One of the most important things in affiliate marketing is understanding the PPC game.  For anyone who doesn't know what PPC means, it means Pay-Per-Click, and it is the text advertising that appears on search engines around the organic (or natural) results.  To see the difference, simply run a search on Google and you'll see the ads separated from the organic.

 

 

The biggest difference between these two is that the organic results are controlled by the search engine's algorithm, while the PPC results are paid placement, so they are ads that anyone can buy.  Here are some differences between the two:

Organic Search Results:

• It can take months or years to get placement in the search engines.  You probably are competing with thousands of websites for your keywords.
• You can "optimize" the way your site is "read" by a search engine, but you have no control over your rankings.  If anyone tells you they can guarantee to get you on the first page of Google's organic results, they are lying.
• The traffic is free, so if you can get it, its great traffic.  Some will argue it is higher quality traffic because people place a lot of value in who search engines rank on the first page.
• Algorithms change frequently, so you may have great rankings one day and not the next.
  

Paid Search Results:

•  You pay for your ad each time it is clicked on.  This is powerful because you only pay if a visitor actually comes to your site.  You don't pay to run a PPC ad.
• You bid on specific keywords, so you can target your traffic by selecting keywords that are relevant to what's on your site.
• You are paying for every click, so you want to make sure to have analytics in place so that you can see if your visitors are doing what you want them to do, and if not, make changes.

I am going to start with PPC advertising, because there is an instant gratification to it that I can start getting traffic within 5 minutes of launching an ad on Google Adwords.  siteMighty is built with SEO (search engine optimization) in mind, so I'll focus on getting natural traffic later on, but for now, I'm going to start with PPC.

Tomorrow, we'll take the first steps towards launching a successful PPC campaign.  The key to success is understanding who I want to target my site to, and then what they are searching for.  In other words, its all about the keywords, baby!

I'm eager to start promoting Creditmighty.com and generating some traffic, and I want to make sure my site is as attractive and professional looking as possible before I do so.  I've found over the years with credit card sites that the more professional and polished you can make them, the more trust you instill in your users. Afterall, I want my users to trust Creditmighty as a resource for making a decision as to what credit card they are interested in applying for (and then apply from my site so I earn the commission).

So, here we go.  Today's tasks are:

1. Choose the theme for the site
2. Upload a logo to match the theme and complete the look of my site.

Both of these are accomplished by navigating to the [Design] link on the blue navigation bar.  So click that, and let's by choosing a theme. 

Choosing a Theme 

The theme of the site is like the site's template.  It enables you to personalize your site to your own design preferences.  We'll be adding more themes all the time, so check back frequently for new themes.  Eventually, we'll be adding the option of creating your own them; so you can truly make your site your own.  I've found the best way to choose a theme is to see what my site looks like skinned with each different theme.  You can do this by clicking the [use this theme] link beside each theme, and then clicking the [view site] link.  Your site will open up a new window, and you can keep this window open and go back to the theme chooser, and switch themes. Open each theme in a new window, and then see which one best matches your tastes.  I like the bright blue colors of the Ocean Breeze theme, so I'm going to go with it.   Remember, you can change your theme at any time, and you can always update your theme as we add new ones.

Uploading a Logo

Now that I've selected my theme, I'm ready to upload a logo.  Creating your own logo will really give your site a professional and unique look.  You may want to design a logo to match the theme you've selected, as you can see, I design my logo with a blue background to match the theme of selected.  Your logo will be automatically resized to fit the theme you've selected.  In some cases it may take a few tries to get the dimensions of your logo to best fit.  But we try to handle this for you by resizing your logo to match the theme.  It's easy to switch back and forth between using a logo and simply using the text of your site's name, so don't worry if you don't get this process exactly right the first time.  You can always update your logo in the future too.  

To upload my logo, I click the [Design] link followed by the {page layout] link.  In the middle of the page, you'll see a "+" icon.  This indicates an expandable drop-down area.  Simply click this, click the browse button and select where you have the logo saved on your computer, and then click upload. Your logo will now be uploaded. I then click my site's name [Creditmighty] in the upper right corner to go look at my site.  Wow, my new logo looks great with this theme, if I do say so myself.

My site's starting to look good, and I'm ready to make some money.  So my next post will be about taking steps to launch a PPC campaign for Creditmighty.com.  Stay tuned.

I'm almost ready to start a PPC campaign and start paying for traffic to Creditmighty.com.  The final step in getting my site ready for traffic is to make sure that all of the affiliate offers on my site are prepared to convert the traffic into applications in the best possible way.  In order to prepare the site for traffic, the best thing I can do is make the site is attractive and usable to me as possible.

Today, I am going to do three things to prep my site:

1. Sort the offers in each category
2. Set my page layout style
3. Set my homepage

Let's get started.

Sorting Offers -- I have the ability to sort all the credit card offers on my site within the navigation categories they are presented.  I want to sort the offers within each category in the way that I think they will be best presented to my users.  This means presenting my best cards at the top of the page. ( I may sort cards based on different reasons: highest payout, most likely to convert, best card, most popular card). Any of these are a great way to sort the offers on your site, just do what makes the most sense to you now, and it's easy to change this at any time. To sort offers, I select the [optimize] link. Here, I can select each category from the drop-down menu, and then sort the cards within that category simply by dragging and dropping them in the order that I want.  It's as easy as that.

Setting Page Layout -- I can set the style that I want the offers to lay out on my page by clicking the [Design] link and clicking the [Page layout] link below it. here I have the option of "stack view" and "tile view". The layouts that these provide for me are represented by the icons.  After I select my style, I can click on the link of my site's name (creditmighty)  in the upper right to view each layout. I'm going to try starting with the tile view.

Setting the Homepage -- I want to set the homepage to the page that I think will be the most useful page on my site for my users.  For example, if I were themeing my site to bad credit cards, I want that category to appear on the home page.  In my case, I think the best card for my site are the low interest credit cards.  To set my homepage to these cards, I click [optimize] and then [homepage].  I now select the radio button next to the category of "low interest credit cards". And that's it!

Creditmighty.com is now just about ready for traffic, the only thing left is to customize my site a little bit to give it its own personality.  next I'll be uploading my own logo, and choosing my favorite design.

Stay tuned for my next post.

So where's my traffic coming from?   This is a very important question for me to get my hands around.

I just earned my first commission, so it's time to get an idea of what's going on on my site: CreditMighty.com. There's an easy solution to this that we've built right into siteMighty.  Easy integration of Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool.  It helps you figure out where your traffic is coming from, understand what visitors are doing on your site, and optimize your site based on the goals you have.  It's an incredibly powerful too, that was developed by a company called Urchin.  We used to use this software when it cost $299 a month.  Google bought this company a couple years ago, and immediately release the software for free.  If you haven't tried it yet, now's your chance. So let's get started:

1. Start by heading over to Google Analytics. Follow the instructions there to open up an account.
   
2. I then click [add a new website profile], in enter in the website I want to track, in this case www.creditmighty.com.
3. On the next page I'm presented with a block of code that I need to add to every page of my website.  The good news is that we've made it easy to do this through siteMighty.com. Copy the block of code from Google Analytics. In siteMighty, click  [Analyze], then [analytics setup]. Click the [+] in the blue bar that reads edit analytics. This opens up a field, where I can paste the Google Analytics code that I've copied.  Once I've done that, I click the [Save] button in the lower right.
4.  That's it my Google Analytics tracking code has now been placed across my entire site.  In about six hours I'll be a little login to Google Analytics and start seeing some stats for the traffic on my site.

That was easy, and now have a good idea where my traffic is coming from.  Onward and upward from here. Stay tuned for more come.

 

I logged on this morning to check out things on CreditMighty.com and to my surpise I'd earned my first commission! Yeah! This is exciting and feels great on a lot of levels, (not the least of which is that it proves that siteMighty works!). 

I haven't been too active in promoting CreditMighty yet, and so I really don't quite know where the traffic came from that lead to the commission, but I aim to find out.  As I've mentioned before, I am live blogging about everything that I am doing on the site and so what you see in the previous two blog posts is all I've done so far.  I've been a little bit slack about working on CreditMighty, but earning my first commission after less than a month as a user certainly is inspiring, so here we go. 

Here's what I did to find out that I had earned my first commission:

1. I logged into siteMighty this morning, and checked out my stats, located by clicking the [Analyze] link on the blue nav bar.  I noticed that I have been getting a decent amount of traffic over the past month.  What this "Offer Stats" page tracks page tracks is what we call conversions.  A conversion is a user to my site who clicks on the [apply] link to a credit card offer and then is transfered to a credit card application form.  We don't have any way of knowing if that user actually applied for that card (because the application is hosted on a secure web page by the credit card issuer), but we do know that he/she made it to the application page.  So, the stats presented here show me all the credit card offers that users have actually clicked through to the application page from CreditMighty.com.  During the course of the last 30 days, I can see that some cards had 4-5 conversion, while a good number of cards had at least 1 conversion.
   
2. Once I realized that CreditMighty had sent this much traffic over to the card application pages, I wanted to check to see if any of those people actually applied for the cards.  I logged into Icommissions (the affiliate network that provides the offers for CreditMighty).  From the Icommissions dashboard, I headed to the [reports] tab, and there I can see a snapshot view of all of the traffic I have generated from CreditMighty.  At the bottom of the screen I noticed that I have earned $5 in commissions.  Wow, that is a great start!
   

Now, I realized that I can't be paid by Icommissions yet, because I haven't filled out my W-9 yet.  So, I'm going to do this in the next blog post so I can get a check.  But for now, I'm celebrating my first commission earned by CreditMighty.com.  Plus, I beat Blake to earning the first commission. 

Keep reading, and good luck with your own siteMighty powered affiliate marketing websites.

PS: Just to be clear, I haven't actually begun any paid marketing campaigns for CreditMighty yet like PPC advertising.  I plan to, but right now, the only work I've done on the site so far has been this blogging, so its off to a good start. 

Today I decided "claim this blog" in Technorati so that I can keep tabs on the blog popularity in Technorati and also hopefully it may drive some awareness of the blog to have it tracked in Technorati.

•  To do this, follow this link to the Blog Claim in Technorati, then follow the instructions there.
  
•  I then copied and pasted the text that you see below to prove to Technorati that this is my blog.

 Technorati Profile

• After I paste that code in, I get an opportunity to "tag" my blog.  Tags are similar to keywords or categories for your blog.  They can really help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  Here's how I am tagging this blog:
• creditmighty.com, credit cards, chris schultz credit cards, apply for a credit card, credit, credit card application, chase credit cards, discover credit cards, american express credit cards, low interest credit cards, credit card reviews, credit card site, apply for a credit card, credit card blog
• In addition you can write a brief description of your blog.  Here's what I put:
  
• CreditMighty.com is a credit card blog where you can apply for credit cards and learn how to launch your own credit card affiliate marketing website powered by siteMighty.com.
• Once I do that, I click save, and I'm done.  Click here to see my finished blog claim on Technorati.

• Blog Pinging - once you've claimed your blog, you'll see a button to "ping" Technorati when you write a post.  This is something worth doing, whenever you write a blog post, click ping on Technorati.  It basically lets them know you've updated your blog and it then goes out and spiders your new post.

That's it! Easy as that. 

As always, if anyone has any questions, please send me a comment below.  I'd love to hear from you.

I was talking to my wife this afternoon, trying to brainstorm names for this website.  We were going to do the official kickoff on March 1st, but Blake told me Friday that he's got some tricks up his sleeve, so I better get started to.

 Welcome! This is going to be the blog for me, Chris Schultz, to use our product, siteMighty, for the purpose for which it is intended.  I am launching an affiliate marketing site for marketing credit cards.  It is powered by siteMighty.  I'm blogging right now testing out our product and excited about putting it to the test.

 So, here it is: The Challenge

 Blake and I will be putting our siteMighty-powered sites to the test over the next several months, our mission: to prove that we can make money through affiliate marketing using these sites.  We're doing that through a friendly competition.  We are competing to see who can make more money with their siteMighty-powered sites!

We'll be talking more about the ground rules over the next couple of days.  Our goal is to live-blog the experience of launching a siteMighty site, and share what we go through, tips and tricks from the strategies we employ, and our successes (and failures) along the way. We know that there will be ups and downs, and we are prepared to live out the testing our of baby, siteMighty, through the blogospere.  We're out to prove that with a little work, anyone can make money using a siteMighty website.  

Lets get started: First Steps 

My wife and I brainstormed all afternoon.  There is a great article about what to look for when choosing a domain name.  Its by a friend of ours Mike McDermont.  It's a great primer for picking a great domain name:

•  How To Name Your Company - by Mike McDermont at ThinkVitamin

Once you have a few ideas, its time to see if the domain is available.  Here's a quick way to see whats available:

•  InstantDomainSearch.com - its a search engine that lets you know if the domain you want to run your business on is available.  This is where I always start my name searches.

After some searching and tossing around a bunch of ideas with my wife, I'm settling on CreditMighty.com.  Clearly you can see where the mighty comes from.  But I also wanted to chose a domain name that people coming to seeking to apply for a credit card would feel safe applying on. This is important:

• Choosing a domain name - choose something that seems legitimate.  Make sure that you would feel comfortable applying for a credit card on your own website.  It definitely should be creative and fun, but it also needs to convey security.  For example good domains would be: apply4acreditcard.com, creditcardapplicationcenter.com, creditreviews.net, findmeacreditcard.net.  Domain names that might be suspicious to people might be: ripoffcreditcards.com, 1kly54-credit-cards.com, bimbocards.net, enroncards.com.  :)
• Tip on Names - a lot of the names you start with will be taken.  Just keep trying. There are probably hundreds of millions of names that are already taken, but there's even more that are left.  You'll find one that fits you perfectly!

These are good places to start.  Since we haven't started our contest officially yet, I'm not going to start blogging about siteMighty until March 1st, but this gives you a preview of what I'm already working on.

 Thanks for reading.  Good luck with siteMighty!

Chris