Q: How can i drive traffic to my website by growing my list! How to grow my list with Aweber ? I tried solo ads and from a 100 clicks i got only 20 subscriber! What is the best way to build and manage my list.

A: I will share some things that I have done that have worked well for me.

One focus of mine has been to provide quality content. That’s easier said than done, but provide value that is relevant to your target audience.

Another strategy is to have some sort of lead gen offer. Make an ebook or white paper available, and people have to submit their email address to access whatever it is that you are offering.

You could do the same thing by requesting their email address in exchange for a free tool or some other sort of resource. In any of these cases, the “price” is their email, and then they get something they want in return.

I would also recommend running an online contest where email addresses are the method of entry. There are legal issues with a contest, so be sure to run this by a lawyer.

Also, Google AdWords offered an Email Capture Ad (I don’t see it as an option in my own account), but that is a great way to get targeted subscribers.

And you mentioned you are on AWeber — be sure to take advantage of their split testing feature.

Q: Hello shawn, im a 18 year old high school student and internet affiliate marketing has really interested me in terms of making money and i would like to make it my full time job. I have not started any marketing yet because i am lost on where to start because i am reading all these different things online about how to be succesfull, and i dont trust some of the people who are giving me this information. I know your are succesfull at what you do and i would like to know what would be the best way to get started for a young newbie like me. Thank you.

A: One thing I’d like to tell you right away is that with you just getting started and not really knowing what you are doing, you should not expect to make this a full-time job any time soon.

I urge you to go out and get whatever job you can find to bring in some money as you learn more about affiliate marketing. Even if you have to work for minimum wage in a retail store, you should really get a job now.

Affiliate marketing is not going to bring in instant money for you. And in many cases, people do not earn full-time money as affiliates.

So, it’s essential to have some cash coming in from other sources as you work on the learning curve of affiliate marketing. I’d suggest looking at a site I created at ExtraMoneyAnswer.com.

It’s a free resource where I go through the whole process of becoming a content affiliate, including how to come up with an idea for a site, the content, how to drive traffic, and how to make money with the site.

This is neither a fast nor lucrative way to earn money, but it is a way to make some extra money while you gain a better understanding of the way things work in affiliate marketing.

Unless you have some money to invest in paid search, it’s not realistic to become a full-time affiliate from the start. Be patient, learn, and you may well achieve that sort of success down the road.

Video: Affiliate Marketing as a Full-Time Job video

Ask Shawn Collins your affiliate marketing question and it will be added on the affiliate blog.

Q: I have just started affiliate marketing and started paying for search engine ads, however, i haven’t got a single conversion so far. I am so nervious now about spending on paid advertising. Please could you advise why i am not getting any conversions. I have just started affiliate marketing in this week. Been running ads for 5 days now and no conversions. Let me know if you have any questions so you can help me.

A: One issue there is that I have not seen your campaigns on Google AdWords, and I don’t know the URL(s) for your landing page(s), so I am doing this a bit blindly.

But I will give you some recommendations on how you can optimize and track your paid search campaigns.

As soon as your ad is created in AdWords, you can see how it is doing on the AdWords homepage in a graph they display on your performance, and they have some tables that outline how the various categories of keywords are performing.

If you drill down further from the homepage, you can select your campaign and then an ad group.

A side note here — AdWords is very competitive and the prices are high for many keywords. I am not sure what kind of keywords you are targeting.

Anyhow, look for a column marked “status” and then the keywords that are indicated as “eligible” are the ones that are running.

Anything marked as “below first page bid” is not.

The issue there is that you aren’t bidding enough money or the “quality score” for your ad is too low. The “quality score” is a measure from Google on your ads and the keywords you target, and the landing page where you are sending people.

Google makes some conclusions from this information and assigns a “quality score”. The better all of the pieces match up, the higher your quality score.

The best way to turn around any of these “below first page bid” ratings is to increase your bid. That might help you also.

As far as fine tuning yours ads, it can be a challenging and frustrating experience, because some ads that performed great last week might be inactive this week. This could be due to Google conducting an audit on your ads and they have determined that they do not measure up this week, or a competitor might be bidding more than you.

It’s essential to check your ads regularly to see what is working and what is not, and sometimes you just have to raise your bids.

Also, you should kill off any poor performing ads, as they are a distraction. Also, change your copy entirely every once in a while to see if the change can generate more clicks and conversions.

Hopefully, you’re already doing some A/B split testing. If you’re not, you should. If you don’t already have a Google Analytics account, get one (they are free) and connect it to your Google AdWords account.

They have a feature called Google Analytics Content Experiments, which allows you to test variations of your pages on your site to determine whether any changes may alter the behavior of your site visitors. You can see which elements might increase conversions for you.

You can get great insight from Google when you hook up Analytics and AdWords, so do it. Constantly monitor, modify, and test your campaigns.

And if you’re getting tight on money for the ads and you’re not seeing a return, I would suggest halting your campaigns, and try generating original content to bring in organic traffic.

Video: I Don’t Have Any Conversions With My Paid Search Ads video

Ask Shawn Collins your affiliate marketing question and it will be added on the affiliate blog.

Q: I am a publisher of a soon to be launched, one of a kind, social website which has a large internet shopping mall in it. I want to hire a long term, experienced manager for it. Please give me advise of how to find and recruit this person?

A: The first thing that occurs to me here is that the ideal candidate would be somebody who has their own affiliate site(s).

Assuming they are doing well (would you want them if they weren’t?), it wouldn’t really make sense for them to abandon their affiliate site(s) to work for somebody else.

However, there may be talented folks who want some job security, and they could be happy to make the switch from running their site to running yours if they get benefits and other perks of full-time employment.

As far as trying to identify candidates for the job, I would suggest going to meetup.com to find affiliate marketing meetups in your area, and also to attend conferences.

Both of those can be great for recruiting employees.

Also, I would suggest taking a look at two services from FMTC: FMTC Connect and Elite Media Partners.

The FMTC Connect service utilizes the expertise and relationships they’ve built to connect an FMTC account with thousands of merchants across dozens of affiliate networks and data sources.

And the Elite Media Partners service gives enterprise-level businesses a hands-free alternative to integrating coupons/deals into their site. FMTC creates a content-rich deal/shopping portal that helps visitors save money while their purchases earn commissions for the clients of FMTC.

Q: When setting up a new site/blog for an affiliate niche should I use my own name or go with a pen name or even anonymous? With the whole Google Authorship thing I’m wondering what the pros/cons are to using your own name for each affiliate site?

A: As far as I am concerned, I always use my own name.

I am not clear about what the cons would be to you, unless it is some sort of controversial topic that you don’t want to be attached to, such as adult.

I like to have my name associated with my sites, as I work on building credibility, and I find that using my name is an asset with my sites. And as you mentioned, Google Authorship is a factor and you will need to use your real name to get the benefits from that program.

Also, I think it’s a negative for a lot of people when they go to the “about” page and they see some generic information, rather than details on the person or people behind the site.

I would encourage you to use your name, unless you see some big peril in using it.

This whole topic leads me to another discussion on wishing to remain anonymous online, whether it be in registering domains or the information on your contact page. I would highly encourage you to use a PO Box or a UPS Store box.

Don’t put your personal address out there for anybody to see, or else you might get somebody who is a huge fan of your site who decides to visit you at home. Or it could be someone who is a little unhinged and they disagree with something you wrote. They might also pay you a visit.

Q: I still consider myself a newbie, but am gaining knowledge! I went to Affiliate Summit East 2012, and recently to Affiliate Summit West 2013. I’m signing up for James Martell’s new school, and am psyched! I’ve had a few bumps along the way, getting sucked into schemes that teach me nothing, so it’s great to be hooked-up with you and Affiliate Summit. My question: I joined HostGator for web hosting. Do I still need to register with GoDaddy, even though I’m signed up with HostGator? I guess I’m not clear on what the difference is between web hosting and registering a domain name. Once I sign up for any web hosting site, does that automatically register my domain as well? What’s the purpose for registering?

A: Web hosting companies and domain registrars are two separate things, and you’ll need to pay for both to have a website.

In the case of HostGator, they are a hosting company that also provide domain registration services.

And with GoDaddy, they are a domain registrar that also sells web hosting, as well as many other services.

I personally use GoDaddy strictly for domains, and then I use other web hosting companies for my sites: 1and1, BlueHost, Liquid Web, RackSpace, and WP Engine.

You can certainly keep it all in the HostGator environment for convenience, but you will still have to pay for the web hosting and domain registration.

If you are struggling with the process, I cover how to go about getting the hosting and domain setup in my book, Extra Money Answer. My examples are with BlueHost and GoDaddy, but many of the hosts and domain registrars have similar interfaces.

Q: I’m very curious if you happen to know what are really good current niches to promote or if you cannot release any tips? I’m looking into Commission Junction products. I plan on promoting my fat loss campaign from ClickBank next year.

A: Some niches that are currently hot include dating, dog training, gaming, web hosting, and weight loss.

You can try focusing on any of those, but bear in mind that they are not secrets, so they’re pretty competitive.

One thing I’ve mostly done is focus on niches that truly interest me. That keeps me interested in the sites. I continue working on and promoting those topics that I like.

I have fallen into the trap where I chased trends, and then lost interest.

This played out a handful of times where I did all of the grunt work to set up a site, and then didn’t want to bother with it after investing time and money.

If you are able to stick with it as a gun for hire and chase the niches, you should give it a shot. Be sure to have some unique value proposition – original content or something else that will give people a reason to visit your site.

Whichever way you go, there are a couple things you ought to do:

1. Build a list – you need to continually remarket to interested people to keep bringing them back to your site. I use AWeber for my email lists.
2. Be a specialist – when you decide on your niche, drill down to be more specific and become the specialist in that sub-niche. Work the long tail.

Either way I think you can do well if you really dedicate yourself to it – either some topic that interests you or a popular niche.

Q: Where can I find non-spammy affiliates that aren’t just running coupon sites?

A: Without revealing your affiliate program, I see that you are running it through an affiliate network, and they offer lots of opportunities for enhanced placement and exposure of your affiliate program.

Check with your representative at the affiliate network about opportunities there.

Also, have a look around at who is promoting your competition on paid search and Facebook ads. Reach out to those affiliates if they are driving the traffic to their own sites, rather than directly to the merchant.

Another approach, which I did years ago to recruit quality affiliates, was to send out direct mail pieces.

I would research sites that made sense for my niche, and then pull together a database to contact those sites. Then I would have a postcard made with 3-5 value propositions for the affiliate program.

And then you’ve got your customers. Many are likely already unpaid evangelists for your company, because they like what you are doing. Harness their satisfaction and work on scaling up their voices.

Finally, I would suggest looking into conferences, where you can meet up with large volumes of affiliates in person.

I am not objective on this one, since I am a Co-Founder of Affiliate Summit, but each of the twice yearly conferences provide you a chance to meet more than 1,000 affiliates over three days – way more than you have time to meet.

Q: I was so pleased to find your youtube information. Hopefully you can help me. I recently applied for Google adsense and was not accepted. I would like help uniformly monetizing my platforms (youtube, blogger, etc). I am an actress from various Broadway shows. I’ve decided to start a new blog that focuses on giving advice to young actors as I constantly get questions about how I’ve done it. I had hoped that ads for broadway shows or hair and makeup would be familiar with my blog and a great fit for what I’m looking to do. My current blog is about my life but I plan to taylor it to a more helpful/advice column style. I was not accepted into the program. Based on my current blog do you have advice to give to me.

A: I don’t want to share the URL and embarrass the person asking the question, but the first problem is that it’s on Blogger.

I know there are Blogger sites that have Google AdSense, but many affiliate programs won’t consider you.

By using Blogger, you’re sending an unintentional signal to affiliate managers that you’re not taking your affiliate efforts too seriously.

You can get a domain name for less than $10 a year, so I would encourage you to go out and get a domain name and hosting for your blog.

Just the simple act of getting your own domain name and hosting will make a big difference when affiliate managers are reviewing your site.