The new tool allows Bloggers to add links and images to their blog posts in just 2 easy steps:

1.Bloggers highlight the relevant text and the Amazon Product Finder will search Amazon’s millions of products and recommend the ones that are most closely associated with the text

2.Bloggers can then insert a link or image to that product which includes their Associates ID, enabling them to earn up to 15% in referral fees from Amazon

Bloggers will also be able to show dynamic content in their blog sidebar using a new set of integrated Sidebar gadgets, such as gadgets for MP3 clips from the Amazon DRM-free music store, an Amazon Deals gadget, and an Amazon Search box.

Also as part of this new integration, Bloggers who don’t have a free Amazon Associates account can create one directly within Blogger so tell your friends that use Blogger how they can start earning with Amazon Associates today.

Check it out here on Associates Central.

First of all I’m not big on Joomla, Wordpress is my weapon of choice when it comes to building websites not because Wordpress is better but it’s just the tool I started with on the web and I’ve always been satisfied with it so I have no reason to change it. Since I run a website called Site Builder Tips I can’t make it all about Wordpress, Though I don’t use Joomla for any of my projects I do use some there theme designs, meaning I’ve seen some great CMS themes for Joomla that I then convert to Wordpress themes, I have a membership at Joomlart which is a Joomla premium themes site that has some really great themes that I convert to Wordpress themes.

It’s on Joomlart where I discovered a site called JomSocial which is a Joomla social network website builder plugin, I have to say this is the first time I ran into a tool that I couldn’t find for Wordpress, I mean there is BuddyPress but JomSocial is a whole other level. The cool thing about JomSocial is that the site it self is a social network that allows you to see the extension in action, a couple months back I joined the site and I completely forgot that I was trying out a demo because It was a real social network where I was interacting with other members. I think that’s a great way to sell a tool, the look, feel and functionality of JomSocial reminds me of being on Facebook.

JomSocial does a good job with this tool and they’re quite a few successful sites powered by JomSocial, 3 of which are GibLink.com that has 113,380 + members, OnlineRadioStations.com with 49,500 + members and KenyaHub.com with 120,583 + members just to name a few.

A few features and Specs that stood out for me.

Facebook Connect

Facebook has now eclipsed MySpace as the #1 most popular social network on the planet. With over 350 millions active users worldwide, chances are someone registering at your community will already be a member of Facebook.

To make the registration process hassle-free, JomSocial even included our new Facebook-Connect login-module in JomSocial, so your members can log-in to your JomSocial-powered community using their Facebook account details.

Profile pics, status updates & more are “pulled” in safely & securely from Facebook, making it easy for new and existing users to sign up and stay logged into your community.

Twitter Integration

If Facebook Is the king of social networks then Twitter is the prince, I’ve watch the service bloom from the very beginning (I was one of the first to use it back in 2006) when it was just a side service to Odeo to now being one of the most talked about services on the web, I mean you can’t even go a day on the internet without seeing something regarding Twitter.

JomSocial allows you to integrate your community with Twitter allowing your members to show there Twitter updates as well as there friends updates on your JomSocial community profile pages, also members of your community also have the option of automatically updating there Twitter account with status updates they make on your JomSocial community.

External Applications Support (Apps)

This is a really important feature for tools like this because it allows you to integrate your community with pretty much any third party service out there, thus giving you more flexibility with your community.

I’m really considering building Wordpress plugin that does exactly what JomSocial does for Joomla because there is nothing out currently for Wordpress that does this and I think a tool like this would be great for Wordpress.

Anyways check out JomSocial, sign up to there community to get a real life demo of JomSocial in action.

Check em out, JomSocial.

Ad.ly is the first network to accommodate all Twitter users, they have a large number of high profile celebrities but there is also room for the little guys with only a few thousand followers. Some of you who have already joined the network a while back might remember that campaign NBC had for upcoming shows one of which was True Blood (love that show) which I think everyone at the time got paid to tweet about the season finale which was $290 for a Tweet, yeah that’s right one Tweet. Some Users are even getting upwards of $5,000 per tweet,and this is just the beginning.

Checkout the video from their Launch back in September. It includes some pretty big celebrity endorsements like Dr Drew, Chamillionaire, Tony Hawk, and many others:

A few days ago Ad.ly launched there referral program where if you refer your friends to Ad.ly you make 12% of whatever they make, and with the Ad.ly Race, the person who gets the most people to sign up for Ad.ly wins a Free 13’ Macbook Pro (2nd and 3rd place will also get a free iPod Touch).

Ad.ly already ran successful campaigns with brands like NBC and Sony Pictures and are working with brands like Dell, Hilton, The Olympics, and Maserati to bring more high quality ads to there publishers. They are also launching our self-serve engine soon, which will allow more advertisers to participate. These guys are making all the right moves and doing all the right things in the Twitter advertising space and by the looks of ,millions of dollars will be passing through this company in the upcoming months.

Don’t miss this plane, sign up for Ad.ly

About eight months ago I decided to set up a fan page for my hip hop blog (HipHopMusicDotCom.com), I didn’t do much with it until I noticed I was getting fans most of which were most likely referred by my friends who I initially invited when I first launched the page.

It wasn’t until September 24th that I really started to see the benefits of using Facebook fan pages. Since that date I’ve been averaging 1,000 new fans per month and averaging 1,000 + visitors per day which has increased my overall traffic by 14 percent. At this rate I’ll be averaging 2,000,000 page views per month by December.

So Here’s How You Get It Done
First thing to do obviously is to set up a fan page for your website, now I’ve created multiple fan pages for the same site in addition to building pages to promote specific products but that’s not what we are trying to accomplish in this guide. That’s more advanced and I have a separate guide for that coming up. In this guide I’m going to get you up and running with one site first. So after you set up your fan page, give it a name which would most likely be the same as your website. Before you start driving traffic to it or invite anyone fill up your fan page with some content first. You would think something like that would be a no brainier but seeing as I’ve been invited to so many fan pages that didn’t have any content I take it that this must be a common mistake.

First thing you need to do is to add a logo as the fan pages profile pic, add some external links, post some articles in the notes section, and make a few status updates. It’s also great if you add videos, if you don’t have videos of your own just go to YouTube and find some videos related to your site’s content and post them. This is good since the videos play right within Facebook, the fans love this. So now that you’ve got a active Fan page it’s time to start promoting your fan page.

The first step is to create a fan box for your website, there a few different customization options you can choose for your website. You’ll find that this simple step will be one of the biggest factors regarding your fan page getting new fans on a daily basis from the already existing traffic on your website. You might be asking what’s the point of having visitors that already frequent your website everyday as a fan? Well it’s simple it’s no different from having them on a email list (the money is in the follow up). The only difference is that following up is more instantaneous, think of your Facebook fan page as a “social follow up marketing platform”. 2.6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day, those are unbelievable numbers. This is where web users hang out and this is where the traffic is so even though your readers come to your site every day why not have them come to your site ten times a day. With every post you make on your fan page it shows up on all your fan’s news feed therefore keeping your brand in front of your target audience.

Another thing you should do in regards to your website is to add a Facebook share button. They are a bunch of services out there that does this.

That’s all you need to do as far as your sites concerned, now lets move on to Facebook, by now you should have invited a few friends and gained a couple fans from your website depending on your site’s traffic. If you don’t already have existing traffic on your website don’t worry, the next couple of steps will help you get traffic without already having any traffic on your site. The next thing I did with my fan page is to create a simple competition, it wasn’t so much a competition so much as it was a call to action with a deadline.

And It goes a little something like this.

“Thanks to all the Facebook fans for joining our fan page, we just started this and we want to do it real big, and we need your help, our goal is 1,000 members in 1 month”

That one little status update has lead to new fans who have never heard of my site before. Needless to say I broke that record, I actually ended up getting 1,300 fans the first month.

Write Creative Content
Some really easy ways to create reactive content that will evoke a responses from your fans is to ask questions.

Eg: “When was the greatest era for Hip Hop Music, the 80s, 90s, or now?”

This lead to an overwhelming amount of responses, this is still one of the most discussed status updates to this date. Another way to create compelling content is to create lists.

Eg: “The top 5 greatest lyricists of all time?”

I do lists all the time because there easy to come up with and the fans never get tired of them. The trick to creating lists on Fan pages is to not give them choices but let them come up with the list themselves, this way more people will respond and it will keep the discussion going longer. The aim here is to keep the discussion going, why? Propagation. You see with every response a user gives on your Fan page shows up in their status feed and on their profile so there friends will all see this as well. So the more feedback your fan page receives leads to more propagation through out Facebook which leads to more fans which leads to more visitors to your site.

Sync Your Facebook Fan Page with Twitter
This is a really cool feature Facebook recently added to fan pages that gives you the ability to automatically update your Twitter account via Facebook.

Promote Your Fan Pages In Groups
A great way to get more fans is to promote your Fan page on Facebook groups related your topic. The cool thing about groups is that the group is more democratic than a fan page. When you post something in a group it’s visible to all the group members. This is not the same when you post on other peoples fan pages because your posts don’t show up in the main feed of the fan pages so no one really sees it, don’t waste your time on posting on other fan pages.

Get More Fans with Prize Giveaways.
Another way that is guaranteed to increase your fan count is by giving away prizes. With my particular audience here are some prize competition campaigns I’ve done

“Two tickets to the Jay-Z concert on 9/11 Free to whoever invites the most fans by the end of the day.”

“The new Jay-Z album is a instant classic, we are are giving away a free copy to anyone who refers the most fans today.”

These work every time , that second one lead to 100 fans in a day. I have a Facebook App set up to track who refers the most members.

Facebook Ads
I didn’t use this for my Hip Hop site but I’m currently implementing it into other fan pages that don’t have existing traffic….If your looking for instant gratification, instead of waiting months to get fans. Facebook ads are very cheap and you can get a great deal for very little. You can turn a $300 campaign into 5,000 fans and you could then double that with the tips you’ve learned in this guide and you’d never have to run another campaign again. When you create a fan page ad just don’t make it look like a ad. Here’s a rule of thumb to go with, the description you gave to your fan page and the image you used when you created it should be the same for your ad campaign which Facebook can automatically do for you.

Study Your Stats

Once you have a couple hundred or thousand fans, start checking your stats more frequently to see what’s creating the most feedback and interactions as well as demographics and more. This will gives you insight on what type of content you should be creating for your fan page. I must admit I’m quite impressed with Facebook fan page stats no other social network provides this at least not for free.

And that’s pretty much sums up Facebook fan page marketing, I have a few other posts coming up about marketing on Facebook, this is just the beginning.

Thank you for reading Chozen…

In many instances Blogger serves as a starting point for most Bloggers, a place where they can start blog with little to no risk and if it turns out to be a blog that has the potential to be a business then they can then upgrade to a self hosted service like Wordpress .org. Though they’re many Bloggers out there that make a full time income with blogs hosted by Blogger. In this guide I layout the steps to creating a blog that is scalable. People use Blogger for many different purposes such as affiliate sites, news sites, video blogs, gossip, music blogs, photo blogs or a simple online journal or diary which was the original purpose of a blog, but that was a long time ago and the times have changed. Here’s how to set up Blogger correctly or at least just the smart way.

Finding A Good Domain Name For Your Blog
In many cases people use their name as their Blogger name, or they pick a name that doesn’t have much relevance on the web. Now lets say your blog is about “Web Design”, it would be smart to pick a name that relates to that topic but not only related to that topic, the name should also hold relevance and by relevance I mean that people should actually be searching for those keywords you decide to put inside your domain name. The easiest way to know what people are searching for on your particular topic is to use the Google Keyword Tool the same tool used by advertisers who want to advertise on Google.

Above is a screen shot(click for larger image) of a search I did using the Google Keyword Tool, as you can see the search volume for “web design” is very high which means it’s a very popular topic on the web. It would be wise to pick a name that is related to those set of search terms (keywords) above. The search term “best web design” seems to have a nice healthy search volume so obviously your Blogger name should be bestwebdesign.blogspot.com but that’s most likely taken so try variations like best-web-design.blogspot.com or try adding a extra word like BestWebDesignTips.blogspot.com, if your unfamiliar with Blogger and you don’t know what “.blogspot.com” means it’s simply the sub domain name that Blogger gives you when you create a blog which is the same if you created your blog on Wordpress.com your site name would be BestWebDesignTips.wordpress.com. Using “.blogspot.com” with your domain is not a good idea and below in the next step I’ll show you why.

Using A Top Level Domain Name
If you one day consider taking your blog to the next level then building a brand should be your number one priority. Having a name like bestwebdesigntips.blogspot.com is not very professional and many Advertising companies don’t even accept sites with “.blogspot.com” in the URL. Once you’ve signed up with Blogger and have created a name for your blog the next step is to purchase a TLD (Top Level Domain) such as .com, .net, .info, .us, .org etc, so instead of having bestwebdesigntips.blogspot.com your URL should read BestWebDesignTips.com, BestWebDesignTips .net and and so on and so forth. Why is this important? Lets say one day you decide you want to move your blog to another service or you want to hot the blog your self on your own server, you won’t be able to move the domain name bestwebdesigntips.blogspot.com because that belongs to Blogger and all the marketing, promotion and link building efforts will be lost, but if you use your own domain name that you own then you can move that to wherever you please and thus protecting your brand.

Setting Up Your Top Level Domain With Blogger
Blogger gives you the option of purchasing a domain name from right inside Blogger for $10/year, do not buy your domain name from Blogger. Even though you may have a professional top level domain it’s still hosted by Blogger and that means if your blog gets deleted for whatever reason you will also loose that domain name. Instead use a service like Godaddy to register your domain which gives you full control over your domain name. Once you’ve registered your domain name with Godaddy setting it up with Blogger is quite easy.

1. Log in to your account at www.godaddy.com.
2. Open the Domains tab and select My Domain Names. You’ll be directed to the Domain Manager page.
3. Click the domain that you’d like to use with your blog.
4. Click the Total DNS Control And MX Records link at the bottom of the section entitled Total DNS.
5. Click Add New CNAME Record in the box labelled CNAMES (aliases). If you’ve already created a CNAME record for your blog’s address, click the pencil icon next to the existing CNAME record.
6. For the Name, enter only the subdomain of the address you want to use for your blog. For example, if you picked www.mydomain.com as your address, enter www here.
7. Enter ghs.google.com as the Host Name. Specify a TTL or use the default setting of 1 hour.
8. Click OK, and then click OK again.

If you don’t use Godaddy they are other domain name services out there that can do the same but since Godaddy is the most popular, easiest and just happens to be the service I use for all my domain name management.

Once you’ve finished the above steps you’ve completed the most important part of setting up your Blogger blog, below are a few other steps you should take when setting up a Blogger blog.

Giving Your Blogger Blog A Professional Look
The default themes that come with Blogger are ugly plain and simple, If you want your blog to stand out you’ll need a professional looking design. They are many places online where you can find really great looking Blogger templates the most notable resource is BTemplates .com which has hundreds of free and professional looking blog templates, they have templates that are so well designed that it makes your blog look more like a website and less like a blog.

Keep Track Of Your Visitors
There is no point to having a site and not have statistics otherwise your just shooting blanks in the dark, unfortunately Blogger does not come with built in site statistics but they are tons of free website tracking services out there. The most popular and widely used service is Google Analytics they provide in depth statistics about your visitors and the best part about the service is that it’s free. Sign up for a Google Analytics and add your tracking code to your blog to start tracking your visitors.

Keep Track Of Your Subscribers
All blogs come with something called a RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary), it’s a way for visitors to subscribe to your blog and get updates as soon as you make them. The problem is that when they subscribe to your blog there is no way for you to know how many subscribers you have or what there reading. This is where Feedburner comes in, Feedburner is a RSS feed tracking service that Google acquired a few years back for 100 million dollars, it tracks and keeps a count of how many subscribers you have for your blog it also provides allot of other in depth stats about what your subscribers are reading, it also has a cool Email feature where visitors to your blog can subscribe to your RSS feed via email and receive updates from you right within there email inbox.

Now that people is how you set up a Blogger Blog correctly!

thank you for reading, Chozen.

WP Affiliate Platform allows you to easily launch your own affiliate program with just a few clicks right from within your Wordpress installation. It has all the standard features that most affiliate management tools have today. It’s built to be integrated with any shopping cart solution one of which includes Instinct’s WP-eCommerce plugin (the most popular and widely used shopping cart plugin for Wordpress). Even more importantly it can be integrated with Wishlist Member which is the Wordpress membership plugin I’m using to build my membership website.

Check out some screen shots of the front end and back end of the plugin.

Affiliate view of WP Affiliate Platform plugin:

[View with PicLens]

Admin view of WP Affiliate Platform plugin:

[View with PicLens]

I gave the WP Affiliate Platform a run by testing out the demo and I gotta say it’s a pretty solid plugin, and will be my choice for managing my affiliates not to mention it’s only $35 bucks which is big difference from iDevAffiliate which puts you back $299.00 for a single site license and without any addons.

Depending on what your looking for to mange your affiliate program, this may not be the best choice for you but if your using Wordpress and don’t want to be bothered with installations and customizing a solution to work with Wordpress then this should be a no brainier.

Visit:WP Affiliate Platform

And for those who might be wondering whether Yahoo Answers has a large enough user base to yield a worthwhile response, here is what Yahoo Answers has to say:

a With more than 21 million unique users in the U.S. and 90 million worldwide, Yahoo! Answers is the largest knowledge-sharing community on the Web.

Is that big enough for you? If so, let’s get started!

Step One: Open a Yahoo Answers Account

You will need a Yahoo Answers account to be able to answer open questions. To create your account visit:

http://answers.yahoo.com

You will be able to create your account using your current Yahoo messenger account if you already have an ID:

Step Two: Complete Your Profile

Once you have created a Yahoo Answers account and are logged in, you will be able to create or edit your profile. You should take a few minutes to fill out as much as information as you would like to share and then save your information.

You can choose to allow Yahoo Answer members to contact you via messenger, or keep this information private. You can also enable “email contact” if you would like to receive comments via email, or you can choose to disable all contact other than through the questions that you answer.

When you edit your profile it is recommended that you add a photo or customize an avatar. It’s important to brand yourself and this is an easy way to make your profile more memorable as your photo will appear within your answers.

Step Three: Familiarize Yourself With Yahoo Answers

From the main Yahoo Answers page you will see categories listed on the left hand side. This is where questions are posted and grouped according to their subject matter. This is also where you will go when choosing the different types of questions that you would like to answer, and depending on the niche markets that you are involved in, you might find yourself answering a variety of questions from different categories and groups.

Before you start answering questions you should have an idea of what you plan to promote. That way you can find questions that are relevant to the website that you wish to advertise via the Yahoo Answers website. Each time you answer a question, you can include a “SOURCE” in a secondary box that accompanies your response. This is an easy way to promote your websites and direct people to find out more information about the topic of their question.

You should also browse previously answered questions so that you can get a feel for the way other people have answered and addressed different questions, paying attention to those answers that were selected as being the “TOP” response.

As you begin answering questions, you may run into a series of questions that are no longer open. Here is a breakdown of the life cycle of a question from the time it is first posted:

Questions that are “Resolved” are typically closed from receiving future follow ups while questions that are marked “Undecided” have not yet received a “TOP” vote.

Questions are open for only four days but the original poster can extend the period for a few extra days or if a question has been resolved, they can close it before that time period has ended.

It’s important to answer questions as thoroughly as you can and avoid spamming your websites within your answers. In fact, there are few times where including your website URL within the answer is acceptable at all. If those viewing your response feel that it is spam you will not receive votes and your answer may be removed entirely. Therefore, you should try to keep your websites within the “Source” box only. Those who liked your answer are likely to follow your link to find out more especially if you are careful to answer questions that pertain to your niche market.

Start Promoting!

Due to the large number of people answering questions every minute of the day, it is important that you are quick when responding to open questions. As mentioned above, you must also do your best to answer the question as thoroughly as possible and be sure to address the person who posted the question by name (whenever possible). This has been known to increase your chances of being voted as “best answer” since the original poster feels that you are taking your time to address them personally.

Quick Tip: There is a built in spell checker available. Use it whenever possible to minimize spelling errors.

Remember that the ultimate goal is to be selected as the best answer (Top Answer) because the more often you are selected the more exposure your answer, profile and website will receive.

The Points System

As a member of Yahoo Answers you will earn points for each question that you answer. You will also discover that there are limits on the number of questions that you can answer each day until you build up your levels.

Here is a breakdown of the different levels that you can reach depending on the amount of points you receive every day. (For the first week you will be focusing on building up your levels so that you can answer more questions by increasing your daily limit. Those who reach Level 4 can answer an unlimited number of questions every day.

When you start out you begin at Level 1. You are able to answer 20 questions every day at this level. In the first day it is possible for you to earn 140+ points by answering 20 questions and you will earn more for every answer that is selected as the ‘top choice’.

You will be able to view your Points and Level on the main page of Yahoo Answers (on the right hand side) under your name:

Here is an overview of how the points are accumulated.

When you begin answering questions you should focus on targeting your main niche until your levels increase and you are able to answer as many questions as you like. That way, you can start driving traffic to your site right away, despite being limited to only 20 questions a day.

Locating Specific Niche Related Questions

To find niche-specific questions that are still open for answering, click on the “Advanced Search” link to get started. You will find this at the top of the Yahoo Answers website once you are logged in.

Once you have loaded up the Advanced Search page you will be able to enter in keywords that are relevant to your niche market. You can also minimize any time wasted by being certain to only search for questions that are still open for answering.

Enter in you’re a specific keyword that best describes your niche and set the “Keyword Match” to “Questions” as you are searching for questions to answer right away.

Next, choose “ALL” when selecting your categories as sometimes questions may appear throughout different groups.

Be sure to filter out the questions so that you are searching only for questions in your primary language unless you are able to understand and respond in alternative languages.

And finally be sure to set the status of your search so that it generates a list of “Open Questions” only. There is no sense in searching for questions that have been resolved (or are closed) from receiving additional responses.

Once you have completed this step you will generate a search results page that includes multiple un-answered questions found using your keyword(s).

In my example search, I requested the search engine to find open questions relating to “Wordpress”.

Here is what was found:

By targeting the keyword “Wordpress”, 52 un-answered questions are available to me.

To begin answering questions, simply click on the links to load up the “Question and Answer” page.

By answering questions that target my niche market and including a website that provides additional information about the question that I am answering I can easily generate traffic to my site in a few minutes, the time it takes for me to successfully answer the question. Even if my answer does not end up being chosen as the “top” answer, I can still generate traffic just by using the “Source” box.

Remember as well that Yahoo is the most popular search engine, outranking even Google.

By answering recent questions rather than digging through older ones you are ensuring that your website receives traffic not only from the Yahoo Answer center (and those who view your answer from within that section) but also from the Yahoo search engine as well!

Quick Tips To Top Traffic

Tip #1: Focus on answering recent questions, posted within the first three hours.

Tip #2: Always post a relevant website link in the Source box using a URL that sounds similar to the topic.

(example: If I was answering a question regarding weight loss, I would create a landing page specific to that niche and include it in the source box: yourdomain.com/weight_loss_tips.html)

Tip #3: Answer questions as thoroughly as you can. The more specific you are with your answers, the better chance you have of being selected as the top choice.

Tip #4: After your limits are raised and you are able to answer more questions each day, start answering questions regardless of when they were posted (older ones are fine at this point). Every answer you submit will be included in Yahoo’s search engine results page regardless of how old the original question was.

Tip #5: Be sure to include your keyword (that you are optimizing for) in your answer as best as you can. You can also add your URL (using a href tag) but if you do this incorrectly and your answer reeks of spam, you will not be chosen as the top answer and in some cases your answer may be removed completely.

Tip #6: It isn’t just Yahoo’s search engine that will pick up your answers (and links). Google may also spider your answers and give you credit for a back-link to be sure to answer as many questions as you can each day, until you reach your limit.

Tip #7: Stick with it. Building an impressive portfolio and developing your back-links takes time but if you create a strategy where you are answering questions on a daily basis, incorporating your keywords into your answers and linking to your websites within the source boxes you will see results relatively quickly.

The more effort you put into answering questions thoroughly and being chosen as the top answer the more traffic your website will receive. Always keep this mind when you are answering questions.

While quantity is important, so is quality!

Tip #8: Since you are answering questions across a variety of categories and niche markets, be sure that you know enough about the subject to provide a helpful response.

If you answer a question incorrectly, your credibility will wear down. It is important that you focus on answering questions relating to topics that you are familiar with. If you are unsure about a question take a few minutes to research the correct answer before posting. It is not possible to edit your answers once they are published!

There have been times where I was unsure of the correct answer to a question but I was slowly getting involved in the niche and wanted to direct people to a landing page where I was showcasing a product via an affiliate link. I took a few minutes to search out the answer and posted it, only after I was certain it was correct. It resulted in my answer being selected as the “Best Answer” and a nice comment from the original poster:

And one word of caution; Once you begin to receive positive ratings and feedback you’ll find Yahoo Answers quite addictive!

Tip #9: Don’t underestimate the power of custom landing pages. Instead of directing people to the main page of your website, creating specific pages where you can lead people to find out more information, while sticking to the topic or subject that you are answering. This way you will avoid confusing your visitors who are simply looking for additional information about specific topics.

Tip#10: Points & More Points
You will receive points for answering questions (2 points per answer), 10 points for being selected as the best answer and an additional point for every answer you vote on. When you are building your levels it is important to collect as many points as you can so by voting on answers submitted by other people you are able to generate more points quickly, however you must be a LEVEL 2 to be able to vote on answers, so do your best to get to that level as soon as possible.

As you begin to earn points and answer more questions, you will become a top contributor and a badge will appear near your avatar picture. Once you are a top contributor you will be selected more often as the “best answer” and more people will view your answers, profile and your websites.

Use The Answers To Build Your Website

As a Yahoo Answers contributor you will begin to see a pattern emerge where the same types of questions are being asked over and over again. This is a great way to learn about the current topics that people are interested in and if you are clever enough to see the value in this, you can utilize these topics to create interesting blog posts that will capture attention and receive comments.

You can take it a step further and write articles based on the questions that you review. Submit these articles to EzineArticles.com and other directories to generate even more traffic. It’s an easy way to research various niche markets and see just what people are interested in or needing help with!

To make things easier, you can choose to keep track of specific questions that you plan to address by clicking on the “SAVE” option under each question. You can save it to your RSS feeder or to your private watch-list.

Be The First, Every Time

One quick technique that will help you answer more questions before others is to subscribe to the RSS feed available through Yahoo!. You will receive a listing of recently asked questions that are still open and available to be answered, and best of all, these questions will be related to your chosen niche markets!

Here’s how to set this up:

Go to the “Advanced Search” page as discussed earlier. Search for your specific keywords (primary ones that best describe your niche) and view the results page from your search.

At the very bottom of the page in the left hand corner, you will see the option to add that search query in your RSS reader, as shown below:

Once you have added this feed to your RSS reader, you will receive updates of new questions relating to your niche market (based on the keywords you just entered).

This makes it easy to be the first to answer new questions!

Repeat this process selecting keywords for each niche market that you are involved in and wish to receive notifications of.

Daily Tasks:

Every day, log into your Yahoo Answers account and view the open questions from the different categories or use the advanced tool to search for more specific questions based on keywords.

Answer the questions that are posted via the feeds.

Build landing pages that you can include in the source box with every question that you answer. Once you have designed a landing page for each niche market, you will always have a place to refer people to based on the subject of the question you are answering.

You should also take the time to create multiple pages for each niche so that if you answer a lot of questions in the same category you can direct your traffic to various places on your website. Writing articles relating to the niches that you are involved in is the best way to generate traffic and continue to address different topics on your website.

One easy way to categorize your articles or create new topics on your website for different questions you answer is by installing a WordPress blog and organizing topics into groups. This way whenever you answer a new question or you find that certain questions are continuously asked, you can create a category on your blog for these specific topics in the event that your blog covers a wide variety of topics.

Tip: Purchase a domain that is generic, so that you can create a multi-topic blog. This will make it easier to direct people to the same website without having to create multiple blogs or purchasing multiple domain names.

Create A Yahoo Swipe File

By creating a swipe file of previously answered questions you will be able to cut and paste your answers and cover more ground. Be sure to modify your answers whenever required so that the person posting the question believes you have answered it exclusively for them.

While this is a time-saver and a method used by a lot of Yahoo Answers marketers, be careful not to simply paste the same answer repeatedly. Every question is different and you need to ensure that you modify to your answer or change it up a bit from time to time, depending on the nature of the question.

Cover Multiple Niche Markets Easily

If you are involved in multiple niche markets, you might benefit from creating multiple Yahoo Answer accounts. This will also help you answer more questions each day under different accounts while building up levels on all of them.

By creating multiple Yahoo Answer accounts you can also create different characters, (men/woman, parents, single men, divorced, etc) which will lend credibility when you are answering questions in different categories.

Yahoo Answers allows multiple accounts so you don’t have to worry about breaking any rules, however voting for your own answers or point gaming is not allowed.

To make sure that you are familiar with the rules, you should read the Community Guidelines overview:

http://answers.yahoo.com/info/community_guidelines.php

In the meantime, have fun with Yahoo Answers. It can be a very enjoyable and rewarding experience and an easy way to generate targeted traffic to your website. Just be sure to log in every day and build up your levels. The quicker you reach a level where you are able to answer an unlimited number of questions the more exposure you will receive.

To your success!

Additional Resources:
If Yahoo Answers isn’t enough for you, here are a few other communities that you may enjoy:

Answer Bag: http://www.answerbag.com

Thanks for reading……Chozen

Please note that I didn’t write this article I just simply published it from a eBook I bought a while back, I was gonna write my own guide on how I’m getting traffic from Yahoo Answers but why reinvent the wheel when this guide does more than cover everything.

BigCommerce is a new comer (well sort of new) to the list of ecommerce solutions BigCommerce is a hosted, fully managed version of Interspire Shopping Cart that was launched by Interspire in June 2009. With the Interspire Shopping Cart software being so highly popular and successful they the decided to launch a full blown hosted version of it, it’s a hosted solution meaning they take care of the servers, security, upgrades and backups for your online store so you don’t have to, this is great for small and large size businesses that looking to run there business and no worry about managing a server. Not I know I said ProStores was the The Best Ecommerce Website Builder, but I think BigCommerce could give them a run for their money and here is why.

BigCommerce does a pretty good job of describing all the features that are included in there service so I won’t do their job for them but instead I’ll touch on only a few of the key features and why they’re important in today’s web environment.

Reporting and Analytics

One thing you should always remember when running a website, whether it’s an affiliate site, blog, ecommerce site, or a subscription based site is that “the money is in the stats”, this will be where you spend most of your time after you’ve finished setting up your online store. Stats will tell you exactly what works and what doesn’t as well as what’s making you money and more importantly what’s costing you money. Of course if you don’t have a stats system with enough features to help you know how each and every part of your website is performing then you’ll just be wasting time. Big Commerce has 20+ performance reports some of which include daily conversion rates, inventory report, best and worst performing keywords, order location (Google Maps) just to name a few. You can also integrate your store with Google Analytics which is one of the best site tracking services available on the web not to mention it’s FREE!.

Built In SEO

SEO is important but it’s not something you should spend all your time on, most services out there coming with basic SEO features included while others completely ignore them, stay away from website building services that don’t have SEO features built in. BigCommerce web pages are optimized by experts and make proper use of title tags and search engine friendly SEO links, of course there a tons of other things to know about SEO but most of them are not worth the time to learn, trust me the search engines are smart enough to rank your site for accurate search terms.

Google Merchant Center (Formerly known as Google Base)

If there was ever a source for getting free traffic to your store this would be it, if your not familiar with Google Merchant Center it’s where you can upload your store’s product feeds and make them easy to find on Google Product Search. The thing is most store owners or people looking to start a online store don’t even know what a store feed is or how to create one, basically a store feed is a XML file (don’t need to know what it means) that is automatically generated for your site that allows you to automatically syndicate all your products across product search engines and comparison shopping sites like PriceGrabber.com, BizRate .com, Shopping.com, Yahoo Shopping and much more. This is a untapped way of driving traffic to your website because most store owners are not using this free source traffic simply because they are not aware of it or their site isn’t equipped to create store feeds. BigCommerce automatically generates store feeds for your site that can be submitted to Google Merchant Center as well as other product search engines and comparison shopping sites.

The best thing about the features is that Product results show up above natural search results, so you don’t have to worry about ranking for search terms in the search engines just list your products in the product search section and your good to go. (Example Image below)

Affiliate Tracking System (Affiliate Marketing)

Apart from Reporting and Analytics, this is by far the most important part of your business at least in my business, for those not familiar with Affiliate Marketing it’s an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliates marketing efforts, usually that affiliate is paid a commission when a sale is made, or if a lead is generated. It is also known a performance based marketing in other words you only pay for results. Imagine if you launched a website and you had a thousand people advertising your site for you for free and the only time you would have to pay those people is when they refer a paying customer, that’s power of affiliate marketing and if you don’t offer  affiliate programs for your store in this day and age then your definitely at a huge disadvantage. The problem here is that most website building solutions do not come with affiliate marketing built in, BigCommerce however comes with a built in affiliate tracking system that allows you to track, manage and pay your affiliates. 75% of my sales come from affiliate referrals, this is not a feature that should be overlooked.

There are a bunch of other great features such as drag and drop layout design, support for 50 plus payment gateways, Google Awords and Yahoo Search Marketing export, Single page checkout and the list goes on, but I’ll leave that up to BigCommerce to list all the features.

Here are A few live sites…..
YuBo
Christine & Taylor
Pro Golfer Gear
Report Collection
Baby and Me Gifts

In Conclusion

Apart from ProStores this is by far one of the best online store builders that I’ve seen on the market, they both have pretty much all of the same feature sets with a few differences, it all depends on what your looking for.

Visit:BigCommerce

So Whats The Cause Of These Changes?

Ad Inventory: The most obvious reason for the drop in earnings is that the ad inventory for AdSense has gone down, when the economy took a turn for the worst so did the Ad rates and not just for AdSense but for all Ad Networks across the board. Advertisers have much smaller budgets to work with thus Google AdSense has to lower there rates, now of course there are some exceptions to the rule such has the health industry and few other markets that still have healthy ad payouts but they are few and far between. I can tell you from personal experience working in the music industry that music and entertainment related websites and blogs are not making much from AdSense, last year my hip hop blog was making a full time income and this year even with more traffic the site isn’t even making half what it made last year. In fact AdSense has become a third tier income stream for that site.

Ad Formats and Placements: Believe it or not this plays a major part in how well Google AdSense performs on your website, depending on your site design and what ad formats you use, it will directly affect how much money you will make. The best way to figure out which site design, ad formats and positions will perform the best. I suggest you setup three different variations of your website (Designs), run each different design with different ad formats and ad positions. Run each variation for at least a week depending on your traffic, if you have a high traffic website you can make it less than a week. This is split testing in it’s simplest form. To know exactly what your visitors are interacting with on your website I suggest you check out CrazyEgg, it’s a really sick analytic tool that gives you a visual view of your website with a heat map overlay that shows exactly where your visitors and their mouses went and where they didn’t go.

Visitor Retention: Now of course visitor retention is a good thing, it means your brand is growing and your keeping your visitors interested in your content but in terms of Google AdSense it’s almost guaranteed to kill your income. The problem is that your repeat visitors have become immune to the ads, they see the same set of ads with the same ad copy every time they come to your site. Eventually ads will become invisible to them and you’ll notice shortly after that the only clicks your receiving is from brand new visitors most of which come from search engines. The problem with the new visitors clicking on your ads is that once they click that ad there gone and they may never come back, this will hurt your overall visitor retention and stunt the growth of your brand. Now of course this does not apply to you if you just built the site to specifically to make money from Adsense then building a brand is really not important.

Seasonal Traffic: If you noticed a sudden drop in your earnings and your traffic, this is probably due to time of year. In most niches it’s common for blogs and websites to have lower earnings in the summer time. If you can afford to, wait to see what your earnings are like in another time of the year and if you don’t see any changes in your earnings then it’s time to try something new. Personally with my media site Music Video Cast, the daily AdSense earnings has gone up and the same goes for my blog iHipHopMusic.com since the beginning of September.

So What Do You Do When AdSense Starts To Suck Ass?

Find Other Advertising Networks: There hundreds of Advertising networks out there that you can test out, especially if you have a high traffic website with high visitor retention. Your visitor retention is too valuable to be wasting it on AdSense, instead find some ad networks that will pay you according CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions) rates, most networks out there pay anywhere from $0.50 to $3.00 per CPM. The great thing about this is that you don’t have replace AdSense but instead just diversify your income, lets be honest the chances of you getting rich from AdSense in this day and age is highly unlikely, it’s not like 5 years ago.

Partner With Vertical Ad Networks:More and more niche specific ad networks are popping up all over the place, the great thing about these networks is that they have higher payouts than the large ad networks, I’m currently working with Global Grind Network which is a Hip Hop related ad network owned by Hip Hop mogul Russell Simmons and I’m currently in talks with CraveOnline to start a running multiple campaigns from numerous major brands on Hip Hop Music Dot Com, right now the payouts are looking like there going to be anywhere from $4 to $7 per CPM (yep you read that correctly). Currently I’m averaging 48,000 page views daily on Hip Hop Music Dot Com so I’m looking forward to getting those campaigns rolling, usually if you have great website these companies find you and make you a offer, so far I received 18 offers this year already. Global Grind has been on some bull shit lately but I’m going to save the bashing for another post.

You can find many different niche specific networks at Adify.com which hosts many popular networks such as B5media (A Blogger Network), Green Ad Network, and Martha’s Circle (Martha Stuart’s Ad Network) just to name a few.

Rotate Your Ads. This is pretty self explanatory and very important but surprisingly not enough people spend time doing this, which is probably due to do all the testing and analytics involved. They are a few services out there that simplifies the whole process which include Rubicon Project, Yield Build and Pubmatic.

Affiliate Programs: While every other form of generating income and adverting has taken a dive, the affiliate marketing/performance based industry has been thriving in this horrible economy and many networks have been showing record earnings.There are hundreds of Affiliate Networks such as ClickBank, Commission Junction, ClickBooth I (I love ClickBooth) and LinkShare just to name a few. I’ll have to cover affiliate marketing in a few upcoming posts and how I’m using this method to make more money than I am with AdSense.

Sell Ads Directly: Just like affiliate programs this is a whole other subject that I will be covering in a upcoming post, from what tools to use, wear to find to find advertisers and how to pitch your website. When this is done right it can completely replace AdSense as a income source, as I mentioned earlier in this post that AdSense is now a third tier income stream on Hip Hop Music Dot Com. I’ll cover all that in upcoming post so stay tune.

In conclusion

Don’t make AdSense be your end all be all income stream, the same way your try to find different ways to expand your website or blog is the same way you should try and find ways to monetize your content. Just pay attention to most of the big guys in the industry, there not talking about AdSense anymore. Don’t get comfortable with your current earnings a start playing defense, before you know you’ll be dependent on a declining income and you’ll end up with your head up your ass like the image above.

Introducing PicAdMedia

About a month ago I received a email from someone over at PicAdMedia inviting me to a private Beta testing of there new In-Picture Advertising service, as soon as I saw “In Picture Advertising” I remembered BritePic and I deleted the email. For about 3 weeks from time to time I continued to receive emails from them, they eventually wore me down so before I decided on adding them to the spam list I went to check there service out. After signing up and checking out the dashboard I quickly realized that the method by which they place the ads on websites was completely different from BritePic’s and adheres to standards of web usability. I decided to test out the service on my hip hop music blog HipHopMusicDotCom since it had the most images on it.

PicAdMedia wins at everything that BritePic fails at, implementation is very simple just add the website(s) you would like to serve ads on then get the embed code, place it on your website or blog and boom shortly after that ads will start appearing on all the images on your site. The ads are shown whenever a visitor hovers over a image on your website via a slide in effect and slide’s out whenever the visitor hovers away from the image. The best thing about the ads is that they open in a new window so you don’t loose your visitor when they decide to view an ad. It 100% compliant with Google Adsense and you can also set it to only display ads on certain images for example if you have a logo in your website header, in the Image Manager dashboard (image below) section of PicAdMedia you can set it so that image does not display any ads on that logo. The ad engine is very fast as soon as your page loads the ads are available for display though I’m not sure how they will perform with billion impressions happening daily across the web.

As you can see in the image above PicAdMedia scans your website for all the images available on your website and archives them inside your admin area called the “Image Manager”, it automatically creates tags for the images which is pulled from the meta data available in the images. In the future this will be very beneficial for advertisers who want to target keyword specific images which will drive more targeted visitors to the advertiser’s website and generate higher earnings for publishers.

[View with PicLens]

Above are some ads from HipHopMusicDotCom, as you can see the ads are not very targeted but that is to be expected since it’s still only in the BETA stages and currently advertising isn’t even open for testing yet.

Above is a screen shot of the Domain Manager where you can add the domains you would like to display ads on.

Above is a 7 day earning report from PicAdMedia, of course I can’t show you certain stats due to PicAdMedia’s policy but lets just say that click through rate isn’t that great which is to be expected from untargeted ads, however this doesn’t mean your site wouldn’t perform better, keep in mind that I tested it on my hip hop music blog. With these early stats I can say this could become a additional income stream with more targeted ads and also would be a new frontier for advertisers. I can see how I could drive some major targeted traffic to some of my other sites with this platform at a much lower price than Google Adwords.

Something like this would be great for sites with a thousand images or more, photo sharing sites like photobucket, imageshack and tinypic would make a killing from this. Just think about displaying targeted ads over a hundred thousand images being viewed by millions of visitors. Blogs that post images almost everyday would do great with a service like this as well.

In closing I have to say that I’m going to continue to display PicAdMedia ads on HipHopMusicDotCom since it generates additional untapped revenue and doesn’t affect my other income streams plus I haven’t lost any traffic because of it which is the most important thing. Registration for there beta test is currently open to the public for publishers but not advertisers which is what I’m now waiting for, if you have a blog or website with quite a few images you should definitely check them out.

Visit PicAdMedia