Niche marketing has always caught my attention as a good way of getting traffic from organic searches. As you have probably noticed, buying traffic from various sources has become increasingly expensive due to more competition. So diversifying your traffic sources is always a good thing. I have been playing with niche marketing again lately and have a few experiments running. One micro-site (less than 10 pages) that I started was indexed and ranked in Google within about a week. The main keyword I was targeting was on page 2 the first week and went to the first page after about 3 weeks. So yes, good SEO methodology still works.

The most important part of this whole process of selecting a niche is doing the research. Product research and keyword research is critical for estimating whether or not it is worth investing your time and energy into building the website. I followed a strategy that is well documented and it seems to work well. Along the way, I’m also including my own tweaks.

One of the things I’m doing is keeping a notebook to record keyword ideas, research results and progress on site construction and link building. Going back to SEO basics, there are only two things to worry about. Number one, on-page factors and number two, off-page factors. If you want to know what works, take a look at a few sites with a similar number of competing pages that are well-ranked. Analyze and study them to try to find out what is working for them. Then go ahead and try experimenting with your own sites.

If you’re meeting up with people, try to arrange it before the event starts as people tend to get busy once the show starts. If you don’t have a plan, you’re bound to waste time just walking the exhibits. Also, make sure to take good notes because you’ll often pick up a lot of good tips just chatting with people.

Overall, the exhibitors at ASE tend to be mostly made up of affiliate networks (e.g. CJ, SAS, Linkshare, Google Affiliate Network) and CPA networks (the usual suspects). If you’re looking for new traffic sources, you’re much better off attending Ad:Tech. However, if you’ve never attended an Affiliate Summit event before, I definitely recommend going to one to make some good contacts.

Cashvertising

The Ultimate Sales Machine

I downloaded the Kindle app for my Droid so now I can read either on my PC or on my phone.

Anyway, I was just reading Mr. Green’s latest post on it and this line popped out at me:

“Although only around 30% of impressions are served to IAB ads, most people don’t realize that the option is there because they have to deposit $1000 before it’s available.”

I thought that you have to spend rather than just deposit $1000 to get the IAB option. It’s worth a test. I deposited the money to see if the option becomes available and it did.

Here’s some info about the IAB-sized ads. The only sizes currently available are 300×250 (shown on profile pages) and 160×600 (shown on online/your city pages).

So far I have only tested offers in the dating niche, and while there have been conversions, I’m still trying to optimize the CPM to make it profitable for me. Having the IAB size ads will add a whole new dimension to split-testing ads.

So the moral of the story is… always be sure to test your links before your campaign goes live.

They have an easy to use interface where you can target keywords, URLs or categories.  Generally approvals of new campaigns or targets are done within 24 hours.  If you spend more money wiht them, you can also get a dedicated rep which will then speed up approvals.

One word of caution though. When you add keywords or URL targets, for some reason the system automatically adds category targeting to your campaign. So for example, if you’re adding walmart.com as a URL target, you’ll find that the shopping category is also automatically added. You’ll want to go in there and delete those categories. Otherwise, you’ll get boatloads of traffic with very few conversions. This is a flaw in their system that they still have yet to fix.

I met these guys at AdTech in NY and they are going to be adding more downloadable apps to increase their user base. This is good news for advertisers. If you decide to try out, Direct CPV use this coupon code to get an extra $25 when you deposit $100 into your accout: BR25

The new site is easy to navigate and has a nice clean look. For anyone doing CPA marketing, MaxBounty has a ton of offers. If you’re not already part of the network, be sure to take a look.

I met Steve, one of their founders, when I was at AdTech New York last year.  We had a nice chat and I decided to check out his CPA network. All I can say is that I’m glad I did. Great offers, great AM and always pays on time. What else can I say?

If you need an affiliate manager, ask for Adam.

Join MaxBounty here.