Getting Traffic to Your WebsiteSuper Affiliates in Niche MarketsHow to Make Money OnlineList Building With Autoresponders and Pitfalls to AvoidHow to Find, Revise and Improve PLR Content for Your AutorespondersBusiness CostsJumpstart Your Affiliate CommissionsMonetizing Autoresponders With Google AdsenseUsing Reviews and Ratings to Increase Your Affiliate SalesImportant Features to Look for in Affiliate ProgramsScience Meets Art – The Importance of SEOInternet Marketing: Earn Money and Stay Home with FamilyImprove Your Affiliate Marketing with VideoDynamic Duo: Your Best Chances for Affiliate SuccessWebsite Tips: Putting Together Good ContentThe Importance of Tag Titles and DescriptionsDos and Don’ts of Link BuildingSuccess with Autoresponders in Any Niche!Work at Home Business OpportunitiesFuture Projections Excellent for Affiliate MarketingAffiliate Marketing and PPCMistakes to Avoid With Your WebsiteArticle Submitter ReviewDaily Tasks for Affiliate MarketersA Few Affiliate Marketer Tricks of the TradeHome Internet Based Business Opportunity: Choose the Best One...Earn Residual Income Online the Smart WayDirectory Submitter ReviewArticle Optimization 101... - Tara's Home Business Blog Tara's Home Business Blog: June 2007

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Getting Traffic to Your Website

Website traffic can be the hardest thing to come by when it comes to promoting your work at home business. When venturing into a home business using the internet one must be aware that in order to become successful there must be regular visitors to your website. Some may ask, with all the other websites out there, how in the world can I get people to my site?

The steps to making it happen are fairly easy but it may be difficult to get your site in front of all the others. An important factor you may want to concentrate on is optimizing your website for the search engines. This includes making sure the html code is neat and tidy and as close to error free as possible. If there are too many errors the search engines may not be able to read it properly, therefore the website may not get indexed or ranked highly.

Pick some keywords or phrases that are not highly competitive and use them in the keyword tag and scatter them throughout the site. By choosing less competitive keywords you have a greater chance of getting to page one of the search engines.

Use those same keywords or phrases in articles and the resource box of your articles. Submit your articles to the popular directories. It is advised to change up the article to have a few versions of it so you won’t get hit with the duplicate content penalty. If your articles are interesting and informative, people will want to know more about you and visit the site in your resource box.

How about all the buzz about social networking? Using these sites creates a link to your site plus get you socializing with other like minded people. Those people may be looking for new business ventures to add to the others they have going.

Videos are becoming more popular for promoting your business. Create a simple video about your business opportunity and submit it to directories like YouTube or Yahoo Video. There is video creating software out there that makes it very easy to create a great looking video.

Blogging is an excellent way to promote your business or products. Post an entry every day or even a few times a day. Just make sure you ping it using a pinging service such as PingGoat. This alerts the ping servers that there is new or updated information on a particular blog. If your blog is hosted on your website server, it is providing your website with fresh content, which the search engines love. If not, that’s ok too.

All of the above methods of getting traffic to your website are free. There are also several paid ways to get visitors to your website. Adwords, purchased leads, local newspaper classifieds, and ezine solo ads are just a few of the paid methods you can use to get visitors to your website.

Some methods may take longer to get your site noticed but they will also create back links to your site, which gets you higher ranking in the search engines. Getting higher quality back links also helps with this. This is great for the long term and getting a steady flow of visitors.

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Super Affiliates in Niche Markets

Some affiliate marketers sell much more than others and actually achieve what many refer to as super affiliate status. While there is no one set way to achieve this feat, there are some ways to sell more than the average person.

The average affiliate marketer will probably try to sell via these more popular avenues:

• Pay per click campaigns leading directly to the seller’s site through the affiliate link (or a cloaked one of some sort).
• Write articles about the product and distribute them to online article directories and publishers.
• Write a press release about the product or site and send it to online press release publishers.
• Add affiliate links to signature (sig) files with short classifieds in emails, forum posts and other communications.

The super affiliate will more than likely incorporate these basic methods, too, into daily activities. However, the super affiliate often does much more, like:

? Make a side business that goes along with the product or service. For example, a super affiliate for a shopping cart purchase might sell guides with accompanying video / audio tutorials on how to best set up and use the shopping cart software. He or she may also sell shopping cart services, setting up and performing regular maintenance on the clients’ carts.

? Ask the product seller to set up a two tier affiliate program structure, if it doesn’t already have one. Then the super affiliates will not only focus on sales but on recruiting other affiliates in their downlines so that additional revenue is regularly generated from the sales of the affiliate marketers in the downline.

? Set up a much more elaborate sales system that includes a totally unique website and /or blog combination, review area, forum, article area, etc. growing it over time. These super affiliates will not only sell the main product but other compatible products of their own and affiliate products of others. They will have autoresponders with leads capture forms in place to instruct, cross sell, up sell, offer back sales, seek referrals, ask survey questions that can be used online to attract visitors and used in articles as stats and more.

For more ideas on how to be a super affiliate, look online for more articles on this topic. Reach out and get higher above the pack with your affiliate marketing efforts and reap greater rewards and income!

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Friday, June 29, 2007

How to Make Money Online

Many of us now days are in search of that goldmine. We all want to know how to make money online. This way we can hopefully do something we enjoy, while doing so from the privacy of our own homes. Let's face it, we don't want to deal with the public all of the time. The public is full of angry patrons who take their daily frustrations out on you for no good reason. Why put up with them if you don't have to. The fact is that there are many options on how to make money online.

My wife is a perfect example of someone who's fed up with the chaos and anguish of a work place. She complains constantly about having to go to work. Now, this isn't because she hates her work. She simply doesn't like the atmosphere. The noise, the tempers, the headache. Who needs it? She is always telling me that she would like to work from home. Well, many people are making this happen these days with the Internet. If you have a business idea, then maybe you already know how to make money online. Start your own company. A friend of mine designs children's clothing and markets them online. She does this all from home. She even has a regular cliental now.

The key on how to make money online is finding your knack. What are you good at? You can research all of these things on the web. It's more than easy to get information on what you enjoy. Simply pick a topic involving your interests, then type in some keywords. You will receive a number of websites that can offer guidance. No matter what your aspirations are, there is likely to be a market for it somewhere.

Many careers are attained with online work. Web designers, graphic artists, and editors all find work online. They can actually hang out at home all day, and not bother with the madness of the workplace. It is ridiculous to assume that you can't make money online. With the popularity of the Internet, it's more than feasible to attain an online job. Whether you're looking for a company who is hiring online workers, or trying to start your own business, there are websites to help you with this goal. Always exhaust your resources. Check out the online sites like, careerbuilder.com and monster.com when searching for jobs. You can really narrow down your search when using these free sites. It just takes a little browsing and consideration to discover how to make money online.

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Thursday, June 28, 2007

List Building With Autoresponders and Pitfalls to Avoid

List building is extremely important in an online business. But it has to be handled right. If it is not handled right, you can get into a whole lot of trouble. Don't use those great email handling programs – Outlook, Thunderbird or Eudora.

Don’t think of buying "email handlers". There are several such programs available. If you send 700 of the exact same emails to prospects, do you know what will happen? Your ISP will shut you down, simple.

So if your ISP has shut you down, you lose even if you have double opted in email addresses. It will take time to get set up with another ISP and if your ISP is the only broadband provider in the area, it is really bad.

Your ISP does not want spam circulation through it. Instead, get a reliable autoresponder service.

Second, nobody will give you their name and email id in exchange for nothing. You should have compelling newsletters packed with terrific information, terrific hints and tips for your niche market, a free e-book or a contest. Nobody will stay on your list unless you sustain their interest.

If you are able to develop good writing skills and build trust, you will more likely than not be successful in making the sale. If your list is not too big (20-30) subscribers, you can handle the task of sending them emails manually. You should be warned about potential dangers of not choosing the right autoresponder service.

Autoresponder companies will not tell you the whole story. They will not tell you that their service development is crippled in trying to cut service price. They will not tell you the limits of their technical capacity. If they let you know the truth, you will never buy into their service.

I have bumped into some really bad autoresponder services in my search for autoresponder services. Some of them deliberately hide their bad points just to make a sale. If I had chosen the right autoresponder to handle my mailing lists, I could have saved a great deal of time. Some people also have to face legal trouble because they do not know the few simple rules they have to follow.

Since an autoresponder service will not let you know its pitfalls on its own, you need to research the pitfalls of the autoresponder service you are thinking of opting for. Generally, Aweber-responder.com or Get-Response.com is a good choice to make. However, it is a good idea to do your own research based on the kind of autoresponder service you want to use

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Wednesday, June 27, 2007

How to Find, Revise and Improve PLR Content for Your Autoresponders

If you thought web marketers were generating all the content/articles you saw on their website, you could not be further from the truth. If you are not familiar with the hype, here it is – PLR articles are the lifeblood of many websites.

This brings us to the next question. If webmasters were buying their content and it is duplicate, how do they fare so well in search engines such as Google. After all these search engines are quite unforgiving to duplicate content and are getting smarter by the day.

Obviously some tactics are being used to fool search engines. If you have fresh PLR content, it is yours to change and use as you require. You really do not have to make complex and detailed changes to make your articles unique. Change the look of the end product so that it is as different from the original content as possible. Try to enhance the content rather than take away from it.

1) Use Synonyms – Use words that are similar in meaning to the original. One good place could be an online dictionary or thesaurus. Word's synonym finder is good as well. After highlighting the word, press shift-f7. Choose the best word from the list of alternative words.

2) Utilize Matter Changing Software – Software is available that changes the form of your articles. It uses the synonym method. If using software, you are only a few clicks away from fresh content.

3) Introduction and Conclusion – Write a fresh introduction and conclusion. Articles that carry relevant interesting introductions generate 2-3 times the hits of other articles.

4) Shuffle Your Content – This is as easy as cut and paste in MS Word.

5) Get to The Point – Trim the fat from the article. Get to the point. Remove the useless matter from the article. Summarize paragraphs. Break down sentences into smaller sentences. Get to the heart of the matter quickly.

6) Rewriting – When you read your PLR articles, you can use the article as the spine for your rewritten article. As you rewrite, inject fresh thought and perspective into the article.

7) Altering the Tone – PLR articles contain someone else's voice. As a result, the tone of the article is quite different from your personality. Change the article. Begin with a change in the Title. A powerful title is a great way to pull in those readers. Adapt the body of the article to suit your style of expression. If the article is too cut and dried intersperse it with humor. Turn technical terms into layman's language.
There you are. 7 simple steps towards revising and improving PLR content for autoresponders. Use these 7 steps for that sterling response to your autoresponder messages.

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To find the best Work at Home Business Opportunities so you can stay at home visit:
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Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Business Costs

When starting a new business, many have problems deciding how much money they need. They may have a figure in mind, but if they have never owned their own venture before, they may have no idea about hidden business costs. These can be small, or they can be very large and troublesome. Most figure out what they know, but far too many fail to do proper research before they take out a loan to start their own company or service. This usually means they will fail because they run out of money.

Business costs can be something like Monopoly money. This game is about real estate, but it is something like what would really happen to an unprepared business man or woman who has not done enough research and has not secured enough money for business costs. Towards the end of the game there is one player that seems to have a lot of property but they can’t keep in the game because their cash is too low. A business might be well stocked and cared for, but without the proper money to keep it going, it is going to tank.

In order to calculate business costs, research into similar businesses is essential. Though this information might be hard to find, it can be done. A bank that has experience with business loans may even be able to help with this, but they may not be able to help other than offering to extend the loan. Their screening process might weed out loans that are way too high for the endeavor, but they may not say if they think the estimated business costs are too low unless they think it would cause the loan to default.

The Internet is good for many things, and when it comes to research about business costs, there may be a lot of great information out there to be found. It is important to note the source however, as not all things are written by people who know what they are talking about. There are many great books on the subject, and these might be the best tools to help estimate business costs and also to find other great pieces of information that someone starting a business needs to know. When it comes to opening and running a new business, there is no such thing as too much research, but too little could really do at lot of harm and might mean the difference between success and failure.

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To find the best Work at Home Business Opportunities so you can stay at home visit:
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Monday, June 25, 2007

Jumpstart Your Affiliate Commissions

You don’t have to know rocket science to make money with affiliate marketing. But it does help to know some tips from those who’ve been there, done that. So here you go, some tips to help jumpstart your affiliate sales.

1) Search popular keywords to learn what people are searching for online today. This will help you find the best products to promote. Popular tools for finding this info are:

Good Keywords Free Keyword Research Software http://www.goodkeywords.com
Overture Search Suggestion http://inventory.overture.com
Nichebot http://www.nichebot.com
Digital Point Keyword Suggestion Tool http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
Word Tracker http://www.wordtracker.com
Keyword Discovery http://www.keyworddiscovery.com
Google Adwords Keyword Tool at: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

2) Get an autoresponder set up with leads capture forms in place so that you can grow lists. You want to get subscribers by offering free reports, ebooks or other goodies that go along well with the product you are selling. And once people sign up, send them your regular weekly ezine that tells more about the product. Online shoppers are just like those offline: they need to see your marketing materials about 7 times before buying. So stop thinking you get one shot to sell and do start following up.

If you already have your autoresponders in place, test them. Do the messages pass through email filters? Maybe you need to reword them. And update your content. Do the links work? Do you need to add fresh content?

3) Stop trying to do everything alone. Get help from people mentors or coaches, continue learning about your niches and marketing online so that you can keep up with the times and what your target audience needs.

4) Interact with the people on your lists. And that doesn’t just mean via email. Reach out with phone calls, postcards, print flyers and newsletters. Run a quarterly direct mail campaign.

5) Constantly check out the latest SEO (search engine optimization) tactics that are working online for people. Bookmark and subscribe to free ezines from places like
SiteProNews http://www.sitepronews.com and other top SEO sites. Then take what you learn and update your site regularly. You want human visitors, yes, but search engines help bring them to you. So adjust your online promotions accordingly and keep them current. Don’t get caught with your head in the sand and let competitor sites rank higher than yours because you were not in-the-know.

Read more articles regularly about affiliate marketing. And never stop learning! To know more is to grow more.


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To find the best Work at Home Business Opportunities so you can stay at home visit:
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Sunday, June 24, 2007

Monetizing Autoresponders With Google Adsense

Autoresponders function primarily by sending automatic responses back to email senders. Secondarily they can be used to send, for example, a 5-part e-course once a week. They are just a sales support tool, though an important one. One little change in your autoresponders can make you a great amount of money. I am talking of monetizing your Autoresponders with Google Adsense.

For the uninitiated Google's Adsense is an advertising program run by Google. On the basis of text on that page Google delivers targeted advertisements. These are the Adsense advertisements. Every time someone clicks on your Google Ads, you get paid.

If you ordinarily use autoresponders to send e-newsletters, e-zines or e-courses, this is what needs to be done. Do not send all the newsletter content in the email. Send a teaser paragraph with a link that points back to your web page. Build a page with the entire article located on your website and monetize your page with adsense links.

The best kinds of adsense links are those that blend into your text and seem to be a part of your text. They should appear non intruding. It is a good idea to make your titles blue like on clickable hyperlinks. People are trained to click on blue links

Now what is the best style of box to use? The best style of box is the rectangular 336*280 box with four or five clickable links:

Learn Internet Marketing Secrets <= blue hyperlink
Learn Internet Marketing Step By Step<= black text
Instructions Guaranteed <= black text
www.internetmarketingsecretsrevealed.com <= grey text

Use black description text with the bottom link light grey. Use blue for the top clickable hyperlink. Place these rectangles in a manner that they blend in, like between paragraphs. You are allowed to place three rectangles on a page. Place them in spots that make sense, to maximize clickthroughs.

The adsense robots will spider content and place relevant advertisements on the page. Make the adsense boxes match the other clickable links on your page in color.
Imagine if you had 10, 20 or 50 follow up messages. Think of the amount of money your autoresponder can make you.

Sending your leads to your content letter pages will make your income explode. If your prospects were not going to buy anything in the first place atleast Google Adsense advertisements are enough to get back your cost of customer acquisition. Google Adsense is a great way to monetize autoresponders. Advertising that pays for itself! Now that is fine.

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To find the best Work at Home Business Opportunities so you can stay at home visit:
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Saturday, June 23, 2007

Using Reviews and Ratings to Increase Your Affiliate Sales

A couple of techniques that can be used to increase your affiliate marketing efforts and sales that are growing in popularity are the use of reviews and rating systems in your promotions. Both techniques are fairly easy to learn and simple to put into practice. And both can help bring in more traffic and close sales 24 / 7. Here is a little more about each.

Reviews with Affiliate Marketing

Shoppers like to read product and service reviews before buying. They want to trust their online purchases in this scary age of identity theft. And they want to make sure their purchases are up to par with good customer support and follow up as needed.

So offer your own reviews. Forget hype, and cut to the chase. Share the good, the bad and the ugly of products you are selling.

And sine people also like interaction online, invite their feedback and reviews as well. Use a forum or blog or some type of interface that allows for interaction and posting.

Tell people to bookmark the site and come back before shopping. They’ll save time, money and headaches, plus you’ll earn income when they buy through your links and ad spots sprinkled throughout the site.

Invite guests to sign up for email notification, too, so that they’ll know the latest review info as it becomes available. And insert ads in your announcements plus feedback and review comment highlights from your subscribers and your ratings area that you’ll set up below, for cross promotions.

Ratings with Affiliate marketing

Some shoppers like to pick and choose and consider all competitors on one page. They like sites like MySimon.com where you can go, enter a product like “Weight Watchers” and see the top Weight Watchers products all turn up in a second or so along with links to the right of each that say, “Compare Prices.”

So set up a web page where you compare and contrast comparable products in the same niche. You may want to use CSS on your web page. Or you may want to go with a simple form page create in Frontpage or other similar website creating software.

Then similar to above, invite website guests to sign up for email notification, too, so that they’ll know the latest ratings info as it becomes available. And insert ads in your announcements plus feedback and review comment highlights from your subscribers, inviting them to review areas, too for cross promotions.

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Friday, June 22, 2007

Important Features to Look for in Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs come in many shapes and sizes. Some sellers only have one product for you to market. Some have a wide range of products. And some programs offer stats for you to monitor and track your marketing and sales efforts; some have none. So before you jump into affiliate marketing – or get deeper into the affiliate marketing arena, here are some important features to look for overall.

A) Cost – Many affiliate programs are free to join. Will it cost you anything to join? Most affiliate programs being offered today are absolutely free of charge. So why settle for those that charge you some dollars before joining.

B) Payout – Some places pay via checks, some pay through Paypal and still more pay through other set ups or third party processors. So see what your needs are. For example, are you in a country that accepts Paypal? If checks are mailed, are they only mailed in the USA? It could definitely pay to do some homework before signing up and selling anything.

C) Sales and Marketing Tools – Many affiliate programs package their products complete with websites, full color graphics, copywriting, autoresponder series with your branded affiliate links – the whole nine yards. Others only offer the products: you must brand them and use your own means to market and sell them. If you have the knowledge, means, income and time to set up shop on your own, go for it and sell whatever you like. Otherwise, stick with affiliate programs that come with everything you need.

D) Tiers – See if the affiliate program is a one tier or two tier plan. A one or single tier program pays you for the sales you get through your links. A two tier program pays you not only for the sales you generate, but also a percentage based upon the sales generated by any affiliate who signs up under you, an affiliate that you sponsor or bring into their program.

E) Cookies / Tracking – Check to see how your sales referrals who click your affiliate links are tracked. IN other words, if someone visitors through your link, but doesn’t buy until two weeks later, will you still get credit for the sale? And what if you are selling more than one item for the affiliate program? If someone clicks through product A’s link, but purchases product B instead, will you get credit for the sale of product B?

And check into subscription payouts. Do you get paid only once for new sign ups? Or do you get a percentage of each month’s membership fee while your referrals remain active members?

Do your homework and all of the math first with affiliate programs. You don’t want to come up short–changed or short-tempered when payout time rolls around!

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Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Science Meets Art – The Importance of SEO

If you’re new to the website game, you might have heard a lot recently about SEO or Search Engine Optimization. In recent years, with the advent of more advanced search engine algorithms, the importance of optimizing key words and articles for search engine inclusion and performance has only grown.

SEO itself is a complicated procedure that requires a certain careful artistic touch along with some simple science. It’s necessary to have a certain amount of keywords in the proper percentages throughout a website, but at the same time, no one wants to read content that is clearly positing towards a keyword and trying to sell itself. Over optimization is for that reason a major problem.

The Search Engines

There are hundreds of search engines. Each of those engines has their own algorithm, but the most important of them are going to be Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The big three are used more often than any other engines, and Google itself has a majority share at this point of all searches, so many people look there for their optimization. Because they rake in over half of all internet searches, if you can reach the top of the Google listings you’re nearly guaranteed a substantial traffic boost.

Choosing Keywords

Optimizing for Google is largely dependent on which keywords you use. Many people hope to get a good ranking for a popular keyword. However, with the millions of websites out there already using those keywords, you’re only wasting your time. Instead, you need to look for specific keywords that match your content, people will search for, and have not been used too many times in the past. There are dozens of research tools available for you to start this process, not the least of which is Google’s own Keywords or Adwords services. The more money a keyword goes for, the more likely it is a very popular keyword. Mostly though, you’ll be doing this through trial and error. Check if a keyword works for you and if it doesn’t try switching it up a bit.

A good starting point for target keywords is 5000-10000 searches per month for a phrase. In this case, you’ll likely run in to much less competition. However, if you do not find success here, aim a little bit lower still.

Utilizing Keywords

Once you’ve settled on good keywords, it’s time to start using them. The first step is to load them into your Meta tags. In the heading of your HTML code for your webpages, there are Meta Descriptions and Tags that search engines use for finding these keywords. By placing your keywords here as well as in your title tags, you can optimize their search position in Google results.

Furthermore, you can put those keywords in your content. This is where the true trickiness of SEO arrives, balancing good frequency with quality content. Ideally, you’ll want keyword frequency to equal around 2-4% in an article. Any more and it’s entirely too obvious, while any less does not have enough impact on search results.

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To find the best Work at Home Business Opportunities so you can stay at home visit:
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Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Internet Marketing: Earn Money and Stay Home with Family

You know you need to earn more money to make life a little easier, but you do not want to put the kids in day care or have a sitter take care of them. The cost of child care can sometimes be more than a person’s income. It can be terribly expensive. So what is a logical solution to this dilemma? Starting a work at home business would solve all the problems associated with child care and can bring in that much needed extra income.

Some may think it will be too challenging to start a work at home business. Some may think it will cost them too much money to start a business at home and some may think they need special training or schooling to get into this kind of business.

Some types of home business may require more money or training, but not all. If one wants to make a product to sell, then there are some expenses for supplies, but if one wants to work online doing affiliate marketing, there may be no expenses. Depending on the program, you may not have a monthly fee and they may supply the website needed to promote the company. Some companies will package and ship the products that are sold and take care of all returns.

The good thing about affiliate marketing is that you do not have to store the products at home or worry about shipping the orders. All that is required from you is to get the customers to the website that is provided and get them to buy the products. Some will pay you for recruiting others to do what you are doing as well. The more people the company has advertising their web sites and products the more sales they make, therefore the more money they make.

Some advertising is required to get the word out, but not all advertising needs to cost money or be expensive. To start, just tell all your family and friends and they can tell all their friends. The word will spread fast.

To start earning income at home is not as hard as one might think. Get a reliable computer and internet connection and you are set to go. The internet is a great place to start because there are so many different opportunities to choose from. Whether you are interested in health, marketing or web site design, there is something for every one. There is no risk either. Choose free or cheap programs to start, then when you get the hang of it you can branch out and invest a little money in order to make more money.

What is there to lose? Maybe a little bit of time, but the payoff can be huge and very rewarding. Do your research to find a reputable company to promote and you could be looking at a very bright future in the world of internet marketing and having your own work at home business.

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To find the best Work at Home Business Opportunities so you can stay at home visit:
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Monday, June 18, 2007

Improve Your Affiliate Marketing with Video

To help set you apart from other affiliate marketers who are selling the same products and to help boost your affiliate marketing sales, try adding video clips in with your promotions and marketing activities. Create videos that teach about the product you are selling, offer ways to use it or that share reviews about the features.

You can even get creative and have fun with different videos to add in your marketing mix based upon ones you like online now. Conduct ‘man on the street’ interviews only online and through telephone interviewing, instead, and ask others about things related to your products, for example.

A popular software for creating videos is Camtasia. And there is a free video-creating software with many similar features called Audacity, downloadable at: http://audacity.sourceforge.net .

Here are the basics on how to work with video software:

1. Download your software and use it right from your desktop.

2. Create files for your videos. And note: they will be large.

3. Close other applications and Windows on your computer when you are making videos. The software will work more efficiently this way.

4. Either capture your desktop, pointing out web pages as you film, like your entire website. Or create a PowerPoint slide show complete with script and filled in with screen shots of what you want to feature: web pages, how to tips, etc. Then film your entire PowerPoint slide show when you are finished, complete with audio.

Tip: Add some text to your PowerPoint slides to help deaf website visitors and visitors who prefer something to read while they watch. Then more people will get an enhanced experience and return and share the video with their friends.

5. Save your video in different format so that you can experiment with the different files for editing and loading to your website. Make backup copies and keep them stored in case you want to revise your videos later.

6. Upload your video files to your website and publish them on your blog. Announce them by adding an RSS feed to your blog and web page (head to http://www.mysitefeed.com for help adding RSS to HTML pages). Then submit your RSS feed to RSS directories. Don’t forget to submit your main URL / domain to search engines, too. Although this is a basic step, many forget about it over time. So schedule all submitting (RSS, URL, etc.) for the same day each month.

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To find the best Work at Home Business Opportunities so you can stay at home visit:
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Saturday, June 16, 2007

Dynamic Duo: Your Best Chances for Affiliate Success

Affiliate marketing is noted by many as being one of the most effective ways to make money online today. Affiliate programs on the whole are pretty easy to join and start using, plus they pay you commission regularly which helps pay your bills.

But just as there are difficult issues to deal with in other enterprising money-making programs, online or off, there are issues to combat with regards to affiliate marketing, as well. Too many people jump aboard not fully knowing the best way to proceed. And results are often great losses of effort, time and money on marketing and sales work. To avoid these or at least minimize your risk in these areas, here are two main things to focus on when dealing with affiliate marketing.

Buy It and Try it!

When you are an affiliate marketer, you are mainly trying to let your prospects and clients know that you are promoting a product that you believe in, bottom line. You don’t want to pull products from thin air that you know nothing about and then try to promote them, especially using fake products reviews that could be presenting erroneous information.

Instead, focus on what you know. What products have you been using and recommending already to your friends and relatives. Cell phone service? Cable television? Any special books?

Then locate affiliate programs for these. Try LinkShare.com and search for other affiliate marketing programs on the Internet.

A popular affiliate marketing program site with electronic products (ebooks and software) is Clickbank.com. Products are fairly inexpensive there, so you can buy something you actually need to try it out before selling it yourself.

Joining Affiliate Programs.

You may be like many others out there and jump in full steam, joining many affiliate marketing programs out there so that you can try to maximize your efforts. Don’t!

Yes, it would be great to have multiple streams of income. But you need to grow slowly, focusing on one program at a time, product by product. Why? A couple reasons:

1) Payouts are usually based upon total amount you’ve sold in the entire affiliate marketing program. So you don’t want to spread your income out so think that you don’t receive any checks for long periods.

2) Affiliate marketing programs change their clients, their rules and their links from time to time, and some products stop being sold. And especially with places like Commission Junction at cj.com, if you do not have sales for a couple of months, you’re account becomes void, all your links inactive for you – and this cannot be reversed. So you’d need to set up all new links.

So buy it and try it before you sell it. And stay sharp to stay on top of things!


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Friday, June 15, 2007

Website Tips: Putting Together Good Content

Building a decent website is the key to having an impact on the world wide web. It’s all about how you present yourself. Before you can hope for return visitors and customers, you must give them a good reason to return and that means offering a good website with quality content. There are dozens of good tips to putting a quality website together. It’s only a matter of knowing where to start.

The most important thing you can do though right off the bat is to offer quality content. No matter what the site looks like or how well it shows up in search engines, you need quality content to offer your visitors.

Choosing a Topic

You should have a topic that you know something about or can easily become well versed in. Don’t pick a topic that bores you and you know little or about or it will be apparent to your visitors in your content, which will only bore them and reveal that you know nothing about it. You’ll see dozens of websites if you search quickly on google that are slapped together overnight and filled with horrible content, optimized for the use of Adsense. Don’t let that happen to your site.

Updating

You must have constant updates in your content as well. If you choose a boring topic, you’ll be unwilling to constantly update that content, and because search engines are hungry for new content on a near daily basis to keep you at the top of their listings, you need to be willing to update. The key is to find a good niche online that very few people have much to say about and that you will be interested in. this allows for constant updates without duplicating content and a fun, content rich site.

Quality Content

Write quality content. Do not slap together a quick 300 words every day without proofreading and spell checking it. It’s important to present quality along with your informed, interested opinions. This means taking a little bit of time writing it and checking your facts. You want your site to appear professional and to read naturally, not key word optimized. If you have trouble with writing, you can always consider hiring a professional.

Finding Content

You do not always have to write your own content either. There are dozens of websites that offer thousands of prewritten articles for free usage with a byline attached. These are perfect ways to attach interesting new content on a daily basis to your website that will continue to draw visitors and keep you in the search engine ranks. Just remember, while that free content is a great way to get your site started, only original content will help in getting you higher search engine rankings.

It’s no surprise that quality content is the key to running a successful website. It’s a hands down necessity for nearly any new webmaster just getting started. You just need to know where to start.

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Thursday, June 14, 2007

The Importance of Tag Titles and Descriptions

When optimizing your site for search engine statistics, one of the most important things you used to be able to do is offer a good title tag. Recently, search engines have begun to look beyond this simple headline to determine what your site is about and index it accordingly, but it can still go a long way toward putting yourself in a good position if you create good title tags with these simple tips:

Length

Google will take only the first 65 characters of any title tag to display. Any more than that and you’re wasting time and space. Be efficient and succinct right off the bat. Of course you want to optimize your title tag as well for the best results, so you’re walking a very fine line here. The difference between optimization and intelligibility is not quite as thin. The best way to get the results you’re looking for might be to simply stuff keywords.

Making Sense

But, stuffing keywords doesn’t always make sense either. If you write everything out without a sense of what your site is actually about save the word “dog collar” repeated four times, you’ll get fewer visitors. You’re writing this for multiple audiences – the search engine algorithm as well as your visitors. Find the right balance.

Capitalization

Make this a headline of sorts. You should have every word that is of any importance, or just simply every word capitalized to grab attention. More or less all copywriting is better and more effective if you use this technique and hey if newspapers have been doing it for centuries, why not you as well? This is an important step you can take in separating your text from others; however make sure not to capitalize every letter in your title. It looks juvenile and angry.

Unique Key Words for Every Page

It might be easier to just use a set list of keywords and title tags for each page of your site, but by separating them out and utilizing numerous styles and phrases throughout your website, you can further enhance your search results. Otherwise, you’ll likely never see any of the subpages of your website ranking in the search engines. By optimizing every page individually, you can receive a better chance of each individual page being successful.

Company Names in Tag Titles

Don’t do this. It’s just a bad idea. All you do by adding your company name to a tag title or headline is waste space in a search engine. The only way this helps you is if someone searches for your company name directly, in which case they’ll likely find your site anyways. You want to use keywords that attract audiences looking for products like yours. If they are already looking for your product, you probably don’t need to optimize.

Optimizing your tag titles is a key step in providing the best and most efficient description of your website to both the search engines and potential visitors. Doing it correctly is important or you’ll likely find that no one visits your site or those that do, do it for the wrong reason.


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Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Dos and Don’ts of Link Building

Way back when the internet first evolved, link building was not nearly as important as it is today. With primitive search engine technology and limited access to incoming and outgoing links, the only purpose of building links and their popularity was in getting traffic from someone else’s sight. As the internet evolved though and search engines started ranking sites and links on the quantity and most importantly quality of incoming and outgoing links, link building’s importance surged.

Once upon a time, link building was something a site owner or web master would work on after all of the tedious work of actually building a site was done. It was an individual prospect. However, today it has become one of the leading industries on the internet, with millions in cash flow.

So what do the search engines look for that there are so many people making a living off of link building? It’s in the algorithms really. Search engines use complicated algorithms that break down the value and importance of each link and its authenticity. The more positive, organic links you have to your site, the more endorsements you’ve wrangled from the web community, something that search engines absolutely love.

Unfortunately for site owners, this organic link building is a very time consuming, tedious prospect and isn’t nearly as efficient as it needs to be. So there are multiple other methods that people have developed over time to get the links they need. This can be a dangerous proposition though as the last thing you want is for a search engine to tag you as a malicious link builder. Fooling a search engine is tricky, so keep these in mind when building a link creation strategy:

Link Buying

Google doesn’t like this. The whole idea of their algorithm is that they are substituting mechanical processes of weeding through millions of websites for human opinion. Buying that opinion is considered cheating and it’s possible to not get credit for these types of links. This doesn’t hurt you in any way other than wasting your time. However, if you offer a link back to these link farming sites, you’ll likely find yourself in Google’s timeout, possibly losing your search engine index altogether.

Presentation

The whole point of search engine algorithms is to pick apart sites as a person would. For that reason, they attempt to decide if your links are user friendly and placed in easily reached places. Do not separate links to a links only page and keep them near prominent sections of your site. Don’t load everything with keywords either; it needs to appear genuine or you’ll lose your indexing.

To be Successful

You need to run your site as a casual, natural looking site. The search engines get smarter every day and if you farm or buy links and stuff keywords in them, you’ll likely risk losing whatever good you might have had or even losing your place in the search engines altogether. Don’t fall for the trap of ease over substance and you’ll be building great links in no time.

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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Success with Autoresponders in Any Niche!

The good news for Internet marketers is that email marketing has an excellent ROI (return on investment). In fact, according to a recent study from the * Direct Marketing Association, email marketing, including automated email from autoresponders, has an ROI of $57.25 for each and every dollar spent. And this is more than 150 percent greater than the ROI for non-email online marketing.

In short, email ranks as one of the best online marketing tools, if not THE best. And automated emails are the best way to leverage your email business relationships. So let’s take a look at autoresponder basics to discover how to reap success in any niche.

Autoresponders – What Are They and What Do They Do?

Autoresponders are software programs that automate the process of answering e-mails when they are sent to a certain address that’s set up for them. Different autoresponder programs have different configuration settings, but many of the same basic set up instructions.

One of the most popular ways to use an autoresponder is to set it up to send instant replies when emails are sent to it, activating the system to release stored messages you write ahead of time and load into the system.

The autoresponder’s messages can include all types of product and service instructions, articles, guidelines or other information for buyers or even just tire kickers, however you set it up. You can even include links in the messages to bonus downloads like reports or guide books.

An autoresponder’s follow-up messages may be set up so that they are sent immediately or at predetermined intervals by the autoresponder system or service. By setting up intervals for marketing, you can keep your potential and existing clients up to date with latest specials and news releases. For example, you can either insert a message whenever you want or set up a series, like a learning series that goes out every 4 days or so, however often you’d like.

And note that while your autoresponders are doing all this work, plenty of valuable time and money is saved by doing without the help of human services; i.e. having someone ‘man the helm’ of your operations.


At this time, the three major kinds of autoresponders that are out in the marketplace today are:

Desktop-based
Locally hosted
Remotely hosted

Desktop-Based Autoresponder

A desktop-based autoresponder is most often the cheapest way to go. You need to install the autoresponder script or software on the hard drive of your computer, and then operate the autoresponder you’re your desktop. So you will need either a tech on hand, someone you can pay to help you or you will need at least a little tech savvy to be able to install the software correctly.

There are a couple of things to be alert to when setting up your desktop autoresponders. First, make sure that you are connected to the Internet so that the autoresponder program can function work. And second, you might have a limit to how many computers are allowed to use the program at one time without buying more licenses. So check both things before you begin.

Some of the more popular desktop-based autoresponders are:

Mail Xpert
Followup Xpert
eMailer

Locally Hosted Autoresponder

Locally hosted autoresponders are run from your website. What you generally do is purchase an autoresponder script and then either have it installed on your hosting for you, or you hire someone to do this (or you learn how).

As above, note that some scripts have limitations, so you may not be able to simple use it on multiple websites. Check ahead and ask about multiple users and licenses.

People most often choose this kind of autoresponder so that they do not have to pay for extra features that come packaged with other types of autoresponders that also cost more. Some of the more popular hosted autoresponders solutions are:

PostMaster
Send Studio
MailLoop

Remotely Hosted Autoresponder

Remotely hosted autoresponders are hosted on someone else’s server, i.e. a third party. In essence, you subscribe to their autoresponder services and pay either a monthly fee or often an annual fee that’s usually offered at an overall discounted rate.

Usually upon payment, you are given immediate access to your autoresponder control panel area where you’ll find your account info, settings and other pertinent member info. And a huge benefit is that you no longer need to rely on having your own computer all the time to access the info. In fact, you can log on from anywhere, 24 / 7 through the companies website.

Once you log in, set up and usage instruction are fairly easy. And there are generally video or other tutorials plus a help desk and call in number for support.

Other benefits for choosing this kind of service is that the company techs take care of any tech issues you have and keep the autorepsonders up to date, tweaking the features to keep them running smoothly, adding new ones to keep up with technological and internet changes and consumer needs, etc.

These kinds of autoresponders are usually best for people with little to moderate tech skills, or people too busy to mess with their own solutions. Plus, all the extras, including extra servicing and features, often outweigh the extra cost per month for your subscription.

Examples of remotely hosted autoresponder services are:

1Shoppingcart
GetResponse
AWeber

Search around, try trial offers and see which works best for you. And don’t be afraid to compare a couple and try more than one. You may find two systems that work well for different campaigns.

Basic Autoresponder Features

Autoresponders can do a lot more than simply send messages. To learn more about what they can do, take a look at some of their basic features and what you can do with them in your business operations.

1) Email - Autoresponders can handle email in a number of ways. You can set them up to reply instantly; for example, with a brief reply that you are out of the office.

2) Subscriptions - You can also set up some to handle your newsletter or ezine subscription and educational training series in a timely manner. Then when someone subscribes by sending in an email or completing a short online form, they will be instantly subscribed to your autoreponder ezine or series. The ezine or instruction can then either be in text or HTML or even on your website, linked inside the message with a brief introduction.

3) Instruction / File Sharing - Lead your subscribers to video clips, a PowerPoint presentation, an Excel spreadsheet, to digital photos or audio files, if you’d like, too. There are endless ways to use your autoreponders.

4) Misc - Use them in any niche for nearly any reason: to share news, announcements, celebrations, files, tips, articles, recipes, advice and a while lot more. Set up sub-lists and multiple autoresponders to handle several different operations

5) Customizing & Branding - Choose any of the 25 or so personalized fields like customer name, email address, telephone number. And personalize the messages, if you like, inserting tags where you want their info to appear like:

Hi ,

Thank you for subscribing to my ezine!

Your autoresponders keep all of the information stored in a database. And when you learn how to set up autoresponder message and form templates or use your own html, you can customize and brand your marketing efforts with them.

6) Shopping cart - Some autoresponders like 1Shippingcart allow users to upgrade their autoresponder account so that it works with shipping cart tools. You can immediately send Thank You messages to shoppers, receipts, upsell info, follow up messages and more.

7) Electronic Delivery – Some autorepsonders can also help with immediate delivery of downloadable products. You can set up a receipt email so that it triggers a download message, for instance. Or oyu can upgrade service at places like 1Shippingcart to include their electronic delivery function.

There are many more ways to use autoresponders, many more features. So shop around, compare and do some tire kicking.

Beware!!

Autoresponders can be great but watch out for:

Companies who spam. Do NOT spam! Read your autoresponders guidelines and rules on this and be responsible.

Companies who do not report all your stats or lack in this area. You should be able to monitor your promotions to see who signed up, who opened the messages (if they are in HTML), bounces and more. You should be able to request backups and get a downloadable Excel or text document that contains your list, your autoresponder subscribers. This is yours, and it’s precious. Get and keep regular back ups.

Companies that do not have subscribers opt-in. With all the spamming going on, it’s easy for people to turn you in as a spammer. So make sure your autoresponders have a way to set them up as opt-in messages or learn more about this, if you need to first.

Getting autoresponders in place is like getting more help – for not much money. But it can be like getting a giant headache, if you’re not careful. So follow the rules, be responsible and enjoy your fun marketing tool!

* Cohen, Heidi. E- Mail Marketing Has a Great ROI. ClickZ.com (Nov. 9, 2006).
Retrieved from http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623879

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Monday, June 11, 2007

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Future Projections Excellent for Affiliate Marketing

by: Diana Barnum

The amount of money spent on online advertising continues to grow annually. In fact, US Internet ad revenues alone totaled roughly $16.9 billion in 2006, and this amount was up 35% from 2005, according to the “Internet Advertising Revenue Report” from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), as reported by *Emarketer.com.

This large amount of ad spending is great news for affiliate marketers. It means sellers will be spending even more dollars online to push their products. And the outlook is great for the future as well when you consider the facts*:

Over 49 percent of US advertisers are spending their ad dollars on the Internet.
The total amount spent has been increasing each year since 2002.
US ad spending is expected to grow to more than $36 billion in 2011.

What This Means for Affiliate Marketers

The majority or 81 percent of affiliate marketing programs use what is called revenue share or cost per sale to pay their affiliate marketers. Most of the other sellers use some type cost per action or CPA method, as discussed more in depth at **Wikipedia.

In a nutshell, CPA advertisers pay for impressions that result in sales or from some other form of targeted activity that’s tracked and verified. For instance, a company might pay per lead when one of your leads clicks on their form (linked via your affiliate link) and fills out all of the information which in turn will be verified by the seller to make sure the entry isn’t fake. If it pans out, you get paid for the lead.

The bottom line is that regardless of which type of affiliate program you choose, more money is being spent by advertisers which means you will have more opportunities to make more money. Definitely a win-win there!

Now just as there is with nearly anything else, there is a dark side to affiliate marketing. So take a peak at some of the negative side to get a clearer picture of what you may be up against before proceeding.

The Dark Side of Affiliate Marketing

Some of the aspects of affiliate marketing can get downright ugly. Any of the following may cause issues for your business and you:

Affiliate accounts may be de-activated without your knowledge if you have short periods of inactivity. Not only that, once de-activated, the accounts cannot be re-activated. Hence all your affiliate links become useless overnight. All your hard work, time and money setting up campaigns and promotions vanish virtually overnight.

If you decide you still want to pursue that affiliate program who gave you the boot above, note it gets worse. You now need to open an entirely new account and use a different email address. That can translate into, “Good-bye” to any reporting, accounting and other types of organization you had in place with accounts all using the same email address, and it can mean, “Hello!” to more spam, set up and other tracking issues. So reconsider your plans before taking action and make sure to use your time well.

Some affiliate programs have more than two tiers and thus this fact turns them into MLM or multi-level marketing plans. Now some of these multi-tiered organizations won’t admit as such to you, and others may try to gloss over the facts about how you need to recruit others under you like a pyramid scheme. So before you jump into any program with more than two tiers, do your homework and check with the Federal Trade Commission at http://www.ftc.gov and with your state and local governments to see if the program and organization contacting you it is legitimate, legal and has no complaints against them.

Unfortunately, flaws in technology and mankind can result in program performance being reported incorrectly. This can be bad for you because your click-throughs and sales may not even be registering with the affiliate program, meaning you get no pay. So always test and track. Monitor your progress. And if things aren’t working, stop participating and move on to something else.

When you refer your leads to other people’s products and services, you may be losing out on plenty of other sales – back end sales, up sells, follow up attempts to close more, etc. Avoid passing people along by setting up systems to capture your leads info first and continuing communications afterwards for the long-term growth of your business.

How to Jump In There to Make This Opportunity Work

What you need to do to make the most out of any affiliate marketing efforts, is to begin by first learning all you can about the latest in affiliate marketing techniques and strategies in order to get up to speed with the latest information. You need to learn about popular affiliate marketing programs out there today. And you need to learn about various methods of affiliate marketing that work to find which ones work best for your projects and you personally.

And the buck doesn’t stop there. Anyone who’s been doing business on the Internet for awhile will tell you that technology and the Internet grow, develop and change constantly. So what works today may not and probably won’t work tomorrow.

For example, in the earlier days of Internet marketing, you could simply toss up a website and be listed fairly quickly. Forget about pay per click campaigns and many other marketing avenues. But alas, those days are gone with all the competition out there, all the people online, all the millions and billions of web pages today.

Popular Affiliate Marketing Programs

Some of the more popular affiliate marketing programs today are Clickbank.com, Linkshare.com and those offered via 1Shoppingcart.com sellers. If you have plenty of traffic and sales with no concern about issues mentioned above where if there is a short time delay in activity, your account is de-activated, Commission Junction may also offer opportunities for you at cj.com.

Note that the Commission Junction program can be very difficult for many to simply sign up. Fact is, there is nothing simple about their sign up process, and you’ll probably be rejected several times until you complete their form to their liking. You will be called a publisher, too, so don’t let that throw you for a loop right off.

Popular affiliate marketing programs have some of the following points in common:

- The affiliate programs are free to join.
- The program offers training or at least some basic information to help you get started.
- The program offers marketing help – banners ads, text ads, site with gracphis and copywriting…anything & everything can help!
- There is customer support to help you in a timely manner, usually via a Help Desk.
- There are tracking and monitoring tools in place.
- Payment comes at a good pace (i.e. regularly during the month and after only a couple sales so that you’re not waiting for $10,000 or more in sales over 20 years or something). And payment also comes in an acceptable format (check or Paypal, for example .

Popular Methods of Affiliate Marketing that Work

Test, track, monitor ROI –the tweak SEO (Search engine optimization), website content, etc.

Set up your own blog and use it to post about your products and services

Set up your own site and use it as a home base for your affiliate marketing. Link it up with your blog, your review pages, your articles, etc.

Set up a review site & invite interaction

Set up a rating site & invite interaction

Add a forum, chat room or link to popular ones on your site for interaction.

Incorporate digital images, audio and video with your marketing mix

Use autoresponders and leads capture forms to generate leads: offer freebies, reports and guides to go with your products, learning series, ezine, articles, news, file sharing and more.

Write and submit articles to online directories and publishers and offline publishers. marketing

Press releases – submitted online and offline

Postcard marketing – sent via online methods and offline

Conduct regular learning series (via autoresponders, workshops, teleseminars, podcasts, videos, locally, at industry events…)

Focus on offline marketing, too: direct marketing campaigns, B2B telemarketing, fundraisers, community events, trade shows, etc.

Ask for 2 tiers or more profit or other benefits from the seller (like free membership or product samples or guides to include in your reviews, etc.)

Start your own affiliate marketing program and recruit your own affiliate marketers.

Learn about what ‘super affiliates’ and what it takes to become one. Then pump up your affiliate marketing!

Now the rest is up to you. Opportunity is there. It’s knocking at your door. It’s time to take action and get moving!


*Emarketer.com (2007). Online Ad Spending Hits New Record. Emarketer.com. May 25, 2007. Retrieved from http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1004963&src=article1_newsltr

**Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Affiliate marketing. Retrieved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing

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Saturday, June 09, 2007

Affiliate Marketing and PPC

For many affiliate marketers, pay per click or PPC is a cost-effective means of targeted Internet advertising. Here is how PPC search engines work.

These search engines place your listings online and then rate them based on bids. In short, whoever bids the highest amount moves to the top of the search engine. Hence affiliate marketers bid against each other to get higher rank for their targeted keyword ads.

The second highest bidder follows number one with his or her ad being placed underneath the first ad. Then the third highest bidder follows underneath the second’s ad, and so on.

Goal is to strive for the first page in search engine searches. Of course any of the top placements would be best.

How Affiliate Marketers Make Money with PPC

When someone clicks your ad in a PPC campaign, you pay for that click – whatever amount you bid, like 50-cents per click. However, note that as an affiliate marketer, you are only paid when people buy the products that you are promoting.

In other words the product seller, is not going to be reimbursing you for your PPC payouts. So make sure you have funds to cover this type of marketing and set budget limits until you learn and are very familiar with it, or you could lose a lot – fast.

However, some people set up web forms to capture and harvest leads for follow up emails so that they can increase their closing ratio over time. Their autoresponders hooked up through these forms send out messages regularly to make more money by trying to: cross sell, seek referrals, make back ends sales, up-sell and more.

So there are many ways to earn money from PPC campaigns. Just make sure you have money to cover clicks up front. Budget and monitor accordingly.

Features and Benefits for Affiliate Marketers

There are a couple major benefits with PPC campaigns. First, you get tracking links in your PPC ads, so you can monitor stats at any time to tweak your ad copy and check site clicks and conversion rate.

And second, the more targeted the ad, the more targeted the lead. You pay per click, so you may want to not use words like “Free” in your ad copy unless you are seeking sign ups and feel this will get the results you seek. Freebies only attract freebie seekers and not true buyers to your site.

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Friday, June 08, 2007

Mistakes to Avoid With Your Website

When first building a website there are a number of mistakes that can be made. These mistakes are easily over looked and they can quickly and immediately cost you customers and traffic. Some of the mistakes that can be made are avoidable and fixable.

Counters

Try to avoid using a visitor counter, especially the visible ones. They can backfire if they display low numbers. Visitors may not trust your product if they see you have a low number of visitors. If you must have a counter use the ones that are invisible so the visitor doesn’t see it. A better solution would be to use a statistics program. There are free programs out there.

Construction Signs

If your website is not ready to be shown to the world then avoid putting up under construction signs. Leave it offline until you activate it with content that will entice your visitors. Otherwise, you could end up creating permanent non-visitors.

The Simpler the Better

Try to use the flashy looking features sparingly. They can be distracting to your visitors and take their eye off the product you want them to be looking at. They can also make your website slow. Those that use older computers or a slower internet connection will have trouble viewing sites with heavy technology. There’s nothing more annoying to a visitor than a slow, unresponsive website.

Update Website

Regularly updating your website is something that is required. When people visit a site they look for relevance and the best way to display relevance is to update regularly. If people see a site not being updated and worked on they will not want to stay and look at it. Taking care of your site shows you care about it and the content on it.

Short and Sweet

People don’t have a lot of time to sit and read online a lot of time because they may be at work or on a short break. Don’t get too wordy and long winded. Offer short, to the point sentences and paragraphs that can be digested quickly by the reader. Use bullets and headlines as people scan for the most important facts and topics.

Proper Grammar

The worst thing anyone can do when writing website content is not take the time to do it properly. Poor grammar and misspelled words can be costly. People want to read content that is accurate and spelled correctly. Using proper grammar makes you appear confident in what you are saying and your site will look more professional.

Sell Your Product

Emphasize the best information and features of your product. What does it do? Why do people need this product or service more than anyone else’s. Finish with a powerful statement that will have your readers want to contact you, purchase your product or come back later. Be proactive and sell yourself.

Keep it Going

These tips will help to create a productive and successful website, but you have to keep doing it as well. As soon as your website is built and you don’t see too many visitors, don’t give up. Keep providing fresh content, helpful articles and information readers will find interesting. Build you links so you will be found on the internet. It is a big world out there.

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Thursday, June 07, 2007

Article Submitter Review

While article submission isn't anything shockingly new to the world of SEO, many people STILL don't do it... and for good reason. It takes so incredibly long to do manually.

I'll admit, I had tried article submission at one point, but after I finally found a few article directories to submit my articles to, and then after manually copying and pasting my information into the required textboxes on each submission site, I quickly realized that my time could be better spent doing something else.

Then I came across a free program created by Brad Callen and Bryxen Software, Inc. that allows you to automatically submit your articles to hundreds of article directories with a few mouse clicks. Basically all I had to do was input my article criteria into the software, ONCE! Then, the program would automatically fill in all of the required data at each of the submission websites. Pretty incredible if you ask me.

The only part I didn't understand was why the program is free... but I can't argue with that I suppose.

The software currently contains around 700 article directories, all free to submit your articles to. It is the most straightforward program that we've come across, in that all you need to do is:

1. Input your article details (i.e. title, article body, bio, etc.) into the software

2. Click on the directory you want to submit to

And then the program will automatically fill in your article details. Then, you simply click the submit button and your article is instantly submitted to the directory. Then, you can move to the next directory, go through the list, and by the time you're finished you'll have roughly 700 one way links pointing to your website.

I can't think of an easier way to get links. Of course, if you're going to get links this quickly, it's important to submit different variations of your articles, to make things look more natural to the search engines.

You can do this very easily via Article Submitter when you create your project in the beginning.

The software is constantly being updated and their is an incredible community of users established that all work together to make the software better and better, so you know you're getting great value for the money.

To check out the software, go here:

Article Submitter


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