Posts Tagged ‘Affiliate Marketing’

Top 5 SEO Tips

December 7th, 2009

Anyone who pays attention to SEO techniques knows that getting high quality, “do follow,” and diverse backlinks is the key to search engine optimization. The challenge, of course, is where to find places to get powerful backlinks.

Most people build their link building strategies around blog and forum postings. This makes sense and is certainly part of our plans as well. However, it stands to reason that Google also knows that most marketers who are using SEO tactics to rank their sites are doing this, and it makes sense that they will be looking for a much more diverse backlink pattern to award the highest rankings to.

With that in mind, I’m going to share the top 5 non-forum/blog backlink sources.

1. Squidoo Lists

Squidoo.com is a great place to get links back to your site. Type the following into a Google search:

“add+to+this+list”+site:squidoo.com

You will be presented with a huge list of Squidoo lenses where you can add your site, with custom anchor text. Many of these have very high PageRank as well!

For extra credit, append +”keyword phrase” onto the end of this query, and you can target your links for relevance. For example, if you were trying to rank a fitness site you could type:

“add+to+this+list”+”fitness”+site:squidoo.com

2. Web 2.0 Profiles

Many Web 2.0 sites that allow you to create profiles and interact with others provide high PageRank, “do follow” links to the website listed in your profile. Some examples include www.linkedin.com, www.flickr.com, www.twibs.com, and www.zoominfo.com.

When creating profiles on these sites (which you could do for every niche you’re in) you’re able to list your website, which becomes a high quality backlink to your site.

3. Article Marketing for Links

Most marketers are familiar with writing articles to get traffic, but we write most of our articles for backlinks. If you’ve put a link to your site within the article (and let’s certainly hope you’re doing that!), every article that gets posted becomes a backlink (or even 2 or 3). The more articles that get posted, the more links you can build.

To get started, you simply have to write the article and submit it to a few article directories. I recommend: www.Ezinearticles.com, www.goarticles.com, and www.articledashboard.com.

There is absolutely no problem or penalty with submitting the same article to all three places (submit to Ezinearticles first, though, as they are the strictest with regard to unique content), and if you are accepted by all three and have 2 links in each article, your article will result in 6 high quality backlinks!

4. Relevant Lists and Resource Directories

There are many websites that function as a resource for people interested in a particular topic. For example, one site may maintain a list of top weight loss sites to visit. A backlink from pages like these can provide high quality, highly relevant backlinks. The relevance of backlinks is being talked about much more by Google lately, and it is assumed that relevance will play a larger role in site ranking in the near future.

The trick is to find these sites quickly and efficiently. We’ve found the following Google search queries to work very well:

“Keyword phrase” + “add url”

“Keyword phrase” + “add site”

“Keyword phrase” + “add website”

For example, if you’re looking to build backlinks to a fitness-related site, you can search for:

“fitness” + “add url”

Google will return a huge list of sites that will allow you to add your web site, creating a backlink to your site.

One thing to watch out for is that many of the sites you’ll come across will ask for a reciprocal link (i.e., we’ll link to you if you link to us). These should be avoided. It’s worth the effort to sift through these sites to find ones where you can add your link without having to place a reciprocal link on your site, because these links are less valuable for SEO purposes.

Make sure to keep a list or database of all of these great link building sites/resources that you find, so you don’t have to search for them again the next time!

5. Easy EDU Links

I’ve saved my favorite and most unique tip for last. It’s commonly accepted knowledge that .EDU and .GOV backlinks are valued very highly when Google decides on your search rank position. Some people also know the “trick” to finding blogs and forums on .EDU domains, where they can leave useful comments that link back to their sites. If you don’t, here’s a great Google query to find .EDU blogs:

site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”you must be logged in”

We’re after something more valuable, though. How about a whole page on an .EDU domain where you can put an article or a whole blog post, as opposed to just a comment? All you need is a willing college student!

At many schools, college students are given web space they can use for anything they like. Of course, this web space is hosted on the .EDU domain. All we need to do is to get this college student to allow us to post our material if they like it. But how do you go about finding these students?

If you really think about it, you can’t possibly be many degrees of separation away from knowing someone who’s in college right now. Think about your circle of friends and family, and branch out from there. For example, even though I’m “older” (I have teenage children… sigh), I still have 3 cousins that are attending college right now. If I expand my reach further, friends of my parents have children in college. I’m also getting to the age where my friends are starting to have kids in college. In short, I can’t throw a rock into my personal network without hitting a college student!

All you have to do is approach these students in your network and ask for their help, or give them something in exchange, for the privilege of putting some content on their site. It’s as simple as that.

I hope these tips help you improve your search engine rankings and make you a more successful Internet Marketer!

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Tags: Affiliate Marketing SEO Web Traffic

New F.T.C. Rules Now Apply

December 3rd, 2009

The new FTC guidelines take effecton December 1 2009. These new guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission will affect practically all marketing, but especially affiliate marketing.

One important change is that affiliates cannot use testimonials the same way they used to.

Another big change is that affiliates must disclose “material” connections. This means you as an affiliate must make it clear to your readers that you make money from promoting something. This disclosure runs in stark contrast to the strategy many affiliates take of keeping hidden the fact that they are affiliates.

Those are just two of the many impacts these new FTC guidelines will have. Affiliates should know all the major implications of these new FTC guidelines. You can do so by reading through FTC Toolkit, which is available at https://www.sitecompliant.com/.

Lawyers and FTC professionals wrote this course to educate affiliates on the recent FTC guidelines. This is a couse that you pay for but It’s is well worth the investment to protect your business.

The FTC is an American Federal Authority and as such it cannot exercise it power of my business as I’m based in Australia. However, I think it would be good prectice for all legimitate marketerers to take head of what the FTC is trying to achieve and apply it to your business.

I may seem hard, and if you have a lot of web site out there it may take some time to get things right, but I think it will clean up the industry ans make it more legimitate in the eyes of the people that matter, our current and future customers. Without them, we don’t have a business.

Please note that I am not a lawyer, I am an accountant. You should get information from lawyers on legal matters.

Make sure to go out and start researching today about these FTC guidelines.

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Tags: Affiliate Marketing

An Effective Article Writing Formula

October 26th, 2009

Here’s the formula that I learned from Willie Crawford, one of the Godfathers of Internet Marketing, to quickly write informative articles that get results. For many of the articles that are writen, the goal is to get visitors to a website where they take some action related to the topic of the article. Often the action that they take is to buy some product that is recommend.

Here is the formula that I use to write articles almost in an assembly line fashion. The reason that I write so many articles is that in some niches you need dozens, even hundreds of articles, to break through the clutter.

I begin with keyword research. You want to know what keyword phrases your ideal customers are using when searching online. They come online searching for solutions to their problems, and when they come across your articles offering a solution, they become raving fans.

To do keyword research, I often use the “Google External Keyword Tool.” You can find it by googling that term. This tool shows you how many searches are made on a given term in a month, plus how many webpages there are out there already targeting that phrase. The tool also suggests
related terms that you might want to target. You can use this tool to compile a list of suitable keywords and then download your research results in an Excel spreadsheet.

In looking at keywords, what you’re trying to identify, in addition to search volume, is “What problems are these searchers try to solve.” People come online looking for solutions to their problems. You identify those problems and then let them know (via your articles) that you have
the perfect solution.

In crafting my article titles, I use my keywords but also work in a promised benefit. My titles promise to show them the solution to a nagging problem. When they see that title listed in the search engines, this is what entices them to click through to your target site.

In crafting the body of my articles, I use the “problem, agitate, solution” formula. I describe the problem to let the reader know that I understand their problems. I then go into excruciating details explaining the problem, and how it’s not going to get any better unless they do
something about it. Finally, I point out the obvious solution, which is my recommended product.

Sometimes I only point them to a website to read more about the problem. On that website, they’ll also find my recommended solution. This is a less-threatening, soft-sell approach.

When I do my keyword research, I sometimes identify hundreds of related keywords that are being searched on a lot. At the same time, I identify several different painful problems (or variations of the same problem). This is what allows me to write articles in almost an assembly line fashion.

After the articles are written, I use an automated submission service to submit them to the top article directories. I use automated submissions because otherwise I’d spend countless hours submitting each article (not a very good use of our time).

In the resource box of these articles, I point readers to a target site. Where permitted I use anchor text in the links in these resource boxes. That anchor text is generally the keyword that I’m targeting (the same keyword that I used in my title).

I also post these articles to my blogs or maybe to a static page on one of my sites.

Since I like to leverage my time, I also turn many of my articles into videos, and podcasts. I generally create the videos by putting the main points of the articles on PowerPoint slides. Then I read the article as I go through the slides – recording then using Camtasia (screen capture
software).

Alternatively, I sometimes simply turn the text of an article into a PDF. Then I scroll down my computer screen reading the article, and again, recording it using Camtasia.

To create the podcast you can use recording software probably already on your computer, or you can download one many free pieces of software such as Audacity. Simply read the article as you record it. I generally save it as an MP3.

Submit the videos to video sharing sites, and submit the audio to podcast sites. I use an automated submission service for this, submitting to numerous sites!

Here’s one final tactic that I use to get my articles to rank higher for a target keyword and get noticed more readily in the search engines. I look for ways to create external links pointing to my article in one location – generally my main blog. I do this by bookmarking the blog post that contains the article. This is perhaps the easiest way to give the article a search engine boost.

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Posted in Business

Tags: Affiliate Marketing Articles Keyword Phrases

37 Emotional Benefits To Use in Marketing

October 13th, 2009

The below is directly from Amish Shah’s blog.

If you havenver heard of Amish, then I’m not surprised. He is an underground marketer who has quietly been making millions of dollars a year.

Here is a link to his blog. Go and read some more of his posts. You will learn something from everyone of them.

Anyay, here his latest post.

Here are 37 Emotional Benefits:

These were derived via extensive quantitative research with thousands of consumers, a panel of psychologists, and marketing consultants who specialized in assessing emotional purchase motivation. Taken together, the list is probably the best representation of the full spectrum of human needs which can be met by purchasing a given product or service.

1. Feeling Loved: Feeling Loved implies that a person has a satisfactory number of significant attachments in his or her life from whom (s)he receives an adequate amount of emotional nourishment on a daily basis

2. Feeling Attractive: Having a strong level of comfort with one’s physical being. Knowing that one is pleasant to look at and able to draw attention by virtue of one’s physical presence. (Note: ‘Feeling Sexy’ … the specific ability to attract a desired sexual partner, is a special kind of attractiveness, which is rated separately)

3. Sense of Adventure: Interested in exciting and remarkable experiences, sometimes involving unknown danger and risk.
Rising to the challenge, exploring new territory, feeling excited about new leanings, new experiences, etc.

4. Feeling Financially Secure: Believing one has adequate money to take care of the majority of their BASIC needs and desires in the present and in the future. Feeling Financially Secure is different than Feeling Affluent or Wealthy – which means one believes they have enough money to buy WHATEVER they desire (more than basic needs and wishes) and has more money than one could reasonably spend.

5. Sense of Accomplishment: Seeing progressive evidence in one’s life that particular worthwhile goals are being sought after and achieved.

6. Feeling Caring or Nurturing: Interested in providing emotional, physical, financial, or spiritual support to others, warmly enjoying the process of doing so.

7. Being Altruistic: Able to sacrifice oneself for the benefit of society. To forgo one’s own gratification in favor of the interest of others whose well-being will not enhance one’s own.

8. Being Assertive: Able to stand up for and strive to obtain one’s own interests, especially given the presence of difficult people who stand in the way.

9. Feeling Brave or Courageous: Being willing to face risk and danger for the purpose of obtaining a positive benefit (when it is judged to be beneficial and wise to take the risk). (Being willing to face risk and danger without judgment is ‘foolhardiness’).

10. Feeling Creative: Interested in and able to UNIQUELY express oneself in words, behavior, or the arts.

11. Excitement or Liveliness: Having a strong sense of being alive, having the energy and interest to partake of all life has to offer.

12. Feeling Fair, Just, or Ethical: Marked by impartiality and honesty. Able to make judgments free from self-interest, prejudice, or favoritism. Interested in upholding these principles.

13. Feeling Luxurious or Pampered: The belief that one has enough resources at hand to enable splurging on things that are understood to be unnecessary DESIRES as opposed to essential NEEDS.

14. Feeling Healthy: Having confidence in one’s physical well being, strength, and ability to avoid disease and illness.

15. Feeling Athletic: Having confidence in one’s physical strength, stamina, flexibility, and ability to meet various physical challenges. (Especially sports, but also non-competitive physical challenges)

16. Feeling Flexible or Adaptable: Able to change one’s perspective and use one’s strengths according to the demands of a wide variety of situations.

17. Feeling Free: Being able to say what one wants to say, think what one wants to think, go where one wants to go, be with people one wants to be with, and behave how one wants to behave. Generally, being able to do as one pleases!

18. Being a Good Friend: Believing oneself to be attached to and supportive of a cared for other. Providing companionship and enjoying their company.

19. Enjoying Humor: Seeking to laugh regularly. Enjoying the ludicrous or absurd. Liking to make others laugh.

20. Feels like a Good Teacher: Able to successfully impart useful knowledge or abilities to others.

21. Being In Control: Able to influence one’s self and surroundings as desired. Being able to predict, manage, and successfully react to the occurrence of stressful events. Having the ability to decide when, how, and where one will engage in particular verbal or behavioral expressions.

22. Feeling Independent: Able to care for oneself, not requiring others to meet one’s needs.

23. Being Insightful: Able to make useful new connections. Seeing the broader picture, able to understand the way things work in new ways.

24. Having Integrity: Walking the walk, not just talking the talk. Knowing one’s behaviors are consistent with one’s principles. Able to put off or deny one’s own gratification at the moment in favor of a cherished principle. Being willing to hold oneself accountable for one’s actions.

25. Feeling Wise or Intelligent: Being mentally keen or quick. Knowing that one has a high degree of mental capacity which has been used to accumulate the kinds of knowledge and experience which makes one particularly well suited to meet the challenges of life.

26. Taking a Leadership Role: Serving as a leader for others, helping guide others towards worthwhile goals and being directly responsible for their supervision and performance.

27. Peaceful – Relaxed – Calm: Feeling peaceful, relaxed or calm. Having peace of mind, body, and spirit.

28. Having a Sense of Power: Able to wield influence over one’s own life and over others. Occupying a position of importance in life.

29. Being Productive: Believing oneself to be effective in consistently contributing some valuable work product to one’s own life, family, or society.

30. Feeling Respected: Being acknowledged and recognized for one’s value or contributions to one’s loved ones, family or society.

31. Feeling Spiritual: Feeling an established connection with a higher power of one’s own definition (one that transcends the mortal world). Can be, but is not necessarily, the higher power defined in one’s chosen religion.

32. Feeling Sexy: The specific ability to arouse the desire to mate in a potential partner of the desired gender. (Feeling Sexy is a specific type of the more general ‘Feeling Attractive’: which is knowing that one is pleasant to look at and able to draw attention by virtue of one’s physical presence).

33. Feeling Romantic: Enjoying the thoughts, feelings and perceptions associated with the desire to be ONE with another human being.

34. Feeling Safe: Reasonably knowing no harm will come to oneself. Able to rest assured in life or in a relationship.

35. Sense of Belonging: Knowing on a gut level that one is part of a family, group of friends, or society where one ‘fits in’ due to similar values, beliefs, and behavioral tendencies.

36. Feeling Trustworthy: Will not harm others in favor of one’s own gratification if given the opportunity. Reliable, dependable, able to be counted on.

37. Feeling Unique: Feeling unique implies that one is aware of being an individual distinct from all others.

These emotional labels and single paragraph descriptions were derived from an extensive quantitative research with thousands of consumers, a panel of psychologists, and marketing consultants who specialized in assessing emotional purchase motivation. Together, the list is probably the best portrayal of the full spectrum of human needs which can be met by purchasing a given product or service. When you understand the logical connection between one of the above features and the way that the feature exclusively supports the prospect’s self esteem, your attempts to entwine emotion into your marketing ads are much more realistic and effective and do NOT require hype or “emotional attitude.”

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Tags: Affiliate Marketing Niche Marketing

How to Use Two Tier Affiliate Programs to Your Advantage

October 1st, 2009

To those who are not familiar with affiliate marketing, two-tier could be a new term to you but to those who are involved in this kind of money-making experience; it could mean a stream of income. Two-tier is an enticing feature of a particular affiliate program wherein, affiliates are allowed to sign-up additional affiliates below them. So that when the sub-affiliates otherwise known as second tier affiliates, earns a commission, the affiliate above receives a commission too.

In two-tier system, the first tier of commission is just like in the usual affiliate program. The sole difference is that it has an additional tier/s or sub-affiliates, whereby marketers also gain a commission once the people that the additional tiers referred to the program generate sales. Theoretically, affiliate programs can have multi-tier program with infinite number of tiers, however, there are practical limitations. As tiers increase, the affiliate program draws more webmasters who are mostly interested in gaining profit from other’s work and effort.

Two-Tier affiliate program is also recognized as Multi-Level Marketing. When you sign-up for an affiliate program, you are identified as the first tier and the person that you have recruited or encouraged to sign up is the second tier. If there are additional tiers, then the system can now be regarded as multi-level marketing (MLM). But today, MLM isn’t as effective and successful as it was several years ago. It is because at present, affiliates can freely select from thousands of affiliate programs and they can quickly switch from one program to another.

You could probably go wrong if you’re thinking that you can depend on your second tier to do the job for you. So if you want to use two-tier affiliate program to your advantage and generate more income by encouraging sub-affiliates to sign-up below you, make sure that you carefully choose your affiliate merchant. Pick those merchants who generate stable stream of high quality products, give high or just commissions, offers real time tracking, furnishes you with a proven and tested advertising arsenal and treat their affiliates very well. You can also sign-up for the merchant who gives high visitors-to-sales conversion rate.

It is also advisable if you engage yourself with a web merchant that has a user-friendly website which you can access anytime so that you can monitor your statistics including visits and sales. And if possible, choose the one with powerful marketing tools which you can use in promoting their products.

You’re just wasting much of your time and effort and worse, damaging your integrity once you promote poor affiliate program because your visitor will surely presume that the product or service you are reselling must be dreadful too. That’s the reason why it is important to pick first-rate affiliate programs. Through these, you can not only build up a good relationship with your visitor, but also, you can easily get more tiers to sign-up under you. You should also be cautious of some affiliate programs that give more importance on the profits to be earned in taking on other affiliates than on the income from sales, because you’ll just eventually find out that someone has already close those sales without informing you. Usually, this kind of affiliate program offers a very low first-tier payment but a sky-scraping second-tier commission.

If you want to start an affiliate program of your own, you surely have to decide whether it will be a single tier or two-tier affiliate program. Who am I to say which of these two programs are better? But let me tell you the benefits you could get out of two-tier affiliate program.

First, your profit will increase due to increased sales from the customers that your second tier has referred. Second, you have a much broader customer base to which you can sell your products and services. Then, you gain more and stable income because the customers referred by your affiliate and sub-affiliates could probably develop a lifetime loyalty on your site and your products. Plus, you have an army of sub-affiliates who will promote and resell your products and services to their visitors and subscribers.

Two-tier program has been a proven winner and should be the number one choice for the budding affiliates as well as for the affiliate program managers. When you start gaining profits from your site as well as your tiers, this is now the right time to say that you have used two-tier affiliate program to your advantage.

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