Choose SEO via Google Webmaster Guidelines


Every now and then I find it useful to look and see what Google has to say to webmasters about their websites. It's been years since I was last in here and I'm amazed by the amount of new content Google has added to their webmaster helps.

One thing to keep in mind whenever reviewing information put out by the search engines is that the engines have a vested interest in being selfish. Sure, they want to be helpful, but at the same time the information they provide comes with a very distinct bias as to what will ultimately help them.

That doesn't make the advice bad, it just means we need to learn to sift what is really important from what Google wants us to think is important.

Today I want to revisit Google's Guidelines for selecting an SEO provider. Let's take them point by point and I'll provide my own analysis. You can click the link above if you want to read Google's expanded explanations.

Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.
Not all unsolicited emails are bad. I think it's a shame that email marketing has gotten such a bad rap, however I will admit it is mostly deserved. The danger with this kind of solicitation is that they are usually sent from SEOs that have done little or no research and are just pounding out slightly customized mass emails.

Typically these emails claim that your site "isn't ranking" or "could not be found" on the search engines. Of course, it begs the question how they found you order to send you that email. Often the claims will be legitimate in a very narrow context, stating they could not find you when searching for a particular keyword that may or may not be relevant or valuable to you.

Keep a healthy dose of skepticism when reading these emails. Most of the time you're better off just deleting them any way. But the same time, these emails are not all from spammers. Google's advice here to be wary is sound.

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.
I've blogged enough over the years debunking the myth of guaranteed rankings, so there is no need to go into it all here. There are things that SEOs can guarantee, but rankings are not one of them, outside of pay-per-click campaigns. However, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't expect results either.

Avoid any SEO that offers ranking guarantees. There is usually enough small print that allows them out of any type of refund or continued service. On the other hand satisfaction guarantees our something that SEOs can provide, if they are willing.

Be careful if a company is secretive or won't clearly explain what they intend to do.
SEOs that won't share their processes with you need to be avoided at all cost. There really are no SEO secrets, just different strategies that can be employed. Any SEO you are dealing with should freely share their strategies with you and they should be able to give you comfort that they won't engage in activities that are likely to get your site penalized by the engines.

The better informed you are as a client, the healthier relationship you'll have with your SEO. And knowing what strategies they'll be implementing will help you keep your expectations in line with the results as well.

You should never have to link to an SEO.
You should never have to link to anybody, period. This includes directories that exchange a listing for a link, suppliers, agents, etc. Don't get yourself in a deal where a link is required to be maintained at all times.

With that said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with anybody requesting that you place a link to their site, and doing so may be mutually beneficial. But linking from your website to another should always be a choice, and you should do it only when it is of benefit to your site visitors.

When you lose control of who you link to because of the deals you make, you can often times find yourself associating with some less than reputable websites. The last thing you want is for the search engines to ding you quality points because of your shady associations.

Choose wisely.
Doing your research is important, especially when you'll be investing thousands of dollars over several months for any marketing effort. There are a lot of companies out there that sound real good, say all the right words, but when push comes to shove they just don't have what it takes.

One of the most important aspects of choosing an SEO is not just knowing if they can do the job, knowing they operate their business ethically. I don't believe in "SEO ethics", but I do believe in business ethics. Your SEO should be upfront with you about what they are doing and why, and what kind of benefit you should expect from them. They should also let you know if any of their optimization strategies will bring any potential harm to you.

Of course, no one will tell you they operate unethically and unfortunately many people get sucked into paying these companies only to get shafted later on. Do your due diligence research. Find out about the company, and about the people running it. Cost of services is far less important than the potential cost of doing business with a rip-off artist.

Be sure to understand where the money goes.
There are a number of various avenues of online marketing where money can, and likely will be invested. From social media to link building to development of new architecture or content. The goal however, should be the same, to increase your exposure in the search engines and to provide a better user experience in total.

But you should be aware if the SEO is spending money purchasing links, ads or subbing their work out to a company in India. You're paying the bill so you have a right to know what's being done with that money and what results you can expect.

What are the most common abuses a website owner is likely to encounter?
Google provides two main cautions here. The first is to make sure that you own all the work that an SEO does for you. Don't engage in SEO services where you don't have a legal right to all work performed at the end of the contract, including content, pages, domains and links. Anything purchased as part of the optimization campaign should be yours to keep.

The second is the creation of junk pages that serve little or no value to your customers. There is nothing wrong with creating new pages to target specific keywords that are not targeted elsewhere on the site. The creation of these pages, however, must include full integration into the website, professionally written content, and nothing "hidden" that's there for anybody's interest but your own as the site owner.

Google's recommendations are largely sound. Remember, they have a vested interest in keeping their site free of spam and choosing a SEO that is committed to helping you grow your business, as opposed to just achieving search engine rankings, helps them as well.

There is not much here that isn't sound. Google's suggestions are pretty fair and balanced toward the business owner, and not just propaganda that serves their own needs. You'll be better off following these guidelines than not.

Continue reading this post

Internet Video Marketing and the Small Business


Effective small business marketing on the internet requires using every available method to you in order to improve the exposure to your site. There are so many different ways available online to bring more and more people to your webpage every day. However, it does take careful planning to ensure that you are utilizing every single one of those methods in order to ensure that you are getting the absolute most value out of your web presence.

First of all, you must be properly using methods like SEO and PPC marketing in order to be bringing traffic to your website. However, we are now living in the era of Web 2.0, and social marketing of all kinds is at least as effective as those more traditional methods. Using social networking sites and even more so, sharing sites, like YouTube, can be a great way to get a viral reaction going and start getting people to your website. Using videos is one of the most effective ways to get people to your website.

Small business marketing online needs to include multimedia aspects or you will be behind the competition. There are two great ways to use video online. The first is as mentioned above, create a great video and share it with everyone you possibly can on the internet. This means posting it to all of your social networking pages, like Facebook and MySpace, as well as posting it to every video sharing site, like YouTube, that you can find. The amount of people that look at the postings on YouTube, alone, is truly staggering. There is such a massive amount of potential publicity to be gained by posting great video content on that site. Informative content, funny content, instructional content; whatever you can offer, be sure to put it into video form and get it onto YouTube in order to increase your online exposure.

You can also use those same types of videos on your own webpage as well as on the sharing sites. Small business marketing online is at least partly about creating a great website that people are going to want to visit and videos can be a big part of that. Create a video tour of your website and post it on the homepage or create a tutorial video for people who buy your product or service. Many find that a video demonstrating that product or service helps in the overall advertising of a product. If you’re not comfortable making the video yourself, you can easily use one of the many great freelancers available online.

Continue reading this post

How to Make Money With Web Design


Do you want to make money with web design? Almost every organization has some kind of web presence on the web today. Does that mean there is no room left for new designers to get into the business of designing bespoke websites? No. In fact, it is a good thing, because a huge fraction of the existing websites out there are full of issues including bad design and technical errors. This can be for a majority of reasons with any bad website; perhaps the buyer was on a low budget, made it themselves with little experience, or just got completely ripped off by a bad service.

Whatever the reason, this opens a door for designers to do website redesigning. This is not much different from designing a website for a business that does not have one. The only difference is that it can be a bit easier because at times you will be transferring content from the client’s old website, or perhaps using an existing structure. I would say around 80-90% of my clients already have some kind of web presence, and they are at a stage where they are willing to spend some real money.

Getting Started
As long as you have some kind of skills in creating websites, you can absolutely do this. And you know what? Even if you do not have any website creation skills, I have provided some great resource links at the end of this article for those that would like to get started on the skills necessary for this lucrative industry. The first time I was paid to make websites, I only knew the basics, and then the more I did the more I improved. It is actually not that hard becoming a web designer, all it takes is some time commitment. It is good to start off learning HTML, CSS, and some basic interface graphics. Scroll to the bottom if you would like to check out the learning resources right now. Otherwise, read on.

A Safe Investment Opportunity
A great thing to keep in mind is that web design can be such a low-investment business opportunity as long as you go about it the right way. The only costly things tend to be some of the one-off costs, such as having the right software and actually having a computer to work on. I am not saying that these do not need upgrading ever, but to me a one-off cost is something where you are not paying for it on a recurring basis. Here are a couple of important tips on keeping this all a safe investment:

Work from home. At least to begin with. It means you are saving money on the rent and bills involved in having an office. In my experience, it is best to start small because you then do not have to put as much funding into things that are not so necessary to have right away.
Buy cheap but quality hosting. This is done by finding a small package offered by a reputable hosting company. I use the smallest package at www.1and1.com, because it is all that is needed for the hosting of a web design company’s website. It costs $3.99 per month ($23.94 per 6 months) and includes a domain.
You do not have to quit your day job (if you have one) straight away. You can start by doing the odd project here and there while you are still employed. I actually do part-time studies and work full-time with my web design business. I love it, and I would not have it any other way.
Name or Business Name?

You have two choices, you can work as a freelance web designer under your full name, or you can operate under a business name. In my eyes, the latter is much preferred. Freelancers can be awfully undercut these days; you are more likely to make good money as a business. Not only will people take you more seriously but there will be the opportunity to get staff or partners later on if you so please.

The first thing you need to do is secure a .com for your business. Having a .com is pretty standard, I would ignore .net and .org if I were you. You can always have them additionally later on if you like. When thinking of a business name, do not try to be too smart with it. "[Something] Designs" or "[Something Media]" are the kind of names that give people an idea of what your business does when they hear the name. What goes at the front does not matter too much as long as it is not particularly ridiculous. It is also more appropriate on a corporate level if you eventually get some big-time contracts. Create a shortlist of the names you have thought up that you like, and see what is available for domain registration (I use GoDaddy).

If you are having trouble thinking of a business name, you could, for example, try combining colors with animals. Black Crow Designs, Red Wolf Designs, Purple Monkey Media (or not). You do not have to worry too much about thinking of a name, because it is your service that will be defining your company’s quality.

Setting Up Your Web Presence
Whether you are looking to deliver to clients locally, across the country, or all over the world - you need to have a home website for your web design company. The website is to show information about what the company does, what work it has done (a portfolio), how you can be contacted, what services you specifically offer and what the prices are. There are other things too, such as providing the general terms for contracts and the payment options. The more details, the better. But don’t cram your website with too much, keep things neat and spaced appropriately. This website is going to be a big part of selling yourself, so it should be a breeze to navigate and read.

Also, the design and layout are going to show what you are really capable of (besides your actual portfolio). And make sure you have a nice and recognizable logo in your header somewhere. If the website looks bad then you could be losing out on a crazy amount of business. So put your all into making it look great!

Putting a Portfolio Together
So, are you wanting to get into web design business but lack a strong portfolio to get people interested in your services? I will be honest, this will take some work if you really are at square one.

Do not worry, you can rapidly build a portfolio by doing some free websites for businesses, bands/musicians, artists, freelancers, etc. These are also the kind of clients you can get paid business from in the future. And while you are doing work for free, you are in return getting the experience of working for clients and having something to put into your portfolio on your company’s website. Once you have built these sites, you can charge money for any maintenance they would like from you in the future. They just got a free website from you, so that is completely acceptable.

Getting Clients
To be honest, getting clients is not actually too difficult. Back when I wanted to start my own web design company, people would tell me it was a bad idea because there would be “dry patches”. This means going for a while without any business. Put it this way: if you put effort into marketing yourself effectively, you will absolutely get clients. Before I learned to become more organized, I had queues of clients that I just did not have the time for. This excited me though. I really enjoyed marketing myself because I believed in what I was trying to sell. I truly believed that my potential clients needed my services in order for them to further their business, and I still do believe that.

The best way to start getting clients is for you to find them, rather than them finding you. It costs a lot of money advertising for people to come and find you, so do not worry about spending that kind of money just yet. Here are some tips on marketing yourself effectively at low-cost:

Get some business cards printed. I started by getting a few hundred printed for cheap, with my company name and business logo on them. Include important details such as your own name, along with your cell number, e-mail address, and of course the URL of your company’s website. I used cardsmadeeasy.com as I am based in the UK. If you are in the US, uprinting.com has some good value printing services. 1000 cards for $25 is pretty awesome.

Walk into small businesses of any sort and tell a member of staff who you are and what you do, then just leave your business card with them. If they show an interest and ask questions, give them as many details as possible. And remember, you are selling yourself, so give them the reasons why your services will benefit them greatly. You may get their business there and then, or you may have to wait for a call. Do this to as many local places as possible, especially independent businesses.

For potential clients that are not based quite as close by, write a short letter explaining your services just like you would face-to-face, then mail multiple copies, with a business card, to places that have bad websites or perhaps even no website at all. I got a good few clients by doing this, but the only downfall is that they may want you to travel to them if they do business with you. That is why local clients are best. It can be very worth it anyway though, especially if it is someone paying you a lot of money.

Referrals. Ask all of your friends and family if they know anybody who needs a website doing. Hand out more business cards and tell them to pass them onto people. If you are not getting results, then put a twist to it. Offer potential referrers a small percentage of what a client will pay you if they find that client for you. You could offer around 5-10% depending on what you are being paid. Advertise it on your website too. This is useful for getting those first paying clients in, but to be honest I still use this method today because it does get me good business, and word about the company spreads.

Similarly to the above, you could do a special offer that is to take place for limited time only. You could offer 10% off of any quoted price, or something like $50 off with a promotional code. I now only do this with some of my fixed-price services, such as website packages and my hosting services. These kind of things are really great for drawing customers in, trust me. We all love discounts.
Be Prepared…

I have met some great people through my design business, but there will always be clients that are difficult to deal with. To avoid clients walking all over you, make sure you put everything into writing if someone is going ahead with your quoted service. Also, take a deposit upfront. Usually anywhere from a third to a half of the full amount is a good idea, then they can give the rest during and after the development of the product. Or the rest of it could be put into the form of a monthly payment plan if the client is budgeting.

The last thing you want is a client refusing to pay for many long hours of your hard work. Yes, people can be this cruel, even if they seem very nice! So secure some money upfront before going ahead with the project.

Extending Your Services
Doing bespoke web design is great to start with and as your primary service, but why stop there? As you grow, your services can too. Why not also offer logo design, video creation, Flash animation, DVD authoring, media printing, or perhaps multiple-use web templates? How about buying reseller hosting so that you can provide a hosting service to go hand-in-hand with your clients’ websites? You can also look at offering services for certain types of websites such as e-commerce, database-driven websites, CMS (Content Management Systems), etc. You could do work for marketing campaigns. I have also seen design companies provide website management training at hourly rates.

There are so many possibilities in this industry which gives you the opportunity to make more than a comfortable amount of money. Just be sure not to offer too much from the beginning, because you may find that it is just too difficult to deliver. It may also mean more investing in one go.

Conclusion
Thank you if you had the patience to read this little guide, and more importantly, I hope you got something out of it. I think that anybody is capable of starting a profitable web design business, and to top it off, it is something that is so flexible it can be worked around your job or studies if you wish not to do it full-time.

If you have any questions or suggestions then please post a comment. Keep in mind that everything I have written is based on my own experience in becoming a self-employed web designer. Perhaps you disagree on a part of the guide due to your own experiences. If so, please do post a comment. Other established designers reading may well have other methods of becoming a good business. I am interested to hear.

Continue reading this post

Tips To Make Autoblogging


Many asked how to make an autoblog. How is it works? What is autoblogging? Well autoblogging is not a blog about cars, although an “auto blog” may mean exactly that. Autoblogging is a term used to describe automated blogs and automated blogging. In other words, instead of the usual method of writing the content yourself, or pasting articles from article sites manually, you can actually automate the content and linking for your blogs. What it takes is the correct mindset, the correct method and the correct tools.

1) The Mindset of An Autoblogger
Firstly, an autoblogger has to learn to manage expectations. No matter how good you get at autoblogging, you’re never going to produce high quality sites that attract a loyal fan-base using autoblogging methods. Nothing beats content that is original and written by a human being.

That being said, the wise autoblogger knows that all he really needs from one of his “autoblogs” is a few hundred to a few thousand visitors a month, and just one or two ways of turning those visitors into a profitable revenue stream.

If he can achieve this, his blog would be considered a success! He then moves on to a different blog, probably on a totally different topic or niche.

2) How To Blog Automatically
The method most people know is republishing content from RSS feeds. The only problem is that most of these people use the same RSS sources everyone else is using. They grab RSS feeds from news sites, PR sites and blog listings like Google’s Blogsearch or Technorati.

Needless to say, it doesn’t work very well. RSS is now a fully developed technology, and you’ll be surprised to find that forums, directories, regular websites and even online groups have their own RSS feeds. All you really need to do is figure out a concept for using these feeds, and then create your autoblog.

Besides using RSS feeds, articles are also a good way of adding content to your blogs. However, unless you’re doing this automatically, the amount of time spent copying articles and pasting them into your blog may not be worth your time.

Another autoblogging tactic is using data feeds from affiliate networks, and posting them into blog posts with your affiliate ID included. Unlike using RSS feeds from blogs, people don’t get annoyed when you do this.

3) Autoblogging Tools
Let start with the hosting. If you’re autoblogging, one blog is not enough. You’ll need to create and manage a handful of blogs at the same time. Therefore, you need some sort of reseller or VPS (Virtual Private Server) that can handle many domains and individual accounts for each blog.

Next comes the blogging platform. As far as autoblogging goes, nothing comes even close to Wordpress, an open-source blogging software that you can use on your own domains, and modify as you see fit.

One of the most important tools you’ll need is an “RSS feed aggregator” like or other similar software. An aggregator is the key to almost all autoblogging techniques, as most other applications like article posting and data feed posting requires it.

To expand your blog’s traffic exponentially, you’ll also need a language translator script installed on your autoblogs. Having this script will instantly multiply your traffic and earnings without any extra work on your part.

Lastly, you’ll also need a social bookmarking script that automatically submits your new blog posts to like Del.icio.us. Submitting you posts to social bookmarking sites is still a good way to get your blogs indexed and ranked in the search engines.

Continue reading this post

Power.com Locked From Facebook and Now Myspace


Power.com is a social network aggregator which helps people “link” all their social networks (Myspace, Facebook, Orkut, etc.). For those that don’t really know, it had a huge start when it was first launched in November 2008. Many users quickly stormed to the site to make it their “everything” social site. Wanna chat with Robert on Myspace AND Michelle on Facebook? Power.com help. The only problem with their “plan” is that they started taking users away from these sites… and guess who got pissed?

It wasn’t until recently that Facebook denied these wonderous powers to Power.com, but Myspace had to jump on the bandwagon. Facebook actually took blocking out Power.com a step further and sued the social networking site for scraping data from the Facebook.com site. The lawsuit was resolved, but it got a lot of the other sites thinking as well: let’s stop these leaching freaks!

It was said that Myspace users logging into their accounts was a bit more compromised than many of the other social networking sites. Power.com stored the logins/passwords on their servers rather than just using Myspace’s “OAuth” authentication method (for the non-savvy people: it means that instead of logging into Myspace servers through Myspace using Power.com, they just kept your login information and logged in themselves… sort of like a “middle man” service). Big no-no. Super serious charges, and I don’t blame Myspace at all for being pissed.

For those interested in Myspace’s direct statement, I’ve posted it below:
MySpace has been in talks with Brazilian Website Power.com to express our objections with how the company has been collecting user data from the global MySpace community and to persuade Power.com to implement MySpace’s secure log-in authentication process.

From the home page of their site, Power.com is soliciting MySpace users for their private credentials including username and password in order to gain access to MySpace profiles and is using the MySpace trademark in doing so. Power.com’s actions violate our Terms of Service and their methodology to collect this information implies an affiliation with MySpace that confuses our community and gives our users a false sense of security that MySpace has endorsed the practices of Power.com. In fact no official partnership or other affiliation between the two companies exists. While we are in conversations with Power.com, their failure to implement MySpace’s secure log-in authentication process in accordance with our Terms of Service presents us with a unique set of security challenges. Per our stringent safety policies created to protect sensitive user information, effective immediately, MySpace will no longer allow Power.com to gain access to user accounts.

It’s imperative that MySpace is able to effectively manage site security. The tactics being used by Power.com are compromising our ability to keep user data safe, private, and within our users’ control. Our goal is to help create a more social Web but key functionalities such as a simplified and secure log-in authentication process must be protected and maintained. As of today, Power.com is refusing to implement a simple technology provided by MySpace that would secure this process for our global users. We are confident that we’ll come to a resolution with Power.com quickly.


Definitely legit worries from Myspace. Let’s see what happens to the service in the future.

Continue reading this post

Enhanced Your PPC With Google Sktool


The team at Google AdWords unveiled a new beta testing keywords discovery tool and it looks pretty good. You can find the tool here: http://www.google.com/sktool. This new tool allows you to enter in web addresses and then discover keywords from the pages. This could be an excellent tool for competitor keyword harvesting. The wealth of information that the tool provides is excellent and a wonderful step up from the previous AdWords keyword tool found at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.

The new beta version provides the information that you really want in order to make smart decisions such as competitor volume, suggested bid, ad versus search share, the actual number of monthly searches for your query on Google.com, and even the page title and hyperlink from where the keyword was extracted from on the site - good to find hidden pages. You can add the keywords you like directly to your AdWords account by ticking off the box, save to draft, then view the draft keywords, and select export. You can then grab the .csv file. It may be in the future that you will be able to automatically add the keywords to your account, but for now, you get them as a .csv file which is still very useable for power users.

See what you think about this new tool, run it through it’s paces and let me know what you think. Personally I think that it is a very welcome tool to the AdWords arsenal.

Continue reading this post

Secret To Get Free Campaign From Facebook


It’s been pretty much listed around some places around the net, but I figured I might as well go ahead and post up the directions and steps to get $350 worth of free Facebook advertising money in your account. The uses of having these can be pretty much: get people to your websites, forward them to other websites, kick start traffic with a new site, take advantage of a free offer, and I’m guessing another million variations of the already listed advantages to getting free Facebook advertising money. Some coupon codes expire January 30, 2009! So if you want to take advantage of these, GO FOR IT ASAP!

The steps are list below

1. Create a Facebook account if you do not have one (or use your existing Facebook account)

2. Login to your Facebook account and then click the “Advertising” link from the bottom of the page. Create an ad and later– you’ll able to change the daily budget and CPC (cost per click). You will need a credit card here to confirm your account, but the charge is only to confirm space on your account. If there are any temporary holds, they will be reversed and your advertising money will end up being drawn from your coupons completely before charging your credit card.

3. After creating the advertising account and getting the “Congratulations Message” from Facebook, click “Billing” > Click “Funding Sources” > Click “Enter Coupon Code”

4. Enter these coupon codes one at a time. Enter a Facebook coupon and wait for success message, then enter another. There are a lot of codes, but they are all worth it!
1652-YMF5-23XX-CM66
EVCT-54YH-K1V8-EKE1
TE8Y-46T7-NCRE-JX3C
EXEX-4P47-38JX-4W20
8CH1-5VW1-Y96N-2P94
XXWW-7JVC-3FH6-R61T
053K-H148-T1PE-98NC
21VT-RRNM-8RWN-2X1C
FCK0-T70X-HME3-FJ6C
XXEE-28X7-26NT-W4R8
WN18-6XF9-NY1F-WCE7 - Expires 4/01/09

5. Go to http://www.new.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=24249628048

6. Click “Go to Application” > Click “Allow”

7. Submit a brief profile. Use the same email address that you used for your Facebook account (the one you are using your Facebook advertising coupon codes for).

8. Check the email for coupon code.

9. Enter the coupon to your advertising account following the same step as previous (Add another $100 to
take your total to $350).

There you have it! Hopefully this helps some people out there who didn’t already know about this! There are reports that some of the Facebook advertising codes don’t work anymore, but for the most part… they have been working with everyone. If there are any issues with this, I’ll post any updates (for the time being).Great way to take advantage of free advertising for your websites/domains for sale.

And again…

WARNING: Some people have reported that Facebook has actually began to ban accounts that are using multiple coupon codes… some don’t care and are risk-takers, but just wanted to let it be known! Use at your own risk!

Continue reading this post

Small Business Web Site Design


One requirement of running a small business is multi-tasking. The owners of small business often perform the functions of operations director, marketer, researcher, logistician, and resource planner. Why take on so much at once? Because of the balance sheet. With more limited capital resources and capacity, they are required to invest every last dollar toward maximum gain over the short and long terms. Hence, small business are often more wary than large businesses when it comes to choosing a web hosting plan.

Web hosting services have luckily figured out that big businesses don’t need them anymore. Instead, they turn to data servers and commercial software for their needs. So going after the big companies isn’t always a strategy that makes the most sense. They can actually do better attracting younger and smaller businesses.

One the other hand, because of the proliferation of small businesses that require no-frills web hosting plans, the small profit made on each transaction adds up to millions of dollars. Therefore, web hosting vendors are leaving no stone unturned in their quest to woo small businesses.

While you can find various small business web hosting packages, it’s not so easy to decide among them. As the manager of a small business, your initial thought should be to make use of a no-cost plan to host your site. You shouldn’t think in terms of a fee-based plan unless your traffic increases drastically or you find yourself facing repeated downtimes.

Along with web hosting services, providers also offer allied services. This means that web hosting providers have everything you need to get your website off the ground and keep it running. Services that go along with having a website like web design, domain name registration, email services, and site migration are often found in the same company. So in addition to strict web hosting, carefully evaluate all the services offered by each hosting plan you consider.

It would serve you well to learn the terminologies used in the brochures of small business web hosting before making any decisions. You should learn to differentiate between dedicated web hosting, shared hosting, managed hosting, clustered hosting, grid hosting, and reseller hosting. Understanding the taxonomy of web hosting services would ensure that you do close scrutiny of the service proposals received from hosting providers.

Small business web hosting merchants know that it is the small businesses that are the most loyal customers and they work hard to keep them. Choosing the right hosting plan can be hard, but many smaller businesses start out with a free hosting plan and upgrade once the site traffic increases. Many providers off plans that will bundle everything you need in the same package. Such as web design, domain name, business mail and more. Prior to joining a plan, it is important to research the different types of plans offered and find the best one that will benefit you the most.

Continue reading this post

Making Your Own You Tube Video


A lot of people wanting to create their own youtube video. Most of them haven't have the right tool to make their own vidoe. I bet more of them also do not own camcorder, video camera or whatever they called it.

But thanks to google with their great stuff. Introducing the Picasa3, google picture application. Now any newbie also can create their own video using their own picture. Picasa3 from Google now has a nifty little button called "Make Movie" which will make a slideshow of any photos you choose from a Picasa album. You can add audio (make sure it's public domain or copyright free!) There are a variety of ways to display and scroll your photos, you can add text slides in between, you can add captions to each photo, and much more!

Then once you create the movie, you can automatically upload it to YouTube (I had trouble with that feature) but you can easily upload it through your YouTube account.

Here are steps how to create your own video

Viewing Video files in Picasa 3
You may have several video files in your library right now and not even know it! Picasa 3 gives you an easy way to find out. Just click the filter, ‘Show Movies Only.’ You’ll find the filters at the top of the Picasa window in the middle. Movies is the 4th filter, and it looks like a little piece of movie film. Click that once and now the only items that will be showing in your library are video files.

Uploading Video Files to Web Albums
You can select video files just like you can select photos. When you click once on it, it appears in the ‘picture tray’ or ’selection area.’ Then, anything that is selected will get uploaded to your Picasa Web Album just by clicking the Upload button (in Picasa 2 this was the Web Album button.) When your friends and family view your Picasa Web Album, they will be able to play your video as easily as as viewing your photos!

Uploading Video Files to Youtube
Picasa 3 has added a lot of new functionality for video files, including a single-click method to upload to Youtube. When you double-click on any video file, you will see the ‘Upload to Youtube’ button at the left. Click on that, make sure you are logged in to your Youtube account, fill out the information fields, and click ‘Upload Video.’ Picasa 3 takes care of all the rest. Just sit back and wait - this will take a while. And, once it’s uploaded, then Youtube still takes more time to ‘process’ it. It may even take a day, but then you can go to youtube.com, log in to your account, and view the video. You can also send a link to anyone else so they can view it too. OR embed it in your blog.

If you love this post, it will be great if you can leave your comment here

Continue reading this post

More Adsense Tips


Google AdSense program is a great way to earn income from your site which does not require you to put any extra effort to sell any product or service. Anyone would be able to increase profit from a website, if he/she knew how to utilize AdSense program profitably. A few tips are given here for so that you could increase click through rates and revenue earned from your site.

The most important tip would be to create a site which is of good quality. Advertisers would like to select those sites for placement of their ads which is of high quality. These sites would attract higher paying advertisers for placement of their advertisement.

This will help you to earn more per click. You should try to make your site interesting and providing up to date information. This would attract return visitors also which will farther add to your earnings.

You should place your advertisements near the top of your page. Therefore, a visitor to your page would not have to scroll down the page to view the advertisement. But, you should not place them at the very top of the page as people generally do not pay much attention to that area.

If your site contains a large article of more than 500 words in size, you may consider embedding your advertisement inside the content of the article by using tables. This will wrap the content around the advertisement. This will improve the visibility of your ad as it would be likely that more people would be clicking the advertisement.

To make your advertisement look more attractive and to stand out within the content of the site, try to make it more colorful and the colors used suit match the colors used for the main links of the site.

If the page you are displaying has lots of content, you could consider placing more than one ad. AdSense program allows you to place three ads and two link units per page. But, you should take care that the content of the site should not look squeezed too much because of placement of multiple advertisements.

Another good tip would remove the borders around these ads. That would help these ads to get properly blended with the content of the site.

Google AdSense accounts are provided with tracking facility. You should utilize this facility to find out how the ads placed on your site are working. You could make some experimentation to improve the result and get more clicks.

It is hoped that by acting on these tips you would be able to earn more revenue from your site with the help of AdSense program.

Continue reading this post

Quality Article + Right Niche = High Adsense Payout


First before you can actually earn a steady income from Adsense, you have to think where are you going to get your traffic from. If you are thinking to bring traffic from articles, all you need to do is to write some articles. But bare in mind, 3 or 4 articles will NOT do the job. What you need is to steadily write and take your time. Remember time is money.

When you get to the point where you're having some success, or when you have some money to spen, my recommendation is to do outsource writing. You can get a 300 word article written for between $1 and $15 depending on the size of your order and the quality you want. If you have a site that will make $100/month once mature, it is easy to justify investing $100 in articles to get it started.

But the most important is you have to select niches with high paying keywords. Examples are weight loss, travel, acne, legal advice etc. You must not build sites with low CPC - like sports socks or cheese.

You can screen your niche ideas for CPC using a tool like the one at SpyFu.com. To see how crazy the CPC can get, check out this list of high paying keywords. http://www.spyfu.com/TopList.aspx?listId=3.

Now, you are correct that you will not get paid the AdWords CPC. When estimating AdSense earnings, I assume that Google will keep 50% and the content network will result in a 60% reduction from that. So, I assume that I can get a CPC of 20% of the AdWords cost. That is a rough estimate. It means that if someone is paying $5 for a click, I will get to keep a dollar.

If you are getting $0.01 for clicks, you are either targeting a low-paying niche or your account is “smart priced” due to low conversions or low CTR.

See, if you are trying to make money from AdSense, you need to understand some basic economics. The AdSense ad is on your site in the first place only because some business person is paying Google to get a click that will convert into a sale. Google's gross profit is the amount that Google get's paid for the click minus the cost that takes them to get the click.

What is Google's cost to get the click? Well, fundamentally, they need to pay for the people and machines that run AdSense, and they need to pay you for the click. That is why they care about CTR (Click Thru Rate). It costs them money to show the ad (computer time, bandwidth, etc). If they have to show an ad 100 times to get one click, they are bummed. That is why the penalize advertisers and publishers for low CTR.

So, the money they pay you is the amount they got for the click minus their cost and profit (basically). This means that if you want to get good money from your niche site using AdSense, you need to target high-paying keywords.

What do you think about AdSense? Are you having any luck making money with it?

Continue reading this post

$100 cash from Cheap Mobile


To celebrate the launching of the About Cheap Mobiles Blog, Aboutcheapmobiles.com is proud to announce its first ever blog contest!

One lucky blogger could easily win the the prize money of $100 via Paypal!!

TITLE: $100 cash from Cheap Mobile
PRIZE: $100 cash
DEADLINE: 28 February 09
WEBSITE/URL: http://www.aboutcheapmobiles.com/competition-time/
METHOD: Subscribe/Blog or both

DESCRIPTION:
1) Subscribe your email address to our RSS feed using the box in the top right of this site and/or
2) Write a quick post on your blog about this site (you can link to any article you like or just use our homepage. Make sure the hypertext you use to link back to us includes the phrase “Cheap Mobiles”.

If you do both, you get two entries to the competition.

Once you’ve completed those steps, just leave a comment on the post at http://www.aboutcheapmobiles.com/competition-time/
Continue reading this post

Win $100 cash, 500 business cards & more…



TITLE: Win $100 cash, 500 business cards & more…
PRIZE:
1st Prize:
$100 CASH from CSS Design Gallery
2nd prize:
500 business cards(including Free Shipping) from BIZ Business cards
3rd Prize:
2000 Entrecard Credits and 468×60 Banner for a month at The Nexus - Feed Your Brain
4th Prize:
125×125 banner ad for a month at Laptops & Notebooks Reviews
125×125 banner ad for a month at Premium Wordpress Themes
DEADLINE: 31 January 09
WEBSITE/URL: http://cssdynamite.com/contest/win-100-cash-500-business-cards-more…/

METHOD: Blog + Subscribe + Social Bookmarking

DESCRIPTION:
How to enter:
5 points - Stumble this post.
5 points - Digg this post - http://digg.com/design/Win_100_cash_500_business_cards_more
15 points - Subscribe to RSS Feeds - http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverifySubmit?feedId=2857645
20 points - Blog about this contest. (You can get the sponsor links here http://cssdynamite.com/contest-sponsors.txt)
Contest starts from January 15th, 2009 and ends on January 31th, 2009. The winners will be selected randomly using Random.org and announced on February 1st. Remember the more you do, the more chances to win.

Continue reading this post

Spread The Love Contest



wealthymiser is a place where you can learn how be a successful blogger. Officially created on the 1st day of 2009, the site owner Deepak Thomas already start making such a quality article for everyone.

If you are new about search engine optimisation, wealthymiser is a good place to start with. You can see step by step guide how you can improve your seo, bring a good traffic to your website and many more.

Thats not all, wealthymiser also give a lot of tips about blogging. What you should do and what you shouldn't. Trust me, you will be amaze how easily you can learn from his guide.

Furthermore, from there also you can have a look a great site for you to get a nice vector logo without having you searching all over websites looking for a suitable logo for your site.

And here come the most interesting part, wealthymiser is currently organize a contest called "Spread The Love Contest" where you can win $100 paypal cash without have to break too much sweat. For details please refer below;

TITLE: wealthymiser Spread The Love Contest
PRIZE: $100 paypal cash
DEADLINE: 27 February 09
WEBSITE/URL: http://wealthymiser.com/contests/jan-09-spread-the-love.htm
METHOD: Blog

DESCRIPTION: Refer website


Continue reading this post

All in one information pack you will find


Internet is the large place for everyone to look almost everything that they want. How interesting internet can be, but somehow there is some problem of many users will face especially someone who looks for information for their site/blog. Often we have to search or visit different website just to get information such as seo technique, blog script, internet tips and tricks and many more guide. Like myself, I always need to go to different blogs whenever I'm looking for blogging tips.

And fortunately I stumble upon to http://techravings.info owned by Aditya. And now I've become a regular reader in his blog. What amaze me that he can cope a different categories into one blog. I frequently visit http://techravings.info to find an information especially on search engine optimization, blogging resources, latest technology and many more.

I wish to learn personally from him, how he digest all the information and present it with a great quality. Without saying more, prove me wrong about him!

But wait, surely you will like him because recently he is giving away at least $500 in his contest. So move your cursor now and point to techravings contest which I bet you wont just let it go.

Continue reading this post

Article Marketing to Drive Traffic


If you have skills in writing an articles, why not use it as the way to market yourself? Article marketing is one of the best way to drive more traffic or more precise, unique traffic to go and visit your website. In case you're not familiar with the term, article marketing is a technique where you write articles about topics related to your website and then submit them to one or more websites called article directories.

You're probably aware that fresh nad quality content is often an important factor of getting traffic from search engine to your website or blog. We can see a lot of webmasters and bloggers frequently use this method to promote and help other webmasters and bloggers who looking for a new articles for their own sites.

Whenever you submited your articles to the various directories, you are giving the permission to other webmasters to use your article on their websites and blogs. And with condition that they include 'about the author' section at the end of your article.

Whenever there is someone posting your articles on their site, they are also promoting you on the about author section. So anyone who reads their blog can see your name. Your article can maybe end up in thousand of other websites with millions of reader.. and I lost count already how many who may click the link to your site.

It is easy to find a article directories to submit your article. All you need to do is just type in 'article directories' on your search engine and plenty of article directories will eventually come out on the result page. All you need to do is just looking for the right website to publish your articles.

The topics you can choose to write about are limitless. What is the focus of your website? Be creative and think of why someone would want to visit your website and create an article about it. Someone who sells Tupperware for instance, could easily write about food related items or take it a step further an write an article about the fact that the plastic containers are great for organizing toys, bathroom items or even nuts and bolts in the garage.

And if you don't really enjoy writing, it's not a problem. You can hire writers to ghostwrite your articles at various places on the internet. How much you'll pay will depend on different factors, but usually you'll wind up paying between $8 and $20 per 500 word article.

So, dont waste your talent and skills. Now everything that you have actually can turn it to profit. What say you?


Continue reading this post

Affiliate Marketing and Making Money With Free Traffic


A lot of people build a website and then sit back and relax, convinced that they are going to become rich making money online.

For your information, website does not just automatically appear high in the search engine result and easily get traffic. There are many more website competing each other to get the same traffic that you want depending on your niche and keywords. It might be millions actually.

All you need to do is promoting your website and your affiliate program and try to get it noticed. This means your targeted traffic will visit your place when they found out about your website.

Here are 4 methods to drive traffic to your site to make money online.

Method 1 - Directories
Search for your keyword and "Directory" or "Link Exchange" on the internet and you will find hundreds of places to put your link. Search for "Affiliate Program Directory" and you will find sites waiting to specifically list your affiliate program.

Method 2 - Articles
This is an great way to generate traffic and to promote your site. Submitting your article to directories will give you backlinks, especially a quality article, you will get plenty of traffic to your site. Newsletter and website owners will pick up your articles and use them as content, which will help to promote your site to a much wider audience. Mention you affiliate program in the resource box. or the body of the article. You can mention your affiliate program in the body of the article (Note: Some sites do not allow affiliate links in the body).

Method 3 - Viral Marketing
This is a very powerful method of getting traffic to your site. Viral marketing. Finding a quality affiliate product that people will want (such as an Ebook, video, games) and will share with their friends and associates creates the viral momentum of making money online - and it's free.

Method 4 - Forums
Forums are one of the best free ways to market your website. Participating in a forum, you can establish yourself as an authority and a trusted expert on your chosen subject. This will cause people come to visit your website to find out more information.

You must promote your affiliate program to get targeted traffic and to make money online. This will also allow you to organically move up the search engine rankings through backlinks and the use of keywords. If you are someone who is serious about making money online, then must make all efforts to start taking your website promotion seriously.

Continue reading this post

Make Money Online - Does it Work?


If you had wondered if making money Online works, here is a few things to discover. People can make money from home on the Internet many different ways. And yes, you can make money doing this thing called "Internet Marketing". Some companies or so called "guru's" may try to get you to try their program or website, which in turn they will tell you that you can make truck loads of money, but in reality, unless you put forth effort on your part, you more than likely wont make as much money that you had anticipated on.

Learning ways, free or that cost money, of making money Online can be done and can produce a great income to you whether you do it as a hobby for extra pocket change, or go father in depth with it to surpass your current means to making an income. Learning how to make money without spending money can be done. The only thing it would cost you is your time and effort. Same thing goes for learning how to make money with and investment. There are ways to use your money to advertise and promote things on the Internet to turn a profit.

Making money Online does work when you do it correctly. A big reason why many people fail is because they do not apply themselves. If you can avoid getting lost in all the eye catching, shiny and proposed lazy way of making money Online, you will have a great chance to start seeing a return for you time and/or money invested.

Continue reading this post

Affiliate Marketing FAQ(#6): Which Affiliate Program To Join?


"I am a newbie in this field, which affiliate program/network should I join?"

"I just created a new website about ..., can you tell me which is the best affiliate network for me?"

Because there are so many affiliate networks and in-house affiliate programs, many new affiliate marketers don't know which one to choose first. So the above questions are the most frequently asked questions in affiliate marketing forums.

The bottom line to choose your affiliate program is that it has the products/services you want to promote. So the first time you need to choose these qualified affiliate programs whose products and/or services are relevant to your website's topics. By doing so, you have more chances that your visitor will make a purchase and your conversion rate will be great.

And then you must assess the qualified affiliate programs and choose the best ones from them for the second time. The factors you need to consider are:


1. Commission rate: what is the percentage of sales amount will you get? 20% or 50%?
2. Performance tracking and report: do the affiliate program provide a real-time and detailed report?
3. Service: does the affiliate network has a good service for both advertiser and publisher?
4. Payment: does the affiliate network pay affiliates the full commission amount on time?

Here I just list the most famous and trustworthy affiliate networks for your information.


1. Commission Junction(CJ)
2. LinkShare(LS)
3. Google Adsense
4. ClickBank (CB)
5. Paydotcom
6. Ebay Partner Network(EPN)
7. Amazon Associates Program


Continue reading this post

Affiliate Marketing FAQ(#5): What Are The General Steps?


"I have read your previous FAQs. I know what is affiliate marketing and there are big earning potential in it. So If I want to make money from affiliate marketing, where can I start? I am not afraid of hard work, but please show me what Should I do and how can I become successful in affiliate marketing, OK?"

Well, if I answer your question in details, that can be written into a whole book as most of ebooks teaching you how to make money online. So let's cut to the phase and tell you the general steps of affiliate marketing.

1. Find the proper products or services to promote

What is so called proper product? It must meet 3 requirements. Firstly, it must be in a profitable niche market and in great demand, therefore you have chance to sell it to your customer. Secondly, you know the product very well and have strong interesting in it. This will enable you write good product introduction and reviews to presell the product effectively. And the last one, the merchant who sell the products must have an affiliate program for you to join, regardless of an in house affiliate program or third-party affiliate program.

There are many way for you to find the proper products. The most common way used by other affiliate markers is to use the keyword suggest tools, for example, Google AdWords Keyword Tool, Wordtracker free keyword suggestion tool and the powerful great Keyword Elite Software. And you can also check the hot products listed on Ebay and Yahoo! shopping and find what products interest you most.

2. Set up your marketing channels.

To sell the products to your customers, you need to let your potential customers know your products first. So how? Here I list several marketing channels for your reference:

1.) Build a website/blog. A website or blog is the most fundamental tool for affiliate marketing. You can build a blog or content website to promote the products by writing product reviews, or you can build an affiliate store or a comparison shopping website list relevant products together.The more visitors come to your website/blog, the more chances that they are persuaded to make a purchase. Not only is it a good channel to contact thousands of your potential customers, but also a platform for the other marketing channels.

You can build your website all by yourself, or get other web designers build it for you, and you also can buy a ready-made website packages with everything done for you. The cost will range from no more than $100 to thousands of dollars.

2.) Build your newsletter/Opt-in Email list

Opt in e-mail is a term used when someone is given the option to receive "bulk" e-mail, that is, e-mail that is sent to many people at the same time. Typically, this is some sort of mailing list, newsletter, or advertising. Opt-in Mail list or newsletter is a great marketing channel to promote your products or services. If used properly, Opt-in mails have a higher conversion rate. Building a big list can take years of hard work and effort but the rewards are worth it, because an Opt-in Email list with a large quantity of targeted subscribers will make a lot of money for you.

Email marketing is good marketing channel but don't send spams without permission. It does not works and you will be banned quickly by those mail servers. You need your potential customers to subscribe to your Opt-in mailing list first and then confirmed by them again. This is called confirmed subscription or closed-loop opt-in.

The most powerful way nowadays for you to get your Opt-in mail subscribers is giving out a free report/ebook/gift to your subscribers as a bonus, and the most often used email marketing software by affiliates is Aweber and GetResponse.

3.) PPC advertising Campaigns.

Per Per Click advertising is a quick way to get traffic to your website or your merchant's website. But you need to choose both the products and the keywords carefully and monitor your ad campaigns frequently, because you may spend a lot of money on PPC advertisements before you can make money from it. The most used PPC programs is Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.

3. Join in Affiliate programs and get your affiliate links

Well, now you can find and apply affiliate programs. There are many affiliate networks(CJ, linkshare, etc) or in house affiliate programs to choose from. Read their affiliate terms or Publisher Service Agreement carefully and then fill out their application form if you want to join in. Once you application is accepted, you can login your account and get your affiliate links. Then you need to place the affiliate links on your blog/website, insert them in you email content and create PPC campaigns with your affiliate links.

4. Promote your products, monitor your marketing status and get commissions.

Now you need to get your products known by as many as potential customers. You need to work hard to get more traffic to your blog/website, send useful emails with your affiliate links to your Opt-in mail subscribers and adjust your PPC campaigns from time to time. Doing all above 4 steps, You will start to make money from your hard work in affiliate marketing.

Continue reading this post

Affiliate Marketing FAQ(#4):How Much Money Can I Make?


I am 100% sure that this is one of the most concerned questions. In fact, it is very hard to answer. And the question should be answered by yourself. But I would like to provide relevant information here: The truth is top affiliates make more than 30K dollars (like Nabs) every month from affiliate marketing and make a decent living as full-time affiliates, but on the other hand, the unsuccessful affiliate marketers make much less even no money from it.

While the earning potential is unlimited, there are also objective conditions affecting your affiliate income:

1. Marketing Skills: How Skilled you are in Marketing and sales.

Affiliates are just like salesmen in a company selling products and/or services to their customers. As the good salesman sells much more than ordinary one and get much more performance bonus, the great affiliate who knows where the customers are, what the customers want and how to persuade the potential customers to buy will make much more money than who does not.

2. Audience Basis:How many potential customers you can contact.

The more people you can contact to sell your products and services, the more sales you can make to get commissions. Earning changes will increase when the number of your audience enlarges. So think about how many visitors you can get to you website, how many subscribers you can get for your opt-in mailing list, and how much clicks to your landing pages from your PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising campaigns.

3. The Conversion Rate (CR for short): How many visitors will become real consumers.

If you get a lot of people to your landing pages or merchants' websites, but the visitors soon close this pages without any further action, you will not make any money from them. So in fact, your affiliate income equals the traffic amount to your merchant's sites multiplied by Conversion Rate. Traffic does not mean money, but targeted traffic means, because targeted traffic often gets a higher conversion rate. What's more, the quality of your landing page and the merchant's sales copy will influence CR to a certain degree.

4. The Product itself:

There are different demands on different products or services. And different products are produced by different manufacturers with different quality and prices. Top affiliate marketers compare the product quality, prices and brand names, and choose the products carefully. Then they focus on marketing them to the most profitable level.

In a word, How much money you can make from affiliate marketing varies and depends on yourself. Because it is your own business, and it is you who choose the product, choose the marketing channels and take the marketing actions.


Continue reading this post

Affiliate Marketing FAQ(#3): What Are The Pros And Cons?


Why I should make money from affiliate marketing? What are the advantages of affiliate marketing? And is there any disadvantage of affiliate marketing I need to pay special attention? All the questions can be turned into one question instead: What are the pros and cons of affiliate marketing?

As any other thing in the world, affiliate marketing has its own pros and cons. Here is a list of both pros and cons I summarized for your information:

The Pros of Affiliate Marketing

1. You don't have to source or create your own product. Sourcing or creating your own product needs a lot of time and hard working. However, affiliate marketing allows you to sell other merchants' products and/or services and get commission from your promoting performance.

2. You don't need to invest a lot of money to start your affiliate business. No Inventory. No staff salary. You can start your affiliate marketing by building your affiliate website or blog in your spare time at home. It just take you no more than $100 to buy a domain name and a shared web hosting. Then you can use one of the popular Open Source CMSs to build your website for free. The CMS is easy to learn and easy to use. if you don't want to spend time on site building, you can go to GetAFreelancer or ScriptLance to find a professional at an affordable cost.

3. Free yourself from daily routine. If you run an online or offline business, and unfortunately you don't have any stuff working for you, then you need to work all days to deal with the whole process: purchasing, marketing, shipping, payments, and both before and after sales services. This can really be frustrated. But as an affiliate marketer, you don't need to make a living like that. Your only job is to market the merchants' products whenever and wherever you want. Once you establish you marketing channel and start to make money from it, you can leave it running automatically. Then you can start another affiliate project if you want. Finally the growing income will make you a flexible life.

4. You can promote any many products as you want. There are thousands of merchants ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses that wait for you to promote their products and/or services for them. That means you can run different affiliate businesses at the same time and make money from all of them. Some top affiliate marketers have more than 100 websites that promote different products and services and pump more than 30,000 US dollars into their bank accounts.

5. The Earning Potential is unlimited. How much money you can earn from affiliate marketing is up to you. As an affiliate marketer, you are your own boss and no one can control your income but yourself. The more you work on it, the more you will earn. It is safe to say that many top affiliate marketers make a decent amount of money and they don't need to worry their financial situation any more.

Now let turn to the cons of affiliate marketing.

1. You can not control the product quality and service provided by the merchants. Of course, it is the cost for not running the business by yourself. So if the product or service you promote is not as good as advertised, customers will require a refund and you will then lose your commission.

2. Some merchants may scam you. They may claim high commission rates and attract you to join their affiliate programs, but then lower the rates so that you are paid less. And the worst thing may happen that they close their affiliate program without informing you in advance. You need to be very carefully to choose which affiliate program you will join.

3. Affiliate marketing is not easy and quick. To be successful in affiliate marketing, you need to learn hard and work hard, especially when you are just start. Building your website is quick and easy, but it need hard work to create good content, also will take a long time for your to get a lot of visitors to you affiliate websites.

Continue reading this post

Affiliate Marketing FAQ(#2): How does Affiliate Marketing Work


If you want to make money from affiliate marketing, you must firstly find a product or service to promote. Since there are almost any product out there online, it is not difficult for you to find a great many products you want to sell. Let's say you finally find a merchant selling this product or service. This merchant has an affiliate program and provides a 20% commission for the sales amount.

You need to sign up this affiliate program by filling out an affiliate application form. Once you are accepted by the affiliate program and become an affiliate member, you will get at least one affiliate link which contains your affiliate ID. The affiliate link can be a text link, an image link or a javascript code.

Now you need to promote the products or services by promoting your affiliate links. You can place this affiliate link on your website or send this link to your potential customers by email, or promote this link on others' websites. But before doing so, you must read the affiliate agreement carefully, some merchants don't allow you to promote their products or services in certain ways. for example, you are forbidden by some merchants to promote your affiliate links in email, or bid their trademark as a keyword in search engine PPC campaigns.

As your affiliate links display many times because of your effective promotion, a percentage of potential customers will click your affiliate links and will be redirected to the merchant's website. During this progress, a tracking cookie is set on the visitor's computer. A tracking cookie is a small text file created and stored in your visitor's computer telling your merchant that this visitor is referred by you, but not other affiliates.

And some of these visitors will surely take required action, maybe make a purchase or leave their valid contact information to the merchant. Then you finish your job and your commission will be credited.

Normally, merchants pay their affiliates on a period basis. let's say, an affiliate program pays its affiliates by check or Paypal every month and the minimum payout is $50. So if your account balance exceeds $50 this month, you will get your payment in next month. This is a very simple example, but in order to prevent fraud, most affiliate will keep your commission pending for a certain period, for example, 30 days or 45 days.

Why the affiliate can only get commission when the visitor referred take required action? Because Affiliate marketing is mainly performance marketing, which is also called CPA (Cost Per Action). There are 3 types of required actions:

1. Pay-Per-Sale (PPS): the merchant pay their affiliates a percentage of sales amount or a fixed amount for the sales generated from their affiliate links.

2. Pay-Per-Lead (PPL): the affiliates earn a fixed amount when your visitor leaves his valid contact information and fills out a survey or requests a quote or information.

3. Pay-Per-Click (PPC): you get paid when you visitor clicks your affiliate link and go to your merchant's website.

Continue reading this post

Affiliate Marketing FAQ(#1): What Is Affiliate marketing


In the past days, I was asked several times about affiliate marketing by others who don't know it very well. Although I am currently not an expert in affiliate marketing, but to make it understood by a complete newbie, I investigated and gathered much material and will compile this into a brief series. Let's call it The Affiliate Marketing FAQ. This series assumes you don't know anything about affiliate marketing and covers the most basic information about it. If you are a Guru in this field, please ignore it.

FAQ #1: What is affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice that the affiliates promote a merchant's products or services and get paid from the merchant if a customer is redirected to the merchant's site by the affiliate and take a required action successfully (eg. making a purchase, filling out a from, etc). Affiliate program is also called "associate programs" or "partner programs".

In this process, three parties are involved: the merchant, the affiliate and the customer.

A merchant is an online business who provides certain products and/or services to its customers. Yes, not all the merchants have an affiliate program, but some of them would like to have an affiliate program and share the profits with their affiliates, for the purpose of increasing the sales volume and maximizing their profits.

An affiliate does not have his own products and/or services to sell but is a member of the merchant's affiliate program and helps to promote the merchant's products and/or services. As an affiliate, your task is to refer the potential custmors to the merchant's site and make a purchase or fill out a form. Once the customer take the action required by the merchant, you will get a commission.

Affiliate programs use The affiliate links to identify which affiliate should be credited. An Affiliate gets paid only if the customer is redirected by his affiliate link. You can not expect a commission from the merchant if the customer go to the merchant's website directly and buy something.

The concept of revenue sharing—paying commission for referred business—predates affiliate marketing and the Internet. But the fisrt well-known company who use affiliate marketing online is Amazon. Amazon launched its associate program in July 1996. The affiliate link provided by Amazon's associate program can easily and automatically track sales from its associate members and pay a monthly commission to them.

Affiliate marketing has grown quickly since its inception. "MarketingSherpa's research team estimated that, in 2006, affiliates worldwide earned US$6.5 billion in bounty and commissions from a variety of sources in retail, personal finance, gaming and gambling, travel, telecom, education, publishing, and forms of lead generation other than contextual advertising programs such as Google AdSense."(source: Wikipedia) And Today, the affiliate marketing business has become much bigger than before and will keep growing continuously.

Continue reading this post

Making Money Blogging


Yes make money blogging. I was writing blogs for a while unaware of the fact that you can make money doing this. Whether you make enough money to quit your job or make only enough to pay for your coffee in the mornings, it is entirely up to you. Success with blogging is real. There are thousands of real success stories out on the web of real people who make thousands or even millions writing blogs. In this blog I will get right to the basics on how to get started.

Have an Idea. Brainstorm ideas for your blog, something that will get you a lot of hits and traffic. The best way to do this is to have a unique idea, something that is hard to find information on, this way your blog will become a first hit. Another idea is something very popular, maybe a political blog or technology blog. There is a lot of competition for these but when people research information they visit a verity of sources. If your blog is interesting enough with good enough traffic, people will stumble upon it.
Blogger.com is a very good place to start blogging, I have found problogger.com to be very good as well

Ads and Traffic. Pretty simple yes, but very effective. Adsense is one of the best ways to monetize your blog. Make an Adsense account; add it to your blog. People that click your ads will make you money. Increase your blog traffic, more traffic means more people clicking on ads, which means money in your pocket. One of many ways to make money. My friend started a blog about a week ago and already made his first 5 dollars just from Adsense. It may not seem like a lot right now but that’s a huge step. At that rate if he gets about 5 a week that’s already 20 dollars his first month. Of course his traffic will increase significantly over time, you get the idea. Donations, Affiliate Programs, Advertising Companies or individuals. Lots of ways to make money.

Advertise. The web is the world, use it. Sign up on forums, social networks like Myspace, Facebook, blog sites, promote your blog. That is the key, more traffic= money. In this blog I will post what I have found to be successful websites for advertising and promoting your blog.

Can you make a living working online? Definitely. A lot of people do it, so why cant you? Do your research.

I hope this post helps some of you get started making money online. I will keep you updated on tips and different posts. Feel free to comment any suggestions or questions you may have thanks.

Continue reading this post

Search Engine Optimization Tips


Search engine optimization is a key factor to promote your website. Bring more traffic to your online business with following important tips to optimize your website and bring it in top search engine results.

More incoming links – more popular your web site
Make your website popular with more incoming links. Number of incoming links in your website will significantly affect web page rankings. Generally, more incoming links to your website is a good sign. It says that more people are visiting your site and find it useful. Each incoming link votes a “YES” for your site. Therefore, search engines interpret it as a sign of useful content, which will bring you in top lists. Build your links, get more incoming links. It is an important part of Internet marketing strategy. But another critical point to consider here is to maintain quality and significance along with quantity of such inbound links.

Proper Internal link structure
Each webpage must be prominent with proper internal linking structure. Highlight best content on relevant pages and showcase proper links on homepage. Use main navigation menu or links on homepage. Linking directly from the homepage generally gives better results.

Relevant incoming links
We have seen that the more incoming links to your website, the better ranking for it. But at the same time, such incoming links must be topically relevant to your website content. Generally, inbound links related to targeted keywords weigh more in search engine optimization. How other websites are linking to yours is as important as how many other websites are linking to your website. Try to get incoming links that are related to your topics.
It is also important that “who” is linking to you? That is your incoming links should be from popular sites within your business field. It is better to get one popular link from a fellow giant than to get 10 links from small, personal blogs. Try to get linking with the biggest websites related to your website. It shows that your website is linked with an authority and appears on top lists.

Target keywords in body text
Most of the people find a website by typing a word or phrase in popular search engines. This word or phrase is known as keyword in SEO field. Find out which keywords are used to search your business and use them as a key of successful SEO optimized web site.

Your website will appear in first or second search result page if you use proper keyword in its web page title as well as in its content. Which key words are appearing how often in your web pages? Your web site needs to show relevant content with proper keywords. An article with relevant keyword will make your web page worth looking in it. Use keywords in an article where it makes sense. Avoid keyword stuffing, but make relevant content with sensible words and phrases.
Analyze your SEO needs and apply these practical tips to make your web site search engine optimized.

Continue reading this post

4 Easy Ways to Start Earning Online Money From Home


For people whom money is not an object, sometimes they look at other off-line ways to start a business of their own. However many people who want to start a home business on the Internet want to do it for as little money as possible.

There are various ways to earn money online and again I will show you the door for you to walk and start your online business and start makes money.

1. Start your own blog and learn how to make money with it. Blogging is a popular way to make money on the Internet today and anyone can start a blog for free.

For example you can join Blogger.com which is owned by Google and set up a free blog in three easy steps. Millions of people have done this and continue to do so every day!

2. You can turn your blog into a home business and make money as well. One way to do is to blog about something that interests you, then add affiliate programs in text Link ads and in the form of banners.

Google offers an affiliate program known as Google Adsense where you can easily place a piece of code that brings up relevant advertisers to the theme of your blog. Every time a blog visitor clicks on one of these ads you make money. This is a very easy way to start a home business and get started making money too.

3. Join the affiliate marketing, and this is an extremely popular way to start a home business online for free. As an affiliate marketer you join affiliate programs provided for you by merchants in virtually every category you can think of.

The affiliate merchants give you products, your own website, marketing materials, and training to teach you how to make money selling the product. You earn a commission every time someone purchases a product from your affiliate marketing website. This is very easy to get started in and it's free!

4. One final way I want to mention starting a home business online is to join a network marketing company. You can get started with most network marketing businesses for less than $100.

The interesting thing about this business model is you can recruit distributors, an earn money on any products that they purchase or sell. You can also make money on distributors that they recruit and the products that move through your downline. The inexpensive way to get started with your own home business online is network marketing.

Continue reading this post

Secret Of Make Money In Automated Ways


There are lots of teenagers who want to be self independent and want to earn money online so that they can fulfill their wishes. The purpose of this report is to show you how you can earn a lot of money on autopilot. You don't have to do anything which requires lot of work. The method I am going to show you below involves investing little amount of money as low as $15, This you would require for this work:
1) A Web Hosting Account
2) A Domain

If you already have both things listed above you don't need to invest a single penny! You can get web hosting from hostgator for as low as $0.01 a month using coupon code: wordpress and a domain from namecheap for $8.81 using coupon: happy2009
I hope you enjoy this report and stay subscribed to my blog, because we would be bringing more reports like these, I'm sure you don't wanna miss them, Do you?
By staying subscribed to my blog you would get updates about the posts and more reports I write by email which we won't be sharing publicly.. There's lot do gain and nothing to loose, so go ahead and get subscribed if you haven't done so.

download Secret Of Making Money Automatically.txt

Continue reading this post