Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the revenue sharing between online advertisers (and merchants) and online
salespeople.  Compensation and pay is based on performance measures, normally in the form of clicks, sales, and registrations.

Affiliate Marketing

The advertisers and merchants are normally referred to as affiliate merchants, and publishers or sales
people are known as affiliates.

The many benefits of affiliate marketing include the potential for making lots of money.  You can
automate a lot of the advertising process and receive payment only for desired results, which
includes sales, registrations, and clicks.

Even though most merchants will assume some level of risk with fraud, there is still a level of risk
involved.  Once you know what you're doing with affiliate marketing, you'll be on top well before
you know it.

Affiliate marketing has been a contributor to the rise of many companies online, including Amazon.com. Amazon.com was one of the first adopters of affiliate marketing, and now has thousands of affiliate relationships.

When it comes to making money, affiliate marketing is in a league of it's own.  You don't have to
worry about bosses breathing down your neck, and you are in control of everything you do with
your company and your website.

Affiliate marketing also gives you the chance to stand behind products you know and love, be
offering links and banners to them on your personal website.  You'll receive money for each product
purchased that you represent, which is reason enough to participate.

If you've been looking for extra money, affiliate marketing is the way to go.  You can stick with
one merchant or go with as many as you need for your business.  Affilate marketing on the internet
is truly becoming more and more popular - making now the time for you to get your foot in the
door.

How To Produce a Good Squeeze Page

Many would argue that the ability to produce a good squeezepage is a bit of an art form. This is true – but as long as you keep some basic principles in mind it shouldn’t be too difficult for even a newbie to create a squeeze page that converts at a decent rate.

First of all, what IS a squeeze page?

Quite simply it’s a single webpage where people enter their name and email address in order to join your list. This is usually in return for some sort of freebie – whether it’s a report, ebook package, or a set of videos. The sole purpose of a squeeze page is to get people to opt-in to your list. That’s it. It shouldn’t have any other function that might ‘distract’ the reader.

Tip # 1 – Give away a quality freebie

There was a time when you could offer a free report on pretty much anything and people would sign up for it simply because it was free. This isn’t the case any more. People are becoming more and more choosey about what they will swap their name and email address for, so the first step towards producing a good squeeze page is to make sure your freebie is of good quality and is something people in your niche will actually want.

Tip # 2 – Make sure your copy makes your freebie ‘irresistible’

If your offering is something people will want AND they know they want it - they will sign up. Your copy should pull out all the juicy bits of what they will receive and make it such that they simply can’t turn down your freebie.

Tip # 3 – Have a catchy title

We have all seen free reports been given away with the title “10 top tips to…….” In the current internet world this is seen as BORING. Give your product a catchy title and make it stand out. Take a look at the best selling products in your niche and look at the sorts of product names they use.

Tip # 3 – Use graphics to “sell” your product

Make your squeeze page look like a paid product. Spend the time or invest money into creating good quality graphics. In my opinion this is the most important step towards producing a good squeeze page. Of course there are plenty of them out there which have no graphics at all (and it seems to be an increasingly popular trend) but if you take that route then you need to be able to write really good copy. If you use graphics your copy won’t need to be as good and it’ll still convert at a decent rate.

Successful Blog Marketing Tips

So you have a blog and want to market it and make it a successful blog. How do you do this? How do you go about getting your blog out there to be seen and known by others? How do you draw readers and keep them coming back for more? There are many ways to get your blog out there and known by others. This can be known as challenging for some and just quite easy for others. If you have ever had a successful blog before then you know what it takes. You are not going to get anywhere by just setting up a blog and hoping that people will find it and read it. You are not going to gain any links, nor a higher search engine ranking by just having a blog. This is all part of blog marketing. Anyone can do it, even you.

Successful blog marketing tip number one. When you first create a blog, of course it is unheard of. No one knows anything about the blog unless you give them the link and show it to them. However, for a new blog that has never been seen, there are many ways to get it out there and known. You just need to know how. The first thing that you can do is to allow RSS feeds be taken from your blog. Allow other websites and blogs to publish your same exact blog. When you do this, they are giving you a link back to your blog, and also telling their readers all about your blog. You will get more traffic than ever with this tool. RSS feeds are wonderful for promoting and getting your blog out there.

Blog marketing tip number two. Update your blog frequently. We can not put enough emphasis on this tip. If you tell your readers that you are going to update your blog daily, then do it. If you tell them that you will be writing in your blog weekly, don’t let them down. Your readers are what makes your blog successful. You may not realize this in the beginning, and you will have few readers in the beginning as well, but you will eventually build a readership base and have people checking out your blog regularly. Maybe you do not plan on telling your readers how often you will update your blog. That is ok too. However, think about this, if you were reading a blog on a weekly basis, and you expected to see the blog that you like to read updated at least once a week, you would be very disappointed to find out that it was not. Sure, things happen that might prevent you from updating, and that is expected, and excused, but week after week can hurt you and cause you to lose readers.

Tip number three. While you are working on your readership base, and trying to gain readers, you are going to find that commenting on blogs that are relevant to yours will surely help. Find a blog that is on the same topic to yours, or close to it and leave comments. You can also make a track back with your blog postings to comment on your own blog. Doing so will probably more than likely give someone else the urge to track back to your blog. Which will be good for it as well. Commenting on blogs that get many comments will make yours be seen by those interested in that market. You will gain traffic and readers that way, and it is easy as well as free.

The fourth blog marketing tip. Learn and apply SEO to your blogs. SEO is search engine optimization. You are going to find that if you want your blog to go anywhere, you need SEO, and you need to know how to use it to the advantage of your blog. Just like a website, a blog will be better off optimized.

Internet Blog Marketing

So you have been hearing all about these blogs that are all the rage lately in the internet world. internet blog marketing purposes. Internet blog marketing is all of the rage just as much as blogs are. When you talk about internet blog marketing, you are meaning that you use the internet to market things on your blog. That would be the most simplest way to put it.

However, you have yet to start one of your own, and pretty much figure that you are the last person on earth that does not have one. While you may think that this is true, you are going to be shocked that not everyone has a blog, and most of those that do, have them for

Marketing things on the internet is not as easy as it was just a few years ago. Everyone is into marketing online because of the pay per click programs that everyone wants a part of. And that means that the competition is fierce. In order to market things online and become successful at it, you need to choose a market. You can not just use one single blog to market a number of things unless they are all relevant. If you tried, you would really get no where and fast.

So, choosing your market is even kind of hard to do. Some people will tell you to choose low competition markets to begin with, that have many searches. However, other people will tell you to choose something that you know and love, and that you are passionate about. Even something that you can be known as an expert about. When you do so, you gain trust in the internet world, and many people will know you for your market and your views on it. And that in return will make you successful. However, you must truly know what you are talking about, or you will be found out. It has even been known that some will choose a topic to become an expert on, and when they do, learn all that they can about it before they begin to promote it. Even if they never knew much about it to begin with.

Internet blog marketing is still easier for some than others. It is easier the sooner you get started with it. Because the internet changes every day and things are not all ways the same, the faster you learn the best marketing techniques and tools now, the easier it will be for you once they change and start to become more complicated.

Not only does the interent change frequently, so do the search engines. For example, Google changes about four times a year. You will find that when it does go through a change and update everything, your page ranks are different, and so are your search rankings. When you might have been in the number two spot on Google search for 3 months, after they go through a change you just might find yourself to be on page three.

Internet blog marketing is all about knowing and becoming familiar with the internet. The more you know about it the better off your blogs will be. However, if you are just starting out, don’t get discouraged, you can still learn everything that you need to in order to become successful at blog marketing.

Getting Started as a Freelance Writer

Many people find the idea of becoming a freelancer very appealing. You can work from home, and

take on as much or as little work as you like. Getting started as a freelance writer however can be difficult. If you are new to the scene it is hard to win business because nobody knows who you are or what your writing ability is like.

Here is one way to do it (there are others but this one seems to work well!)

1.       Write a sample article to show to prospective clients. Make sure it is the best you can do. Spend time perfecting it and making sure that it is grammatically correct.

2.       Go over to the Warrior forum and post a WSO (a Warrior Special Offer) advertising your service. Offer a really attractive rate to get people to try you out and include your sample article within the advert so that people can see that you write to a decent standard. I would suggest a price of around $1 for every 100 words as a starting point. That should get you some initial clients.

3.       Once you have completed some orders get testimonials from your clients. If they are happy with the work you produce they should be more than willing to do this.

4.       Relist your WSO, this time including the testimonials.

5.       After a few weeks send a follow-up email to your previous clients asking if they have any more work for you. A lot of the people you write for will always be in need of content and will have plenty of work for you.

6.       Set yourself up with a website. Give plenty of samples and include some details about yourself and your initial experience.

7.       Rinse and repeat. Each time you do this you will be gaining new clients and building a relationship with your existing ones. Over time you should find that your reputation builds (assuming of course that you produce good quality work) and as it does you can begin to charge more money.

There are of course other ways of getting started as a freelance writer. Sites such as Elance can also offer a fruitful way of getting freelance work, but I hope that this article has given you some food for thought.

Being a freelance writer can be hard work but it can also be extremely rewarding. For many people it provides an easy way of making money online, even if it is just as a way of funding your other business activities.

Choosing Blogs To Comment On

It’s fairly well know in the internet marketing world that commenting on blogs is a good way to generate traffic and backlinks, as well as making yourself known in your niche and building good relationships with other blog owners. However whilst blog commenting is an effective method, choosing blogs to comment on (ie. choosing the right ones) is paramount to your success.

The first thing you should think about is your target audience.  What sorts of blogs are your market interested in? Whilst it is a given that you should comment on blogs which are in the same niche as yourself, you can widen it a little. For example, consider also posting comments on blogs which are in a different niche but which have the same or similar target audience.

Once you have found a possible blog, the first thing to consider is how active it is. I try to comment on blogs that are well known in the niche and which are posted to regularly, after all there is little point commenting on a blog where the last post was made 12 months ago!

Look at how many comments the blog already gets. An active community means that people are getting involved and a high number of people will see your comments.  It also makes it easier to post comments since you can pick up on what other people are saying and you can debate their points.

When choosing blogs to comment on, it is also important to look at the amount of useful content contained on the blog in question. Many blogs exist as pure advertising ploys (you know the ones I am talking about – blogs which have tons of advertisements and affiliate links but very little useful information.) These are the ones to avoid. You ideally want to seek out the blogs which people look at as an authority source. By commenting on these blogs you will associate yourself with quality content and develop your own reputation.

4 Things You Have to Know about Joint Venture

Joint ventures in business are a wonderful thing. They can allow you to make money you wouldn’t otherwise be able to make on your own, they enable you to tap into other people’s expertise and knowledge, and potentially they can speed up projects, whilst making them more successful and

sharing some of the risk. Joint ventures are talked about a great deal in the internet marketing world, but despite the many benefits there are also a number of drawbacks. Here are 5 things to think about before doing a joint venture:

1.       Joint ventures mean shared profit

Say you decide to join forces with another marketer and create your own product together. You can share some of the development costs and utilise both of your respective expertise, however assuming the joint venture is split straight down the middle then it also means you’ll only make half of what you would if it was solely your own product. Of course in many scenarios this is irrelevant because the project might have been impossible on your own, but it’s something to think about.

2.       Jointventures can go wrong

It can be the case that your joint venture partner simply doesn’t share the same commitment to the project as you do. This can be extremely frustrating if you’re putting in lots of hard work yourself and your partner simply doesn’t do their bit.

3.       Before you start, make sure you have an agreed timetable

It is all too easy for a joint venture project to slip behind schedule because your partner is not good at doing things on time (relating back to the point above) or simply that you both have other commitments and the project never gets finished. Before you start make sure you agree a timetable that both of you are happy with and are sure you can commit to.

4.       Choose your joint venture partners carefully

Are you compatible with the other party? Should you even be considering working together? There is little point in doing a joint venture with someone who has a completely different skill set or way of thinking. Whilst joint ventures allow you to tap into other peoples expertise, it is also essential that you have SOME shared knowledge, skills or common ground since otherwise the venture will become impossible. Similarly it is usually of little value to join forces with someone who has exactly the same skill set or market access as yourself. If, for example, you have a product but no list to sell it to then look to joint venture with someone who has a list but no product to sell to them!