClickBank are great at managing orders, refunds/rebills and also by advertising on the site’s Marketplace your product is open to more people and a greater number of affiliates…it makes sense.

Example of Earnings

Signing Up

Signing up to ClickBank is easy, although I found the login/password section a bit difficult. If you manage to forget your id and email address, then you need to register again!

Also what was a bit confusing when signing up for offers is that you didn’t need to be logged in to join! You can join any offer on Clickbank, just input your username (which is also your nickname) and an optional tracker id.

Clicking on “Marketplace” is the location to find actual offers.

• Sign up for Clickbank here

Affiliate Program

ClickBank offer an affiliate program which is available to anyone:

The setup is “http://AFFILIATE.reseller.hop.clickbank.net” where “affiliate” would be your username that you use to login.

Commission can range from 1% to 75%, which is determined by the product vendor.

Using ClickBank as an Advertiser

An eBook is the simpliest thing to sale, since it can be delivered straight away. They may be time consuming to construct but can result in constant sales from your site. The benefit of using CB is that they deal with sales. I was thinking an automated email from Paypal sales would work but then I also heard that Paypal likes to shut down accounts with a lot of refunds, so makes sense that CB handles it.

At this point, it’s worthwhile to note that a great landing page should be constructed to draw attention. All the landing pages I saw on CB looked the same, they dragged down the page and looked very poorly made.

There is huge potential for affiliates in this area and is something I’ll be looking to do for my Meals Chinese site.

The setup is:

• For a one-time setup fee of US$49.95 after your first product is approved and accepted by Clickbank for being listed in their website. There is no monthly charge, but for every check that ClickBank issues to you, do take note of the US$2.50 processing fee.
• You can also sell subscriptions, memberships and digital info on recurring billing such as monthly fee, and not just the typical one off selling price.

Asian Offers

Continuing with the theme of this site, I looked at specific offers for affiliates in Asia available in the Marketplace. There is no option to search by country/region so I made searches for keyword terms like Asia, China, Malaysia, Japan, Chinese etc., and pulled the list of results below.

I found these useful to affiliates based in Asia due to potential revenue and relevance:

Date Women From Asia (Sales Page)
Information Product For Men On How To Meet And Date Korean Women. First And Only Information Product Of Its Kind With A Specific Niche That Has Been Making Me Money. Information Book Is Priced At $37 And Affiliates Get $26 Per Sale.

Rocket Chinese! Brand New Product. (Sales Page)
Earn A Minimum Of 70% Per Sale Of Our Rocket Chinese Language Product!

Registry Winner – Multi-language Registry Cleaner. (Sales Page)
The First Multi-language Support Registry Cleaner On The Market! Google/Yahoo/MSN And CB Conversion Track.

Speak Japanese Fast. (Sales Page)
75% Commissions! Selling Like Hot Cakes! Get On This One Now! Help Customers Learn Japanese. Affiliate Resources Include Pre Written Content, Rebrandable Pdfs, The Works!!!

Sort Results by

This is one of the most important sections of the site since it’s the only way to sort out the listings before/after making a keyword search. A useful site like Cbgraph shows the Movers and Shakers on CB and is an excellent resource.

For me the most important are:

Popularity
This should mean a measure of sales. I check the top 10 products in the category, sort them by referred sales (60%+ is best/$30+ earnt per sale)

Gravity
What does ClickBank Gravity mean? The meaning does not tell you how much money the product has made or what percentage it converts at. Gravity only counts the first sale each affiliate makes. However, if it has a high gravity it’s probably because people are having good success with it.

Conclusion

The complexities of the huge size of CB means there’s a lot of junk/worthless material on the site. Time taken to sift products to promote, wastes time when a better interface could be designed.

It’s often said that CB benefits sellers more than promoters, since theres more money to be made. It’s worthwhile joining and checking out and I’ll be exploring the site in more detail later.

Best Blogs Asia.

Korean Casino Market

There are 17 casino’s in Korea, all open to foreign nationals except Kangwon Casino, which is for local citzens only and is the only place to play blackjack, baccarat, sicbo or roulette. As for gambling online, it’s illegal in Korea but very popular. The lack of protection by Government and online addicts who spent alot of time glued infront of their computers – see this report on Korean Gambling Habits.

According to Korea Leisure Industry Consulting, the total betting amount of Gangwon Land, the nation’s only casino for Koreans is estimated to reach the equivalent of US$2.3 billion and in general the gambling industry is expected to rise to a value of US$8.8 billion.

Gambling Software

Innoco seems to be the only software available to Koreans. Popular software like Livedealer isn’t “really allowed” , as the act of gambling in a ‘common betting house’ is illegal, which means that online gambling should also be illegal. Legislation in Asia has generally not been amended to include internet websites within the definition of what constitutes a common betting house…

Very few online casinos support software in the Korean language, however, this is starting to change with more software providers translating their casino user interfaces into Korean.

Popular Korean Online Casinos

Recommended sites by Livedealer are Bodog and Bet365 since they do not have restrictions on Asian signups and support popular gambling like including blackjack, baccarat, sicbo, roulette and Asian roulette.

Other popular casinos that are online and supports Korean languages are:

Royal Vegas Casino
Offers a $1200 welcome bonus. Supports $/CAD/UK Pounds/Euros. New promo – 300 free spins.

River Belle Casino
Owned by the Belle Rockgroup, 100% up to USA$/CAD/Pound/Euro 100 free.

Winner Casino
Offers online gambling players a 100% first deposit match bonus up to $300 free and a further bonus worth up to $2000.

Wild Jack Casino
One of the top Microgaming powered gambling sites in our guide, and offers a 100% up to $100 bonus and great competitions.

888.com Online Casino
Probably the most well know international online casino brand, new players qualify for a bonus of 100% up to $200 (or Pounds / Euros) when they join.

Casino Las Vegas
Offers a 100% up to $100 bonus on your first four deposits.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Marketing in Asia

Bestblogs.asia came about by accident really. I identified a need for a blog directory for Asian bloggers, then the site transformed into writing about Internet in Asia and has developed. The people below are people who have opinions I respect and read regularly. Many are established in their respective countries in Asia and have great tips for people looking to progress further, I’ve also written about SEO in China.

See I See

By Sam Flemming, who has been involved in Chinapay.com the first online payment platform in China. His site helped brands like Pepsi and Nike and demonstrates how the “Internet Word of Mouth” is impacting and can be used to impact marketing communications, product research and development, reputation monitoring and public relations.

More at seeisee.com/sam.

My Life in China

Written by Stefan, Managing Director and Owner of 3digitalminds Co., Ltd., a China Internet marketing agency for performance marketing and SEO Consulting. He reports about online marketing in China, China SEO and Chinese PPC.

More at my-life-in-china.com.

Motoko’s weblog

By Motoko Hunt, writes about SEO in Asia with mainly a Japanese focus and is a member of SEMPO board of directors. Her search marketing consulting services with her extensive knowledge of Asia and Japanese market have been highly valued and made big impact on some of the world’s popular multi-national brands search marketing campaigns.

More at Motoko’s weblog.

Digital Market Inner Circle

Mainly written by Dr. Mathew McDougall. He brings 18 years of professional experience in the Internet, wireless, new media, and software sectors. He has done business internationally in 12 countries and is a seasoned executive in strategy, international sales and marketing, and general management. Dr. McDougall founded the SinoTech Group of companies in Beijing in 2007.

More at sinotechblog.com.cn.

Conclusion

If there are others that should be on the list, let me know! I was hoping to list http://www.gordonchoi.com/ but his site seems to be down.

Best Blogs Asia.

Marketing Industry

I’ve been involved in online marketing for over 10 years now, from being involved in the Amazon affiliate program, befree (now defunct) to the latest regional Affiliate Networks.

As a marketer, things have gotten more complex with more Networks springing up, more affiliates promoting products and less revenue to be made. As the years have gone by, there’s been more transparency and accountability. Long gone are the days waiting for a cheque to show up, when now we can use Paypal/direct transfer.

I would say something though, that it’s complex to get all your offers in one place and joining alot of networks seems like the only solution if you’re involved in affiliate marketing full time. It can be difficult to keep track of offers, declined applications/closed down offers, CPC/CPA’s etc.,…but this is where a decent Affiliate Manager would come in to help you.

Affiliate Manager Topics

I’ve had my fair share of AM’s, most of the time I never requested their help and only received their initial contact through emails like this. Whenever I have contacted my manager, quite often I didn’t receive any reply or the reply was delayed. I’d recommend affiliate manager’s have the following setup:

• Working mobile number
• MSN, Yahoo Messenger and Skype
• Searchable information online as to what they do – LinkedIn, own website etc.,
• Recommend campaigns with high epcs doing well on the network.
• Send personalised emails and let affiliates know when offers are ending

My Recommendations

• Big payouts aren’t often the best, make sure an offer converts.
• Be active in affiliate forums – Digitalpoint, 5Star…
• Be inspired by current affiliate marketers
• Find a supportive Affiliate Manager.
• Create connections and do your research in your ield
• Plan for the long term
• Treat the AM as a friend, get to know their offers and offers you are running on other networks

Popular Affiliate Managers

You may be away there are yearly contests in the affiliate fields around the world, here are the most popular Affiliate Managers. I’ll add more to this list later.:

Chris Clarkson from Sunshine.co.uk, Naomi Brown from Firebox, Ryan Sessler from Azoogleads…

Questions for Affiliate Managers

From what I’ve read online, people are asking questions like:

• To cloak affiliate links or not to cloak?
• Can you guarantee advertisers won’t take down programs after a short time?
• Rules and regulations, what can and can’t I do?
• As a newcomer – Can you help me how to build, launch, promote and monetise an affiliate site?
• What are the monetisation methods outside of Google?
• How to drive traffic to my site? (cheaply)
• Can you help with landing pages, graphics, seo…

Conclusion

I think it can be a tough role, as successful affiliates are your ways of making more money. The more successful they are, the more you can make and depends on the relationship you have with affiliates. For example, an affiliate needs help with their site. Do you A) Spend more time with them to help them convert, but spend less time with other affiliates or B) Distribute your time effectively between the affiliates you manage…it’s a tricky question. I’ve never been an affiliate manager, but I have helped out other affiliates as well as my own experience.

I’ve taken time out and helped people who needed it from designing an effective squeeze/landing page to help on other topics. Sometimes they’ve appreciated my work and other times I haven’t heard back from them…not even a thanks.

There’s also the problem of having decent affiliate programs to promote to your affiliates. Affiliates aren’t silly and the majority are out to making decent money, so the programs need to be great…An AM’s job is to manage these 2 fronts (programs and affiliates).

Best Blogs Asia.

Azoogle Service

I made a review of Azoogleads last year, I didn’t recommend them but that was only because their offers didn’t suit users in Asia.

I checked again recently and made a screenshot of the “relevant Asia only” offers they are running and as you can see, they aren’t aimed at Asia at all. I think Azoogle is for the US market only really, that’s not to say people in Asia can’t make American sites and promote them, but it does annoy me when they are promoting Asian offers and they aren’t at all.

This is the email they sent

Greetings from Epic Media Group (aka AzoogleAds)!

I hope this email finds you well!

In a recent initiative to reach out to our publishers, I noticed that you have not logged in to our interface since !

I’d really like to help you get started with some campaigns since it has been a while since we’ve been in touch. What are you currently working on? Would you mind sending some insights into your business model so I can better assist you in launching some projects?

We have a large inventory of campaigns, a significant number of which are exclusive and private. In order to maximize your profits with us, we need to be in close communication so I can help you find offers most suitable to your target audience!

Furthermore, I urge you to check out our network-wide contests happening this summer by visiting azoogleadscontests.com. With a chance to win a trip to the Playboy Mansion on the table, how could you walk away?

Since it has been so long since you last logged into your account, we ask that you login now to indicate your continued interest in working with us! If we do not see at least one login within 30 days, we are going to assume that you no longer wish to conduct business with us and your account will expire.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns! I’m looking forward to working with you now that we’re in touch!

Conclusion

Not sure why I need to log in though every 30 days, can’t work that out. With new features, surely any sales I make will be automatically emailed to me hence the need not to log in. Also, any new offers should be sent by email rather than require me to check in one location…

Something to note on topic. After being an Amazon affiliate for over 6 years, I received an email telling me my account would be shut down if I didn’t make a sale in a few months time. It’s true I didn’t make a sale since I’ve been prefering to redirect users to BANS sites (which ended up as a failure, but more on that another time) . However, Amazon have the cheek to ask me to pay if I cannot make a sale until then…hmm.

I’m wondering if this is the future of Affiliate Marketing now?

Best Blogs Asia.

Famous Indian Bloggers and Affiliates

Amit Agarwal
A professional blogger and personal technology columnist for a national newspaper. He runs the Digital Inspiration site.

Ajith Edassery
A software professional and blogger from Bangalore, India. He runs the popular Dollar Shower site.

Lax
Owns and runs Techzoomin which is a popular web blog and talks about making money in India.

Tushar Agarwal
Probably the best blog on this list as the posts make sense and easy to read. Tushar runs the popular Bloggers Passion site.

Indian Blogging Communities

There is a small list of blogospheres which are communities/directories of Hindi and Bangla blogs. I also have my own directory at Indian Blogs:

• Indiblogger
• Blogvani – Hindi
• Blogbharti
• A4u India

Useful Affiliate Networks in India

From what I understand, PayPal India have stopped transactions to personal accounts – which is a huge thing so having a stable currency online (and offline) would help affiliates. That said, here are some popular and active networks in India:

DGM Asia
I’ve written about DGM in Hong Kong, so taking that in mind they also have clients like ABN Amro, SnapFish, Tata Motors, Tata AIG, Lipton, Makemytrip and Rediff shopping. Join DGM Asia (India).

Clix Galore
Clix Galore have been around for ages and seem to have a lot of country specific sites. One thing I must say is that their sites have an Australian angle to them which doesn’t relate at all to India. Join Clixgalore.

Vcommission
Seems to offer similar programs like DGM Asia, but also gambling offers like 888 and Nielsen which could be worth checking out. Join Vcommission.

SMXchange
Huge list of popular programs like Microsoft, IBN Live, Mac, ICICI Bank, British Council and CricketNext. Join SMXchange.

Affiliate Programs

The following are established and worth joining up with:

• Shaadi – The World’s largest matrimonial agency
• Adsense
• Other Asian Dating programs

Conclusion

I’m no expert on Indian blogging I’m afraid, but there seems to be potential. Depending on the popularity of this article, I may look into this field further and see what else is going on in the local web community.

If there’s more to add to this article, let me know!

Best Blogs Asia.

Why is PPC in China so Important?

Baidu is the biggest search engine in China and they claim 62% of market share, with Google being the second. But, regarding SEM, they work a little bit different: Baidu’s keyword advertising placements are listed before the natural search results. All of those ads are called “推广”. So, professional service about keyword advertising is necessary for most companies. Keywords reports from Baidu’s stystem is actually very simple. Dislike Google’s adwords system, you cannot even track the performance / conversion of each keyword in Baidu.

PPC vs SEO

The survey data was drawn from over 5000 active online marketers in a variety of settings was listed as:
In-house managed PPC Search – 3.84%
Outsourced managed PPC Search – 5.40%
Difference: 40%

In-house Natural Search Optimization – 2.62%
Outsourced Natural Search Optimization – 4.76%
Difference: 80%

SEO

According to a Forrester Marketing Survey, SEO trails only social media and online video as places where marketers are expected to be shifting marketing dollars. SEO continues to outpace PPC and there’s a long way to go before balance is established between the share of clicks SEO commands and the fraction of spend it receives, but the gap is slowly closing.

Conclusion

It’s too early to compare the dynamics in the US with China, the headaches of SEO with Baidu may cause problems later on. Finding the right SEO Agency in China is also hard work.

Best Blogs Asia.

Their Situation and Asia Affiliates

I reviewed DGM Asia a while back, I mentioned the attraction of Apple and also they need more stronger advertisers. I see that they have clients like Acuvue, Apple, Avis, Avon, Chrysler, Citibank, Clinique, Dell, Dulux, FT, Good Year, HSBC, ING, iTunes, LG, M.A.C, McDonalds, McAfee, PayPal, Pioneer, Qantas, Shangri-La, Sony, Time, Visa and Vodafone…but this doesn’t apply to the Asia regions.

Affiliate Marketing in Asia is still slow to take off, I thought things would of changed by now. DGM are one of the biggest networks within the Asia region, so it will effect their business but why are Apple pulling out of Asia too?

Just looking at the famous people in Asia who’ve made millions out of affiliate programs, they should show the rest of us how it’s done. On a personal level, I’ve never made any money from DGM Asia which is strange since I’m ranked #1 for most of their search terms as well as having a popular site with many signups. I’m not sure if it’s bad luck on my part or that their accounting system isn’t working well.

Conclusion

I see this post actually turned into a rant about the company, which wasn’t my intention or meaning. However, I’d like to ask…is anyone currently making ANY money from DGM Asia at all?

In mean time, things have been made harder for affiliate marketers in Asia, but cheer up there are many other programs to use.

Best Blogs Asia.

PPC Keywords

This is the setup you can use:

[ ] = exact search only
” ” = using keywords in that order

Keywords campaign #2:
[football gifts]
[football gift]

Keywords:
?Buy Playstation 3 Controller?
?Buy Wireless Playstation 3 Controller?
?additional playstation 3 controller?
?cheap playstation 3 controller?
?buy ps3 controller?
?cheap ps3 controller?

Brand keywords:
Adult Friend Finder
?Adult Friend Finder?
[Adult Friend Finder]
?adultfriendfinder?
adultfriendfinder
[adultfriendfinder]

Adwords Tips

• exact match option [football gifts]
• link to pages not just homepage
• geotarget
• language
• content network?
• focus on specific keywords, I might only have anywhere between 5-25 keywords in one adgroup.
• use mis-spelt words as keywords too
• Use the: ? & ?symbols in the title
• Promote benefits ahead features

Advert Tips

• Use the keyword in your ad
• Use capitalization in your URL
• Use numbers whenever possible.

Split tests

The easiest way to improve ads is to run split tests. A split test is when you divide the potential traffic of a keyword between two different ads. One ad is displayed to one half of the viewers, and the other ad to the other half. Assuming the viewers adopt similar behaviours, you can see which ad gets the most clicks.

Other tips

• Create Relevant Ad Copy
• Use one account per site and merge them
• Run the campaign for a week, lower the budget and calculate your earnings

Best Blogs Asia.

Shoemoney Money

I reviewed Shoe Money a while back, he started off making 1 dollar a day until 6 months later he was making huge amounts. The questions and answers seem to expand outside of Adsense, but is still useful in relation to building a site.

Don’t let one adsense account make too much money.
Setup separate corporate entities and get different bank accounts/ein for each. It’s much safer to have 10 corporate entities bringing in 10k each/month then 1 bringing in 100k. All someone has to do is complain about copyright or whatever or any of the other horror stories we have heard about getting shutoff from adsense and boom your whole business is out. Setup multiple corporate entities and you will have safteynets. I get a new P.O box for each company then have them all forward to our main office.

Site Profits
Take current profits from last month and multiply by 40. That should give you a good estimate of what a company is worth. If its worth it sell it.

Set goals and keep them.
When I first started with adsense my goal was to make 273.98 per day. I had it taped all over my house. It drove my wife and friends nuts. I had that number in my head and wouldn’t stop until I started making at least that. Once I was averaging that per day for 60 days I doubled it and so on and so fourth. Never settle. I know allot of webmasters who made there goal and just idled.

Everyone is targeting high paying ads and building a site around it.
My business model has been to target high SEARCHED for phrases and then try to make the pay as much as possible with adsense. It’s a very interesting game trying to balance keyword density for traffic and keyword density for profit.

Be patient.
There will be massive spikes with adsense but unless you have drastically changed your web page don’t worry about it too much. This is an extremely volatile market we are making money in.

Banning Sites in Competition Filter
I have never ever banned sites on my page using the compeititon filter from google. If I feel they are not pulling good ads then I change the keyword density to pull better ones. I *think* that google will ALWAYS try to display the highest paying ads for your site for your keyword density. This is purely my theory and its just based on common sense.

Weekly Routine
1) Register at least 10 new domains (and have ideas for each domain)
2) Put up at least 1 new website. I call this part planting seeds.

Once a website gets over 1k uniq visitors a day I will put up subscriptions/donation/adsense/adbrite depending on what it is.

Domains
I have only had success for .com but that is all I register.

Niche vs Traffic
In my opinion traffic is the easy part. Its finding the niche or service that is the hard part.

Selling or Dropshipping
I try to dropship everything I can and not have inventory to manage but sometimes if the profit is there that is unavoidable. Most data cables can be bought for under 1$ and if you buy bulk you can literally get them for pennies (quantities of 1,000 or more). I usually make a 75% profit on physical goods including shipping, handling, and packaging.

Do you use your existing sites to generate traffic for your new sites?
Totally. I think its very important to stay with one vector and slowly branch out into related subjects.

Best Blogs Asia.

Participation in Google Adsense

The rules say:

• Do you have a website? You’ll need one in order to participate. If you don’t have one, you can create one using Blogger. Read our tips for creating great content so that you’ll attract users and advertisers to your site.
• Are you at least 18 years old? As noted in our Terms and Conditions, we can only accept applications from applicants who are over 18.
• Does your site comply with our programme policies? Check that your site complies with our policies before submitting your application. Keep in mind that we may change our policies at any time, and according to our Terms and Conditions, it’s your responsibility to keep up to date with them.
• Have you owned your site for 6 months? In some locations, including China and India, we require publishers to have owned their sites for 6 months. We’ve taken this step to ensure the quality of our advertising network and protect the interests of our advertisers and existing publishers.

How come?

Not sure of the real reasons, could be due to copied content or MFA adsense sites but I thought it isn’t based just in Asia regions only.

How to get accepted

These steps may work for you, sign up to sites.google.com and start writing a few articles. Then use the site as a base and apply for Adsense. I think it works well because it’s hosted on their own servers. Starting a Hubpage and using that may also work.

Best Blogs Asia.

State of Affiliate Marketing in China

The main option would be using Google Adsense, but offers small numbers of click values. There are many networks available, but I’ve listed the best from well-known affiliate programmes and owners.

I’ve never really rated u2mee or clickvalue.cn (which seems to be the biggest listed companies in China) and well known sites like Lucky Pacific or AzoogleAds aren’t so centred on China.

• adforbest.com looks good, but when signing up it asks you for your full bank details – who would send that information out?!
• AsiaClickz.com, why can’t I find the details to log into my account?
• 8affiliate.com hasn’t been updated in a while (no affiliate details) and their contact form doesn’t work.
• Clickvalue.cn is also available, but been unable to signup with them.
• Adbank.sg is aimed at publishers in Asia, but the login details haven’t been available to users for a long time.
• DGM Asia is a Network I recommended for a while, but having recently logged in and found out my account was deleted I cannot recommend them!

Having some knowledge on Internet Marketing in China, I’d like to recommend the following networks.

ChineseAN

I previously reviewed the Global Chinese Network, giving it some positive response due to the high profile Asia based advertisers on the site like Sasa, Hong Kong Tourism Board and Newsweek. They also claim they are the “only affiliate network that can truly offer comprehensive coverage over the entire Greater China region”. Signup to Chinese AN here.

Baidu Union (Chinese only)

Probably the biggest available in China, in Chinese language only. There are frou groups of Baidu advertising: Union Promotional, Union Searching, Zhidao Advertising and Union New Type Advertising. They only accept 1000+ daily unique visitors and you’re not allowed to join until you’ve gotten a ICP licence issued by the Chinese Government! Signup to Baidu Union.

Alimama (Chinese only)

Alimama is a prestigious advertising network run by Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group. Alimama offers Pay Per Click advertising, Pay Per View advertising, Pay Per Action advertising and etc. The payment processor is Alipay. Signup to Alimama.

Amazon.cn /JoYo (Chinese only)

JoYo was bought by Amazon and transformed into a Chinese version of their Western site (Although DangDang.com is still a bigger site in China than Amazon). Signup to JoYo.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Shoe

I’ve written about Shoemoney.com before last year. Since then he’s developed further into the area of Social Media, making money from sites like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.

I think he’s a born entrepreneur and the difference between him and other marketers is that he’s always after the money. Even though he’s rich, he still wants more and more.

From what I remember on his blog, he’s been making money in Social Media generally by:

Using Twitter

Implementing twitter feeds for all his sites, adding subscribers and following everyone (although later he cancelled this option).

This meant he’s got 1000’s of twitter followers who are interested in him and his sites, very specific group of people. Now he makes money through “Sponsored Tweets” which are targetted to his Twitter audience, making money from clickthroughs or just promoting products.

Using Facebook and Myspace (Increase his Shoemoney Account)

Again it’s a similar pattern of gaining a lot of followers and sending them targetted advertising. However, the rules are more strict on these types of sites so I imagine he’s more likely to promote specific articles on his sites to gain more readership.

Finally, he’s advertising on these sites. I’d imagine page impressions/views are very high and since Social Media is a new industry, I’d guess there’s not a lot of competition say compared to Google Adwords.

Shoemoney System

I was surprised to receive an email from Shoe (must have been from a subscriber list he’s got by me placing a comment on his site years ago). It looked a bit spammy to tell the truth, where he’s created a system where anyone can signup and then learn the “secrets” as to how he’s made his money.

The guaranteed income stream from gaining monthly subscribers must be huge and of course, the only guy making money from this is shoe…but I don’t discount what he’s doing. It offers:

• More than 100 hours of premium full-length step-by-step training videos, showing you my screen, holding nothing back.
• New video released every 3 days. Progress tracker and video library built-in to the member’s back-office.
• In-depth Interviews with the people at Google, Facebook, SponsoredTweets and all major affiliate networks, where they share their tips for success
• ShoeMoney Tools and third-party tools, all hand-picked by me, to help you grow your online empire.
• Niche Ideas, Top converting Keywords, Banners and ads I’ve used over the years.
• Podcasts and mp3 files of every single talk, presentation and interview I ever gave.

Join the Shoemoney System

• Signup to the Shoemoney System

Conclusion

The thing is with him is that everything’s calculated. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got a 5 year plan laid out on how much money he can make and will probably retire in a few years. He looks like an “average Joe”, well an average American Joe but take away the scruffy appearance and casual attitude is a hard nosed marketer and has become very succesful in what he does!

Best Blogs Asia.

Reasons for being a terrible Network

I’ve written about the “worst affiliate programmes” before and I’m sure alot of the networks on this list are great for particular groups of users, but I’m basing myself as an affiliate marketer in Asia with specific niche sites and for one reason or another I faced problems with the following networks. I’m afraid I can’t recommend the following.

Neverblue

Neverblue is labelled as “Neverblue is a premier global performance-based affiliate network that brings together choice affiliates and quality online advertisers as partners through carefully monitored, custom advertising”.

With the reference to “global” and hearing positive messages about the company, I’ve tried to sign up on many occassions only to fail. I’m not sure why I’m failing after filling in a long and boring signup form (which also has an annoying requirement of “where I found out about Neverblue”), I get a generic email back detailing that I haven’t been accepted, example:

The possible denial reasons for your application include, but are not limited to:

* We are not accepting applications from the country in which you applied
* Business practices and promotional methods are inconsistent with our Terms and Conditions
* Incomplete or missing application information
* Inconsistencies and conflicting application information you provided
* Failure to meet our minimum website requirements
* Your site or marketing methods do not compliment our offers
* History of improper affiliate practices
* Inability to reach you by phone or email
* Failure to reply to our phone or email correspondence within a 2 week period

I’ve filled out the form correctly, my submitted sites get lots of hits as well as following the terms of conditions. I believe it’s because I’m in Asia and my .asia domains, which goes against them being a “global network”.

u2mee

u2mee looks impressive, it’s based in China and has content in English and Chinese. So why is it rubbish? It’s because their signup process is terrible. First it’s extremely hard to find the link to signup (why??) and after signing up you get no confirmation that you’ve been accepted or not?

Their offers look good like Amazon joyo (although you can signup directly via Amazon) as well Dell and Global Sources. It’s a shame since I really wanted to try them out. Perhaps they need to handle their emails better!

Commission Junction

I sort of have a love/hate relationship with CJ. Sure, they’re probably the biggest network in the world but applying for specific programs, having extra windows open up and closing, as well as implementing old school Javascript links make them difficult to use. I’ve used them in the past when they were in control of the eBay affiliate program, but since then they’ve gone downhill.

I want a network which lets me join programs automatically (if my site was initially approved, why can’t I join any programs on their network), then I want text link codes available to me on the page, banner graphics optional and other creatives if available. What I don’t want to do, is use a site like Commission Junction for hours to find a single link!

Lucky Pacific

I previously recommended this company to my users, but having recently logged in and checked their offers I found them to be pretty poor. Mainly aimed at publishers outside Asia, I can’t promote them to my users. Also the fact they removed my campaigns without telling me is a bit no no.

Conclusion

I’ll keep this updated, but I do find it annoying that spending alot of time researching offers, filling out forms and then finding that my site isn’t accepted or that the offers aren’t displayed is a pain.

Best Blogs Asia.

Internet Marketing in Taiwan

From what I can see, ChineseAN.com is the main site that promotes affiliate networking in Taiwan (as well as Mainland China and Hong Kong).

AzoogleAds also have some small offers at Taiwanese marketers, but these are mainly Fun type Ringtones.

Internet Statistics

• 14,500,000 Internet users as of Dec 2006, 63.0% of the population.
• GNI per capita is US$ 13,320 (’04) according to World Bank.
• Taiwan’s Internet accounts increased by at least 400,000 every quarter since the second quarter of 2003.
• Mobile Internet subscribers for the first outnumbered dial-up subscribers in the second quarter of 2004, becoming the most popular method of Internet connection in Taiwan.
• Dial-up, broadband and mobile Internet are the main methods for Internet connection
• More men (56%) than women (52%) used the Internet.
• Age groups, 95% of people between 15 and 24 years old were Internet users
• Only less than 10% of people over 60 used the Internet.

Using ChineseAn for Taiwan

For examples of the kind of offers available to affiliate marketers, my recommendation (in terms of being well known) would be to sign up with:

• Fun Mobile
• Tradekey
• Forex
• Newsweek
• JShoppers
• Oregon
• be2 Dating

Join ChineseAn

Taiwan – Join ChineseAn

Conclusion

There wasn’t much to write about, however if you know of any other TW networks or TW Internet Marketers who are making money online, let me know!

Best Blogs Asia.

Using Adtoll

I want to use their advertising on some of my pages/sites, measuring the results with Google Analytics and Statpress and also showcase the revenues earnt. I’ll be promoting:

• Cars Under 1000 Dollars
• Godaddy Asia Domains

Here’s a graph showing the impact of implementing AdToll on my Best Blogs Site, the red mark shows when I first started using them.

However, I think I should first explain the usage of AdToll for both publishers and advertisers.

For Publishers

Bloggers can use AdToll to make money by publishing 2 types of Ads, earning rates are a 75% share :

• Sponsored ads – Set a price you define
• Run of Network ads – Set cost

For Advertisers

From what I gather publishers get free advertising on the AdToll homepage depending on the advertising site’s sales and pricing, clicks can be found for $0.01 CPC! Below is a screenshot of the Buy a Sponsored advert directory, where you can sort by Alexa Rank, Ad Costs, Average Views/Clicks, Average CPC and Rebooking rates.

Site Directory

In general the most popular publishers are in the Entertainment & Games section, which could really mean anything! Internet and Technology and Adult are other popular sections in the directory. I chose these options: Non Adult, Language: English. Then I experimented with America and Asia locations. I find these options very useful and by clicking on each publisher I could see the useful information about their demographic users, average clicks and duration.

Making Money

I limited myself to a small budget and I first had to find the right publisher who offered a good CPC.

I was looking for a short duration time as I wanted instant results, of course this could effect the number of clicks and not give a fair representation of the service but this review is only an example…Signing up as an advertiser was quick and I was also pleasantly surprised to see the stats updating in real-time too.

Run of Network Advert Test

For the carsunder1000dollars. site, I couldn’t find a relevant high number of clicks ” Sponsored Ad” publisher in the directory so I bought a “Run of Network” general ad, limiting my location to North America:

242clicks @ 8.25cents/click / $20 ad placed
Target Region: North America
Target Categories: Automotive, Culture & Lifestyle, Shopping & Travel

I chose a PicText Ad (without an image), as I wanted to place a text only advert and “stripe ad” would be one long strip of text.

The headline and body text was:
Cheap Cars under $1000
Search Here For Resources On cheap cars under $1000

I could of chose to advertise in all categories, if I had a bigger budget I would of done so. But the categories I chose were Culture & Lifestyle and Shopping & Travel and Automotive. Although I felt I wouldn’t get many clicks from Automotive which the relevant sites in the Directory didn’t get many clicks.

I was then told my request would be personally checked by my ad manager and would approve my Run of Network ad within 24 hours, which it then was within this time frame. I was getting page impressions, but no clucks which could be due to the restrictions on Target Region and my ad copy.

Adtoll kindly refunded my $20 advert, no money earnt.

PicText Advert Test

Learning from the Cars advert, I wanted to continue with a text advert having had experience of these types of ads via Adbrite. For this link, I wanted to aim it at the Asian market since I’m writing about .asia domain names. I found that the directory does have a restriction and can show Asia based publishers, but doesn’t have a feature for Asia based clicks unless I check each publisher individually.

The headline and body text was:
$14.99 .Asia Domains
Register domains cheap. Find Your Technology Needs Here.

865.00 clicks @ 2.31 cents/click / $20 ad placed
Target Region: All Locations
Target Categories: Internet

I know Adtoll is more than just Text Ads, so I will next take advantage of graphic ads.

Earnt $40.

Graphic Banner Advert Test

I then made a 468×60 banner for the same destination above, I wanted more clicks so I sexed it up by adding bright colours and a busty asian babe, although the ad was tasteful. I bought the ad on an individual publisher site this time.

174.83 clicks per day / $19.60 ad placed

Earnt $45 (but total not defined yet).

Sign up with Adtoll

You can join AdToll here. (Referral Program)

Conclusion

One thing I noticed is that it’s great to find groupings of ad publishers, but the actual sites need to be double checked as for example I found Photography websites in the Automotive section of the site. Also when I checked out a publisher’s site, I saw that the Adtoll advert wasn’t in the location specified or even on the promoting site itself. This is a problem and can be hard to enforce on the Network’s side, so to note if you’re buying an advert on a site check out the site’s source code and make sure it excepts ads from that particular network.

I budgetted myself $100 dollars, but ended up spending only $40 having some funds refunded due to lack of clicks.

Note that I was restricted to a low budget and also a short time scale, I would of liked to continue this further. I found it better than Adbrite as Adtoll have advanced targetting groups. Of course buying ads is about being in the right place at the right time, also depends on budget, time of the year and even the economic situation. I found the Adtoll experience to be positive and will be using them again soon.

Best Blogs Asia.

Alternatives List

Have you thought about making more money from your adverts, or that in certain countries where there is no adsense advertisers a public advert will be displayed? Try the following alternatives, which will be updated constantly:

Adbrite

AdBrite, is currently one of the best alternatives there are to Google’s adsense, they do not offer quite as many ad formats as Google but they offer the most commonly used ones and also offer inline page links with have some great click through ratios as well as interstitial full page ads which offer an excellent way to monetize all traffic to your site not just traffic that clicks on your ads. >> Join Adbrite now.

Adtoll

AdToll pays on a CPC basis. Their user interface is great and navigating through the user panel is both easy and pleasant. Payments are available via Cheque, Paypal, ePassporte and Wire/Bank Transfer. >> Join Adtoll now.

AzoogleAds

AzoogleAds is a performance-based online advertising network comprised of a variety of effective large to medium vertical sites, portals and email publishers. >> Join AzoogleAds now.

Bidvertiser

Bidvertiser can be used as a source of getting cheap clicks and has reliable payouts. >> Join Bidvertiser now.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Lucky Pacific

I tried to register with Lucky Pacific a while back and heard nothing. Now with a recent site redesign, I found I could sign up easily as an affiliate and was accepted after a few days.

They promote themselves as “Our network spans some 15 Asia Pacific countries with a reach of over 300 million unique users.”

I noticed they use the Direct Track affiliate software, which powers other popular affiliate networks too…something to keep in mind if you’re starting a network.

Followup of Lucky Pacific Network

I previously had links to their programs, but seems like they changed them over time without informing me. This is pretty much a no no in the world of affiliate marketing.

Also, as a followup I checked out their recent offers. They all seem centred around surveys, particularly at “non Asian” publishers.

Conclusion

Sorry guys, I can’t recommend you. I was disappointed you removed my links without letting me know and latest offers are quite poor.

Best Blogs Asia.

Making Money

Before I go further, I want to point out the obvious that this guy is making money by telling you how to make money from the net! I guess someone has to start somewhere and most of the famous IM’s do this anyway. I broke down why he is famous as:

Sales Patter

The way Carl writes and promotes himself would always mean people would take interest. It’s easy to promote a product, anyone can do this. But it’s the way he writes about something, it’s like a story which could contain: personal past experience, not holding back on whether something is good or not and finally giving a conclusion in easy to read sentences…this is the sign of a master seller and Carl has already learn it at this young age.

Self Promotion

I noticed he displays all the positive feedback from other popular marketers on his blog as well as photos of his success. This is something everyone should do, perhaps you know you’re a good marketer…but why not let other people know also!

Age Issue

His popularity came from his age. I guess it’s a case of “if he can do it, so can I”. I’m wondering if an Old Aged blogger would get the same amount of publicity, perhaps – perhaps not.

Location

Problem his location would attract attention too. The Philippines is quite a poor country, so a guy making a fortune from this country would stand out. Perhaps a little like Sabahan who makes money from the jungles of Borneo, Malaysia!

Other Money Making Sites

I checked out his other sites which focus on testimonials, email signup boxes, online signatures, reds and black colours and big lettering to make certain phrases stand out.

All which creates a great looking landing page which then secures a potential buyer’s details…which then = money!

Examples of his Money Making Sites

• http://www.directresponsetemplates.com/
• http://www.ultimatebloggingtheme.com/

Conclusion

Carl doesn’t really focus on Asian Marketing, but with the power of the internet your location doesn’t really matter…you can make money anywhere. I didn’t see anything on his site as to how much he earns, but as a reader we get an “impression” that he’s making a lot of money on the net. Carl is well known in the internet marketing circle and has a great future ahead of him, regardless of his location or age!

Best Blogs Asia.

網路賺錢

When I go to Google, I find these people who are vying to be highly ranked:

網路賺錢資源站
http://www.4779.info/ -介紹免費網路賺錢的資料，讓你在上網之餘也能賺到零用錢喔。

網路賺錢部落格-Adsense繁體中文觀測站
http://adsense-tw.com/ – Made by Simon Chen who helped write the Chinese AN article for me.

CashFab網路賺錢介紹
http://cashfab.com/ -沒有不景氣~只有爭氣喔~一起在2009年扭轉”錢”坤大家共勉之!! 金錢工廠

Tuixy博客
http://www.tuixy.com/ -网络赚钱经验分享，网站赚钱，博客赚钱，网络资源，网站建设，美国空间

Recommended Programs

If you’re a Chinese publisher, I’d recommend signing up with the following:

• Asia Clickz
• DGM Asia
• Chinese AN

Conclusion

With the focus on Westerner internet marketers, it’s easy to forget that people are making a lot of money in other countries. These Chinese affiliate marketers rank highly on the major search engines. With the huge numbers of Chinese people online and a growing market, these guys could be richer than their Western counterparts in a few years!

What I noticed about the sites in general was that most of them look poorly designed, like sites used to look a few years ago. They are setup mainly for people to click on links, no real content is added or even the site is designed to look like a forum. I did notice a lot of the above used BloggerAds on their site, I never came across this network before.

Best Blogs Asia.

加入ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟的條件

只要你的網站是非色情、暴力或鼓吹社會不安的網站，不管流量和網站規模都可以加入中岸廣告聯盟，另外中岸廣告聯盟ChineseAN的廣告碼使用HTML或JAVA，所以有沒有特別的網站程式要求，大部份的免費部落格也都可以加入。

如何申請ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟

因為ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟是一個國際化的網站，接觸的不只是大中華地區，所以網站語言有簡中、繁中和英文，申請加入ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟的方式很簡單，只要依說明填寫就可以完成ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟的註冊程序，沒有煩瑣的申請手續。

ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟的收益與支付

ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟的佣金計算有幾種：

• 銷售額的某一百份比(CPS)
• 每個定單付一個固定的數額(CPL)
• 每個新登錄的會員或客戶付一個固定的數額(CPA)
• 如果廣告主只求流量，我們也會安排按點擊計費(CPC)。這和現在流行的搜尋引擎的計費方法有點類似。

ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟對不同地區使用不同的的貨幣支付收益，而最低支付金額也因貨幣的不同也所不同。中國是以銀行匯款支付、最低付款金額10元人民幣。香港是以Paypal或支票支付、最低付款金額50港元。台灣是以Paypal或支票支付、最低付款金額10美金。而且是每星期發放，最低付款金額就可以申請付款。

如果你有多個網站或部落格，你也只要申請一個ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟帳號就可以放置廣告在多個網站上。雖然一個帳號就可以放置多個廣告在不同網站，但每個網站都要各自申請加入廣告活動和被廣告主核準後以才可以獲得廣告碼開始賺佣金。

如格加入ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟的廣告活動

在中岸廣告聯盟ChineseAN後台中的”廣告活動”中找到適合你的網站的廣告活動，只要按下”立即加入”就會送出申請加入信給廣告主，如果廣告主設置自動審核那麼只需幾分鐘你就可以開始獲得廣告碼和放置廣告到你的網站上，如果廣告主設置手動審核那就要等待廣告主的審核通常是二、三天或一個星期。

只要你加入的廣告活動被許可後，你就可以在廣告列表最右側看到”廣告創作”和”生成鏈結”。
廣告創作可以讓你選擇廣告主已設計好的廣告圖示，只要將中岸廣告聯盟ChineseAN提供的廣告HTML完整的複製和貼到你的網頁適當的位置中就完成。

如果你不喜歡廣告主提供的廣告圖示或廣告圖示的大小不適合你的網站、或你只想使用文字連結，你也可以點擊”生成鏈結”來設計自行定義的連結，可以是圖像也可以是文字。

更多網路賺錢

網路賺錢的方式有很多，你參觀Simon的 AdWitness 廣告目擊者：網賺部落格，也可以到這裡看看Simon為撰寫整理的免費網路賺總覽

Best Blogs Asia.

Based in Hong Kong and developed by Ignite Vision, they are the first HK based affiliate network I’ve come across. I like the way they are focusing their efforts on the China market (Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan…) which can only be good news for Chinese affiliates.

Using Chinese AN

The site setup is one of the better layouts I’ve seen. You can search for programs to join, then click “Join Now” to (instantly?) join the campaign. Prices are in USD and HKD, with a short description of what each campaign does which is useful.

Types of Programs

There is a quite a big list of programs available, one that caught my eye is a charity affiliate program in which you promote a charity and get paid nothing. This is something unusual in affiliate marketing, but goes towards a good cause!

Affiliate programs available range from:

• Greenpeace Hong Kong
• Facekoo (The Chinese Facebook)
• be2 (Chinese Dating)
• Citibank Hong Kong
• Joyo (Amazon CN)
• Sasa (Cosmetics and Beauty)

Supported Models

ChineseAN supports all the performance-based advertising models which tie commissions to actual results:

• Percentage of sale (CPS)
• Fixed amount per order or lead (CPL)
• Fixed amount per each desired action, which is typically a free membership sign-up (CPA)
• Some Advertisers care about traffic. We can also arrange a pay-per-click (CPC) model

Signup

Signup by going to ChineseAN and join.

Conclusion

I’m actually impressed by the layout and the number of great offers, it inspires me to create relevant local websites using these programs. The payouts are only 1 or 2 USD per sale which is pretty low, but I’m sure will increase over time. I also noticed there’s a lot of survey programs which put me off a bit, but there are real quality programs available from well known companies, so is worthwhile to check it out!

Best Blogs Asia.

Affiliate Marketing Activity

According to the latest CICC statistics around 2,661 advertisers are using Internet marketing and the total number of online campaigns in China is over 19,000 at any one time.

FMCG, IT/Electronics, Finance and Automobile industries account for more than 60% of total Internet advertising value in China. The growth of keyword advertising or search engine advertising may be one of the reasons for the surge in the Chinese Internet market. Search engine advertising in China is growing at a rate of 108.6% annually.

Online Spend

China Internet advertising – 2008 (Expected) – 17.2 billion Yuan
Online Travel Service Market – 2007 – 2.8 billion Yuan
Online Shopping Market- 2007 – 29.6 billion Yuan

Chinese Affiliate Networks

A previous post on Affiliate Programmes and general Asia based networks led me to explore the actual China networks below.

• Asia Clickz – Although based in Singapore, they have a China offers.
• DGM Asia – Chinese offers such as British Airways makes them interesting to join.
• Chinese AN – Hong Kong-based affiliate network.

Conclusion

At the moment I think it’s a case that the agencies must learn to integrate appropriate affiliate marketing, marketers have to set realistic commissions and publishers must be ready to embrace pay for performance.

Structural changes to Asian markets will help. For example, as credit cards become more common in China, networks will have a bigger audience. I’m happy to report some the above networks pay using Paypal and Wire Transfers, similar to their Western counterparts.

Best Blogs Asia.

Online Casinos

Online casinos enable gamblers to play and wager on casino games through the Internet and countries like Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau allow online gambling. Types are split up into:

• Web-based online casinos
• Download-based online casinos
• Live-based casinos

Revenue Facts and Figures

In 2006 players wagered over Twelve Billion Dollars at online casinos and that figure is expected to double in 10 years! (CAP Statistic)

Each program is different, but you generally earn 20 – 50% of the profits off that player for life.

The average profit on a single player is $64.00 per month.

So the potential revenue Casino Affiliate Programs generate can be huge!

Online Gambling Ban

I couldn’t see anything about gambling online being banned in specific countries in Asia. The most popular gambling site 888.com is blocked in China whilst India declares it does not prohibit online gambling, but in the state of Maharashtra it is a banned offense under the “Bombay Wager Act”.

Asia specific Casino Affiliate Networks

There are many programs available, based in the UK or US but as affiliates we need to think of “target traffic directed at target offers”. So here’s a list of Asia friendly programs from
Casino Blasters that I found that are based or aimed at the Asian gambling market:

• Golden Palace Japan
• Grand Online
• Flamingo Club

Conclusion

I checked out the most popular Asian based Casinos such as Casino Lisboa, Venetian Macau, Wynn Casino Macau and the Sands Casino – None have online affiliate programs. It’s a shame whilst Casino owners recognise there’s a huge market for online gambling, they don’t actively push ahead and make their site a gambler’s paradise!

If you are interested in many huge profits from gambling, I think joining the recommended Affiliate networks above would be worth your while.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Shaolin Tiger

The Shaolin Tiger site is run by Gareth, an expat based in Malaysia who writes funny observations combined with photos. The site is easy to read and follows a similar style to another Malaysian blogger – Kenny Sia.

He also owns and runs http://www.darknet.org.uk and http://www.shutterasia.com, whilst also getting promotion to his site from local magazines and TV appearances.

All photos owned by Shaolintiger.com.

Use of Nuffnang and Advertorials

I see he uses Text Link Ads to make revenue (oh no!). However, one important aspect that made me want to write about his site is that Gareth has sponsored paid posts by Nuffnang (another oh no!).

Potential clients contact him, he refers them to Nuffnang and if accepted Gareth makes a custom advert post, examples:

• Wrigley’s Extra Professional Mints
• Celebrate Like A Champion With Smirnoff!
• Heineken – UEFA Champions League – Be Prepared!

Advert Integration

Not sure on why there’s a lot of focus on Alcohol adverts, but this is an excellent way to make money but also keep readers on the site since the advert posts don’t look like adverts and blend it with the site. I also like the way he’s disclosed they are adverts, unlike other bloggers. It’s also interesting that there’s a considered ruling at the moment in the US that bloggers should disclose paid posts (which they should do anyway).

Conclusion

I always heard bad things about Nuffnang, but this site seems to be working well in partnership with the Malaysian/Singapore based Affiliate Network. Perhaps there are big things going on with Nuffnang after all!

Best Blogs Asia.

AzoogleAds Features

I found signing up was very easy (although you need to fax a W8 tax form), I can see why AzoogleAds are so popular! You can then apply and be instantly approved to any campaign. This says a lot compared to other networks, where based on your country of origin you can be automatically rejected or there’s a time delay in getting approved.

There are a wide number of niches to choose from, similar to Commission Junction and you have the ability to sort by payout, region or currency.

Points to Note

• Guaranteed Highest CPA Payouts.
• 75%+ CPM payouts (highest in industry).
• Variety of CPM, CPC, and CPA choices Fortune 500, and 1000 Advertisers.
• Proven net 15 ON-TIME payouts.
• Fanatical Customer Support.
• Exclusive Rewards Program.

Aimed at Asia

I can search by Asian countries, but the results aren’t targeted to the country. The actual results from countries like Singapore, India, China are very poor.

The available adverts available to Asia are:

• FunMobile Ringtones Taiwan
• Learn Chinese Online – With Beijing’s Best Teachers
• Sokiwi – Mobile – Hong Kong
• Cho-Yung Tea: Social Media/Incent
• Wixawin Taiwan

I guess you don’t have to have target ads, so the highest payout are:

• William Hill Casino – $80.00
• Kandy Halloween party at the PlayBoy Mansion- $50.00
• Miracet Stop Smoking | Free Trial – $33.00
• HerbalBiz Online Business Free Trial – $33.00

Not Recommended

I’m sorry AzoogleAds, you seem great for Western publishers with high payouts for certain themes, but in relation to Asia or Asian themes – the site is lacking. It seems like Ringtones would be the best option for people based in Asia, but it’s a huge competing market which is very hard to now profit from.

Also, I found the process of clicking on a advertiser, finding the banners to use, then clicking on the code/view page very complex. In most cases the preview image didn’t display which relates to their server…very poor management.

I still think it’s worthwhile to sign up with AzoogleAds, keep them in mind and check back with them now and again to see if the right offer appears.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Randall and Big White Guy

Bigwhiteguy started many years ago and Randall van der Woning has been posting to the site constantly,

Randall is a HK expat commenting on social issues relating to Hong Kong and also documents HK life through his photos.

I think by writing on his popular site, he’s led to different avenues such as local magazines and photography classes which wouldn’t have been available to him if he didn’t create the site and update it.

Lessons to Learn

The thing I’d take most from his site is that he seems to enjoy writing blog/diary entries. They reflect his mood, they are interesting and funny too. If we as Internet Publishers take a step back from concentrating on adverts and making money online we’d realise that content is always the number 1 factor in getting visitors to your site!

I can see that Randall hasn’t really monetised the site, perhaps would be too distracting from the writing – although I think the site at least pays for itself per month with paid adverts and a Personals section for dating.

Conclusion

I contacted Randall a while back also, having advertised on his site and he gave me CSS tips a long time ago. I feel his site is friendly, the inability to comment on the posts can be frustrating at time…but it’s his personal site and doesn’t follow the normal convention of other blogs.

My feeling to showcase this site is to give an example of a guy who is dedicated to writing whether it’s profitable or not…money and fame do come later!

Best Blogs Asia.

About Adtoll

Similar to Adbrite where publishers can set their own prices and advertisers can purchase ads on specific sites.

Once joined, there is a useful referral program to make money and adding your site as a publisher is very easy! I like the way you can specify what types of adverts are allowed – such as Child Friendly to Restricted Industries (I just selected the Computer Industry and News & Blogs only) as well as what regional countries to show adverts. I’ve never seen an affiliate program which offers so much customisation – so this is a great benefit.

Payment terms are cheque, paypal, epassport, Adtoll account and wire transfer. The setup is exactly the same as Adbrite, except you can also use “Peel away” adverts on your site too.

Signup with Adtoll

You can join AdToll here.

On the signup I’m being asked my details, then my postcode is deemed “wrong” even though it’s outside of the US and isn’t wrong, then I see that I need to complete:

” For International customers, you will need to complete the W8 form” – who uses Fax anymore? I then received a followup email, all in jumbled HTML..not a good start guys!

Potential Revenues

• 20% commission on profit made from Advertisers (90 day period).
• 10% commission on profit made from Publishers (365 day period).

Conclusion

I tried Adtoll for a while but didn’t get much profit. As it seems, the more popular site you have…the more money you can make. I would use this as an alternative to Adbrite or even compare how much revenue you can make per day with each. I would think by placing restrictions on your published ads it will effect revenues more, but this is something you’d need to check out.

Best Blogs Asia.

Jack Ma

Jack Ma used to be an English teacher and tour guide for Hangzhou. He founded Alibaba in 1998 with $60,000 in capital. The company, owned for large part by Yahoo went public in 2007. Alibaba Group also operates Taobao.com, a consumer e-commerce portal similar to Ebay; AliPay, an online payment system; and AliSoft, which makes business management software.

Ding Lei

Ding Lei founded NetEase and became the richest individual in Chinese mainland in the year of 2003. Netease is a Chinese internet company that operates 163.com, a popular web portal which received over 546 million page views in June of 2005. The company has grown rapidly since its founding in June 1997, thanks in part to its investment in search engine technology and massively multiplayer online gaming.

Ma Huateng

Ma Huateng (Pony Ma) has spent his entire career in computing. He joined Runxun Communications Development Co. Ltd. in 1993. He later founded Tencent, the company behinds China’s most used chat client QQ. Tencent Computer System Co., Ltd. In 1999. Revenues up 85% in first half 2008 thanks to boost in Internet advertising ahead of Olympics and popularity of such online games as Dungeon, qq Dancer and Cross Fire.

Shi Yuzhu

In 2007, Shi Yuzhu became a billionaire in US dollars. Giant Interactive develops massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, played by tens of thousands of players through networked game servers.

Robin Li

Robin Li is the founder of Baidu.com, the leading Chinese-language Internet search provider, that looks remarkably similar to Google.com. Interestigly enough, the founder represents more net value then Eric Schmit, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page combined!

Conclusion

Looking at these rich people, makes you realise none of these guy’s activities were ground breaking or original. You can look at other trends in other countries, copy them and hope to succeed in your niche. The difficulty is persistence, contacts and determination which is what all these entrepreneurs have in common.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Shi Yuzhu

Shi has an engineering background, was an inventor and created software and later setup his Giant Group company. Bankruptcy came about from large investments in a company building from Zhuhai to Shenzhen. He then made his money back from making healthcare products and creating China’s third-largest online games company, Zhengtu.

Shi was ranked no. 24 with a net worth of 16.75 billion Chinese Yuan (approximately US$2.4 billion).

About Giant Interactive Group

Giant Interactive are one of China’s leading online game developers and operators in terms of revenues, focusing on massively multiplayer online role playing games (“MMORPG”) for personal computers. The Chinese online role-playing game developer caters to the masses, creating massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, played by tens of thousands of players through networked game servers. Its first internally developed game, ZT Online, was launched in 2006. The company has more than 140 game developers, and its prepaid game cards and game points are sold in more than 116,000 retail locations, such as bookstores, Internet cafes, and software stores.

Giant also co-operates with Alipay run by Alibaba, one of China’s biggest independent third-party Internet payment platforms to enhance their online payment system.

Giant also own a percentage of Chinese online social networking site 51.com.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Leon Ho

Leon’s background is in IT, HR and Management and has worked at Red Hat. These skills led him to create his own company Stepcase, which acts as an umbrella for both (Stepcase) Lifehack and Stepcase Apps. Leon was also featured in Business Week’s Top Young Asian Entrepreneurs.

I could have profiled anyone working in Web2.0 who happens to be based in HK/China. But with the Asian economy growing rapidly especially in China, investors are tuning to the energy and innovation of the Asian market and especially to the generation of young, tech- and business-savvy Asians (who also set long term goals)…such as Leon.

Lifehack

Lifehack is the sort of site I wished I designed. Founded in 2005 it’s a blog on productivity and personal development, which became #40 most popular blog in the world. I’m always searching for answers to questions, even exact deep search on Google doesn’t work most of the time. I personally can’t stay with one subject at one time, so a site like this has many articles on varied subjects.

I think there’s many ways someone could copy the idea of Lifehack and be successful. Just search for answers to questions on Search Engines, if they don’t appear or you feel you could do a better job in answering questions…then create an article about it. I think the viral impact of your article, as well as getting it searched and indexed means you can get instant popularity. The problem being is that you’re in competition with huge site’s like Lifehack who publish daily and have a huge amount of authors to deliver fresh content!

An example of a recent interview explains this:
” Why did you start up Lifehack.org, and what is the secret to your blog’s success?

I like to find and read content related to productivity and lifehacks. I usually spend one hour daily reading books and articles on the Internet. I think if I properly use time to find good content, those pointers will save people time as well. So that’s how lifehack.org was born – with a motivation of sharing good content and pointers. Secret? I probably don’t have one to its current status, but I do think constantly publishing good content daily is a major factor to the blog’s growth. As long as I remember, lifehack.org has at least one post every weekday since it was started two years ago.”

Stepcase

Stepcase is the parent company of Lifehack and is a productivity solution company; Stepcase’s Lifehack.org is a blog that delivers content for people who seek improvements in their everyday life; and Stepcase Apps, which is in development, is an online software platform for helping people further on their organization.

Conclusion

Looking at the amount of articles he wrote for Lifehack, it seems from 2006 onwards he was writing one or two articles a day! This amount of fresh content, with titles such as ” 99 Email Security and Productivity Tips” to ” How to be Interesting” would always attract attention and led to a large number of visitors and referrals.

Revenue is earnt from advertising on the site and Google Adsense, so perhaps there is potential to earn more with sponsored posts or using other affiliate related programs. However, I feel the site wasn’t made just to make a profit but to share valuable information to it’s readers…which isn’t a bad thing. As for Asian specific adverts, there are none. I guess it doesn’t matter where you are based since readers come from all over the world…

Best Blogs Asia.

Vladimir Prelovac

Vladimir Prelovac is a well known Wordpress plugin developer and SEO expert. I kept in touch with him on a few occasions as our paths crossed on a SEO project. I enjoy reading his commentary on what it takes to be involved in the Web Industry.

Scott Jones

Scott Jones became famous for winning the SEO V7N competition and later as a successful full time domainer and site owner based in Scotland. He’s posts are interesting and seems keen to answer any questions posed at him and his work.

Stuart Keown

Stuart is known for running Earnersblog, a sort of underground site which gives valuable tips on subjects like Blackhat, link building and promotion. Extremely useful but rarely updated.

Joost de Valk

Yoast is well known internationally for his conferences, wordpress plugins and blog. I check on his site now and again and if you’ve ever wanted to check out how a site should be designed, look at the source code of his sites!

Patrick Altoft

Blogstorm isn’t an easy name to remember, so I don’t regularly check Patrick’s blog. However, I find the indepth posts very useful, well managed and easy to read to is a site you should regularly check.

Other Inspiration

I’ve also created other posts on people who inspire me for particular reasons such as:

• Yongfook
• Kieron Donoghue
• Shoemoney
• John Chow…

Best Blogs Asia.

Where to Start

I did a post on Asian Affiliate Networks a while back, but programmes provided by these Networks are completely different in that they can change over time and the terms and conditions fluctuate…is something to keep an eye out for.

It’s well known the Asian Blogging and Marketing programmes are just starting up, but I’d recommend the following:

DGM Asia
DGM Asia offers programmes like Apple and British airways flights aimed at the China market.

Other Options:

Asian Dating
Asian Dating is popular for Westerners and could be used to capitalise on Foreigners accessing your site.

eBay Adverts
Whilst Singapore is only supported, there is no other specific Asian eBay affiliate programme, but it could still be worthwhile monetising on your non-asian traffic.

Google Adsense
Arrr, you don’t really want to be going down the Google Adsense route as it’s not a guaranteed form of reliable income, but felt I had to include it again for non-asian traffic.

Commission Junction in China

Commission Junction is a place I first explored when starting out in Affiliate Marketing, it’s tried and tested but the lack of Asia based programmes is small. You could apply for offers with:

• DHGate (China based Marketplace)
• Learn Chinese with ChinesePod
• Yahoo South East Asia
• Good Orient

Biggest Web Companies Programs

A made a post a while back on the most valuable web companies in China and found it strange that only the company below had anything close to an affiliate program!:

• CTrip Affiliate Program

Best Blogs Asia.

About Alibaba.com

The site conjures up thoughts of bazaars in Iran/Iraq or even the Disney film “Aladdin” but in short the website is publicly traded company in the business-to-business e-commerce marketplace. I first came across them when I saw their adverts on top of Hong Kong taxis and on tv, their logo is memorable also.

Alibaba operates two key online B2B marketplaces, an International Marketplace and a China Marketplace. The company’s English-language International Marketplace serves to bring together international importers and largely China-based suppliers by offering online export marketing services. The China Marketplace (www.alibaba.com.cn) is focused on facilitating domestic B2B trade within China.

There are more than 35 million registered users, as well as 6000+ employees working for Alibaba, mainly based in China. Also the site works in conjunction with Yahoo China in a joint venture.

Other Companies

There are other companies owned such as:

• Taobao.com – online retail marketplace
• Alipay – third-party online payment platform
• Alisoft – Internet-based business management solutions
• Yahoo! Koubei – Chinese regionalized classified listing website

Using Alibaba and the Impact on eBay

Alibaba is a huge site and does a good job in displaying company products, specific regions and displaying seller details. The problem I see is “trust”. The site is aimed at local Chinese businesses selling abroad so the foreign buyer has to have faith in the seller as well as deal with the logistics of purchasing from abroad.

The 2nd problem is using the online payment system supplied by Alibaba. It’s called Alipay and whilst it does work, it doesn’t have the strength or reputation of Paypal…it’s still early days yet. It works in China because relatively few Chinese have credit cards, so e-commerce companies have long struggled to find a way for customers to make payments for online transactions. With Alipay, Ma has come up with a simple solution: Buyers use Alipay to deposit money in a bank account; Alipay keeps the money in escrow; and then, after receiving notice that the buyer has received the purchase, releases the funds to the vendor.

Jack Ma Profile

Jack Ma is known for investing in companies and could even make a bid for Paypal or eBay in the future, but it’s current TaoBao auction site is huge and dominates the Chinese Person to Person selling market.

I read his background with interest. He had no experience of technology, was previously an interpreter and teacher but he found that as search was taking off in the Western world there was a gap in the Chinese market and raised funds with the help of friends and later Goldman Sachs and Softbank.

Funds were raised by charging for China exporters to meet U.S. buyers online for example companies that pay $2,900 a year to become “Gold Suppliers,” can, for instance, post an unlimited number of products online, offer virtual tours to would-be buyers, and (to reassure potential trading partners) receive vetting by a credit reporting agency. In 2007, Alibaba raised $1.5 billion in an initial public offering in Hong Kong. Yahoo owns 39% of Alibaba.

Jack will take the site further by offering localised versions to other countries around the world and expect to tap into these markets soon, helped along with $30 million spend in marketing. The vision of Alibaba is huge and things are looking up!

Best Blogs Asia.

Impact of Adbrite

For a starting bid of a penny per visitor, you can put direct traffic onto your landing page. This type of format is more successful with both branding and direct response advertisers. You can also see the Official AdBrite Advertiser Questions here.

Tips as a Seller

• Never start your pricing too high. I learnt this the hard way, better to gradually increase prices over a 6 month period when you have back orders.
• Make sure your placement is worth buying, remember the marketplace tagging, titles and site description.
• AdBrite is more successful if you sell a few premium placements as opposed to just backfill placements.
• Change the “your ad here” Adbrite code to something like “This site gets 50k uniques per day, advertise here”
• Offer discounts to recurring publishers, or price reductions on 2 or 3 monthly adverts
• Don’t use AdBrite’s auto pricing, it can be a source of cheap clicks but has no benefit to you.

Sign up with Adbrite

You can sign up here to be an Adbrite Advertiser, funds are securely deducted from your bank account after you purchase a Publisher’s advert.

Conclusion

I was lucky to have a huge backlog of advert buyers and was retailing about $1500 USD per month for one site. I contact Adbrite and they helped even further by displaying my site on their homepage, which increased sales further. My downfall was that I increased the price so much that it put advertisers off and even when I lowered the prices, the same advertisers (who were constantly rebilled) never came back…so be careful.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Affiliate Program

Seems eBay have rubbed people up the wrong way with the launch of the own Partner Network. CJ was more easy to apply to, make commission from a % of sales and wait for the cheques. With their eBay’s own site, things are more strict with the inclusion of campaign ids, confirmation of urls and restricted countries. Also combined with a lot of publishers getting dismissed for no reason at all (although could be related to poor number of sales, mis-use of code or long delays in logging in).

Effects of Quality Click Pricing

I heard about it in an email, I still didn’t understand it. Seems that the current system of making a % of sale is long gone. It’s quoted that:
“Starting September 1st 2009 for all new publishers and October 1st 2009 for all existing publishers, eBay Partner Network will start paying for clicks sent to eBay sites. The price paid will depend on the traffic’s quality — the more incremental revenue the traffic generates for eBay, the higher the amount paid per click”.

So it’s all about quality? How is quality determined? What does quality mean – I’m not sure! Perhaps it means if you have a relevant site, with lots relevant traffic then it’s of a high quality. At the end of the day, it’s all about making sales. If someone came to your site looking for a particular item, instead bought something else it still counts as a sale and shouldn’t effect the amount the publisher should get.

They explain that “High quality publishers will earn more” and “Lower quality publishers will earn less”, which basically means if make a couple of dollars a week/month from eBay, you’ll be earning even less. As for the real amount of “high quality” (whatever) that means, then earnings could be higher.

Making Money using eBay Network

A lot of affiliates use the Partner Network on BANS or Build a Niche Stores. You can make a lot of money if you dominate a keyword or keyword phrase. For example I recently setup Cars Under 1000 Dollars, the point being that I’d make revenue from each car sale and it’s benefit is that it’s targeted to buyers with less money to spend but still has a high payout for me as a publisher. I’ll keep you updated as to what happens with this site.

Seems like the days of adding your eBay affiliate link to say a blog post is over as you’ll now be earning less money to do so. Google Adsense isn’t the answer either as their payouts are terrible too.

Conclusion

They’ve changed from CPA Pricing where it can take upto 30 days to know the amount to EPA pricing where the revenue is known by the next day, this is one benefit. I know affiliates are getting fed up with these changes and the worry that one day they will be removed from the program with no notice. I love eBay and makes me money but need some stability from their side also.

Also seems about driving “relevant optimised traffic” to your site. This sounds like something you’d read on Adwords which gives me the idea that top publishers will be driving as much traffic as possible to their sites using paid searches, so the little guy like me and you won’t benefit at all from these changes. Prove me wrong guys!

Best Blogs Asia.

About Asia Clickz

Based in Singapore, they are focused on the Asian markets and offer relevant affiliate programmes to publishers. They also offer help to advertisers to drive sales through various sectors of the site – AsiaClickz Connect (Hands on marketing), AsiaClickz Reach (Viral Marketing) and AsiaClickz 360 (Mobile users).

Using Asia Clickz

Signing up was fine, had to wait a couple of days whilst my application was approved and signed in via https://edge.asiaclickz.com.

They use a system of having already pre-defined banner sizes, sign up with advertisers and then you implement the iframes banner code on the page.

List of Adverts

At the moment advertisers range from:

• Newsweek Asia
• Reebonz – A Luxury shopping site

Asia Clickz Site

Sign up at the Asia Clickz Site

Conclusion

The site could do with more advertisers, but the layout for publishers is more easy to use than say DGM Asia, which I found complex to find offers. I think it’s a bit of shame they are using iFrames and no actual text links, whilst it maybe easier to track…implementing something like this on a Wordpress CMS rather than editing HTML would be very hard and is aimed at more experienced website coders, which is a alienates a lot of bloggers who don’t know anything about designing sites.

I think it’s very interesting they are using Mobile Advertising. It’s something I had yet to come across with other Asian based affiliate programmes and for that reason alone I think they are worthy to sign up with as both a publisher and advertiser.

Best Blogs Asia.

Using DGM

Firstly, DGM are highly rated so perhaps more reliable than say Nuffnang, Advertlets and other Asia Affiliate Networks. They use reputable advertisers like Apple, British Airways and HSBC!

The sections are split into:

• Text Links – link to a product or company
• Banners – Stable and Rotating banners
• Promotions – One off special offers

DGM Experience

I found logging in complicated. They have too many options, country selections and urls to access – the best page to log in is via http://www.dgmpro.com/index.cfm.

You then need to apply to have your website accepted, this is pretty useful to veto bad sites but also there can be a long time delay (one acceptance took over 2 weeks). You then need to access a few pages for each particular advertiser, then click the symbols in the top right corner to get your banner or text link – a bit confusing.

Affiliate commission can be as low as 2%, but these are high priced items so in the long term it maybe profitable.

I also get the feeling DGM Asia is a small start up, with only 9 different advertisers and a main Singapore focus, is hard to target particular Asian websites.

However, the quality is there to see, with exclusive Asian based advertisers such as Apple, HSBC, British Airways and Newsweek you can really create a lot of revenue if you have these Asia based niche sites. This is also let down by lesser affiliate programes such as RBS, Moffy and Pfingo.

Examples of Advertisers

Apple Hong Kong

Apple Singapore

British Airways China

DGM Asia Site

Sign up at the DGM Affiliates Asia Site

Conclusion

The site still seems a bit work in progress, for example the useful feature “rotating banner” doesn’t work and the lack of available advertiser choices isn’t so great. However, the quality of the few advertiser is so great that I’d recommend you sign up. If for example, you are able to target Singapore or China based Apple users then you could make a lot of money!

Best Blogs Asia.

About Kieron Donoghue

Kieron’s focus on 80% PPC and 20% SEO on a wide range of sites in all specialist niches. The main theme of his domains is single keyworded .uk based, which was a smart move to make many years ago since most domain owners focused on the .com addresses. He spends huge amounts on his PPC campaigns and has a great portfolio of domains.

Domains Owned

This is a selection of his domains:

• UK Offer – An Offer/Voucher site
• Here – A personal blog
• eToys – Was a popular company site years ago, now showcases online toys
• Poker – A guide to playing poker
• Creditcard – Purchasing credit cards online
• Bingo – Guide to playing bingo
• Sharemyplaylists -Spotify Music

Income Earners

• Affiliate Window
• Market Ace
• Double Click UK
• Buy.at
• Affiliate Marketing UK
• Trade Doubler
• Sponsorship – Deals with Specialist Companies (BT etc.,)

Famous Bank Statement

Driving Traffic

It’s interesting to read that he prefers to drive traffic directly to a Merchants offer page rather than a personal landing page, as it may give a greater rate of return. I would guess on his niche sites he drives traffic to specialist pages by using Adwords/Yahoo/Overture and since he owns single keyworded/targeted domains, he ranks very high in Google UK and gets organic traffic.

I also see he’s using Twitter as a means of promoting himself and his latest ventures, which is a smart move.

Conclusion

Kieron Donoghue’s specialist area is UK domains, which is an emerging market just behind the States and Korea. It took great foresight to purchase these single keyworded domains and their value has only increased since then. His latest project is sharemyplaylists which developed from a Spotify music hobby and is now being promoted through magazines and Twitter.

To get to Kieron’s “level” you need to own quality domains, pursue PPC avenues and SEO and promote and make contacts. Then perhaps you can stay home to work and snack on Kit Kats .

Best Blogs Asia.