- 0 – Money from the Web – 0 – The Reality Show

Copyright © 2011 Lawrence Hamilton

If you are looking to make sustainable and residual income online, then you need to develop a strategy with Affiliate Marketing. Your personal Affiliate Marketing strategy will depend on several factors.

What kind of revenue do you want to sustain?

How much market research do you want to perform?

Do you have passions about certain niche markets that create excitement in you?

Do you know how to build a website?

Do you know how to market your website, the product, and convert prospects into actual customers?

The most successful strategies you can employ will have clear and definite criteria. You need to be aware of PPC (pay per click), CPA (cost per action), banner ads, solo ads, classified ads, E-Mail lists, creating links, and even how to cloak a URL address. You need to do significant research to find the relevant niche keywords that apply to your product, and exhibit low competition as well. Choosing an Affiliate Marketing strategy that is right for you is one of the most important business decisions you will make. The strategy you eventually choose is what will ultimately shape the various decisions you make. Being successful at Affiliate Marketing isn’t about throwing up a website or blog, sticking a few banners in strategic places, placing some ads, and waiting for the commissions to start rolling in. You have to know and understand your target audience, and you have to understand the principles of developing relationships with your prospects.

So let’s define Affiliate Marketing before we move on to strategies. Affiliate Marketing is a third party selling products or services owned by another vendor and receiving commissions for those sales. If you understand that much then you can begin to learn how to start marketing these products or services to earn money with an online business. What are some strategies to ensure your success with Affiliate Marketing?

Strategy 1.

Research, find, and choose a viable niche product that you would enjoy promoting. Where can I go to do this research? All the information you need are in two sources. If you use ClickBank, you will find a multitude of products by category that details the popularity, gravity, initial sales dollars, average sales dollars, and if they rebill so you can be assured of residual income. I would never promote a product that did not rebill, as that will become a onetime sale, and you will continually have to promote it ad infinitum. The second source is to use the Google Keyword Tool to research appropriate keywords that can best assist you in promoting your product or service. The Keyword Tool is easy to use, and Google has a tutorial for you if you are unsure of how to use it most effectively.

Strategy 2.

Build and publish a website for your product or service. You will hear all sorts of chatter about how a website is not a definitive need to be successful in Affiliate Marketing. I can honestly tell you that you do not have to publish a website to enjoy success. A website, however, will enhance your chances exponentially for success at Affiliate Marketing. A website gives you the opportunity to create exciting copy for your product. It allows you to offer free gifts to your prospects. It allows you to express your passion for the product you have chosen. It allows you to tell your story about what this product has done for you, and what it will do for them. It allows you to create an E-mail list so you can stay in touch with your prospects. Staying in touch with your prospects is the main selling key in turning those prospects into actual customers. If you don’t publish a website, it won’t be a deal breaker, but you will be losing out on a lot of your ability to employ several marketing strategies.

Strategy 3.

Marketing my Affiliate Product: It’s an obvious question; how do I market my product? You have to get some sort of ad copy in front of thousands of people so you have an equitable chance of converting visitors or prospects into customers. You do not have to possess professional writing skills to create good copy. What I might suggest is outsourcing one solo ad or one article about your product so you can learn how to develop a template for your own copy. Once that is accomplished, you need to start writing articles and ad copy for your product so people will visit your website. The whole strategy here is to get traffic, right? You’ll never get adequate traffic unless you expose your site to prospects and let your site do the selling. Your copy in the website must also be good enough to convert those prospects into real customers.

Strategy 4.

Where do I market my product? There are several legitimate ways to market your product, and they all work to some degree. In this article, I am only going to recommend two ways to market your Affiliate Product.

a) The first is to devise a budget you can live with and place solo ads in Ezines. You don’t just go out and contact an Ezine and place a solo ad. You research the ezines that are relevant to your category and find out how many subscribers they have. DO NOT think that more is better in this scenario. I have found that if you place a solo ad in a relevant Ezine that has 40K to 90K subscribers, you will get favorable results. You also need to explore their rates. I am going to give you a guideline for what you should be willing to pay. Never pay more than $4.00 per thousand subscribers. Remember, you solo ad will go out to every subscriber the Ezine has, and you need to do the simple math to ensure you don’t pay more than $4.00 per subscriber. Ezine publishers are under no obligation to standardize their rates, so it is up to you to do your due diligence when it comes to your budget.

b) The second is to write articles and submit them to article publishers. There are several free directories you can use and some directories are fee based. You need to do some more research and determine which ones would be most effective and efficient for you. Once again, you do not need to be a professional writer to create and submit articles. You can find several ideas to create quality articles, or you could outsource them if you feel that would meet your needs and your budget better. Regardless of what venue you choose to submit articles, they can and will generate substantial traffic to your website. One word of caution, however, about article writing; It is the very best advertising you can create, albeit, the slowest. Do not expect instant results or set your return expectations too high immediately. It takes time for your articles to get into the system and then get perused by readers. You also need to be prepared to write and publish two articles per week so your material never gets stale, and you keep that promotion moving forward. Know that it will work just like word of mouth, be confident, and be patient.

Strategy 5.

We all have certain levels of skill and knowledge when it comes to Affiliate Marketing, website building, and article writing. I highly recommend anyone except an “expert” to join a community of learning where the focus is on success and teaching members how to be successful. These sites have forums where questions can be answered, and you will find out people just like you are struggling with the same problems you are. These sites can turn you into a very resourceful Affiliate Marketer given time and dedication. I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors.

Larry Hamilton helps people succeed with online businesses. As a successful entrepreneur, he has developed a passion for instructing people on how to use the internet in an ethical, and profitable manner. If you need help with affiliate marketing, you’re one click away:

http://www.academyforinternetincome.com

or visit my blog at:
http://www.eliteaffiliatetools.blogspot.com

Many Internet marketers are questioning whether article marketing is worth it anymore now that Google has made changes to their algorithms again. I actually feel now is the time to get serious about article marketing.

Anytime Google makes a change it benefits some Internet marketers and hurts others. It all comes down to how you approach it.

In this article let’s go over 5 tips that can help you capitalize on the changes currently going on in the marketplace.

1. Focus on fresh content. I personally think that every article you submit should be unique. The Internet is cluttered with duplicate content and this is what Google and other search engines will be focusing on.

If you are going to submit an article to a large article directory such as EzineArticles.com do not put that article anywhere else online. This does not mean you cannot create unique versions of the article and submit them.

However, it does mean you do not want to take the exact same article and submit it to multiple article directories. If you do this you are only adding to the clutter and are part of the problem and not the solution.

2. Keep the content on your blog unique. Do not pose the same article on your blog if you have already submitted it to article directories.

One good strategy is to write your article and post it on your blog. Bookmark the post to social directories using a service such as Only Wire.

Then re-write the article and use the new version to submit to one article directory. Vary the directories you submit to and try and hit the top 5-10 over a period of time. This allows you to reach a larger audience as well as develop backlinks from more than one directory.

3. Add more words. This is one big change that article directories are now requiring. Short articles are not going to be accepted.

For example, EZA has increased the minimum number of words from 250 words to 400 words. ArticleBase.com is now requiring articles to be a least 350 words.

If you want to be serious about article marketing start thinking in terms of 500 to 700 word articles. Do not sacrifice the quality of your article just to get more words either.

Take this opportunity to make your articles even more useful. Increase the length and you will be rewarded by the article directories and search engines as well.

4. Use Submit Your Article. I love this service. You can develop unique versions of your articles using their patented article leverage program.

You submit your article and then quickly rewrite it to the desired level of uniqueness. It is possible to develop unique versions that are all most 100% different from each other.

When you do this you are creating content that is different from each other. It is then submitted by them to multiple article directories. This provides you with an excellent opportunity to have more articles published.

5. Work on your resource box. If your articles are interesting your reader will make it to your resource box at the bottom of the article.

This is make it or break it time. Your goal very simply is to have that reader click on the link in your resource box.

A well written resource box is extremely important. However, you can get more with less in terms of how long your resource box is.

Another thing to keep in mind is to vary the hyperlinked text and the website URL. This allows you to develop backlinks to more than just your home page.

It certainly is time to take article marketing more seriously. The opportunities to benefit from writing and submitting articles has never been better!

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The entire marketing world has been completely revolutionized with the internet and what search engines bring to the table for any business out there. Today, there are now hundreds of methods in which any business is able to get their products and services marketed in a manner that is successful, well planned, and effective at generating traffic. As this trend continues to grow, one should take a closer look at the benefits of using a niche article directory for any and all marketing purposes.

For some time now, the use of article marketing has been quite powerful when implemented successfully. Using keyword rich content that is then published on specific directories that cater to this format of publication helps provide visibility to your branding and business overall. Upon publication, the benefits of visibility and consumer traffic are definitely present and well utilized.

One amazing benefit of this particular type of website is that it provides a link building popularity. At the end of each article, the author or business owner is then able to place a URL on the bottom of it which provides a direct source to their website. This, in turn, helps provide the process of creating more URL publications for increased rank on search engines.

Of course, as within any marketing campaign, increased overall exposure is provided from these directories. This is mutually beneficial to business owners that need the content as well as the writers that need their work purchased in order to earn a profit. Thus, the open marketplace of content is definitely a revolving door for all involved.

In most cases, great articles often make for greater chances of sales. When consumers read the content in the publication and like it, they are much more likely to purchase from your particular business or website. Thus, it is often a direct link to increased consumer sales and retention in many cases with continually updated and relevant content.

As they are specific to the niche in which you provide products and services, most readers are those that are interested in your content. By publishing in the specific site that caters to your specific market, the worries surrounding uninterested and spammed consumers is greatly reduced. Hence, it is definitely a means in which defining your target audience is often already performed for you.

Also, pertaining to niches, there is much less competition for gaining interested readers and potential consumers. While some niches are much more robust than others, those sites that offer numerous categories of niche content are often flooded with potential publications and non interested consumers. Niche directories are more focused and provide a greater chance of marketing success for the business owner and publisher.

Finally, niche article directories are usually free to join and publish within. Posting content and spreading the work using other kinds of strategies and techniques can often become amazingly expensive which is definitely a huge capital drainer for any business owner. Fortunately, much of this expense is removed when publishing content on these particular sites.

Article marketing is a highly effective way of promoting yourself or your online business. You can achieve this by authoring articles and submitting them to article directories or by means of guest blogging. In both scenarios, you would like to be allowed to include links to your web pages. Below are three different approaches for using article marketing to promote your web pages. Articles can be used to generate online traffic directly, or they might be used to improve website rankings through search engine optimization (SEO), or they could be used in both ways.

Article Marketing To Create Traffic

Articles may be used primarily to generate website visitors. This technique counts on people clicking the links in the author’s resource box or in the article body to surf on over and visit your website.

To produce traffic, your articles must carry sufficient value to readers that they’ll actually read and benefit from your articles. The articles and also their titles ought to be keyword-focused so that they appear in search engine results for the keywords. Be sure you write the information in your author’s resource box so it excites readers to click your links and visit your site.

Utilizing Article Marketing For SEO

Some use article marketing largely to produce incoming links for SEO. Most search engines base search results and ranking on the quantity of incoming links pointing at a web page for the specific keywords (e.g., “health articles on stress“). Inbound links and anchor text are possibly the most significant criteria used to determine which website will be at the top of search results.

For SEO link creation purposes, the quality of articles is less significant, though they still should give value to readers. This could be simpler, though, because you mainly just want numerous inbound links to your web pages. In this strategy, you do not expect to get much traffic from links in your articles. The emphasis is on using your links and anchor text to get your website to the top of search engine results any time people search for your keywords.

Using Article Marketing For Both Targeted Traffic And SEO

Article marketers constantly debate the advantage of using articles for website traffic versus publishing primarily for inbound links and SEO. But why limit yourself when your articles can do both?

There is already way too much useless content on the world wide web. Site visitors don’t want junk and nearly all publishers don’t either. If you have to compose an article anyway, you might as well create one of decent quality that will actually deliver some benefit. You should publish good quality articles which will get direct clicks and that will also produce the SEO benefit of incoming links. Applying this combined approach, you can make your readers happy, and get published more frequently. And you will still achieve optimum search engine optimization results from your article marketing.

Not very many people who do business online are already aware of the magnificent impact that article marketing can have towards successfully ranking their business website on top of the search engine results pages.

If there are some important methods that site owners should be learning about in order for their businesses to succeed on the internet, then surely article marketing is one of those methods.

In reaching the top spots of search engine listings, there are several different strategies that can be implemented to successfully attain this goal, and no doubt article marketing is surely one of these so called strategies.

When a person is trying to find out about something or is looking for some valuable information on the internet, he or she will most probably immediately resort to taking advantage of what the search engines can do. Once that person types a specific term or keyword related to what is being searched about, then a list of different sources will be introduced as a result of that search.

So, just how does article marketing play an important role in the ranking of a specific website on the search results listings? The answer is as follows:

Whenever you write an article in the intention of using it for promoting a specific website, the entire process of that is what is called the article marketing. After successfully writing an article, you then have to distribute or publish that article through different site portals all over the web. Some of these maybe called article directories, while some may just be simple websites or even blog sites that actually accept articles for publishing in them.

The benefit of distributing your article to all these several different site portals all around the web is that you get to attach anchor links within the articles. Those attached links are actually supposed to be pointing back to your main website. Now, there are several hundreds of site portals that will actually accept your article for publishing, so you can just imagine the huge potential of generating massive backlinks for your website.

The process of building links to a website is a very important contributing aspect within the entire realm of pushing a website at the top spot of the search results listings. And article marketing is just really good at accomplishing this very goal of building links that point toward a website.

You surely can’t blame many online marketers who have been successfully taking advantage of article marketing in ranking their websites on top of the search engine results pages if they say that it is indeed the most reliable strategy available to implement.

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The link problem was not quite as bad as I first thought. I had a typo in my link that I posted with the article. The first link is still broken, but I uploaded a page with the typo file name, so the second link in the article does work. The article is still at the end of the list and does not show in the list of recent articles. There are supposedly over 200 instances of this article directory but few of the articles that I checked (I did only check a few) have been read more than a few times. Many on my page show 0 or 1 for the number of views. I suspect that those showing a 1 show it because the author viewed his own article one time.

I also paid a bit of attention to the links in the footer box. These all appear to direct to pages put up by the directory owner. YouTube had pulled a couple of the videos and at least one other link is broken. This is an interesting concept. The major benefit, if there is a major benefit for anyone, seems to be to the owner of the directory. I am not so sure that I approve, but I will observe for a while more before I pass a final judgment. I did do a search and did not turn up complaints on the subject, but perhaps I did not dig deep enough.

I posted an article to my article-exchange directory last evening. This was an article that I wrote to promote my site Gemstone Jewelry Now.

There is minimal instruction on the site as to posting procedures, just the various input boxes for title, description, article body, and resource box. I screwed up on the format for the resource box and ended up with no working links. It appears that the software does recognize an URL in the standard format and that you can use html to put in anchor text, but I will need to try again to be sure. There was also no space between the end of the article and the beginning of the resource box info. I will try adding a couple of spaces at the end of the article next time.

My major complaint with the directory software is that it dumped the article at the end of the category. I should go back and check to see if that is still the case, possibly the owner of the database can check an article off and it will move to the top of the list. Another thought that I had was that the broken links may have flagged the article and sent it to the end of the line. If this is really the way that the software works there is not much hope of a direct click to a site from the article even though it appears many times. Users are not likely to make it to the end of the category unless they know that the freshest content is at the end. This is the reverse of the way that every other article directory that I have seen works. The pages may still get indexed and the links count, but I would expect no direct traffic.

This may be a good thing for the directory owner as his articles may appear on page one for any category, but for those others adding content promotion would be the only way that I would expect the article to be viewed. The owner of the directory does give instructions on how to list the articles on RSS feeds (something other article sites do automatically).

I do need to go to my installation and make some further observations. At this point the jury is still out on the utility of these article directories. They have not been in place long enough to see if they produce any traffic either directly to the site or due to articles posted to the directory. I will have another update when I have some more thoughts on this topic.

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I ran across a free script for an article directory and installed on my site, The World SoapBox. I will be watching the results as I have some questions about how this script operates.

The database for the script resides on a remote server. The script calls for the content over the Internet. I do have some news feeds and they do get indexed, so maybe the articles will be indexed as part of the site. The pages of this and all WordPress blogs are called from a local database and the pages are built by the script at the time when there is a request, but they get indexed. I am hoping that these articles get indexed as content on my site.

There are several things that I will be keeping my eye on. I will try to post a report when I have enough information to draw some conclusions.

Check out the World SoapBox Article Directory and tell me what you think.