Jean Galea

Health, Wealth & Happiness

  • Start Here
  • Guides
    • Beginner’s Guide to Investing
    • NFTs
    • Cryptocurrencies
    • Stocks
    • P2P Lending
    • Real Estate
    • Forex
    • CFD Trading
    • Start and Monetize a Blog
  • My Story
  • Blog
    • Cryptoassets
    • P2P Lending
    • Real estate
  • Consultancy
    • Consult with Jean
    • Consult a Lawyer on Taxation and Corporate Setups
    • Crypto & NFT Consultancy
  • Podcast
  • Search

A Guide to Basic Search Engine Optimization

Last updated: January 12, 2023Leave a Comment

I’ve never paid too much attention to SEO when writing, just because writing is really a research tool for me as I learn new topics and consolidate my opinions on others.

However, there are a few habits and techniques that I’ve picked up over the years. I’ve been blogging for close to two decades after all.

  • Monthly go through Google Search Console and fix any issues. I like to take a look even more frequently, maybe once a week, just because this is a great tool to point out any major issues that many times only need an easy fix.
  • Make sure the site is optimized for mobile. Nowadays I get more visits from mobile devices, around 55% of all visits.
  • Comparison tables work really well at presenting information and you will achieve a high rate of clicks through them.
  • Images in posts should be linked and there should be a clear call to action.
  • Think about what the user is searching for, and what his real intent is. Then target that real intent in a laser-focused manner.
  • Open external links in new tabs, else you are inviting people to leave your site.
  • Make use of your newsletter to develop a closer relationship with your subscribers. Also ensure you’re taking actions to grow the subscriber base over time.
  • People tend to click on
    • buttons
    • links
    • images
    • logos
      Make sure you have all these elements on every blog post.
  • Every month, pick the top 5-10 posts and ensure they are optimized and up-to-date. I also like to prune and consolidate the non-performant posts.
  • Test your site with ad blockers on, make sure there isn’t any essential stuff missing.
  • Use tools to measure and optimize, but make sure you spend an appropriate amount of time on that. Your writing is always the most important thing.

Here are the top courses for those who want to learn SEO and affiliate marketing:

  • Backlinko SEO Training
  • SEO Blueprint (by Glen Alsopp)
  • Authority Hacker (2 courses available)
  • The Affiliate Lab (by Matt Diggity)

Here’s a list of great SEO tools:

  • Hotjar
  • Accuranker
  • SurferSEO
  • Clearscope
  • Clicky
  • Ahrefs
  • Semrush

What are your favorites? Let me know in the comments section.

Filed under: Business

Why Publishers Prefer to Work with Affiliate Networks

Published: September 23, 2022Leave a Comment

affiliate marketing networks

Web publishers such as news media outlets, bloggers and affiliate marketers, all need a way of partnering up with advertisers and track commissions due to them.

As a publisher, you are usually working with either of the following:

  • Affiliate networks
  • In-house affiliate programs

In this article, I will list several reasons why you should always try to partner up with advertisers through an affiliate network and not through in-house affiliate programs.

Before we start, to make sure everyone is on the same page, let’s define what’s an affiliate network and what’s an in-house affiliate program.

Let’s start with a diagram of how affiliate marketing works.

how affiliate marketing works

The diagram should be pretty self-explanatory. Note that publishers are also referred to as partners or affiliates. Advertisers are also known as merchants.

Here’s an even simpler way of looking at it.

steps in affiliate marketing

Or perhaps you can relate more to this next diagram which lists the typical personas involved in an affiliate marketing transaction.

What is an affiliate network?

Affiliate networks congregate many advertisers under one platform and simplify things for both the advertisers and the publishers. They use their reach to link the two parties and propose partnerships both ways. They also handle all transaction tracking and billing, as well as other essentials such as reporting.

As a publisher, you have one platform that you can login at any time, and you will see all the commissions generated from all the advertisers you have partnered with.

Which are some of the most popular affiliate networks?

Here’s a list of the best ones I’ve used over the years:

  • Circlewise
  • Shareasale
  • Impact
  • Partnerize

And what about in-house software solutions?

  • AffiliateWP
  • Affiliates Pro

Alright, so let’s get into the reasons why I prefer working with big affiliate networks rather than in-house programs.

Trust

It is much easier to trust an affiliate network than to trust tens or hundreds of advertisers to manage their affiliate system effectively.

When working with in-house affiliate systems, I’ve had several advertisers fail to make the monthly payouts or change affiliate links without properly notifying publishers or redirecting previous links. This all leads to missed revenue for publishers and time spent chasing down the problems.

With big affiliate networks, the trust factor doesn’t even come into play.

Invoicing and billing

A big problem when working with many advertisers is invoicing and billing. As an advertiser, you are responsible for invoicing each advertiser every time they send you commissions. If you are working with hundreds of them, the task becomes impossible, effectively leading to having to shut down the business. The solution is to work with an affiliate network, as they will automatically generate the invoices based on the company details you provide, thus you are always covered and you have zero work to do.

I can’t overstate the importance of this benefit as a publisher.

Standardization

Instead of learning how to use a ton of different affiliate marketing software programs, you instead need to learn how to use a handful of affiliate network platforms that you are signed up with. Again, this saves time and hassle, and it is easier to train other people you might have on your team.

Better software

It is usually the case that an affiliate network will have a better technical solution than an in-house software system. Affiliate networks are experts at what they do, so you can bet they will have taken care of multiple currency handling, reporting facilities, deep-link builders, self-billing, and a host of other features you will need as a publisher.

In-house affiliate software will typically be sorely lacking in such features.

Less work

Do you want to end up using an excel sheet to keep track of your 200+ affiliate agreements, how to login to each in-house affiliate system, login details, and make sure they all keep working month after month? This can easily take 2 or 3 full days of work every month to manage. If you want to spend your time more productively, use an affiliate network.

Wrapping up

So there you have it. My experience over more than ten years of working with affiliate systems has taught me to always prefer working with affiliate networks than in-house affiliate programs. It’s not the first time I have outright refused to work with an advertiser due to them insisting that they do not want to join an affiliate network. Others thankfully see why it’s beneficial for both the advertiser and the publisher, and have no problems moving to an affiliate network once I recommend that they do so.

What’s your take on the subject? Let me know in the comments section.

Filed under: Business

Blogging VS Affiliate Marketing

Last updated: September 21, 2022Leave a Comment

blogging vs affiliate marketing

When bloggers succeed in making money, or just happen to generate enough traffic that income becomes inevitable, there usually comes a point where the urge to make more and more money gets quite strong.

Let’s face it, making money online is one of the best feelings. It still feels hard to believe that it is possible, and when you actually achieve it you feel great and want more of it.

Where some bloggers go wrong is that they get greedy and start looking for higher ticket items to promote and become less authentic.

I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times over the twenty years that I’ve been blogging.

Some people start off with money as their main goal and the arts of persuasion and manipulation as their tools, but the vast majority start out with a passion for writing and sharing their stories and opinions, and eventually slowly lose their way when money gets involved.

Here’s a good article on how you can stay happy and guilt-free while growing your blog and making money. It’s packed with tips that I fully agree with, so I thought I’d just link to it rather than repeat the same things over in this blog post.

You might think that it’s counterintuitive to not keep pushing for more and more income from a blog, but there’s a balance that few people consider until they’ve been through the whole experience.

Here’s how it goes.

When you start blogging, it’s probably just a few friends and family who will venture to your blog. However, you keep putting in the hours because it’s a passion-driven project.

Soon enough, your content gets linked to or ranks in Google and a few like-minded people start to subscribe to your newsletter or comment on the top content.

This feels amazing. Your work is finally being validated, people are interested in what you have to say, and you might even learn a thing or two from the people who comment and give feedback on your articles.

This goes on for a while as your traffic grows and grows, until one day the first commission comes in, and it feels incredible.

Now, you not only have a loyal flock of like-minded people, but you are even being compensated for your work. A few months pass by and the income now pays for your expenses, or if you’re lucky even for you to blog full-time and stop any other job you were doing before.

You decide to take this thing very seriously and start getting into SEO, reading about affiliate marketing, and possibly learning some basic coding.

You realize that there are other bloggers out there who claim they are making $50,000 a month or even more, and driven by your success so far, you see no obstacles to getting there if you just keep doing what you’re doing and follow their courses and secrets.

This is usually where things get nasty. Your expectations are now really high. You’re no longer happy with a day where you earn $100 in commissions, or a month with a $5000 payout. That’s just normal for you, you’re a successful blogger and you want more and more.

At this perilous point, a lot of bloggers turn into full-on affiliate marketers. This is where you see that genuine food blogger suddenly start making more money with her courses teaching you how to start a food blog or how to find a perfect web host. The whole act becomes more and more about money and less about the original topic of the blog.

This is where the blogger unwittingly deviates from his real passion (food, technology, etc etc) and starts to focus exclusively on finding and promoting high-ticket items. They might even write ebooks and launch courses that promise others how to achieve the dream of the dot com lifestyle.

What happens here is that yes, most likely the blogger makes a good chunk of money, but they become less happy and work many more hours, as they start losing the benefits of their narrow niche and start competing with aggressive affiliate marketers for hot generic keywords. This road leads to anxiety and burnout.

On the other hand, the blog starts to lose its loyal readers, who are disgruntled by the way things have turned out, and no longer feel that sense of camaraderie and connection with the author of the blog. They are instead replaced by an army of (unfortunately) gullible and lesser educated people who are looking for a get-rich-quick scheme and are not ready or capable of putting in the years of learning all the skills needed to make money online.

These are the same people that get drawn into pyramid schemes and MLMs and go to self-help seminars, spending thousands of dollars and getting nowhere closer to their dreams. They usually end up worse off in fact. It’s sad but it’s the truth.

Going back to the blogger, your only option to keep growing is now to focus even more on the arts of manipulation, as this is the kind of target audience your blog is now aimed at. Going back to the good old days is almost impossible now, so it’s either keep focusing on the money or shut up shop altogether and go into something new.

I’ve met a ton of bloggers and affiliate marketers and felt the allures described above myself. Years back, when I was building my early successful blogs, I got close to the tipping point, but the extra anxiety and my family background helped me ask the right questions and realize what the choices ahead were.

I decided to keep doing what I really love, because doing something you love is more important than making more money, especially if you’re already doing well enough to get by.

My choice was to keep blogging about whatever interests I have at that point in time, and use the skills I had learned along the way to build products. In that way, I could build products that I could stand behind 100% and I also had the skills needed to promote them via blogging and other forms of content. It was a win-win scenario.

My aim is not to tell you what you should do as a blogger, but to at least shed some light on the usual course of things and share the fact that there are always options, you should never have to compromise on your morals or your true calling in favor of more money.

In case you’re wondering whether all the claims of monthly income by affiliate marketers are even true to begin with, then I can tell you that I know many of them and the vast majority of them really make what they claim they do. However, a lot of them made choices that I wouldn’t be comfortable doing and I don’t envy their lifestyles. I feel that in most cases, instead of their blogs providing them with freedom and the ability to help others and share their passions, they turned into huge money-making machines that they are chained to in order to keep going and keep up their big level of monthly earnings.

Now you know the story, it’s time to reflect and make your choices.

Filed under: Business

Making Money in the Second Wave

Last updated: September 21, 2022Leave a Comment

Over the years I’ve come to realize that my best investments happen during the second wave of the product or industry lifecycle.

The idea is loosely based on the Gartner Hype Cycle curve, the No products found. concept, the Hero’s Journey and the theory of Diffusion of Innovations. Let’s take an abbreviated at these models that have inspired my strategy.

This style of investing is also driven by the fact that by nature I love being somewhat of a contrarian, and am quite unlikely to invest in something when it’s in hype mode and everybody is getting in on it.

Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. — Robert Frost

So let’s take a closer look at the concepts and models that have (mostly at a subconscious level – I rarely feel I’m being very methodical with my strategies) been framing my investment decisions over the past few years.

Gartner Hype Cycle

The Gartner Hype Cycle aims to visualize the typical path that most new technologies go true until they reach mass adoption.

In the Gartner Hype Cycle, we find 5 main stages for a new technology:

  1. Emergence: “The Technology Trigger”
  2. Excessive enthusiasm: “The Peak of Inflated Expectations”
  3. Excessive disappointment: “The Trough of Disillusionment”
  4. Gradual adoption: “The Slope of Enlightenment”
  5. Mainstream adoption: “The Plateau of Productivity”

I’m most interested in the 3rd and 4th phases. Let’s see how they’re defined by Gartner:

  • Trough of Disillusionment: Interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. Producers of the technology shake out or fail. Investments continue only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters.
  • Slope of Enlightenment: More instances of how the technology can benefit the enterprise start to crystallize and become more widely understood. Second- and third-generation products appear from technology providers. More enterprises fund pilots; conservative companies remain cautious.

Now let’s take Bitcoin as an example. Perhaps it is a bad example as the whole cycle has not yet played out, but it’s the best example I have right now. After the 2017-2018 peak that crypto went through, there was a bit drop in both asset prices as well as media coverage and public opinion. Clearly we hit the “trough of disillusionment” at that point. In the meantime, nothing changed for the builders in the Bitcoin space, and that was an amazing time to get interested in the technology and educate yourself as well as get invested.

Investing in Amazon after the dot com bubble is another example of second-wave investing in the trough of disillusionment.

Hero’s Journey

This monomyth is not typically used in relation to new technology lifecycles, however, I think it also fits in quite well, especially as I consider my own personal journey with new technologies.

Humans react to great story-telling because we are programmed to respond to an elemental story arc. The Book of Jonah, The Odyssey, Rocky or Star Wars: the details don’t matter because although the contexts are different, the story is the same. They appeal to the masses because of our deep desire to progress from the mundane, fight through challenges and then achieve a great victory.

Taking Bitcoin again as my example, it started its “call to adventure” as a result of the financial crisis of 2007-2008. It then went through its own challenges and temptations, with the scaling wars that lasted a couple of years, as well as the Abyss of 2020 (huge drop in price) and the rebirth and fast adoption by both public corporations, institutional funds and even countries.

The Chasm

The “crossing the chasm” model is based on the theory of diffusion of innovations. This is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread. It was Everett Rogers, a professor of communication studies, who popularized the theory in his book “Diffusion of Innovations”. He argues that diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated over time among the participants in a social system.

In most product adoption curves, there’s a point that can make or break the success of the product. It’s called the chasm. It’s the point between the early adopter stage and the early majority stage.

As the chart above represents, crossing the chasm means breaking into the mainstream market.

Again, with Bitcoin, I believe that as of 2021 we are just beyond the chasm, or possibly on the way to crossing it the final part of it. I’ve long held the belief that in order for Bitcoin to be successful, it would need to be properly regulated and also adopted by big institutions and possibly even countries.

Over the past few years, we’ve simultaneously seen governments and regulators all around the world take strong and detailed positions on the crypto space, as well as huge investments by public companies and even countries (El Salvador is the first).

We’ve also seen a tremendous amount of innovation in the crypto space, with the resurgence of the Ethereum VS Bitcoin debate as well as a ton of DeFi projects, NFTs, and most recently DAOs.


Having looked at those models and theories, I will come back to my simplified way of describing when I’m most likely to be interested in investing in a product or technology.

Let’s take a look at the first wave first and why I’m rarely that early.

The First Wave

In the very early stages the stakeholders and investors tend to be a mix of the following:

  • builders of the technology
  • rich people with money to burn on new things (e.g. venture capital and angels)
  • those who happen to be in the right place at the right time, or have friends deeply immersed in the technology

If you don’t possess one or more of those characteristics it is very hard to get in on something very early. Chances are you won’t even know the product or niche exists until the first wave has already passed. If you do happen to catch an early glimpse at the new technology, I feel that it will be an extremely time-intensive process to decide whether to invest at that stage, and even then, it would be a very risky investment.

Therefore, at the first stage, the risk-reward-work ratio is not worthwhile for me. To take an example with the internet, this first wave would be the 90s decade. Typical big risks, even though the technology would be wonderful, include:

  • not gathering enough traction, or being too early to market
  • regulation risks
  • scams
  • ridiculous valuations

Many products never make it beyond the first wave and there is a very real risk of your investment going to zero. Think ICOs in 2017, and Kozmo.com, Garden.com, Pets.com, Flooz.com, Webvan.com during the Dot Com boom and bust years.

Typically, during the first wave, a subset of people become immensely rich in very short periods, and they make the

The Second Wave

Almost every new product or technology that gathers enough traction to become well-known then experiences a period of hype, and it is usually during this period (typically earlier rather than later since I read a lot) that my interest is piqued. However, rather than rushing in to invest along with the rest, I tend to go deep and isolate myself from the news and hype to truly understand the tech, the main players and ideas behind the technology.

By the time I have developed a decent understanding, the hype is usually gone, prices have plummeted and the technology is bordering scam or trash status in popular opinion. On the other hand, because I would have invested a lot of time into the subject, provided that I was convinced about the future of the technology, I would be pretty bullish myself.

That means that when there is the next growth phase (growth is much slower and almost imperceptible at first), I am able to go all in and take a sizeable position that looks like madness to most others who didn’t do their homework properly.

While some technologies or products fit this idea perfectly, others share similar properties but are not that easy to explain. For example, I feel that I entered the WordPress space back in 2006 at an excellent time. Rather than the product itself having been through an early hype cycle, however, it was the overall theme of self-publishing, blogs and website creation that had gone through it.

WordPress was the phoenix that emerged from the flames produced by the downfall of highly centralized products like Movable Type and the closed-source CMS solutions of the time. I had been creating websites and blogging for a few years already and I remember there being a peak of excitement about the “power to the people” idea of giving a voice to anyone to create a space online and publish their thoughts, closely followed by a deep sense of frustration with the expensive or inadequate tools available at the time.

When WordPress came along it ticked all the boxes for me and I immediately left everything I was doing at the time to focus on building things within that space, which proved to be a winning move over time.

What’s your take on the above? Let me know in the comments section below.

Filed under: Business

Why and How to Buy Websites as a Profitable Investment

Last updated: November 17, 2022Leave a Comment

buying-websites-guide

This article will be your ultimate guide for buying websites. This will include some of the top places where you can buy a site right now. This will also include some tips and tricks for anyone who recently bought a site or is thinking about diving in!

Why Buy A Website?

The biggest reason why someone would buy a website is because of the potential profit that can be made. There are a lot of success stories out there of people who have flipped websites for a significant profit. This means that they bought a website at a lower price and eventually sold it for a lot more money.

Think of it like buying a cheap stock and then cashing out after the share price increases. Like the stock market, there is plenty of money to be made if you choose the right stock (or website in this case).

How To Make Money From Buying Websites

In this section, I will provide you with some specific examples of how you can make money in this space. This will give you a better understanding of how it can be done and will maybe even inspire you to get started.

A Hypothetical Example

Let’s just say that you purchase a website for $1,600, and it was earning around $50 per month when you bought it. This means that you purchased the site at a 32x multiple of the monthly income average ($50 x 32 = $1,600).

Let’s say that you then spend a year working on the site and it continues to grow in both earnings and traffic. If things go really well, your monthly income average could grow from $50 a month to something like $300 a month.

With the site now earning $300 a month (on average), you could then flip it for a nice profit. Using the same 32x multiple that you bought the site for, you could then sell the site for $9,600+. It could even sell for more than that as 32x is being conservative. In just one year, you were able to make a profit of $8,000+. Not bad for a website that you only spent $1,600 on!

[Read more…]

Filed under: Business

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 5
  • Next Page »

Latest Padel Match

Jean Galea

Investor | Dad | Global Citizen | Athlete

Follow @jeangalea

  • Padel
  • Affiliate Disclaimer
  • Cookies
  • Contact

Copyright © 2023 · Hosted at Kinsta · Built on the Genesis Framework

Please share your location to continue.

Check our help guide for more info.

share your location