I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how lucky I am that my days are usually filled with music (my major passion)! Whether it’s listening to great tunes while working at the computer or stepping away to goof around on the piano or guitar for a while whenever the urge hits, happily, music now has a major priority in each day.

Some other things that are really nice about working from home:

• Waking up each morning whenever I’m good and ready to and not when the alarm clock dictates that I should
• Taking lunch breaks whenever - and having time to cook/prepare fresh meals for lunch if I happen to feel really motivated that day
• Having the flexibility to schedule other personal appointments whenever they’re necessary - no checking in with the boss first or finding a co-worker to “cover” for you
• Having the opportunity to give attention to and play with my pets (3 dogs, 4 cats and 4 horses) throughout the day
• Taking occasional naps in the afternoon
• Taking advantage of grocery stores, Costo, Walmart, etc being less crowded during the weekdays - errands are so much easier to deal with on weekdays rather than weekends
• Getting tax write-offs for some expenses that you would normally have to pay for anyway (utilities, certain home repairs & maintenance, homeowner’s insurance, etc.)
• Being able to workout/exercise whenever I feel like it instead of when it’s dark outside
• Not being pulled into endless, productivity-draining corporate meetings at someone else’s whim
• Have much more control over interruptions (ie answering or not answering the phone while working, no hovering bosses, hyper-talkative co-workers, etc.)

Some people really thrive on working in a more formal setting with lots of people nearby, procedures and formalities, but I’m definitely not one of them!  If you have the discipline necessary to still get the job done each day, working from home is the perfect way to add “balance” to a busy schedule.

The dust has pretty much finally settled down from that incident, but I’ve found out that some programs don’t work as well (if at all) running on Windows Vista as they did with Windows XP.

Unfortunately, Dreamweaver MX was one of those programs. I couldn’t even get the damn thing to finish installing itself! Instead of dealing with the whole hassle of it all, I decided to seek out some free alternatives to the software.

I’d heard of NVU (it’s pronounced like N-View) before, but since I was already using Dreamweaver there was no need to check out the open source software. Now that I’ve had a chance to download it and play with it, I can say that it’s a very impressive application for the price (free)! It has both graphical and text/source code editing capabilities, which is what I loved so much about Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is the Cadillac of HTML editors, but NVU is a really good alternative. If you want to check it out for yourself, you can download NVU here.

Now, the only other thing needed was a graphics editing program to replace Fireworks MX. Enter GIMP. It’s available for free and it can be used for a wide variety of tasks such as photo retouching, banner creation, image creation and works on a variety of operating systems. I don’t use a graphics program very often, but every affiliate marketer needs one from time to time. I found it to be similar enough to Fireworks to be able to use fairly intuitively and quickly without having to read any documentation. Highly recommended! Download GIMP free of charge here.

Although the average Cost Per Click increased, it appears that the “quality” of the visitors improved at the same time. Instead of taking 18 visitors before someone would set up a profile on the dating site, the figure was reduced to just under every 14 visitors. So overall, the cost of obtaining a profile decreased by 0.10 per profile.

It may not sound like much, but over time these small numbers really add up. So…. I think I’ll ditch my old campaign and keep the campaign that the Google people prepared.

The articles are written about just about every topic under the sun from jewelry, motorcycles, computer hardware, fitness, recipes and a lot more.   Here’s a sample of some of the topics that come with your PLR download.

After taking a quick look at some of the articles, you should realize that many of them may need to be rewritten (ie the articles have been run through bad rewriting software or have been written by authors who do not have the best command of the English language).  It’s always a good idea to re-write PLR articles anyway so you can have unique content for your sites.

On the upside, some of the articles are quite good as they are, and there is definitely something for every webmaster in this pack.  If you prefer to write your own content, these articles can also be used for those times when you are experiencing writer’s block or just need some fresh ideas for new content.

Here’s where my dating sites now stand for each major dating keyword phrase (along with the total competing number of results for each phrase):

Site —- Position —— Total Results ——-Notes
Site 1             1              2.1 Million
Site 2             1              567,000
Site 3             3              23 Million
Site 4             5              1 Million
Site 5             5              2.7 Million
Site 6           12              2.4 Million
Site 7           13              14 Million
Site 8           15              546,000
Site 9           21              1.7 Million <–Ranks for “personals” 2-word phrase instead of “dating” 2-word phrase
Site 10         35              1.5 Million
Site 11         69              3.3 Million
Site 12         -                2.8 Million <–Brand new site
Site 13         -                1.6 Million <– Formerly # 1 - Still Completely Gone From SERPs

This is such a huge, gigantic relief! I have no idea what had happened, but I’m SOOO glad it was temporary (at least I hope it is). Thank you, Google!

The sites are still in the index, but nowhere at all on the actual SERPs.  I’ve not recently made any major changes, have done nothing black-hat, have not purchased any links, everything is squeaky-clean white-hat, etc, etc…. and *poof* just like that they are not being displayed in the SERPs for some reason.  The only thing I can figure at this point is maybe it’s purely because they are affiliate sites.  They are not blatently obvious affiliate sites (they are well-designed, good quality,  good user experience “private label” dating sites and not full of the typical spammy-looking affiliate links).  Don’t know if it’s a bonafide penalty or just a temporary algorithm tweak.  I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that it’s just one of those temporary things that happens from time to time.

To rant even more:  2008 has been a very, very bad year for me personally.  A lot of sad and unexpected events and losses in my personal life - but business had been doing well all year.  Now it seems that 2008 has decided to give me one or two last nasty surprises before finally fading into history.  I’m usually a fairly optimistic person, but 2008 really sucked in a major way and I can’t wait to start over again with a clean slate (hopefully) in just a couple of weeks with 2009.

To turn this thing around, I’m going to start making a list of New Year Resolutions for 2009 in regard to website promotion ideas.  I’ve got to find other (less Google SERP-reliant) ways to make my site visible to potential customers.  Here’s the list so far:

• Work harder on and update the actual content sites more frequently (they have links to the dating sites throughout)
• Put more effort into reciprocal link exchanges (I know, it sounds so 2002).  This wouldn’t be for the purpose of gaming the search engines, though - sometimes the right partnership can really bring in some good, high-quality targeted traffic.
• Do more article marketing
• Build up a mailing list from site visitors (something I’ve 100% completely resisted doing so far - but will now seriously reconsider)
• Get more involved in Social Networking/Web 2.0 stuff
• Ramp up on paid search campaigns
• Look into paid advertising placement on other highly targeted sites

I’m sure there are about a million other things that can be done as well, so I’ll be keeping a pen and pad of paper handy for other random ideas.

In a nutshell, it’s been a successful campaign that’s been running more or less on auto-pilot for the past 12 months.  I’ve been too lazy to get around to making a proper landing page, so it’s just a direct link to the merchant site.   Been pretty hands-off since I initially set it up, which is really nice, but would definitely be interested to see if Google can help improve on it.

The only stipulation is that they want me to let the optimized campaign run for two full weeks before reverting back to my original campaign (if I want to).  I’m a gambling woman, so I’ll suck it up and see what’s dished out over the next couple of weeks.  In order to establish a benchmark, here are some BEFORE stats for the past 10 days for this particular campaign:

Commissions (10 Day Period):

Total Number of Profiles Created For Dating Site:  249

Number of Sales (Upgraded Profiles):  47

Commissions Earned = 47 x $30 = $1,410.00

Advertising (10 Day Period):

Total Ad Spend:  $ 824.10

Impressions:  27,198

Clicks:  4,480

Click Through Rate (CTR):  16.47%

Overall Average Ad Position:  2.2

Bottom Line For Benchmark:

Net Income From Campaign over 10 Days ($1,410 Commissions - $824.10 Ad Spend) = $ 585.90

Return on Investment (ROI) = 71%

Average Cost per Click = $ 0.18

Number of Clicks It Takes Before Someone Creates a Free Profile (On Average):  18

Cost to Generate Each Profile = 18 clicks * 0 .18/click average = $3.24

Background Info and Notes about this Campaign:

- Campaign is for a niche dating site.  Over the past 6 months, for every 5.33 free dating profiles that are created through my affiliate link 1 member will uprade to a paid membership, which = $30 commission each time that happens.

- This campaign is not running on the content network - just the Google (and partners) search network.

- The last major change I did was 10 days ago (stopped running ads on the Yahoo network temporarily), so this is why I’m using a period fo 10 days as the benchmark - in order to compare apples to apples.

- The holiday season may have an impact this experiment in some way.  Things have definitely seemed to be slowing down since November, although I’m not sure if it’s due to the poor economy, the upcoming holidays, or a bit of both.

- Will update blog again after December 28 with stats for optimized campaign.

To be continued………………..

I’ve only recently (within the past year or so) begun to use WordPress for website development on a regular basis.  Before Wordpress, I’ve been content to create sites by editing HTML code by hand (along with the help of the Dreamweaver editor).  Unfortunately, each time a new version of Dreamweaver comes out, it is always such an expensive proposition to upgrade.

There were several reasons for sticking to this web development method for so long:

• Complete control over the on-page SEO factors
• Wide availability of well-designed templates for little or no cost (great for the graphically-challenged)
• Security issues more prevalent with PHP/MySQL platforms
• Old habits are sometimes just so hard to break

By and large, the biggest reason I’ve resisted switching over completely to WordPress was due to the rapid clip of updates coming out.  If you have numerous sites, it can be a real pain in the a** to try to keep everything updated.  By the time you get around to updating 20+ sites, a new version would be released and the whole vicious cycle would then repeat itself.

What really caught my attention this time is this blurb from the WordPress website:

…..last, but certainly not least, this may be the last time you ever have to manually upgrade WordPress again. We heard how tired you were of doing upgrades for yourself and your friends, so now WordPress includes a built-in upgrade that will automatically notify you of new releases, and when you’re ready it will download them, install them, and upgrade your blog with a single click.

By now, the benefits of using WP for an affiliate marketing business are beginning to seriously outweigh the disadvantages!  Think I’ll wait it out a few weeks, though, before migrating everything to 2.7 - there are certainly going to be bugs and themes and plug-ins that will break with the new version.  It’s usually best to let things iron themselves out a bit first before upgrading too soon.  But if you’re up to it, you can download it here.

It’s always a good idea to do a little bit of keyword research before deciding on a domain name.  A great free keyword tool is the Google Keyword Tool.  What you’ll need to do is to type the main keyword into the box (I like to keep the “use synonyms” box checked) and click the “Get Keyword Ideas” button.  In a few moments, you’ll be presented with a list of related searches (based on actual user data) and approximate figures for search volume that are performed by users when they are searching for something that is related to your keyword.

Why is this good?  It can help you to zero in on the keywords that will make the biggest impact on your business.  For example, let’s say you sell “widgets” on your website.  Obviously, someone has probably already registered the domain name widgets.com (just a hypothetical example) and is not willing to part with the name for anything less than $3 million.  Sort of rules out that name, doesn’t it?  But with a little bit of further research, you might see that there are a lot of people who actually use the search term “buy widgets online”.  In addition to having an important keyword in the phrase, this term has huge potential for your business because it is a very targeted phrase.  It suggests that the searcher is in a “buying” (as opposed to just browsing) frame of mind when they make this type of search!

Now if you were searching using the phrase “buy widgets online” wouldn’t you be enticed to click on a search result that has the domain name BuyWidgetsOnline.com or some close variant of it?  I thought so!  This example illustrates why doing a littble bit of keyword research before you decide on a domain name can make all the difference.

There are still a lot of good domain names available with extentions other than .com (ie .net, .org, .us.com, etc), but the fact is that it has become so ingrained into people’s psyche to think “dot com” when trying to remember the name of a website.  For this reason, It’s always best to try to come up with a name that is available as a .com.  It would be frustrating as all heck to have a domain name like buywidgetsonline.net only to lose your customers to the store that owned the .com version of your name as people inadvertently type in “.com” out of habit.

Another strong case for having important keywords in your domain name is the role it can potentially play in the way the search engines rank your site on the search result pages (SERPS).  It is my personal belief that this is an important factor.

To illustrate this point, much of my affiliate marketing revenue comes from the online dating industry.  While the terms “dating” or “online dating” are way too competitive and out of my reach (at the moment- ha ha), I have a number different sites that have consistently ranked within the Top Ten search results on Google for a couple of years now.  These are for some highly competitive and targeted two-word keyword phrases.  A couple have even been # 1 for quite a while now.

Can you guess what the domain names might have in common?  Right!  They are loaded with the key phrases that are important for each different dating niche.  Although the two-word versions of the domains were already taken (but of course…), I was able to come up with decent-sounding 3-word version of the keyword phrases.  Using this technique, I’ve managed to build a “brand” of dating sites in this manner.  This is also great for helping people to remember the name of your site as well.

One more tip regarding domain name registration:  it may be worthwhile to register your name for more than one year at a time.  Many spammers only register a name for 1 year (the minimum term) and the folks who engineer the algorithms at the search engines are quite aware of this fact.  Your business will look more “credible” in this regard if you go for several years at a time.  If at all possible, go ahead and register it for 10 years if you plan on being in business for the long haul - it certainly can’t hurt.

Ready to get that great domain name?  I personally use and also highly recommend The World’s Largest Registrar - GoDaddy.com for buying domain names.  The prices are outstanding and if you keep all of your various domain names together at one registrar, it can greatly simplify the task of managing your entire domain name portfolio.

The content is written by a nurse who has worked in the field for 20 years and covers a very wide range of topics including things like arthritis, depression, women’s health issues, men’s health issues and a whole lot more.  The site is updated twice per month with new articles and the downloads even include graphics to illustrate the articles!  In addition, with the Platinum membership there are e-books you can download that can be used to capture health-related leads on your website.

I’ve joined a number of these PLR membership sites in the past and I must say that I’m very impressed with this one. The regular price is $69/month, but at Deal Dot Com you can get it today only for $40/month.

No more excuses - Now I have to get busy launching these new websites