Their original website was not very SEO-friendly, so I suggested moving to a WordPress platform. If you’ve been on my site before then you probably know I’m a big fan of WordPress, but for the first timers, here’s why I made this recommendation:

• I knew I could rebuild the site quickly and for lower cost.
• There are thousands of premium themes available for WordPress that allow me to keep client costs down while still building an attractive and professional website.
• WordPress makes it easy to use SEO-friendly permalinks.
• WordPress makes it easy for my clients to make changes to their website on their own – no need to contact me.
• The WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast is easy to add and makes WordPress even more of an SEO powerhouse. This plugin makes it easy to set Titles, Descriptions, and Keywords, and also allows you to easily optimize on-page content, and fixes those parts of WordPress that aren’t already SEO-friendly.

The new website is built on the Karma Theme from Themeforest.net.

Visit Plastic-Domes-Spheres.com

Original Post: Plastic Domes & Spheres Project

It takes a certain kind of person to get interested in Internet Marketing. Most of us are opportunity seekers looking to make lots of money as quickly as possible. I wouldn’t say we’re a greedy bunch, rather that we’re highly money motivated.

Unfortunately that makes Internet Marketers the perfect target for make-money-online scams.

Many of these scams masquerade as helpful tools or IM courses, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the person who created the tool or course is tricking you to get money.

While the FTC is cracking down on those telling outright lies, there’s still plenty of grey area and ‘flexibility’ in marketing.

The key is to be able to quickly identify and dismiss the latest scam product that some IM Guru just emailed you, and avoid wasting your hard-earned money.

Identifying IM Scams

Almost all ‘scam’ sales pages (squeeze pages) have the following things in common:

• 1The creator tells their story, which invariably involves being broke or in debt, living on the street or in a van, and working for pennies in an unsatisfying job. This part of the presentation is designed to connect with you and says, I’ve been where you are.
• 2Next they show their current wealth. This was traditionally done with pictures of mansions, sports cars, and boats (easily faked), and now is commonly done with screen shots of Clickbank or other affiliate accounts full of hundreds of thousands of dollars (even easier to fake). This is the part where they get you excited by the possibilities.
• 3Then they reveal that there was one specific tool that they discovered or created that was the difference between living on the streets and banking millions – and you can get access to the tool for only $49.97! This is the part where they lie. The tool they’re selling you may or may not be helpful, but it was their internet marketing knowledge that allowed them to make money – not some push-button software.
• 4This is then followed up with more earnings screen shots and testimonials (solicited or fabricated) to reinforce the sale.
• 5Then they close the presentation with some kind of scarcity – “only available for a limited time!”, or “price is going to double tomorrow!”, or my favorite “only 7 copies left before we close the doors forever!” This is BS, however scarcity is a powerful motivator.
• 6Finally they seal the deal with a no-questions asked money-back guarantee. This is critical as it makes you feel more comfortable buying and is protection against fraud complaints. For the record they do honor the guarantee. I’ve asked for my money back on several products and services and received it every time.

This format is used because it works – and it works well. Even though I’ve seen literally hundreds of these sales pages or sales videos, when I read a good one it still make me want to buy!

The truth is, some of the content on these sales pages may be true – but the vast majority of it is exaggerated, half-truths, or outright lies.

Don’t fall for it!

The surprising thing is the number of people that are lured into buying this stuff with the promise that they can use ‘push-button software’ or ’10-minute mini sites’ to make a fortune while doing next to no work.

This is all lies. If it were really that easy to make money online then everyone would do it.

It takes time, know how, and some money to do this business right – and your best use for that money is on things like web hosting, domain registration, keyword research, and SEO outsourcing or tools.

People advertising ‘push button software’ and overnight millions are liars that are trying to make an easy buck.

The worst part about these web scams is they give the rest of us a bad name and make the public that much more cautious of the internet. Oh, they also waste a ton of your time!

How to Really Get Started Making Money

So if the latest Internet Marketing course or program is a waste of money, then how are you supposed to learn this business?

First, it’s important that you understand that making money online takes time.

Sure, if you know what you’re doing and have money to work with you can make money online pretty quickly, but if you’re just starting out then don’t expect to make any money for a while.

It could take 3 months to make your first sale, and 6 months or more to make a regular income.

While some people make a full-time income within a year of starting their business, they are the exception to the rule and make up well under 1% of people in this business.

I’m not trying to discourage you, but I think it’s important to start out with realistic expectations.

Second, You can literally get a free education in Internet Marketing.

The internet is full of great information, and a lot of what I know I learned from the following websites:

Smart Passive Income – One of the better IM blogs. Pat updates his site every couple days, and has a getting started guide to help new IMers.

ViperChill – Another good IM blog, however ViperChill is written for more intermediate to advanced IMers.

The Warrior Forum – Like most web forums, you’ll have to wade through a ton of junk to find the gems, but there are some real gems on the Warrior Forum. A good place to start is this list of the best Warrior Forum threads.

I’d recommend avoiding the WSO – Warrior Special Offer – section, as this is full of the scams I was talking about above. There are some quality WSOs too, but until you’ve started making money online I’d stay away.

Copyblogger – 1 of the most helpful internet marketing skills is the ability to write compelling content. Copyblogger is a great resource!

These are the sites I use the most often, however there are plenty of others.

That said – Don’t read too many different websites! Information overload is one of the top causes of IM failure. Also, it’s easy to spend hours just on the sites I list above, and if you’re not applying what you learn then you won’t make any money.

Are All IM Products Scams?

That isn’t to say that every product or service targeted toward Internet Marketers is a scam. I’ve used many excellent products and read more than my fair share of eBooks that were full of great information.

If you’re looking for a solid online program that can really teach you how to make money online then checkout Affilorama by Mark Ling. <- Yes that's an affiliate link, however Mark's site has tons of free information on how to make money online, so even if you never spend a dime it’s still well worth your time to check it out.

Mark also has weekly free webinars that are worth checking out. Most of them have sales pitches at the end, but they’re still packed full of valuable content, and you can listen to them for free.

That’s it for this week – remember, don’t waste your money on Internet Marketing Scams!

Original Post: Avoid Internet Marketing Scams

Plenty of people get started in affiliate marketing without any of these skills, however I’d guess that the vast majority of successful affiliate marketers have all of these skills.

Don’t despair if you don’t have all – or any. The great thing about the internet is that it’s full of information, and it is possible to learn everything below from the comfort of your home.

Here’s a list of the 5 skills I think you need to be successful online:

#1You must be able to write! This is a huge one. When I say ‘able to write’ it’s not just sentence structure and grammar I’m talking about. You need to be able to write stuff that people want to read. Reading Copyblogger or Problogger will give you a good idea of what’s required.

#2You Must Understand SEO. Making money online requires traffic, and to me traffic equates to SEO. Everything from picking out your domain name, to doing keyword research to choosing article titles relies heavily on SEO, and if you don’t know what you’re doing then you’re literally wasting your time!

I learned this the hard way, and my first site was a complete failure. Fortunately tools like Market Samurai and Traffic Travis can help you learn the basics – and experience will teach you the rest.

> Click Here to try Traffic Travis for Free

#3You Have to Know How to Setup a Website. Sure there are different ways to go about this. Some people use Squidoo or Hubpages to build minisites – although that method doesn’t work very well anymore.

If you’re serious about having a real business that YOU own, that means having your own websites on your own hosting account. Knowing how to do this yourself is pretty critical and well worth learning.

I’ve written posts on web hosting – and you can read my lens on Squidoo about how to setup and install WordPress.

#4It helps to know HTML and CSS. This isn’t mandatory, but you’re in for a world of frustration is you don’t have a basic understanding of both. Oh, and WYSIWYG editors will only get you just so far. The web is full of broken websites that don’t make any money!

You can actually learn HTML and CSS pretty easily through W3Schools. This is a completely free resource – and I literally taught myself CSS on W3Schools. Click Here to visit W3Schools

#5Finally you must know how to manage and delegate.This is probably the most important and least talked about aspect of affiliate marketing. Those of us who are successful outsource a fair amount of our business. Some tasks are simply not worth doing yourself! If you’ve been a manager in the past then you’re off to a good start, but knowing how to delegate tasks – and who to delegate them to – is a huge part of this business.

If you don’t know where to begin, then I recommend taking a look at Odesk. Odesk is a great place to find people to help you build your website. You can find everything from writers, to web designers and programmers. If you’re just starting out then you may not be able to afford outsourcing yet, but you definitely want to have outsourcing in mind as your business grows!

Bonus – The MOST Important Skill

The Most important skill you can possess as an affiliate marketer is resourcefulness.

There are three kinds of people in this world – those who know how to find information, those who know someone that knows how to find information, and those who would rather lay on the couch and watch TV.

About 95% of people fit in the 3rd category, and there’s really nothing wrong with that. Making money online is an entrepreneurial endeavor – and it’s definitely not for everyone.

If you’re not interested in ‘techy’ stuff, then it likely isn’t for you.

Also, online success takes time. Anyone that says otherwise is trying to sell you something!

Finally, You don’t necessarily need to know how to do everything – but if you know how to figure it out then there’s a good chance you have what it takes to be a successful Affiliate Marketer.

Where to Go From Here

If you’re looking for a solid online program that can really teach you how to make money online then checkout Affilorama by Mark Ling.

Mark’s site has tons of free information on how to make money online, so even if you never spend a dime it’s still well worth your time to check it out.

Mark has made millions through affiliate marketing, and the best thing about Mark is that he makes most of his money as an affiliate marketer – not selling bogus courses to wanna be affiliate marketers like most so-called ‘gurus’.

Mark also has weekly free webinars that are worth checking out. Most of them have sales pitches at the end, but they’re still packed full of valuable content.

> Click Here to Check Out Affilorama

That’s it for this week. I hope you found something useful in my post. Keep an open mind, keep learning, and remember that you can’t fail if you don’t give up!

Original Post: 5 Skills You Need to Be a Successful Affiliate Marketer!

I’m guilty of using Adblock too as it reduces clutter on websites and makes the web a more friendly place.

Adblock Plus is especially nice on news and social media sites as some of the sites have started to put giant blocks of advertisements everywhere.

That said, if you run a blog and make your living from advertising then Adblock and Adblock Plus are your worst nightmare!

In this article I’ll discuss how to get around common Adblock plugins on your personal site so that your ads are still visible to your visitors even if they use Adblock or Adblock Plus.

First, How do Adblockers Work?

Adblock can’t actually see the image that your ad contains, so it has to look for other tell-tale signs of ads. Here are just a few of the things Adblock looks for:

• CSS styling that uses ‘ad’ or ‘advertisement’ or similar
• Images that are served from Ad networks instead of from your domain
• Affiliate links around images
• Images with ‘ad’ or other keywords in the file name
• Images that are ad-specific sizes (in some cases)

These are just a few of the thing that Adblock is looking for. When it finds any of these things it completely removes the block of code from the browser, and as a result the user sees nothing.

How Can You Get Around This?

If you’re using Adblock or Adblock Plus you should still be able to see advertisements on my website. It’s actually pretty easy for you to do the same.

Step 1 – Save the banner ad that you want to use to your desktop. Don’t hotlink the ad from another website!

Step 2 – Name the Image something vague. I named my Genesis image gns.jpg.

Step 3 – Upload the re-named image to your website. If you’re using WordPress, upload it directly through the Media tab.

Step 4 – Install a link cloaking plugin. I use Pretty Link. This allows you to cloak your affiliate links and make them look like they’re pointing to another location on your website. For example, my Genesis Affiliate link is: http://richkent.com/uses/genesis

Step 5 – Create cloaked links for all of your affiliate links. I prefer to use /recommends/product, or /site/website.

You can’t create links that have the same URL’s as a post, so if you have a post with this URL: http://yoursite.com/hostgator, and you make a Pretty Link that’s just /hostgator, this is going to cause a problem. That’s why I start most of my redirect links with /recommends/

Step 6 – Manually place your ad images with your pretty links on your website or in the sidebar. In general they should look like this:

<a href=”http://yoursite/recommends/product”><img src=”http://yoursite/wpcontent/uploads/bannername.jpg”></a>

And that’s it. If the banner doesn’t display correctly you can always add a little CSS to fix the position on your site. Generally you’ll want to use margins, so:

<a href=”http://yoursite/recommends/product”><img style=”margin: 5px 5px 10px 0;” src=”http://yoursite/wpcontent/uploads/bannername.jpg”></a>

Just remember that when using margin the first number is how much space you want to add above, second number is space to the right, 3rd number is space below, and the 4th number is the space to the left.

Also, you can use negative margins in some cases – so margin: -20px 10px 0 -20px; and so on.

That’s it, it’s really not that difficult. I know it’s tempting to use the banner ads directly from the advertisers website, but with more and more savvy internet users using Adblock this simple trick is a must!

Thanks for reading and feel free to ask questions in the comments.

Original Post: How to Get Around AdBlock

Etax laws, or so-called nexus laws state that if a business operates in a state then they must collect sales tax in that state. Operations include affiliates, so to avoid collecting taxes companies such as Amazon.com and Overstock.com cancel their affiliate programs in nexus law states.

California is about to pass AB 153, AB 155 and SB 234, which are our own version of Nexus or eTax laws, and will result in Amazon and dozens of other merchants terminating their affiliate programs in California.

This is pretty awful for you if you make your living from Amazon affiliate sales, as your only recourse is to move to a state (or country) that doesn’t have these laws.

Personally I know of several people that make thousands of dollars a month from Amazon.com sales – and even a couple that make over $10,000 a month – and I’d think that moving is their only choice. Very not cool for them!

Do The Laws Help State Revenue?

The worst part is that these laws are a complete failure. Not only that but it’s very likely that these laws are unconstitutional and may be reversed after a lengthy trial. Of course that doesn’t help affiliates in the meantime.

Of course lawmakers are completely out of touch with the impacts of these Nexus laws (perhaps out of touch in general?) and clearly don’t understand what they’re voting on – or the huge impact that this will have on thousands of people.

In their mind the law will result in more tax revenue – because it says that it will. The problem is that it A. When Amazon.com cancels their affiliate program they still avoid paying taxes, and B. By putting thousands of affiliates in the state out of business overnight, the state actually loses revenue!

Here’s the copy of the email I received from Amazon.com today:

Hello,

For well over a decade, the Amazon Associates Program has worked with thousands of California residents. Unfortunately, a potential new law that may be signed by Governor Brown compels us to terminate this program for California-based participants. It specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers – including but not limited to those referred by California-based marketing affiliates like you – even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state.

We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that we must take this action.

As a result, we will terminate contracts with all California residents that are participants in the Amazon Associates Program as of the date (if any) that the California law becomes effective. We will send a follow-up notice to you confirming the termination date if the California law is enacted. In the event that the California law does not become effective before September 30, 2011, we withdraw this notice. As of the termination date, California residents will no longer receive advertising fees for sales referred to Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned on or before the termination date will be processed and paid in full in accordance with the regular payment schedule.

You are receiving this email because our records indicate that you are a resident of California. If you are not currently a resident of California, or if you are relocating to another state in the near future, you can manage the details of your Associates account here. And if you relocate to another state in the near future please contact us for reinstatement into the Amazon Associates Program.

To avoid confusion, we would like to clarify that this development will only impact our ability to offer the Associates Program to California residents and will not affect their ability to purchase from Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com.

We have enjoyed working with you and other California-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program and, if this situation is rectified, would very much welcome the opportunity to re-open our Associates Program to California residents. We are also working on alternative ways to help California residents monetize their websites and we will be sure to contact you when these become available.

Regards,

The Amazon Associates Team

Pretty rough letter! Amazon.com could be a bit nicer about it in my opinion, but it is what it is.

Oh, and for those who think this may not pass – According to the Performance Marketing Association, the Nexus laws in California will definitely pass.

What Can We Do About It?

#1 – If you’re a California resident then please contact your local State representative. You can find your representative by clicking here.

Tell them that you strongly oppose Nexus and eTax laws, and explain that they hurt your business, and hurt business in California in general.

#2 – I’d also recommend that you Join the Performance Marketing Association, as they’re fighting the good fight against Nexus laws, and your membership will help.

#3 – Finally, you can move to a state (or country) that is unlikely to pass Nexus laws of their own. I’m guessing that many of Amazon’s larger affiliates will be forced to make this choice – and I hope that it works out for them.

I know that if I were earning $10K+ every month from Amazon sales, I’d rather move than give that up!

It stinks that this is going down this way. As I don’t currently make a ton of money from Amazon, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this info.

I’ve considered changing my state of residence away from California anyway – as I don’t actually live there right now. Of course it’s a huge hassle to establish residency in some states – but perhaps Nevada or Wyoming would rather get my tax dollars?

Update – This Has Happened as Predicted

Quick update – got my letter from Amazon late last night that this has been signed, and as such my account has been closed.

It will be interesting to see what Amazon does as more and more states enact Nexus laws. Perhaps Amazon figures it’s big enough to do without affiliates at this point, and the Nexus laws are a good excuse to clean house?

Here’s hoping that a legitimate Amazon.com competitor shows up that still shows affiliates love – Nexus state or not.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone who’s been impacted by the new Law. How much where you making from the Amazon affiliate program, and what are you planning to do now?

Update – Amazon California Affiliates have been Reactivated!

I got a very pleasant surprise early October – Amazon worked out a deal and reactivated California affiliates for 1 year while they work out the whole tax thing.

Good news for California Amazon affiliates – and good news for me. I’ll get back to posting make money on Amazon.com posts shortly.

I hope they work this out and keep the Amazon affiliate program open for all, as it really is one of the best affiliate programs on the web.

Original Post: Amazon.com to Terminate Their California Affiliate Program

Hosting is at it’s best when it’s invisible – which is to say when your website works, and works well. If your website is making you money, then good hosting is critical because bad hosting will cost you money due to downtime and slow website performance.

The best thing I can say about Hostgator hosting is that I never have to think about it. I test my websites often – and even use a monitoring service.

All of my websites have 99.9%+ uptime, and my website speeds are excellent using Hostgator. I’ve also had excellent service, and find the Hostgator support team to be excellent and knowledgeable!

The vast majority of websites that I work with are built in WordPress, so it’s very important to me (and my clients) that any host I use is highly WordPress compatible. WordPress does require good hosting to run well.

To be compatible with WordPress 3.2 (current as of this post) a host needs:

• PHP version 5.2.4 or greater
• MySQL version 5.0 or greater
• Apache (server) is recommended

And that’s it. Of course there are lots of other things that I look for in a host. These include:

• cPanel – I can’t stress this enough!
• Unlimited Websites per Account
• Unlimited MySQL Databases
• Unlimited Storage
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• 24/7 Tech Support
• 99.9%+ Guaranteed Uptime

Other stuff that’s nice to have:

• Unlimited email accounts
• Fantastico or simplescripts (common with cPanel)
• Dedicated IP addresses

This is all the stuff that I look for in a host, and Hostgator does it all. The only package that limits you at all is the Hatchling Plan – which only allows you to host 1 website.

cPanel is a Must!

I’ve said this in other posts, and I’ll repeat it here. cPanel makes it SO MUCH EASIER to work with your web host.

Setting up new email addresses is a breeze. Setting up WordPress is simple. Moving and transferring files, Setting up FTP, checking server status, you name it, cPanel makes it easy!

Hostgator uses cPanel of course, and they preinstall fantastico to make WordPress installation super simple.

Hostgator Support

I’ve contacted the Hostgator support team literally dozens of times. The majority of the time I use the live chat feature, and I’ve had excellent service every single time!

On average a Hostgator CSR answers my chat request in 2 minutes. I’ve had to wait at most 6 minutes, but in general there are around 100 support staff available, and the queue moves quickly.

I’ve found every Hostgator support rep to be helpful and knowledgeable. They’re all very well trained, and very friendly. I haven’t had a single bad experience – and I can’t say the same for any other host I’ve ever worked with.

Hostgator vs Bluehost

I used Bluehost to host my websites for over a year. While I found their service to be very good, what I didn’t like was that Bluehost uses CPU throttling.

What this means is that when your websites are getting a lot of traffic or putting any strain on the server processor, Bluehost uses software that then gives you LESS server resources – they ‘throttle’ the amount of server resources they give your website.

That means that when you’re getting the most traffic your website will literally grind to a halt, which will result in visitors leaving your site. I had this happen to me several times, and it was CPU throttling that ultimately led to my leaving Bluehost.

During the time that I’ve been with Hostgator I’ve never had my websites grind to a halt like they did regularly on Bluehost.

I know that Bluehost has to protect all their other customers on each server, but throttling performance when you need it most will cost you tens, or hundreds, or even thousands of dollars.

Also, Hostgator support is WAY better than Bluehost. I found Bluehost support to be good most of the time, but when I started asking about throttling and site speed they simply blamed my websites and didn’t offer any useful suggestions.

Hostgator vs GoDaddy

My biggest problem with GoDaddy is that they don’t use cPanel – and that their custom control panel is awful!

I first signed up with GoDaddy way back in the day – just like a lot of people – and I struggled every time I logged in to do anything. Creating email accounts, installing WordPress, transferring files, you name it!

I periodically have to use GoDaddy as some of my clients made the same mistake that I did. Don’t make this mistake yourself!

As I said above, GoDaddy uses their own control panel which is very poorly organized. Not only that but if you want to install (or uninstall) a WordPress website you have to submit a ticket and wait until they finish the installation.

Sometimes this happens quickly, and sometimes it can take days. I had one case where I needed to uninstall a clients WordPress installation because he installed it in the GoDaddy default – www.mysite.com/wordpress – and I needed to install it in the root directory – www.mysite.com. It took GoDaddy nearly a WEEK to do this! I could have done it myself in less than 5 minutes with Hostgator.

Oh, and on a separate note GoDaddy ads are sleezy and dumb, and the President of GoDaddy shoots elephants for fun. Seriously.

My Hostgator Coupon Codes

Hostgator has given me coupon codes that will save you money on your first order. Definitely take advantage of the coupons below! In most cases I recommend purchasing 2 years worth of hosting and applying the 25% savings coupon – richkent25

Apply my coupon code on the “Step 1″ page shown below:

> Click Here to Sign Up With Hostgator

These are my hostgator coupons, and hostgator does pay me a commission when you use them. Of course it doesn’t cost you more to use my coupons – and I appreciate it when you do as Hostgator pays me a referral fee, so thanks!

If you’d like to check out Hostgator hosting, click the button below. Thanks for reading my Hostgator Review and I hope you found it helpful. Feel free to ask my questions in the comments below!

Click Here to Visit Hostgator

Hostgator VPS

Hostgator recently introduced Hostgator VPS services. I host all of my websites on a Hostgator VPS and I’ve been very happy with the speed and performance of my sites.

What is a VPS? A VPS is a Virtual Private Server.

VPS hosting is like renting a fixed percentage of a web server for a reasonable cost. A full web server costs several hundred dollars a month, whereas a VPS can cost as little as $20 a month.

Unlike shared hosting, a VPS gives you your own dedicated resources, so that your websites will always have a certain amount of processing power and memory available.

Advantages of Hostgator VPS Hosting:

• Dedicated Memory and Resources to Your Websites
• Easy to add ‘nodes’ if you need even more performance for your sites
• Hostgator VPS is fully managed, so you get 24/7 support!
• Hostgator will even transfer your websites to your new VPS for free in most cases.

If you’re making several thousand from your websites, I strongly recommend that you purchase Hostgator VPS service, as in general this will make your websites run faster more reliably – and site speed is a factor in SEO.

Click Here to Visit Hostgator

Original Post: My Hostgator Review

While I make a decent income from other affiliate programs, it’s only recently that I’ve taken an interest in making money with Amazon.

I get a lot of questions from clients about making passive income online, and Amazon.com is a great way to start as it’s easy to sign up for the Amazon Affiliate program, and Amazon sales conversion rates are generally very good.

That means that a high percentage of the traffic that you send to Amazon will buy a product resulting in YOU getting a commission – and this is largely because people trust Amazon and are comfortable purchasing from them.

First a disclaimer – while I’ve made money with Amazon, I am by no means an Amazon.com super affiliate. I’m going to show you how I’ve made Amazon sales thus far, but this is just my experience and your mileage may vary.

Amazon.com General Sales Principles

First of all, it’s important that you understand the basics of online sales. This is really critical stuff. The easiest way to make a sale online is to target people who are looking for more information about a product or service.

Sounds like a no-brainer, right? The reason I spell this out is because a lot of people get frustrated and give up on making affiliate sales because they’re not targeting buyers with their content.

For example, If you write about a vacation you took with the hopes of selling luggage through the Amazon affiliate program you’re unlikely to make any sales. If, however, you write a positive and constructive review of the luggage you purchased from Amazon you’re MUCH more like to make sales.

This is because the person who reads your travel log is very different from the person who reads your luggage review. One is looking for a quick escape in the form of armchair travel, and the other is shopping for luggage. Make sense?

How to target Buyers

The most obvious way to target buyers is by using the format: [Product Name] Review, replacing Product Name with a product. ‘Makita BSS611Z Review’ for example if I had a woodworking or tool blog and liked that particular Makita Circular Saw. This works for anything.

The second thing you can do is what I did on GreenHobbit.com recently, and that’s target a more generic buying keyword. The post I wrote is entitled: How to Find Discount Hydroponics Supplies, and the keyword I’m targeting is ‘Discount Hydroponics Supplies’.

I think it’s safe to assume that someone looking for Discount Hydroponics Supplies is looking to buy something – I guess I’ll find out soon enough!

It certainly would have been safer to write a post about a specific product, or even to write a tutorial that explains how to put a hydroponics system together with links to each of the products, but in this case I wanted to target entry-level hydroponics gardeners and point out that most of the stuff they need is available through Amazon.com.

The key here is that I’m targeting people who are looking to buy something, and if you stick to targeting buying keywords you’ll make sales even if your sales copy isn’t that great.

Add Value!

The other thing you want to do is add some value! Don’t just regurgitate what you read on Amazon.

It’s preferable that you own and have had experience with the product and write a REAL review. Short of that you can do what I did on GreenHobbit – and that’s help people who are looking for something, in this case inexpensive (discount) products.

By doing the homework for those people, I’ve put together a list of highly-reviewed products that are relatively inexpensive. There’s a good chance that people looking for Discount Hydroponics Supplies will find my list useful – or at least useful enough to click over to Amazon.com which will result in sales (and money) for me.

SEO Your Amazon Posts

Make sure to use your keyword or product name (if it’s the keyword) in your post title, url, meta description and so on. Don’t make the mistake of naming the post: ‘A great circular saw that I use’, as no-one is searching for that!

Also make sure to use your keyword several times on the page, and follow all the other SEO rules that I’ve outlined here.

Getting organic traffic is the same whether for an Amazon.com product review or any other keyword that you’re targeting.

Keys to Success with Amazon

• The more products you sell, the higher a percentage of each sale Amazon.com pays you. This is retroactive and paid out over the course of a month, so it makes sense to sell more items if you can!
• The key to selling more items is to push some items that are more expensive, and some that are less expensive. Inexpensive stuff tends to have higher conversion rates, so by selling more cheap stuff you end up making more money on your higher cost sales.
• Only push products that are at least 4 stars! This is really important as poor reviews will decimate your conversion rate.
• Target more popular products by going to a category and then looking at top sellers. Top Sellers almost always are 4star+ items, and tend to have more search volume too.
• Don’t expect to get paid quickly – Amazon takes their time when it comes to payment, and only pays you (or rather me) once a month.

Making money with Amazon is really all about connecting buyers with products that they’re going to feel comfortable buying. Give it a shot and you’ll be collecting your first Amazon check before you know it!

Original Post: How to Make Money with Amazon

What exactly does a product review consist of, and how can you use a product review to make online sales?

FYI, Product = anything that you have to pay for, so it can include services and experiences as well as tangible products.

What is a Product Review?

A product review can be anything from a full Consumer Reports Magazine style teardown to a recommendation from friends or family.

The most powerful form of product review is the kind that you get from friends and family. This is a form of social proof, which is a big driver of sales in many industries – especially electronics and the movie industry.

When a friend recommends a movie to you for example, it’s natural to want to see the movie just so you can discuss it with your friend. This also happens with product purchases such as iphones or ipads. When your friend or relative says: “I LOVE my new iPad – you need to get one too!”, that’s a powerful endorsement.

How powerful depends on how much you trust your friend or relative – and TRUST is one of the most important parts of a review. If your friend has given you lousy reviews in the past, then you’re less likely to listen to their recommendations today.

This is also true if you receive obviously biased reviews. If your family member works for Ford and tells you how great Fords are you may believe them, but you also know that the review is biased.

How Do I Use Reviews?

This brings me to how I use reviews to sell products & services online. You can read a brief review I wrote here: my OneHourBacklinks Review. Believe it or not that review has gotten quite a few clicks and made some sales too.

I use similar reviews to sell products on most of my affiliate websites (although most of my reviews are better written.)

I recently placed a review on my ‘test’ site – GreenHobbit.com – representing a gardening product called Aquaponics4You. For the record I gardened a lot as a child – both my parents have gardens, and I’ve spent a lot of time weeding, pruning, picking veggies an so on.

Aquaponics4You is a clickbank ebook product that teaches you how to build your own Aquaponics system. You can read my Aquaponics4You Review Here.

While I’m sure my review could be better, I still want to point out the things that I do in my product reviews that improve my clickthrough rates and convesions (sales).

6 Ways to Improve Your Product Reviews

#1: Buy and Read or Use the Product You’re Reviewing! – This is a big one. If you want to look credible it’s important that you read, use, or try out the product.

I read Aquaponics4You several times, and while I didn’t build my own Aquaponics system, I’m pretty sure I could.

More importantly, I can write a comprehensive and honest review of the product because I actually know what the product is about in detail.

A huge percentage of review sites don’t bother with this step at their own peril. A review that sounds like rehashed information from other websites won’t generate a click – it will just result in a potential customer clicking the back button to look for a better review – or to give up entirely.

#2: No SCAM – A lot of product reviews are written with the word scam in them. Something like: Is Aquaponics4You a SCAM?!?.

I realize that a small group of people are searching for that exact term, however a far greater number of people are simply looking for reviews or information. When you stick the word SCAM in front of anyone, you raise red flags and create concerns where there weren’t any to begin with.

Another thing in common with all these misguided reviewers is they immediately say how product X is NOT a scam. Great – if it isn’t a scam then why bring that up in the first place?

Regardless of what you see online, don’t use the word scam – it will only serve to make your readers overly cautious – which is the enemy of sales and conversions.

#3: List the Bad Stuff Too – When you read a review that’s all flowers and sunshine you start to get suspicious, right? I mean, the product can’t be THAT good, can it?

If you want to have a credible – as in TRUSTworthy – review, then you need to discuss the good AND the bad. I see a lot of reviews that only focus on the positive, and if that review is for something I’m interested in I keep looking for a more honest review.

Even Amazon.com makes it easy to see negative reviews – you simply click on the 1 star and 2 stars and you can see what’s bad about a product. This is important as knowing what the possible downsides of a product are ahead of time actually helps to put your mind at ease.

#4: Break Your Review Into Sections – Most people scan reviews, and if you break your review into sections it will be easier for those people to read.

I read tons of reviews that are big blocks of text, and they are BORING. Even if the content is good, I simply don’t want to read a boring looking block of text.

I always have an overview, pros, cons, and my take on the product, followed by a button with my affiliate link. This makes it easy for people who just want to see the good and the bad – or who just want to see what the product includes.

#5: Don’t Talk About Cost! – There are exceptions to this rule, but in general it’s better if you don’t discuss the cost of the product.

Chances are the person already knows what the product costs, but more importantly your product review is designed to give people more information about the product itself and get them more comfortable with the product.

It’s the sales page’s job to make the actual sale, and it’s better to leave the cost on the sales page.

When I do include the cost on my review pages I’ve seen click through rates plummet, and sales plummet as a result. Don’t do it!

#6: Tell Others What You Would Want to Know – ask yourself what YOU would want to know about the product or eBook before you bought it and include that in your review.

If you simply wouldn’t buy the product yourself after using it or reading it, then SAY THAT. I know this sounds nuts, but I do this all the time and still make sales of the product.

The point is, be as honest in your product reviews as possible, give your readers quality information, and your readers will reward you with sales.

That’s it for this post. I’m getting back on the road shortly – leaving Playa Del Carmen, Mexico and heading to California for a week or so, and then back to the east coast.

I’ll be posting more GreenHobbit updates shortly I hope. Stay tuned and thanks for reading.

Original Post: How to Make Money with Product Reviews

I’m happy to say that I’ve built several versions of my own theme, and at some point in the near future will be releasing it on my website. First though – why Genesis and why a Theme Framework?

Why Use a Theme Framework?

First – what is a theme framework? WordPress themes consist of many different files doing many different things. There are files that define the layout and function of each page, post, category, and archive, as well as style sheets, function pages, javascript and so on.

A theme framework breaks these things into 2 themes – a Parent theme and a child theme. Genesis and Thesis are both parent themes, and child themes in Genesis consist of only a style sheet, a functions page, and an image folder – at least simple ones do.

This is better for 4 reasons.

1. First of all, it allows you to make visual changes to your theme without having to worry about breaking anything on the backend.
2. Second it makes it easier to design child themes in the first place, as all the changes you make are designed to carry through the whole theme.
3. Third you can update the parent theme more easily to stay up to date with WordPress. Sometimes your child themes will need updating to – but it’s much easier to fix a child theme than it is to fix a whole parent theme – and in the case of a theme framework the parent theme gets updated for you.
4. Finally, all child themes are backed by the rock-solid code of the parent theme, which helps with site speed, search engine rankings, and performance.

Up until a couple weeks ago, I ran all of my affiliate websites on a theme that I created for exactly that purpose. I did this because most WordPress themes are setup poorly for search engine rankings, and if you want an affiliate website to be successful then SEO is really important of course.

The problem is that I originally designed my theme over a year ago, back when WordPress was at version 2.7 or so. While my theme still appears correctly in 3.1+, there were certain backend things that weren’t working very well, and I was afraid that they were creating too many queries and slowing my site down which can hurt your search engine rankings.

I decided to transition to a theme framework and design a child theme for use going forward to eliminate those problems.

Why Chose Genesis over Thesis?

Thesis has been around for a while, and Genesis is the new kid on the block. What pushed me to Genesis over Thesis was actually Brian Clark of CopyBlogger.

Now I don’t know Bryan personally, but I have bought themes from Studiopress in the past, and I’ve been happy with the quality of the themes, and more importantly with the support that I got from Studiopress – and Bryan himself. In my opinion support is the key in the WordPress theme business – if you can’t get support a theme isn’t worth having no matter how nice it looks.

I also like that Genesis is backed by a team, whereas as far as I understand it Thesis is mostly supported by one person.

Finally, even though Thesis makes it easier for a non-designer to modify the design, Genesis actually makes it easy for a designer to modify, and the hook system makes Genesis really easy to work with and modify once you know how to use it.

Also, if you’re comfortable with css you can do virtually anything with child theme design.

I haven’t talked about any of my affiliate sites up to this point, but I figured I’d actually show you all one so you can see what’s possible with Genesis. This is my first child theme – so be gentle – but let me know what you think in the comments below.

The site is: www.GreenHobbit.com

This is a gardening affiliate site I started a long time ago and haven’t done much with, but will be developing it a bit going forward. To be clear, I’ve never made a sale with the site, and it get’s no traffic. It’s not a great model for an affiliate site – at least not yet – but I will be making it better.

I thought it would be helpful if I used GreenHobbit as a demo going forward – as examples speak louder than words.

By the way, I’ve named my new child theme Aplomb, which is Composure and Self Assurance – as I always try to make my websites instill confidence in my visitors. I’ll be writing a post on my theme shortly.

If you’re looking for a quality theme to run your affiliate websites, then I strongly recommend you check out the Genesis Theme Framework. Studiopress sells many great child themes, and you can also find free child themes or design your own like I did.

I’m planning to release the Aplomb Child Theme to the public sometime soon – although it won’t be as ‘cute’ as GreenHobbit.com. My standard design is much cleaner. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!

Original Post: I’m Moving My Affiliate Sites to the Genesis Framework

This was a fun site to put together as I haven’t worked with a physical product manufacturer or distributor since getting laid off back in 2008.

I especially like the theme. Karma is very flexible and has about 16 colors, more than 20 page layouts, tons of sidebar and navigation options, and more than 50 short codes! The short codes make it easy to add the frames and shadowing around the pictures, the 2 and 3-column page layouts, and the product portfolio pages.

If you’d like your business to have a quality website without paying thousands for a custom-theme, then I recommend you check out Themeforest and check out their huge selection of awesome WordPress themes!

Visit Themeforest

Also, if you need help setting up or customizing a WordPress website, please Contact Me

You can see the live ProSource Global website by visiting: http://www.ps-global.com

Original Post: ProSource Global Site Setup