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Tools for Success - or at least the tools we are using!

July 15, 2007 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Tools of the Test

Hi all -

Actually, it is only Hello to me at this point - I dont think anyone is reading yet! LOL

This week - I decided I would discuss the tool and strategies we are employing to get this off the ground. As this project evolves, we will be trying several different methods toward earning first, a college fund for the 7 kids - then a retirement fund that keeps on giving for Kim and I.

Tools so far: (Some of these have our affiliate code :-))

  • Enterhost Hosting - Actually, this was not a new tool for me - I have been developing websites for several years and at one point, decided to just get my own leased server for the 15-20 ecommerce sites I manage. For my customers and web design business (www.hanseninteractive.com) I chose a Windows 2003 Balanced series plan that cost $170/Month. It includes all stats and email server application to run asp based websites, which is the ecommerce application I have used for several years. I have also installed MYSql and a php engine onto the box for various other needs, including this wordpress blog. Most people who are doing this for monetization purposes, will NOT NEED their own server… for me, it was needed for other purposes and having it in the pocket is just an added benefit to this monetization project.
  • GoDaddy - This has been the registrar we used to seek out and register our domain names. Account setup is free, as well as the ability to search for domain names. Once you get a bit familiar with the process, you can actually search for up to 500 domains at a time through their bulk registration tool. Overall, it is a very easy process: Search for a name, complete the restration infomration, done. Depending on what you plan to do with the domain after registration (Park or develop a site) will determine what happens next!
  • WhyPark - Since this project is somewhat new to me, I cannot comment too much on the other services out there. I DO KNOW that after looking at several options, including GoDaddy Cash parking, I ran several of them through some search engine tools I regularly use and the cash parker or SEDO domains just dont seem to get good indexing by the search engines as much as rotating content does. I chose WhyPark because it offer dynamic articles along with the articles you can write yourself. It did cost $99.00 to setup an account for up to 100 domains, but that should quickly pay for itself once they are all indexed and delivering traffic. One of the sites we pushed to whypark was a 1.5 year old real estate website (Homes and Real Estate in Charlotte NC) that was already getting roughly 200-250 unique daily visitors from search engine traffic. At this point, we only have 25 or so domains on whypark, but have a goal of getting 100 live before the end of July.
  • AuctionAds - This service was one that we JUST FOUND this week. Since day 1 we have planned on diversifying our portfolio between parked domains, mini sites (websites less than 10 pages) and full grown manually edited webs. AuctionAds is being used on a brand new product reviews website we decided to get going with early.  After some modification to my tried and true ecommerce website backend application, I was able to throw together a site that WILL show strong search engine results for specific product searches. I am not guessing at this - I know it will work perfect! Essentially, we will add 1 new product EVERY DAY (ok - sometimes more than 1) along with technical info about that product. In the backend, I have modified the code to allow page specific keywords and feed those keywords into the auctionads javascript. The AA script displays the site with the product or category specific keywords, and delivers eBay auctions relevant to the page the visitor is viewing. The basic concept is this:1 - User searches for “Specific Product” in a search engine
    2 - User finds the product listing on our product reviews website
    3 - User reads about the product and views available auctions at eBay

    AuctionAds pays a percentage of the eBay listing and FVF to us for referring a visitor for that product. Initial reviews are very good, but we will hold off on final judgement until we see results. Unfortunately, since this is a new website it make take several months for full indexing and high SERP listing. We also have 2 other established websites we will be converting to review sites over the next 2 weeks and using auctionads on. They both already have fair traffic from the search engines - so the earning curve should be quicker!

Well - I dont want this to run on and on today so I will close this issue down now. Throughout this week, i will write one or two more articles on the tools we use, ease of use, and approximate skill level needed to make it all succeed!

Thanks for Reading - Mark!

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 15th, 2007 and is filed under Tools of the Test. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.



Stumble it!

2 people have left comments

Wow- I dont know how I found your site but it looks like it will be fun to follow! Dont get bored with it - thats what usually happens to us.

Jane

Jane wrote on July 15, 2007 - 1:40 pm |

Hi,
I use some of the same tools you use and had some questions. I set up some domains under Whypark. They allow you to put up google ads, etc with your code. However the majority of the content they promised is a short story ending in a pitch for someone else’s product. I sent several emails to Whypark support asking if the links in all of these ads generate income for me and never got a response.

So if all of the links in the stories doesn’t generate any income for my then it seems that 98% of the site is generating income for someone else. Do you know if you share in the revenue, if any, generated by those links and what is the percentage payout to you as the domain owner.

The other tool that you use is AuctionAd. I would assume what they pay you is a percentage of the affiliate pay that ebay pays to its affiliates. What is that percentage? What advantage is there to you in working through them? Why not just buy one of the scripts available that allows you to ad ebay auctions to any of your web sites and get the entire affiliate commission? Or do they act as an aggregator to ebay and get a larger commission from them and are thus able to pass the same affiliate commission to you as if you were working directly. Thanks in advance for your help.
All the best,
Ted Sudol

Ted Sudol wrote on September 8, 2007 - 11:06 pm |
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