If you have been in affiliate marketing for even a short time, you know that the name of the game is to get improved search engine rankings. Ideally your goal is to achieve page #1 status in Google, Yahoo and Bing for your keyword of choice. When you start from scratch this goal is one of the most critical. The best content and articles are of no value until the customer you are trying to reach is aware of you.
Unless you intend to pay for your traffic with PPC (Pay Per Click), or borrow your traffic with a number of joint venture associates (JV’s), then you need to use the power of a good back-linking structure to improve your standings in the search engines. Although the exact parameters (Google algorithms) of back-linking are not known, the search engines like to see that your site is achieving popularity around the web in the form of sites linking to yours.
Here are 5 Steps to Increasing your Back-link Strength
- Directory Listings
First things first you need to submit your site to as many directory listings as possible. This can take the form of paid or free listings. There are thousands of directory services out there which will list your site on their directories, some require that you link back to them others will give you a one way link for a price or free. The free listings will usually take a while to show up as they are manually examined by the directory service. Other services will require a fee for a “premium” listing. There are also submitting services and software programs available to somewhat automate the process. Brad Callen has a free version which will give you access to 300 plus sites here.
- Article Submission
In the big scheme of things you need to promote your site by telling others about your product and your site. The best way to do that is by writing articles describing your site and service. Article submission sites will publish your article and give you a link back to your site for each article that you submit. The higher page rank of those sites helps to get traffic back and adds a back-link to your site. There are also thousands of these sites and an entire industry of related services surrounding this major part of internet affiliate marketing. Some of those services will write and submit articles to the “E zines” for you for a reasonable fee. One of the best I have seen recently is is called “Get Articles Done”, they will not only compose articles on any subject in several formats, but also submit them to hundreds of sites for back-linking power.
- RSS Feed Aggregates and Pinging Services
Blogs and static html pages can be set up to generate an RSS (Really Simple Syndication)feed. Feeds allow your content to be viewed off line and today they are incorporated into most email clients. Once again there are several sites that offer multiple RSS feed distribution. Feedage.com, Feedest.com and Feedping.com are among many of the better aggregate RSS feed services. These services require registration and then each new article needs to be pinged to them as you post. Another great source is available at: http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
- Social Bookmarking, Web 2.0 Media
Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Myspace and thousands more comprise this category of ways to get improved search engine ranking. At the very least you should be a member of several of these social media sites. Individually, each site is a study in slightly different ways of getting popularity, name/brand recognition, and social credibility. To borrow a phrase from Perry Belcher treat them like you are attending a party. To be popular at a party you take an interest in others and build their credibility, if you do it skillfully they will return the favor. Using software like SocialMarker will get you started in the book marking side of things where you can submit your new posts as they become available. Each of these sites can consume a lot of time and energy so you must learn the nuances and count the cost in time if you want to grow in any given one.
- Blog and Forum Commenting
This is probably the most effective form after article submission for creating worthwhile back-links. The challenge with this route is twofold first you need to identify forums and blogs which provide a “Do Follow” link to your site. The second part is time you need to spend the time in the forums that are relevant to your subject matter reading the posts of others and making comments that are consistent with the subject matter of the forum or blog post. Comments like “Nice Site” , “great post” are generally deleted by the system administrators. Considering the time it takes to register, figure out the “captcha” and respond to the confirmation email, it is important to make a relevant comment if you want your link to stay. Go to the “Warrior” forum and search for back-links, you will find some excellent low cost offers.
There are certainly many more tricks to the trade for you to learn which can increase your “back-link” effectiveness, but applying all of the above will go a long way toward improving your search engine rankings.
Posted in Affiliate Programs by .
Delivering the Promise of Online Marketing
Product Review of the:
Associate Program Marketing Handbook
by Marlon Sanders
You’re online. So what? Just because you’re out there prospecting for customers with a product you think is terrific, don’t expect customers to come beating a path to your cyber door. Unless you’re sweating the details, constantly focusing on how you’re going to improve your chances of success through smarter web selling techniques, you’re no better off than anyone else. And you know this kind of hit-or-miss approach just won’t cut it.
The reality is that you need all the help you can get’all the leverage you can find to bring traffic to your site and convert that traffic to dollars. It’s work. Hard work. Web marketing master Marlon Sanders knows this, probably better than anybody else in the business. And for years he’s been doing the legwork, blazing a trail for a growing number of believers people like me-who’ve seen his experience, expertise, and horse sense find its way into one must-have e-book after another.
No matter how many how-to tactics and hints on web selling you’ve heard about, you haven’t gotten serious about building your “customer intelligence system” until you’ve learned from Marlon. He’s the guy who’s carved a name for himself through discovering and delivering the formulas, the step-by-steps, and the real-world tricks of the online marketing trade.
You’re online. Where do you want to go? How do you get there? What do you need? Well, the King of the Click-Throughs, has delivered again. The Associate Program Marketing Handbook is an up-to-date toolbox crammed with 25 closely linked techniques for building and promoting your associate programs. It’s about drawing your customers to your site with the right “bait.” It’s about getting the most from free or low-cost services, advertising, and classified ads. Getting the word out about your product through reports and e-books, and maximizing your money machine through search engines, piggybacking on media events, and cashing in with techniques like the Swish Banner method. When all is said and done, it’s about converting click-throughs to cash. You study what works, you fine-tune, and you adjust.
Even with the powerful tools and the winning edge you’ll get from Marlon’s solid guidance, he’s the first to remind you that basic trial and tweaking is the name of the marketing game. And that advice is worth something in itself! Finding and keeping customers can be as simple as streamlining your site design for usability, perking up your online content (after all, your text is king), or re-evaluating your opt-in campaign.
For all the invaluable strategic information covered in his quick-reference on the fine art of online reselling, Marlon’s bottom-line message is clear and no-nonsense: Online reselling is still down-to- earth marketing, and the fundamentals apply. Figure out what you do
best, who else does it, and why your target customers should care. In other words, position your product and educate your customers.
Yes, you’re online. And if you could turn to a proven voice of wisdom to improve your odds of making more money, why wouldn’t you?
–Robert G. Gardner, Ph.D.
Dr. Gardner writes professionally and, as such, was compensated for preparing this review.
I recently purchased his “Backlinks Jackpot”. Like many of his products it is very inexpensive but incredibly long on value. With just one tip in one of the video’s I was able to get page one ranking for 3 different key words on another site. I bought three original, keyword specific articles and had them distributed through a submission service. It also resulted in over a thousand “backlinks” built in about three weeks time. Take a look at his page here:
The reality is that the sound business practices that are common to successful businesses throughout the ages, are also applicable to the successful internet based businesses of today.
- Know and understand your market.
- Develop or find products that meet the needs of your market
- Market Your products
- Review your results
There is also a fifth step that is particularly relevant to an Affiliate Marketing System.
- Repeat and duplicate the process.
The difference between conventional business and affiliate marketing is that it is highly unlikely that you will be able to make even a basic income from 1 or even half a dozen affiliate products. At least not in the early stages of your business.
So ultimately the keys to your success as an affiliate marketer are;
- Firstly to find a simple formular that will derive a positive cash flow from just one product, and suck the living daylights out of it.
- And secondly to repeat the process, again, and again, and again, and …
In the conventional business world it is entirely possible to build and empire on one simple concept, perhaps the names Coca Cola, Pepsi, Mc Donalds, KFC might ring a bell. The efficient delivery of ready made, easy to use and consume food and drink products are just one example of largely simple concepts that have been made into world wide success stories.
Just to diversify for a moment, Nike, Reebok et al are other examples.
Sure these companies make lots of different types of Foods, Drinks, Shoe and Clothing lines, but the reality is that the different lines are in many ways just the same product re badged to meet a different market.
So in devising your assault on the internet, you need an affiliate marketing system that is easily repeatable and once put into place requires minimal monitoring. It also needs to apply to a broad cross section of market places.
If you are still with me then you have a great chance of success. You know why? because repetition is one of the greatest forms of learning, and you get to see the not so secret steps to success one more time;
- Know and understand your market.
- Develop or find products that meet the needs of your market
- Market Your products
- Review your results
Oh, and don’t forget the all important fifth step for your Affiliate Marketing System;
- Repeat and duplicate the process!
Ok, so there are a number of aspects to each step that you need to learn and you can learn about some of those at Affiliate Marketing Opportunity, BUT, if you keep that basic formula in front of you, it will make it a lot easier to put your Affiliate Marketing System into place, and get to the stage where you to can earn a substantial living with a minimal amount of effort.
Good Luck
Steve Roberts
Posted in Affiliate Programs Internet Marketing by .
Welcome to the wide world of affiliate marketing. This article is a study of the 15 best ways to guarantee that you will fail at your internet marketing ventures. There are probably several hundreds more and you are welcome to add yours in the comments below. Hopefully you are not guilty of these; even one or two can make a serious dent in your sales and profitability picture.
1. Do a search for “make money online” and sign up for a $25 course that will show you how to take surveys from home. Be sure to sign up for a “free” PC and fill out and buy all the all the required offers. That way you will get on every spam list on the planet.
2. Buy a pre-made ebook or product for sale website with a list of funny domain names to choose from and pick one that “sounds good to you” without doing any key word research. Those catchy domains advertise themselves, just put the site on a traffic exchange and wait for the sales to come flying in.
3. Decide to become an internet marketer before you even know what keywords are. After all Google is just a mindless dictionary definition collector, and your definition is just as good as theirs. That research stuff is just too much work, besides you have the coolest graphics and flash on your site, so you don’t need it.
4. Start by picking a niche market, like “Internet Marketing”, there is so little competition that all 8 billion websites out there will link back to yours quickly.
5. Buy a domain like “MakeMoneyNowSite.com” (Because ‘all’ the other names are gone) and put up a blog. It’s so easy, “everybody” else is making a pile of cash so you might as well join them.
6. When you figure out that a “blog” requires you are actually expected to write something intelligible be sure to hire a writer whose first language is not english.
7. Buy 16 “Silver Bullet” courses on internet marketing and spent hours reading the materials with out taking action. After all the author has shared his secrets knowing that less than 5% will actually do as he suggests, so he will certainly have no competition.
8. Try every “Silver Bullet” system for 2 or 3 days and then look for another because this one is not working. It has worked for centuries, every farmer does it doesn’t he? Put the seed in the ground and yell “Grow!” it will be up in a few days guaranteed.
9. Join 2 $100 a month “Membership” clubs that advocate conflicting points of view. That way every time one club says “GO” you can confidently “STOP” because the other disagrees.
10. Get your first website set up and then wonder where the traffic is going to come from. Don’t bother to have a strategy, Google is glad to take your money. If you must use SEO the be sure to use an article spinner to insure more information gets out to ALL the sites. If you want to add a human touch then see #6.
11. Set up your first squeeze page with language that sounds like; “you would’nt mind giving me your email address would you”. After all you haven’t offered them anything of value so you wouldn’t want to appear to be too demanding.
12. Set up your first auto-responder with a 15 part series on “Buy My Product”,”Buy My Product”,”Buy My Product”, and nothing else. The client who just signed up to your list has “clearly” said he want nonstop buying messages so don’t bother giving anything else. By the way, if you joint venture with others be sure to use the “official” emails for the launch with your list so they wont get anything different from the 15 other emails they receive on launch day.
13. Get 5 sites up with 3 plr written articles on each and spent your time cruising your hard-drive looking for a sixth in your vast collection of “Bonuses” from #7. My gosh you have tons of great stuff there, that pioneered the internet in 2000 and hardly anyone knows about all this obscure knowledge.
14. Write your first “Sales” letter before you discover Claude Hopkins, Gary Halbert, Dan Kennedy, Ben Hart, John Carlton or Frank Kern. It is simple, just explain all the facts and ask for the order. That “benefits and triggers” stuff is is not important,
15. Do something new every day and make sure that you have at least 10 projects on “Someday Isle”; you know that Island you are going to buy when you make a killing on the Internet!
Posted in Affiliate Programs Internet Marketing by .
Dec 09
31
“Make Money Online”, Say What?
The internet has now been around for over twenty years and slowly since the mid nineties it has grown to be a huge commercial venture. “Make money online” is one of those siren songs that gets played over and over. Just sign up for this program, join this survey organization, get an email address, throw up a website with an offer and the world will instantly beat a path to your door with money in hand. The sobering reality however, is that “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”
As the internet has moved from its’ infancy a new concept has been introduced. Today the information highway requires that what you need to know to be successful comes at a cost. There are several areas of knowledge that you need to acquire before you can establish a successful internet business. In your search for this knowledge there are also several detours that can take you off the track.
The most important thing that you can bring to the table is a passion for the product or service that you intend to promote. Most of us in any buying situation hate to be “sold”, and a surefire way to fail in your enterprise is to set up a site that screams “Buy this Now”. Sure there are plenty of storefront sites that do precisely that, but they are usually the last place that someone comes to after making up their mind to purchase a product.
So you need to be enthusiastic about your product. In addition you need to setup a nice, welcoming, professional looking website that targets the keywords for your niche. You then need advertising to get traffic. Your advertising can take the form of articles that give you exposure on the ezine/information sites or by paying for it directly with pay per click advertising.
Enthusiasm is critical, as the results of your hard work are often not apparent. The article that you wrote that begins to bring traffic to your site may be the first article that you write or it may be the twenty second. Maintaining your attitude and passion for your product will see you through the time when nothing seems to be working.
In addition to your passion you are going to need to acquire some knowledge. Learning how to write an article, doing keyword research, and using methods of search engine optimization are all important as well. Once you have traffic visiting your site you will also need to offer value in terms of good content and bonuses. In today’s competitive world you need an edge that makes you stand out from the crowd.
When you develop these characteristics for your site you then build the trust necessary to develop a clientele and with that will come sales. For most people this process is not an overnight accomplishment, your dedication, enthusiasm and persistence will see you through. If you are passionate and would like to speed up the educational process, you need to look at what Mack Michaels is offering.
Maverick Money Makers is a private
society that will teach you how to
build a six-figure a month business
on the internet.
It’ll only take a few minutes,
but I assure you, it’s like nothing
you’ve ever seen!
http://www.maverickmoneymakerssys.com
Posted in Affiliate Programs by .
In the business of affiliate marketing there are many tools that a marketer has to have in his arsenal. Starting with his ability to choose a good market to begin with. Then proceeding with all the other steps that are necessary to pave the way to lead the customer to the vendor and actually make the purchase. These tools include the ability to get all the important things done like building a nice website that appeals to the eye. Putting up content, commentary and information which will interest the visitor and eventually move the client to make a decision to proceed to the vendor’s sales page and place an order.
Along the way the affiliate marketer needs to learn how to drive traffic to the site, as an unvisited website is not going to move much traffic to a vendor. Getting the clients to come to your site is an important affiliate marketing tool, you must pay for it with PPC or in articles written and submitted to an article directory. To increase the traffic you need to advertise in other ways as well with the use of video through Youtube and other sources. Having an ad or two in some of the net classifieds, like USfree ads, or Craigslist won’t hurt. Taking a few days to build a few extra sites to act as feeds to your main site like a hub-page and squidoo page will certainly help.
Once the visitor arrives however you have to pull out the most important affiliate marketing tool of all. That tool is the tool of trust. One of the many tools that Google offers to the internet at large is called analytic’s. This is a free service that they offer which will track many things for you to enable you to tell what is happening when a client comes to your site and how long they stay. It tracks ad impressions (if you use adsense) it tells you how long they visited, what pages they visited and in some cases you can even tell what they clicked on to move on from your site. One of the factors that they track for you is called “bounce” , how long did they stay before they hit the back button and went on to other pastures. This statistic is a good measure of how you are doing as a webmaster and also how you are doing in the copy writing department. Typically you have about 10 seconds to work your magic. What people see and read in the first 10 seconds will determine whether or not you have a potential client that is willing to take the next step and allow you to work toward convincing them to look at your offer.
Admittedly if you have done a good job of writing your PPC ad or Ezine article you have an edge, but your page and what they see when they arrive is critical. Are the colors of your theme glaring or garrish? Do you use a dark background with hard to read text, (if so I’m gone). Most of all…What are you saying? Is your headline screaming at them or is it intriguing? Does it make them curious? Is it controversial? I read the other day that a fellow affiliate marketer writes his headline 20 times before he even starts to write content for his articles on his blog. Makes sense to me. If I have 10 seconds to establish trust with the client/reader then it doesn’t matter what I am saying in my content if he/she is gone.
So the next time you sit down to write that important article think about the headline, it just might be the head line written by that 16 year old a few years back that got world wide recognition through Digg in less than 24 hours. Trust building starts there in a big way.
Posted in Internet Marketing by .
|
|
|
|