A beginners guide to Affiliate Marketing

Obstacles for Affiliate Marketing

2012-09-17T12:12:00.003-07:00

Anyone who is considering launching their own Affiliate Marketing business needs to be aware of some of the basic concepts that go into building an online business. There are quite a few variables that exist that require your focus. In this post, I'll provide some examples of mistakes that are made so that you can avoid them, thus ensuring the success of your business.

Free Vs. Paid Web Hosting

Affiliate Marketing is a legitimate business, so take it seriously. Don't make the mistake of using free hosting and domain name services just to save on costs. While it looks attractive, you will only regret it. Web hosting is not expensive, so spend a few bucks upfront to get your Affiliate Marketing business started on the right foot.

it's important to make a good impression on your visitors and show your professionalism. Typically, free hosting companies require some sort advertising on your site. This in itself can distract your readers from your blog content. Additionally, most likely you will want to add your own affiliate links and/or banner ads to your Affiliate Marketing site. So, if you have the hosting companies banners along with your affiliate links and/or banner ads, your site becomes cluttered. Websites cluttered with advertisements are unattractive to most visitors and can even be penalized by the search engines for page ranking.

If you want more information on web hosting and registering your domain name, read my post Registering Your Domain Name.

Outdated Methods

The internet is evolving, at a very fast pace. So, keep yourself current on all the changes. This can be challenging, since it seems that Google is always making changes to their algorithms. Not only that, it seems that marketing methods are constantly changing.

So, the question is, how do you stay current?

Well, my blog is a great place to start (if I do say so myself), since I have done many posts on the changes by Google. Additionally, as I have stated in my post, Choosing a Successful Affiliate Marketing Training Program, there is a lot of free information on the internet. However, it's incomplete and outdated. So, for anyone who is considering starting their own Affiliate Marketing business, I recommend you learn from someone or a company that has a track record of success, such as Fast Cash Commissions.

Trial and Error

Wouldn't it be great if you were one of the lucky ones who found success at Affiliate Marketing right from the start? As much as we all would like that to happen, the reality is, it takes time along with trial and error. So, don't get discouraged from things that don't work. It happens, there really isn't a way of avoiding it. So, keep track of what works and what doesn't. the duplicate what works, and you should find success.

Multiple Streams of Income

Most Affiliate Marketing business take time to be successful. Sometimes this can be discouraging and cause some people to give up. So, while you are waiting for your Affiliate Marketing business to take hold (so to speak) try creating multiple streams of income for yourself. Consider doing other things to make money online. The following are sites that you will find useful and ones that I use myself:

For more information on creating multiple streams of income you may want to read my post, Financial Independence With Multiple Streams of Income

Thats it for now, until my next post...

Affiliate Marketing Has Low Start Up Costs

2012-08-20T11:23:00.000-07:00

Affiliate Marketing is ever-growing in its popularity. With today's economy, more people are jumping on the Affiliate Marketing band wagon in hopes of making money online. One of the main reasons is that Affiliate Marketing is becoming so popular is because it really is considered to be a low-risk and it allows people to make money online, from the comfort of their home or where ever they have online access. Another reason Affiliate Marketing is growing in popularity, it offers the opportunity for just about anyone to start their own online business with relatively low start-up costs.

I have written many posts about Affiliate Marketing and what it's all about. Basically, you promote quality products, services and/or programs. You make money when your site visitor makes a purchase on the merchant’s site after clicking on your affiliate link. It's a very simple process and if done correctly, it can be very profitable.

So in this post, I am going to go over some advantages of why Affiliate Marketing is a great option for working from home and making money online.

Minimal/Low Start Up Costs

Affiliate Marketing is considered to be a business, so you will need to check with your state and/or county to see what licensing is required. The cost for obtaining the licensing varies but it's typically low.

Since Affiliate Marketing is done online, so you don't need to open a brick and mortar store. You start your Affiliate Marketing business from the comfort of your home. So for the most part, all that is needed is an internet connection and a computer (laptop or desktop).

Now if you are new to Affiliate Marketing, then you will need to learn it from one source or another. There is an abundant amount of free information on the internet about Affiliate Marketing and how to do it. A lot of it is very helpful however (in my opinion) its incomplete and can be misleading. As I have stated in my previous posts, I believe that you should obtain some training from someone (such as Fast Cash Commissions) who has been successful at it so you too can be successful. Where ever you obtain your Affiliate Marketing training, the amount you spend to obtain the knowledge you need should be minimal, less than $75.

For various reasons, I recommend that you purchase your own web hosting, so that you may set up your own site. This is because you want to ensure that you web host can handle your traffic. You also want the security of having your Affiliate Marketing site not mysteriously disappearing one day which can happen with the free hosting. Additionally, you want to be able to create a unique Affiliate Marketing website, one that separates you from the rest. Purchasing web hosting is also very low-cost.

0 Inventory

One of the best things about Affiliate Marketing is, you do not need to carry any inventory. As noted above, you promote quality products, services and/or programs. So inventory is not a problems since you want your site visitors to click on your affiliate links. Since there is no inventory, you have no costs.

0 Employees

With Affiliate Marketing, the only employee is you. It's your business, so all the work get's done by you. So other than your time, there is no cost.

Now there may be times where you don't have he expertise of certain aspects your Affiliate Marketing business. That is where you rely on the knowledge of your trainer, assuming you have opted for that. There may be other times when you feel you don't have time for some things in which you can put it off until another day. You may also outsource the work, for a cost which is typically very minimal.

Minimal Customer Service

As noted above, Affiliate Marketing does not require having any inventory. So, you really don't have to deal with Customers. Now there is some Customer Service, as noted in my post Customer Service, Its Important Even in Affiliate Marketing, however it's very minimal in which there is no cost to you.

Conclusion

As you can see by the examples above, it's inexpensive to start an Affiliate Marketing business. So, if you would like to start your own business and work from home with Affiliate Marketing, give it a shot. It could be the best decision you'll ever make.

**On a side note, Fast Cash Commissions is the perfect place to learn everything about Affiliate Marketing. That's how I learned it.

Thats it for now, until my next post...

Link Trading, Does It Help Your Affiliate Marketing Site

2012-07-24T09:50:00.001-07:00

Does trading backlinks really help your Affiliate Marketing website?

It used to be that many people used to trade links with various other websites. Trading links was one of the many ways to generate traffic. Trading links also built and/or increased the amount of backlinks to a bloggers website. So, the question is, is this still a great way to create links for your Affiliate Marketing site or has it become a thing of the past?

Anyone in Affiliate Marketing or online marketing in general pretty much knows the importance of backlinks. I have written some posts (Links, Traffic and SEO, PageRank & How to Improve It, Backlink Building For Your Affiliate Marketing Site, More on Backlink Building) on backlinks, that go into more detail.

To briefly recap- backlinks provide your Affiliate Marketing website with authority and improve SEO. Search engines look at these inbound links as a sort of vote for your site. When you can create a large amount of links, the search engines will reward your Affiliate Marketing website with better rankings in their search results.

An important thing to remember is that every link that is made has a different benefit in the search engine eyes. So, if you have a link on someones site that has a page ranking of 5, it's actually worth more in the search engines eyes if it's on the home screen versus being buried in a sub-page. So make sure you look at the page your backlink is on, rather than the page rank of the websites home page.

Back to the question of does trading links really help?
well...it can be a good thing and it can also be bad. So, I'll cover both....

First the good....

Trading links can be useful, if you are linking to a site that is trusted. It can also be useful if the site has a good page rank and also has a steady flow of traffic. In order to maximize the link back to you site, try to get it on the other sites home page rather than one of the sub pages.

And now the bad....

Typically, when you trade backlinks, the link pointing back to your website is rarely on the home page. Unfortunately this lessens the quality and value of that backlink. Sometimes this can even be overlooked or not even be counted by the search engines. Additionally, most search engines, especially Google favors one way links rather than link exchanges. One way links have much more strength and quality then a link that has been traded. Lastly, you can also hurt your search engine rankings if you end up trading backlinks with a site(s) that had a bad reputation with Google.

Conclusion

I am not trying to minimize the benefits of trading links, since it can certainly help generate traffic to your Affiliate Marketing website. For me, I used this method of generating traffic in my beginning phase(s), when I first set up or created my Affiliate Marketing site. Once things were up and running smoothly and I had a good amount of traffic, then I went to the other ways of creating high quality backlinks to my Affiliate Marketing site, as discussed in my previous posts noted above.

Thats it for now, until my next post...

Does Your RSS Feed Work

2012-07-11T09:20:00.001-07:00

The posts below are some that I have written on the importance of RSS Feeds and how it can greatly increase the traffic to your Affiliate Marketing site.

Since writing those posts, I have subscribed to a lot of RSS Feeds from other blogs. Initially while subscribing to them, they appeared to work fine. However, some actually did not and some have become invalid over time. After receiving an e-mail notification today that another of the RSS Feeds I subscribe to is invalid, I thought I would write this post so that anyone who reads this can verify if their RSS Feed is valid.

As noted in my previous posts, RSS Feeds are very important and are a benefit for your Affiliate Marketing blog. Having a valid RSS Feed equals additional traffic, both new and returning. So, with that fact alone, its imperative that any blogger hoping to make money validates that their RSS Feed actually works.

I found this free and simple tool on FeedValidator.org. All you have to do is enter or paste the address of your Affiliate Marketing website (or any website) and it will scan your RSS feed for validity. Once it scans, you will get results on if its valid and what could be improved with it.

Thats it for now, until my next post.

Avoiding Online Scams

2012-06-29T17:51:00.001-07:00

I'm reading through Yahoo Answers today, searching under "work from home" and notice a common question. It seems that most people want to work from home however they want to know how to avoid work at home scams. So, I thought today's post would be about this subject.

The economy is at a lowest point and really it doesn't look to be getting better very quickly. The job market seems to be providing fewer and fewer opportunities for people to find work. So many are turning towards the internet as an alternative source to make money from the comfort of their own homes.

With a simple Google search, you will find a lot of work at home opportunities. However, a majority of these work at home opportunities are just schemes or scams. Unfortunately people are just trying to take advantage of your unfortunate situation by cheating you.

Most often those looking for work at home opportunities cannot differentiate between scheme/scam and the legitimate opportunity. So here are few tips that can help you to avoid those bogus work at home schemes/scams.

Too Good To Be True
If you find any work at home scheme that seems to be too good to be true, chances are its bogus. For example those work at home schemes that promise huge financial gains with little or no effort. Or a scheme that offers good/substantial pay without any prior experience. In reality nothing can make you a millionaire over night or without any effort. All legitimate businesses take work and time.

Be Patient & Do Your Research

If you come across a work at home opportunity that interest you, be patient. Take your time and do some research find out as much as you can about the opportunity and the company/individual offering it.

Some schemes have the 'today only' or ‘join today to get discount’ etc. Don't let these words persuade you into making a hasty decision. Those are just marketing technique's, most often used by bogus offers. See they know that if you have less time to make a decision, the chances are you will most likely fall for their bogus offer.

Make sure that you do adequate research before joining any work at home offer. Read articles and/or reviews written about the websites, research the company/individual on the Better Business Bureau to see what complaints they have had. Just by doing a general search in Google, you should be able to find a lot of information that should help in making your decision. It is always better if you know everything about the company/individual, their websites and even the success rate before you invest money and time into any offer.

Reputation
This tip goes along with the previous one about research. As you are doing your research, find out the reputation that company has, find out the brand value of such companies, and find out about the customers and business partners of those companies. A good company will have a working phone number, legitimate contact address, and other contact details. Try and contact them and get information directly. Call them directly to check the information.

Don’t Believe In Their Figures
Most work at home opportunities will advertise with huge earning figures that are intended to attract more people. While the figures are attractive and we would all love to making the same amount, those figures are not possible. Well not initially anyways. All businesses take time and effort to be profitable. So, while the numbers they show on their offers very well may be true for them, keep in mind that their business has been running for some time thereby allowing them to make that kind of money.

Check Out Refund Policy
Many work from home jobs offer refunds to customers if they are not satisfied. Keep in mind that just because they have a refund option, it does not mean that they are trust worthy. Carefully read through the refund policy, to get all details and understand al the procedures to get a refund. If a work from home offer has a refund option however it does not have any other details on how to actually get the refund or any contact information, its most likely a scheme/scam.

Conclusion

Work at home scams can be avoided by doing adequate research and by using your common sense. As a general rule, all get rich schemes are scams. As noted previously in this post, all work at home businesses take time and effort to be successful. In reality there is really nothing that will make you millionaire over night. If there was, the person who thought of it wouldn't share it with you without charging a hefty fee or a share of the profits.

Now if you read through my blog posts, you will find that I learned how to work from home in Affiliate Marketing, with Fast Cash Commissions, which is not a scam. I wrote several posts about my decision to learn it from them, which you will find helpful.

When I decided that I wanted to work from home, I followed the steps outlined in this post. During my research I found other work from home offers, (Survey's Paid, Legitimate Online Jobs, How to Create Mobile Apps, Mobile Blog Money) that are legitimate and are not scams. I included the links above to give you other work from home options,besides Affiliate Marketing.

Thats it for now, until my next post...

Effective Writing For Your Affiliate Marketing Blog.

2012-06-20T12:29:00.000-07:00

In this post, I am going to discuss writing effectively for your Affiliate Marketing blog.

Writing effectively is extremely important, since it engages your readers. It also reflects the message that you are trying to communicate. Writing effectively, helps to keep traffic on your site and more importantly, can help you make sales.

I have received comments and e-mails about my posts, commenting on how well they are written and how easy they are to read. I am often asked how I learned to write so well. So, to touch on that, in my previous profession, I worked in a position where all responses to customer inquiries had to be in writing. I was in that position for a long time and learned a substantial amount about writing effectively to communicate my message. Additionally, at that same company, I was a trainer in which I further refined my writing skills, since I had to teach others how to write effectively. With that being said, here are some tips for writing effectively, that you should use in your post on Affiliate Marketing

Choose a Good Font Style- The style or font type says a lot about you and your Affiliate Marketing blog. Style is more of a personal choice and will vary for personal vs business needs. Your writing style in your posts reflects your personality and the nature of your blog. For business blogs, such as Affiliate Marketing, I would stay away from the cursive or fancy styles

Font Size- This is really important. I always tell everyone, especially in business, you want a 12pt font size. You want your readers to be able to easily read your posts on Affiliate Marketing. If the font size is too small, it makes it much tougher and you will lose readers. Someone left a comment on one of my posts recently, so I went to the look at their blog. The font size (in my opinion) was simply too small and I found it very difficult to read. So, needless to say, I didn’t stay long.

Headlines- Headlines are very important. I wrote two (2) posts on this (Tips For Attention Grabbing Headlines, & Headlines and SEO) in which you should read.

Writing Tone- When I was a Trainer, the writing tone used to be the toughest struggle for most people to catch on to. Most people like to write as they talk, which should not be applied to your writing style in your blog posts. If you think about how people talk now days, with all the different styles, its pretty hard to find something that is common for everyone. So, I used to teach my students this, write as if you are talking to a third grader. At first this may seem a bit offensive but it’s really not meant to be in any way. When you talk to a third grader (or young child in general), you use short sentences (or phrases) and you explain things in more detail. This is perfect for writing your posts for your Affiliate Marketing blog. If you write as if you are talking to a third grader, you should be pretty successful in getting your message across. At the same time, you can always throw some of your personality into your writing style as well.

Good quality content, with plenty of keywords- This tip can be found in several of my posts and all over the internet since its very important for SEO. I say forget about the search engines and focus on your audience. In writing effectively for your Affiliate Marketing blog posts, narrow your focus when you create your content and use your keyword(s) as it naturally apply. Provide your readers what they want and everything else (SEO, traffic, etc) will fall naturally into place

Proof Reading- This is the most important thing in writing effectively for your Affiliate Marketing blog, or whatever/whenever you write. Mistakes are embarrassing and tend to discredit you. So, always proof read everything prior to publishing, to look for grammatical errors and misspelled words. As I would tell my students, the best way of proof reading is to have someone else take a look at it. A fresh pair of eyes will catch more mistakes than you will. Since you wrote whatever it is, your brain tells you whats there when in fact in may not be. Now, if no one else is available, try reading it out loud to yourself. You can also draft your post, take a short break then come back and proof read it.

For some, writing effectively can be tough, whether you’re doing it for your Affiliate Marketing blog or just writing a letter or e-mail. At first it can be tough, however with a little practice it gets easier. So go ahead and start writing, using the tips in this post.

Before you know it you’ll be writing effectively. Happy blogging!!

Thats it for now, until my next post….

Affiliate Marketing and Blogging Mistakes

2012-06-04T10:05:00.001-07:00

Making mistakes on or in your posts can have a negative effect on your Affiliate Marketing site. So, in today's post, I am going to go over just a few that should be avoided.

Inconsistency

Inconsistency doesn't translate well to your readers. Being inconsistent says something negative about you and your business. Your readers (current and future) look forward to reading your posts on Affiliate Marketing. That is, if you can show them that you are reliable and can be counted on to provide them with what they are looking for on a regular basis. Therefore, how often you post to your blog is important since they rely on you to consistently post valuable information.

So, suppose you want or intend to publish a post to your Affiliate Marketing blog every other day or maybe just twice a week. The duration of when you post is fine, just as long as you are consistent. Being consistent sets the pattern that your subscribers will get used to and will expect.

Content
It's important to keep your blog content relative to your niche. Lack of appropriate content gives your readers a reason not to return. Remember they come to your Affiliate Marketing site because they are interested in information related to your niche. So stick to topics that are easily identifiable to your niche. Provide content that is interesting and informative on the subject they are interested.

DONT DO Free Hosting!!
Affiliate Marketing is a business. So, you should really host your business on its own domain through a paid hosting plan like GoDaddy, BlueHost or HostZilla. See free hosting is fine, but I believe its more appropriate for a personal blog or website. Appearance is important in business, so you want to appear as professional as possible to your subscribers/readers.

One thing you should do is host your blog on your own domain by purchasing a name that's related to your Affiliate Marketing business. If you already have an existing site, you can create a sub domain from your existing site (businessname.com/blog). The first will cost you for the domain name and hosting unless you already have hosting that allows multiple domains to be hosted. The second typically will cost you nothing at all.

Here are some tips for finding/choosing a domain name for your Affiliate Marketing website. Find a name that is related to your business name. If your business name is too long, you can try using the first letters of each word. Make sure your blog domain name is easy to remember and keep it as short as possible. Always try to get a .com extension since it is the most widely recognized. Just try to make it short and sweet!I wrote a post about setting up a domain (Registering Your Domain Name) that provides valuable information on this subject.

Search Engine Optimizing (SEO)

Optimizing the posts and/or articles on your Affiliate Marketing blog is extremely important. It helps people find your site and/or articles. You can do keyword optimizing by making sure that your title has a keyword related to your article or post. Your article or post should be keyword rich as well. I have written several posts on SEO, that will provide all the information you need on this subject. Just click on SEO in the category cloud.

No Marketing For Your Blog.
Believe it or not, this is a common mistake for beginners. Regardless of whether you have a business blog and/or a personal blog, you want to market your blog(s) to drive traffic and eventually followers There are a lot of ways to market your Affiliate Marketing blog. This includes social networking (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc), article marketing, commenting on related blogs, backlinks, social bookmarking, etc.

As stated earlier in this post, Affiliate Marketing is a business, therefore it stands to reason, the more readers and/or followers, the better chance your business has of being successful. So, avoid the mistakes noted above.

Thats it for now, until the next post....

Guest Blogging,

2012-05-22T14:04:00.000-07:00

For anyone who is just starting out in Affiliate Marketing and/or blogging, it is important to understand that guest blogging is becoming more and more popular. Posting guest blog posts on other popular blogs is great way to get targeted visitors to your site. Its fast and best of all, its free. In this post, I am going to expand on the some of the many benefits.

*Guest blogging helps improve your exposure- Think about this, a blog owner has an established blog that they put a lot of effort into. Most likely they have an established a good following, or audience through all their hard work. You come along and do a guest blog post for the blog owner. Your guest post results in you and your Affiliate Marketing blog being exposed to the established audience. This can have quite the positive effect on the traffic to your site.

Note- if you have created a brand for yourself, put your brand on your guest post. This will help it become more recognized, since more eyes will be seeing it.

*Guest blogging increases the traffic to your Affiliate Marketing site- This benefit follows right along with the benefit above. Traffic that is the result of guest blogging, is better than any other, especially paid traffic. See if a blog owner allows you to do a guest post, you can almost consider it to be an endorsement by that blog owner. So, when write a post on their blog and its within your niche, then the traffic that is directed to your site is considered to be qualified or is already targeted. Basically, they will have been directed to your site by the endorsement of their favorite bloggers, rather than by advertising. Which is so much more beneficial.

*Guest blogging provides high quality backlinks- I have done a few posts (Links, Traffic and SEO, PageRank, What Is It & How To Improve It, Google’s Latest Update & Your Rankings) now about backlinks where I discussed how important they are and how they improve SEO along with PageRank. So, guest blogging is another great way to get high quality backlinks. See, your SEO and Pagerank will most definitely improve since it’s exactly what the search engines are looking for in terms of linking.

*Guest blogging provides long term backlinks- In addition to high the quality backlinks noted above, guest blogging also results in long-term links. See the links on your guest blog post are pretty much permanent. This is because most blog owners keep their posts available for the life of their blog.

*Guest blogging can increase your social media followers- Almost all bloggers have sharing options on their blogs. So, if you write a guest post on their blog and it gets shared, just imagine where that can lead.

I have only covered just a few of the many benefits of guest blogging above. So, go find a blog (or several) that is within your niche. See if you can provide a guest post (or several) for the bog owner. If the owner allows it, write a great post on their blog site. Then you can see all the benefits it has for your Affiliate Marketing site.
…

Information on Links, Traffic & SEO

2012-05-08T11:30:00.001-07:00

One question that I often hear is, how are links important in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Links are extremely important for SEO. Links help your Affiliate Marketing site in many ways. In this post, I am going to provide more information on links for SEO.

Links help your PageRank

PageRank, briefly, is the "reputation" of your Affiliate Marketing site. PageRank is based on the number and quality of sites that are linking to yours. It's one of the core ideas behind Google's ranking algorithms. (You may want you read my previous post (Google’s Latest Update & Your Rankings) on recent changes by Google.) Even though it isn't the only thing that determines your search engine ranking, it's a useful thing to work on building. Just know that the only way to build PageRank is by getting links to your Affiliate Marketing site.

Links bring you traffic

If you are a follower of my blog, you will know I have written many posts on how to increase traffic. If you look at them, almost all of them mention building backlinks. Simply stated, links bring the traffic to your site, which is the ultimate goal. So, if you can get your links in places where they will receive a lot of click-through traffic and/or targeted visitors, then you have done well. Just remember that you shouldn't overlook blog sites or social networking sites when you're building links. Both of them can generate lots of good, targeted traffic.
Links which get traffic are typically enticing, interesting and/or arouse curiosity. One good trick is to leave a thought unfinished, or ask a question that people want to know the answer to. Then people have to click on your link to find out. Just don't be spammy, as was discussed in my previous post (SEO and Blog Commenting). Remember you're trying to get people to click on your link. Most likely They won't click on it if it looks like suspect or shady.

What is a good link?

So I bet you are asking, what makes a good link? Well, some links are better than others. What makes a good link depends on which of the benefits discussed above interests you the most. Generally links appear on prominent pages, rather than being buried deeply inside a site. Ideally, your links will appear on pages that get a lot of traffic and are relevant to your Affiliate Marketing site and niche. Relevant means that your link is on a site that is related to yours or is within your niche. There's not much point in your fishing website being linked to an automotive forum. Where ever possible, your links will come from authority sites and/or well-respected sites. High PageRank sites are great, as are sites with a .edu top-level domain.

If you are trying to improving your ranking for keywords, then use Links that improve your ranking for a specific keyword use your keyword in their anchor text and aren't marked with the "nofollow" attribute. Links to Improving your PageRank come from sites with high PageRank. They appear on pages where there aren't too many other links and aren't marked with the "nofollow" attribute.

Is there a bad link?

We asked and answered the question about good links. So now lets cover a bad link.
For the most part, all inbound links to your site are good. They all help you, by giving you PageRank, helping you to rank for keywords, or sending you traffic. Even if they don't do any of these things very effectively, they certainly can't hurt you. Your Affiliate Marketing site won't be penalized in any way if bad, disreputable sites link to yours. The worst that can happen is that your site becomes the subject for a "Google bomb", which means it starts to rank well for undesirable keywords. That however can turn out to be a good thing though. Just be careful if being well ranked for undesirable keywords should start to happen since there are some bad things that can result from that. You can end up being penalized for associating with bad internet citizens. Your Affiliate Marketing site may end up getting tarred with the same brush as the other sites. You then might find your rankings plummeting or your Affiliate Marketing site being de-indexed. That's definitely a bad thing and not what you want for your Affiliate Marketing site.

So, now you have more information on how beneficial links are for your Affiliate Marketing site. Go out and work on them, as they are essential.
That's it for now, until the next post....

Blog Cluttering

2012-04-12T10:35:00.000-07:00

If you surf the web and take a look at some of the blog sites that are out there, you will see that a lot bloggers are posting ads everywhere on their site. While this blog is about Affiliate Marketing, I have looked at blogs regarding all subjects and it seems there are so many blogs out there that simply don’t have enough good quality content. They seem to have an over abundance of ads (paid ads, banner ad’s, sidebar ads, etc.). Some blogs are so cluttered with ads, that you have a hard time finding the content, which in my opinion is not a good thing. It’s not that ads don’t work because they certainly do. I admit that sometimes I see an ad that catches my eye and I click on it. However, I really don’t think that you should clutter your blog site with tons and tons of advertising.

When creating a plan for your blog on Affiliate Marketing, or whatever type of business/niche you choose, try to limit the number of ads. What you want to do is focus on writing good quality articles and/or blog posts. Spend your time creating good quality content that will turn you into “the expert”. Write articles or post that have information that helps others.

The following are just some of the benefits of putting good quality content in your blog posts, versus cluttering your site with ads:

people read content
people tend to scan and skip ads
people save good content for later reference
people forward your good content to others who may be interested
people look for good content to add to their newsletters or websites
people will see you as the expert, rather than someone who spams ads
people will be curious to know more about you and/or your products
people will want to know what else you have posted in your blog
people will go to your site to see what you do
people will remember your site name
people will perceive you as a resource
Good blog content will make you a google “celebrity.” That way yo will generate more traffic based on your content indexed by google (ref: Indexing Your Website)
most importantly, people will look forward to hearing from you, and will return again and again

As you can see by the tips noted above, there are tons of benefits for adding good content to your blog posts on a regular basis vs cluttering your site with ads. One of my previous posts, Blogging Is Important, provides some additional information that you should find helpful about blogging in general.

So, my guess is that you may be asking, what is considered to be a good content to ad ratio. Well, if you search the web, there are a lot of different opinions on this matter. Of course, this blog represents my opinion.So, when you set up your blog, do what feels right for you. Then just be open to change. Take the feedback of your visitors as they may post comments about the cluttered ads. You could even write a post about your content and invite your readers to post their comments. You could send an e-mail or even send a newsletter to your viewers.

Fast Cash Commissions= Successful Affiliate Marketing

2012-04-07T23:17:00.001-07:00

Anyone who reads my posts can see that I get quite a bit of comments, a lot of which compliment this site, my writing, etc. First, I really appreciate all the compliments that I have received and I welcome all comments (good and constructive). So, I am often asked how long I have been blogging and some have even asked who or where I learned from. Two (2) of my previous posts, Choosing a Successful Affiliate Marketing Training Program and More On a Successful Affiliate Marketing Training Program, talk about this subject. If you haven't had a chance to read them, I recommend that you do since both provide very valuable information.

In both posts, I really promote Fast Cash Commissions. The reason for that is simple,90% of what I know about Affiliate Marketing is the result of Fast Cash Commissions and the personalized coaching that they offer. I say 90% because, after deciding to work from home, I chose to pursue Affiliate Marketing which at the time I knew nothing about. Actually, I had heard that Affiliate Marketing had potential to make money and there are people who were very successful at it. While I was able to find a lot of free information on the internet, it just felt as if there where some things that were missing. Since, I knew absolutely nothing about Affiliate Marketing, I decided to obtain some training, from someone that was successful at it. After extensive research, I chose Fast Cash Commissions.

Here is some information not contained in my two previous posts.. At first I almost didn't choose Fast Cash Commissions because the name just didn't seem real and I thought it was a scam. See, after deciding that I wanted to pursue Affiliate Marketing, I was checking out some sites that made that infamous claim to make me money quick and I must have entered my name and e-mail address. If you have looked at any sites for Affiliate Marketing or maybe even a site that offers a work from home opportunity, you are aware that most provide very limited information on their initial (landing) pages. In order to get all the information about what exactly you are doing to make your money online, work from home or whatever the claim is, you have to give them your name and e-mail address. So, I guess I gave my information and at some point I received an e-mail that lead me to the Fast Cash Commissions. I am not really sure what intrigued me about Fast Cash Commissions however something did. I remember narrowing it down to two (2) companies and I chose Fast Cash Commissions based on the reviews that I found. Additionally, I was not able to find anything that advised me that Fast Cash Commissions was a scam.

So lets briefly talk about the scams... If you search almost any place on the internet (try Yahoo Answers) for any of the words or phrases related to making money online (make money online, work from home, online scams, online survey, etc) you will see that just about everyone thinks that the concept making money online is a scam or it simply isn't possible. Well, I have to admit that I used to be one of those people. It wasn't until I lost my job and had a hard time find another one, that I actually started looking into the matter of working from home and making money online. Initially, the sites that I came across and the information that I found, didn't do much to change my opinion. After researching most of the sites that I had came across, I found that they were selling Herbalife or Amway, which I wanted absolutely no part of. The others offered to make me money or rich after signing up, for basically doing nothing. of course, this sounds really nice and would be ideal but in reality those claims simply are bogus. I know that any legitimate business, whether it be a brick and mortar, work from home or whatever, takes effort and good hard work. Fast Cash Commissions only stated that with good hard work and effort, I could make some money. I was not able to find this statement with any other company.

During my research of Fast Cash Commissions , I found the following statement:

"I’d personally advocate Fast Cash Commission to any person who’s decided to be one of the major pieces in internet marketing. For less than 100 bucks this merchandise is a deal that can’t be conquer merely for the reason that it’s coming within the most effective within the marketing and advertising and internet marketing business enterprise, this by yourself would make the products a move forward in the levels of competition. Overall this merchandise is assured to generate another person or everyone slightly or maybe even quite a bit wealthier than they had been previous to it."

Source: Online Scams Uncovered

After reading the above state along with everything else, I was sold. I signed up, watched all the training material offered on the site and began my adventure/journey in Affiliate Marketing. Shortly thereafter, I signed up for their personalized coaching, which I didn't find to be offered with any other program. I have not looked back since and have never regretted my decisions since.

Conclusion- I have learned just about everything I know from the personalized coaching I received since purchasing Anthony Morrison's Fast Cash Commissions program. I have shared and continue to share that knowledge with all of you, my readers. I try to explain everything that I learned the best that I can, however, I still highly recommend Fast Cash Commissions, to anyone who wants to be successful in Affiliate Marketing. I also recommend their personal coaching program, especially for the beginning Affiliate Marketer. I recommend that because the information that I share is certainly beneficial for you, however there is no way that I can put all of what I have learned from them on this blog.

Affiliate Marketing & RSS Feeds

2012-03-30T10:51:00.001-07:00

Traffic is the life blood of any website, for Affiliate Marketing or any other business If don’t get any or have very little traffic, it seriously limits your chances of success. I have done several posts (Promoting Your Affiliate Marketing Business, Generating Traffic, Indexing Your Affiliate Marketing Website) now on how to increase traffic. The subject of this post is on RSS Feeds, another valuable tool to help increase traffic.

RSS (real simple syndication) feeds provide online business owners, bloggers, and Affiliate Marketers the opportunity to connect with members of their target market in an ‘ongoing fashion’. While it is still essential for a website to feature valuable content which interests others to be successful, RSS feeds have the ability for a site owner or blogger to send out notification of new content or promotions to interested subscribers. Thus, allowing them to stay in contact with previous visitors like never before.

Visitors who find a site or blog useful and entertaining could easily subscribe to the RSS feed and receive notification and have and easy access to any future site updates. This adds to an advantage of being able to keep in touch with past visitors, and in this way, would increase repeat business for a site. There are a couple other reasons why businesses are now embracing the use of RSS feeds:

1. RSS feeds increase your chances of others linking to your content, mentioning your site, and spreading your business around by word of mouth.

2. Having an RSS feed to your site aids in your ranking with search engines.

3. With RSS feeds, you could be able to get your content indexed with search engines much faster.

4. You can attract traffic to your site that does not originate from search engines results pages, if you have RSS feeds installed on your site

5. Since your content is distributed to all subscribers, the is always the chance of your content catching on and “going viral” as it spreads from one person to another.

When you have RSS feeds operating with multiple sites, you could essentially get free marketing and traffic for your Affiliate Marketing site which is beneficial for your business! Some websites which operate RSS feed directories receive thousands upon thousands of visits every single day. So, if you are listed with them, you get to benefit from the constant flow of traffic which you do not have to pay for!

Most people do not realize how powerful RSS feeds can be. Unfortunately, they are not using this tool to its greatest ability. They use it to some minor extent, but they do not understand or know how to get the back links that they should be receiving from the usage of RSS feeds. Additionally some do not understand that RSS feeds can improve their page ranking with the search engines. All in all, if you could grasp the concept and understand the application of RSS feeds, you could take a huge leap ahead of all your competition!

Adding a RSS feed is fairly simple. You should be able to use your web creation software to easily create it. I recommend you stick with the universally known orange rss button.
If you want to see substantial increases of traffic to your site and watch your Affiliate Marketing business grow by leaps and bounds, then you really can’t afford to pass up on RSS feeds.

So, maybe you are struggling with the decision of whether to implement RSS feeds or not, consider the following benefits for those who use RSS feeds as part of their content and communication plan.
The benefits for anyone who decides to implement RSS feeds on their Affiliate Marketing blog/website can be and are numerous:

1. RSS Feeds Save You Time

RSS subscribers can quickly scan RSS feeds, without having to visit each and every website. Subscribers can then click on any items they are interested in, to get additional information.

2. RSS Feeds Are Timely

RSS feeds will automatically update themselves any time new information is posted. So the information your subscribers receive via their RSS reader or news aggregator is timely.

3. RSS Feeds are Spam Free

Subscribers don’t have to worry about wading through huge amounts of spam in an attempt to get to the information they are actually interested in.

4. Opt-In Option

The RSS subscriber chooses what they want to see. Subscribers also choose what information they wish to receive. Subscribers are more likely to opt in since they know that they have full control, and that they do not have to provide any personal information to subscribe.

5. Unsubscribing Is Easy

At first thought, this may not seem to be a benefit. However, in the end it is since unsubscribe (or cancelling) an RSS feed is very simple. So, if for some reason, your reader does not like information contained in an RSS feed, they can simply remove the RSS feed from their RSS reader or news aggregator.

6. Alternate Communication Channel

RSS feeds provide you with alternate communication channels for your Affiliate Marketing business. The more channels you provide, the more opportunities you have to connect with your customers and potential customers.

7. Expands Audience Through Syndication

The very nature of RSS feeds is that it is designed specifically for syndication (i.e. publication by others). Any sort of syndication can expand a company’s reach and strengthen the company brand.

8. Can Increase Backlinks

When an RSS feed is syndicated, it can increase the number of links back to the original website. Additional incoming links will help a Affiliate Marketing website rank better in organic search engine rankings.

9. Increases Productivity

RSS increases productivity by allowing your readers to quickly scan new posts and headlines. That way your readers spend time on the items of interest.

10. Competitive

Your competitors probably use Rss Feeds. So one way to remain competitive is to implement RSS feeds. That way you can keep your competition from getting ahead of you.

While there are plenty of positive for Rss Feeds, unfortunately there are a few negatives

1. Some Readers Do Not Know How to Subscribe

While Rss Feeds are becoming more and more popular, some people do not know how to subscribe. This mostly applies to the new internet user, in which you would not think is possible, however it is.

2. Your Content Can Easily Be Copied

RSS feed content can easily be copied and replicated. This can happen whether you want it to be or not.

3. Tracking Subscribers Can Be Difficult

It can difficult to accurately track the number of subscribers who read an RSS feed or the items contained in an RSS feed. This is due in part to the fact that at its heart, RSS is all about achieving the widest syndication possible.

4. Source Origination Difficult

With RSS feeds it canb sometimes difficult to discern the origin of an item, especially when its syndicated. Unfortunately, the metrics available are not always reflective of the traffic received.

There you pretty much have it. Enjoy!!!

Struggling to Find Your Niche?

2012-03-28T12:14:00.000-07:00

In my previous post, Choosing a Successful Affiliate Marketing Niche, I wrote about finding your niche for your Affiliate Marketing blog and/or website. In that post I said you could build your Affiliate Marketing business by choosing a niche on something that you are passionate about. While this is true, this assumes that you can find something you are passionate about.

So, a few questions come to mind...

What if you can’t find a niche market that you are passionate about?
also

What if there is no money in the niche markets you enjoy the most?

These are good questions. I have searched other Affiliate Marketing websites and have even searched Affiliate Marketing forums. So far, I have not been able to find a clear cut answer to these questions. So, I believe that it is assumed that everyone can find their niche, or at least something that they are interested in. However, what happens if you are unable to find your niche and/or there is no money in what you enjoy most??

I'll take a shot at providing some steps to help answer those questions...

First, let’s take a quick look back at my previous post, Choosing a Successful Affiliate Marketing Niche, in which I provided the following steps:

1. Make A List Of Your Passions
2. Make A List Of Things You Do Well
3. Merge The Two Lists Together
4. Choose Your Favorite Niches
5. Determine The Traffic Potential
6. Determine The Blogs Money Making Potential
7. Time For Your Affiliate Marketing Niche

So, if you go through all of the steps above and none of the niches that you are passionate about look profitable, then try skipping over step 1 (Make A List Of Your Passions). If you start at step 2 (Make A List Of The Things You Do Well), you will have a list of niches that you are good at and should be able to make money. If none of the niches that you are good at, or have knowledge about, are niches that you think you can make money at (which is possible, but unlikely), then try skipping steps1 through 4. So, only doing steps 5 though 7, means that you just need to find profitable niches. At this point you should be able to find a profitable niche in which you want to target for your Affiliate Marketing blog.

If the above steps don't help, then maybe you can just consider the top categories. For that I refer you to my previous post, Popular Affiliate Marketing Categories.

What about the Passion?
In my previous post, I indicated that passion is one of the biggest keys and it is. You should be passionate about about the niche that you choose for your Affiliate Marketing business. Just keep in mind that loving what you do is a choice. You can choose to love any niche and is an important principle to learn. This is so important I am going to repeat it in big bold letters:

“Loving what you do is a choice. You can choose to love any niche.”

You don’t have to be passionate about a niche to make money online. However, you need to become passionate about everything you do in that niche (marketing, writing about it, etc.). You need to be passionate about what you are doing, to make it easier to stick with it long term and most of all to be successful Your passion is your choice. You can choose to love what you are doing, or you can choose to hate it. The decision is yours. When you choose to love what you are doing, then you will be much more likely to create a successful Affiliate Marketing business for yourself.
Hope this helps in choosing a niche for your Affiliate Marketing blog.

Successful Affiliate Marketing Tips

2012-03-24T20:53:00.000-07:00

Here are some additional tips to improve traffic, which will help your Affiliate Marketing website and business be successful.

Back-links help to improve your SEO

One of the most important elements of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is link building. This is definitely the way to go to experience tons of no-cost traffic flooding to your Affiliate Marketing site. The internet is getting bigger and at a much faster rate, which means it’s important to keep your site ahead of your competition by creating more quality back-links. If done correctly, proper link building can bring higher search engine rankings as well as a higher Google Page Rankings. This is a terrific way to increase traffic since every single link that leads to your site is an entry point for visitors to come through. In previous times, people would exchange links. Exchanging links is still a good idea, however, search engines now prefer one sided linkings.

Create a Logo and Make sure your logo gets noticed

If you are starting your own business, think about making yourself a logo, or something standardized like that for your business. Think about all the successful business out there, they all concentrate on a logo or branding. So, make yourself a logo and work on getting it visible across multiple social media channels by using the same logo as your profile photo. Facebook, and Twitter are great channels when used properly, especially when it comes to creating awareness of your Affiliate Marketing website, which should have your brand or logo shown someplace.

Automate only 50% of the time

To facilitate social media management, advanced affiliates use automation publishing tools. The good news is that many of them are free! When you sign up to sites like Ping.FM and Twitterfeed and set it up so that you can post messages through multiple social media accounts. If your Affiliate Marketing blog is on WordPress, you can also use the plugins to automatically publish your blog your content across almost all social media accounts. Before using any automation tool, keep in mind that you should not automate your content more than 50% of the time. Studies have shown that personalized social media messages get better responses, so remember that while these tools are meant for convenience, they should not completely replace you.

Affiliate Marketing, Tips For Attention Grabbing Headlines

2012-03-22T10:05:00.001-07:00

Effective headlines can make all the difference in the world, for your blog on Affiliate Marketing. Headlines can determine whether your site visitors reads your post(s) or moves on to another website or blog. Keep in mind that there are a lot of other blogs on Affiliate Marketing that your readers can choose from. So if your audience is not interested in reading your posts, your blog followers wont grow and there is less chance of success. One way to keep visitors reading is to create attention-grabbing headlines. Remember, that the headline is one of the first thing that is seen.

Here are some tips that may help:

1. Turn each headline into a benefit-oriented statement. Reading headlines that tell how great your Affiliate Marketing business is or focusing only on the features of your product or service simply don't work. Instead, speak to what appeals to your readers and or try offering something.

2. Make headlines short, sweet and to the point. Sometimes your reader's attention span can be measured in milliseconds. So as demonstrated in the picture to the right, get to the point, and do it quickly. Use as few words as possible to entice your reader to continue reading.

3. Don't sensationalize your headline. Ever read a headline that sounded too good to be true? That's exactly what your reader will think if you promise too much in your headline. Keep headlines factual and exciting.

4. Immediately explain your headline in the posts that follows. Once you've got your readers attention with exciting headlines, make sure your post tells the story or gives the information your headline indicates. Try do it as soon as possible, or your reader may quit reading after less than a paragraph.

5. Use attention-grabbing verbiage. Don't be shy with your headlines. Use words and phrases that give your reader an enticement to keep reading. Keep in mind that if you are the reader and you see headlines starting with Free, Secrets of..., Tips to..., or a question, you'll probably keep reading so you don't miss anything. Your readers feels the same way.

6. Keep your target audience in mind. Explain the benefits of your product or service in a way that always appeals to your target market. Never forget who they are, what they like/dislike, what problems they face, and what solutions they need.

7. Test your materials on a knowledgeable audience. Put your piece to the test by asking people you trust to evaluate it and give you honest feedback. Use the feedback (good or bad) to refine your headlines to make them even better.

8. Lastly, and most important, picture yourself as the reader and ask yourself if you would read the article with a headline like that. Chances are, if you wouldn't read it, your readers aren't going to either.

Hope these help to make draw attention to your Affiliate Marketing blog.

Breaking Your Blog Traffic Addiction

2012-03-21T16:41:00.001-07:00

When I decided one of my niche's would be Affiliate Marketing and I first started blogging, I kind of got sucked into this analytical quicksand (so to speak) and thankfully I survived. In the beginning, for someone who has never done this before, I found it to be very exciting to watch my blog about Affiliate Marketing grow and grow. After waking up in the morning and couldn't wait to check and see how many hits I had over night on my blog. When I was away from my house, I would check the hits from my cell phone too.

The thing with checking your traffic, e-mails and comments, it can and often does lead to procrastination. You think to yourself, "someone may have sent me an e-mail or left me a comment, I have to check or respond." Then you go to your blog, log into your admin area, and proceed to check for comments and then you go check your e-mail(s). This cycle could go on and on. Without even knowing it, that cycle lasted all day (I know because it’s been done!). This means that you're actually less productive because you didn't concentrate on the important things, like getting more traffic. Unfortunately this analytical quicksand could be a bad thing since it could actually reduce your traffic which is exactly the opposite of what you watch traffic for.

So, here are a few techniques that will help you (just like they helped me) to be productive and help your blog about Affiliate Marketing.

1. Make a Plan

Now I know the nature of most people not to plan, especially in the beginning. That is how I got stuck in the rut in the first place. I would say to myself, “I’ll just check this while I am thinking of what to do.”
So the way to get around this is to plan out your day the best that you can. If you can plan your day, the day before, that's ideal. If not, then plan your day first thing in the morning, before you get on the computer or even look at it. Put your plan on paper if you have to. Give yourself tasks and time limits for the things you are going to work on for your affiliate marketing blog. If you are part-time, then plan when you are going to work and plan on what you are going to work on during that time. Do not use the excuse, “I only have a couple of minutes.” A couple of minutes is enough time to get a bit of exposure for your blog.

Try going to another blog and writing a comment. Or you could even find a good forum to see if anything interesting has been talked about that day and if there is anything you can help with. If appropriate, leave a comment that maybe includes a link to your blog. This only takes a short amount of time and your efforts could pay off with more site traffic and maybe even a back-link or two.

2. Restrict Your Time

This method is very simple. Just do not allow yourself to go look at your emails. comments or your analytics outside a certain time of the day. Write down all of the things that are included in your “procrastination list” and then give yourself a small window of time during the day that you are allowed to check them.

This is the method that I used for myself. I would restrict myself to where I allowed myself to look at them first thing in the morning and then again after I had finished my work for that day. Each time I tried to limit myself to 15 minutes or less. This may sound a little extreme to some, however when I look back over how much time I spent looking at stats, looking for e-mails and/or comments, I know the restriction was worth it.

3. Stay Productive

This may seem obvious to most, but its easy to get stuck in the quicksand without even knowing or realizing it. So this very simple, as soon as you think of going to check up on your stats, comments or e-mails, redirect your activity by changing the thought into something constructive. For example, every time you have a thought of doing one of those things, immediately do something else like write an article or socialize on your networks (yes, this can also be a form of procrastination, but that’s another article entirely!). After doing this for a little while, you will soon get into the habit of doing constructive things.

Try the methods above. Once you try them, you should see the results relatively quickly in your traffic rankings. Keep in mind that everything you are doing will help you in the end. While checking your stats, comments and/or e-mails are important, they shouldn't be the main focus and it should be done at the appropriate time(s) of your day.

Advertising Your Affiliate Marketing Website

2012-03-20T13:44:00.002-07:00

With the easy access that the internet provides, it provides a challenge since it there is as much competition as you can imagine. It is extremely crowded and congested. Even affiliate marketing is a field where you can find a millions of webmasters, running their affiliate sites.

Unfortunately just having a website is not enough to make your affiliate marketing business successful and stay above or at least in line with your competition. You must take other alternatives that allow the online community to easily find and access your affiliate marketing website. You have to expose your affiliate marketing website, or make it be known. It has to be visible, it has to be frequently targeted by consumers and internet surfers.

In order to do this, at some point you will need to invest in marketing for your affiliate marketing website. Two (2) options that are available to you are SEO and PPC. These are probably the most desirable alternatives you can get for your affiliate marketing business as a good strategy for search engine marketing.

SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
Recent studies show that 60% – 70% of internet surfers and users rely on using a search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing) to find and locate web sites and pages. SEO is the process taken to make sure that the internet uses will find your website when ranked among the top results of a search. This way you can make sure that you will be visible and can clearly stand out from your competition.

In SEO, the results from a search engine are natural and is based on the content of your site. So there is no need for you to pay for the clicks. However SEO requires you to spend some time doing research to get good, authentic content on your site, along with plenty of back links and a good combination of ads and of course target audience.

The SEO process is a long term and may require several months before the proper outcome is fully achieved. However, once the goal is accomplished, you will definitely get a steady source of traffic which results in additional profit. Just work on your internet site daily, and you'll the to where you need to be.

PPC

PPC stands for Pay Per Click.

PPC is basically, paid advertising on a search engine. These are sponsored listings the internet user sees whenever they make a search. So, if a internet user does a search, sees your add and clicks on it, a small charge is incurred for that click.

The first thought is that PPC advertising can be very expensive, especially for the someone who is just starting out in affiliate marketing. Well the search engines have a few safeguards in place to protect you and your wallet (or credit card).

One safeguard with PPC advertising is that you can control your affiliate marketing campaign as you get to create your ad(s). You can manage the target audience and stay within a daily budget since the ad campaign has a daily spending limit. When your daily spending limit has been reached by the target number of clicks, your affiliate marketing ads will no longer be displayed until the next time period.

So could it possibly happen that someone out there will go clicking on your ad, time and time again? This of course is possible and will definitely give you a large bill without the expected profit on your part. One safeguard that the search engines have is that they are able to recognize fraudulent click(s).
With PPC advertising you can also specify the target market, either by topic, industry and/or geographical location. Additionally, you can verify that your ads are showing and check to see if they are competitive.

Now when you set up your PPC add with the search engine, there is a bidding process. The highest bidder for the price per click will definitely get the chance to be first one listed in the search engine results. Just because you are not the highest bidder doesn't mean that your add won't be shown. There are a lot of ways to properly utilize PPC advertising where you can be one of the first ones shown, even though you are the lowest bidder. That is where proper training comes in, see my previous posts (Choosing a Successful Affiliate Marketing Program, More on Leaning From a Successful Affiliate Marketing Program)

In deciding which of the two strategies will work right for you, think of your goals and of your resources. They definitely offer benefits and advantages that will work for your good. The better way to approach these two options is to evaluate them according to your short term and long term plans. Take the PPC course for your short term goals and choose SEO for your long term goals.

There world is out there for you now. Just make sure you do what will work best for your entrepreneurial endeavors and visions. The secret to success lies in your hands. Just study your options well and you’ll get exactly what you want.

Tips for Your Affiliate Marketing Blog

2012-03-19T09:52:00.002-07:00

In my previous post, Simple Easy Ways to Earn Money Online for Everyone, I advised to set up an online blog.

Well here are some tips for you to consider when creating your blog-

Consider your Audience – start with your reader when considering what to promote. Relevancy is always key, especially for Affiliate Marketing.
Genuine Recommendations and personal endorsements always work best – recommendations of things you personally and/or genuinely like are always best.
Link to Quality Products – the better the products that you recommend the more your readers will thank you for suggesting them.
Contextual Deep Links work Best – in general you’ll have more luck promoting a product from within a post than on a sidebar
Consider positioning of links – links/banners that are in parts of your post/blog that where readers look work best (top of posts for example)
Traffic levels are Important – the more eyeballs your promotion gets the better
Diversify without Clutter – some products work better for some audiences than others – so promoting a variety of products can be good – promoting too many is of course not good.
Be Transparent – don’t try to trick people into clicking your links. Be as forthcoming as you can
Combine with other Revenue Streams – every blog is different, some will work better than others with affiliate marketing while others will work better with advertising. However I find on many blogs advertising and affiliate marketing can work well in tandem.
Track results – if you don’t have some way of working out how your promotions are converting you could be wasting your time.
Build Your Network- the bigger and stringer your network is, the better your Affiliate Marketing business works.
Try Different Mediums- promotions work differently on different mediums. Just as with any business, Affiliate Marketing is competitive and is always evolving, so always try different approaches. Find out what works best and go for it.

I hope this helps.

Promoting your site, additonal information

2012-03-17T20:42:00.000-07:00

As indicated in my last post, Promoting your Affiliate Marketing business is extremely important and those who master this will help to ensure their survival and success. Today's post will provide a few more tips on how you can promote your Affiliate Marketing business, more specifically your blog.

So, you as blogger, might have great things on your site. This could include good content, a good website design, informative video's, good graphics, etc. However, these things alone will not get you more blog readers since there are thousands of blogs being created every day and you have to establish yourself on the internet. People do not know that your blog exists, so you have to let them know you are there. You have to let them know that your blog is here and will be for some time. You also have to show them that you are an expert in your niche, since thats important for Affiliate Marketing.

Here are some tips to promoting your blog posts...

Blog directories
Submit your blog to the top blog directories on the internet. Technorati is a great place to start.
is a huge directory that gets hundreds of visits every hour and getting your blog listed in this website is highly recommended for the first time blogger. Technorati has its own ranking system which ranks blog in their directory and the most frequently updated blogs usually are ranked higher on their site.

There are lots of other directories that you can submit your blog to. Submitting your blog to a directory has a lot of advantages, including the following:

Your blog gets some referral traffic from these directories because some of their categories rank higher.
Your new blog posts will get incoming links
This is a one time job you submit once and forget about it.

Rss Feeds

Rss feeds can be used to promote your blog to interested people or repeat visitors. If you have a very good content and regularly post new information, then the chances of visitors coming back to your blog is higher. Rss feeds can assist in increasing the number of repeat visitors.
Google has a free tool that can help and should be utilized.
has this wonderful service called email subscription once your signed in you will be given a small code which creates a email subscription box that you need to place somewhere appropriate on your blog for your readers to subscribe. Once a reader subscribes then feedburner will send them a mail whenever you make a new post, this helps you get repeat visitors and engage them regularly on your blog posts.

Video sharing sites
Make video about your blog posts and submit to the top video sharing sites with your link in the description. Videos tend to rank higher and works great when you target long tail keywords, these videos can get you some long term traffic.

You can use a free tool – OneLoad will distribute your videos to several video sites and its a highly recommended resource.

Social Bookmarking
The social bookmarking sites can get your site a good number of backlinks and get your blog posts indexed in a matter of minutes. These type of sites usually have a huge user base and if they find your site useful they share your link on their profile getting you more traffic. It is worth submitting to at least the top bookmarking sites and manually doing all this will take a lot of time, so make use of a free service like socialmarker.com which will cut down the submission time greatly.

Additionally, try providing a bookmark option to your blog readers at the end of each post. That way it's easy for them to share and bookmark your content if they find it helpful. If you are using a wordpress blog, then you can download a free plugin that allows for this.

Social Media Sites
With social media you can take your content to the readers making it easier for them to access. So whatever you do, do not overlook social media.
Today just about everyone uses social medial and as a blogger we can use social media sites (below) as a valuable promoting tool for our blog.

For each blog that you create, try to have a separate account with twitter and/or facebook. Then build loyal followers and regularly interact with them. Whenever you make a new blog post share it with your followers ask them for feedback and encourage them to leave a comment on your blog, try to reply for all their comments. This will build a good relationship with your readers which leads them to coming back to your site more often.

Submit Press Releases
Today anyone with a newsworthy content or event can publish their press release and the good thing about these services is that these press releases will be distributed to hundreds of feeder sites which are read by users all over the world. They not only get your blog more reference link but it also gives an instant surge of traffic and you should try to retain most of these visitors using the feedburner or newsletter service.

There are a lot of press release websites which offer free service try to make the best use of them.

Forum Posting
Forum posting really works, so why not use it to your advantage. You can promote your blog or reference it whenever you find it to be relevant in a discussion of the particular thread. Some forums may not allow to post links to external sites and might not help, so may sure you look. However you can post regularly and get some traffic from these sites.

As a blogger you want to retain your readers and attract new one. So make use of all the blogging resources you can so that you can acquire more visitors and engage existing readers. The important thing is to good/quality content so that people keep coming back to your site. They will even share your content with their friends and family which promotes your blog even more.

Promoting your Affiliate Marketing Website

2012-03-16T10:37:00.001-07:00

So first recap a bit, in my last post, I advised that experience and knowledge in keywords is a plus in Affiliate Marketing. You want to use keywords to your advantage, so you can determine the competition and find out the demand for your products. As noted in my previous post, the information for this is easily found on the internet, for free, however I'll provide some information here that should be helpful.

Take a look at Google Adwords Tool which shows you the competition and demand for the keyword(s) or key phrase you are thinking of using. Its fairly easy to use and its something that you will use often in your Affiliate Marketing business. Basically you want try to choose words in the medium range and try to stay away from the words that are in high demand. Additionally, you want to look at the monthly search results since it shows the demand for the product.
I recapped a bit, since the rest of this blog is regarding Google Webmaster, which includes the Adwords tool.

So, moving on to promoting your Affiliate Marketing website, or any website for that matter.
A great tool is Google Webmaster Tools, which has everything you need for promoting your Affiliate Marketing site and/or business. So, lets go over a few things that are important...

Backlinks
Google uses backlinks as a way of judging the popularity and authority of a web site so it expects you to try to get backlinks to establish yourself online.

One way to get backlinks is organically over time. Another way is by finding sites that compliment your site. Ask the site owner if they will post a link to your site and in return, you do the same for them.

Blogging
Another way is to create compelling content on a blog and announce it to your readers with relevant blog posts.

RSS Feed
An RSS feed is a great way to let people know when you have created new content and so you should make a point of setting up a way for your readers to subscribe to an RSS feed for your site.

Google Places
For local businesses Google Places is a must. It is a great way to connect with the customers in your local geographic area on Google Maps and web search. A good resource with tips on how to promote locally is the Webmaster Help Center.

Offline Promotion
Google reminds you not to forget all the classic offline ways to promote your business and website. Business cards,letterhead, posters, newsletters all embedded with your website URL can go a long way in getting traffic to your site.

Best Practices
In Best Practices Google brings up social media sites as another important way to promote your site. It has recently been confirmed by many sources that the search rankings are affected by twitter and Facebook data regarding followers and fans. So it is important to establish a presence on those and all other social media venues in promoting your website and online business.

Avoid announcing trivial content and also avoid auto posting and phony reciprocal devices to artificially inflate your results. Those tactics are found out over time and the penalties are not worth it in the long run.

Finally, you should reach out to those in your community and build relationships on the strength of your content and contributions to the common good.

Avoid massive link building schemes or buying links, since these can be viewed as spam.

Webmaster Tools
As noted above, Google Webmaster Tools has everything you need, for promoting your Affiliate Marketing business or any site. Take the time to review all the pages to see whats available to you. There is a lot of means available to you to make your Affiliate Marketing site successful and something worthy of promotion.

So there you have it, hope this has been helpful.

2012-03-16T10:35:00.000-07:00

I have received a few responses to one of my previous posts, asking to further explain Affiliate Marketing. So, I'll provide more detail in this post, that hopefully will provide the information some were looking for....

My previous post, (The Early Learning Phase of Affiliate Marketing) I posted a picture in which I'll use again in this post (below), this time however, I'll expand a bit more.

Let’s look at the steps of the How Affiliate Marketing Works graphic.

Affiliate Program Sign up
This first step/piece sounds simple enough, however it really is the last step in this multi-step process, since you should first decide what you want to sell or promote. You should do some keyword research to determine the level of demand and the level of traffic your keywords can generate.

Experience and knowledge of what keywords are is a plus including how they work; where they are in the buy cycle and how you can use them to your advantage given the competition there is for them. You can easily find this on the internet. Or, if you are taking some training, then this piece should be included.

You are going to want to learn how to register a domain name. You are also going to want to learn how to set up a web site to go along with that domain name. For that, I again refer to you to my previous post (Registering a Domain Name) You are going to want to create articles and content to put on that website in a way that optimizes what the search engines are looking for.

Does this make sense?

This is a real business that takes time and effort to be successful.
Having covered all that, lets move on, remember that we are still at step one.

The Affiliate Link
When you get through all the steps in phase 1 and succeed in getting approved, then you get your product(s) or service affiliate link(s) from an affiliate program.

The affiliate link is a piece of code that has an identifier on it that is specific to your account with the merchant. It tells the merchant that the traffic it is receiving with that code on it is traffic you have sent to the merchant. If that traffic buys you get a commission. So basically, it links back to you.
So, you put that affiliate link(s) on your website. Your link(s) can take different forms, like a visual banner display that a visitor can click on. Or it can be a product image that can be clicked on. Or it can be a text link in the copy of your site content in an article or in the product description.
Whatever the form, it is a link that sends your visitor to a merchant’s site and with some luck or good pre-selling you get that visitor to buy the product or service.

There is a whole body of information about masking or cloaking your affiliate link to prevent bad guys from stealing your link but that is something for another time.

Customer Visits Your Website
The next step is pretty straight forward. You set up you website, get traffic and visitors are coming to your site. There are various ways to get traffic, and for that I refer you to my previous post (Generating Traffic).

Customer Clicks Your Link(s)
You have a visitor arrive at your site. He/she reads what you have to offer and clicks on the banner, text link, product image and is sent to the merchant site. Bravo! You got a click.

The Cookie
Some Affiliate Links include a piece of code and when your Customer clicks on your link(s) it, it puts the code on his/her computer with your identifier on it. It is called a cookie, which is very common. It tells the merchant who belongs to the link and who should get a commission. It also tells the merchant that the cookie is good for 30-45-60 days so that if that visitor doesn’t buy right away you still have a shot at getting a commission.

Your Visitor Buys on Merchant’s Site

You luck out and the visitor buys a product or service and your cookie is still on his/her computer.

Merchant Checks Cookie
When someone buys something from the merchant and the transaction goes through and is confirmed, that merchant looks for an affiliate link and/or a cookie to find out who referred the sale.

Merchant Confirms Affiliate Link Identifier or Cookie
When the merchant confirms your link identifier or finds the cookie and ties it to the confirmed sale, that sale generates a commission for you the affiliate. The amount is determined in the affiliate agreement which you have read and are familiar with.

Commission Report
A record of all your sales and commissions is filed in a report kept by the merchant in your affiliate account.

Payment Period
At the end of the payment period specified in the affiliate agreement, you will receive a payment by check or direct deposit or by whatever means agreed to in the affiliate agreement. This payment reflects all the commissions generated for that period of time, usually on a monthly basis.

Conclusion:

The Affiliate Marketing process takes time to understand.
As was mentioned earlier, the research and set up of an affiliate relationship takes time and effort. You should learn about keywords, domain names, web site set up and design and content creation.

Take Your Time
So take your time and learn to take in information in small digestible pieces. Just give yourself plenty of time and plenty of slack in learning how to do affiliate marketing online.

Hopefully, this helps to provide the additional detail to those who asked, and for anyone else who needed it.

Popular Affiliate Marketing Categories

2012-03-14T11:11:00.000-07:00

So you want to get into Affiliate Marketing and do not know what category to decide on. Well, the five (5) most popular categories for Affiliate Marketing are ..

Love/Dating

Making Money

Beauty

Entertainment

Health/Fitness

So when trying to decide on your niche, choose something that you are most familiar with, something you have a vast or fair amount of knowledge in.

Now, if your niche does fall into one of the categories above, does that mean you wont be successful? No, it doesn't!!!! The categories above are currently some of the most popular and I am putting them there just to give you a starting point (if needed). As noted in some of my previous posts, your success depends on you and you alone. It all depends on the effort you put in, the knowledge you obtain whether its free or paid and how you apply it.

Tips for Affiliate Marketing

2012-03-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

Today, many of us want to pack up our jobs and be our own bosses. Unfortunately, the reality of making it happen stops most. In fact the vast majority of us cannot get a business off the ground due to two (2) main factors; the first being money and the second being risk.

Keep in mind that it takes money to make money. So starting any type of business will cost a certain amount of money. If you have a brick and mortar store, you need to buy or rent the premises, purchase your stock and equipment and pay staff if you have them. If you have a internet business, your starting costs are reduced, since the cost of your internet site is typically lower however you still have costs. No matter what type of business you have, you will also have other outside expenses such as advertising.

Risk is the factor that kills most businesses off. Even if you’re lucky enough to get the capital to start, nearly 90% of all small businesses fail in the first year. If yours is one of the lucky ones, you have to keep reinvesting your time and money to build up the businesses reputation. It could be anywhere from 5-7 years before any significant profit is seen. Most of us cannot wait that long which is what makes Affiliate Marketing such an attractive offer.

Affiliate Marketing involves you, working as an affiliate for a merchant or company. You sell either goods or services and you’re paid on how much you produce. There are no costs and no risk. You put in what you choose and are rewarded accordingly.

Running an Affiliate Marketing business is challenging. Just as with any other buisness, you will have to work to build it up. However, you’ll be rewarded for your hard work not someone else. Getting an Affiliate Marketing program going may seem difficult. The truth is, it up to you and how much you want to put in. There is no sure fire way to success but there are some good tips that you can follow to make your Affiliate Marketing scheme as successful as possible.

There are literally thousands of programs for you to choose from (as noted in my previous posts). Take caution in whatever you choose for your training. Remember, in the world of affiliate marketing there is no such thing as the perfect program. Any particular program will be stuffed full of varying testimonials. Some will be great will others will have not done so well. You need to decide for yourself and not be put of by a few bad experiences. In the end it is down to you and how much you want to put in.

Additionally, your niche should be something that you are familiar with. This product or service may not be the hottest thing on the current market or make you a millionaire, but you will come off more confident and sincere with something you know and believe in. This will also help when it comes to creating your website or blog. Something familiar will allow you to be personal and creative. Trying to create a site around something you know little about will soon become boring and tedious.
Working with something familiar will also give you the some experience in the program. You can always expand at a latter time when you are more familiar with how things work.

Something to keep in mind, watch the number of banners that you put on your site. A site full of banners will make the site look ugly and put off potential buyers. Carefully place your banners and use them to accent your site. Stuffing it full will not help.

Affiliate Marketing is a great way to make money and work for you. The risk to you is minimal and there is no start up cost. There are many great Affiliate Marketing programs out there and choosing the right one may seem like a daunting task. When you first start out remember to stick to what you know. Find something you know about and have an interest in. Make your site attractive to others and resist the urge to fill it with banners. This may end up having the opposite of your desired effect. Finally remember, there is no perfect program. Some will have success where others have failed. It is all up to you.

Most of all... Don’t ever give up!!!

More on Learning From a Successful Affiliate Program

2012-03-12T10:32:00.001-07:00

In my previous post, I talked about obtaining some training so that you can learn as much as possible about Affiliate Marketing. As previously indicated, I obtained mine from Fast Cash Commissions and I recommend that program. Since I knew absolutely nothing about Affiliate Marketing, I knew I would have to be taught, so I signed up for the coaching offered through Fast Cash Commissions.

I found a lot of free information however I just felt that pieces were missing and every time I tried getting those missing pieces, I found that they came with a price tag. So, after deciding on Fast Cash Commissions, I signed up for the coaching that they offer, since it offered the tools (video's, 1 on 1 coaching, etc) that I find to be most beneficial for me.

Now I prefer the audio or video versions of almost everything. If you are the type of person who prefers reading, there is quite a books on Affiliate Marketing and how to be successful at it. During my research for a successful training program, I came across a few ( The Secret Classroom - 12 Internet Millionaires Share Their Secrets and Adsense Secrets 5) that I almost ordered. Both are from Joel Comm, a very successful person with Affiliate Marketing. If you recall, in my last post, I talked about how to find a successful training program. I found Joel to meet the criteria and I really liked what I found on his website.

Now if you go searching for information about Affiliate marketing, you will find there is so much that readily available by books, e-books, online seminars etc., (see Ultra Marketing Marathon, Offline Webinar Autopilot, Automated Income Stream Home Study Course), so you have plenty to choose from. Whatever your preference is, you should be able to easily find what best works for you. Just make sure whatever you choose matches your level of expertise (beginner, intermediate, advanced). Also, you may want to find out what has worked for others.

Take what you learn from whatever you choose and combine that with what you learn for free and you will have more than enough information to be well on your way to success.

Choosing a Successful Affiliate Marketing Training Program

2012-03-11T14:35:00.002-07:00

Currently, there are thousands of online enthusiasts who are taking the plunge and joining the community of affiliate marketers. With e-commerce booming, and the internet dominating the business world, becoming an affiliate marketer is a very smart choice.

Many people are under the impression or are lead to believe that you can earn a lot of money with online, with affiliate marketing, without investing anything. There certainly is a lot of free information available on the internet, and this blog is an example. However, all the free information that is available simply doesn't provide everything you need to or should know. So at some point, you should consider investing some money in training. This is probably the scariest part, especially for someone who has little to no experience. It can also be scary for someone who doesn’t have a lot to invest. The good news is, the investment is (or should be) minimal and in most cases you should make it back in a relatively short amount of time.

The first and most important investment should be on setting up your business (business license, permits, etc.) with your state and/or county. The other investment comes with advertising and promotion. For someone who is just starting out in affiliate marketing, or is just considering it, this can seem a bit overwhelming. For that reason alone, I advise that you invest in some professional training, so it provides you some resources, direction, etc. For me, I obtained my training from Fast Cash Commissions. I have some posts that show how and why I chose Fast Cash Commissions that you may want to read.

There are hundreds of thousands of affiliate marketing programs available on the internet. Just about all of them claim to be the best. Most give you the impression that all you have to do is use their banners and links then wait for the money to start rolling in. Unfortunately, this is not the case for someone who is just starting out in their journey with affiliate marketing.

Before you join any type of affiliate marketing training program you should learn as much as you can about the company. It’s actually very easy to research companies. All the search engines (Yahoo, Google, Ask, etc) can easily find almost all of the companies out there. One thing you should make research is how long the company has been in existence. To be on the safe side, you should ensure that the program and company has been operating for several years. Research their complaints on the Better Business Bureau. You should also verify the product(s) that the company is actually having you sell or market. Another suggestion is to check out reviews on that company, which you should come up in the results from the search engine.

Make sure you verify the support the company provides. Many organizations and companies claim have around the clock support or customer support for those affiliates who need advice or assistance. Some companies also offer e-books, tutorials, articles, and tips that will make your quest of becoming an affiliate marketer a little bit easier.

So, whatever program you choose, use a lot of caution.

Being successful as an affiliate marketer will take time, effort, and some work. The more you know (especially the tips and tricks) and the more time and effort you put into your business, the greater the success you’ll achieve.