Prosperent Affiliate Networking

(Launched!) forPolis Price Comparison Shopping

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 13:08:00 +0000

forPolis is a Pro-Community shopping website where people can perform price and product comparisons. Product searches can begin in numerous ways. The first and most popular method is to use the search form. Search forms are found on all pages and are identified by the blue-background button labeled "search." This method will suggest alternate spellings when necessary and it will attempt to produce a result matching the search terms. The second method is a brand-specific search. Popular brands are listed as a point of departure. The third search method is store specific. Bestselling stores will showcase those popular online merchants that have earned the trust of their shoppers. Trending categories is one more method of finding hot items. Here, we discover similar items that are classified within the same shopping category.

Shopping top 10s not only lists the most popular brands, stores, and shopping categories, but also the top 10 countries, regions (states), and cities where shopping is happening. Real items that real people have purchased, up to 100 products, will be revealed for each country, region, or city.

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"Gobble, Gobble" is the sound of impending doom

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 05:47:00 +0000

Chuck eats spam.

While poking through the Blogger support forums, I came across a section labeled "something is broken." Because I'm rather new to blogger (not to the world of blogging), I wanted to investigate any possible issues that might roll in my direction based upon the experiences and frustrations of other people. And it is at this point that I found a few threads that more or less described how blogger's spam algorithm locked users out from their blogs, citing a violation of posting policies as the chief reason. "Oh, my." I thought. "I'd better learn what people were complaining about in order to avoid the same mistake."

Blogger's Terms of Service does not necessarily detail all the information needed to avoid having a blog flagged for spam. Accident or not, mistake or not, doing it in full ignorance or with full self-awareness, users who have their blog flagged for spam end up in the same place: locked out of their blogs. There is, of course, an appeal process for false positive spam identification on blogs. But what a pain.

What are Spam Blogs?

As with many powerful tools, blogging services can be both used and abused. The ease of creating and updating webpages with Blogger has made it particularly prone to a form of behavior known as link spamming. Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.

Spam blogs cause various problems, beyond simply wasting a few seconds of your time when you happen to come across one. They can clog up search engines, making it difficult to find real content on the subjects that interest you. They may scrape content from other sites on the web, using other people's writing to make it look as though they have useful information of their own. And if an automated system is creating spam posts at an extremely high rate, it can impact the speed and quality of the service for other, legitimate users.

As I mentioned earlier, I found some information on the help forum about the criteria used to determine if a particular blogger blog is a spam blog from one of the blogger support staff members.

Blog Banning Criteria

Affiliate marketing.
Content created with scripts and programs, rather than by hand.
Content scraped from other blogs / websites.
Copyright Infringement.
Large blogs with multiple, unfocused / unrelated subjects.
Links to Illegal Downloads / Streaming / Torrents.- Content or links referencing referral-based activities such as GPT, MMH ("Make Money from Home"), MMF ("Make Money Fast"), MLM ("Multi-Level Marketing"), PTC, or PTS.

Affiliate Marketing

OMG. I need to quote something that Chuck said in one of his comments that made the hair rise on the back of my neck:

Chuck said...
You can post as many affiliate links as you wish, in your blog. But any more than 0 makes the blog possibly liable for spam classification.
The best decision would be to not post any affiliate links.

Now, blogger makes available adsense widgets and amazon widgets. To use blogger's amazon widget means that affiliate links are generated. But here we read that any affiliate links above "0" might classify the blog as spam. Mind-blowing. It's as if a blogger staff member is actually discouraging the usage of affiliate links, which blogger itself provides through widgets!

Now I understand that Google wants to nuke auto-generated content blogs, content scraper blogs, copyright infringement blogs, and perhaps even the "large blogs with unfocused and unrelated subjects" -- although this particular one sounds a little more "subjective" rather than "objective" to me. But then again, isn't objectivity just a standardized subjectivity? And I'm totally on board with banning linking to illegal stuff.

What I don't agree with 100% is "Content or links referencing referral-based activities such as GPT, MMH ("Make Money from Home")". Now the reason is simple (and is in my personal self-interest of course)! Some of the original content I produce is labeled as money-making; heck! This entire blog can be seen as being in the "money-making" blog niche. But how I advise people to make money is through blogging unique, useful, relevant, and focused content. Yeah, you can make money from home (even with blogger) if you write in such a manner that respects Google's (Blogger's) terms of service for Adsense. But the manner in which the rules are written make it seem like I'm a total slime-ball if I encourage people to make money with being passionate about blogging.

Look, clamp down on the spammers. I hate spammers. I hate comment spam. But let's be a little more forgiving and soft towards those blog authors who produce unique content and encourage people to take up the blogging passion. If money can be made from from through blogging useful material -- why not?

How to neglect your blog's potential

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 19:36:00 +0000

Your blog has potential to make money. Regardless of how little content or how much content exists on your blog at the present time, and regardless of whether or not you've been neglecting your blog up until now, you have the potential to turn it all around. Now. However, if your goal is to continue neglecting your blog's potential or if your goal is to become another story of online financial failure, then all you have to do is nothing and let your blogging adventure gather more dust.

I can't tell the number of neglected blogs I come across on Blogspot alone! Many of them appear abandoned because fresh content hasn't been posted for months or years. Many of them look unprofessional in terms of their layout, use of colors, and placement of ads. Most of them do not place ads of any kind at all! It's no small wonder that people see no financial rewards from doing something (blogging) that they're doing already. I understand that many of you might be skeptical of what I am saying here. Perhaps a small number of you will even disbelieve me -- flat out. "Ok." I respond. "Here's evidence."

At the top of each blogspot blog, unless otherwise disabled through template modification, will be a site stripe. Within that site stripe will be several links (Follow, Share, Report Abuse, and Next Blog). My personal favorite is clicking on the Next Blog button. Clicking on that button will reveal precisely what I am talking about here within the content of this particular blog entry: blogs who neglect their own potential. You'll see blogs about church, family, and hobbies. There will be blogs about creative writing, photography, and artistic expression. And you'll come across blogs about cooking, vacation, and sight seeing. For the most part, you will be exposed to a wide array of blogs that cover an even wider array of material -- from the birth of a child to instructions on how to sew.

Searching Google for Why Blogs Fail reveals several things that most Blogspot blogs are practicing. Among them are:

Lack of Content Identity
Lack of Passion
Lack of Perseverance

Lack of Content Identity

Lack of content means that there are little to no words, sentences, and paragraphs on the blog. Blogs that are used as online photo sharing sites (think about all those blogs that you saw that featured pictures of babies and children), and blogs who main content is the republication of Youtube videos are doom to fail -- why? Not only is there nothing substantial to read in order to capture the attention and the imagination of the reader, but there is also nothing that the search engines can index. It boils down to this: when you visit a search engine, you search for words, phrases, sentences, and names. When your blog lacks content, the search engine cannot associate the content of what you're blog is about with particular keyword or keyphrases.

Therefore, if you're blogging about food and recipes, then it is imperative that the words "food" and "recipe" are used throughout your content. If your blog is about parenting skills, then it is important to use those keywords throughout your content.

Lack of Passion

Blogging done for the sake of pure profit will eventually run out of steam. This is because talking about "making money" with each blog post will run out of novelty. You can only recommended a limited number of way of making money online. However, when making money is the secondary benefit to an overall creative process, then it becomes more real. In other words, by "making money" subordinate to "expressing passion through the written word," "making money" becomes more of a reality than if making money was the sole intent and purpose of blogging. (Therefore, it helps to be passionate about making money!)

Humans are creatures of passion and intrigue. We like reading stories about good guys vs. bad guys, seeing someone overcome impossible odds, or accepting choice and mortality. Money and profit are a means to an end; that is to say that money and profit come secondary. When a person has a passion for what they write, the passion can become infectious and inspirational to others. People are attracted to passionate writing -- this means that writing passionately will create more organic search engine traffic.

Lack of Perseverance

Giving up is easy. You might feel that there are hundreds of blogs who share your same topic of interest, or you might cite the fact that your new blog has no readers, no subscribers, and is generating no income. You might believe that you're wasting your time. However, "immediate" gratification has no place when it comes to blogging. It takes time (weeks, months) to build up a readership. Most people make the mistake of abandoning their blog because the amount of energy put into content creation does not equal some pre-conceived notion of how much money it should generate or how many followers it has.

Lack of perseverance means that the motivation for creating the blog in the first place WAS NOT to express the passion of the blog author -- it was for some other reason. And when that "other reason" runs its course, nothing is left -- not even passion.

Leave a comment below after you've seen several blogs through the Next Blog button. I'm curious to know what you found and whether your findings confirm or refute my opinion that most blogs on blogspot are not taking advantage of their full potential.

Auto-posting is a slow death to your blog

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 22:58:00 +0000

Nothing poisons a blog like auto blogging.

Auto blogging is the practice of using a script to publish the works of others for personal benefit, e.g., monetize mashed up content with Adsense, Amazon, or Prosperent. Auto blogging means that the results of the scraping process are stored in a database and are served as blog posts. Discussion in the comments may or may not occur, but the point of the matter is that auto blogging means that no original content was written or created. Rather, other people or news sources have generated the content and it is being republished with or without the expressed permission of the original content author.

Google hates this. Google punishes this.

Scraped content: Some webmasters make use of content taken from other, more reputable sites on the assumption that increasing the volume of web pages with random, irrelevant content is a good long-term strategy. Purely scraped content, even from high-quality sources, may not provide any added value to your users without additional useful services or content provided by your site. It's worthwhile to take the time to create original content that sets your site apart. This will keep your visitors coming back and will provide useful search results.

Translation from Google: "We know about auto blogging. We will blast your domain from the search results if you do it." Now, before Google took such harsh action against auto blogging, people were making real money doing it. I had a buddy who was making $500.00 per month from Google's Adsense and another $500.00 from Amazon. (He was getting about 1,000 unique hits per day.) He would be contacted from his blog's contact form and would be sent products in the mail in order that he would write up a review for them. Now, he wasn't using an awesome template or anything. He was just scraping articles from articlesbase.com and was publishing content from Amazon's API along with Youtube videos here and there. For some reason, Google loved his domain and content, ranked him well in the search engine results, and the traffic flowed. And with traffic came real money.

Now all that's gone. While Google takes into account dozens, if not hundreds, of unique factors when calculating the "worth" of a page on the internet, scraped content seems to always count against the over all relevance of a page. Time and time again, Google recommends creating unique content. Google tells us to create useful websites, and even suggests that republishing content in small amounts is okay, so long as there are "additional useful services or content provided." This means that there must be a degree of original content on each page for Google to find worth and value in that particular page.

Now as I have said before, blogging is about the easiest way of creating unique content. The reason is simple: nothing is more unique than you and your perspective on things. Writing interesting pieces of information, offering advice, posting criticism, sharing poetry and short stories, talking about a foreign place or food, or even discussing your pet's latest escapades can be possible topics for original content. Google wants it -- lots of it. And if you do a good job of creating content, Google won't ban your domain from the search engine results page -- which means that you stand a nice chance of getting organic traffic. Organic traffic translates into real freaking money, folks. This is why even if you have the simplest blog, you should add some kind of monetization of it.

My evidence of this is Google itself. Google offers the blogger service for free, and it provides content publishers (blog authors) the built-in tools to freaking monetize their blog. Google wants you to monetize your blog, folks. Now, you can do that by blending in adsense with your blog's content. You can also do that by blogging about products found on Amazon or on Prosperent. The sky is the limit; actually no. That's wrong.

You are your own limit. :)

Product Review Breville BOV800XL The Smart Oven 1800-Watt Convection Toaster Oven with Element IQ

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 05:18:00 +0000

Breville BOV800XL: The Smart Convection Toaster Oven Product Review

The overwhelming consensus from people who purchase this item is that the The Breville Smart Convection Toaster Oven ranks 5 out of 5 stars for numerous reasons including practical function and design aesthetics. This product is not only a great toaster but it is also an easy-to-use convection oven. Gone are the days when a traditional standard sized oven needed to preheat for several minutes for the purpose of cooking a few cookies. Making a few cookies at a time with the Breville convection oven is more economical in terms of overall energy usage when compared to what's needed to fuel a conventional oven. In addition, cook times are reduced because the interior volume of the Breville is less than that of a traditional oven. It takes less fuel and less time to achieve cooking temperatures.

Read more about the Breville BOV800XL Oven on Amazon.

The interior of the oven has 0.8 cubic feet of space, accommodating the included 12"x12" enamel baking pan. This smaller interior space means that it takes less energy and less time for the oven to reach its programmed cooking temperature. But don't let the sound of 0.8 cubic feet fool you: it is possible to roast an entire whole chicken inside this oven! In addition, the automatic cooking timer can be set for up to two hours allowing for more diverse items to be cooked. Also, many people claim that this oven is very easy to clean and that the oven's handle stays surprising cool to the touch even after vigorous use.

Frozen pizzas and frozen dinners taste better because they are cooked better; toast is browned on both sides, and baked potatoes are a breeze. Corn dogs are awesome! Cookies seem to have that "store bought" feeling to them, and no one can resist a house that smells like fresh baked cookies for family and friends. Reheating left-overs in this oven, especially cold slices of pizza, makes the food taste better than if it were reheated in a microwave oven.

Some people have suggested that the exterior of this oven gets a little hot while in use. Of course this is the case -- it IS an oven after all! :) However, despite the fact that the Breville Convection Oven takes less counter space than its competitors, it is still recommended that the area around this appliance be kept clean and clear from items that might come into contact with its exterior. If you're considering purchasing a toaster oven, look no further than the Breville Convection Oven for its longevity and over all customer satisfaction!

Make money writing product reviews in 8 steps

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 04:35:00 +0000

Here's a money-making formula for those curious enough to read this blog. I discovered this information on the Warrior Foum in a the thread titled, "Amazon Affiliates - Are You Seriously Making Money?" and found the idea of this method sound enough to integrate with this blog.

Join the Amazon Affiliate Program.
Join the Prosperent Affiliate Program.
Pick an Amazon Bestseller that costs around $150. Here's the HTML landing page containing all of Amazon's bestsellers.
Find a handful of existing product reviews that are 4+ stars. Copy the content from each review to your favorite text editor.
Rewrite the product review of the item using your own words and unique presentation style. Do not plagiarize. B-e u-n-i-q-u-e. The length of the review should be at least 500 words. 1000 words would be better. Take your cue of your unique review from the existing reviews of others. Make sure everything is in your own words!
Create a new blog post with the title of "Product Name Review" or "Reviewing Product Name" or something similar. Ensure that you use the word "Review" and the product's name in the post of your blog entry.
Use a text link linking to Amazon in the upper right hand corner of the content body of the review as well as in the first top-half of the screen. The URL of the link can be something like this: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/%1/0009-20, where "%1" is Amazon's product identification code, e.g., B004JKMQK4, and where "0009-20" is your affiliate ID. The anchor text of this link should reflect the title of the blog, e.g., "crocs Crocband Clog Review".
Add a Performance Ad from Prosperent; this ad will reflect the content of your review and will be about "crocs CrocBand Clog" for this particular example.

For an example review, consider reading: Product Review Breville BOV800XL The Smart Oven 1800-Watt Convection Toaster Oven with Element IQ.

Rationale

We're using two affiliate networks which feature similar items for sale. If a reader follows the banner ad from Prosperent and the Amazon link, they will have two affiliate cookies in use, each of which has the potential for a sale.
We're rewriting reviews using our own words while using the work that others have done as a point of departure. Search engines love unique content and we're giving it to them!
We're not talking about the ethics of this method here; the bottom line is that we're talking about making money online. We're talking about making money with Amazon. We're talking about making money writing product reviews.
The holiday shopping seasons is around the corner, so get writing! :)

Please post your success stories here.

Breaking through blogger's block: a practical guide

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 21:58:00 +0000

I mentioned in an earlier entry that "content is king" (Help with Ads on Blogspot) and that the search engines have a limitless appetite for devouring unique and helpful content. Search engines are computer programs in essence, and cannot gauge the usefulness of an article in terms of abstracting or practical thinking in the human sense of understanding. However, search engines can monitor network traffic to a particular article or another piece of data on a site. And the search engine's programmer can make an association between aggregate network traffic and perceived content usefulness. In other words, a programmer can associate content usefulness with over all traffic patterns. The more useful that content seems to be, the more traffic from humans that it will bring. Following this line of logic, if the traffic from search engine requests and human searches remain steady over time, then the content's value increases as well in the search engine's algorithm.

People will read things that they find useful, and will discard or ignore things that are not useful. The best content will provide a unique insight into a phenomenon that remains unique despite the passage of time. There is no need to publish only when the content meets the criteria of being the best, most universal, most insightful, and most profound. If this were the case, nothing would ever be published! Rather than worrying whether or not certain content meets some abstract quality threshold, I recommend that writing take the form of the author's unique perspective and understanding about the workings of the world around him or her. Don't fret that you're writing content about a popular subject area. Unique about what you're bringing to the table is your particular point of view about the popular subject area.

Content from the point of view of the author will always be unique simply because "there can be only one" author. (Did you catch my Highlander reference?) Topics can be controversial, pensive, reflective, technical, insightful, or anything else within the scope of imagination -- so long as the content embodies the "presence" of the author, it will be unique. Content can tell a story, illustrate a particular technical objective, or it can be written to entertain. It doesn't matter. The search engines love unique content, and they'll stop at nothing to index it.

If you've hit a wall when it comes to generating unique content, there are a few things you can do (aside from remembering what I've mentioned earlier). The first thing you can do is search Google: that's right. Do a search about your present topic and see what others have written about it. You can at this point write a better article that has more detail in it, or you can write an article that is critical about what someone else has written, or you can write an article that compliments with and blends in with the ideas expressed by others. In each case, you're bringing your own unique perspective to the topic at hand, and your starting point is based upon the information provided from others first. All you're doing here is building upon what work has been done already and you're taking it in a new direction.

Other things you can do to combat writer's block is to take a break. Walk away from the keyboard and do something active and productive: visit Starbucks, hang out with friends, go to the mall and people watch, treat yourself to a nice meal, or watch a favorite movie. In other words, give your poor brain a rest! :) After a little time away, you can then re-engage the topic with a new perspective.

Because you never know when your brain is going to snap out of writer's block and spontaneously generate a riveting idea, it's best to carry a pen and small notepad at all times. In this manner, you'll never miss another moment of spontaneous inspiration. Writing down a few sentences at the precise moment of creativity can give you something to expand upon later when you're back at your computer.

If you have other suggestions for overcoming writer's block (blogger's block), I'd appreciate hearing your techniques in the comments!

Subscribe to Amazon Deals in RSS: Free Code

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 01:30:00 +0000

Embedding Amazon RSS Feeds are a great way of adding product related content to your Blogspot blog. However, most people are not aware of how easy it is to add Amazon affiliate links, so I'm going to show you how. In exchange for this information, I ask you examine the Prosperent Affiliate Program and add one of their Javascript product banners to your website in order to have an additional line of revenue from your blog. First, we need to be familiar with how to embed RSS content with Blogspot:

Next, we need a list of valid Amazon RSS feeds. Featured below are direct links to Amazon's RSS feeds. These links can be embedded directly into Blogspot and/or can be added to Feedburner for syndication. More about Constructing Valid Amazon RSS Feeds is available from Amazon's site. Some good information can be found there. For example, Amazon makes it possible to generate RSS feeds based upon a particular keyword for USA affiliates.

List of Amazon RSS Feeds (URLs): USA Affiliates

http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/apparel/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/appliances/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/arts-crafts/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/automotive/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/baby-products/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/beauty/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/books/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/digital-text/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/dmusic/digital-music-album/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/dmusic/digital-music-track/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/electronics/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/garden/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/gift-cards/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/grocery/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/hi/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/home-garden/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/hpc/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/industrial/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/jewelry/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/kitchen/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/magazines/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/mobile-apps/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/movies-tv/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/music/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/musical-instruments/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/office-products/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/pc/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/pet-supplies/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/photo/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/shoes/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/software/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/sporting-goods/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/toys-and-games/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/videogames/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/watches/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/wireless/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20

The advantage of using the primary category links above is that they are not likely to change over time. While "apparel" has a corresponding node number, the fact that the node number is referred to as a particular name means that it is less likely to change. This information is useful in URL construction. Any Amazon affiliate knows that they change their node numbers often. What this means is that while it is indeed possible to display RSS feeds for a particular Amazon product node, the node number is likely to change at some point in the near or distant future. (An Amazon product node number is a way of classifying information into sub-categories and sub-categories of sub-categories.)

Back to the information at hand. Let's take a moment to break down and explain one of the RSS feeds above. As an Amazon affiliate, it is important to be familiar with this information for the sake of earning money through Amazon's RSS feeds. This had the advantage (at the present time) of not making an API request, which has a limited usage per hour. Using and scraping Amazon's RSS feeds is your best bet.

Let's break down item #1 in the list above.

http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/apparel/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20

http://www.amazon.com is URL address of the feed. If we were talking about Amazon Canada, Amazon Deutschland, Amazon France, Amazon Japan, Amazon United Kingdom, or Amazon China, we would use another URL.
rss tells Amazon that we want the RSS version of the page; to view the HTML version of the page, change rss to gp. Here is the link to the HTML version of the page: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/apparel/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
bestsellers tells Amazon that we want to see Amazon's bestsellers of course! Now there are alternate methods of data classification that can be presented. Simply change bestsellers to any of the following to see a different presentation (punctuation and using lowercase are paramount!): most-wished-for, most-gifted, movers-and-shakers, new-releases, and top-rated.
apparel is the particular shopping category. Now, you CANNOT go off and put anything here. :) You are constricted to use the names that Amazon provides. I listed all 36 feed names, so choose one which you think your blog readers would be interested in seeing!
?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20 is the affiliate identification tag; change "amazon-associate-20" to whatever your particular tag is in order to receive credit, although, I wouldn't mind if you kept one or two feeds unchanged if you're feeling generous! :)

Blogspot Feed Widget vs. using Feedburner
The condensed version is that using Blogspot's feed widget will limit the number of product items to 5, while using Feedburner's code on the other hand will increase the number of items available beyond the 5 number limitation. If you elect to go with the Feedburner solution, you must add the code to an HTML/JAVASCRIPT widget.

Syndicate Amazon through Feedburner
Pick a particular RSS feed from above, and add that Amazon RSS feed to Feedburner. Once in Feedburner, it is possible to customize further the number of items available for display. (Feedburner >> Publicize >> BuzzBoost) You would then add this Amazon Feedburner RSS url to a Blogspot HTML/JAVASCRIPT widget. For example, here's the code in use on this site ... feel free to copy it, modify it, and use it!

<a style="color:#0000ff;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:700;font-size:14px;text-align:right;" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/deals-amazon" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Deals<img style="text-decoration:none;padding-left:5px;" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a>
<div style="font-size:14px;font-weight:400;margin-top:10px;list-style-type:none;list-style:none;">
<script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/deals-amazon?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript"></script>
</div>

Blogspot Blogs Fail to Monetize: Free Money Abandoned

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 04:23:00 +0000

The navigation stripe located at the top most part of the page on a Blogspot blog features several links including: Follow, Share, Report Abuse, and Next Blog. I'm a frequent user of the "Next Blog" button. This is how I discover blog authors and their content that happens to be outside my normal searching behavior on Google. More often than not, I find information and blogs written about families, friends, recipes, fashion, and much more. There are a lot of digital photographs and digital videos embedded with various blog entries, and the blog content tends to be more personal and intimate in nature. It would appear that most blog authors using the Blogspot service tend not to monetize their blog, and that's tantamount to leaving money on the table folks!

I understand that the primary purpose a Blogspot blog serves is to communicate information to particular individuals. Parents showcase their children to other family members and friends, artists showcase their photographs to potential clients, and writers showcase their latest works. But since most blog authors set up their blog in such a manner as to allow the rest of the world to peer in, activity on personal blogs is not limited to a specific set of people. Take a moment and see what I mean: experiment with the Next Blog button. (And if you stumble across Prosperent Affiliate Marketing or Observations in a Strange Land, drop me a line.)

Most blogs I discover on Blogspot are not monetizing their content. I do not know for sure if such a choice is the result of a conscious effort or of simply not knowing how the process of making money from Blogspot works. In either case, both situations leave money on the table. I'm sure that if you saw $10 laying on the ground during a walk in the park that you would make an effort to capture it. You would then purchase something like a cold drink and it would taste all the better because it was free. The same reason applies to monetizing a Blogspot blog: you would get paid to do what you're doing already: publishing content.

And while Adsense is a popular tool for monetizing a Blogspot blog, there is another program available: Prosperent. With the Prosperent program, you get paid when people buy a merchant's item through advertising banners and links embedded with your Blogspot blog's content. And the best thing here is that you can make purchases through your own affiliate links, so it's like always having the perfect coupon with your favorite item on sale. After your purchase and assuming that you did not do a product return, Prosperent will deposit a percentage of the final sale amount to your account. Let's take a concrete example and suppose that you operate a Blogspot blog about cooking and you feature recipes on it. On your blog are photographs and tutorials that detail how to create various culinary feats. Prosperent would see this information on your Blogspot blog and would display products for sale that are related to your content. Therefore, everyone would see banner advertisements about cooking magazines, cookbooks, useful kitchen tools and appliances, and the list goes on and on. The point here is that people who read your cooking blog are more likely than not to be interested in purchasing cooking supplies -- perhaps the same cooking supplies that you use!

However, if you don't feature ads on your Blogspot blog, then there is no way that money can be made from them. If you need addition help with the Prosperent Affiliate Program, then there is a forum where questions can be asked and where information and tutorials can be read. Following the above link will lead you to the Prosperent website where, upon joining, you will have access to create "Performance Ads" which can be custom tailored to various sizes and color schemes to merge with the design of your paticular Blogspot blog.

There's nothing to lose, and Prosperent encourages that your family and friends make purchases through the banners you will be featuring on your blog. And once you see how easy it is to make money online, you'll wonder why it took you so long to put a few high class advertisements on your Blogspot blog.

Keyword bidding: How to succeed with Prosperent in 8 Steps

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 20:53:00 +0000

In a recent post titled "Amazon hates their affiliates," I made the case that Amazon was and is doing everything within its authority to bypass paying their affiliates in order that customers visit the Amazon parent site directly. In summary of that article, Amazon affiliates were engaging in the practice of keyword bidding in order to send traffic directly from the search engine result page to Amazon's site. The affiliate would attach their Amazon ID to the referral link and would earn a commission from the sale. This strategy was brilliant because the Amazon affiliate links would appear only in relation to the relevancy of the search engine query and result. Therefore, a customer was more likely to investigate Amazon's products after a search engine query about a particular "product review" for example.

This practice was so popular and profitable for affiliates that Amazon put the brakes on it. This profit saving measure was good for Amazon's bottom line and it was bad for the affiliates, upon whom Amazon owes its house hold name recognition after years of their online marketing efforts in exchange for commissions. But in this particular blog post, I am not debating the merits of Amazon's practice; rather, my goal is to illuminate this practice for its obvious and profitable applicability to the Prosperent Affiliate Program.

After you are a member of Prosperent, you'll need to create your first Performance Ad in the Prosperent dashboard. A performance ad is a piece of javascript code that can be placed on a website, such as a free blog from Blogger. If you have questions on how to create a performance ad (once called TCPA Ads), consult the following video:
Now that you have created your first javascript piece of code, it is time to integrate that with your website. If you're using blogger, here is a useful video that shows how to create a new section on your blog that will contain the code:
At this point in time, it is assumed that you (a.) have a website, and can (b.) add the Prosperent javascript to your website. Also assumed at this point is that you are able to SEE your Prosperent Ads. If you cannot, please re-read the previous steps and figure out what went wrong. It is also possible that you have an ad-blocker that disables javascript from showing up in the first place. You might need to disable that, or at least allow your domain to pass through the ad-filter in order to complete the next steps.
Now comes the fun part. You're going to decide which products you want to market through search engine keyword bidding. A popular item (in August 2011) is Halloween costumes. Actually, as Halloween approaches, the sale of Halloween costumes will increase. So, create a post in your blogger account relating to Halloween costumes.
You should now be able to see Prosperent Ads that feature Halloween costumes.
Hover your mouse over the link to the Halloween costume, and copy the URL of the ad to your clipboard. If you're using the Firefox browser, hover your mouse over the product of interest, and right click your mouse and "Copy Link Location" . This link location will be where you will be directing traffic from your search engine ad creation page.
If you need help creating ads on Google or on Bing, it is recommended that you see YouTube videos. Watch tutorial videos until you feel comfortable creating an ad campaign on Google or Bing!
Target keywords that are specific and relevant to the product you identified on Prosperent. Also, be sure to link to the product URL that was copied to your clipboard, i.e., the specific link found earlier.

It should be mentioned that bidding on keywords means that there is an out of pocket cost involved; however, you, the bidder, have the power to set your daily spending limit on your chosen keywords.

Enjoy your membership with Prosperent.

Tips for successful blog commenting

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 18:33:00 +0000

There's a specific etiquette that guides the world of blog commenting. When the rules are followed, comment approval rates increase; when the rules are discarded, blog comments sail to the spam folder. It all comes down to a simple rule: demonstrate consideration through comments. While consideration appears to be a simple rule to follow, many comments are disapproved because of their lack of it.

con·sid·er·a·tion [kuhn-sid-uh-rey-shuhn]
noun

the act of considering; careful thought; meditation; deliberation: I will give your project full consideration.

something that is or is to be kept in mind in making a decision, evaluating facts, etc.: Age was an important consideration in the decision.

thoughtful or sympathetic regard or respect; thoughtfulness for others: They showed no consideration for his feelings.

a thought or reflection; an opinion based upon reflection.

a recompense or payment, as for work done; compensation.

There are several ways to demonstrate consideration to the blog author, all of which are communicated in the comment's word choice. Good comments show consideration when the comment cites something specific in the blog entry and builds upon it, and the comment demonstrates that the blog entry was read and understood. In addition, good comments usually span over two or more sentences and refrain from simple words or phrases such as "Good article," "I agree," "Thanks for the information," etc.

Good comments add value to the original article and enhance the ensuing discussion found in the comments section. Terrible comments are short and are filled with links to other sites and not much else. Blog owners, for the most part, are fulfilling some need to receive attention from the general public for their intellectual effort; the comments that get approved are more likely to cater to the blog author's need for attention in a positive manner.

Good comments demonstrate intelligence: this means that good comments make use of proper capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and word choice. Good comments relate to the topic at hand, and contribute more original content to the blog author's original article. While asking questions in the comments is a decent practice, better questions tend to have a couple of sentences prefacing the question's purpose or intent. In this manner, blog comments still contribute information while seeking clarification. Imagine if all blog comments were nothing more than questions -- this would put an additional burden on the blog author to respond and write beyond the original scope of the entry. For a blog author to answer the question, the question itself must be framed in such a way as to enhance the entry's value in the first place.

Blog commenting is a practice used to advertise the knowledge and intellect of the commentator. Poor blog comments reflect on the blog commentator, similar to how blog entries reflect on the content author. By taking the time to formulate blog comments that add to the general blog's original content, comments are more likely to be approved. Comments that are short and without much purpose other than to advertise other websites are insulting and do nothing to stroke the ego of the writer.

A little consideration goes a long way.

Make Money Online Idea #3: Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 02:42:00 +0000

In order to understand what Google considers a successful site about making money, I performed a search for the key phrase "make money" . Out of 439,000,000 results or content pages related to this topic, the number one result was a blog titled "101 Ways to Make Money."

Commentary: The dream of every webmaster is to have his or her site rank as the first result on Google's search engine result page. The reason is simple: the site that ranks #1 will receive the most Internet traffic. Of note is that Google ranks Internet sites as a function of their secret sauce algorithm; those sites that Google considers to be "most relevant" will rank higher. So... see what your competitors are doing and do it better.

Content readership

After Money Making Idea 1: Make Money Taking Paid Online Surveys – Free Membership and Money Making Idea 2: How To Make Money On EBay, Money Making Idea 3: How To Make Money Blogging appears to rank as the third most important method of money making online. The content author gets right to the point and suggests that blogging online is an excellent way of making additional revenue after achieving an "impressive and loyal readership." In other words, the author suggests that revenue follows in proportion with the number of people who are attracted to the content in the first place; the more people who visit in order to read, the more people who are available to click on advertisements, to join affiliate programs, and to make purchases.

Also interesting about this particular article about blogging is that its first comment occurs on October 26, 2009 at 1:10 pm, and that its overall domain ranks #1 in Google for the above mentioned key phrase on today's date: August 23, 2011. Either it took just under two years to achieve this result, or this result has been obtained and sustained for quite some time now.

Design color

After writing a little bit about the importance of being in complete control of your blog, and after writing a little information about web hosting and domain purchasing, the article author mentions that it is important to find a blog design template that complements the content. In my opinion, a blog's design should (a.) be easy to read, (b.) not cause eye strain, (c.) be laid out logically, and (d.) use colors that one already recognizes. As an example, for the longest time Google themselves used a certain color scheme. Google colored their links blue (#0000FF), the URL of the links green (#008000), and the text message of the link as black (#000000). We can assume that after much research and development that Google chose their scheme to maximize clicks. Therefore, it would seem logical to pattern the design of one's own personal blog after that which a multi-billion dollar corporation considers more conducive to human click behavior.

Content selection

"Something you are passionate about," the author argues, is what should determine the content of your blog. I have written about this elsewhere, but to review, content should be unique, insightful, and should reflect the perceptional-experiential world of the content author. If you're a minister, writing about religion would be a good choice; if you're a parent, perhaps sharing successful parenting techniques would be a good start. If you're a person who likes to think about the deeper meaning of things, then perhaps sharing and describing with the world your unique point of view would be a good fit. Controversial topics inspire debate and argument, so it's best not to wear your emotions on your shoulder if you want to discuss sensitive topics.

Raising social awareness

"One great way to do this is to submit it to as many of the social bookmarking sites as possible. You can also join social networking sites and build a profile which contains a link to your blog. Other no cost ways to generate traffic include writing free articles for article directories with a link to your blog at the end, and creating signatures at the end of any posts you make to internet forums, and also in all the emails you send out. When you really start thinking about it, you don’t actually need to spend anything to generate plenty of traffic."

I would add that it is important to advertise your blog's RSS feed. Many individuals read from within aggregate programs and will not visit your blog personally. Also, there are some directories and other websites who accept RSS feeds alone. The best method is to syndicate your content through Feedburner.

Monetizing

The author concludes by mentioning that ads can be placed on the blog, and that a successful blog can be sold for 10x its monthly ad revenue. When it comes to selection, I would recommend a blend of Amazon, Adsense, and Prosperent advertisements. Each alone stands to meet decent coin, but when used together, more opportunities are presented to each blog visitor. Remember that money is a function of traffic, and traffic is a function of good content.

Help with Ads on Blogspot

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 04:12:00 +0000

"Either content follows advertising or advertising follows content." What this phrase means is that either the art of blogging will occur for the sake of fulfilling the art, or it will occur for the sake of securing profit -- why not both at the same time?

I scoff at those who claim to create content for the sole sake of content creation; content creation occurs for a purpose and/or reason that guides the art of creation in the first place. Earning advertising revenue seems to be the grand design of content creation and its publication on the internet. Money, in other words, is the primary motivator for the creation of content. However, this is not to say that content created under these circumstances must be sub-level or meaningless. Quite the contrary, money and internet traffic encourage content writers to produce better and better articles.

Blogspot provides the cheapest, best, and easiest platform to showcase such content to the world. Blogspot is a free blogging service provided through Google, and it is indeed possible to feature advertisements from Google's Adsense, advertisements from the Amazon Associates Program, and ads from the Prosperent Affiliate Network on Blogspot. The question is: when should those ads be shown? Should content creation determine ad selection or should the potential money earned from ads determine the particular kind of content that is made?

The answer is both. In other words, content creation should be an easy act for the one who is writing the article. The article should relate to personal experience in some manner, or it should be a reflection of certain ideas held in the mind of the author. Ideas can range from broad categories such as Home Business to specific niche categories such as which freezers obtain the perfect amount of ice slush in canned soda. Advertisements are then placed around or blended in with this content with the hope that some users will be interested in the ads or products displayed, and will click the ad or make the product purchase.

Now, some content niches offer higher commissions than others. The amount of revenue that one can earn from clicks on ads about pink and blue bunniess living in Antartica is less than the amount of revenue that one can earn blog entries about finances or celebrity news. If one has ideas about content relating to finances or celebrity news, then the advertisements will necessarily reflect the content and will yield a much higher payout.

Ads on Blogspot are designed to be a part of a larger templating system. In other words, the blog writer or content publisher has control over the placement, color design, and affiliate network of the available ads within their chosen template. Because the templating system is independent from content creation on Blogspot, that is, ad placement occurs within a design structured framework that is independent from and revolves around content creation, it makes more sense to focus on content creation first. "Content is King" is the mantra here. Content pulls in the traffic from the search engines; content is what users are looking for -- people want to read good content. Once this content is published and the end-user is on the content publisher's site, then this is where design becomes important.

Home Business Ideas in 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 03:26:00 +0000

Regardless of the state of the economy, anyone and everyone with an internet connection and an account with Google can begin making money online. Given the right set of circumstances, making money online can come at little to no financial expense on the part of the entrepreneur.

The search engines have a voracious and an unsatiable appetite for unique and useful content. This content has the potential to be monetized, that is, publishing unique content on the internet can translate into real revenue. The process from publication to payment does not happen immediately, however, given persistence, creativity, and habitual dedication to the creation of content, financial rewards will follow.

The first step in the process of making money online with your home based business is securing a computer with an internet connection. Those not having the money to purchase their own computer or their own internet connection can find access to computers at their local library free of charge. In addition, there are several locations who offer free WiFi access to the internet as part of their overall customer experience. Think of that person pecking away on their laptop on a Friday night at the local Starbucks Coffee House.

The second step in the process of making money online is to remember to write about topics that are most familiar. For example, those in the fire protection business during the day have unique experiences and insights in their particular field that is not common. Writing articles, how-to's, and creative criticism pieces relating to the fire proteciton field would seem most accessible to this particular individual. In essence, content creation happens most easily when the writer puts into words their own personal experiences, insights, thoughts, criticisms, and helpful advice pertaining to their area of experise. If you're a firefighter, consider writing pieces about fire fighting; if you're a student in high school, consider writing pieces about the triumphs and failures of the high school social hierarchy; if you're a college student who possess a degree in underwater basket weaving, then produce content relating to underwater basket weaving: which material is the best and why, how does water effect the weaving process, and are there long term health benefits from engaging in this extra curricular activity?

The third step in the process of making money online is to secure a means of communication the unique content with the world at large. Consider setting up an account with Blogspot. You can interface your Google account with Blogspot and can display Google' Adsense alongside your unique and insightful content. There are no out of pocket costs associated with creating an account at Blogspot -- that's right ... creating a blogging account is free. And there are no out of pocket costs associated with joining an affiliate program such as Amazon or Prosperent.

In essence:

Create a free blog at Blogspot.
Apply to the Google Adsense Program after a few initial posts.
Apply to the Amazon Affiliate Program after a few initial posts.
Apply to the Prosperent Affiliate Program.
Create unique content.
Showcase advertisements from Google, Amazon, and Prosperent on your free blog.

As time progresses, and as users find the information and content on your blog useful, traffic will increase. As traffic increases, revenues will increase in direct proportion. You'll have no upfront and ongoing costs, no hosting costs, and no domain registration and renewal costs. Your only limitation will be your imagination. Then, consider also submitting your unique content to article directories in order to obtain backlinks from the various other websites who will inevitably republish your content. In this manner, your content will inform numerous readers as well as host numerous incoming links from various domains.

Affiliates aren't making as much as they could

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 18:47:00 +0000

Some estimates place online retail sales during the holiday season at tens of billions of dollars. This means that a lot of people who normally do not use the internet will begin doing so in order to find the best deals and the most bang for their buck. Affiliates can earn from the upcoming shopping spree if they have in place the mechanisms to help shoppers connect with the products that they seek.

In the world of affiliate marketing, securing relationships with product merchants is the key to success. The more merchant relationships that an affiliate can secure, the more products that can be shown ... and the more products that can be shown, the more commissions that can be made from the sale of those products. However, those just beginning in the world of affilaite marketing are at a disadvantage; the sheer novelty of their domains and the lack of historical product sales disqualifies them from earning top-tier commission rates.

Enter Prosperent. Prosperent takes the hassle of out forming relationships with individual merchants for their affiliates. When one becomes a Prosperent affiliate, one takes advantage of the existing partnerships that Prosperent has with various online merchants and advertising firms such as Share-a-sale, Linkshare, and Commission Junction. One would spend a lot of time, energy, and effort in attempting to form partnerships with all of the merchants within each of these repsective advertising frameworks on their own. In addtion, merchants come and go from each of these marketing firms all of the time, transforming their product datafeeds from being active and relevant to being inactive and non-operational. In other words, an individual publisher would be spending a lot of their personal time and resources simply maintaining, updating, and revising their merchant partnerships.

Prosperent makes affiliate life easier and simplier. As I mentioned earlier, Prosperent already has formed various partnerships with various online merchants and advertising firms. To be a member of the Prosperent Network is to leverage Prosperent's market share in your favor. Prosperent updates their product catalog accordingly as merchants join and leave advertising firms, freeing up affiliate resources to focus on the marketing of items in the Prosperent catalog. If a merchant lowers their affiliate commission rate below a certain threshold of profitability, Prosperent automatically discontinues featuring that particular merchant's goods and will feature higher commission similar items from that merchant's competitor instead.

Prosperent was developed by affiliates for affiliates, and it is in Prosperent's interest to develop tools that continue to increase profitability from reputable merchants. Prosperent affiliates provide shoppers with access to the product that they are looking for while at the same time earning commission from their efforts when a product is sold. Shoppers get what they want. Affiliates get what they want. Prosperent gets what they want. In the end, to be on Prosperent's team is to be on the winning team indeed.

Mr. Answers is a member of the Prosperent Affiliate Network and publishes to his blog titled "Blogspot-Ads". His interest is in raising awareness of the Prosperent Network and in finding new and novel ways of earning money online. In addition, he is a curious individual and an independent thinker who attempts to understand the nature of the world around him. He promotes critical thinking skills, independent thought, and calm discussion about important issues in the affiliate marketing world and beyond.

Adwords & Adsense: Google's Hypocrisy

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 17:18:00 +0000

While Google is, at the present time, the world's largest internet search engine, there are certain practices that call me to question how it earns revenue. The crux of the argument is in the tension between how Google advertises itself as a family-oriented business to Adsense publishers while at the same time accepting money from sexually explicit websites.

Bloggers and other website operators showcase Google's Adsense advertisements in an effort to earn clicks for money. When an advertiser desires to promote their website, they would make use of Google's Adwords. In other words, advertisers use Adwords and publishers use Adsense, and it is possible to be a user of both platforms simultaneously. Indeed, Blogging for Money has grown into a popular activity that has the potential to generate residual income from home.

Adsense Explained

How Adsense operates, in a nutshell, is that the web operator places a small piece of Javascript code alongside or embedded with their original page's content, and Google (after scanning the content page) displays advertisements related to the content in question. The publisher can design the ad to blend in with their page's design, or they can design their ad to stick out from the overall design of the page. Both display methods have their advocates and opponents.

When someone visits the website in question, Google shows them relevant ads with the hope that the user will click on the ad and visit the site promoting the ad. When the user clicks on the ad, Google pays an unknown pecentage of the advertising cost to the web site publisher of the ad.

Adwords Explained

Adwords is the platform that advertisers use to associate their particular advertisement with particular search engine keywords or keyphrases. It costs advertisers a certain dollar amount, on a per-click basis, to associate their advertisement with a particular word. For example, searching Google for information about "dogs" will reveal advertisements about "dogs" because the advertisers pay a certain dollar amount to have their particular ad about "dogs" associated with search engine queries relating to "dogs." Certainly, it is possible that an advertiser will show their ad about "cats" when users search for "dogs," but this works out to a disadvantage in the end because while the click through rate might be high, the conversation rate will be low. The conversation rate is determined by the behaviors the user performs on the ad destination site.

The Hypocrisy

The tension between adsense publishers and adwords advertisers rests in the domain of what Google considers to be "family friendly." Indeed it is part of Google's Terms of Service that advertisements on a publisher's website appear within "family-safe" content. In other words, Google will terminate a publisher from receiving payment when the publisher places adsense ads on a content page relating to "adult toys".

Google doesn't deny advertisers from creating "adult toys" ads in the first place.

Do you see the tension here? Google terminates adsense publishers for showcasing ads within "adult toys" content while at the same time accepting money from the advertisers of "adult toys" content through adwords. What this means is one thing: Google, the company who believes themselves to be "family-oriented" hoards all the advertising money from the adult toy industry

Example

Perform a Google search for "Adult Toys," and you'll see plenty of Google Ads. However, if you are a publisher, that is, if you operate a website that sells "Adult Toys" and you feature adsense on pages that contain adult toys, you'll receive a warning email, suspension email, or a termination email from Google for being in violation of their "family-oriented" policies.

The author of this article is part of the Prosperent Network, which makes a catalog containing over 50 million items available to their affiliate partners.

The Prosperent Affiliate Network

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 16:33:00 +0000

The Prosperent Affiliate Network was founded in 2009 with the intent of providing content publishers the tools needed to connect internet shoppers with internet merchants. Prosperent manages professional business relationships with hundreds of online merchants found on the Commission Junction, the Share-a-Sale, and the Linkshare marketing networks. In addition Prosperent features several partnerships with companies such as Zappos.com, 6pm.com, Overstock.com, QVC, and Kohl's to name a few. Because Prosperent has access to the product catalogs from each of their merchants, there are well over 50 million individual items available to content publishers. What this means for affiliates is that there is a better chance of matching niche products with niche content.

Access to Prosperent's massive catalog occurs through javascript banner ads and/pr through an API programming interface. Both are made available on the Prosperent Affiliate dashboard after signing up, and both can be customized to blend in with site content. Javascript banners and links units are available in a variety of size formats including: 500x250, 728x90, 550x120, 550x90, 468x180, 468x60, 120x600, 160x600, 336x280, 300x250, and 300x300 for banners. Link unit sizes include: 728x18, 468x18, 200x90, and 180x90. Each banner and link unit can be customized further in that elements of the banner and the link units can be configured to be either visible or invisible. The product image, product title, product description, product price, and the "buy now" button can be modified to taste.

Javascript banner ads make an excellent compliment to or a replacement of Amazon's banners, and because most free blogging sites allow the use of javascript code, it is possible to show blog readers products relevant to the on page content. This translates into higher conversion rates and increased income for content publishers. This also means that content publishers have another tool that allows them to monetize their blog. And when content publishers use free blogging platforms, such as Blogger, it becomes possible to turn a "regular" hobby into a "profitable" one. Addition information about blending Prosperent with the Blogger platform can be found on the Prosperent Affiliate Blog.

Access to Prosperent's catalog also occurs through an API interface. Programmers can design applications that use Prosperent's API to return relevant product matches for user-driven search queries. Because Prosperent's master catalog is composed of each merchant's catalog, writing code for a product comparison site has never been easier. Prosperent has already done all of the heavy lifting. This not only means a reduction in server load and latency, it also means that each product search occurs against the product catalog from each individual merchant within Prosperent's network simultaneously. This makes it simple to price compare between merchants without having jumble between numerous APIs.

In conclusion, Prosperent's 50 million+ item catalog has content publishers clamoring. Whether a content publisher be a blogger or a programmer, Prosperent has something for anyone interested in making money online.

Amazon hates their affiliates

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 16:31:00 +0000

Once upon a time, Amazon embraced their affiliates as partners and rewarded them with generous access to their server's resources. As Amazon's popularity increased over time, they began to distance themselves from their once cherished affiliates.

Allow me to begin this article with a disclaimer. Before writing this article, I searched Google in an attempt to find archived documentaion in order to support the claims found in this article. Unfortunately, I could not find such a site that kept an accessible document archive of Amazon's policies and policy changes regarding their affiliate program over the years. The closest match for what I needed was found on the Amazon's Document Archives site, however, older documents were not accessible because the information they contain are no longer applicable at the present time.

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, Inc. in 1994 and the site went online in 1995. At that time, Amazon did not have the household name brand recognition that it enjoys today. Amazon, more then than now, relied on their network of affiliates to promote their products online. Their practice is and was to credit their affiliates with a certain percentage of the final sale amount as a way of rewarding the particular affilate for their advertising efforts. When an affiliate sold more items, Amazon rewarded them with a higher percentage cut which resulted in a higher overall paid commission. In this manner, Amazon's advertising budget was depleted only when their affiliates would make a sale. It was up to the affiliate to create a web site, pay for hosting, and drive traffic to Amazon.

However, Amazon's affiliate model also placed them at odds with their affiliates. As consumers would discover Amazon's existence on the internet, there would be less and less of a need for consumers to arrive at Amazon's site through an affiliate link. Consumers could just visit Amazon directly and make their purchases. And when consumers would arrive on Amazon's site directly, there would be no need nor requirement for Amazon to credit their affiliate with a percentage of the final sale amount. In this manner, Amazon began to see that their advertising budget through affilaite commissions would be stretched further and further.

This model of having consumers visit Amazon's site without prior passage through an affiliate link is part of their overall business strategy. Affiliates appear to be a "necessary evil" in Amazon's eyes. As evidence of this, I offer one of Amazon's policy changes regarding search engine advertising: "After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay advertising fees to Associates who send users to www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca, or www.endless.com through keyword bidding and other paid search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines. As of May 1, 2009, these paid search Associates will not be paid advertising fees."

Affiliates use to earn thousands of dollars from Amazon through the implementation of the practice of search keyword bidding. For those of you who do not know what this is, allow me to explain the concept quickly. Keyword bidding allows advertisements to appear alongside the search engine results. For example, if you do a Google search for a product, sometimes you will notice that there will be advertisements along the right hand side of the results page. Keyword bidding would allow affiliates to place Amazon products relating to the search phrase or search word in that area. Consumers, who were obviously interested in such a product (because they as consumers would trigger the advertisement with certain keywords), would see the link advertisement and were more likely than not to click that advertisement. Since that link advertisement was placed there by an Amazon affiliate, the affiliate was using ads alongside the search engine results to drive traffic back to Amazon and earn commissions.

Amazon, who was more interested in denying commissions to affiliates who were using this method than being grateful for the increased traffic and sales, decided to halt payments for those using this practice. Indeed, this decision on Amazon's part seems to follow Amazon's increasing presence in Google's search results. At the present time, Google has indexed over 311 million pages from Amazon.com, and indeed products from Amazon appear in many search engine requests. Should Google decide to eliminate Amazon from the search engine results, I believe that Amazon's Affiliate Program would undergo a rebirth.

Interview with Prosperent Brian

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 17:56:00 +0000

You can download and listen to the audio interview with Prosperent Brian. The topic of this interview is an introduction to the Prosperent program itself; and during the course of the interview, it is revealed that "shoes" are a popular online selling item.

Link to MP3 interview

In an effort to demonstrate how easy it is to deploy the phP-Rosperent PHP script as a shopping comparison site, I have created a few niche sub-domains: for the Nike brand and for the Adidas brand. The search results on these domains are not constricted to these brands alone; it doesn't make sense to lock out certain products or brands from appearing on a shopping comparison site. However, these brand names form the root of certain seed words that will allow search engines to index site content. These seed words serve as the starting point for search engine indexing. The script itself constructs and manipulates on-page links in order that search engines "deep-spider" the site. In other words, we begin the search engine spidering process with these brands as seed words.

It should also be noted that the shopping cookie offered from Prosperent lasts a lot longer than the shopping cookie offered from Amazon. Whereas Amazon's cookie lasts for 24 hours, Prosperent's cookie lasts for several days and/or weeks. During the price comparison shopping process, a customer is likely to visit several online store before committing to a final purchasing decision. In addition, the price comparison process can take several days to complete -- the reason varies from customer to customer.

Prosperent makes available several avenues of online income earning. The first and easiest is the implementation of javascript advertising; with a small piece of javascript code, products will be pulled from Prosperent's product catalog of over 50,000,000 items and will be shown. In fact, this is how I'm using Prosperent with Blogspot. Since Prosperent is Free to join and since Blogspot is free to use, all the money I make online through this avenue is always a profit. There's no hosting to pay for; there's no domain to renew.

The second avenue of making money online is through Prosperent's API interface. It just so happens that I wrote a script that takes advantage of this API interface, and I provided links to a Nike Shopping Site and to an Adidas Shopping Site earlier in this post.

At this point, you might be wondering if Prosperent really works. The short answer is: yes. Payment is sent on a monthly basis to your Paypal account or to your Payoneer account.

Were you a California Amazon Affiliate?

noreply@blogger.com (Niteblade) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 16:21:00 +0000

Amazon no longer pays commissions to their affiliates living in California. Yup.

If you live in California and were once an Amazon affiliate, then I recommend examining Prosperent as a viable alternative. And if you're living in another state and are a current Amazon affiliate, then using Prosperent ads in addition to Amazon ads will provide a competitive shopping experience for potential consumers.

According to Amazon's Terms of Service for Affiliates, living in one of the following states is grounds to be dismissed from the program:

In addition, if at any time following your enrollment in the Program you become a resident of Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, North Carolina, Rhode Island, or Connecticut, you will become ineligible to participate in the Program, and this Operating Agreement will automatically terminate, on the date you establish residency in that state.