Monthly Archives: September 2005

100% Commissions? Incredible But True…

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Harvey Segal has done something quite fascinating – a viral ebook that’s free, and the affiliate gets 100% of the sales on products inside � yet everyone wins.

The book is not just free, it’s a good read on the subject of viral products. But it’s the details of his viral plan I found fascinating. The ebook describes how to make money with viral ebooks; in fact, the ebook itself is an example of that viral plan, while also explaining the viral plan, while BEING the viral plan, and so on and on, like some sort of Escher painting…

But to cut to the chase:

  • The book is a great introduction to viral ebooks in general.
  • The scheme he talks about in there is powerful – so powerful, I was sending off my payment as I was finishing the ebook.
  • It also includes a discount at the end for all the goodies inside � so good I bought them right away
  • Affiliates get 100% of the sales of those goodies (which are well worth while in themselves).

So get a copy as soon as possible (you can download it here) and go shopping.

And keep a watch out – I predict this will be a powerful new way to upsell.

Taguchi Testing and Google Adsense

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Everyone says – TEST. Test your ads, test you copy, test your layout – test, test, test.

However, testing is a rather annoying proposition. To be confident something makes a difference, you can only change one thing at a time, wait, then change something else. And test every combination. Over enough time to be confident it’s correct.

So if for example you decided you wanted to test three different ad titles, three different prices, and three different types of ad copy, you’d need to do 3×3×3, or 27 tests!

So it’s with some eagerness I’ve been exploring Taguchi testing. The Taguchi method still requires tests, but if set up properly, it allows you to ‘fold’ these multiple tests into a much smaller number. Fewer tests mean that lower-volume sites can test effectively, and results are available much more quickly.

For example, instead of three items, and three variations, requiring 27 different test pages, I only need 18 – AND I can test even more items at the same time!

Based on the Taguchi format I’m using, I am testing two items with two variations each, five items with three variations each, and an item with 6 variations – or 2×2×3×3×3×3×3×6, for almost 6,000 possible combinations with only 18 test pages!

To put that into perspective, if it takes a week to get the visitor volume to successfully test a page with my 18-page Taguchi testing results, it would take over 6 YEARS to be that confident with regular split testing!

My initial plan? Settle the big question – what Adsense works best on my site? And in the long term, test anything I can think of – ad copy, subscriber response, price points – you name it!

I’m looking forward to some very interesting results…

Blog Content – Or, What To Put In It?

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A fellow asked a question today about a report he had read, where a Guru had talked about making large amounts of money by putting up lots of web sites.

Unfortunately, he had left out a tiny detail – what to fill them with!

A site needs to be filled, and filled with unique content (if you’re a copy of someone else’s site, why would people go to yours first?). After all, a WordPress blog can be set up in 5 minutes – so content really is the main issue, not the site.

But what to put into it? Some recommendations:

  • Public domain content. There’s other rules, but roughly speaking, anything published before 1923 qualifies. However, people can easily copy your content with impunity.
  • Article content from free online article sites. Many of these sites have articles available for free republishing (such as my own, FreeWordZ.com). However, you’re not the only one using them, so you risk duplication.
  • Content generators. Various kinds exist, but these are basically programs that take other’s content, and regurgitate it in a format for your site. Search engines tend to dislike automatic generators like this (since they often provide no real content, just rearrangements of other’s), so you run the risk of having your site removed.
  • Your own content. The preferred choice for uniqueness and value, liked by search engines everywhere – but more work.

This is just a brief list, but it does show that sites CAN be filled – and sometimes quite easily…