If you’re interested in making money online then at one stage or another you’ve joined an affiliate network or ten.

We tend to assume that that these institutions are above-board and act in a fair and reasonable fashion. But that’s not always the case.

Some are certainly above-board and honest in their dealings. Others, however, use umm…questionable…tactics in dealing with affiliates. Let’s look at some examples…

1. Clickbank

These guys are pretty honest as networks go. However, there are some “hidden” charges that you may no be aware of. We all know they take a percentage cut of any transaction (about 5%) that cuts into commissions. That’s expected. But they do impose lower limits on the amount of money they’ll pay out if you get paid by check. It defaults to $100 (any less in your account and they won’t issue a check) but that can be reduced to a $25 minimum by selecting a different option in your account setup.

They also charge for issuing checks. In total, I reckon about 10% of commissions goes in admin fees of one type or another.

The more insidious charge is the one they apply in the event that a customer requests a chargeback from their credit card company (though this applies to sellers rather than affiliates). Despite it having nothing to do with the seller and everything to do with (possibly unscrupulous) buyers, the entire chargeback fee is taken from the seller’s account, not Clickbank’s. There is no seller protection here. If a buyer requests a chargeback outside of Clickbank‘s 60-day money back guarantee, the seller loses the sale foots the bill for the chargeback to boot. Not exactly fair.

2. Google Adsense

As we all know, Google run the biggest online advertising network on the planet. To make it work, they need the support of the millions of webmasters who slap Adsense ads on their sites. True, those webmasters have the ulterior motive of making some cash from those ads. Google has the same ulterior motive.

It’s only right and proper that they have some rules governing where and how the ads they serve are used. And those rules are laid out for anyone to read on the Adsense TOS page. However, some of those rules are open to some interpretation. How you read a rule may be different from how the writer of the rule intended.

There was a time when, if your site was banned from the Adsense network, you could contact a person, ask what was wrong and how to fix it. It worked for both parties. Google was happy that your site was conforming to its TOS and you were happy that ads were appearing on your site.

Google has long since retired to its ivory tower. Now there is no one you can contact in the event ads stop appearing on your site. If you’re lucky, you’ll receive an email telling you your site has broken their TOS. Many times though, there’s no email and no explanation. You’re left there wondering what rule your site has broken.

This happened to me a couple of months ago. I re-read the Adsense TOS and could see nothing in it that my site was contravening. There are public forums where you can ask questions of supposed Adsense staff. But those forums are open for anyone to read. I like to have a little privacy in my conversations about delicate matters rather than exposing them to all and sundry. So a big thumbs down to Google for their tacky way of dealing with Adsense queries.

After a lot of digging, I found a URL where I could submit a query to Adsense staff without going through the public forums. They don’t advertise it and it’s buried deep, so it makes you wonder why they’re making it so difficult for webmasters to contact them.

I asked a simple question: what rule is my website breaking that’s getting it banned from Adsense. Back came an automated, stock reply that basically said: read the TOS. I replied saying I had read the TOS but must have taken a different interpretation of one of the rules and I asked them to clarify what rule was being broken.

They relied with an automated, stock reply that was exactly the same as the first. Thanks for the two-fingers, Google. So Google don’t want to know. They don’t care. Looks like they have a “plenty more fish in the sea” attitude. So how many small-time webmasters are getting their sites thrown out of Adsense without ever knowing why?

While my Adsense account is still up and running, I’ve heard from others that their entire Adsense accounts have been closed down. The excuse given is often “invalid clicks” intimating that you’re dishonest up front, trying to screw them and their advertisers out of their money. There are probably a few foolhardy people who take this approach, but the vast majority of webmasters are honest people who want to earn a bit of cash from their websites. It’s in their own interests not to screw things up.

Yet Google always assumes it’s you who’s at fault. The burden of proof should always lie with the accuser yet I know of no instance where Google has backed up with evidence the reason for an account cancellation. There’s nothing to stop an unscrupulous competitor from clicking madly on your ads (or hiring someone to do so) in an effort to get your Adsense account closed down for fraudulent clicks. Yet there’s never an investigation. You’re just summarily kicked out of Adsense. Guilty until proven innocent. No, that’s wrong, just assumed to be guilty with no recourse to due process.

And what about any outstanding commissions that are in your account. Google keeps them because, you’re guilty of fraud and shouldn’t get the fruits of your labors.

Now, how many times is something like this happening daily? How much money is Google redirecting to its coffers on the basis of supposed guilt for crimes not committed?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed that the Adsense ads appearing on my sites have become less and less targeted over the last year or so. It has me wondering if Google have lost a huge number of advertisers either because they’ve been pushing small-time advertisers out of Adwords and/or because of the current financial climate forcing companies to reduce their advertising expenditure or cutting it entirely.

It may explain why they’re shoving Google +1 (and accompanying advertising) into everything they own – trying to make up for lost revenue.

3. Ebay

In the old days, if you sold something from ebay as an affiliate you got a fixed percentage of the sale. Not any more. Ebay introduced a traffic quality score to weight the commissions you’re paid. If you send lots of traffic that actually buys something, you earn decent commissions. If you send them lots of traffic where only a small percentage buys, then you earn a piddling commission. It doesn’t matter that you’re not responsible for the traffic you send their way, unless they buy you’re commissions are penalized. Great way to screw your affiliates guys!

4. Commission Junction

I used to get good results with them but they closed my account down in 2009, citing fraudulent clicks (the clicks cost the advertisers money). We entered a long exchange as I tried to fight my corner, in fact providng proof that I was not responsible for excess clicks. At that point, they cut off communication and refused to respond to any emails. They guy I could phone stopped taking my calls too. The result: cancelled account and over a grand in commissions not paid out.

Since I’d had success with CJ, I rejoined them. However, many of the merchants I had been an affiliate for wouldn’t let me join their programs (maybe I was blackballed internally), so the new account never made the commissions the previous one had.

Then just over a week ago when I tried to log in, up came a notice saying my account had been deactivated. I hadn’t received any email from them so assumed it was an error on their part. That’s when I found out that they don’t provide email support, only phone support. I rang, eventually got through the automated phone system and spoke to a rep. She told me to email a special email address with my query. I had to send the email from the email account registered with them when the account was opened. The rep did say the account was shut down for sending unresponsive traffic. Sorry, but it’s not my responsibility so massage the traffic that goes their way via my website. I send them traffic and it’s the advertisers responsibility to entice the visitor into buying. If the visitor doesn’t want to buy, the advertiser is doing a bad job. And CJ and their advertisers don’t appear to be taking into account the fact that people have a lot less disposable income these days.

My email address was still active. But it raised the issue that if I’d changed my email address since the time I joined CJ and forgotten to update my account with the new email address I’d have no way of contacting them as they’d just ignore any email from a different address. Another way a company shirks its duty in dealing with affiliates.

I sent my query to the address provided. Six days later I haven’t even had the courtesy of an automated response. For all I know my email has gone into their folder named “Trash”.

CJ need affiliates to make their business work, yet when it comes to dealing with those affiliates, they’re pretty much nowhere to be found – they just don’t want to engage with their affiliates. Hardly good business practice.

Again, I wonder how may affiliates have found themselves in a similar situation. And, once again they’ve purloined my commissions.

5. Other Networks

Some networks impose a minimum payout limit, say make less than $50 and we don’t pay you. This, despite the fact that most issue payments via PayPal where mass payments are easy for a company. They know that many affiliates will struggle to make more than a couple of sales and so have no intention of ever paying those affiliates. Dishonest don’t you think?

Conclusion

Anyway, maybe you’ve had similar or different experiences with various advertising networks. Share your thoughts so we can all get a better idea of what it’s really like out there in affiliate land.

How Affiliate Networks Can Screw You is a post from: Web-Biz Knowledgebase

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The original post is located here: How Affiliate Networks Can Screw You

We know you get this stuff all the time, but a new product is just about to be released (12:00PM EST today) which is a lot different than most of the stuff you are seeing out there these days.

This new product has been built as a huge portal for building an internet business. This thing is big, but it is one of the most perfectly setup operations we have ever seen.

Honestly, if you have ever wanted to get on track with setting up your own Internet Marketing Business without a bunch of hype. Without a bunch of Gimmicks.

This is it.

Imagine being able to build an entire business online and not having to continue to buy product after product? Well this product has made sure you don’t have to.

It’s called Profit.FM and it has everything you will need to build your business.

It has a website installer which instantly installs new blogs, totally Optimized for use via their custom Clone setups.

It has a 24/7 Live Niche Research tool which pulls the best and most profitable niches for you from across the web and has a database of over 2 Million and counting with over 30-50,000 new Niches being added each and every day.

It has a huge Premium WordPress Theme Library so you don’t have to buy any Premium WordPress themes. You will be able to have a professional looking site fast without any additional cost to you!

It has 6 Premium WordPress Plugins which allow you to Automate almost everything you would normally need to pay for. Automatic SEO Tagging, Advanced Link Cloaking, Landing Page and Squeeze page creation, article spinning in post content and SEO Content updating, and last but not least; a huge Social Media plugin which does everything to integrate you and your business into Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and more!

Are you tired of Products that don’t deliver? Well this one Over Delivers! The craziest thing is the Price. You won’t ever see anything like this priced this low again, we can Guarantee you that!

So who’s responsible for this gem? Mike Johnson of AutoBlog Blueprint fame and Gary Prendergast from BlogPIG and NicheReaper fame teamed up to create Profit.FM. Both guys have a long history of creating quality products, ones that we do use ourselves.

Get The Best Affiliate Marketing Tool of 2012
And Work Smart Not Hard!

Profit.FM – Launching at 12:00PM EST Today – A Business in A Box Like Never Before! is a post from: Web-Biz Knowledgebase

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The original post is located here: Profit.FM – Launching at 12:00PM EST Today – A Business in A Box Like Never Before!

I’m sorry to be so quick with this announcement, but it is the end of 2011 and due to many requests, Greg Jacobs has decided to open up Mage Monster for 2 days or 50 copies (whatever comes first).

You may be aware that Monster Mage is one of the most successful products in the history of internet marketing, being a staple in the industry and helping people with their online businesses since 2009.

You may also be aware that it is almost IMPOSSIBLE to get a license of Monster Mage because of the powerful nature of the software.

First off to get into Monster you need to have a sponsor or “recommendation”. Furthermore you need to be willing to devote yourself to learning the system.

I know that there is no such thing as ‘push button overnight riches’, however Monster gives you a proven and working system that has propelled EXTREME amounts of people to 4 or 5 figure monthly residual income (I use it on many of my own blogs).

You know it is real because the Mage’s have over 50,000 posts in their private members helping members forum of which you will be a part of after you join.

I’ll leave it at that.

To learn more about this opportunity to join Mage Monster and see if you are fast enough to be one of the lucky 50 to join them at this end of the year FIRE ALARM, then here is your invite link. Use it well.

ALERT: Monster Mage Opening for 50 Copies Only! is a post from: Web-Biz Knowledgebase

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The original post is located here: ALERT: Monster Mage Opening for 50 Copies Only!

Wow, it’s been two months since I last posted on this blog. That’s because I’ve been spending so much time re-developing SiteBuillder Elite, my web authoring tool for affiliate marketers.

SiteBuilder Elite makes it easy for marketers to build websites quickly and easily – websites that are pre-populated with content, that inlcude dynamic page elements like RSS news items and Yahoo Answers and has built in support for Adsense, Amazon, Chitika and Ebay (you can also use whatever ad networks you want), so it’s pretty much all point-and-click stuff.

Site layouts are controlled from within the software and you can configure a site to look exactly how you want. All changes are immediate and site-wide, so no more editing of multiple HTML files if you want to change something on every page. And you don’t need to know any HTML, PHP or Javascript to use the software.

Rather than reiterating the software’s benefits here, take a look at the sales page for more information, then come back here to take advantage of the discount price on offer.

SiteBuilder Elite Version 4 was released just a couple of days ago and since it’s Christmas, I’ve decided to run this discount offer over 10 days until New Year’s Eve.

The software normally costs $147 but I’m starting this offer off at $97 (a 33% discount). Each day, around 8PM EST, the price will increase by $5 until, at 8PM EST on New Year’s Eve, the price will reach its normal retail value.

The sooner you buy, the more money you’ll save:

There’s more information on the SiteBuilder Elite Version 4 Christmas Discount Offer here

SiteBuilder Elite Version 4 Released And A Christmas Discount Offer is a post from: Web-Biz Knowledgebase

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The original post is located here: SiteBuilder Elite Version 4 Released And A Christmas Discount Offer

Two things I need to tell you about in this post, both of which will have immediate and lasting effects on your search engine rankings… both take minutes to implement.

The first of these things I’ve written up totally in this post, and the second one is at another link. So relax and read all the way through this post now…

#1: If You’re Doing This, Stop NOW

As Andrew Hanson taught in his Unstoppable Affiliate course, one of the more distinct changes in the Google algorithm implemented in the Panda update is the integration of user feedback data as an influence on search results (no, it doesn’t mean people commenting on your blog).

That sounds complicated, but all it means is that now – more than ever – Google is looking at how searchers for YOUR keywords, and visitors to YOUR sites are actually interacting with your site and using that information as a judge of the quality of your site.

It’s no longer just how many keywords are on your page or how many links you’ve got… it’s how users interract with your sites too.

This has a few parts, but let’s talk about just 2. How people react to your search listing, and how they react to your content.

How Users React To Your Search Listing

Say you’re ranking on page 1, position 5, of Google for your chosen keyword. Google has a broad idea of what percentage of the search impressions you should receive if your site is of real interest to users searching for that term.

If your site is getting less than the expected number of clicks, (because your page title and description aren’t enticing enough), Google may decide that you shouldn’t be ranking in that position. If your site is getting higher than the expected number of clicks, Google might determine that your site is highly relevant, and boost it up in the listings. This is a simplified example demonstrating a real principle.

NOW…

Let’s say you… excited about how your sites are progressing… go and search your target keyword every day. You just enter the keyword, check where your site is, then close the window. You do that 3 or 4 times a week.

What YOU’RE doing, is sending the message to Google, 3 or 4 times a week, that NO sites ranking on page 1 for that keyword were enticing. You didn’t click any of them, did you? Right, so that’s what you told Google. You’re telling Google that none of the sites – yours included – should be ranked there.

Post Panda… this WILL harm your rankings.

How Users React With Your Website

Next, Google is looking at what the users do after they click your listing in the engines.

How long do they stay? At what rate do they click the “back” button? How do they leave your website? Via a link you shared with them, or another way?

Generally, the longer they stay the better… the deeper into your site they get (the number of pages) the better, and if they leave following something you’ve recommended, that’s better.

NOW…

Let’s say on those times where you search your target keyword, you click on your own site. You just want to see it’s loading properly… see it’s all still there.

You let it load up – see it’s all good, then click BACK.

BOOM… Bounce Rate adjusted. User left the site in 4 seconds. Site may not be highly relevant to searchers.

That’s what Google sees.

OR…

Let’s say you search for your keyword and and want to check out your competitor’s sites. You click on their links, you spend 10 minutes analyzing all the elements of their page, you check where their affiliate links go to… and more.

Message sent to Google: Competitor site is high quality – kept user on site for a long time – user left via a recommended link. Boost this site up the listings.

YIKES!

Bottom line… and yep, this one’s going in caps…

STOP SEARCHING YOUR OWN KEYWORDS. STOP CLICKING YOUR OWN SEARCH LSTINGS!

If you want to track your rankings, add your site to Google Webmaster Tools (or use another tracking service like Piwik or Clicky). They’ll update you on all rankings for all your keywords every day… simple as that. You’ll see them all plus how they’ve changed, how much traffic they’ve brought, your click through rates and more. And you can check your Webmasters account as often as you like with no penalty.

Ok. Let’s move on.

#2: PR 7 Backlinks For FREE In Under 60 Seconds

This is the coolest SEO trick I’ve seen for a while.

If you want to quickly get PR7 DO FOLLOW backlinks to any site you wish, for FREE (they normally cost a few hundred dollars per month each) then you have to check out the free video at the link below.

And I don’t mean like “on a PR7 site” either, where you get a link from an inner page on a PR7 domain – no, no, no. I mean a real link on a real PR7 page. Just one of these links can skyrocket your rankings.

It’s from Matt Carter, and you have to enter your email to see the free video, but if you’re not on Matt Carter’s list, you should be anyway (he’s one of the best affiliate SEOs on the planet, period.)

Click Here To Watch This Video Now

Trust me, you’ll thank me for this one

Alright, those are two things that will change your rankings, traffic and income today.

Are You Inadvertently Screwing Your Page Rankings? And How To Get A Free PR7 Backlink is a post from: Web-Biz Knowledgebase

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A few of my readers have been in touch because they’ve heard about NicheReaper opening its doors again briefly, and I’d promised to keep people posted about this!

It’s true, for the first time in four months, NicheReaper has opened its doors to new members. Even with a database of 2.6 million researched and evaluated keywords, and 20,000 new keywords being added every day, and almost 200,000 researched niches, membership is still limited to 1000 people – the 200 open slots will be snapped up fast!

Grab Your NicheReaper Spot Now!

Not heard of NicheReaper?

Identifying the right niche for which to build and promote a website is the foundation block of making money online. You have to get it right but, boy, is it time consuming to do yourself, even with some of the best keyword tools on the market like Market Samurai.

NicheReaper, as its name suggests, reaps the web for untapped niches for you. That’s right – not just keywords, but niches. It took the founder of BlogPiG, Gary Prendergast, and his colleague Matt Garrett two years to produce this game-changing tool.

NicheReaper will mine keywords, group them into niches and then evaluate them, assessing competition, monetary value, available domains and fanpages. Every day it adds about 20,000 new keywords to the database – all analysed and evaluated in this way. You don’t have to lift a finger, you’re just presented the end results so you know which niches to target instantly. Currently the database stands at 2.6 million keywords!

As well as telling you the obvious stuff like search volumes, NicheReaper’s complex algorithm:

• Groups like keywords to form niches – so you can see the value of a niche, not just a keyword, and then build authority sites
• Assesses the competition – so you know where you have a fighting chance
• Reports available matching keyword domains – so you can snap up domains which will rank
• Lists Facebook fanpage URLs – so you can snare your share of the Facebook goldrush
• Calculates a potential monthly revenue figure per keyword – so you know if it’s worth investing
• Opportunity and value filters – so you can see instantly what to jump at and what to disregard

Within minutes you can have a valuable niche (which you’d never in a million years have thought of yourself) in the palm of your hand and for which you can get a site up on a great domain and start monetizing. And you can repeat this again and again so that you build a portfolio of niches to master.

NicheReaper also now includes 12 video training modules with over 60 training videos, covering every aspect of building, monetizing and driving traffic to niche websites and Fanpages. So whatever your level of experience, NicheReaper can grow your business with you.

NicheReaper launched in May and sold out within days. It was opened again in June but hasn’t been open to new members since then – not for four months! About 200 spots are now available.

Grab Your NicheReaper Spot Now!

Gary and Matt have limited the total number of members to 1,000 to make sure the value of the system isn’t watered down, and they’re keeping to that limit, so they WILL close the doors again once the spots are filled.

If you’re a WordPress blogger or build sites with SiteBuilder Elite, you’ve already made the decision to focus more on the revenue generating aspects of your sites and to outsource some of the essential but time-consuming tasks to software.

Let NicheReaper take care of another vital task, one that you need to get right in order to give your chance at success a head start.

Grab Your NicheReaper Spot Now!

NicheReaper Reopens Its Doors After 4 Months is a post from: Web-Biz Knowledgebase

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1. Want To Join NicheReaper? They’ve Opened Memberships For My Subscribers!
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The original post is located here: NicheReaper Reopens Its Doors After 4 Months

Former chief executive and co-founder of US techonlogy giant Apple Steve Jobs has died, the company says. He was 56.

“Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve,” Apple said.

Jobs announced he was suffering from pancreatic cancer in 2004.

His death came a day after Apple unveiled the new iPhone 4S at its headquarters in California.

Steve Jobs Obituary.

Apple Co-Founder Steve Jobs Dies Aged 56 is a post from: Web-Biz Knowledgebase

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A question I’m often asked is “How do I make money from my website?”.

The easiest way is through passive income sources. These are things that you install once on a site and they earn money for you forever after. It may not be a lot of money, but it is free money…

The best known passive income source is Google Adsense. However, there may be reasons why you don’t want to or can’t use Adsense. So what other alternatives are available?

Chitika – A viable alternative to Adsense for product-based websites (e.g. review sites). Like Adsense, it provides contextual ads based on the content of your webpage. you get paid per ad click. Like Adsense, you paste a code snippet into your pages where you want ads to appear.

Kontera – This hyperlinks words and phrases in your content. When a visitor moves their mouse over a link, an ad pops up. You get paid per click. Links are double-underlined to distinguish them from regular links on your pages. Kontera provide a code snippet that can be added to traditional, static websites. A free plugin is available for WordPress.

Infolinks – Very similar to Kontera and a good alternative. It also provides some extra monetization options that Kontera does not have. However, don’t use both Kontera and Infolinks on the same website. Kontera impose an exclusivity agreement with webmasters. Like Kontera, Infolinks pays per click. Their payouts are higher but they clicks seem to be fewer. In my own tests, I’ve found that both earn about the same amount on a website. Links are double-underlined to distinguish them from regular links on your pages. Kontera provide a code snippet that can be added to traditional, static websites. A free plugin is available for WordPress.

Backlinks Genius – This one’s suitable for blogging systems only (WordPress, Drupal, etc) as you need to use a plugin. What this does is hyperlink words and phrases in your content. Links use the normal single underline. However, it’s different from Kontera and Infolinks in that you get paid whenever a link is placed on a page, whether the link is clicked or not. You only get about $0.01 per link placement but the more pages you have (and the more sites) means more links and those $0.01 payments can really start to add up.

Text Link Ads – Can be added to blogs via a plugin. Can be added to PHP-only static websites by installing some PHP code though it’s not as simple as a cut-and-paste job. Places text links on your site for advertisers. You have the option of accepting or rejecting ads for display or can opt to have them be accepted automatically. Any site you submit to them for inclusion in their network are likely to be rejected if they have a PageRank of less than 3 and don’t get decent traffic but PR2 sites do sometimes get accepted. Payouts depend on the PR of the site and range from about $5 up to over $100 per ad/link. Since you can have up to 8 links on a site, that could add up to a nice monthly income!

OIO Publisher – Can be added to blogs via a plugin. Can be added to PHP-only static websites by installing some PHP code though it’s not as simple as a cut-and-paste job. Similar to Text Link Ads but allows image/banner ads to be placed on your sites as well. You define zones on your site where ads can appear and can set ad sizes, how many ads will appear in an ad slot, etc. You’re also responsible for setting ad prices so if you set your rates too high, people won’t advertise on your site. Text Link Ads don’t like it if you use OIO Publisher on a site as well and they’ll remove your site from their marketplace until you remove OIO Publisher.

All the above income sources are free apart from OIO Publisher which costs $47 (but you can save $10 with this coupon code: MIST-WEBBIZKB). Many can be used in combination on one site; e.g. Adsense, Infolinks, Backlinks Genius and Text Link Ads could all be used on one site.

I’ll update this post as I come across other passive income sources.

Ways To Earn A Passive Income From Your Website is a post from: Web-Biz Knowledgebase

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The original post is located here: Ways To Earn A Passive Income From Your Website

This 37-page ebook contains a compilation of 100 (actually 118) of the top WordPress plugins in 13 different categories.

And they are:

• Ecommerce
• Contact/Email Plugin
• General
• Interactive
• Security
• List Building
• Search Engine Optimization
• Video Player
• Membership
• RSS Feed/ Content Generating
• Monetization
• Social Sharing
• Slideshow/Presentation

Get the Top 100 WordPress Plugins ebook here.

The ebook comes with giveaway rights so feel free to give away your ebook to your own mailing lists or customers.

Free Ebook: Top 100 WordPress Plugins is a post from: Web-Biz Knowledgebase

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The original post is located here: Free Ebook: Top 100 WordPress Plugins

This brand new set of 30 WordPress Mastery tutorial videos will walk you through all the important aspects of WordPress V3.2.

You will NOT believe the price , but it goes up with every 25 sales.

You may have WP videos already but these (just a few days old) are based on using the latest version of WP, version 3.2 !

Even if you are an advanced marketer, you can pass these videos to your outsourced help so that they can help you complete any of the tasks required…leaving you time to do more important things.

By the way, the included (very generous resale license) lets you do virtually anything you want with this package!

Getting The Most From WordPress V3.2 is a post from: Web-Biz Knowledgebase

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The original post is located here: Getting The Most From WordPress V3.2

I’ve had a few queries about how to use NicheReaper to find niches and keywords to build sites around. So here’s a video I’ve just put together showing one of the ways I use it to find profitable niches:

There’s a better quality video here if you’d prefer to see finer detail in the video.

How I Use NicheReaper To Find Profitable Niches is a post from: Web-Biz Knowledgebase

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1. Want To Join NicheReaper? They’ve Opened Memberships For My Subscribers!
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The original post is located here: How I Use NicheReaper To Find Profitable Niches

[Update 12 August, 2011: SENukeX have extended their offer to get a Lifetime Licence for the software until 4pm EST today (12 August, 2011). So, if you thought you'd missed your opportunity, there's still time.]

A few months back I promoted the SENukeX launch to you. If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know that I had a number of problems running SENukeX myself in the early days and maybe my experiences made you think twice about subscribing to it.

They had a lot of problems with the launch as well (too many subscribers for their servers to handle) and the software crashed quite a bit. I maintained that the service was released too early and that it hadn’t been stress tested enough and that, basically, it wasn’t in a fit state for release to the public.

SENukeX relied almost exclusively on Internet Explorer for link submissions and IE was a weak point. Its instability, particularly IE8, was the cause of most SENukeX crashes. IE9 was recommended, but that version of IE is not available to Win XP users like me. So I ended up renting a Windows VPS just to run SENukeX. And, on that platform, it was much more stable than on my PC. There were still the occasional crashes, but SENukeX has an auto-recover feature so that it restarts and picks up here it left off following a crash.

Since the launch, the software has gone through quite a number of revisions as bugs were fixed, new features added and submission sites updated and changed. And then, recently, the SENukeX servers were were hit with a DDoS attack for about 5 days. Naturally, that impacted the service.

The good thing is, this made the SENukeX team adapt and they’ve made critical changes to their current server setup. Behind the scenes they were already making drastic changes and serious upgrades to the capabilities of the SENukeX software.

The 3 most important updates for me are the change of 90% of their submissions to Sockets, which means that only 10% of their Submissions have to go through IE now. This has had a twofold effect – it’s increased the speed of submissions substantially and it’s increased the success rate as well.

My last submission (which normally would have taken 30-45 minutes depending on the server) only took about 5-6 minutes to complete.

The second great improvement is that they are now adding tons of new sites and with the new addition of 6 new Programmers (whose only job is to add new sites to submit to) . So the amount and cross section of backlinks you can build with SENukeX will be 150% better than before.

One of my early gripes was that to use SENukeX effectively, you had to subscribe to a decaptcha service in addition to paying for SENukeX. Now, the third thing which has really impressed me about this latest SENukeX update is the addition of captcha solving. Over 40% of the captchas you used to have to fill in yourself or pay for are now solved 10 times faster and for Free. While it doesn’t remove the need for an external decaptcha service, the costs for that service will now be 40% cheaper thanks to the upgrade.

These are just a small part of the upgrades, and now with all the changes that have been made to get away from the terrible Internet Explorer 9 integration, the server has been running trouble-free without any crashes, and there aren’t any annoying Popups anymore either.

All gone. This thing is definitely the best Backlink Building tool in Marketing, Bar None!

For the Next 24 Hours (and a bit), they are also reopening their Lifetime License option as well, or if you decline the lifetime Option, you can get a Yearly License and I think they all have multi-pay options as well.

I first purchased SENukeX in April 2011 and all they have done is continually build and add to this software. Upgrade after Upgrade. No, I wasn’t happy with the software to begin with (as I’ve outlined om this blog), but the SENukeX team have worked diligently to fix problems and make the software robust. I think they’ve now achieved what SENukeX should have been when it launched.

There is no other software tool in Internet Marketing which has been around as long (the original SENuke was released back in 2008) unless you count in Market Samurai, which is running a close second (but won’t build backlinks and get them indexed for you as well)!

So, at this stage, I would recommend SENukeX to you. Yes, it’s expensive. But how do you value your time? You can build a lot of backlinks manually or using some of the other backlinking tools I’ve mentioned from time to time. But it all takes time. That’s the reason I switched to SENUkeX. I spend 60-90 minutes building a backlinking campaign and then set it in motion with SENukeX and it will build 100s of backlinks for me, all on autopilot, at sites which normally require you to fill in those captcha codes. And do it over a time period I specify – days to weeks to months (if I want). And the time I save on backlink building, I can put into other things, whether that’s building more sites or meeting friends for coffee!

SENukeX 2.0 Launches – Lifetime Licences Available For 24 Hours! is a post from: Web-Biz Knowledgebase

Related posts:

1. Ongoing Tribulations With SENukeX
2. Third Impressions of SENukeX
3. Second Impressions Of SENukeX

The original post is located here: SENukeX 2.0 Launches – Lifetime Licences Available For 24 Hours!

A few days ago I asked my email list what topics they’d like me to write about. One of the top requests was on how to drive traffic to their websites. So with that in mind…

Getting Website Traffic

There are both free and paid ways of driving traffic to your sites. Of the paid ways, expenditure runs from a very modest couple of bucks to $100+ per month for subscription based services.

While free methods are fine, their big drawback is the amount of time it takes. The more sites you have, the more time you have to spend building backlinks. For the normal Joe with just a couple of hours free in the evenings to dedicate to websites, that time can be quickly eaten up by all the manual backlinking that has to be done.

That’s where the paid tools start to come in. If you want to save time , or spend less of it building backlinks, you’re going to have to put your hand in your pocket. Time is money as they say.

However, various people have various budgets and while one might be able to afford $100+ per month on a subscription service, another may only have a couple of spare dollars to play with.

How To Build Backlinks – A Little Q & A

Q: So first off, what is a backlink?
A: It’s simply a link on another website that points to your site.

Q: I’ve heard of reciprocal backlinks but what exactly are they?
A: When another site links to your site and you have a link on your site pointing back to that site, that’s a reciprocal link. You’re linking to each other.

Q: How useful are reciprocal links?
A: They’re better than no links at all (they were big a few years back) but the search engines now prefer one-way backlinks.

Q: Ok, so what’s a one-way backlink?
A: It’s a link on one site that points to another site. Basically, it’s half a reciprocal link. The philosophy behind one-way links is that the search engines assume if a webmaster puts a link to another site on hos website, he sees value in the site he’s linking to. Reciprocal links, on the other hand, are seen as a mutual appreciation society – each webmaster is putting a link on his site to get some link juice from the other site. So they’re doing it for self-aggrandizement rather than anything else. That’s why one-way backlinks are more highly valued.

Q: How do I create a link?
A: Well, it’s pretty simple – you hyperlink some words. But what words you hyperlink is important. The words you hyperlinks are called anchor text.

Q: What’s so special about anchor text?
A: A lot of people will use their website name as anchor text, or their name on blog comments for example. The words you use as anchor text should be the keywords you’re trying to rank your site for. So, unless your website name is actually a real, searched for keyword, you’re not making the best of your links if you’re not using keywords in your anchor text.

As an example, say you had a site called Joe’s Diner Recipes and you’ve been adding backlinks to other sites that say Joe’s Diner Recipes. Now there probably aren’t a lot of searches for a keyword called “joes diner recipes”. However, there are searches for this keyword: “cajun chicken recipe” and say you have a page about cajun chicken on your site. So it would be better to use Cajun Chicken Recipe as your link rather than Joe’s Diner Recipes.

Q: Why?
A: A certain number of people search for “cajun chicken recipe” each month. If you use that keyword in your backlinks, the search engines will be able to associate your selected anchor text (cajun chicken recipe) with your website. So the more “cajun chicken recipe” backlinks you create, the higher your website will appear in the search results. There’s a direct correlation. The more backlinks you have to your site for a particular keyword, the better your site will perform for that search term.

Q: What if I have other keywords I want to rank for?
A: Build backlinks using those keywords as your anchor text. It’s good to have variety in your backlink anchor texts. It means you don’t look like you’re trying to game the system for one particular keyword.

Q: If I’m building backlinks for several keyword phrases, should they all link to my site’s homepage?
A: No. If you have a page dedicated to cajun chicken, build backlinks to that page using the “cajun chicken recipe” keyword (as an example). If you had a page about Chinese Chicken, you’d create a backlink to that page using a related keyword like Chinese Chicken Recipe as your anchor text.

Q: What if I have lots of keywords and pages for each one – do I need to build backlinks to each page?
A: In an ideal world, yes. But, practically, it’s impossible. Identify the key pages on your site – the ones that make money or the ones that you hope will make money and build backlinks only to those.

Q: How quickly should I build backlinks?
A: That’s down to you. They key is to be consistent. Building 100 links in one day and then no new links for a couple of months is nowhere near as effective as building one backlink per day over 100 days. Automated software will allow you to build substantially more than 100 links per day but, again, consistency is the key. If you build a lot of links this way, keep building lots of links, Don’t chop and change. And don’t stop for long periods.

Q: When can I stop building backlinks?
A: Whenever you want, but backlink building is a long-term proposition. It’s painful, tedious and time-consuming but without it your website is dead in the water. It’s like writing the greatest book in the world and not telling anyone about it. Imagine if J.K. Rowling hadn’t sent Harry Potter to the publishers; a better analogy would be if the publishers had never sent book to the book stores and just expected that people would come knocking on their door instead. It’s not realistic.

Q: How do I reduce the pain of backlink buidling?
A: The only way is to invest in some semi-automated or fully automated tools. Be aware though that even the most sophisticated tools like SENukeX still require setup time for building a backlinking campaign. What paid tools allow you to do is build more backlinks, faster in the time available.

Starting With The Free Methods For Driving Traffic

When you’re starting out with building backlinks, it’s a good exercise to do some manual backlinking so that you become familiar with the process of building backlinks to your sites on other websites. You’ll then have a better appreciation of what the automated tools can do for you.

I’ve written previously on this blog about some free ways to drive traffic so rather than reiterating them here, this is the link to that previous post:

Getting Traffic To Your Websites – Free Options

You can also write articles for the various article directories like EzineArticles, GoArticles and ArticlesBase (there are many others).

And there’s this report I wrote: Blog Linking tactics

It’s primarily for building backlinks to blogs rather than traditional websites like SiteBuilder Elite produces but most of the linking tactics will work for traditional sites too. It comes with 50 videos that show you many ways to drive traffic to your sites at zero cost.

Onto Methods For Driving Traffic That Aren’t Free

Again, I’ve written previously about some of the paid methods for driving traffic. Here are those earlier posts:

Getting Traffic To Your Sites – Paid Options
Using Article Marketing To Get Traffic

Since I wrote those posts, I’ve come across and used many other paid services. Some require one-time payments only, others require a monthly subscription. So here are some backlinking systems to look at, in order of increasing price:

[Updated August 1st, 2011]:

• EDU Backlinks ($7) – Get high-PR backlinks from your own EDU sites that you can create on high-PR University sites
• Backlink Loophole ($9) – finds high pagerank blogs where you can leave comments to get quality backlinks to your sites
• Directory Maximizer ($14+) – Submit your site to 100s of directories. You decide houw many directories to submit to (so you determine the price). You will have to pay separately for each site you submit though.
• RSS Submit ($74.95) – PC software that submits your site RSS feeds to various RSS aggregators. Better for non-WordPress sites than Web traffic Genius.
• Visitors Dot Com ($77) – Course showing many different methods to drive traffic to your sites
• Traffic Travis ($97) – Multi-faceted tool for keyword and niche research but also features backlink building capabilites. A free version is also available.
• Web Traffic Genius ($97) – WordPress Plugin to get backlinks by submitting your blog’s RSS feeds to various aggregators. Read my review here.
• Sky High Linker ($127) – Software app that allows you to get high-PR backlinks from a number of sources (article directories, press releases, social sites, web directories, blog comments, forums, etc). A good alternative to SENukeX if you don’t want to pay a monthly subscription.
• Auto Link Juicer ($147) – WordPress plugin to get backlinks
• Traffic Ultimatum ($197) – a course on how to drive traffic to your sites by the creator of Google Sniper
• Article Marketing Automation ($47 per month) – posts articles (that you should spin) to a blog network to get backlinks
• Unique Article Wizard ($67 per month) – post articles (that you should spin) to article directories to get backlinks
• SENukeX ($147 per month) – very steep learning curve – I’m still trying to get to grips with it myself. Needs some extra monthly expenditure too to make the best of it.

There are other traffic systems available but these are the ones I’ve had direct experience of. I use all of them to one extent or another. If you can drive traffic, then any sales you make will offset fees and purchase prices but there’s no denying that some kind of financial commitment will be required if you want to take site promotion to the next level.

Where To Start?

My advice would be to start small and work your way up. Backlink Loophole is a good way to find high pagerank sites to use to get backlinks. After that, Unique Article Wizard gets good results (better than Article Marketing Automation). I use Web Traffic Genius on all my blogs but I don’t rely on it for all my backlinks.

Auto Link Juicer is a pretty good plugin too (if expensive) and requires an annual subscription to Traffic Kaboom to keep working (so it’s not the best plugin to use).

SENukeX has the most potential (I’m still assessing it) but it’s also the most expensive and unless you’re generating sales or have money to burn, I think it’s too big a financial commitment for most people.

So start small and slowly build your way up, choosing tools that build links the way you want to build them, whether that’s in article directories, social networking sites, forums, video sites or wherever.

How To Build Backlinks To Your Websites is a post from: Web-Biz Knowledgebase

Related posts:

1. Pingback Optimizer – Another Way To Boost Your Backlinks!
2. Unique Article Wizard Review
3. Getting High PR Backlinks To Your Sites

The original post is located here: How To Build Backlinks To Your Websites

Ever heard of NicheReaper? It’s a subscription-based service that has a database of just under 2,000,000 fully researched keywords (about 20,000 new keywords are added each day).

The keywords are researched for their profitability (so you get a ballpark figure of how much can be made with Adsense per month) and how many opportunities there are to rank the keyword in one of the top 5 positions on Google using competition analysis.

Keywords are grouped by niche, so you can quickly go in, find a niche, get a list of profitable keywords in that niche and start building sites around them in minutes. Keyword and niche data can be further filtered using other criteria.

NicheReaper in action (more features have been added since this video was made)

And because the keywords are held in the NicheReaper database, retrieval times are measured in seconds rather than minutes (as would be the case if you were to do similar keyword research and analysis with desktop keyword research software).

NicheReaper memberships sold out fast when it launched and it has been closed to new members for weeks now. In fact, there’s a large number of people on their waiting list hoping to be allowed in at some point in the future.

We contacted the NicheReaper guys and asked them if they’d be willing to open the doors to people on our mailing list and they agreed to do so. Frankly, the request was a shot in the dark, but it’s paid off. Guess it goes to show that there’s never any harm in asking for something!

There is a proviso to this special offer: NicheReaper won’t keep their doors open for long, so…

CLICK HERE now to jump the queue on all those who are currently on the NicheReaper waiting list and secure your membership today!

[This special offer is also available on my sister site, Internet Marketing Deals]

Want To Join NicheReaper? They’ve Opened Memberships For My Subscribers! is a post from: Web-Biz Knowledgebase

Related posts:

1. NicheReaper Reopens Its Doors After 4 Months
2. How I Use NicheReaper To Find Profitable Niches
3. Micro Niche Finder 5 Review

The original post is located here: Want To Join NicheReaper? They’ve Opened Memberships For My Subscribers!

I don’t get the appeal of Facebook. I really don’t. It looks crappy (like something designed by a teenager) and it’s got the most gawd-awful user interface I’ve come across in a long, long time.

Yet people love it. Go figure.

And people love it so much, they love it more than Google. Yes, folks, it’s official, Facebook gets more traffic than Google. It’s been acknowledged by Google (who are now fighting back with Google+) and Facebook now has a PageRank of 10, equal to that of the almighty Google itself.

Despite hating the whole Facebook “thing”, as an affiliate marketer I can’t ignore. I’ve tried but it just won’t go away.

Providing more free traffic than Google can shake a stick at means Facebook now has to be factored into the affiliate marketing equation and than means building fanpages (yuck!).

Facebook used to use something called FBML. Haven’t got a clue what it stands for (Flippin’ Bloody Marvellous Language?) but it was dropped in favour of iframes. Whoop-de-do. All that happened while I was looking the other way hoping Facebook would be just another flash-in-the-pan fad.

But no, iframes and Facebook are here to stay. Now I couldn’t be arsed spending time building crappy fanpages with Facebook’s tools and their crappy interface. I want a tool that’s going to take the pain out of it so I won’t end up slitting my wrists at the end of the day.

Well, one such tool trundled into my Inbox today.

There’s lots of emails going out about it – it’s called the Income Hybrid 3in1 Software Suite (catchy title, huh?). It’s 47 bucks and you can click the link to get it if you want.

I found there’s a 1-hour webinar on a special page that only a select few are supposed to see but I’m in a crappy mood what with all the Facebook crappiness I’ve been dealing with today that even though I shouldn’t give you the link…

…but here it is anyway. The webinar’s pretty good at explaining why Facebook is so important to affiliate marketers, before the inevitable hard sell of the Income Hybrid 3in1 Software Suite appears (thankfully it’s only in the last few minutes of the vid).

Pretty box-shot of Income Hybrid 3in1 Software Suite

Ok, so despite my low opinion of Facebook, it looks like it has potential as a revenue stream. So did I buy Income Hybrid 3in1 Software Suite (what a mouthful!)? Nope. Looks like a decent system for those who want a quick push-button solution. But I want more control…

…and during my research today I came across the WPFacePages plugin for WordPress. It integrates WordPress with Facebook and vice-versa so you have a fully integrated system. Set up of a fanpage is a bit long winded but that’s because of Facebook’s app IDs, secret keys and other crappy interface stuff just making things harder than they need to be. WPFacePages was also created by Mike Johnson of AutoBlog Blueprint fame.

There’s no pretty box shot for WPFacePages

So why WPFacePages instead of Income Hybrid 3in1 Software Suite? Because with WordPress I have much greater control over what I can put on a fanpage. With Income Hybrid 3in1 Software Suite, monetization is limited to Clickbank, Amazon and eBay though you could stuff whatever ads you want onto your fanpage (it’s a better solution for those who don’t want to go the WordPress route). I don’t know if the affiliate links it creates are cloaked but I like cloaked links. Stops link juice from draining out of my blogs through that’s probably not an issue for a fanpage.

With WPFacePages, I can use WordPress monetization plugins like PHPBay, PHPZon and PHPOStock to put product listings on the page. It also has a lot more features than Income Hybrid 3in1 Software Suite. And I can change the fanpage content any time I like (don’t know if you can change a fanpage built with Income Hybrid 3in1 Software Suite after the fact). And, since I bought the Developer version of WPFacePages, I can include the plugin on blogs I flip as an extra incentive for people to buy and to charge a higher asking price.

So it’s WPFacePages for me – the plugin can be used on an unlimited number of domains you personally own, and it’s only 27 bucks, 20 cheaper than Income Hybrid 3in1 Software Suite. Fanpage templates are available for another 10 bucks, so it’s still cheaper than Income Hybrid 3in1 Software Suite.

So what’s the downside for WPFacePages? It needs a separate blog for each fanpage, so there is an overhead in webserver space and resources. Still, it’s greater flexibility suits me better.

Time to gird my loins and do battle with Facebook (groan!)

Why Is Facebook So Hot, Especially For Affiliate Marketers? is a post from: Web-Biz Knowledgebase

Related posts:

1. Getting Traffic From Facebook Without Needing A Facebook Fan Page

The original post is located here: Why Is Facebook So Hot, Especially For Affiliate Marketers?