All posts by Justin Mbaji

I’m a Soldier of Christ

Advertise to THOUSANDS Daily for FREE!

HercuList?

Trusted

For almost 20 years, HercuList has been a trusted internet marketing source for thousands of marketers worldwide.

Powerful Tools

Many FREE advertising tools to choose from to help build your business, including our new MonsterBLURB splash page builder.

Email/Web Marketing

Embedded 100% safe optin list. Send your ad to opportunity seekers in email and web format.

Earn

Affiliate program paying up to 50% commissions. Get paid within 24 hours.

100% Real Traffic

REAL people means real traffic to your website. No Fake traffic or bots.

Network

Join thousands of like minded business owners and opportunity seekers from all over the world.

How to support small businesses

The past few years have altered the way we approach everything from travel to child care. While in some ways, a return to normal is starting to happen, one thing is certain: the way we shop has changed forever.

Inside of a retail store with pink walls and bold plants
Moorea Seal

Now that you know why it’s important to support small businesses, here’s how to do it. There are many ways your dollars can be diverted to small brands, from switching to the independent grocer for your weekly food spend to spreading some love on social media.

1. Actively discover new brands

Take a look around while you’re out walking in your neighborhood. Is there a small lifestyle store you haven’t noticed before? An independent bookshop you haven’t visited? Check with neighbors and review sites to discover local spots that may become your new favorite small business. 

You can also download the Shop App. It not only tracks all your orders from all online stores in one place, it’s also a great way to discover local and curated businesses and get notified when your favorite brands have new products in stock.

2. Buy gift cards

A gift card from Good Neighbour
Gift

During the pandemic, many businesses pushed gift cards, asking their customers to support them until their doors opened. You can still buy gift cards for yourself for later use. It’s a way to support a business now, even if you don’t need anything.

Gift cards are also a great way to introduce people on your gift list to your favorite small businesses, giving them valuable organic word-of-mouth and a potential new customer.

3. Share your favorite stores in your social networks

Small businesses today are facing increasing competition, higher costs to acquire customers, and lower return on advertising spend. Brands with a small budget rely on their loyal customers to help spread the word via peer-to-peer and social referrals.

While others in your circles may be looking for ideas, it’s beneficial to share an anecdote about a positive experience, post an unboxing video, or submit positive reviews of products you’ve purchased from small businesses.

4. Buy gifts from small businesses

Two people having lunch on a patio exchange wrapped gifts
Burst

Larger retailers have made it easy to shop, with incentives like Amazon’s free next-day shipping. But if you have a little more time to wait, you can find unique, handmade, or sustainable alternatives from small businesses. Give twice with every gift—your business means a lot to independent brands. 

5. Rethink your budgets

Buying from an independent clothing brand over a fast-fashion brand or a big-box store often means spending more money. That’s because it costs more to produce high-quality garments ethically. But think about your budget in the long term: being smarter about how you allocate your clothing budget might mean buying fewer pieces that last longer—and supporting a small business in the process. This can apply to other types of products like home goods and furniture.

Do not forget to follow and like please… Thank you

5 ways to live a healthier lifestyle

Here are five ways to live a healthier lifestyle:

1.  Diet.

Eat plenty of fresh, non-processed foods, drink 64 ounces of water every day, and limit caffeine and alcohol intake.

2.  Exercise.

Get 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobics activities or 30 minutes most days. Also get two-to-three 20-30 minute sessions of strength-training per week, focusing on major muscle groups.

3.  Sleep.

Try to get 7-8 hours every night and try to keep a regular sleep cycle – go to bed and get up at the same time every day.

4.  Socialization.

It reduces stress and anxiety and improves mental functioning – and that helps guard against depression, heart disease and dementia.

5.  Have a primary care physician.

Annual visits are important for all ages because they are intended to detect disease early, before it leads to serious consequences.

9 Ways to Stop Global Warming

Want to help stop global warming? Here are 10 simple things you can do and how much carbon dioxide you’ll save doing them.

Change a light
Replacing one regular light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb will save 150 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

Drive less 
Walk, bike, carpool or take mass transit more often. You’ll save one pound of carbon dioxide for every mile you don’t drive!

Recycle more
You can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per year by recycling just half of your household waste.

Check your tires
Keeping your tires inflated properly can improve your gas mileage by more than 3 percent. Every gallon of gasoline saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Use less hot water
It takes a lot of energy to heat water. Use less hot water by taking shorter and cooler showers and washing your clothes in cold or warm instead of hot water (more than 500 pounds of carbon dioxide saved per year).

Avoid products with a lot of packaging
You can save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide if you reduce your garbage by 10 percent.

Adjust your thermostat
Moving your thermostat down just 2 degrees in winter and up 2 degrees in summer could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

Plant a tree
A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime.

Turn off electronic devices
Simply turning off your television, DVD player, stereo, and computer, when you’re not using them, will save you thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

Best Cars for 2022 and 2023

Find the best cars then compare models and read our car reviews, which provide the consensus opinion from the automotive press. You can also view new car prices in your area.

SMALL CARS

Small Cars

SEE FULL RANKINGS

Luxury Small Cars

SEE FULL RANKINGS

ADVERTISEMENT

null

Hatchbacks

SEE FULL RANKINGS

Compact Cars

SEE FULL RANKINGS

Subcompact Cars

SEE FULL RANKINGS

ADVERTISEMENT

null

MIDSIZE CARS

Midsize Cars

SEE FULL RANKINGS

Luxury Midsize Cars

SEE FULL RANKINGS

LARGE CARS

Large Cars

SEE FULL RANKINGS

Luxury Large Cars

SEE FULL RANKINGS

Super Luxury Cars

SEE FULL RANKINGS

ADVERTISEMENT

null

SPORTS CARS

Sports Cars

SEE FULL RANKINGS

Luxury Sports Cars

SEE FULL RANKINGS

CONVERTIBLES

Convertibles

SEE FULL RANKINGS

Luxury Convertibles

SEE FULL RANKINGS

ADVERTISEMENT

null

WAGONS

Wagons

SEE FULL RANKINGS

HYBRID CARS

Hybrid Cars

  • #1 2022 Honda Accord HybridThe 2022 Honda Accord Hybrid does just what you want a hybrid to do, and then some. It has agile handling and is comfortable on the road, the cabin is adorned with high-quality materials, and there are plenty of safety features. Passenger room is plentiful tooREAD MORE
  • #2 2023 Hyundai Sonata HybridThe 2023 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid is a standout in its class. It offers fantastic fuel economy, spacious seating and an upscale cabin. However, if it’s sportiness you’re after, you won’t get it with this Hyundai. The Sonata Hybrid is more of a comfortable cruiser than a drag racer.READ MORE
  • #3 2022 Toyota Avalon HybridThe 2022 Toyota Avalon Hybrid has adult-friendly seating, lots of standard features, and a comfortable ride. Its gas-mileage figures are great for a nonhybrid large car , but there are several hybrid vehicles with superior fuel economy. The Avalon Hybrid also carries one of the most expensive starting prices in the hybrid car class  READ MORE

How to Win Big at Affiliate Marketing using Optinmonster

Are you an affiliate marketer struggling to increase your earnings per click but not sure how to get started?

Earnings per click (EPC) is one of the most valuable pieces of data for affiliate marketers.

It can help determine whether or not a product is worth your time, money, and energy. And once you’ve learned how to increase your EPC, you can expect to drive larger profits from affiliate sales.

That’s why, in this post, we’re going to teach you:

And by the end of this article, you’ll know exactly how to make more money through affiliate marketing.

Before anything, though, let’s get clear on what EPC means and why it’s so important to track.

Let’s get started.

What Does EPC Mean in Affiliate Marketing?

Earnings per click (EPC) is an affiliate marketing term that refers to the average amount of money you earn each time someone clicks one of your affiliate links. EPC affiliate marketing is, typically, run through pay-per-click (PPC) ads.

But the EPC affiliate meaning is the most important metric for being successful at affiliate marketing. 

That’s because it concretely indicates your earning potential.

And this is true whether you’re running an affiliate program or sharing links from affiliate partners.

Here’s why:

Though many new affiliate marketers aren’t aware of EPC, what it is, and how to calculate it (which we’ll cover shortly), they know another popular marketing term: “Cost per click” (CPC).

So they search for products that have the lowest CPC, run expensive pay-per-click adsto that affiliate link, and hope that they’ll make enough money back to cover their advertising costs.

Oh, and they’d also like to make a small profit.

But if you can accurately calculate EPC, then you don’t need to rely on hope.

You can make data-driven decisions with predictable success and even target other affiliate products with higher CPC.

Because once you know your EPC, then the CPC is actually irrelevant. In other words, so long as you are always earning more than you spend, you’ll be profitable.

Which is why we find it funny when people ask us, “What is a good EPC?”

The answer is simple: your earnings per click are good any time they’re higher than your cost per click.

Because then you’re making money. Period.

Once you understand this concept, you’ll be on your way to increasing profits from your affiliate marketing strategy.

How is EPC Calculated?

Your earnings per click calculation is easy:

EPC = the total amount of commissions you earn divided by the number of clicks your affiliate links had.

That’s it!

So let’s say you were running ads for an affiliate product. Your total profit from the campaign was $100, and all of that revenue came from 50 clicks on your affiliate link.

That would mean your EPC is calculated by $100 (your profit) divided by 50 (your total clicks) for a total of $2.

Plus, many affiliate marketing sites have this information on hand for affiliate marketers. They’ll calculate the average affiliate EPC of their products for you:

epc from clickbank

This data is sometimes called “network EPC” because it comes from the affiliate program’s network of partners to create the average.

These earning per click affiliate programs give you this information to help you choose your affiliate products more wisely.

Now we can already tell what you’re thinking:

If you know your earnings per click and your cost per click, why doesn’t everyone just choose products with a higher EPC than CPC and pump ads to that affiliate link? 

In the end, you’re bound to make more than you spend, right?

Well, yes and no.

The problem is that these are average earnings per click, meaning they aren’t the same for all affiliate partners. One person may link to a product with an EPC of $3.00 and another with an EPC of $1.00.

So you get the average of an EPC at $2.00.

But your marketing strategy may not yield that exact result.

This is why blindly choosing a product based on the highest EPC affiliate program isn’t as rock-solid a strategy as you may think.

The only way to know your EPC on affiliate links will be to test it yourself.

And that’s exactly what we’ll cover in the rest of this article. Because we’re going to teach you how to boost your EPC to drive more affiliate sales FAST.

Let’s turn our attention to 7 ways to improve your EPC.

How to Increase Earnings Per Click

In many cases, affiliate marketers run paid ads to their affiliate products.

But the following 7 strategies are ways to increase your profits without relying on paid ads at all.

That’s because, for many of these tips, we’ll be using :

OptinMonster is hands down the best way to create a more profitable affiliate marketing strategy and increase your earnings per click. It allows you to make highly effective “optin campaigns” like popups, floating bars, fullscreen welcome mats, and more.

These optin campaigns are super easy to create and require zero coding or “tech” skills to get started.

Everything starts by selecting the right template for the type of campaign you want to build:

optinmonster templates

These templates save you time, energy, and headaches in the campaign creation process. They come with everything you need to boost affiliate sales out-of-the-box.

Plus, they look great across all devices: mobile, desktop, and tablets.

Once you’ve chosen the right campaign, you can easily make modifications to customize it to your brand and offer.

To change the text, for example, you can use OptinMonster’s inline editor:

inline editor with shopping template

This allows you to personalize your campaign’s messaging for higher conversion rates.

Want to add a new feature like images, videos, chatbots, and more? You can do so with a drag and a drop:

Drag an drop builder basic dark template

This makes it possible for anyone to create high-converting and professional-looking campaigns in a matter of minutes.

But once the campaign has been built, how do you show it to the right people to maximize affiliate sales?

You can use OptinMonster’s targeting rules and triggers.

These will ensure that your campaigns are shown to the right people, in the right places, and at just the right time in their customer journey.

A few of OptinMonster’s most popular rules include:

  • Exit-Intent® Technology: Display a campaign, like a lightbox popup, as users are actively leaving your site to recapture abandoning visitors.
  • OnSite Retargeting®: Show new campaigns to returning visitors to prevent “popup fatigue.”
  • Geolocation Targeting: Create campaigns to appear to people based on where they’re physically located.
  • Page-Level Targeting: Make your campaigns appear on specific posts or pages across your site.

These targeting rules can help you show the right affiliate products to only the most relevant portion of your site’s traffic.