Tips for starting a successful online affiliate business

There are a number of things to look for when starting your own online affiliate business. But, before I get into the specifics of what to search for, the one aspect that an individual must possess in order to be a successful Internet marketer is PERSISTENCE. With out this quality you might as well stop reading right now. Like many successful entrepreneurs, persistence is one of the main qualities that allow them to be successful. Once you acquire this characteristic there is no stopping you.

Now, let me get into the specifics for all the ADD people out there like my self before I lose you.

Keyword Research

First, one of the main aspects of being a productive affiliate marketer is niche market research. You must find an unexploited niche market that has limited advertising competition. The number of advertisers in a certain market is key to being profitable with your product, the fewer advertisers the better. One of the best tools to use to find these unexploited niche markets is Google Adwords. If you have a google account you can sign up for adwords for free in your account information.

This tool allows you to research for keywords that have a descent average search volume and also lists the average number of advertisers for each keyword. This is crucial to finding the right market to promote with your marketing skills. Without this important market research you will be wasting your time. I do not know about you but my time is definitely precious to me. I cannot say it enough but RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH is critical to being profitable in this business.

Affiliate Programs

Next, once you find that unexploited niche market, yep you guessed it, more research. Now you have to find the affiliate programs that pertain to that particular market. For example, lets say you want to promote garden tools, you will have to find companies on the Internet that manufacture or sell these products and make sure they have affiliate programs for you to sign up with. Once you find these companies make sure to read up on their affiliate programs. Some of the things to look out for are the percentage of commission you will receive with their affiliate program. If the costs of products are expensive then the percentage should range from five to fifteen percent, if the products are cheap you will be looking for a percentage higher than fifteen percent, like twenty to fifty percent.

Other stuff to look for when applying for affiliate programs is how they pay you and how often they pay you. Usually most programs send you checks once your commissions have exceeded a certain amount like over fifty dollars, only so they will not be sending checks out for five dollars or something ridiculous like that. Some of the best affiliate programs out there are Clickbank and LinkShare. These programs carry over thousands of different products that are just waiting for someone to promote them.

Generating Traffic

The last part of the process is generating traffic for your new affiliate product. There are several different methods you can use all at the same time to maximize your full potential.

You can write blogs about you product. Promoting the benefits of your product and using your affiliate link to monetize that blog. Blogger.com is free and simple to use for anybody, and I do mean anybody. Article marketing is another free and easy way to generate traffic to your affiliate site. Myspace is another great way to promote your business and products by talking to your friends online about what you are doing.
Participating in forums is one more option you can use to promote your products and affiliate links.

These are just a few ways to generate traffic for your affiliate links; there are many more options out there.

How To Drive Traffic To Your Adsense Website!

If you have a website for the purpose of earning income using Adsense, then you need to be receiving a lot of visitors to your site.

Without much traffic to your website, you won’t receive enough clicks on your Adsense ads to make much money.

There are several ways to drive traffic to your website with the most effective being directory submissions.

By submitting your website to website directories, you are creating lots of backlinks to your website. The more backlinks you have to your site, the higher ranking your website will receive in the search engines.

Backlinks work a bit like a voting system. When a directory accepts your website it is like it’s giving it a vote. The more votes your website gets the better placing you will receive in the search engines and the more traffic you will receive to your website.

The more traffic you receive, the more clicks you will receive on your Adsense ads and ultimately the more money you will make from Adsense.

Another very good way to receive more traffic to your website is through Article marketing.

Writing articles about the topic of your website and submitting those articles to article directories. When you submit your articles you need to include a link to your website in your signature.

Articles marketing will increase your traffic in two ways. Firstly, you are again increasing the number of backlinks to your website and therefore increasing you number of ‘votes’ and therefore also increasing your page ranking.

Secondly, by submitting your articles to article directories, when people visit those directories and see your articles, they may follow your link back to your website.

Also add your article to your website itself as this will be increasing the content of your website, which the search engines love.

The next way to drive traffic to your site is by setting up a blog. A blog is a little bit like an online diary and you can pretty much write in it whatever you want.

Try and make a post to your blog as often as you can relating to your website and always put the link to your website at the end. Every time you update your website, put a post in your blog about it. Every time you add an article to your website, add it to your blog also. The more you update your blog, the quicker your blog will receive traffic and drive that traffic to your websites. Blogs can rise in page rank much quicker than a website can, so to get a good ranking with your blog is a great way of driving traffic to your site.

Another good way to increase your backlinks is to exchange links with other websites that relate to the same topic as yours.

You can do this buy searching the internet for websites relating to yours and sending them an email asking if they’d be interested in exchanging links with you.

The other way is to visit forums relating to the topic and submit a post asking for link exchanges.

As well as forums relating to the topic you could also go to Internet Marketing forums or work at home type forums, many of these forums have sections specifically for link exchanges. Put a post there asking if anyone is interested in a link exchange with your topic.

Paid Search: Poor farm or Great profits?

Pay-per-click is a fantastic way to drive web traffic to your site from the major search engines. It can also suck your marketing budget dry in just a couple of days if not done properly. The bottom line is someone is going to profit by implementing paid search. The question is, is it going to be you or the search engines? The goal of the search engines (and their strategies) is more clicks. The more people click on your ads the more money the search engines make. Their strategy is to get as many clicks as possible with in your budget and they are willing to do that all day long. This is great for them bad for you.

The real goal should be more conversion with less clicks and lower cost. Let's take a few minutes to look at some strategies that should make a difference in your campaigns. We will get more specific and articles to come.

General strategies

1. Turn off Content Network

In Google when you first set up a campaign there is a default setting that turns the "content match" setting to "on". For now, turn that setting off. What this does is present your ads on websites that are using AdSense. If you go to a website and see "Ads by Google", those ads are coming from Google paid search accounts. Those ads show up on these websites based on the content of the website. At first glance this may look like a good idea and it usually is, for Google. There are two things that you need to consider before turning on the content match. The first is that the website that is hosting your ad gets paid every time someone clicks on your ad. Most of the click fraud that happens is when an owner of a site or so want affiliated with the site clicks on these ads. The second thing is that individuals who click on these ads are not actively seeking what you are offering. These folks are tire kickers. Even though your ad may be presented (number of impressions) to a lot of people, the click through rate and conversion rate is very low. The magic of search engine marketing is that you come in contact with individuals who are actively searching for what you have to offer. Only pay for clicks that come from people in that category.

2. Search Terms.

The more general the term the less qualified to lead (generally speaking). Personally, I am not a big fan of hundreds of key words for paid search. This is a great strategy the search engines and paid search management companies that are paid a percentage of your spend. What I try to figure out what terms would work in order to get my ideal customer to my site. Remember, you want people to come to your site who are actively searching for what you are offering. For example if you sell "long term care insurance" what type of people do you want clicking on your ads? Of course, you want individuals looking for long term care insurance, not "long term care" or "insurance". You can use these terms if you create a list of "negative" key words. We will talk about that at another time.

3. Keyword "types"

There are three types of keywords "Broad", "Phrase" and "Exact". Do not use "broad match" except for phrases with four or more words. For example, long term care insurance quote. The rule of some that I use is for single word phrases, I use exact match and four search phrases that are two to three words, I used "phrase matching". I am also experimenting with using "exact" matching for these terms as well. Remember the more specific the search term is to what you are offering and who your ideal client is the more qualified to lead will be. Better a small number of qualified leads than a large number of leads that waste your time and ultimately cost a lot more money.

4. Ad Copy Just a couple thoughts on writing ads. When you write your ads put the following in your "headline" box: {keyword: "your main keyword}. This will put your keyword phrase into the headline. This is very important for a lot of reasons that we will get into at another time. Your ad should be specific enough to attract only your ideal client (someone who is looking for exactly what you have to offer). Your ad contained at least one of your "unique selling propositions". This can be very challenging because of the space limitations. Rule of thumb, find out what your competitors are doing and do something different. For example, if everyone is offering free shipping, use one of your other unique selling propositions.

5. Landing Pages

You need to put a lot of thought to your landing pages. Your landing page has to do one thing that is answer the questions are up that the searcher had in mind when he typed in his key words. The searcher type in his search terms because he has a problem, needs a solution and is in some kind of "pain". You have about two seconds to convince him that you understand what he is going through and what he needs. It does not matter if you are selling hammers, insurance or investment products. The last thing a searcher wants to see is that you can jump higher, run faster and do it better than the competition. He just doesn't care. Besides, 99% of the websites that he visited probably stated that they do that. You must show him that you have the answers to his needs. Do not just send him to your home page unless your home page can accomplish the above. Once you connect with your searcher you must have a call to action. It can be a "buy now", "for more information contact us", "contact us for a free evaluation" or "consultation". You must be very specific and clear about your next steps. Have your phone number or contact us button on every page.

6. Tracking

Finally, track everything. Paid search is not an exact science. It takes time to set up and optimized your campaigns to get the results that you are looking for. You must monitor your campaigns at the least weekly in order to catch market changes. Unless you have a time of venture capital money laying around, paid search is not something you turn on and forget about. Google, Yahoo and MSN have free tracking tools that work great.

Pay-per-click is a great marketing tool, if used correctly. It can also, as stated earlier, suck your marketing budget dry in a heartbeat. It is a lot cheaper to find someone who knows what they are doing and does this day in and day out to help you than it is to lose thousands of dollars trying to figure it out yourself.

Problem Being An Affiliate?

Many people will generally have problems of not earning enough money by their affiliations, well I'm here to help.

If you have been doing the internet thing for some time and are thinking what's the use well good news all those hours of trial and error are leading to something.

You know in yourself when you read all those articles on making money instantly on the net that perhaps its true. That's what many of these affiliate companies rely on to get your hard earned dollar.

The Truth is there are systems that you can actually make money and not even have to worry about outlaying a cent all it will take is time.

That's right not to be to smart about it but I spent many hours combing the net to find the one system that done it all well I have.

The best thing about using this free system is IT's FREE and it's a high quality system that will make you money.

What many paid systems do is provide you the tools to succeed and leave you on you lonesome.

But what about a free system that provides everything a paid system does plus much more.

1. Manuals
2. Website Templates
3. Help
4. Design services
5. Advice

Make Money with residual

Most affiliates start with Amazon or ebay but please consider alternatives many of these offer higher returns and better support but there is marketing that can help you succeed without lifting a finger that is residual income.

That's right you want to earn forever or as long as the customer is signed up so that Every time that customer pays their monthly membership fee, you get paid. Honest! It's called residual affiliate marketing and it can be an amazing way to make money from home on your website. So if some one remains a member of a site for some time then you get a cut of there residual fees.

The best way to maximize this profit stream is to choose the best affiliates with highest income that do residual earnings.

Residual marketing can be an absolute gold mine for some web users. It doesn't happen automatically though, you'll need to make sure you link to quality products and services if you expect people to use them again and again and in fact does require some well targeted work to succeed.
So the truth is to make money online you have to do a couple things, one is choose the right program , spend each spare moment working on your site and promoting it and then make sure you update it regularly.

That's right and with only time you to can succeed give it ago today and sign up now.

Dynamic Sales Letters

You, like all marketers have a million and one things to do today! At the top of your priorities is marketing... finding more customers and raking in greater profits. If you're looking for a simple, proven model to create sales content without spending hours hunched over the computer, try the AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) model. You'll be amazed at how fast you can create an effective salesletter.

1. Attention
What captures a reader's attention more than an exciting list of things that will benefit THEM? Think about the affects of starting right off with 6 of the most appealing benefits of your product or service.

A Multi Level Marketer might start a sales letter like this:

• Experience the freedom of ...
• Being your own boss
• Financial independence
• Benefit 3 and so on ...

That gets their attention, and compels them to read on.

2. Interest
Here's where we sneak in the basic facts that might otherwise be uninteresting. The nitty gritty details of the product features won't hold the customer's attention for long, so keep it short and sweet. Hey, it's great that your swimming pools have filters, etc., but let's face it... there's not a lot of excitement going on here!

3. Desire
Whet their appetite, but give them some cold, hard logic to back up their purchase. Most consumers buy on impulse, then ask themselve whether it was the right choice. Don't make them second guess! Preparing them to face the doubts with a solid logical reason they got the best deal for their buck might include:

• The advantages of purchasing from YOU.
• Testimonials from other satisfied customers.
• An unconditional money-back guarantee.
• A good deal!

4. Action
Order now! Hey it says move it, but it doesn't pack the wallop of a stronger action statement like this one:

Hurry! Don't miss out on this LIMITED TIME special offer. Call now to place an order, or visit us at www.....

Be sure to give details of how to order. Make it a part of the command, make it easy to do and provide several options.

The Marketing Funnel

Do you often wonder why it is that some coaches and other solo service providers seem to be well-known and sought after in their niche and while others, many others (you, perhaps?), still struggle to attract all the clients they'd like?

I can give you a simple (really!) solution to that problem. It's called the Marketing Funnel and if you implement it in your business, I promise that you too can enjoy being considered an expert, in addition to selling more of your products and services. And you'll just have more fun!

You know what a funnel looks like, right? It's wide and the top and tapers down to a narrow opening. When your prospects enter your funnel through your ezine or other (usually) freebie offering, they are in the "getting to know you"level of the funnel. Once they get to know you, like you and trust you, they likely will move down to the next level, which will include your for-fee products and services, your least expensive ones first, increasing in value and cost as they continue downwards, until they eventually get to hiring you one-on-one or to your other big ticket item. That's basically how the funnel system of marketing works.

I see a lot of coaches and other solo service professionals offer a freebie at the top of their funnel, and then their one-on-one service packages at the bottom, with nothing in between. I've made this mistake myself. It's important to have offerings at each level of your marketing funnel so people can continue to get to know, like and trust you, as well as get to know, like and trust your products and services.

And when you offer your products and services at different price points, you are lowering the financial and emotional risk for your prospects. You are essentially making it impossible for them not to buy from you!

Implementing this system is easy. Get started by attracting prospects into your funnel. Create a freebie offering (an ezine, mini ecourse, ebook, report, guide, checklist, etc.) and put a sign-up form 'above the fold' and prominently on your website. You'll want to add a link to your freebie offering in your email signature as well.

For example, an email signature may say:
"Are you on the verge of giving up on your business because you don't have enough clients?

Don't turn your back on your vision for entrepreneurial success. Get your FREE 5-day e-course '5 Keys to Driving Clients to Your Business' by sending a blank email to marketing@myfunnel.com."

This is one highly effective way to attract folks into your funnel.

Once you have prospects in your funnel, find ways to give them more valuable content at increasingly higher prices as they go through the funnel.

For example, the second level of your funnel might offer an ebook for $25 or an ecource for $35. The third level might have a home study course for $125 or a series of teleseminars for $75 each. The fourth level might offer a boot camp for $325, and the fifth level might offer your one-on-one services for $450.

Get the picture? I'm pretty sure you do! :)

Here Are 3 Steps to Becoming an Internet Affiliate

There are 3 steps to this blueprint:

1. Setting up
2. Researching
3. Making Money

1. Setting up:

You can set up a Joe Buck's account for free and that's where you can get lists of products from successful businesses, so you can advertise them and make a commission off every single thing you sell.

Just go to Joebuck's website and sign up as an affiliate. You can get a commission if you advertise their actual site, or you can get a "Hot List" of tons of products on there website to chose from.

A couple other affiliate sites that you need to have is "millnic media" or "ClickBank". Millnic media is just like click bank, where their sites' have a marketplace filled with products to advertise and they are also an internet BANK so every commissioned dollar of every sale will go in your account, that's your money.

Those are the main sites you need to have to actually earn you a commission, and hold your money in an account for you to use. After you have those set up, you need a place to advertise them.

You can use your Ezine articles account to promote items. You can also promote on Yahoo answers. Isnare is another free article site. Those are just a few of the FREE ways to advertise products and services you can use as an affiliate marketer. The fastest and best way to promote and get things sold is by far Google AdWords. Google is the best, but can be expensive. If you know how to use it right, then you can make a fortune. You can't just set up an account and post an ad and expect people to click and buy.

People might click, but not buy, which will cost you a lot of money or not even click from bad ads. I can show you how.

Yahoo answers is another free site. You answer questions and then post a link to what ever product you want to sell, and you can't just post a link and not answer the question. That will get you kicked off Yahoo Answers. There is a great way to be successful.

Lastly, you want to set up a domain for each product you want to sell. I use Go Daddy, but any domain site will work fine. You will get a specialized link just for you from ClickBank, milnic, and joebucks so when anyone clicks on that link and buys that product you will get that commission and put money in your account. Those links are 15 letters long and look very complicated for example (safelinc.mavveric.hop.ClickBank.net) and that doesn't look very professional. You want to make a domain to link to this that looks nice. Make it relevant to what your selling like (www.LovelyGreenTea.com), and definitely make your domain a (.COM) and capitalize the first letter in each word.

Step 2 Researching:

After all those accounts are set up you can start researching. You want to look at the list of products on ClickBank, millnic, or joebucks that you would want to advertise. Look and see how much commission you get for each sale which can be organized from most to least on the marketplace to make it easier. And what is the most popular product that will sell well and make you money.

Research the main aspects on Google about the product you want to market so you can advertise affectively.

Go on Google an see what other ads are out there for your same product so you can make it different and set your ad apart from the rest.

Step 3 Making Money:

When you advertise on yahoo answers, you need to make 10 none sales posts and 1 sales post. That will grow your rating which people like to see and it will not get you kicked off the site. Answer a question and then in the reference box post your link. If that becomes best answer that will be their for ever and any one in the future that searches for that answer will see your link.

Keep growing your Google AdWords budget.

Watch the money roll in.

4 Critical Steps You Must Take If You Want to Succeed With Affiliate Marketing

There are four critical steps most every affiliate marketer takes before they even make their first sale. These steps are so important it can actually make or break you before you even get out of the gate. Not too surprisingly many people who fall flat on their face are usually missing or ignoring one or more of these steps.

Here are the first four critical steps you need to take before you start marketing any affiliate offers:

1. Find a starving market - This is the most important marketing tip you will ever read. You need to find a niche which is ready, will and able to spend money to solve their problems. If you don't have a starving market, the greatest product, offer and marketing in the world will be wasted.

2. Find a product to promote - This should really be your 2nd step, and not the 1st. Many people make the mistake of getting a product first, then seeing if they can find anyone to sell it too. It's important to find a product your niche is interested in actually buying.

3. One of the best tips is to do good keyword research - If you don't do keyword research, then people may not ever find your site. You have to be sure that the keywords your site targets aren't too competitive. You have to be sure that there are enough people searching for the keywords you want to put on your site. It won't do you much good if you're ranking first for a keyword that only 5 people search for a month.

4. Create a website or blog around your niche - It's important to create a blog for your marketing efforts. This way you have a website to drive traffic to while promoting your offers. The reason you want to send people to your site instead of an affiliates sales page is for one simple reason: You want to build a subscriber list. A subscriber list allows you to market other offers to the people you've worked to hard to find.

Best Affiliate Program to Make Money Online

If you are searching for the best affiliate program to join and make money then you have stumbled upon a good resource that will guide you through the mass of information online. A very good affiliate program right now you could get started with is Clickbank and CPA networks. Both affiliate programs are a very good way to make money online but both also have some drawbacks that you should be aware of.

Best Affiliate Program For You

The best affiliate program that you could join right now is Clickbank. Clickbank has thousands of products to promote. The advantage of Clickbank is that you can get started right away and start making money. The drawback to Clickbank is that they tend to hold your money until you have had 5 sales with different credit cards. So if you are just starting out and your sales are slow, you will not see any money for a while. Also if you don't get enough sales, then they start charging you for your account having no activity. The second best affiliate program is CPA networks. CPA networks just mean that it is a cost per action network, you don't have to make a sale to get paid. Someone can put in their email address or their zip code and you'll get paid for the action that the person too.

It can be very reward but the drawback to these networks is that you have to apply and then wait to see if you are approved. The approval process can take days or sometimes even weeks to get completed. And once you get approved, then you have to have an idea of what to promote, what will be worth your time and effort. This is really a trial and error effort for most affiliate marketers. But if you have the right tool then you can overcome this problem quite quickly because you will already know what products are bringing in the highest actions.

If you are looking for the best affiliate program you are really looking for the highest pay out affiliate program. The best is not really an issue but rather the program that will offer the highest payout and will pay you on time. Most of the cpa networks have been around for a long time and they are reliable and will send you a check once a month for all the work you have done.

Most tools that will give you the information on what is the best affiliate programs can be expensive, but you can also get tools that offer free trial offer.

If you are looking for the best affiliate program then get a FREE trial of Google Cash Detective and it will tell you what are the best programs to get started with.

How To Make Money Online Without A Website

You don't need to have a website to make money on the Internet. Here is a proven strategy to make money online without a website:

Step 1: Find Affiliate Product

Find a product to promote where you make good commission on each sale. Generally, you will get the biggest commissions on digital products. Digital products are defined as something that is downloaded directly to a customer's computer after purchasing, like electronic books or software.

Since there is no extra cost per unit, no inventory and no shipping, the commissions are much greater than on regular "physical" goods. The most common commission on digital products is 50%. The best place to find such products is Clickbank.com.

Sign up as a reseller (also called affiliate) for a product that looks the most appealing to you. After you sign up, you will get a unique affiliate link where you need to send people to purchase the product.

Your affiliate link will have a special code that will tell the product owner that it's you who referred the customer. The affiliate link code will allow your commissions to be tracked correctly and assigned to you.

Step 2: Get Domain Name

Get a domain name to redirect to your affiliate link. A domain name is a .COM name (like yourproduct.com). You can get it for under $9 at GoDaddy.com. GoDaddy.com will allow you to redirect your domain name to your affiliate link at no extra cost.

So when someone types in your .COM domain in their browser, it will go to your affiliate link. The visitor will see the website with the product you promote, and the commissions will be tracked correctly.

The reason why you need a domain name is that it's memorable and it makes you look more trustworthy. Affiliate links tend to be too long and arouse suspicion. For example, most people would rather click on the link bestwidgets.com as opposed to abcwidgets.com?reseller=john.

A domain name will make your affiliate link look like it's your own website. So basically, you will have a product to promote and a website to send people to and get commissions - without really having your own website.

Step 3: Drive Traffic

In order to make sales, you need to get visitors to your domain name (which will forward them to the website of the product that you resell). You can pay for advertising and hope that your profit will be greater than advertising cost, or you can use free ways to generate traffic.

The most effective way to get free targeted visitors to your domain name is by writing and submitting articles. You can write short articles on the topic related to the product that you promote. At the end of the article, you include your author bio and your domain name link.

You will then submit your articles to various websites, and allow them to publish your articles as long as your link is included. Your articles will get published in many places on the Internet, and will be advertising your affiliate link at no cost to you whatsoever. People will read your articles, like what you have to say and click on your domain name link ready to purchase.

Once you start getting regular sales from your articles, you can go back to step 1 and find another product to promote using this strategy. After a while, you will build up a nice source of Internet income - without even having a website.

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What To Know About Affiliate Success

Generally the average affiliate marketer just goes out and finds a product, any product that has a high commission, and throws up a link and sits back and hopes that someone will click on it and buy the product.

DON’T BE AN AVERAGE JOE!

When you’re deciding what product to add to your affiliate marketing business, you really shouldn’t be looking at products at all! Instead, you should be looking at people!
You know that products don’t buy products, people buy products! If you don’t know what the people who are a part of your niche are having problems with, are interested in, are talking about, then how can you sell something to them?

Similarly, once you’ve decided upon a niche, you need to be a part of that niche even if it’s just briefly. Learn to talk the talk and walk the walk. That’s extremely simple. Just do a search for forums that relate to your niche. Go to them and sign up. Read the posts on that forum. See what problems people are complaining about…see what topics are getting a lot of posts…see who the experts are in that niche.

Sign up for a newsletter or two. That will give you a good idea of the level of marketing in that niche and will also let you learn the “lingo” of the niche. See what products they are talking about and trying to sell. This will also give you an idea of whom to JV with when you start your own affiliate program for your own product! Ask questions on the forum. Get to know some of the people. Build relationships with them. After you’re an accepted member of the forum, ask them if they’d mind doing a survey for you in exchange for a nice gift. That’s when they actually tell you what they want and will buy!

People FIRST, then products.

In general that philosophy will definitely make you an above average affiliate marketer and increase your affiliate sales. Making people first will almost assuredly create satisfied customers, buyers singing your praise, repeat buyers and all because you went that extra mile.
Unfortunately the average affiliate marketer looks at products first; sees what product has the highest commission and then just throws up a page with a bunch of links and tries to get traffic to it. Is it any wonder that they’re not making very much money?

If you’re just throwing links out there and maybe a picture now and then, all you’re trying to do is sell, sell, sell! Do you like it when someone tries to push you into buying something? Are you the type that loves to go to a used car lot just to be bullied by a salesman? Probably not!

Or would you could rather go into a store where the “salesman” tells you all about a particular item you’re interested in? He gives you a chance to touch it and play with it…to look inside it. He gives you his opinion on the product and tells you novel ways to use it. He tells you stories about other customers that are using the same product and what they’ve found. He tells you the good and the bad about the product and compares it to others. He finds out what you’re planning to do with the product and gives you great tips on how to do just what you want to do. He builds your trust and builds some rapport with you. He’s just talking and educating you, not selling you!

Keyword Optimization and Metatags

The keys to making keywords work for you are how your site is constructed and what your content contains. First let us examine how Google and the other sites actually deliver results from keywords that you give their computers so that you can understand how to maximize your website’s visibility.

When you start a search, you may use a phrase like Hard Drive. Google culls its records and gives you results based on what it thinks is relevant. However, you may realize quickly that the top sites listed have nothing to do with a computer hard drive. However, if you go back and add the word computer, the relevancy to YOU becomes better. The approaches Google uses to determine relevancy is twofold:

1. Keyword Density. If the words “hard drive” come up many times in the article, Google assumes it’s going to be relevant to you.
2. Keyword Placement. If the keywords appear near the top of the document they are given more relevancy.

Now that you know this, what do you do with it? I recommend a keyword density of once every 100-150 words when writing articles and to make sure that you have the keywords prominently placed near the top of the article. If you are using a copywriter and give them a list of keywords to use, this is the general formula they will use as well.

If you can combine some specific keywords with more general ones, you will have solid traffic to your website. Generic keywords are typically harder to get hits on but perseverance and practice you will find a winning combination.

Metatags

First of all, I am sure some of you are wondering what a Metatag is. A Metatag is information contained within your webpage but not viewable in your browser. The tags contained within give some information on your site.

The key to Metatags is understanding how each separate search engine uses Metatags. In the infancy of the World Wide Web, Metatags were the only way that search engines searched. The computing power to catalog entire web pages was not there yet. However, they began to be abused by unscrupulous people, often having PAGES of metatags on their site trying to get you onto their site by whatever means necessary. Today, Metatags are only part of the relevancy equation or in the case of Google completely ignored.

The metatag you should pay the most attention to according to Google’s current rules is the Meta Description tag. Make sure you have an accurate and relevant description of your site and use keywords in the description. However, make it concise and do not flood the description with keywords.

Optimizing your content ...

Web page content is one of the most important parts of a website. Making sure your ads work, securing a high search engine ranking and increasing your traffic will increase your odds of making money. Yet if you don’t have content, visitors will not be interested. You want people to stay on your site, browse through your content and have as much exposure to your ads as humanly possible.

There are three parts in my opinion to ensure good content on your site:

1. Have quality content available (very important)
2. Have quantity to choose from (very important)
   
3. Update the content frequently (very important)
   

Quality and quantity are key because you want people to have as much variety as possible from which to choose when viewing your website/blog. If the quantity is there and quality is not, then people will go elsewhere. If you have quality but not enough of it, people will go elsewhere.

"Bottom line is, you need alot of quality information/content to keep your viewers attention for as long as possible"

What is Adsense?

AdSense is a web program from Google designed to deliver advertisements. Webmasters can enroll in this to have image, text and video ads placed on their websites by Google. The ad content is from Google using a program called AdWords.

The revenue is generated by per-click or per-viewing. Typically the ad content is related to the site’s content through keyword coding done by the webmaster. The webmaster makes money every time an ad is clicked by someone visiting the site.

Pay Per Click

Pay per click and pay per view ads work on the same basic concept. For pay per click, once a visitor to your site clicks through the advertisement to the website promoted, a credit is generated to your account. You may get a flat fee based on each click generated but if you opt for this, it is typically a fairly small amount of money. Or, you get a PPM (pay per mill) amount which means you get paid for every thousand click through visits that are generated from the site.

Depending on the service you choice, you may have the option of choosing one or the other. Or, you may be limited to one particular method based on the advertiser. Either way, the more clicks you get, the more earnings you will receive.

Pay Per Sale

Pay per sale is a very popular form of affiliate marketing. This means that regardless of how many people click through to the advertiser’s site, unless that click generates a sale, you get no money from it. Typically, the tracking cookie that is left from your unique ID retains for a period from seven days to thirty days. This means that even if a visitor clicks through the site but doesn’t purchase for another few days, you will still get the credit for the sale.

Pay per sale advertisers pay based on either a flat fee or a percentage of sale. Some advertisers will pay a flat amount regardless of the amount of sale. For example, if you are getting a flat fee of $12.00 for a sale and the sale is only $10.00, obviously you are coming out ahead. However, if you have the option of choosing a percentage based and the percentage is 10%, the person has to spend at least $100.00 before you see the same amount of money.

This too can be beneficial for higher ticket items, as you have the potential to make a lot more money.