Google

Sunday, November 30, 2008

The List of 10 Best Affiliate Networks

 

 

This list of the 10 Best Affiliate Networks will give you a general rundown on these affiliate networks and how they operate.

1. Commission Junction (www.cj.com)

Now owned by ValueClick, Commission Junction was one of the first affiliate networks. It is also one of the most important with many of the Top Fortune 500 companies listed here.

CJ is an international network with excellent stats and tracking (some of the best you will find), along with regular monthly payments makes this the obvious first choice for anyone wishing to try affiliate marketing.

For those new or old at affiliate marketing, CJ also holds regular seminars and training sessions.

Most merchants offer pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale, one of the best features is the performance bonuses and incentives. As most experienced marketers will know, selling 50k to 100k each month for merchants will bring in the big incentives or bonuses.

Commissions run as high as 50% but most are in 3% to 15% range. You have the option of direct deposit for your payments. One major plus, CJ will tell you which merchants

and ads are earning the most revenue for affiliates so you can easily choose which merchants are worth promoting.

2. ClickBank (www.clickbank.com)

ClickBank is another professional affiliate network with

excellent stats and tracking. Easy to use and pays every two weeks.

ClickBank is slightly different from the other networks in that it deals mainly with digital download products. The commissions from ClickBank are usually much higher than the other networks, around 40% to 50% or more.

ClickBank has over 10,000 products but keep in mind, info-marketing products will have stiff competition from all the savvy and well established Internet marketers promoting these same products. Consider yourself warned!

The most successful marketing tactic here is to first dominate your targeted niche with your blogs and sites, then find affiliate products to match your content or niche subject matter, whether it be gardening equipment, gaming laptops or Mediterranean cruises!.

3. LinkShare (www.linkshare.com)

LinkShare is another excellent affiliate network. It is one of the oldest affiliate networks on the web. LinkShare was recently acquired by the Japanese Portal Rakuten, with a price tag of $425 million.

Very good stats and reporting with their Synergy Analytics system. Many Top Fortune 500 companies are presented here so you will no trouble finding products and services to promote.

LinkShare pays commissions as they receive them from merchants - monthly checks.

4. Affiliate Window (www.affiliatewindow.com)

Affiliate Window is an UK based affiliate network which offers top brand companies and good commission rates. Pays once a month and has excellent stats.

Savvy affiliate marketers know promoting in other countries can be much easier than promoting in the American market place. Mainly because these other countries haven’t become saturated with online marketers, little competition means more sales.

5. Amazon (www.amazon.com)

Amazon is another excellent affiliate network to join if you want to sell products from your site or blog. Amazon has excellent stats and the links are very easy to create and place on your web pages.

You also have the option of creating your own store with Amazon Stores. Amazon also now has context link ads and Widgets!

Commission rates are somewhat lower than the other networks but making sales thru Amazon is much, much easier. You will make more sales mainly because Amazon is a well known and trusted online company. Amazon now pays monthly.

6. Shareasale (www.shareasale.com)

Shareasale is yet another easy system to work with good stats and simple to create links. With 1,700+ merchants to choose from, Shareasale is another good affiliate network to promote.

The control panel is easy to use and the reporting is very good. Usually pays the month following your sales.

7. Google (www.google.com/adsense/)

Many won’t think of Google as an Affiliate network but it does run affiliate products thru its Adsense program. Very few products but like everything from Google it is professionally run and top caliber all the way.

Please note, top marketers know affiliate links/products on their content pages will return 10 times what Google Adsense will give them. However, these marketers will also know using Google Adsense on less targeted pages throughout your sites or blogs will give you a healthy return.

Besides receiving that monthly check from a multi-billion dollar company like Google will put a smile on your face every time.

8. LinkConnector (www.linkconnector.com)

LinkConnector is a relatively new affiliate network which launched in 2004. It has Pay Per Click, Pay Per Sale and Pay Per Lead. Good stats and reporting. Worth checking out for their different types of new affiliate technology such as Direct Linking which passes pagerank along to the merchant’s site.

9. CPA Empire (www.cpaempire.com)

Great CPA (Cost Per Action) network especially if you do a lot of email marketing and promotions. Geared towards acquiring leads and sign-ups but does offer other merchants as well. Good stats and reporting.

10. Independents

Individual affiliate deals with different companies which may or may not be listed with the major networks above. Your independent affiliate deals will be some of your most lucrative since you can sometimes work out separate private commission rates and bonuses. Aim for residual income here. Don’t ignore this aspect of affiliate marketing as it will pay the highest dividends.

Some Powerful Tips to Boost Affiliate Programs

 

 

The ideal world of affiliate marketing does not require having your own website, dealing with customers, refunds, product development and maintenance. This is one of the easiest ways of launching into an online business and earning more profits.

Here are some powerful tips on how to boost your affiliate program commissions overnight.

1. Know the best program and products to promote. Obviously, you would want to promote a program that will enable you to achieve the greatest profits in the shortest possible time.

There are thousands of affiliate programs online which gives you reason to be picky. You may want to select the best to avoid losing your advertising dollars. There are several factors to consider in selecting such a program:
a. Choose the ones that have a generous commission structure.
b. Have products that fit in with your target audience.And
c. has a solid track record of paying their affiliate easily and on time.

Based on these factors, if you cannot still seem to increase your investments, dump that program and keep looking for better ones.

2. Write free articles, reports or short ebooks to distribute from your site. In the reports, provide some valuable information for free. If possible, add some recommendations about the products. With ebooks, you get credibility. Customers will see that in you and they will be enticed to try out what you are offering. There is a great possibility that you are competing with other affiliates that are promoting the same program. If you start writing short reports related to the product you are promoting, you will be able to distinguish yourself from the other affiliates.

3. Collect and save the email addresses of those who download your free ebooks. Get the contact information of a prospect before sending them to the vendors website. Keep in mind that you are providing free advertisement for the product owners. You get paid only when you make a sale. If you send prospects directly to the vendors, chances are they would be lost to you forever.

This is the simple reason why you should collect the contact information of those who downloaded your reports and ebooks. You can make follow-ups on these contacts to remind them to make a purchase from you.

This strategy is a delicate balance between providing useful information with a sales pitch. If you continue to write informative editorials you will be able to build a sense of reciprocity in your readers that may lead them to support you by buying your products.

4. Ask for higher than normal commission from merchants. If you are already successful with a particular promotion, you should try and approach the merchant and negotiate a percentage commission for your sales.

If the merchant is smart, he or she will likely grant your request rather than lose a valuable asset in you. Keep in mind that you are a zero-risk investment to your merchant; so do not be shy about requesting for addition in your commissions. Just try to be reasonable about it.

5. Write strong pay Per Click ads. PPC search engine is the most effective means of advertising online. As an affiliate, you can make a small income just by managing PPC campaigns such as Google AdWords and Overture. Then you should try and monitor them to see which ads are more effective and which ones to dispose of.

Best Practice of Marketing Affiliate Programs

 

 

1)Get cheap hosting and try out a few different landing pages on a single domain, like http://wangzhuan0811.blogspot.com/page1; http://wangzhuan0811.blogspot.com/page2 etc. Set up ppc campaigns for each page.
2)Create your own articles / reviews on the affiliate network product;
3)This is the core of the whole practice: Create 2 - 4 pages that is also packed with content such as sub-categories or just simply more relevant useful info.  http://wangzhuan0811.blogspot.com/page1, http://wangzhuan0811.blogspot.com/page1a, http://wangzhuan0811.blogspot.com/page1b; and
4)Create an index to the pages on the main page ; and
5)Make sure that they all link back to each other by placing the index on every page.
6)Analyze your click through and ROI results for each page over a 1-3 days period, not too long to save costs. Tweak and make changes accordingly. Remember that the ultimate aim is to get the visitor to finally click on your affiliate link, so make sure all your content leads to that and that your affiliate links are prominent in all the pages
7)Find the successful model and move on to your next bestseller affiliate program product you want to promote with the same steps.
In summary, create your own landing page, sort of like a mini-site that specifically presells the product that you marketing. Make sure its 'Google Friendly' by packing it with relevant content and being well indexed.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Online Competitor Analysis Tools

 

Online Marketers always try to do an online competitor analysis to get to know which websites target the same keywords as you do
To find out:
- who these competitors are;
- their page rank, …
- incoming links and value of the incoming links
- marketing techniques they use (Google Ads, linkbuilding, Press Releases, Affiliate marketing to generate traffic for them self, Social Networking, ...)
- Same site hosted in different servers, under different language related domains (.com, .de, .es, ...)

Normally, most of these info you can get with a site: operator search on Google or yahoo. Yahoo will give you a more accurate total of links into a site.

Beside, Spyfu is an online competitive intelligence application that allows you to browse competitors' PPC keywords, daily budget, bid prices, clicks/day, and other interesting PPC facts & figures. The tool is useful for researching the competition and uncovering new keywords, the tool works by scraping the search results of over half a million phrases each day and then storing them in the Googspy database. Marketers use the tool by entering the domain name of a competitor and viewing a list of the search terms that they rank well for. The tool also displays the top 25 competitors for the company that you search on. Entering a search term will bring up a list of companies that are purchasing Adwords, along with the text of their ads.

Finally, here is a link that should answer some questions: http://www.toprankblog.com/2007/06/winner-best-keyword-research-tool/

5 Ways to Produce Targeted Free Traffic

 

 

Below are eight free ways to produce quality targeted traffic for your website, by applying some or all the methods, it is not hard to produce a steady stream of targeted traffic, and it can be absolutely free if you do it right.

1. Content
Content, Content, Content! Search engines are so sophisticated these days that the only real way to get on the top of search engines is to have good keyword-rich content. The more keywords you incorporate into your content, the better, just make sure it is still an understandable article and not just an article full of keywords.

2. Search Engines
Search Engines are one of the best sources for targeted traffic and potential customers, so search engines should be one of the biggest factors for advertising and promotion. By using SEO you can get your website to the top of search engines such as Google and Yahoo for free.

3. Forums
Forums are great places to make partnerships with other webmasters and gain targeted traffic.

4. Free Stuff
Free stuff to offer your visitors is a great way to keep them coming back or to persuade them to buy your products. There are many things you can offer, such as email addresses, games, information, tips and hints, software, ebooks, and the list goes on. You could give away something that would compliment a sale for your product.

5. Traffic Swarm
We usually do not support traffic exchange programs and click for traffic programs, but we have found an exception. A program called Traffic Swarm has been one of our biggest targeted traffic producers. It's unique way of letting the surfer choose what site they want to visit has proven successful and has reflected it's success to it's members. They do offer a pro membership that gives you bonus credits, 2000 credits per month, a featured site link, and much more.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Online Earning with Ebay Affiliate Programs

 

 

Selling own products is definitely one of the best ways to earn money from internet, but but selling own products has many other pitfalls, like packaging, shipping, dropshipping, which means lot of work beside looking at quality and quantity of products manufactured/designed.

Ebay affiliate program is to source products from ebay product sellers or even better get some source which will even dropship the products as and when you get an order. This is a win win situation. Still you need to book orders with your selling efforts at ebay. There are a number of products in each category and the products you sell are one of them.

Ebay affiliate program makes legitimate earnings possible for non buyers and sellers without any problem: People who do not have there own products or services nor do they want to source anything at wholesale or with dropship facility and above all they don't want to sell anything directly. Now, these people often thought that because ebay is for buyers and sellers and those who have interest in buying or selling can earn money from ebay. Well, it isn't so, earning at ebay is also possible if you have a website and you can drive traffic to it. Or if you have proficiency with any PPC like Google Adword, or any other method of web promotion.

Ebay partner network offers an affiliate program which is particularly suitable to these types of people who are neither buyers nor sellers but still command some form of web promotion. They get commission for there efforts and can enjoy doing what they are proficient with, without compromising on earning opportunities at ebay.

Even at ebay affiliate program one can reduce his headache of website desing and development and some part of SEO with third party programs like BANS i.e Build Niche Store. It is best resource to operate and ebay niche store independently at there own site.

18 Steps to Build Your Own Online Earning Program

 

 

STEP 1: Set a goal: find an area where you have solid knowledge and experience on which to build your affiliate business.
STEP 2: Find your niche: Spend a lot of time thinking carefully about this and jotting down notes. You're planning a business, so don't rush it. It's very important.
STEP 3: Examine your potential competitors, find their weakness and prepare to create a better, more interesting, more useful site from a new angle, a new approach.
STEP 4. Choose a profitable niche: Do some research on Google AdWords and Wordtracker to choose the most profitable niche from among the ones you're considering.
STEP 5. Research affiliate merchants:find if there are suitable affiliate products which match your topic and have excellent products, excellent reputations and sites that look as though they're good at selling.
STEP 6: Build a useful, interesting website on your niche. Here's an very important step, the best ways is to build a site which solves people's problems, and content rich, keyword-rich site, designed to be found in search engines.
STEP 7: Join various online pay programs to prepare receiving payment from various affiliate programs.
STEP 8: Add affiliate links, your task as an affiliate is to help your visitor decide what to buy.
STEP 9: Place AdSense ads on your site.
STEP 10: Get good quality links to your site, because without links to your site, your site won't be found in the search engines.
STEP 11: Write good Anchor text, the words you use to link to pages on your site, the words people use when they link to your site.
STEP 12: List your site in major directories and niche directories in your industry.
STEP 13: Place your articles on other websites, Write articles and distribute them to article directories (fairly easy) and try to persuade newsletters and other sites to publish them.
STEP 14: Add more pages and get more links.
STEP 15: Expect to see signs of success, check Google, Yahoo! and MSN and find your site and start sending you traffic, the sign of success is that you'll be receiving 100 visitors a day and visitors will like what they see and some site owners will start linking to you and asking you to link to them.
STEP 16: Tweak your site to boost your conversion rate (your visitor-to-sales ratio).
STEP 17: revise and repeat from STEP 8 at least in a weekly base to improve your affiliate program skills, also practise your SEO and SEM skills. 
STEP 18: Reach your earning target and do things bigger. When you reach your goal of $300 a month, you wonder whether you should expand your site, perhaps adding a newsletter, an autoresponder course or two, a forum, RSS newsfeeds, a blog, a whitepaper, a report to sell ... and turn it into a portal. You dream big. Perhaps you even start dreaming of having your own affiliates promoting your reports for you.
In conclusion, the formula is to find a niche and create a useful, interesting, content-rich, keyword-rich website on one topic and weave in affiliate links and AdSense ads.

Online Earning Arbitrage Analytics

 

 

The word Arbitrage may be defined as "The simultaneous purchase and sale of similar commodities in different markets to take advantage of a price discrepancy."

So like traditional business, Purchasing online resources at lower price and selling them at higher price is also popular today with online earnings:

Pure arbitrage (using ppc): The technique in which a publisher buys mass amounts of traffic from various PPC platforms. The traffic is directed to a site that then serves the user a page that contains outbound links that are monetized on a CPC basis. The publisher tracks both the cost of the inbound traffic versus the income from the outbound traffic, and attempts to monetize the ’spread’ as much as possible. The classic example of this is the word “Adwords Adsense Arbitrage”in the past, where people used to buy clicks from Adwords, to some high paying niche, and used to make more money (then they used to spend Adwords) with Adsense on the site.

Affiliate arbitrage (using ppc): The technique in which a publisher buys very targeted PPC traffic focused around a theme or product. The traffic can be sent directly to an affiliate landing page or to a publisher hosted page that contains one, or several, affiliate offers.

Besides these, there are also other ideas about "arbitrage", such as link arbitrage and article arbitrage, all the same concept but different ways.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Step by Step Online Earning Guide to Build An AdSense Site

 

 

Place Google adsense on your website and earn whenever someone clicks a Google adsense is easier and quicker to make money online. To place Google adsense on your website you need to first join Google AdSense program. You don’t need a professional look or fantastic site to sign up with Google AdSense program. A clean and simple site will be good enough.

Once you get your website launched, you’ll need to figure out how to drive visitors to your website. Your website will not generate income if no one visits your site. There are several ways to get targeted visitors/traffic to your site fast.

1. Pay-per-click (PPC) programs

Pay-per-click (PPC) programs allow you to bid for top-ranking positions on the keywords you have selected. When a visitor searches the keyword(s) you bid on and then click through to your site, you pay the amount you bid. The two most popular PPC programs are Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing, and other alternatives such as Bidvertiser.com, Adbrite.com, Findology.com and so on.

2. Write Articles based on free information and resources

You can find a ton of free information and resources about website marketing and promotion from search engines. The more traffic you can drive to your website the higher your AdSense earning will be.

3. RSS advertising

RSS advertising is a free away to gain more exposure for your website. By creating an RSS file and submitting it to those RSS directories and search engines, the links to the content in your website will appear in front of those who read information using RSS readers or news aggregators and as a result driving targeted visitors to your website. Need more explanations? You can go to Google and enter the search term ‘make an RSS feed’.

4. Give away free content

Another free way to increase your website traffic is write articles and submit them to free content websites. Your articles can drive thousands of visitors to your site within weeks if your content is impressive.

5. Do Soical Networking and Bookmarking

Social networking and bookmarking sites use ranking systems to sort these bookmarked websites by relevance, placing the most important bookmarks on the front page. If you get your article or bookmark on the front page of the top social bookmarking websites, you could receive significant traffic.

Online Surveys as Another Online Earning Method

 

 

Online surveys proliferate in the internet. It seems that every website you visit these days have pop-ups and links inviting users to join paid surveys. Admittedly, some catch phrases from these invites are downright suspicious. Who would believe adverts promising a hundred bucks an hour just for clicking? But not all of these adverts are bad. The trick is in knowing which adverts and websites are reputable. There are lots of e-books about these surveys with lists of the top paid survey websites.

You can find survey opportunities by searching for them yourself. The more companies you sign up with, the more earning potential you will have. While some surveys may take just five minutes and you may only get a couple of dollars, when you couple them with the surveys that pay more you can potentially earn a couple hundred dollars a week. Some survey companies don’t have surveys available every day, or even every week, but when you sign up with several companies you will hopefully have a survey or two that you can complete every day.


Tip! Getting started is easy, there are thousands of online paid survey sites on the internet so the simplest thing you can do is run a search on any search engine for online paid surveys and bookmark all the best sites. This however can take a lot of time, so your best chance is to sign up with a membership with an online paid survey directory.

While you can earn money doing online surveys, it’s important to realize that you won’t become a millionaire by doing this! Paid surveys alone likely will not pay your rent, but it may be enough to pay your bills associated with the Internet and may buy you a new pair of shoes every once in awhile. If you are involved with several paid survey companies you may earn a bit more, but generally this is thought to be fun money or a supplement to your current income. If you work online or you work from home, this is a great opportunity to make some extra cash and it won’t take you long to earn it. Paid surveys can be fun, interesting, and generally are worth your time, just don’t expect to become rich and famous as a result!

Online Earnings with Blogging

 

There are many ways in which one can earn money online but blogging is the simplest and the most interesting way of online earnings. As it only involves a computer and an internet connection.

Before making money online with blogging, the related analysis is important to track how your business and brand are being discussed on blogs so as to better understand your consumers' (blog readers) perspective:

* Monitor the Web for references to your brand, key officers, and major competitors to be selected:

* Set up tracking on Google News Alerts, Technorati, and PubSub. You must be able to react to relevant topics brewing in the blogosphere before they become full-blown issues. Involve PR in this process, and respond quickly and decisively to engage bloggers.

* Analyze comments, links, and trackbacks (define) to determine the relative importance of audience perceptions of your blogs. Use tools such as Intelliseek's BlogPulse or a firm such as BuzzMetrics. This analysis will help determine who the influencers are and what their connectivity level is.

* Analyze broader category or product information. Consumers may discuss products in general terms, without using brand names or model numbers. So narrow tracking may not reveal the full picture. Monitor the information landscape to determine the macro trends and issues that influence buyers and the language they use.

After finishing the analysis, here are some common ways to earn money from your blog:

A) Advertising: Advertising is the most common source of revenue for a blog. There are different types of ads — on page ads, pop-up and pop-under ads. The most commonly used advertising technique is PPC or ‘Pay Per Click’. Popular PPC networks are Google Adsense, Yahoo, Bidvertiser, chitika etc. First you have to register with a PPC network and paste some ad codes on your blog. These ads will be relevant to the topic of your blog. When some visitor clicks on these ads, you make some money.

There is another type of ad network, known as CPM network, which pays you according to the page views or the number of impressions which the ads displayed on your blog generate. The payment is generally made for each 1000 impressions. CPM ad networks are suitable for such blogs which have high traffic and high page views.  You can also directly sell your own advertising space on the blog. It helps to increase your revenue by eliminating middleman commissions.

B) Sponsored Posts/Reviews: You can earn by writing sponsored posts on your blog. There are different sponsored review networks which pay you to write reviews about different websites or products on your blog. Some popular sponsored review networks are ‘Pay Per Post’, Smorty, ‘Sponsored Reviews’ etc. This is a good way to earn some decent money from your blog.

C) Affiliate marketing: Affiliate marketing is another way to earn from your blog. It involves selling other people’s products for a commission. Apart from earning per sale, you can also earn by providing leads ( CPA or CPL). The different affiliate marketing networks are Clickbank, Commission Junction, Link Share etc.

D) Other sources: There are other ways to earn from your blog. You can provide a job board or market place on your blog and earn commissions. You can also place a ‘Donate’ button or link on your blog and receive donations from your visitors.

In summary, if you believe that blogging is the simpliest and cheapest way to earn money online, you can definitely monetize your blog in various ways and earn a handsome income from it.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Top 20 Reviewed Affiliate Marketing Forums

 

 

Based on 33 Reviews of the Best Affiliate Marketing Forums,

http://www.americasbestcompanies.com/blog/33-best-affiliate-marketing-forums.aspx

Here is a further-reviewed list of the top 20 affiliate marketing forums:

  1. 5 Star Affiliates
    Alexa:  134,671 | Compete: 22,639 | Members: 7,000+ | PR: 4
    5 Star Affiliates is one of the best all around sources for affiliate marketing information and networking.  Linda Bouquet, the owner of the site, does a great job of providing free resources for anyone interested in affiliate marketing.  They specialize in helping new affiliate marketers get started and pointed in the right direction.  The forum is pretty active and all topics revolve around the affiliate marketing world. The moderators are also very quick to help and answer questions.  There is also a thread for affiliate managers to post their affiliate program for feedback and review!
  2. Search Engine Watch
    Alexa:  19,877 | Compete: 3,357 | Members: 15,000+ | PR:  7
    Search Engine Watch Forums is a very popular forum for SEO and affiliate marketing topics.  The more active in the community you are, the more boards and threads that you have access to post to.  They have a small section dedicated to affiliate marketing but still gets a lot of traffic and attention.
  3. Affiliates 4u
    Alexa:  74,834 | Compete:  73,596 | Members: 26,000+ | PR:  4
    Affiliates 4u is a great forum with a lot of activity.  Based out of the UK, they focus on UK affiliate programs, but also has a section for all other countries as well.  The general affiliate marketing threads are universal, but they focus on talking about affiliate programs that are most successful in the UK.  This forum is very active, with 1,000 users online at any given time.
  4. DNForum
    Alexa:  19,046 | Compete:  13,545 | Members: 60,000+ | PR:  5
    The DNForum is one of the more popular forums for all online marketing techniques and ideas.  Thread Categories range from Domains, Content Development and Affiliate Marketing.  They have free forums, and also upgrades are available to be able to post in the "Platinum" or "Gold" members only threads.  These threads usually allow you to advertise a product or service or help wanted types of categories.  All around a good resource and a very active forum.
  5. Associate Programs
    Alexa:  53,810 | Compete:  17,447 | Members:  18,000+ | PR:  6
    Associate Programs is another good resource with very helpful moderators. Allan Gardyne runs this website and personally answers many questions asked on the forums by new affiliates.  They focus on providing information and resources for new affiliates, while providing a thread for website reviews and other general online marketing strategies.  It doesn't have the most members but members are high quality.
  6. Click Consultants
    Alexa:  60,286 | Compete:  146,022 | Members: 2,500+  | PR:  3
    Click Consultants is a very, simply clean forum that focuses primarily on affiliate marketing topics, and affiliate publisher information.  Also has a "Learning Center" with affiliate resources available.
  7. Conquer Your Niche
    Alexa: 59,557 | Compete:  162,351 | Members:  40,000+ |PR:  3
    Conquer Your Niche topics range from marking, traffic generation, to general marketing.  They don't offer specific affiliate categories, but under general marketing is where you will find a lot of affiliates actively post here.
  8. Webmaster Talk
    Alexa:  38,048 | Compete:  14,852 | Members:  62,500+ | PR:  3
    Webmaster Talk is a great forum that covers all of the main topics for webmasters and online marketers.  They dedicate a lot of threads to programming and database questions.  This is a very active forum, with usually 500 people online at any time.  They are strict about spam, so be careful not to spam your links right away!  This is a great forum to become an active member of the community in.
  9. eWealth
    Alexa:  51,433 | Compete:  106,636 | Members:  n/a | PR:  4
    eWealth focuses on the individual affiliate networks and clickbank offers.  They have some threads that offer affiliate resources and also a place available for website design reviews and feedback.
  10. More Niche
    Alexa:  59,792 | Compete:  43,583 | Members: 29,500+ | PR:  4
    The headline for their forum is simple:  A meeting place for affiliates, merchants and the MoreNiche team. Honesty, transparency and effective communication between all parties.  4 Categories that keep it simple...  General talk, affiliate talk, and link exchange requests.
  11. SitePoint
    Alexa:  3,011 | Compete:  2,615 | Members: 277,000+ | PR:  7
    SitePoint is by far one of the most popular forums for affiliates or internet marketers.  They cover all major topics that relate to programming, web design, affiliate marketing and other SEO.  They also offer the Sitepoint Marketplace which you can purchase premium listings and other upgraded listings for premiere placement.  With 277,377 members, becoming an active member of the sitepoint community will be great exposure for you long term, and a great place to network with others.
  12. Warrior Forum
    Alexa:  12,648 | Compete:  10,137 | Members: 93,000+  | PR:  4
    Warrior Forum is also a very active site that focuses on general online marketing and discussions on making money online.  They also offer programming and design support threads and other threads to network or share your products with others.  Another great forum that will benefit you to become a spirited active member.
  13. iWebTool Talk
    Alexa:  21,182 | Compete:  8,658 | Members: 13,000+ | PR:  3
    iWebTool primarily covers general webmaster and programming threads.  They also offer a "marketplace" to buy and sell domains, or if you would like to post a service you are looking to purchase.  They also offer a website review thread and some general online marketing threads that you will find active affiliate posts.
  14. WickedFire
    Alexa:  80,498 | Compete:  22,403 | Members: 29,000+ | PR:  4
    WickedFire has a lot of great topics for internet marketing and making money online.  They claim to be the "bad boys" of the internet forums because they consider themselves to be R rated.  You must become a true active member of the community in order to post on this site, otherwise you will very quickly be flamed and banned from the site.  They do not take spam lightly here.  If you do get a foothold, you will find a lot of successful affiliate marketers to network with and you will gain a lot of exposure to links you might post here.
  15. X10Hosting
    Alexa:  9,451 | Compete:  38,085 | Members: 147,000+ | PR:  3
    X10Hosting primary topics revolve around website hosting and website design topics.  They have a couple of general online marketing topics which you will find affiliate marketing threads.  They offer a point system based on earning points by posting useful information and getting positive feedback from other members.  One of the more active forums available for webhosting and webdesign, but you will still find affiliates here too!
  16. DevShed Forums
    Alexa:  6,154 | Compete:  6,648 | Members: 230,000+ | PR: 4
    DevShed is a very active forum that has dozens of topics available.  One of the most universal covering the widest range of internet topics.  They have the most programming, database and networking threads.  Webdesign and marketing are all covered here as well.  With so many members, you are garunteed to find what you are looking for here.
  17. ABestWeb
    Alexa:  56,031 | Compete: 16,223 | Members: 47,000+ | PR:  5
    ABestWeb has a majority of affiliate marketing threads, with a very active userbase.   With 774,000 posts and an average of 2,500 users online at any time, this is another one of the top forums to become an active member of.  They are also very strict about spamming and affiliate links, so make sure to be an active community member.
  18. The V7 Network
    Alexa:  45,884 | Compete:  13,934 | Members:  47,500+ | PR:  5
    V7 focuses on online marketing, web development, and web design.  With over 500 online on average at any time of day, this is a good, active solid community to become part of.  They also offer a webmaster marketplace to offer seo or other web services to readers.
  19. SEO Chat Forums
    Alexa:  23,596 | Compete:  5,206 | Members:  47,000+ | PR:  4
    Seo Chat covers all of the main online marketing and search engine optimization categories you need.  This is a very active forum, with 400 people online on average at any time.  Another good one to become active on.
  20. Wealthy Affiliate Forum
    Alexa:  38,946 | Compete:  31,505 | Members: n/a | PR:  4
    Wealthy Affiliate Forum is part of the membership you can purchase to gain access to a large variety of benefits and affiliate resources.  They garuntee to get you more exposure by becoming a member.

50 Good Affiliate Programs for Online Earnings

 

  1. Adbrite - Sell space on your site for text ads
  2. Amazon aStore- Easily create a store or shopping section on your site instead ofsending your visitors to Amazon. Amazon handles the shopping cart andfulfillment.
  3. Amazon Seller - Sell your stuff on Amazon
  4. Amazon Affiliate Program - Using your existing site, sell anything you can find on Amazon
  5. Associated Content - If you write a story, how-to, rant, etc. you can submit it to them and they will pay you $3-$20 per article if they like it
  6. Azoogleads - Another ad program. They do have some decent companies lined up as advertisers. You provide space, they’ll provide an ad.
  7. Affiliate Fuel specialists in performance marketing, and totally focused on helping advertisers and publishers work together to create promotions that are exciting, enticing, well-managed, fair, and profitable for everyone involved.BidVertiser - PPC (pay per click) program with a low $10 payout amount. Bravenet- These guys offer a ton of services for webmasters and blog owners.Although I feel like I was spammed for a while, it has ceased andthey’ll pay you $1 for each person you send over .

  8. Blish- Whether you’re a company with thousands of digital (downloadable)products, or you’ve written an ebook or some code, Blish offers you aplace to sell that content.

  9. BulletAds is a performance-based online advertising network.
  10. Business Opportunities Blog- I am adding this because I am a subscriber to their site and I see ideas everyday that could result in making money. A lot of the ideaspertain to online businesses. If you are an aspiring entrepreneur, it’sa good reference.
  11. CafePress- You provide a design, they’ll toss it on a T-Shirt, Hat, etc. Noupfront costs. Get a free online shop and promote your products on yourwebsite.
  12. Chitika - TheireMiniMalls service has shown great results for many Bloggers and siteowners. You choose a keyword and they show relevant products on yoursite using a pretty unique interface.
  13. Clickbank - Another Affiliate Program site with 10,000+ products to advertise
  14. ClicknWork- Get paid $5-$150 per hour for basically doing freelance work on aper-assignment basis. You have to pass a pretty tough test to get in.
  15. Clicksor - These are the guys that generate contextual ads on sites that show up when you hover over a double-underlined word.
  16. Commission Junction- If you have a site, you can join Commission Junction. Once enrolledfor free, you can choose companies whose ads are pertinent to yoursite. Companies have the ultimate say on working with you. Their areeasily over 1,000 companies to choose from here.
  17. CPXInteractive.com - Offers performance-based targeting across their 20,000+ publisher’s sites.
  18. CreamAid- For blogs only, advertisers provide you with a topic and you writeabout it on your site. To do this, you have to install a flash widgetinto your blog post. The more people you bring into the conversationthrough the widget, the more you get paid. It’s difficult to explain.
  19. The CX Digital Media Affiliate Network is a leader in performance based online marketing featuring CPA advertising (Cost Per Action).
  20. eefoof - Think of it as YouTube + Flickr + Music. You add original content and they pay you based on the visitors you attract.
  21. Ether- If you are an expert on something, Ether provides a way for people topay you to talk about it in a one-on-one setting. If you want to charge$250/hr, that’s fine. You have to do all the advertising so you shouldhave a blog or site already established.
  22. eBay - Come on, you know what this is.
  23. eBay Stores - If you have a real store and want to sell your stuff online, this is a decent option to get you started.
  24. ELance - Name gives it away. Programmers, Codes, Web Designers, Writers, Editors, can look for freelance opportunities.
  25. Feedvertising- This is an arm of Text Link Ads and is currently only good forWordpress 2.0 Users. This does me no good currently, but as you canguess, they place ads in your feed(s).
  26. Feedburner- Not only are they the best place to house your feeds, they will alsoadd ads to your feed. You get paid per impression and click.
  27. Google Adsense- Come on, you don’t need an explanation. These ads are all over theplace. Google displays relevant ads based on your site’s content
  28. Google Adwords- Create simple text ads and choose keywords that determine when theyare displayed. This is where the Adsense Content comes from. You do notneed a site for this.
  29. Google Answers- If you are good, Google will pay you to answer questions in yourspecialty. Questions all come from normal people like you and me. Youcan get paid $2.50+ per answer you provide.
  30. H3.com- Get paid to fill jobs. Commissions range from $50-$5,000. It alldepends on how tough the job is to fill and how desperate the hiringcompany is. This is another one that’s tough to explain.
  31. Indeed.com- Add their job board to your site. They then post jobs based on thegeographic location of visitors and the position types you pre-select.I tried it and I they continually report that I sent 0 visitors and Iknow that’s not right. Nevertheless, I may have an isolated problem sothey make the list.
  32. InnerSell - If you have a customer that wants to buy something you cannot sell, you can sell the lead here.
  33. Jellyfish- This is a shopping site that pays you a percentage of the purchasesmade by people you refer. They are not part of a wider affiliateprogram so you do it direct.
  34. Jigsaw- It’s a pretty flaky model but if you have a Rolodex full of goodcontacts, you can sell them here. I can’t make sense of it but it lookslike you get $0.10 per profile.
  35. KarmaOne- They are basically a recruiting website. If you fill one of theirjobs by finding a good candidate, you’ll get paid anywhere from$50-$12,000. It all depends on how desperate the hiring company is.
  36. Linkshare- If you have a site, you can join Linkshare. Once enrolled for free,you can choose companies whose ads are pertinent to your site.Companies have the ultimate say on working with you. Like CommissionJunction, there are a ton of companies waiting to evaluate your site.
  37. Microsoft Adcenter- Bid on keywords and Microsoft places your created ads then they aresearched for. This is similar to Google Adwords. You do not need a sitefor this.
  38. Overstock.com - Sell your stuff on Overstock.com
  39. Pageflakes- This is a company that developed a user-defined Ajax homepage to showfeeds, flickr photos, and a ton of other things. Think of it as areplacement for your Google Homepage. Anyway - they’ll pay you $1 perreferral that you send over. They are not part of a wider affiliateprogram so you do it direct. This one is pretty simple.
  40. Pay Per Post- I don’t agree with this model entirely but they have advertisers thatwill pay you to write about their products on your blog.
  41. Pheedo- If you have an RSS feed, run it through Pheedo. Like Feedburner, theycan include ads into your feed and if you really become large,advertisers will pay a premium for you to show their ads.
  42. PrimaryAds is a relatively new affiliate network that shows a strong potential to be a great source of income for your site.
  43. Shareasale- I’ve never really worked with them but I do have an account. They aresimilar to Commission Junction and Linkshare however they seem to havelower tiered companies with advertising offers.
  44. Shoemoney - This is a blog that can teach you a ton on making money online. I’ve spent hours reading his old stuff.
  45. Software Judge - They will pay you up to $50 to review software.
  46. Text Link Ads- I have never made a dime here but I know people that have. You canearn by sending advertisers to them or by selling spots on your site.You must have a real site or blog to do this - nothing on a shareddomain (i.e. /blogspot).
  47. TMX.net - Let’s you choose the types of sites you advertise on and gives you a plethora of on-reciprocal links, and as a webmaster you can sell ad space.
  48. Vibrant Media- Don’t bother unless your site has 500,000 page views of text basedcontent a month. If you have that readership, these are the guys thatdisplay bubble box ads to underlined words on your site.
  49. West Work At Home Agent - Not entirelyonline but this is worth a mention because it’s won awards and is verylegitimate. If you are an at-home Mom or free-lancer without work, youshould check this out.
  50. Yahoo Publisher Network- This is the Yahoo version of Google Adsense.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Clickbank to Fight with Adsense and Adwords

 

 

Clickbank, an online retail outlet for 10,000 digital product publishers and their 100,000 active affiliates, announced a few days back that they will soon be introducing a full blown ad serving platform.

Quote:
"
We will soon roll out a new ad-serving platform that will easily allow affiliates to display advertisements for relevant ClickBank products on their Web sites. This will help affiliates and Web site owners monetize their traffic more effectively than ever, which in turn leads to more sales for publishers who are included in the ad network.

"

This means for your product publishers it can potential start getting a LOT more traffic, just like “Adwords Content Network” for your clickbank product, and it will start out to be free.

For affiliates this is going to be a nice source of income for those that target the right niches, just like Adsense type income but potentially bigger.

Definitely it will only work for certain markets at first, as long has there are clickbank products to support them.

Some Best Practices from Successful Online Earning Affiliate Marketers

 

 

 

There are certain practices that have proven successful over the years for affiliate marketers, no matter what kinds of affiliate marketing tools you choose: ebay, seo, ppc, social networking, blogging, online shopping store sites, even drop shippings and e-services. These practices are tried and proven marketing tips from the successful affiliate marketers. If you practice them, your affiliate marketing checks will be bigger for sure:

1. When it comes to websites, have a singular website for each product you are promoting. Do not lump all of your products on to one page just to save space. Each website should focus on its own product.

2. Have articles on your webpages highlighting the benefits and uses of the products. These can be snippets that link the to a separate article page. Make sure your article headlines are attractive and compelling. Include in the articles calls to actions. Mostly you need to tell your potential customer exactly what you want them to do, down to and including when to get out their credit cards and when to order.

3. On your websites it is good to have a product review so visitors can understand what the product can to for them. It should list the benefits as well as the features. It can be text, but audio and video reviews are very popular because of the manner in which they grab attention. Include testimonials from your customers with their names and photos if possible. You want to make it sound like your products can make their lives easier. People are often looking to have a need filled in an easy fun manner.

4. Use auto responders on your website to capture your visitor and follow up with them. You can offer free reports or ebooks. Rarely is a sale made from a one time visit to a website, so it is important you capture their contact info to follow up. When you follow up you are reminding them of the products on your sites that they may have thought about buying. Give them compelling reasons why the products you are promoting are worth buying.

5. Send some articles you write to ezines and directories that target the market you are seeking. Don’t send them to markets that have no interest in what you are promoting. Put out a minimum of 2 articles per week anywhere from 400 to 600 words in length. By continually exposing your affiliate products with new articles you may end up with hundreds of visitors a day.

In summary, the practices just explained to you are not very difficult, but they do require efforts on your part. If you take no action then you will receive no return.

10 Steps for Social Networking Optimization

 

 

1. Set up accounts. Make sure that you have current accounts with Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace, and any other social networking platforms you regularly use.

2. Use Blog Ping services. Pinging if used can be a very effective way to increase the visibility of your Blog. It basically involves, sending of an automated or manual notice to the search engines and social networking websites informing them about the updated status of your website/ Blog. The important point to be taken care of pertains to whether you are use pings to inform about genuinely new content or not.

3. Open an account at Ping.fm. The Ping.fm service automatically updates your status on all of your social networking sites, 21 of them at the current count. Depending on the number of networks you use, it will take you 10-50 minutes to connect your Ping.fm account to your various social network accounts. However, once everything is set up, you simply log into your Ping account, post your status update (no more than 140 characters), and your status is automatically updated on all of your social networking profiles. Rather than posting updates directly on Twitter or Facebook or MySpace, I instead use Ping.fm as the starting place for my daily status updates.

4. Yahoo Answers. Answering questions on Yahoo Answers is a great way of social marketing. Surprisingly, a lot of questions related to your product or specialization are probably being asked on Yahoo Answers already. All you have to do is go and answer them and you will have customers coming to your Website or business. A site that has done this effectively is PharmaXChange.info, a student resource site for pharmacy graduates with notes and animation on medicine.

5. Display Twitters on other accounts. If you go to your Setting tab in your Twitter account and then down to "More Info URL", you will see a link to "Add Twitter to Your Site." By clicking on this link, you'll be taken to a page where you can add your tweets in a separate box (not the Status updates area) in your MySpace and Facebook profiles, on your blogger or Typepad blogs, or get the Flash or HTML widgets to add to other sites like Squidoo lenses or to your website. Just follow the instructions connected to each application. If you use Typepad for your blog, you can also do this through the Widget gallery by finding Twitter widget in the "Publishing Tools" section.

6. Connect your blogposts to Twitter. Twitter Feed, http://www.twitterfeed.com/, enables you to feed your blog posts to your Twitter account. Simply create an account, go to "Create New Twitter Feed", and enter the RSS feed of your blog. You can control the frequency with which Twitter displays your blog post, as well as the text used to preface your blog feed. I use "Blog update" to preface my posts.

10. Connect your blogposts to Facebook. I use Typepad for my blogs, so if you use a Wordpress blog, there are probably plugins that handle this, as well. When you create a new blog post, you can choose to send a link to that post into Facebook. These links will appear in your Mini-Feed on your Facebook profile, and may appear in your friends' News Feeds.

In your Typepad account, go to Weblogs > Configure > Publicity, select "Prompt me to share new posts on Facebook." When this item is selected, TypePad will automatically display a prompt from Facebook when you create and publish a new post on TypePad. The Facebook prompt will only appear if you have selected the option in your weblog's publicity settings, and only when you create and publish a new post. The prompt will not appear when you save a post as draft, when you edit a post, or when you change the status of a post from Draft to Published.

8. Social Bookmarking. A great way to increase your product visibility is through social bookmarking on sites like del.icio.us and digg.com. An almost infinite number of companies have successfully used social bookmarking to get their products better known. Social marketing is the future for telling people about your product. If you are a businessperson then it is most definitely recommended that you adopt this marketing strategy for effectively gaining customers.

9. Update your EzineArticles.com account. Article marketing is a smart and easy way to drive traffic to your site. If you're submitting articles online to article directories, you definitely want to be using EzineArticles.com, the biggest and most popular article directory online. To connect to Twitter, click on "Profile Manager" in your account, then "Edit Author Bio" in your Author's Area. Add your Twitter account information here. Each time a new article is accepted and published at EzineArticles, a post is automatically made to your Twitter account.

10. Update your email marketing account. I use aWeber as my email marketing service. You can now send an automatic Twitter post to all your followers on Twitter with a link to the HTML version of your ezine. When you create a broadcast in aWeber, select the option to publish a broadcast via RSS feed or to an archive, and then enter your Twitter account info, When your ezine is published, all of your Twitter followers will be notified.

Monday, November 24, 2008

How to Choose the Best Online Earning Products

 

Normally people don't know how the market will receive online earning products, and no one can really predict that, because the internet is so dynamic and the market is fluctuating due to the recession.

Also, there are probably many affiliate programs and/or online earning methods out there in the internet that do not convert well at all and are a waste of time and others that probably work well.

Thus, how to select from these online marketing money earnings and then promote them?

The first solution of the best products to select and promote are make money online products. These products sell very good and people are always looking for ways to make money online. the suggestion is to start there and then start selling other products.

The second solution is to sort product by popularity by default. You can select to search by popularity. For instance, with the affiliate program clickbank, you can search and find the top 10 most popular products in each of the nine categories. This is another way to start with.

After picking up the product, the next step is to simply track everything from the beginning, in that way when you finish a new product, you can gauge it's success compared to the earlier ones. The take home lesson of internet marketing is that you have to take responsibility for your own personal story. You have your uniques talents and skills, and your own way of getting it out there, so really only you can do the best job of assessing what markets you will be most successful in.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

The Latest "Top Online Earning Secret" Exposed

 

 

This is a real case posted in a famous affiliate networking forum, the words are:

"I did an experiment on how to earn cash using clickbank on yahoo answers.

Firstly I would pick a product that was related to someones question.
I would then buy a .info domain on godaddy for $2.12. I would then redirect to aff link. Then I would post not only the link, but also information in too, enough that they would want to learn more to click on my .info domain.

So far after an hour of answering mainly paid survey site questions I earned $81. Not bad, but i am new and i will get better as I know how to work the site."

See, making money online is that easy if only we find the right way. The guy above didn't use any popular platforms and methods such as ebay, seo, ppc, social media and viral marketing, even not drop shipping, all he used are just feedbacking in yahoo answers, promoting paid survey sites, promoting clickbank products.

The lessons here is that all you need to do is to fine tune and try different products to see which one really sticks. However, before you start, make sure you document the process so you can use the information to repeat the steps.