I’ve seen people ask the gurus this question before, and I think it is particularly relevant today since so many of have been blasted by Google. It is certainly something I will need to think about soon if my situation doesn’t change in the next month or so.
The last $20 in my situation would be different from a newbie starting out since I have several years experience making money online. I’m already set when it comes to things like domain names, hosting, website and SEO experience. I am also enrolled in several different affiliate programs, which means I don’t have to worry about finding products to promote.
But despite this background, my approach to making money wouldn’t be much different than how I got started years ago. I would focus on promoting Clickbank products first. Reason being that every imaginable niche is covered and most products pay affiliates $30 or more. It is also easy to see which products are selling well in the marketplace. That is important because I’d hate to waste my efforts on something that doesn’t convert.
If I was really down to $20 then I would need to generate some revenue fast. There wouldn’t be any time for SEO or any long term strategies. Basically I would take a domain name, build a five page website with two different landing pages, an about page, privacy page and email opt-in page.
The two landing pages would be different enough to give me valuable feedback. The first might be an article type lander with links to the offer. The second would likely be a video lander with email opt-in. Ideally I could cut and paste the video and email sequence from the affiliate page of the offer. After setting all this up it would be time to drive some traffic!
This is the part where I would really need to step outside of my comfort zone. I have been focused on SEO for so long that almost everything I’d run would be an experiment. Here are the five sites I would target for traffic…
YouTube
I already own Camtasia, so publishing videos would be easy. I got into this a little bit six months ago but eventually phased out of it. I don’t know why. YouTube is obviously huge and making one new video each day for a few weeks should drive at least a trickle of traffic to my site.
Yahoo and Wiki Answers
This is one thing I have actually done in the past with some success. Set up a profile that links back to my site and post quality answers to questions related to your niche. You can also include URl’s as your “sources” for each answer but don’t link to your landing page or you’ll get banned.
Blog Comments
This is much harder but it can work. Look for high traffic blogs in your niche and leave comments. You don’t need to post your URL inside the comment, but you will need to leave an interesting/outrageous answer to make folks curious enough to click on your profile link. Very time consuming… but the right comment can lead to multiple sales.
Guest Posting
A lot has been said about this strategy lately and I do feel it has much more value than the old school article marketing. Once again you’ll need to create killer content and leave the audience wanting more. The hardest part is finding places to guest post. Search “write for us” or “submit your article” + your niche to quickly find opportunities.
Twitter
Here is another skill I have yet to master. That being said I have not put enough effort into it. The concept is simple, create a profile with a link to your site and then start tweeting away! Use hashtags to draw more attention to your tweets and capitalize on the cuurent viral hashtags. A good place to research hashtag volume is at http://hashtags.org
So that is how I would spend my last $20 as an affiliate marketer. In case you didn’t notice, everything listed here is free because I already own what is needed. Heck, even if you were new you wouldn’t spend more than $50 with this plan. It would take a newbie longer to implement because of the learning curve, but I bet the ROI would be better than half of the ebooks I see listed for $69!
Article by Unemployed Dad
I'm a stay-at-home-dad who quit my corporate job to expand my online business. After getting crushed by Google in 2012, I'm now scrambling to save my business.
Geoff has written 14 awesome articles for us at Unemployed Dad
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