My new website only generates a trickle of traffic and is far from optimized, it is what i might call a future project that i may or may not get round to realizing. So far in 532 affiliate clicks i have generated 15 sales. Not amazing admittedly, however of these 15 sales only 4 were actually for products i am actively promoting. I have sold guitars, television equipment, sofa covers and the obvious books and stuff all from a website that is totally 100% not related to any of these– impressive.

The Pros

Amazon is a well known brand and i am not sure a person exists that has not bought something from them at one time or other, therefore the thought of purchasing from them again shouldn’t cause too much of a problem.  Amazon may also show them other products they may also require and wish to purchase.  My test as stated above (however limited) shows that people may browse for one thing but actually decide to purchase another adding to your revenue.

The Cons

Amazon is certainly not the best affiliate program out there, they offer you a starting commission rate of 5% and only provide a 24 hour cookie — very poor at best. The disappointment however does not end there, they also cap earnings per product at £7.

In my opinion there is a time and place for using the Amazon Associates Program. In my test as detailed above i was selling a pretty low priced product and the average commission rate offered by Amazons competitors was just 5% flat with no chance of increase. In this situation i am more than happy to sell for Amazon and count myself lucky that Amazon will up sell other products on my behalf with no extra work required.

I have never been very good with code (whether html, php, or any of the others that i cant name but am sure exist), but have always wanted to learn how to use data feeds to create online affiliate stores. For those of you relatively new to affiliate marketing i will give a brief description of what data feeds are:

Data Feeds are essentially a feed from an online retailer that enables you to display products on your affiliate site. They are 100% self updating so when price changes occur they will also occur on your site. To effectively implement data feeds involves many hours of coding and styling so that the data feed products do not look out of place on your website.

When i began researching data feeds in the hope that i could learn to implement them on my websites i became very aware very quickly that this was never going to be possible, so i turned to looking for tools that could basically do this for me. Although at this time there were a number of tools claiming to be able to do what i was looking for on closer inspection it was obvious that the look, feel & functionality was never going to be such that i could compete with affiliates who were adept to using data feeds never mind the merchant themselves. I realized there was no product to help me and turned my attentions to other (non storefront) affiliate ambitions.

I have always been a reader of good affiliate marketing blogs and especially a number of great UK blogs (see my blogroll for more information) and one day quite to my amazement a post was made regarding Easy Content Units. I was excited but fully aware that they would probably not be to the standard i was hoping for. They were!

I immediately purchased their professional version costing £19.99 + VAT per month and have never looked back. The units look great and can be customized without knowing one </b> of code, they also provide virtually every feed from every network (worth their salt) in the UK and will soon be launching a US version too.

So lets have a look at what the units can look like (and do look like on many of my sites):



As you can see they are exceptional and the support provided by Jason & John (Lammo) is second to none. The ECU units are also constantly evolving with new features being added all the time.

ECU offer a free version of their units with an 80/20 split (for every 10 clicks your affiliate links receive ECU will take 2 at random).

I decided to immediately take advantage of the paid version for a number of reasons but mostly because of the fact that you can add these to your WordPress websites in PHP which means they are readable by search engines and because product descriptions can easily be rewritten from within your ECU members page meaning you can avoid any nasty duplicate content penalties and in most cases get a jump on your competitors (even those using home coded data feeds).

In conclusion this is a product that i cannot recommend highly enough and if you are only ever to buy one affiliate product / tool in your lifetime make sure it is this one.

Frugal originally appealed to me because of its clean and fresh feel, it is a Thesis theme (in looks) for non coders, as almost everything you want to do with this theme can be done from the Frugal administration & design panel. The comparison between Thesis & Frugal ends at the crisp clean design though as they are very different beasts. If you are an extremely competent coder perhaps Thesis will be more your cup of tea, however Frugal not only provides ease of use for non coders but also has a customizable stylesheet for those requiring to make tweaks.

I have now been playing about with Frugal for a number of weeks and so far no two practice sites that i have built have looked the same, this theme gives you an original design for your blog or website. Please see Luxury Lagos as an example of a corporate site using this theme.

The main features  can all be customized within the min design panel, as shown below:

Beginners will get off to a flying start with this theme and what you cant work out you will learn within the very active support and customization forum. The Forum also contains links to many instructional videos, however most of the theme is very self explanatory even to the total novice. If i told you that the link given above to Luxury Lagos was designed by a good friend of mine as his first ever site design, not to mention first time using WordPress would you believe me? Its True!

In short Frugal is perfect for the beginner or designer, however if you are looking for something other than a clean sharp website i would probably suggest using another theme.

Buy Or Test Drive Free Version Now!

If you are looking for a get rich scheme this is not for you, this is a quality training course teaching techniques that can help turn your business around — knowledge is power!

I am not a blogger who recommends products that I have not personally tried or tested in one form or another, I am also very vocal (in a blogging sense) when I come across products that I feel do not deliver (see my Wealthy Affiliate Review), but with PPC Classroom I can honestly say that it is the best training product that I have ever purchased and am not surprised that it has become one of the most successful affiliate training products on the market.

Course Highlights.…

• How to launch a profitable Adwords campaign 8 times out of ten.
• How to structure and find high converting keywords.
• Beating the Google quality score.
• How to build high converting landing pages.
• The secrets of testing, tracking and optimization.
• How to automate your Adwords campaigns.
• How to expand the scale of your campaigns.

While all the content within the course is useful and caters for both beginner and advanced users I personally found the section on conversion tracking in relation to keyword bids and using the Adwords editor sections mind blowing, these are just two of the techniques that had I not joined this course I doubt I would ever have developed an understanding of, never mind actually putting the principles into practice to make profits.

Amit Mehta is a true PPC genius and delivers some great strategies through this course (alongside Anik Singal) and once read it is easy to see how he earned $2.4 million in one year.

If you think this course may be of interest to you why not sign up to the PPC Classroom Newsletter (you will receive a free report and be updated with details on when registration opens). You too could be on course to earn big!

Or just sign up for the Newsletter & Free PPC Report!

Headway offers a fully customzable theme that requires only use of their drag and drop interface. You can drag and drop to adjust your layout without touching the code. You can change fonts, colors, add favicons, add content to the header or footer, add script,  and totally edit everything SEO. Some of the sites built with headway look pretty much amazing!

So whats so special about Headway Theme?

Headway has been created as part of the new wave of content framework Themes, allowing you to fully customize your website design from the administration panel. Headway provides three back office design features for you to get to know (and love). Heres a short video showing some of the great features of the Headway Theme.

Some Example Sites Using Headway!

So do you buy Headway or wait for Thesis 2.0? To be honest it is almost impossible to say as their has been little written about what to expect in Thesis 2.0. I was very dissappointed with the original Thesis theme, however this is because i am not a coder and have heard from those with competant coding skills that it is the best Theme available.

But with statement like “I don’t think you’ll ever need to buy another premium WordPress theme again, once you have Headway. It’s way more than just a blog theme: it’s a blog designer.”- remarkablogger.com, can you afford not to buy this theme?