Mamma Maya

Archive for the ‘Commerce Compass’ Category

When I started my interest in affiliate sites I was just beginning to learn about web development and working for a company that offered affiliate programs. What are affiliate programs? Most popular merchants that sell something offer affiliate programs for other webmasters to help them increase their traffic and their revenues. Affiliate programs are for people that have a website that generates traffic and can help the merchant who is offering the affiliate program. Anyways, the goal of my experiment was to try to generate an affiliate website that will generate some income and spend the LEAST amount of money in the process.

Like most of you I am an average Joe with mouths to feed, trying to make ends meet. I decided to create my own website and added affiliate programs to boost my income. I first bought a domain name and web hosting, paying a total of about $11 a month in overhead. Now being the cheapo that I am, even this step was a heart stopper for fear that my site would not work out. I decided to make a website about coupon codes thinking I could offer this benefit to many shoppers who were interested in saving money. I designed and created my site utilizing all that I had learned about web development, and gave it a catchy name “cheap-buys.com”. When I finally had a decent looking website, I joined affiliate programs for many major websites through cj.com and linkshare.com. These are companies who handle a lot of affiliate business for many large-scale websites. To join is free without any obligation as long as you have a respectable website created.

Now remember, I did not want to spend any money at all so I did not advertise my website. I decided to optimize my site through “search engine optimization”. This is basically a way to make your website “search-engine” friendly so it can rank higher on the search results. I researched many or many search engine optimization techniques on the web and tried to implement those on my cheap-buys.com website. One site in particular, Seochat.com has many optimization techniques, tools and forum discussions that will help to improve your rankings swiftly. Finally, I added some Google ads on my website. Google ads pay per click so whenever someone clicks on your site you can generate some revenue.

Now after 1 year since the inception of my website here are my results:

I am not a rich jerk (some guy on the web that claims he’s filthy rich through affiliate programs), but I am making some reasonable money through my site. I can definitely pay my overhead of $11 every month but nowhere near enough to quit my day job. I can tell you for sure that affiliate programs do work and, if correctly implemented and successfully marketed, a website that you create can be a cash flowing machine.

If you’d like to create your own affiliate experiment here are my suggestions to help you succeed:

• 1. Create a website that is specific and not so broad based in popularity. For example, if you want to create a website about recipes, it is better to create a site specifically about a type of food category like dessert recipes instead of a broad category such as recipes. The website I created about coupons and deals has too broad of an appeal. If I were to do it over again I would have made it about a more specific topic. By narrowing the category you will be able to more easily be placed on top of search engines for the specific category.

• 2. Get a good domain name reflective of what your website is about. If your website is about horses’ tails then you want to call it something like “horses-tails.com” and not “animals.com”.

• 3. Provide original content rich material on your website. The search engines love it and will definitely allow for more people who search the web to find your site. It also helps if the content of your website changes a lot. In this case the search engines will visit more often to get the updated material.

• 4. Try to get as many other people who have websites to link back to your site as you can. This will improve your rankings in the search engines.

• 5. Sign up with Google Adsense or any other pay-per-click programs so you can offer an alternative for people who want to exit your site to click on related links and produce yourself some extra revenue through otherwise lost customers.

Brian Kim is a webmaster of two coupon code and deal sites: cheap-buys.com has online coupon codes for many popular merchants
and webcouponcodes.com has deals and promotional codes as well. Visit his sites and you’re likely to save a few bucks.

Copyright 2006 Timothy Rohrer

Hi my name is Tim Rohrer, I have been reviewing work at home opportunities for 3 years now and I can be the first to say that 99% of them are scams. I am not a millionaire, but I can say that I am an honest guy making a decent income working part-time from the comfort of my home.

Sports arbitrage trading has been my most recent review. I learned about sports arbitrage trading last summer while talking to gentlemen on the phone who had already been involved with the program for sometime. Being that I test work-at-home opportunities and different income streams, I decided to give it a try and see if the program actually did what it claims to do.

I opened up an account with Surebetpro and found that they offered live support and live training which I was extremely impressed by. A few days later I managed to attend one of the online training sessions and learned a lot about how to set-up my bookmaker accounts and was walked through an actual trade. The training sessions suggest not to ad any funds with the bookmakers until you have watched the software for at least 3 days. The reason being is that you want to put your money with the bookmakers that have the most arbs available.

After about 1 week, I funded 3 bookmakers with $100 and pretty much at this point just wanted to see if I could place an arbitrage bet and turn a profit. When an arb finally came through, I was able to place a bet with bookmaker A and bookmaker B. My total net profit ended up being $14.28 for that particular trade. $14.28 wasn’t very much, but it gave me what I needed to know, and that is that the program worked. Excited, I decided to fund 10 more bookmakers with $100 dollars each to expand my possible arb selections. After 3 weeks of trading, I ended up turning a profit of $378.00. By the end of this month, February 2006, I will have profited almost $500.00 for my first month of trading.

After having reviewed Surebetpro’s new sports arbitrage trading software, it turned out to be a very legitment investment. Online support was excellent in helping me set-up my bookmaker accounts and the training available was phenomenal. I have tested many programs, and the least I can say is it’s not everyday you find one that actually works.

There are many ways to make money online and the best way for you is to simply be creative with your skills, knowledge, and abilities. However, the following five options are powerful ways to make money online with a website and definite something you should consider.

#1 Knowledge

You can always sell your knowledge, which many times is the best way if you are an “expert” of any type or subject matter. People are looking for your knowledge and input, regardless if it is self taught, learned in college, or wherever. People are always looking for answers online, so if you sell your knowledge you can simply make money from what you know.

#2 Affiliate Programs

Become an affiliate for products based on your website theme and then simply promote these programs where you earn money from referrals. It is easier than it sounds and only takes you creating a website full of rich content.

#3 Hard Goods

Selling hard goods is a traditional way of making money and it transfers to the online forum as well. No matter what hard goods you have to sell you can certainly find a buyer online. Create a website that focuses on your goods, have a good shipping plan in place, and then start selling online.

#4 E-books

Selling e-books, articles, and other written materials is also a powerful way to make money online and if you are good at writing it is certainly something you should consider. You can have your own website selling pre-written topics or else you can also write on demand, whatever works best for you and your web business.

#5 Auction Goods

Auction web sites are also very powerful ways to make money. The reason for this is you can sell a wide variety of products, do not necessarily need your own website although it helps, and can change your products from time to time as you need to. Many people enjoy working and selling via auction sites because any number of things can be sold from old personal items to new products as well.

The best way for you to make money online is for you to do something that you like and enjoy. When you do some thing you like and enjoy you will be able to commit yourself to doing it fulltime. The reason for this is working online can be difficult at times and if you do not enjoy it then it will be difficult for you to be successful making money via your website.

Michael Turner shows you exactly how to increase web site traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it today at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

The European market is a multi-billion $ sector which you can not afford to ignore. If you are based within Europe, American or Canada you must be aware of the legal restrictions and requirements or face a hefty fine which could close your business. Don’t panic! I am going to make this so simple you can’t go wrong.

The aim of this article is to guide you through the very simple steps required to comply with European law when selling goods online.

The law concerning these matters is widely similar throughout Europe but the advice given below relates specifically to English & Welsh law.

And if you think you don’t need to comply because you are outside Europe and nobody enforces one country’s laws in another country, you are wrong! International co-operation has never been stronger and jurisdiction laws may allow English consumers to sue you in the English courts – forcing you to incur considerable legal expenses defending a claim in a distant country.

Print this now and keep it by your to-do list so your next website update adapts the key principles outlined.

Let’s start with step one.

Step One

The aim of the law is to protect consumers and retailers and bolster confidence in online transactions. Put simply the law protects all, not just the purchaser. The relevant body of law is found in one document, the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling Regulations). These Regulations have been altered a little recently but this is not of great concern to this article.

Now we know where to find the law, lets look at what it does in step two.

Step Two

The law forces the seller, before the sum is debited from the purchaser, to:-

provide the purchaser with the identity and address of the supplier; and
describe the characteristics of the goods to the purchaser; and
show the price of the goods including taxes to the purchaser; and
make shipping costs clear to the purchaser; and
remind the purchaser that he or she has a right to cancel the purchase.

Now this may seem quite a lot to take on board but the chances are you already have most of it covered anyway. Nearly everyone provides the first four details regardless of local legal requirements. It’s just good business practice.

It is the last point, reminding the purchaser that he or she has a right to cancel, which is so important. We will look at this in step three

Step Three

However, the purchaser can notify you that he or she wants to cancel the purchase in a variety of ways – the most likely being my email, telephone call or fax.

In general the consumer must let you know they wish to cancel within seven working days. These seven working days start one day after the day on which the purchase was made. As long as the purchaser contacts you within this period they are entitled to cancel their purchase.

Even if the goods have arrived with the purchaser the right to cancel still exists. Now the law is not as short-sighted as you may expect. There will clearly be cases where common sense dictates certain items can not be returned or certain orders cancelled. These exceptions to the right to return/refund are discussed in step four.

Step Four

The most likely exception to be of use to e-commerce sellers is for goods which are made to specification or are clearly personalised.

One of our businesses is selling silver jewellery and if a customer orders an item which is engraved with his or her name then it would be useless if returned as we could not sell it on.

Items which by their nature can not be returned are also exempt. We make it clear in our shipping & returns panel for both of our businesses that we can not accept returns for body jewellery or earrings with Purdice Jewellery and bath products for Purdice Home.

Another exception vital for internet retailers is where goods are liable to deteriorate rapidly. Fresh food goes rotten very quickly and a right to return may be of little use to the retailer if the food arrives in a rotten condition. One must remember that the seven day refund applies to otherwise good items which the purchaser simply no longer wants. This exception is therefore vital for businesses to operate profitably.

Music CDs, videos or DVDs which have been opened also can not be returned – this time for patently obvious reasons.

So what happens if goods are returned then? Let’s look at the final step, step five.

Step Five

So the purchaser wants to return the goods and there are no exceptions which restrict them being returned? The law, the prospect of future business and the desire to create a reputation for excellent service all compel you to make the refund as effortless as possible.

The first step as the e commerce retailer is to get the goods back. The law ensures that the purchaser has to finance the safe return of the goods. We strongly suggest you make this clear from the start in your shipping & returns panels – we do for both our information panels for our silver jewellery and home related businesses.

Furthermore, the goods must have been looked-after with a reasonable level of care and returned with care. If they are poorly packaged and damaged in transit or lost in transit you probably do not have to refund the purchaser. We always recommend items are fully insured when returned.

Assuming you receive the returned goods in a fit condition the final step is the refund.

The law requires you to refund the purchaser as soon as possible and no longer than 30 days after the notice of cancellation. Remember this is 30 days and not 30 working days.

You may, as the retailer, deduct the initial postage costs from the total returned.

In Summary

I know this can be quite hard to follow but I have broken it down into simple steps. In reality the law enforces the fairest position for everyone. It protects purchasers by allowing them to get a refund if they ask shortly after purchase. It protects retailers by providing exceptions from making a refund where items are not looked after, have gone-off or would be unsuitable for sale if returned.

It is vital to note that disputes may still arise where goods are faulty or where the seven day notice is given outside of the time limit by the purchaser. If this is the case legal action may follow so do not always think that as the retailer the seven day period protects you.

Either way only use this article as a guide. Always consult a lawyer before making changes to legal aspects of your website such as your terms and conditions and shipping and returns. As a guide you may view the terms and conditions for Purdice Home and for Purdice Jewellery. If you wish to replicate any part of them please contact me first.

Ashley Shameli, the author of this article, is a director of Purdice Silver Jewellery and Purdice Home. He can be contacted through either of the Purdice websites.