Commission Junction Last Check

When I first about Commission Junction two years ago, I was all excited.

- What do you mean? You get paid for recommending companies like skype?

The answer is yes. but you get paid after you complete at least $100 and by snail mail. For Israeli payments, they would mail the check to Switzerland than to Israel, to save on stamps, taking sometimes 40 days to arrive.  They could afford a paypal account like everyone else, but, that would make payment too easy, and besides their portfolio is remarkable. Skype, Vistaprint, Godaddy top US companies with great service, nothing hard to sell. So publishers just lived with it.

As the long waiting to get paid was not enough, now they are charging $10, monthly I guess, to manage the publishers account. Well if i am bothering, I guess is time to go.

I requested CJ to close my account and the account was closed in about one hour, and the last check, arrived far faster than the usual.

I learned the basics of Affiliate marketing on Commission Junction and over all was a great experience. Met people. I will stick to the same rule. Recommend products and services I use myself, and try to deal directly with the vendor, avoiding middle man brokers,  if possible.

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Xerox Copyright Infringment Email

How it all started? I have and manage several domain names for Amazon associate affiliate sales. The formula is buy a product keyword related domain  name install wordpress cms  plaform and populate the website with a stock of products that in case of a successful sale, Amazon will credit my account with a well-deserved commission.
I have a couple of successful sites such as www.casio-shock and perkins marine. So I went on searching for similar domains where I can repeat the enterprise. And that’s how I started xerox-now.com.
What was my goal? Although the printer market for a affiliate it is is very competitive, I suppose I had a chance marketing highly specific donor and cartridge names, I would also update frequently the site with news about Xerox, hoping to attract some traffic.
Checking the Sources. Unfortunately, I was not able to wait enough to see the website succeed. This morning and e-mail from Xerox IP surveillance department, politely requesting the site to be be shut down, based on the fact that Xerox is a trademark and the all copyrights on the name. I did check the name on the email message and learn how to be Seana L. Watts,  a well-known lawyer on copyright infringement. I had to do same verification, after all could be a scam.
I believe if you want to operate as a self-employed, speculator, is mandatory to have a sense of what’s right and wrong, I did some meditation on the fact that I was going to throw away my investment andtime. But again they invested a lot of money promoting the name, and the law and  power is clearly on their side.  I not only shut down the site immediately, but also plan on not selling this domain to anyone else, says I could be inducing them to do the same mistake, so my decision is to write down the domain as a business loss, caring for my name caring for my reputation and hoping to prove the performance of other domains I have for sale.

Learned my lesson. And above all I guess I learnt my lesson, from now on I will stay away from copyright infringement domain names.

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Today I received payment for my first Sedo sale. I did sell before on Ebay, Godaddy Flippa and private sales but it is a compliment to know that my portfolio is receiving professional recognition. The domain was registered a year ago, to replace another domain I had, the internet-timer, also sold for a hefty profit.

Now, a stopwatch I created was placed there and the domain failed to provide any income whatsoever, no links, adsense, or affiliate sale.

Nevertheless, life in general and business specifically are based on POSITIVE THINKING. I posted the domain for sale on SEDO and GODADDY, both with the same quote, that is $150.00

The domain was about to expire, and I did not believe on it anymore. My position was to NOT renew the domain. 30 days before expiration the Sedo email came in.

Sedo Domain Sale Email Notification

Transaction was very smooth, and like fiver they deserve their fat commission, in this case a hefty 1/3 of the total sale price, that is $50.  Iris Siedlatzek a sedo agent brokered the operation, and the domain transfer was made to the SEDO, GoDaddy account not the actual buyer. The payment also came from Sedo. I never met the buyer.

All done through emails, and paypal, it took 48 hours until payment landed on the account.

Sedo PayPal Payment Notification

I do trade Forex occassionaly to see if I see an edge somehow. I doubt if I will make 20 times the investment on a single shot, and by the way, aside some technical details such as hosting and hours of work, I am in control of everything when comes with domain trading. My present challenge is how to do it with considerable sums in order to perform good results. Not bad so far.

Sedo Domain Sales Balance

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It took a lot of testing and finally I have 2 sites converting Amazon sales, from organic traffic. I wish I had more, now that I know the way, it should be easier.

The Beginning: PerkinsMarine was acquired on an Ebay auction. It was the domain of a closed business. I guess my original intention was to wait the original owner come back looking for it. Since the name clearly said marine, I installed Wordpress and populated the site with Reviewazon posting boat and fishing accessories. Since it was an existing site, Google eventually promoted it to PR1 and eventually sales started happening. 5 sales so far. To make things even nicer,  I started selling back links on the site. 1 sale so far.

I also believe I had a lot of luck not only on the page rank promotion but also on the nice, which is very specific and not a lot of people understands about boats AND web design.

What next? My time and resources a limited. I have close to 20 sites running wordpress, some content some shops. I am really considering in starting a blog post brokerage business since I understand so much about, have tons of google vouchers, since I know how to program, investment is relatively small.  but, I will look for those expired domains now and then!

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Google Adsense Disabled Email

My past. I do confess on experimenting buying traffic in china to a site I have with adsense… I was banned within days. I then opened another account since I am a YouTube partner and video clips perform better than my posts. Then I started placing the adsense on other sites, and here it comes again! banned by Google.
I really don’t care. It is not a lot of money, and there are replacements. It is better to have adsense, since it is a no loss situation, but distracts from the real goal, that is real money, not cents per click.

If it is not a match, I will not force it. For a ppc alternative, I am testing Smowtion on a couple of site, to see how it goes, at least they pay paypal, instead check in the mail.

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Domain Outlets I use: I have been peddling domains mainly in three outlets:

• Ebay
• GoDaddy
• Sedo

While ebay had the most results to this day because of its flexibility in what I want to say, and payment is bolting fast,  I had a very nice sale on goDaddy last week, and transaction so far has been very smooth.  pillsfor.me, bought on ebay for 84 cents sold on goDaddy for a cool $30 sounds nice but I have a few domains I paid $20 and no one is paying a dime, so is not that great.

The “proceeds” are ready. Today I go an email from goDaddy, stating that the “proceeds” of the sale is with them and I may push the domain to the buyer’s account. In other words they are brokering the deal, making sure I was paid, and the buyer receiving his domain.

My first Godaddy Auction Sale

Fees. They charge between 10% or $10 – whatever is higher for the sale, and they are entitled, since the platform for the auctions is quite complete and stable, and payment takes a while until arrival, but the fact that we know for a fact that there will be no defaults and that I paid $5 membership, without any insertion fees for the whole year, makes it a great investment.

BTW – I call them all the time and they always answer the phone and solve the problem. I hope to do it more times. Many thanks to goDaddy.

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I just invested $79 (full price) for the legendary ReveiwAzon plugin, and it did impress a lot. I am also now renting another host, aside go daddy, paying 5 times the price, but will get some dedicated IP addresses for my domains.

I created a site http://perkinsmarine.com/ solely on the plugin and left some 3 months of scheduled post to keep google happy. It may have sounded the alarm the fact that a out of the blue site now has 200 posts, overnight, but if it posts daily may get some result. The equation is very attractive.

• I will have one more service to peddle to clients
• I already posted the domain with the site populated for sale on goDaddy auctions
• The site may reap some sales indeed, who  knows
• I may also sell links on Fiverr
• And of course, testing, I will learn a lot.

I see these guys telling stories on the warrior forums and I question if it is not just crowded out there. The expectation requires some positive thinking, yet as I explained it is easy to pay off.

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The Domain Acquisition. It all starts research. Shopping for domains that have long registration for less than $5 dollars is the most popular Ebay saved search I have, it is very hard to lose, and that is How I bought FXPriority.

Here is the screen shot of the original transaction:

Ebay Domain Acquisition

Tweeter Followers. After the domain was bought, Wordpress was installed with a nice theme from the ones I have in stock.  Tweeter Followers. My strategy is that a subscriber list will always increase the value of any site. A tweeter account was created with a nice custom made background image.  For recruiting forex targeted followers’ I used the Tweeter Adder; Soon I had over 70 followers, all traders on my home page endorsing FXPriority

Forex Tweeter Followers

Offline Sales registered. I was aware that Forex affiliate is very competitive, but I am self confident and was able to make some offline sales, but registering the transactions through the FxPriority Website. Here are some screen shots of the performance.

• Ava
• Etoro

Backlinks and Promo Video Commercial. I bought backlinks shooting for the term “Etoro Forex Review”" and I was able to score firs page easily since it was a term without much competition. The backlinks were bought from a professional I know in India, did not cost much. A promo video, using a $5 voice over gig from Fiverr was also made, hoping to enhance the landing page

High Reserve. Although the site had 6 bids, it was mainly one buyer interested on the domain that was trying to fetch the reserve price. Had the domain price been low, it would not have sold so nicely.  It is a general rule for this world. You can always get a bit more if you price it yourself.

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Hunting for Domains with PR. I am hunting for domains with PR. The easiest way I found happened to be the most expensive. That is flippa. PR4 Domains there goes for $600 dollars if you are lucky to find. I am a big believer on you get what you pay for as a general rule. Recommended by a WSO I bought, I tried Freshdrops.net (trial did not pay) but was very disappointed. They do list a few PR4 domains but they were not good enough and many times on obscure registrars I really don’t want to deal with. With a site called http://www.dotnamedrops.com/ which I am yet to find how they make money since it was free I found a couple of PR4 domains I could back order with GoDaddy.com .

They could not guarantee much. It turns out that “Backordering” with GoDaddy.com is not only a bit complex but also very vague. First they don’t guarantee anything. Even though the domain expired, and there was an auction, after expiration, that no one bid on the domain, they still cannot guarantee the domain is yours.

Here is a “simplified” graph on how backordering works:

Godaddy Backorder Process

Small Experiment and a Safe Investment. As an investment rule, I place 1 backorder to see how it goes, after all, it automatically renews the www.GoDaddy.com auction membership which has a $5 value. I did buy a few domains there last year, so that covers part of the investment. As for the rest, they will credit me for another backorder if this one fails, and even if I don’t ever get my money back, at least I know one more aspect of the trade.

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Yes, they banned me. How?

Angry Moderators. I have several performing gigs on Fiverr, designing book covers and selling advertisement on one of my sites. It was growing portfolio and the links I was selling, they renew every 2 months. It was sweet side income that was boosting my self esteem. On a gratitude act I decided to create and submit 2 promo videos that would pump my results ranking on Fiverr. I was selling 2 book covers a month more or less.

Well Fiverr moderators got outraged and instead of approving the video clips, they decided to BAN my harmless, innocent, performing gigs. Here is a screen shot of the email I received:

Fiverr Ban Email

Positive Thinking. My immediate reaction was to believe that was a message telling me that I have to charge more for such a service since it demands so much technical work, and I posted the same gig on Ebay, for 4 times the price, but sales are the bottom line and so far the Ebay listing did not generate a single sale.

Selling Book Covers on Ebay

Why not use a second Fiverr account? I have a second account on Fiverr, I could just re list the gig there, but is not the same if I know that for some reason, I am unwanted, besides, Fiverr only allows $5 sales, they pay 15 days later, and yes, they cut 20% (!??!!) for themselves. Seems that  I will not be missing much. For now I am just going to advertise everywhere else…

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Small Investment. At first I bought because of the price, I have $7 to spare. Finally a Warrior Special Offer (WSO) I feel that really made a great business. The Google Sand Box effect. I bought for $5 and has great quality information and for $7 is a MUST for anyone a bit serious about improving his site’s page rank.

Easy to Read. The book is easy to read, with detailed quality reliable information. It covers several techniques for obtaining quality links for your site, and how these links should be deployed. Here are some techniques that Wesley Atkins Covers:

• Mass Spinning Content
• Link Building Guidelines
• Anchor Text Strategies
• Aged Domain
• Article Directories
• Deep linking

All in clear, down to earth instructions that make sense. No false promises.

One Small Warnings. This WSO fits PROFESSIONALS ONLY that means webmasters with time and resources to invest. RECOMMENDED and GOOD LUCK

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Closing Down. On May the once active BIDO site posted on their home page that they are closing down. A big surprise.  My status back then was of  “expert” that is I could post my opinions on domains for sale. What really happened?

They claim they were losing money. How I don’t know, since the site does not cost much to operate. Many critics say that the platform was hard to operate, and was indeed complicated to validate a ownership of a domain. But support was always present.

Other critics said that was a crappy stock, which is not so much true, the plain fact is that they did a lot of auctions, so that includes good and bad domains.

What really happened?

Jarred was focused in selling. Well, it is a great idea, but I guess Jarred was more interested in selling than operating. Running Bido was more like a prerequisite in order to obtain a higher Bid. Under the new agreement Jarred stays managing the company now owned by a Swiss company, created to own Bido. The amount of the sale is not yet  disclosed.

Crowded Market. Another obstacle was the fact that the market is becoming crowded. With the bulk of the big sales happening at SEDO and SNAP NAMES it is becoming hard to get quality or high priced domains.

Well now they made that the auctions are far longer than 4 hours, therefore making it easier to have a better stock. Now they can afford to be a bit selective.

I made money on BIDO. I read once somewhere that once of the managers was the largest owner of 4 letters dot coms. I was able to buy LLLL.COM on EBAY and resell on BIDO with ease, and for a profit. I will try that again for sure.

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If you look at the screen shot of the FIVERR gig below you will see the member selling 100 back links on DIFFERENT SITES for only $5 dollars. How is this possible? One back link alone it would take close to 5 minutes, if the seller is the site owner, not to mention on going site maintenance.

Well the answer you may have guessed. It is a software that does all the work. You could claim that is a valid enterprise and after all our business man is buying wholesale and selling retail, but unfortunately this is not the case. The buyers are ultimately looking for ranking and the sites on these programs provide links of no or little value. Many of them are nothing else than link farms.  If you are really interested in quality back links the best techniques are also free. Here are my suggestions.

• Blog Commenting. Many blogs have DO FOLLOW comments
• Blog Guest. Many succesful bloggers gracefully agree in links in exchange for a quality content
• Quality Content. Based on that, back links belongs to Google’s algorithm. There will always be demand for quality content.

The rule that you get what you pay for goes for backlinking as well. Good luck.

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Yahoo answers is a great way to get quality links and even some traffic, but you will get punished and even suspended if you over do. Here is a screenshot of the email.
The post http://learn-creative-visualization.com/2010/08/12/they-are-watching-everything/ linked was related to the question, but it was a comic strip so therefore, could have called the attention of Yahoo since there was little text. The penalty was 10 points from my score, something I can live with…

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