Affiliate Marketing – And the Learning Curve

by: Vickie J Scanlon

When you put up your first website – you have to admit that you are pretty green to the ways of the Internet World. You think that once your website is up, and you have put your links in place, you will be in the money. I, and I am sure many, would love that to be true. Just think how many Super Affiliates we would have. I will give you a small sampling of what to truly expect.

The Begin of the Begin

You will be excited at first, and you will have a sense of pride in your accomplishment. Granted, it is no small feat to getting a website up and online. But this is just the beginning of your Internet Marketing experience.

Once you have your website up, you should be asking yourself -- where do I begin, or, what do I do now? If you are short of cash, which, in most cases people in the beginning are -- you can begin by:

1. Writing articles
2. Optimizing your site for the search engines
3. Putting Adsense on your site

All this takes time and work. But, when you first begin, you do have time to optimize, to write articles, and to put adsense ads on your site. Why? It has been said that for the next six months or nine months, Google, and possibly, the other search engines, may put you in the Sandbox. Some say the Sandbox exists, some says it does not. Whatever it is called, you will see a degree of dormancy in your site.

My own thinking is that there may be a pre-set time of six months before you see a rise in your unique clicks – I know I did. I feel that there may be several reasons for this:

1. It’s a great way to protect the Internet community against unscrupulous sites – I figure that these sites have a lifespan of six months before people give them the boot. It only takes one person to feel the blunt of a scam, before talk in the online forums begins.
2. Websites go up and go down daily. The search engines are looking at saving themselves time and money. If you are still on line after six months or nine months, you’re paying your dues, and they may figure you are serious about maintaining a business online.

What Do I Do During That Six or Nine Month Period

First, and foremost – since I have supplied you with this information – do not get frustrated and throw in the towel. Granted, at first the only clicks you may see is your own, but that will change.

Second, start positioning yourself, so when your dormancy with the search engines ends, you have the quality content, and the quality products to begin to fly. That means, writing articles, getting your name out to the masses, and learning to utilize Adsense.
And when you have spare change, try your hand at advertising on Adwords.

In the beginning your learning curve is just out of the starting gate – take this time to read, buy appropriate ebooks, experiment and research. All are important to moving your learning curve to the expert level.

To conclude, a website is just a small part, but an important part, of becoming an Affiliate Marketer. The other important elements, is persistence, hard work, and marketing. And finally, if you still have the passion after the initial exhilaration of becoming an online entrepreneur wanes – then you’ll make it.




About the author:
Vickie J Scanlon has a BBA degree in Administrative Management and Marketing. Visit her site at: http://www.myaffiliateplace.bizfor free tools, quality articles related to affiliate marketing, ebooks, how to info, affiliate opportunities – all aimed toward the affiliate marketer and the marketing process.

Adsense – When should you use it?

by: Joanne King

Well I have several sites, some of them I apply the AdSense to; to make a few extra pennies and some of my websites I wouldn’t even dream of placing Adsense to.

For example, I will not use AdSense on a site that I wish to sell one product on, especially my own products. This can take your potential prospects away from what you want them to buy. Why would you risk losing them to your competition or to another site for a few lousy cents? Or dollars if you got the “higher” end priced AdSense ads on your site.

All sites where I am selling a specific product will not have any out going links for me. I want to keep them on my site for as long as possible.

However, I will use AdSense on sites that are more along the lines of “Free Content” websites. Usually these websites I set up, I use directly for making money with AdSense.

What’s interesting with AdSense is that your layout can have a detrimental affect on how much you can earn from using it. Of course testing and re-testing will be your ultimate tool in finding out what works best with your website.

I tend to stay clear of the lay out that looks like Google’s sponsored ads on the main Google website. Everyone identifies these ads as “paid” and not as likely to have as many people to click through them.

Adsense can be a nice little profitable tool if used correctly.

© Joanne King - http://www.joesy.com




About the author:
Get your Free book on “Affiliate Marketing – Quick Start Guide” by visiting http://www.joesy.com.

You are welcome to reprint this article on your website or send to your mailing list however it may not be edited and the link in this bio must stay active. Cheers =)

Adsense – The Powerful Passive Income Generator

by: Matt Bacak

Webmasters have a revolutionary new method of collecting income from their websites.
Whereas in the past advertising revenue was reserved for those sites with large a coming and going of visitors, now even teenagers are making a quick buck with their online hobby blogs. People place adsense on their online family photo albums, their blogs and their business sites. The minimum you would get, even with a small amount of traffic, is for adsense to pay for your hosting costs.

Adsense revolutionized the world of paid advertising; banner advertising is based on the number of visitors you attract to your site, so the number of “banner impressions” dictate the revenue you receive. Google Adsense is quite different; it is the number of visitors that actually click on the advertising that determine how much you earn.

There is also a great disparity between payouts; because advertisers bid up the price for certain keywords, some ads pay more than others. As such, a site with few visitors but expensive keywords in their google ads can potentially still pull in a hefty payout.

Google really has taken the web by storm; attracted to passive income, more and more people are seriously capitalizing on their Google adsense advertising. Some of the highest earners manage to attract enough visitors to make a four figure monthly income, just from using adsense alone! This is not one of those get-rich-quick schemes and Google’s adsense success is largely thanks to the fact that Google already enjoyed a fantastic reputation before introducing the program. They are a publicly traded company with physical headquarters. This, and the fact that anyone can apply to use adsense for free, has caused millions of people to sign up. For google it was a smart move, because now they extend their presence to countless websites and generate millions of dollars in advertising revenue. People were never reluctant to sign up, because the program is free. Google benefits by more people using adsense, so offering it for free was the best thing they could do.

One of the driving forced behind the program are its relevance to each and every page on a website; the program picks up keywords appearing in the website copy and automatically displays relevant ads. This increases the chances of people clicking through, and the webmaster collecting more revenue.

People are leveraging their income by operating several websites and attempting to attract as many targeted visitors as possible; in many instances we can observe that people work hard at a site, then once it is established they can largely leave it alone, yet still collect significant checks.

A major concern for entrepreneurs was the danger of a competitors ads showing up on their site; thanks to the adsense feature where it only displays relevant advertising. However this problem was solved by offering webmasters the option of filtering out unwanted ads. They can submit the URL of the competing site in their account, and any ads from the website will be blocked.

Google recently came out with a new feature: small targeted keywords based on the site’s content are displayed; then as people click on those, a page opens showing a variety of pay-per-click ads based on that keyword. This gives webmasters the chance of displaying more advertising in less space.

Adsense also adds creditability to your website; the more focused the content, the better the ads will be and this encourages people to built high quality websites. These make the net a better place and generally provide a free service; site owners can afford to share their expertise or passions because they can receive indirect revenue’s. The visitor does not pay for the information; instead the advertisers do, making the website’s existence possible in the first place.

It is no surprise Google adsense is the most widely used form of advertising; they have created a program that is beneficial to both advertisers and users with their “no click no pay” mechanism, or more popularly called “pay-per-click”. Advertisers do not pay for ads that are not drawing visitors, and website owners are paid more for each click than they would if the system were based on the number of people viewing the ads, instead of clicking on them.

All in all Google adsense has developed itself into a powerful tool, used by large corporations and the kid next door. They have truly revolutionized how the web thinks about advertising and made the process more profitable for site owners, while less costly for advertisers.




About the author:
Matt Bacak became "##1 Best Selling Author" in just a few short hours.
Recent Entrepreneur Magazine’s e-Biz radio show host is
turning Authors, Speakers, and Experts into Overnight Success Stories.
Discover The Secrets To Unleash The Powerful Promoter In You! Sign up
for Matt Bacak's Promoting Tips Ezine ($100 value) just visit his
website at http://www.powerfulpromoter.comor http://promotingtips.com

AdSense is Stupid When...

by: Kamau Austin

There are times Google's heralded ad affiliate program isn't in your long term business interest. Oh no I said it!

AdSense isn't the unstoppable revenue engine for every eBusiness. Before I am taken out and flogged by the eCommerce pundits -- please let me explain what I mean in my defense.

I make revenues from AdSense at a very high click-through rate. I experience high click-through rates with AdSense without resorting to questionable tactics like tricking site users with photos (the AdSense trick and tip dujour).

So my perspective is from one who has made decent income from AdSense to fund aspects of his business like advertising seminars -- and outsourcing to his virtual assistants. Yes, AdSense is a legitimate and significant revenue source. However evaluate AdSense with some type of balance.

By now you may have heard about people like Joel Comm's six figure income with AdSense, or Jason Calacanis of Weblogs being on his way to generating 1 million dollars in AdSense revenue. Google's Ad revenue sharing affiliate program for publishers certainly seems to be an eSales Nirvana for many webmasters.

But there are obvious and not so obvious times not to use AdSense ads on your sites. Let's list - examine - and explain them below.

~~~~> 1. On Sales or Mini-sites

This is a no-brainer. If you are trying to sell a particular product that is important to your bottomline, you don't want AdSense ads distracting your customers from either joining your email list, or hindering your site's online sales process.

However I do see hybrid sites that are mini-sites or full scale eCommerce sites, with AdSense at the bottom of their pages. This might not be so bad since only 1% - 15% of your site visitors will either buy from you or fill out a form.

The thinking with this approach is you might as well make money from disinterested parties using up your server's bandwidth.

~~~~~> 2. SEO Business Sites

If your livelihood depends on search engine optimization or marketing for a living you might want to think twice about displaying AdSense Ads on your site. I can tell you this from personal experience. I once was on top of MSN for search engine marketing in my local area. I concentrated on my local area because I found people felt more comfortable hiring an eCommerce consultant locally.

One day my site fails totally out of the MSN index. After intense study I noticed that I obviously had a filter on my site from MSN.

I analyzed all the top ranking sites in MSN and noticed the only difference between me and the other top ranking sites was I had Google AdSense ads on my site. Someone at MSN felt that my AdSense ads, and perhaps to a less extent, my book on SEO, was getting a free ride in the MSN search engine database.

In fact I noticed that there were no sites with AdSense ads for at least the first 3 pages. Plus the sites with AdSense were only using 1 ad unit at the bottom of the home page (there were very few of them in the top 5 pages).

I knew it was strange to not have AdSense ads on the top Internet marketing sites. This prompted me to scan other industries where I noticed the same trend.

Many of the leading SEO gurus have sites that have been banned from the top listings by the search engines. It seems the more visible you become, the more of a target your sites are to the search engine auditors.

Some of my sites are still on the top of MSN with AdSense ads but that doesn't mean they won't also be targets in the future.

Let's face the facts. MSN and Yahoo! have competing ad networks to Google's, and this competitive situation is rife for a potential backlash against SEO sites with AdSense ads.

Many SEOs will point to exceptions to this position. However you have been warned!

Think about it, how long will MSN and Yahoo! sit back and watch SEO driven websites use their search indexes to fund Google? Did you know SEO in MSN and Yahoo(!) --- is much easier to obtain.

Therefore optimized sites are creating an ad sales wealth transfer from MSN and Yahoo into the pockets of Google! It won't be long before Yahoo! and MSN begin to devalue ranking on AdSense sites in their databases -- if not outright ban them.

If you are in the search engine business stay search engine neutral, or create multiple sites for different search engines.

~~~~~> 3. When AdSense Becomes Your Only Business Model

When you become so myopic in your thinking that you build a business solely on AdSense revenue -- think again my friend. Why build a business solely on the largess of Google?

I don't know if your realize it or not, but the sites making the real big AdSense money usually have a following that doesn't depend on the search engines. Internet mavens like Chris Pirillo or Joel Comm have been on the Internet a while and have followings for their websites. Therefore they can consistently make six figures with AdSense.

These content powerhouses are an asset to Google and not the other way around. But do you think Google is going to sit back and watch just anybody make big bucks off of their top rankings?

If you do a search on most keywords you will notice many of the top ranking sites are news sites, .gov sites, or .org sites these days. The only exception is in industries where these sites don't really exist like eCommerce industries (clothing, shopping, etc.).

No doubt in most industries you will notice a conspicuous scarity of AdSense sites in the top rankings. In other words don't bet your future fortunes on AdSense.

An IPO based on projections of AdSense revenue isn't in the future for the average eBusiness. Think of Google AdSense as supplemental income. Building a business solely on AdSense revenue isn't just silly -- it's just plain stupid.

About the author:
Kamau Austin is the publisher of over ten websites. See more of his eCommerce and Search Engine Commentary can be found at:
http://www.eInfoNEWs.comand http://www.SearchEnginePlan.com

Adsense - 7 keys to empire?

by: Richard Keir

There's a lot of buzz around about how you can make a quick and easy fortune using this AdSense course or that tool or this book. And they show you their incomes from AdSense too (though not necessarily THIS month). Now, is it just me or is something a little odd in all this? Say, I'm making $5000 - no make that $15,276 a month from AdSense on my sites. And now I'm going to sell all my secrets on how to do that for $67 or $97 or whatever. So what happened, did I get all bored with my filthy riches and decide to become a philanthropist and sell stuff that makes me 15K a month for a pittance? Or is it something else? Am I saying it's impossible? Certainly not. I know people who make that more. But a little reality. Those people don't have 5 or 6 or 50 sites. They have maybe 500 or 3000 or more. Few sites make 20 or more a day. Very few. Average income is probably less than a dollar a day. So with 500 sites at a dollar a day, you've got your 15K a month. Now the domain names cost you maybe $3500 to $4500. Then you need hosting and somehow you've got to build the sites and get traffic to them. There are excellent tools but the ones that will let you do this kind of thing in a reasonably short time are also very (very) expensive. And you are continually dealing with sites that don't get indexed or get de-indexed or even get banned. Traffic today, gone tomorrow. Plus, if you're not real careful with those tools you may get an unpleasant letter from Google about a DMCA copyright infringement which could cost you your AdSense account. You can make money, you can build an empire. But it isn't easy or quick no matter what you hear. And it really isn't a business. It's not a long run proposition, it's not stable. You need to keep creating more sites as older ones fail - or you need to be smart and use those AdSense revenues to build an enduring business. You put up with this down to here, so here are the real 7 "secret" keys to AdSense. 1. The best performing AdSense type is the large rectangle. This has been tested over and over. 2. The best colors are blue for the link - surfers know that blue means click me. And darkish almost black and grey for the text and url. No borders. The same background as your page. Will it merge into your content? No, that's bogus. There are maybe 4 surfers in this galaxy who can't tell a Google ad when they see one. They are not going to believe it's part of the text. Wake up, OK? 3. Another format which is being reported to more or less work is the full wide banner type layout with text ads and images directly above the links. Try it and see if it works for you. Maybe it's a fad. 4. Keywords and related content are critical if you want targeted ads. If you want high paying clicks you need to target the costly keywords AND have content that supports the keywords. 5. You need traffic interested in the ads. Which means your traffic generation techniques have to be targeted not scattershot. You might hear that 1% or 1.5% clickthrough rate is OK and 3% is good. Nonsense. Really successful people get CTRs that are often well above 30%. Even with modest efforts you should be getting an average 6 to 15% CTR (per ad impression, not pages). 6. You have to track what you're doing and you have to test variations in ad layout, placement, color and related content to optimize your income. No one can tell you how to do it except the traffic coming to your site. If you don't test and track, you're flying blind. 7. You need to keep building new sites. You are now a member of the AdSense Illuminati. Quite possibly you already knew all that. So why are you looking for something else? Really. This is all you need to start doing it. Probably any course or book can help you if that's what it takes to get you moving and doing. Ultimately, no one can really show you exactly how to do it. You're going to have to learn the ropes and put in the time. Like everything in life - the greatest traffic generator, the ultimate course or the super MLM opportunity, if it sounds too good to be true, then it is. There's no magic bullet, no ultimate secret to buy. There's no easy, painless, work free, certain road to riches (except, maybe, inheriting it and that can be very hard on the heirs). Whatever you do on the net, do it wide awake and with your brain actually functioning. The final un-numbered key is that a technique, a shortcut, an idea that will make what you do easier, faster, or more profitable - one single tiny thing - is worth more than any book or course costs. One useable idea and you've gotten a great deal. If you learned something you didn't know or had forgotten, then it's worth much more than you paid. There may not be any magic solution out there, but there are useful concepts, techniques and ideas. You just have to see them for what they are, and then get busy and really use them. About the author: Richard writes, teaches, trains and consults on business and professional presentations and eCommerce related matters. For more information on eCommerce sites and eCommerce site building visit http://www.building-ecommerce-websites.com- you can find more articles at http://www.building-ecommerce-websites.com/articles.

Drop Shippers Can Make a Fortune on Ebay

by: Jason James

Drop shipping has become the latest craze in business and is helping to drive the latest surge of new websites being created today. Drop shippers are creating multiple websites selling numerous product lines and making a fortune in the process. Just type any product you can think of into a search engine and just look at how many pages of websites come up-and most of them are drop shipping companies selling their wares!

Drop Shipping Benefits

The reason why drop shipping has become so popular and exploded so suddenly is that it is simply the most efficient way to sell retail goods. People surfing the web find a site selling a product they want and then make a purchase. The website owner (drop shipper) then passes that order along to their wholesaler along with payment and shipping costs.

From there, the wholesaler processes the order, packages the product with the website owner's business name on the packaging, and ships it directly to the customer. The website owner bought the product at wholesale price and then sold it to the customer for whatever price they thought they could charge, and profited from the difference. It really is pure genius!

But, there is more to this than you think and the beauty of drop shipping gets even better! First of all, there is virtually no overhead because there is no store to operate (or employees to pay!) or any inventory to maintain. Stores like Wal-Mart may get better wholesale prices because they buy in such large quantities, but they still do not make as much profit on each item as a drop shipper due to the costs of operating their stores.

Drop Shipping with Ebay

Although websites are definitely cheaper to create and operate than a conventional retail store, they still can require a fairly sizeable investment of time and money. Between paying for servers and either creating or paying for content, websites can definitely eat up some time and money. But, this is where Ebay comes in.

For a small fee, you can post your wares on Ebay and benefit from the millions and millions of people who surf the site every year. This way, you never have to worry about maintaining any website and you can start selling products within a day or two.

Due to the incredible traffic on Ebay, it is definitely possible to make a fortune by drop shipping from the site. If you just think of the Ebay fee as a business expense, there really is no downside to the arrangement and it can definitely be more profitable than operating your own site and worrying about getting people to visit your site.

While some people may not like the idea of depending upon Ebay for their business, the fact remains that drop shippers can substantially benefit from the partnership. Due to the incredibly low operational costs of drop shipping, the Ebay fee is a very small price to pay for the convenience and high traffic offered by the site. If you are thinking about going into drop shipping but are not crazy about the idea of creating and operating your own website, consider posting from Ebay because the benefits far outweigh the small fee charged by the site.

About the author:
Jason James is an eBay PowerSeller and his website "Auction Resource Network" reveals his inside secrets, tips, and sources that help him earn $10,000+ a month on eBay. Claim your FREE e-Course Here: http://www.auctionresourcenetwork.com

Drive Yourself to More eBay Auction Money

by: Brian McGregor

Big ticket items are increasingly popular on eBay.

Cars are probably one of the best examples of this.

In fact, eBay is the largest dealer of used cars in the USA. And eBay's car sales in the UK is also growing significantly. Every 16 seconds, a car is sold on eBay!

If you're an eBay seller, here's an idea you might like to consider to make extra cash.

The vast majority of car dealers don't use eBay. They advertise in the press, usually locally, and their customers likewise usually live within reach of the car dealer.

What eBay Motors has successfully proved is that people will bid on cars from owners hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

Why not take your eBay selling expertise, and offer your services to car dealers in your area?

You know how to create auctions, take and upload photos, and manage auctions. The dealers have vehicles which are getting a tiny fraction of the exposure which eBay could offer.

You might decide to offer this to dealers on a no-cost basis. In other words, you bear the cost of eBay's listing and selling fees. The benefit here is that there is no reason why the dealer shouldn't give you the go-ahead. They could get a sale without cost to them and no extra effort on their behalf. That's what I call a no-brainer!

Alternatively, you could pass on the fees to the dealer on the basis that they would be spending money anyway on press advertising.

The other commercial arrangements are simple. You could work on a commission, where you get a percentage of the sale price. Or you could agree a price which the dealer will accept for the sale of the car, and anything you can get above that price is your profit. This would work particularly well if the dealer has had a vehicle for some time, and has no interest in it.

The best types of cars to sell on eBay are those that are unusual for one reason or another. It might be vintage or classic vehicles, sports cars or high value models. You're best to avoid what might be termed "normal" cars. It also depends on the kind of dealers you have in your area.

One of the major potential problems is easily handled. You can't expect the dealer to cease trying to sell a vehicle which you have on eBay auction. In every auction you run for a car, you state that the vehicle is also on sale in other ways, and that you reserve the right to withdraw it before the end of the auction period. You will see such statements on many eBay car auctions.

This idea doesn't have to be limited to cars. There are big ticket item opportunities in several categories. You're looking for retail outlets which tend to concentrate on local advertising and local trade. Examples of this would be jewelers, antique traders and real estate operations.

With big ticket items, just one or two sales per week could make a significant difference to you.

Worth thinking about!


About the author:
Brian McGregor is an internet entrepreneur specializing in leveraging the power of eBay. He is author of ‘The eBay Formula’ on how to sell successfully on eBay time after time, and is editor of the eBay Auction Newsletter. Brian is also creator of Keyword Pro, the software which enables sellers to find the top keywords by category currently on eBay. His website is www.workwinners.com

Do Marketers Really Need RSS?

by: Rok Hrastnik

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

The recent Forrester Research study, which claims that only 2% of online households in North America use RSS, took the internet marketing world by storm. Does this data really mean that marketers can still afford to ignore this channel?

Soon after the Forrrester study became public, I received a press enquiery asking whether marketers should be interested in RSS now that so few online adults use it.

Is this the correct question to ask? Let’s take a look at the bigger picture …

1. THE FORRESTER STUDY VALIDITY

The Forrester study is just one of those available and cannot be considered as the only relevant study, although it was conducted on a sample of 68,000 households.

Jupiter Research estimates RSS penetration at 12% of the American online population, while the latest report from PEW shows that 9% of the American online population has a good idea of what RSS is. An October 2004 PEW study actually estimated RSS penetration at 5%.

It is also important to understand that Forrester data does not include those that might not even be aware they are using RSS, especially through services such as My.Yahoo, which is actually the most popular RSS reader.

Also, at the same time, Forrester Vice President Henry Harteveldt says that »RSS is critical for any organization that wants to reach out to people under the age of 30«.

2. THE FUTURE GROWTH OF RSS

Regardless of the numbers we put our faith in, the future growth of RSS is without question. Microsoft just recently announced full RSS support in the next edition of their Internet Explorer browser and full RSS integration in the next edition of their operating system, the Windows Vista.

Once RSS becomes easily available to most internet users out-of-the-box and becomes as widely spread as bookmarks, its adoption will grow at an incredible rate. Microsoft has now made sure this in fact will happen.

Consequently, the time for marketers to not only become interested in RSS but also master it is now. Those that test and discover the best possible ways of using RSS for marketing will be ahead of their competition once everyone starts using RSS.

Furthermore, since RSS implementation can actually be free of any charge, there’s no reason not to start providing your content in RSS feeds now.

3. GOOGLE SHOWS THE WAY

Microsoft and Yahoo! aren’t the only big players to show support for RSS. Google recently launched RSS advertising as part of their Google AdSense program, giving publishers reason to start their own RSS feeds to generate direct revenues.

Those that depend on Google AdSense for part or all of their online revenues actually need to provide RSS feeds, or stand to lose some of those revenues due to their visitors switching to sites and feeds from their competitors.

Face it, today many users are already starting to request publishers provide them with RSS to subscribe to their content. This trend will only continue, with many users selecting RSS as their primary channel of receiving and reading online content.

4. THE QUESTIONABLE RELIABILITY OF E-MAIL

All marketers today are experiencing e-mail delivery problems, constantly wondering whether their messages are getting through or not. Simply put, e-mail can no longer be relied on.

For one, offering your content via RSS as a supplement to e-mail will help you make certain that at least a portion of your visitors, those that decide for the RSS option, will be receiving all of your content without any doubt.

Lockergnome.com decided to start pushing RSS instead of e-mail some time ago, and as a result saw that their RSS feeds are outperforming e-mail when it comes to clickthrough rates for about 500%. Also an interesting fact, they today have 5 times more RSS subscribers than e-mail subscribers.

And two, for your most important content updates, RSS really is becoming a must, especially if you need to be in contact with your existing customers, partners and other key audiences. If you want to be 100% certain that your messages reach your audience, RSS is the way to go.

5. OTHER BENEFITS OF RSS

But all of the above don’t even touch all the reasons why marketers should start using RSS today …

a) RSS will help you generate additional traffic and reach new audiences. Considering the low cost of RSS implementation, this is reason enough to get started with RSS today.

b) RSS helps you to easily get your content published on other sites, thus generating you more credibility and visitors.

c) As a publisher you can use RSS to display content from other sources, thus making your site more relevant and interesting to your existing visitors.

And the list goes on and on.

RSS may not be mainstream yet, but it provides enough advantages even today to make it a must-choice for marketers.


About the author:
Find out immediately how you can power your online business with RSS and integrate it in all of your marketing. Request the free 28-page Business Case for RSS report, with easy-to-follow instructions, examples and advice on how to get the most out of RSS in the shortest possible time. Get the free download here: http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/case/index.html?src=sa15

Creating A Blog To Promote An Existing Business

by: Mal Keenan

Copyright 2005 Mal Keenan

If you belong to any of the following groups, then this article is for you.

* You already have a business and a website that serves as the official hub for your online sales. The website may be serving as an online store for your enterprise.

* You need a venue wherein you can promote your affiliate links.

* Your already have a website, which may not necessarily be a commercial one, and it is enrolled with a Pay Per Click (PPC) program, like Google AdSense.

Success in these fields depends on one essential principle which you might have already realized: traffic is the key to your online business thriving.

You may have in your digital inventory the best products in the world, but they won’t mean squat if no one would get to see them. This is why each and every online businessman will fight tooth and nail just to have a piece of the Internet traffic. After all, the more visitors who get to visit your site, the more potential clients you have.

And blogs can most definitely help you drive visitors to your pages. Here is how you could use them to achieve such a purpose:

1. Download the Wordpress blogging software, which is available for free at www.wordpress.com . An alternative is to go with blogger.com. I have posted instructions for setting up a Blogger blog at your own server in this PDF file:
http://www.pluginprofitstraining.com/blogsetup.pdf

2. Remember that good content is always at the heart of a progressive online traffic stream. People are always looking for information, and if you will give them that, they would read what you have to offer. Dedicate your blog to the subject of your main website. Publish informative entries that would hook your readers and make them come back for updates. In between purely educational entries, strategically include a link to your site by suggesting their importance to your readers.

3. Using the above mentioned strategy, you could also include your affiliate links to pre-sell your affiliate products. The more traffic you drive to your affiliate merchant’s site or sales page, the more chances you will have of effectuating a successful sale and bigger commissions.

4. Links from blogs are unilateral, meaning, they are one way links to your websites. The more traffic a unilateral link generates, the more it becomes prominent in online searches. Avoid reciprocal links at all costs! Do not include a link to your blog from your website. Search engines abhor reciprocal linking.

5. 80% of your traffic will come from the search engines. You have to tweak your blog to attract the attention of the search engine spiders. Now, blogs are already search engine friendly. However, there is a very big possibility that you would be competing with other blogs on the same subject. You have to make sure that once you upload your blog, it is able to outperform its competitors in the search engine rankings.

One way you can do this is by using the title of your post to match the keyword phrases you are targeting, plus put a sprinkling of your keyword phrase in the post itself. I am doing this with great results.

6. Check your blog offline. It should be as readable and as navigable as possible for your prospective readers. Make appropriate adjustments if necessary.

7. Upload your blog to a reliable server that has enough bandwidth to accommodate many viewers.

8. Constantly update your blog. Search engines love regularly updated content, so publishing new entries will greatly increase your blog’s page rank, and consequently, your main website’s traffic.

9. Accepting links from other related blogs will also bring to your site some traffic from sources other then search engines. The way that a blog is designed fosters the building of a community of blog sites, and this will provide for an added stream of visitors for you.

10. You could also decide to enroll your blog site in the Google AdSense advertising program. This will give you an additional income stream. We will discuss this in future articles.

Blogs are excellent promotional tools for your existing business. Use them well and you will harvest the rewards in a matter of weeks.


About the author:
Get Your Hands on My FREE and Exclusive 7 Day Blogging Report by Sending and Blank Email to freeblogreport@getresponse.com In this Report I Reveal All The Secrets for Creating and Running A Successful Online Blog.

Contextual Ad Networks...The Baby Boom Is Upon Us

by: Kirk Bannerman

No, this baby boom will certainly not swamp the Social Security
system (sort of a bad joke for those that live in the United
States, but many other countries...most notably Japan...have an
even more acute problem), but this baby boom is revolutionizing
the way that pay per click advertising is being spread across the
Internet.

One of the early participants in this pay per click baby boom was
Google, with its AdSense program. With this program, Google
shares pay per click revenue with a huge number of individual
partner websites that carry a few pay per click ads that are
distributed by Google. In essence, this creates a whole bunch of
little pay per click locations (websites) throughout the Internet
and hence the term "pay per click baby boom".

Conceptually, programs like AdSense are similar to what the
computer hardware folks refer to a distributed processing.
Instead of trying to draw everyone to a large pay per click
search engine site, little groups of pay per click ads are spread
widely across thousands of locations (websites) all over the
Internet.

Actually, this distributed processing or propagation technique is
not limited to pay per click advertising. For example, Amazon
uses a similar arrangement (called Amazon Associates) to sell the
products it carries on amazon.com and ClickBank has a sales
program called CBAdwords which operates in a similar fashion.

According my trusty Ouija board, it seems likely that most
commercial hubs on the Internet will be shifting to this
propagation concept as time progresses...all of those individual
partner websites that carry the message/proposition will
constitute the vast army of worker ants that keep the queen ant
alive and healthy.

From a pay per click marketing perspective, these programs make
brilliant use of leverage while providing highly targeted
prospects for the paying advertiser.

There are, of course, some interesting things that occur as a
result of all of this stuff. For example, consider what I call
the "cross fertilization effect": Suppose a person goes to
yahoo.com and performs a search that leads them to one of my
websites that happens carry Google AdSense ads and that visitor
then clicks on one of those ads...the net result is that Yahoo
natural search provided Google pay per click with some revenue!
Aren't these fun times that we're living in?

As these programs continue to proliferate, the individual
webmaster needs to exercise a little restraint and avoid the
temptation to go overboard by plastering these ads all over your
website and thereby diluting your own primary message/proposition
and confusing your hard earned visitor. When properly used,
these ads are just ancillary or complementary content that you
are providing to enhance the information and opportunities that
you are providing to your visitor...if something happens to
strike a responsive chord with your visitor, you might make a
little pay per click money.

If properly used, these propagation programs can result in the
classical "win-win" situation. However, if you over do it, this
can quickly turn into a loss for you (the individual webmaster)
and a win for your pay per click partners that are distributing
the ads. As in many things, moderation is important.


The dynamic search engine marketing industry continues to evolve
as users began to take advantage of the steady stream of new
features, tools and innovations provided by the ever increasing
number of search engines offering quality search results (it's
not all about Google anymore). The evolutionary time line for
Internet marketing continues to run at warp speed.

An example of previous evolutionary periods (which by now may
almost seem prehistoric) would be the emergence of pay-per-click
advertising and the cooresponding rise of search-marketing firms
specializing in AdWords and Overture. As long as there are methods
for finding and retrieving information in digital databases by
using keywords or similar attributes, there will be a
search-marketing industry. How that industry operates in the
future depends on how the search engines operate and how consumer
tendencies evolve.

It's a constant sea of change, but the good things just keep on
getting better! Stay alert, and light on your feet, and the
opportunities will just keep on coming your way.

The above are just some observations from "the peanut gallery",
but I don't think I'm far off the mark about where things are
heading. With that, I'm off the soapbox and wishing you
success in whatever you do online!




About the author:
Kirk Bannerman operates his own successful home based business
and also coaches others seeking to start their own home based
business. For more information visit his website at http://www.home-based-business-team.com

Concentrate on what's important...

by: Phil Wiley

This is only my second letter in seven or eight weeks. Sorry about that, but at first I had no Internet connection when things went wrong with my satellite service (I'm now on wireless broadband)
and then I developed a quite serious illness which I'm slowly getting over.

If you want to, you can read more on my forum I reckon you should go there anyway, it's a great community.

Incidentally the forum posts are being indexed by Google, which makes it a good place to get links to your websites - as long as you've got something useful/interesting to say that is :)

Ok, I'll keep this relatively short because I'm still not feeling too good. But I hope that normal "service" has now resumed.





1. Concentrate on what's important...

First of all, it looks like I'm missed seeing a lot of new products since I've been offline.

When I visited my forum I saw a number of programs/software being talked about that I'd never even heard of.

And, do you know what? I didn't really care that I'd missed the products being announced.

There's probably nothing wrong with them. They're most likely useful. They're probably worth investigating.

But... remember this.

It's IMPORTANT to not get distracted with new things all the time. You could spend all your limited web time learning how to use
new tools, when really you should be focusing on improving your sites and your skills and your own business.

I remember David Garfinkel and Mark Joyner saying to me in Vegas that I should focus on what I'm good at (in my case writing).

And that's what you should be doing too.

Play to your strengths.

Work out what you're good at/what your main interests are and give them most of your attention and time.

Don't get sidetracked by everything new that comes along.

Write down your "online business" plan, even if it's only on one piece of paper. And work out the steps you need to take to achieve success with it. Doing this will help you focus on what matters, and it will clear your head so that you know where you should be spending your time.

Once you've mapped out your action steps you need to follow them. Don't make a plan and then not stick to it. Don't let anyone or
anything put you off. Go for it.

Don't sign up for every crappy new scheme that comes along. Don't buy every new piece of software or every ebook.

Do what works for YOU and use the tools that works for YOU.

And just go for it.






2. One of the smartest brains around...

I'm not sure if you've heard of him, but James Maduk is one of the smartest business brains around. He's been working online since 1995, writes monthly articles for Entrepreneur Magazine, and he's an expert at online selling.

Plus he's got more products on the market than anyone I know, even beating the prolific Marlon Sanders.

So why he's not amazingly well known in this field I'll never know.

I'm a big fan, especially of his member only site

If you'd like an introduction to his style and knowledge have a look at one of his free weekly webcasts, where he uses "internet whiteboard" technology to get his messages across.

And when you've finished watching and listening you might fancy signing up for his affiliate program which is looks like turning into one of the best around.






3. Free Amazon Tools...

If you're promoting Amazon's affiliate program here are a couple of useful sites which help you automate the process.

http://www.associatesshop.com/

and

http://www.addassociate.com/add_register.php

Associatesshop lets you add an Amazon store to your site and sell products of your choice, while Addassociates provides you with code which works much the same way as Google Adsense -
meaning it "reads" the content of your webpage and displays context related products.

Of the two I prefer Addassociate, but you can't use it on pages where you're running Google Adsense ads.

Anyway, they're both free and could be a useful addition to your sites.






4. Beginners Bit...

I get heaps of letters about how difficult it is to build a good looking website. But I get even more letters about the complexities of getting a webhost and uploading pages to it.

One simple way around this is to use Site Build It! (SBI) because it offers an all-in-one solution.

The mastermind behind SBI, Ken Evoy, has been really busy with SBI over the past few months, constantly adding new features and making it easier to use. I've owned SBI for a few years now and it's now a far, far better site building tool than when I started using it. And it was good then.

One thing SBI is ideal for is displaying Google Adsense ads.

To really make big profits from Adsense you need a lot of content pages. Using SBI for these sites makes sense because once you've got over the learning curve it leaves you totally free to
concentrate on providing that content. So you can quickly put out a lot more pages.

Plus the in-built tools help you keep that content on topic, which means that Adsense can read that your pages correctly and display relevant ads.

In fact Ken has put together a very good info site about using SBI with Adsense. You should spend a bit of time reading through it.

http://salesnow.sitesell.com/adsense/





5. Stuck for ideas what to build a site about?

Try reading Michael Holland's Strike it Niche.
It's a great place to begin.

Michael's done a great research job, giving you ideas for 70 different sites, and explaining just what you need to do to profit from each
of them. Reading this ebook should leave you dancing with enthusiasm.





6. As a follow on to the stuff higher up...


Do you ever feel like you're drowning in a sea of data?
Well you're not the only one.

I just checked out the online edition of The Guardian, one of the best UK daily papers, and found this report:

"There's a lot of data on our hard disks, and there's more accumulating by the day. The University of Berkeley School of Information Management and Systems has just updated its "How Much Information?" study. In 2002 we created over five exabytes of data, in the form of video, print, magnetic and optical media — an increase of over 30% a year since 1999. That's equivalent to half a million new collections the size of the US Library of Congress — 92% of which was on magnetic media, and most of that was on hard disk."



About the author:
Phil Wiley is the author of the best selling book Mini Site Profits www.minisiteprofits.comand writes the free weekly Letter from Phil at www.ozemedia.com