Free Traffic and the 4 Vital Elements of a Successful Business Website

Your Ad Here

 

Anyone can build a website. Countless companies are offering a vast array of web building solutions, some good, some great, and some quite frankly are a complete waste of time! But building a decent looking website is really only part of the story, only part of the process. There are literally millions of web pages that will never be viewed and therefore stand no chance of commercial success. Some of those sites are even quite good; unfortunately their owners have misunderstood the process and have put the cart before the horse...

In the online world no one just happens by your website, credít card in hand! If you have yet to build your website, or are about to create a new site, stop! You need to consider exactly what you wish to achieve with your site before you get started. “Creating a website should follow a process proven to deliver a commercial end result - or run the risk of ending up just another pretty picture in cyberspace!”

Fortunately there is a process, and I highly recommend you take a look at it - maybe you already know it...

Content --> Traffic --> Pre-sell --> Monetize

A time tested 4 step process, proven to produce websites that deliver - commercially! Ok, let us take a brief look at each step and find out why they work in this particular order.

1. Numoro Uno, as always, Content

Very, very, very, very important. Building an information-rich site is crucial. You abolutely must have high quality, unique, relevant content on your site, a) because you want to attract visitors in the first place and b) to generate long term, search engine based free traffic.

Online, people are looking for solutions and/or information that leads to solutions (not to forget entertainment). They use the search engines to hunt for the most relevant facts to reach their end goal - a practicable solution. Your job is therefore easy: Give it to them! But do not make the mistake of just plonking down any old garbage and hoping for the best - take your time, put in the effort, provide good quality information that will over-deliver and keep your visitors interested, satisfy their needs - and you will be rewarded. Over time, gradually add new fresh, useful content and you will be one your way to creating web pages valued by humans and search engines alike. In the online world, high value content is king!

2. Traffic - The Holy Grail...

Much, too much has been written on the subject, and many are making a good living providing (?) this elusive element.

Truth is, (excluding social media) there are but two ways to get it - you either pay for it, or you optimize for it. If you take the time to understand the basics you can easily do both.

Paid search, (PPC – Pay Per Click) such as Google Adwords has its place, and can provide an immediate stream of targeted visitors to your website; it is, however, a study of its own and can, if not fully understood, become very costly very quickly! If you want to go that route learn with small amounts (of money) and do not be tempted to throw good money after bad...

Safer - and arguably better – is going the route of search engine optimization (SEO) for the organic results, as reached via Google or other search engines. This means nothing more and nothing less than intelligent website construction, a process anyone can learn. It is important to note that the optimization should be built in during the creative process, at the time of your site´s construction; you are literally building your website to principles that make it search engine friendly, thus leading to high natural positions in organic search results, hopefully leading to a significant and constant free traffic flow to your site...

3. DO NOT SELL – PRE-SELL

You have created a website with value rich content and fully optimized its pages for indexing by Google (and other search engines). Folks are arriving at your site as directed by their search results. You are keen to have them buy your goods or services, ready with your pitch - but wait! There is another vital step in the process of converting your visitors into customers, and you have done half of the work already...

Pre-selling is a warming up process that allows you to develop trust and confidence in your offering. It is well known that people are more willing to buy from those they like, trust or respect. By over-delivering relevant high value information without appearing to be forcing a sale you will, almost by default, create an atmosphere that inevitably leads to sales. It is that simple!

As far as your visitors are concerned, their needs are being met, their every wish is being fulfilled, you are providing the very information that is the solution to their problem. Pre-selling creates an open-to-buy mindset that smoothly introduces your visitors to your monetization offer.

4. Monetize

Thank you for sticking with me this long, here is the home run: This is where you make your offer enticing by introducing and highlighting the many benefits of your product or service, and detailing exactly how it provides the solution to their predicament. You have paved the way with informative, relevant content and can now look to close with persuasive sales copy.

Your call to action should be strong and concise. Tell your prospective customers exactly what they need to do to order. If you have a good product, and you should, let them know exactly how they will benefit by ordering from you - today!

This is it: A formula simple, yet highly effective. Generate targeted free traffic via your highly optimized website, provide information packed content that offers solutions, warm up or pre-sell your visitors by over-delivering on the quality of that content, then, and only then, monetize by introducing persuasive, benefit focused sales copy to convert pre-sold visitors into enthusiastic customers.

I hope you found this post helpful. Please visit again for more information about promoting your business online.

Good luck!

 

Related article:

10 Essential Tips for Launching Your Business Blog

 

Technorati-Tags: Seo,search engine optimization,more traffic,free traffic,online business

How to Really Make Money with HubPages

Your Ad Here

 

In this post I am going to show you what you can do to really make money with HubPages. You may have to invest quite a bit of time and work but in the end you will be among those who earn a substantial income by publishing successful articles (or hubs) on HubPages.

The obvious answer as to how to make money on HubPages is to actually have something to say. Some value to add. Some information to provide. While it is important to understand how to use keywords, you should not take it too far.

Do not become obsessed with SEO linking schemes and do not stuff your article with keywords. In short, do not overdo it. Provide good, useful information and do it consistently. Yes, I said consistently. The people who publish hubs on HubPages on a regular basis are the people who make the most money.

If you consistently write about a certain subject (which you do not need to do) it will help you establish yourself as an expert in a niche. But more importantly, it will enable more effective link building between your hubs. Write between 10 and 20 hubs on the same topic and interlink them all. It is always helpful to provide links to more pertinent and useful information.

If you write about honey-bees (wow, that is what I call random), write another hub specifically about the nutritional value of honey and another about the American or European honey industry and another about the actual honey making process and another about how bee-keepers go about collecting the honey.

I do not know if there are any honey-hounds among the people who read this article, but hey, it is just an example. I hope you get the point. This kind of coverage will help bounce traffic around between your hubs, will establish some authority, and will build trust from readers and will even help you earn backlinks from thematically related websites.

Notice that I wrote “earn” backlinks.  It is important to understand that a natural organic link from someone who genuinely finds your work interesting and helpful and thus wants to share it with their readers is priceless.  That is what the game is all about.  It is how you succeed with content online.  And, yes, it is how you make money as well. One natural link is worth a hundred forced links.

Making money on HubPages also requires doing a little bit of promotion.  To be honest, you are not required to do anything, but it will really help you gain exposure for your hubs if you build a few links to them. 

One of the best ways to get more traffic to your hubs other than understanding how to write for a specific audience and doing a bit of keyword research, is to create links from article directories.  Ezine Articles is probably the most widely known and consistently tops the Google search results pages for thousands of different niches. 

You are allowed to include two footer links at the bottom of your articles, which you can use to point to your other work at HubPages. Use keyword-rich anchor text to promote your hubs. Using the honey example, you could write a basic article about the health benefits and the downsides of honey. (Actually, honey, being a 100% natural product, has hardly any downsides.)  Make it around 400 - 500 words long and make it worthwhile – the Ezine Articles staff has to approve it. That means you have to meet their quality standards - which can be a little tricky in the beginning. Build at least one link to each of your HubPage hubs.

Write another hub titled something like “My Honey Hubs” or “All You Ever Wanted to Know About Honey” and include links to all of your honey-related hubs. This link post will give people a gereal view of all the content you have written; it is also a great way to build links. 

Another way to promote your hubs is by building a blog on one of the free platforms (Blogger or Wordpress.com, for instance) and linking to each of your published hubs with a short description of what it is about. This may help widen your search footprint and drive more traffic to your hubs.

See how each link-building exercise is also providing value at the same time?  This is what will work in your favor over time. If you consistently think about your audience and provide valuable information or entertainment, you will succeed in making money online – not just with HubPages, with any blog or website. 

So go get started making money on HubPages. 

To your success!

 

Related articles:

How to Make Money with HubPages

How to Make Money with HubPages 2: Backlinks

 

 

Technorati-Tags: HubPages,income streams,make money,affiliate programs,article writing,link building

Online Business Myths that are Way Off

Your Ad Here

 

Just like any other occupation, running an online business is burdened with collective beliefs, common knowledge, and myths that are sometimes far from the truth. In this post I am going to tell you about some of these myths.

1. Building a successful online business is easy

A lot of self-styled “gurus” may lead you to believe that starting an online business is as easy as a stroll in the park. Get a website going, put up a few ads and money starts pouring in. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. Starting a business on the internet is just as hard as starting a business in the “real” world, it is just as competitive – if not more so -, and can be just as demoralizing. That being said, if you are an authority in your field or a hard worker with great ideas, then you will climb to the top. But it will take time.

2. An Online business requires a different skills than an “ordinary” business

An online business is just that - business. Almost everyone who has a blog or website talks about “social media” and “web 2.0″ and the amazing opportunities tools like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter create for online businesses. And it is true, these sites do open up new ways to make money – if you know how to use them to stay connected to your audience.

But if you do not know how to connect to people in the first place or do not have a valuable service or product to offer, then these social networks and blogging services are not going to magically help you get your message out and make sales for you.

If you have sales skills or marketing skills or the ability to create a buzz around your blog or website, then you will be able to make a huge impact in the internet business world. Remember, the rules are just the same as in the real world. Create a great product, provide great service, and get as many people as possible interested in what you have to offer. Hit it out of the park for people, and you will win.

The only difference is that instead of having customers come into your store from the street, your store is visiting your target audience via computer screen or mobile phone display in their living rooms. Or any other place that has wifi.

3. Online business is just for nerds

This could not be farther from the truth. Sure, it undeniably helps to know your way around a computer, but internet tools are now so easy to use that you really do not need a lot of technical or design expertise. If you can operate a keyboard and a mouse and are willing to put in a little effort to learn about things you do not as yet know much about, then you will be able to create a viable online business.

You can also make use of existing skills if you are interested in working on the internet. If you are a writer (copy-writer, journalist,..) you can start a freelance writing business, and if you are a web designer or social media pro you can do likewise. You can even become an information entrepreneur and provide information and advice via blogs or websites and monetize your sites in many different ways. For all of you content writers out there, please read my post on how to make money with HubPages.

4. Internet marketing is nothing but spam

Sure, there is a loooot of spam out there, but there are also hundreds of thousands of legitimate companies doing business online. Every single brand name company has (and has to have) an internet presence. If they did not, they simply would not exist. There is nothing shady about doing business online. In fact, I would be surprised if in the foreseeable future you will be able to do any business at all without using the internet.

As people gravitate more and more towards the web to do their shopping, find information, communicate with friends, and plan trips and flights, there will be ever more opportunities for online businesses. If you are not preparing your small business for an all-internet world you may be left behind.

5. I cannot start an online business because the Internet is too crowded

The internet is crowded and it gets more crowded every day. But guess what, the streets of many town are also crowded with businesses, but new businesses start and established businesses fold every day.

Google and all the other search engines are becoming better at weeding out the fraudulent, worthless, and spam sites, which makes it easier for the high quality online businesses to shine. Search engine traffic is probably the most important factor in becoming a success on the internet, and if you play by the rules and create a great product or offer a valuable service, you will rise to the top, as the best often do.

6. I do not have time to start my own online business

Building an online presence is probably the easiest as well as cheapest way to further the success of almost any business, big or small. Precious few companies will be able to avoid doing business online. A website or an e-commerce store selling your product is virtually a must.

A good and easy way to start is by creating a blog. It is not as time-consuming as you might think – and  you can do it for free. Start a free blog at Blogger.com or Wordpress.com, find a custom template online that fits well with the product(s) or service(s) you offer (you want a professional-looking online presence, don´t you? ), and start getting your message out. There are a lot of things you can do with a blog with regard to promoting your company and your brand. Even just getting out there and promoting yourself will help you a great deal.

The people who work the hardest and are willing to try out different ways of doing business in order to find out what works best will be the most successful. The internet just helps by making everthing faster. This means that your business can become successful within a short period of time, but it can go down the drain just as quickly.

One of the best things the internet provides though is free access to your target audience, world-wide. You can find and reach out to your community on so many fronts, it is ridiculous. And you can do most of it for free because all it takes it time and the willingness to work hard. Getting your message across and driving targeted traffic to your blog or website are important aspects of the online game. But having an amazing product or service is the most important thing.

Create an amazing product that fulfills a need or solves a problem in an interesting or new way - and you just might become the next online millionaire.

Good luck!

 

Related article:

12 Steps to Successful Blogging

 

 

Technorati-Tags: internet business,online business,online marketing,online business myths

How to Make Money with HubPages 2: Backlinks

Your Ad Here

 

This post focuses on one very effective strategy you can use to help you make money with HubPages.

HubPages, as you may know from my previous post (if you do not, just follow the link above), is a website where you can publish content and earn money for your work.

You can write just about anything you want and have the option to edit or delete your content anytime you feel like it. One of the best things about making money with HubPages is that it enables you to earn residual income for as long as the website is around, and chances are that it will be around for a long time.

There are many reasons why publishing at HubPages is worthwile if you are trying to make money online, or have a blog you want to create links to, or just want to write content for fun and earn a little pocket-money on the side.

First of all, HubPages is a well-respected site that gets a lot of love from search engines. Writing at HubPages is like having a head start in the search engine wars. This brings up an important point: One of the main factors that will allow you to make money online is traffic. Traffic is the lifeblood of internet marketing and online business.

Look at it just like the owner of a regular store would. The more people you can convince to visit your store, the more sales you will make. This can be translated into AdSense clicks, affiliate sales, or referrals in the online environment. Traffic is a key part of the game. And the more targeted this traffic is, the higher the probability of getting a conversion or having an action (click) occur. Obviously there is a lot more to making money on the internet: copywriting, branding, actually having something of value to provide, or in this case, providing useful, well-written and highly searchable content. But high traffic numbers is how websites become online money-making machines.

One of the strategies to writing on HubPages and earning money from your efforts is to publish several “hub” on the same topic. (In this respect HubPages is different from InfoBarrel, where they do not accept several articles on one subject from a single author.) The more you write about one specific topic, the more likely you will be regarded as an authority on that subject. Obviously, to be able to write a lot of “hubs” about the same thing you probably will have to be an expert on that subject. No need to worry, you can learn as you go. Writing is one of the best ways to learn things and solidify ideas in your mind.

Writing about a single topic will also give you more opportunity to increase the rankings of similar content. Say you have a 900-word authoritative hub about the best diving resorts in Australia. You spent a lot of time researching keywords, reading about the resorts, and clearly presenting the information to your readers. This can be a very good piece of content for you. If you have three, four or more related „hubs”, then you can use them to create anchor text links to give your authority „hub” little bit of a boost and create more traffic to it.

Your “support” pages should be directly related to the main authority page you are looking to link to. In the example about diving resorts I used above, these can be pieces more specific to certain resorts or diving-suits, etc. One could be about the Coral Sea Islands and another could be about the Great Barrier Reef. If the main keyword phrases (and related ones) you are working with are also strong in these pages - and even in the title - then links out from them will be even stronger.

When you create your links you want to create anchor text using the phrases you are focusing on. In the example used here, the phrase you would want to link out to your main hub would be “best diving resorts in Australia”. It is much better to be descriptive in the hotlink you create, rather than just linking with text like “see my other article about this topic here.”

You can do this with several of your hubs to create several relevant links that will give the page you want to promote more direct traffic and relevant keyword links, which in turn will help move it up the in search engine rankings. The more targeted these keywords and links are, the more likely they will be of interest to visitors and the more money you will make online.

Websites as well as web pages that adhere to web standards of copywriting, search engine optimization, and linking practices are more valuable than those that do not. If you keep in mind what potential web surfers might be searching for and do your best to create informative, well-written content that is useful, then you will be successful.

Remember that content is king and high value content will gain more natural links from other websites and more return traffic. The more effort you put into your content on the front end, the easier the entire process will be for you. When writing your hubs, take the time to make them as helpful, informative, and unique as possible.

Sign up for HubPages and start writing and earning today.

 

Related articles:

How to Make Money with InfoBarrel

How to Make Money Online with Squidoo Lenses 

Technorati-Tags: make money,hubpages,writing for money,blogging,adsense,backlinks,more traffic

How to Make Money with HubPages

Your Ad Here

 

Hubpages is one of the write-and-get-paid websites where you can write about pretty much anything you want and earn money for your efforts. This is the short explanation of the site - but there is quite a bit more to it.

You earn money when there is traffic to the articles you write and the visitors click on advertisements that are displayed on the page. For this reason, traffic is one of the most important elements that will help you make money online with Hubpages. On thing is certain, making money online is not an easy feat - but there are quite a few ways to do it.

You can obviously provide a service or sell a product. You can also do online copywriting or freelance writing. But that is not for everyone. I have been watching HubPages for a while and I think that if you can learn how to use the site to make money, i.e., you learn how to create so-called “hubs” that generate a lot of traffic, convert traffic to ad clicks or affiliate sales, and rise to the top of the search engine rankings, then you will know a great deal about internet marketing. (Basically, you need to do the same things you would do with your own blog or website.) And this experience will help you a lot in whatever kind of business you plan to get into online.

In the online environment it is all about words. Words are where search engines can really dig in and find relevant information for people surfing the web. Because of this, online marketing or making money online more often than not depends on writing, good writing.

A lot has been published on the subject of writing for humans versus writing for search engines. In my mind, it is important to do both, meaning that you do have a focus on certain keywords, but you do not want to write in such a way that the content is unreadable for a human being. You always want to write for people first, and for search engine bots second. There is a lot of value in enticing people not only to read your content but to come back and read it again and/or more of it.

However, that being said, there is also a lot of value in getting visitors interested in  your work in order to encourage a click through on AdSense and affiliate links. There is nothing wrong with doing this, but if you write really hacky articles that are filled only with keywords and nothing else, your work will be weeded out by Google and sent to search results nirvana. If people cannot find your work you will not make any money.

HubPages is a good place to start your writing career because your articles immediately get a boost in search engine rankings since the site is regarded by Google as a network that produces informative and helpful user-generated content. HubPages does a good job of policing itself in terms of eliminating crap or spam content and making sure their advertising networks run smoothly and there is no fraudulent activity going on. As a result, your content will be indexed by search engines a lot faster than if you started posting to a blog of your own. It could take you months to get a few readers to an article on your own blog or website, whereas it may just take a few hours or a day or two to get readers to your hub.

How to Make Money with Hubpages

First, you have to sign up. If you haven’t yet, sign up here. Then return to this article to read the rest – I promise it will help you.

The way you earn money on HubPages is through Google´s AdSense program, Clickbank, and affiliate links through eBay and Amazon. You can also make money using an advertising network called Kontera, but do not worry about it for now because it really does not pay that well. If you are a savvy internet marketer you can also make money on HubPages with your own affiliate links to third party websites.

The revenue is split with HubPages 60/40 in your favor. It works like this: 6 times out of 10 your ID is used in the advertisements, which means you will earn on a click or sale made during this time. The other 4 times HubPages has the potential to earn money for an action taken. People sometimes think that the total revenue is just split 60/40, but that is not the case. Your ID is used randomly 6 times out of 10. It is a generous pay structure that allows quite a few people to make good money by publishing articles on HubPages.

HubPages is a good place to start writing online, and even making money online. I mentioned earlier that you will want to use keywords in your articles in order to be competitive and gain traffic to your work - because that is what you need to do if you are interested in making any money. The best way to do this is by imagining what someone would type into a search engine in order to find the information you are providing.

If you were going to write about “making money online by writing,” then you should choose that phrase as your keyword phrase and use it in your article. The next thing you need to consider is how competitive a term is. You can do this by using the Google Keyword Tool at the following URL: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

This tool will show you how many times your keyword has been searched in the past month and will give you a monthly average. It will also provide you with suggestions of related terms that may be better options for you to use because they are less competitive. It may sound a little confusing at first, but you will get the hang of it after you do keyword research a few times. You also want to look at the price paid per click, which will give you a good idea of how much money ads that will display will be worth. The figure shown is not the total that you will earn because Google keeps some of the money, but you can easily see which terms are “worth” more and which ones are worth less.

In my next post I shall go into more detail about choosing keywords for your internet writing. But for now, write down or copy and paste two or three sets of terms and how often they are searched and what they are worth. Now, type the keyword phrase into Google to see how many pages pop up. This is not an exact science but it will give an idea of how much content on the internet uses the term you are searching. If 100,000,000 pages come up, there are a lot of entries about what you are planning to write about, so it may be a lot more difficult to compete and get to the top of the search engines with your page. However, if only 250,000 pages come up, you have found a niche in which you can compete and that you may even be able to “own” by getting your page to the top. This, in short, is how you make good money in internet marketing with content and Google AdSense.

If you have a specialized skillset - and every single one of us has at least one - I highly recommend you start creating content based on it on the internet. For instance, I notice that I sometimes get a few visitors to this site who are looking for ways to make money while unemployed. HubPages is one such way. Start creating content about stuff you have expertise in. It does not matter if it is plumbing, roofing, gardening, or investing. If you can create content that is useful to people and valuable in one way or another, you will be able to make money.

Sign up for HubPages and start writing and earning today.

Once you have signed up, let me know if you need some help figuring out what to write about. I’ll do my best to help you out by giving a push in the right direction in terms of keywords and ideas.

Please read my second post about HubPages called "Make Money with HubPages Part 2: Backlinks".

Good luck!

P.S.: A very nice post on how to make money with HubPages can be found here.

 

Related articles:

How to Really Make Money with HubPages

How to Make Money Online with Squidoo Lenses

How to Make Money with InfoBarrel

 

 

Technorati-Tags: make money,hubpages,writing for money,blogging,affiliate program,adsense

How to Make Money with InfoBarrel

Your Ad Here

 

Recently, after doing quite a bit of reasearch, I decided to sign up for InfoBarrel. Although InfoBarrel is relatively new – it went online in 2008 -, it looks like a good opportunity for making money and and getting valuable backlinks.

InfoBarrel is very similar to HubPages and Squidoo where you write one page topics. But InfoBarrel has one distinctive advantage over the others: You can get up to 3 ‘do-follow’ backlinks right away. You do not have to wait until you get a certain quality score before your backlinks become ‘do-follow’.

Like many others, I first heard about InfoBarrel from Lissie at Passive Income Online. She posted a great article titled “What is InfoBarrel?“ that you might want to read. It is the best discription of InfoBarrel I have been able to find so far.

Will you get paid by InfoBarrel? No. You will receive 75% of the revenue on the AdSense ads that appear on your pages and you can further monetize your content by using eBay and other affiliate programs. I guess this means that you will have to write a great number of articles in order to make a lot of money. I won´t go so far as to say that it is impossible to earn a decent income - it is just that you will have to write a lot of popular articles. And you need to know how to trigger high paying AdSense ads with your articles.

Another similarity to HubPages is that if you refer someone to InfoBarrel you get a percentage of the impressions of advertising on their articles (from InfoBarrel´s share, not the writer’s).

Since the people at InfBarrel are only  interested in serious contributors and quality content you probably won´t be able to make money right away. The Terms and Conditions state that the first 10 articles will need an editors´ prior to publication. Fortunately, they work fast and let you know within a few hours if the submitted article meets their criteria. Once you are past your tenth article all further material will be approved instantly. I guess this measure is their way of keeping spammers away.

If you are interested in InfoBarrel visit their home page and sign up at: www.infobarrel.com.

I am pretty sure that I shall be making money on InfoBarrel in the near future. It may not be through the sharing of revenue, but the ‘do-follow’ backlinks are priceless. Moreover, I have noticed that Google seems to like InfoBarrel, therefore it is quite easy to get your page(s) indexed. I hope that Google will continue to treat this site favourably, at least for a while, because it has the potential to become as popular as Squidoo or HubPages.

I’ll be writing some pages over at InfoBarrel and check back from time to time to let you know if it is really worth your while.

 

 

Technorati-Tags: make money,hubpages,squidoo,infobarrel,affiliate programs

How to Make Money Online with Squidoo Lenses

Your Ad Here

 

Squidoo has had its growing pains in the past year or so but is still one of the best free ways to make money - for beginners as well as seasoned marketers. And you do not even need a blog or website of your own! There are people making money online full time just by using Squidoo. That´s how powerful Squidoo is.

To be able to make money online with Squidoo you first need to understand some of its qualities. Squidoo is a one page site that is easily monetized just by the way it is designed. Google has always been very fond of Squidoo - and Squidoo tries everything it can to maintain its favor with Google. Because Squidoo ran in a bit of trouble with Google about a year and a half ago a lot of marketers started to leave the site. But now things are running smoothly again and the guys at Squidoo have been optimizing the ability to make money online for their loyal as well as new contributors.

The best way to make money from Squidoo is by making sure that you have fully optimized keyword rich modules. Squidoo now has no-follow tags from Google, therefore your keywords are determined by the content provided. The tags however still produce value to the inner workings of Squidoo - so do not avoid them altogether. Squidoo members can help you with your rankings and backlinks within the site itself. And your „lenses“ (that´s what articcles on the site are called) are found by the tags you choose.

Squidoo runs its own AdSense ads and you are supposed to receive a percentage of the money they make off the clicks. This kind of compensation is widely used among so-called “write-and-earn” sites. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you how high that percentage is. But I do know that it isn’t much - so I don’t even worry about it.

The best way to make money on Squidoo is by either using their monetizing modules or by using your own methods of monetizing your content. For instance, there are a couple of modules like eBay and Amazon that you are supposedly great money-makers. However, the successful marketers do not use their modules for them.

If you are an eBay or Amazon affiliate or partner you can place you own affiliate sources  within and around the content you create, thereby receiving a greater percentage of the money earned.

This is what an eBay affiliate ad looks like when inserted into Squidoo:

This will allow you to make money online from eBay for full affiliate pay instead of having to share with Squidoo.

The same holds true for Amazon. Instead of only earning a portion of the money from Amazon by using Squidoo’s Amazon Module you will earn the full commission. Here is another example:

The more of these individual ads you run the more opportunity you will have to earn money.

As I have already stated, Squidoo runs the AdSense Ads and you really do not make money online from these ads, but now Clickbank offers their own ads that you can make money with. These are called HopAds. Go to Clickbank and look for the HopAd Builder.Using it, you can build text ads or tabbed ads.

This is an example of text ads:

Your affiliate id will be integrated within the code of the Clickbank HopAds.

Squidoo stopped allowing iframes some time ago, but now there is a way to ad your opt-in forms into Squidoo. If you are among those who specialize in email marketing the opt-in form is a huge benefit on Squidoo. If you publish great content you will get a lot of traffic from search engines and inside Squidoo itself. Being able to capture these leads is a plus. Just offer a free upload or free information and you are good to go. Everyone likes free stuff!

Here is an example of an email opt-in form:

If you are interested in finding out how to add an opt-in form on your lens just follow the link. Click the following link if you want to know how to ad Clickbank HopAds. You will have to leave your email address to receive the manual for adding Clickbank HopAds. Neither one of these methods cost any money.

There are a few more things you need to know before you get start your money making career on Squidoo. Because Squidoo is a one page site, you will definitely want to be focusing on those longtail keywords. This will help tremendously with your PageRank in Google. The traffic may not be as high, but you will be getting a more targeted traffic (meaning more visitors who are looking to buy). Also, when thinking Squidoo think products. Services do OK but you will make money online faster if you use Squidoo for products.

If you are using Squidoo for link building keep in mind that not all modules have “do follow” tags. The “do follow” list includes these modules:

Introduction
Text/Write
Poll (remember you can hyperlink your answers!)
Featured Lenses
Text/Link Lists
Text/Link Plexos (although I don’t recommend that you use these because
it’s link leakage)

Squidoo has a wide range of possibilities when it comes to making money online free. Along with the ability to make money with your Squidoo lens you can have unlimited lenses. Most people start out having a lot of lenses on one account which is a big mistake. Fortunately, they give the opportunity to move lenses around to other accounts. This one of the options built into Squidoo itself. If you are seriously interested in making money you should take care not to have too many lenses on a single account.

There is another great money-maker available to you with Squidoo: Lense flipping! You cannot only move lenses around between different accounts - you can also sell lenses. Lens flipping is a lot like site flipping, but way easier. All you need to do is change one lens to a different lens account. Squidoo lenses are selling for hundreds of dollars - and they don’t even have to have high PR. You can build a well optimized lens (or 3, or 10) today and sell them tomorrow. You would be surprised at how easy this is and how much money can be made by selling lenses. This is an easy way to make money online fast. And all for free.

Good luck!

 

Related articles:

How to Find Suitable Affiliate Programs for Your Blog

How to Find the Right Affiliate Products to Promote

 

 

Technorati-Tags: squidoo,make money online,blogging for money,affiliate programs

How to Add a PayPal Donate Button to Your Blogger Blog

Your Ad Here

 

If you are interested in receiving a few bucks in exchange for all the hours and the hard work you are putting into your blog, then you might want to consider adding a PayPal donate button to the sidebar of your Blogger blog. Adding a donation button will (hopefully) encourage some of your loyal readers to say a big thank you for helping them out and/or entertaining them. Not everyone will donate, but once in a while a generous soul will voluntarily give you a little financial encouragement.

In this tutorial I shall show you how to add a PayPal donate button to the sidebar of your Blogger blog. There will be no need to change the template, so this should be fairly easy.

1. Sign up if you do not already have a PayPal account.

2. Login to your PayPal account.

3. Click on the Merchant Portal tab.

4. Choose Donations from the list of key features displayed in the right sidebar of the PayPal Website Payments Standard option (the first of 3 payment solutions).

5. From the PayPal Create a Payment Button screen choose Donation from the dropdown menu at Step 1 if it is not already selected.

6. Stick with the default button unless there is a special need to customize it.

7. Choose the currency depending on your needs and location.

8. Choose the Donors enter their own contribution amount radio button unless you want to have a set amount.

9. Make sure that the Secure merchant account ID radio button is selected. This will prevent spammers from getting hold of your email address.

10. At Step 2 it is worth saving your button.

11. At Step 3 customize your checkout page by allowing donors to write a short comment by selecting the Yes radio button to special instructions to seller.

12. Select the No radio button for customer's shipping address.

13. Select the Create Button button.

14. Once PayPal has created the donate button code copy it by right clicking your mouse and choosing copy (Ctrl + C).

15. Log out of PayPal.

16. Login to your Blogger account if you are not already logged in.

17. Go to Layout --> Page Elements.

18. Click on the Add a Gadget link in the sidebar.

19. Choose the HTML/Javascript widget from the list provided.

20. Paste the PayPal donate button code into the Content box of the dialog box that appears by placing the mouse inside the box and right clicking the mouse and then paste (alternatively Ctrl + V).

21. Select a title like "Buy Me a Coffee Today!" or whatever you think works best.

22. Click on the Save button.

23. Drag and drop your new donation gadget into the spot you want it to appear in.

24. Hit the Save button to make sure your changes are saved.

25. Click View Blog to check your new PayPal donate button in the sidebar of your Blogger blog.

26. Try out your new PayPal donate button by clicking on it. You should be be taken to the PayPal Checkout screen.

In this post I have walked you through the steps necessary to add a PayPal donate button to your Blogger blog.

Good luck!

 

Technorati-Tags: paypal,donate button,add gadget,monetize blog

Make Money By Adding Banner Ads to Your Blogger Blogs

Your Ad Here

 

One of the things that makes Blogger such a great blogging platform is the ease with which you can add advertising to your Blogspot.com blog and make money from it. In this post I shall be discussing how banner advertisements on your Blogger blog can create passive income for you. By banner advertising I mean advertising in addition to Google AdSense or AdBrite or other contextual ad services you may have already added to your Blogger blog. For information on adding Google AdSense to your blog please read my articles on Google AdSense.

Banner advertising is FREE - And Banners Do Make Money

It is no secret that you can make quite a bit of money by placing banners on your site provided you choose your merchant program(s) carefully and have enough people accessing your site. In my experience, once you reach around 100 unique visitors a day it is high time time to add a few banner ads to your blog.

How to Make Money from Banners on Your Blogger Blog

Affiliate marketing banners are designed to make money for the publisher – in this case: you. In order to place a banner on your blog the affiliate program provides you with a snippet of code to add to your template which makes the banner display and identifies you as the publisher. When a visitor clicks on a banner on your website that click is recorded as originating from your site and you make money as a result of that click. Depending on the merchant program that you have signed up for you will earn a commission for providing a lead, or receive a percentage of the sale.

An Example of How Banners Work

After having placed a banner ad on your Blogger blog your site gets 100 visitors in a day. Out of that 100 people 5 people (hopefully!) click on a banner which takes them through to the merchant's website. From those 5 people one person makes a purchase of around $50.00. Assuming your commission is 10% of the sale you have just earned $5.00. It really is that easy.

Making the Most of Advertising Banners

To make money from banner ads you need a lot of traffic because only a small percentage of your visitors will take any notice of the advertising on your blog and a still smaller percentage of that pool will actually buy anything once they click. Therefore it is really important that you focus your energies on building site traffic. If you need to grow your traffic read my articles on tips to increase traffic to your Blogger blog.

Of course you do need to choose your affiliate banners carefully as obviously some ads will have more appeal than others. To some extent this is a matter of trial and error, as you can never be completely sure how a banner will perform until you try it. However, you can increase the odds of success by choosing merchant programs that are related to your blog in some way. For instance, if you blog about golfing then advertisers of golfing equipment or golfing vacations would be a good place to start.

How to Add Affiliate Banners to Your Blogger Blog

Adding affiliate banners to your blog is pretty easy. In most cases it is just a matter of copy and paste, and pretty much anyone should be able to do this. Please read my article providing step by step instructions on how to Add Affiliate Banner Ads to the Blogger Sidebar of your Blogger blog if you are unsure. If you want to place a banner in the header of your blog please refer to Add an Affiliate Banner to Blogger Header.

Disadvantages of Banner Ads

Too many banner ads can give your visitors the impression you are just in it for the money. So make sure you do not go overboard with too much advertising that will overshadow or detract from the content of your blog. Keep in mind that less is more - so place your banners ads strategically on your blog. Very good results can be achieved by placing a small cluster of about 4 banner ads (usually 125x125) somewhere fairly close to the top in the sidebar and a 468x60 banner in the header. The header is obviously the prime position for an effective banner advertising campaign. Read more about how to place a banner ad in the header of your Blogger blog in my adding banners to Blogger series of posts.

The other main problem with banner ads is that they encourage visitors to leave your site - and as everyone knows one of the hardest jobs is to attract the visitor in the first place. Do you really want them to leave your site before they have had a chance to look around? I do not think so. Therefore, only place banner ads on your blog that you are confident will reap you some rewards, otherwise forget it. You might actually lose traffic if you provide too many inducements to leave your site.

Banner Ads Make Money

In this post I have told you about banner advertising on Blogger blogs. You have learned a little about how affiliate programs work and how you might use banner ads on your own blog to make extra money. For tutorials on adding banner ads to your Blogger Blogspot blog please refer to Add Affiliate Banner Ads to a Blogger Sidebar and Add an Affiliate Banner to Blogger Header.

Good luck!

 

Related articles:

8 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on Your Blog

How to Find the Right Affiliate Programs to Promote

Technorati-Tags: blogger tips,blogging for money,affiliate programs,banner ads,affiliate marketing,income streams,monetizing blog

 

How to Find the Right Affiliate Products to Promote

Your Ad Here

 

“How do I find the right kind of affiliate products to promote on my blog?” is one of the most frequently asked questions when it comes to monetizing a blog. And affiliate marketing is indeed a fascinating topic. Many bloggers are struggling with advertising as a means to make money from their blogs and want to branch out and experiment with affiliate promotions on their blog.

However, wanting to get into affiliate marketing and actually doing so are two very different things. There are a number of difficulties to overcome first.

One of these difficulties is finding the right products to promote.

Choosing the right products to promote is crucial for a number of reasons - the two main ones being:

a) Relevant Products Are Key

If your blog draws an audience centered around a particular topic or demographic it is very unlikely that you will be able to sell products that are in no way relevant to the topic of your blog.

b) The Quality of Products Can Have a Huge Impact on the Success of Your Blog or Brand

Promote low quality products and you could seriously hurt the reputation of your blog/brand. Readers remember who they heard about specific products from and their trust in you and your blog will increase or decrease depending on what you recommend to them.

Therefore, choosing the right affiliate product is crucial. Not only has it great impact on conversions and profitability, the success of your blog/brand and the trust of your readers depend on it as well.

Now, how do you find the right affiliate product to promote?

Here are a few tips and thoughts on finding affiliate products and programs to promote:

1. Google It – It does not take a rocket scientist to figure this one out - but it does work. If you happen to blog about beauty salons and/or products google “Beauty Products Affiliate Program”. Insert your main keywords into the search engine of your choice and you may just find products that are relevant to your niche.
2. Watch Your Competition - What kinds of products are other people blogging in your niche promoting? Quite often a quick glance down the sidebar of another successful blog in your niche to find out what products and services they are promoting will reveal affiliate products you could (and probably should) promote as well (and it could also point you to some relevant advertisers to promote).
3. Take a Close Look at AdSense Ads – You can find products that a relevant to your niche by checking out the AdSense ads appearing besides Google search results, on websites, other blogs and even on your own blog. Do not (ever!!) click the ads on your own blog, but checking out what the ads promote can reveal all kinds of potential affiliate partners. The same thing is true for other types of advertising. For instance, the other day a friend of mine was surfing on Facebook and saw an ad relevant to his blog – and by clicking it he found a new product with an affiliate program that he had not heard of before.
4. Approach Potential Affiliate Partners - This one might not work if you have a new blog with little traffic, but as your blog grows you might find yourself in a position to approach the distributors of a product or the providers of a service to find out if they would be willing to start some kind of affiliate program for you. Some of the most successful bloggers do this regularly - and they make a lot of money this way. The best part of it is that you get a head start on your competition for the promotion as you are most likely to be the only person promoting it.
5. Search Affiliate Networks - There are quite a few affiliate networks around that list a lot of affiliate programs. The good ones have search functions to allow you to type in keywords and find promotions relevant to your niche. Check out Clickbank, Commission Junction, MarketLeverage, PepperJam Network, and many more.
6. Search Online Stores for Products – Almost all popular online stores, for instance Amazon, have affiliate programs attached to them. In general the comissions are not huge (Amazon, for example, offers commissions from as low as 4% up to 15% depending upon the type of product and how much you sell) – the profit margins in the retail trade are rather small - but stores like this have a wide variety of products and are probably the best place to start while you build traffic and search for other programs.

 

Related Article:

What is Affiliate Marketing?

 

Technorati-Tags: affiliate marketing,affiliate programs,monetize blog,make money

The Truth About Online Income

Your Ad Here

 

Easy money, that is what everybody is dreaming about. The problem in most cases is that people tend to find ways that promise to give them the opportunity to earn money easily – and fast. They pass over the fact that these promises are almost always idle. They tend to overlook the reality behind earning money.

This is the reason why so many people fall for scams and fraudulent activities. They tend to believe that there really is a secret way to "get rich quick" just by doing something online.

There are so many “proven” schemes promising instant riches on the Internet, but unfortunately the only people getting rich are the ones who devise them. All the customers get is a lesson in disapointment. As is the case with any other business, tbeing successful on the Internet requires hard work, persistence, determination, the right skills and a marketing strategy.

However, one fact remains true. There are a lot of fairly easy ways to earn money, but it may take a while to achieve this goal. There is a huge difference between easy and quick, and you should be aware of that.

The "Get Rich Quick" Concept

Whatever people may say about earning money online, there really isn´t a way to earn money quickly. Sorry. You will have to stick with your chosen path for some time before you can expect to achieve financial success, but you will get there eventually.

There are many, many ways to earn money easily. For starters, there is eBay where you can easily dispose of any items that you have not been able to get rid of til now. It still is the best way to earn money while at the same time clearing your garage or basement of unwanted items.

You could join paid online surveys. There are more and more sites focusing on online surveys, the results of which are of benefit for their company or their clients. That is the reason why they are willing to shell out up to a hundred dollar just to get people to answer their surveys.

These methods spell “easy online money” but that does not necessarily mean you will make a lot of money within weeks.

The truth about online income is that you need the same combination of skills and attitude that are necessary for starting a business or devising other ways to earn money in the so-called “real world”.

The main problem is that most people do not know the real concept behind the successful online businesses. They simply do not have the basic knowledge required to make money online. They should know that success in online marketing just like in any other business is not a destination but a process.

Earning money online is a step-by-step process of learning the foundations of what to do and then gradually increasing your knowledge about online income. There are no shortcuts or “high-speed” ways to earning big $$ online.

It is hardly possible to start from scratch when thinking about establishing an online business because in order to be able to do so you have to have knowledge about and employ such necessary details as hard- and software, programming and general computer skills that are essential if you want your business to flourish.

The first step is getting your own website online. You can either invest in good software and create a website yourself (a lot of webhosts offer software as part of a package deal) or employ a webdesigner to do it for you (check out sample sites before hiring one!!). Then you need to register a domain and find a webhost (if you expect to generate a LOT of traffic you might want to consider hosting your site yourself). Once you are online you will have to find ways (link exchange, link purchase, advertisement, etc.) to help your website attract traffic. If you work diligently and have a little luck you should start making money within a few months.

My point is that you will have to put in time and effort in order to get the online income you are dreaming of. Even online there is no such thing as success without effort.

If you are still interested in making money online, here are some facts you need to take by heart in order to have financial success online.

1. Making money online is not possible with scams and frauds (at least not for long!) which means that you will never be able to earn a reasonable income without diligent work and a fair amount of patience.

2. Even fraudulent schemers have to work hard to stay successful: they have to acquire computer skills, they have to devise new scams and start new websites all the time if they do not want to get caught. And they have to live in constant fear of detection because sooner or later they will be traced.

3. The "get rich quick" scam was invented by a loser – and only losers fall for it.

4. Online income is 100% dependent on finding or creating a niche market. No market = no sales and/or advertisement revenue.

5. Making money online is more about having fun than just focusing on fast financial success.

The bottom line is that anyone interested in starting an online business should be aware that while it might just take a few simple clicks and "dot coms" to make your life easier than it ever was you still need to work hard to achieve lasting success and personal gratification.

Good luck!

 

Technorati-Tags: online money making,making money online,niche market,get rich quick

8 More Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on Your Blog

Your Ad Here

 

9. Combine With Other Streams of Income

Affiliate programs and advertising programs are not mutually exclusive. There are more than a few people who think that affiliate linking will take the focus off their Adsense ads. While there is indeed potential for one to take the focus off the other there is also a real chance for both to work hand in hand as different readers are prone to respond to different approaches. You should consider the impact that your affiliate links have on other streams of income - but do not let that stop you from employing them.

10. Track Results

Most affiliate programs have at least some type of tracking or statistics service that will allow you to watch how effective your links are. Some of these services are better than others but most will at least allow you to see what is selling and what is not. Watching your results will help you plan future affiliate efforts. Keep track of which positions for links work best, which products sell, what wording around links works well, etc. and use all the information that you can get your hands on as you work to plan future affiliate strategies.

11. Build A Network Before You Need It

Probably the most important thing I have learned about affiliate marketing is that it works best the bigger and stronger your network is. As you may recall, in my first list I mentioned that ‘traffic levels are important’ - which is true, but connected to it is your ‘network’.

Whether it be your loyal blog readers and subscribers, your email list, your Twitter connections, your Facebook or MySpace friends or some other social network - the better and bigger your network the better you will do at driving affiliate sales.

It is not just about size – Although important, the size of your network is only part of what I am talking about here. Equally important is the depth of relationship you have with your readers/network and the amount of trust they have in you. If you have consistently helped people and been useful to them over a long time they are generally more inclined to respond favourably to your recommendations.

Relevance/Focus counts - Another key element of your network is its relevance to the topic that you are doing promotions on. For example – you may have heard of or seen some people on Twitter running competitions to build their follower numbers in a way that just brings in any follower they can get. The problem with this is that they end up with a very large but unfocused network. I recommend having a smaller network of people who all share one interest than a larger one comprised of “friends” who just signed up to get a prize.

Finally, a network takes time to build - If you think that you will be doing some sort of affiliate marketing at some point in the future then it would be a good idea to start building your network now, before you need it. This gives you time to build the depth of relationships, the trust and focus of your network, before you begin promoting affiliate products to your online friends.

12. Try Different Media

I have alluded to the fact that promotions work differently on different media above already, but it is worth mentioning once more.

For example: Some affiliate promotions seem to convert best in a blog post, others work best when you send an email to a list you have been building, while still others seem to take off on Twitter, Facebook or other social media sites.

The key is to try different approaches as you go along, to have build up your network before you need it (see 11. above) and to track the results for each promotion so you can check what is and what is not bringing in money.

13. Multiple Promotions Of The Same Product

If you write a single blog post promoting an affiliate product you will have a certain percentage of readers buy the product (the percentage varies a lot). If you are able and willing to follow that up with a different type of post a few days later it can reinforce the promotion.

The following is a good way to achieve this:

1. Blog Post 1 - a post announcing a new product, giving some benefits, explaining who the product is relevant for,and so on.
2. Blog Post 2 - a post a few days later in the form of an interview with the person or company behind the product - exploring why it was made, expanding upon what it includes and what accessories are available (if any), who it is intended for, etc., thereby giving the product context. You should try to include some tips or suggestions for readers who do not buy the product as well so that it will become a useful post for everyone.
3. Email List - later in the week email out the subscriber list, linking to the previous posts and reinforcing the promotion.
4. Tweets/Followups – You could also include a few Tweets about the promotion throughout the week and should consider a third blog post a week or so later – perhaps including some reader reviews of the product.

It is important not to spam your network but to find interesting and useful ways to draw attention to the product several times over a week or two so in order to reinforce it and give those who need a little more time to make a decision the opportunity to buy the product.

14. Bonuses DO Work

There are a lot of techniques that internet marketers use to increase sales of their products. Some of them may seem a little ‘cheap’, ‘nasty’ even, but many do work. Two of the least offensive and/or manipulative techniques work with the promise of added value. There are two easily manageable ways for adding value to the affiliate promotion: you can make the offer more attractive by adding a bonus of your own or you can ask the person/company behind the product to offer a special bonus or discount just for your readers.

Everyone who has ever tried it can tell you that conversions are significantly higher.

15. It Takes Time

A point I always stess and that may be familiar to you is that making money from blogs (through any method) takes time. While an affiliate program does have the potential to make you a huge amount of money very quickly - it almost always comes only after you have done a lot of work and spent a lot of time and effort on building and maintaining your network.

The early days of building your network may see very little - if any - results. I earned very little from affiliate marketing in my first nine or ten months of blogging but after that it has really begun to take off - partly as a result of getting smarter with the my promotions and partly because my network grew in size and quality.

16. Timing Is Essential

One of the things I have learned over the last couple of months is just how much difference there can be in the rate of sales at different times of the day and week. It can vary depending upon the location of most of a blog’s readers but generally sales will go up significantly during business hours in the region most of your readers reside in and on weekdays. Not really surprising, is it?

This information translates to promoting products: Unless the product happens to focus especially upon the type of people surfing the web on weekends or late at night you will want to time your promotions to those times of the week (and the day) that your target audience is online. And - avoid public holidays.

Please read Part 1 as well.

 

Technorati-Tags: affiliate programs,make money,monetize blog,blogging for money

8 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on Your Blog

Your Ad Here

 

There are a number of very popular affiliate programs available to bloggers who are interested in monetizing their blog. Amazon Associates Program, Clickbank Affiliate Program, Commission Junction Affiliate Program and Linkshare are probably the most widely known. Today I’d like to give you a few tips that should help you get the best results out of any affiliate program that you choose to run with.

1. Consider Your Audience

This one is a given - but it is worth putting yourself in the shoes of your typical reader and consider what he or she might be looking for as they visit your blog. Are they shopping for specific products? Might they be interested in related products or accessories? What would entice them to purchase? Have your reader in mind rather than the product. If you take this advice by heart you will be doing your readers a favor as well as making a few dollars on the side.

2. Genuine Recommendations and Personal Endorsements Work Best

There are literally hundreds of thousands (perhaps even millions) of products and services for you to choose from to recommend to your blog’s readers but, unfortunately, making money from them is not as easy as randomly adding links to them from your blog. Your blog’s readers come back to your blog time and again because something about your writing resonates with them - they trust and respect you, and perhaps the quickest way to destroy this is to recommend that they buy products that cannot possibly benefit them.

So far, I have had the best results from affiliate programs whenever and wherever I give an open and honest appraisal of the product - including both its strenghts and its weaknesses. People want to know exactly what they are buying first, therefore you should tell them about what possible limitations a product might have - they will be grateful for your honesty and buy it anyway if it meets their particular need.

3. Only Link to Quality Products

We all like to make sure that we are getting the best value for our money - your readers are no different in this respect than anybody else and they are more likely to make a purchase if they can rely on you to find the best products for them. Choose products and companies with good reputations, quality sales pages and safe payment options. There is nothing worse than writing a glowing review of a product only to send your readers to a page that looks cheap and untrustworthy.

4. Contextual Deep Links Work Best

A while ago, when I started using the Amazon Associate Program on one of my blogs I naively thought that all I had to do was put an Amazon banner ad (linking to Amazon’s front page or – alternatively – to special offers) at the top of my blog. I assumed that my readers would see it and surf over to Amazon and buy up big - thereby making me rich and happy. Alas, nothing could have been further from reality.

That is the reason  why I always stress that bloggers should learn a little bit from contextual advertising when it comes to affiliate programs. The secret of contextual ads like AdSense is that when visitors are reading a post on a particular topic on your blog they will be shown an advertisement for a product that is closely related to that topic so they are more likely to click it than if they saw an ad for something else. The same is true for all affiliate programs. A banner to a general page on every page on your site will not be anywhere near as effective as multiple links throughout your blog that advertise products that are relevant to readers reading a particular part of your blog.

So if you are writing a blog about digital cameras and have a review for a particular product - the most effective affiliate program that you could link to from within the content of that page would be one that sends your readers directly to a page selling that specific model of digital camera. This is how I use the Amazon program today. It is more work than AdSense-style contextual advertising because you’re not just putting one piece of code into a template but rather need to place individual links on many pages - but it is worth the effort.

5. Consider the Positioning of Links

The key factor in AdSense optimization is the positioning of ads. I keep telling fellow bloggers to position their ads in the hotspots on pages (like the top of a left hand side bar - or inside content - or at the end of posts above comments – directly below the header, etc). The same principles should be applied to affiliate advertising.

6. Traffic Levels are Important

While they are not the sole factor - traffic levels are obviously key when it comes to making money from almost any online activity. The more people see your carefully placed, relevant and well designed affiliate links the more likely it is that one of them will click on them and go on to make a purchase. So do not just work on your affiliate links - work on building a readership. Not just this, consider as well how you might direct traffic on your blog toward pages where people are more likely to see your affiliate links.

7. Diversify without Cluttering

Don’t put all your affiliate efforts into one basket. There are plenty of products out there to link to so there is no need to just work on one. But do not clutter up your blog with too many affiliate program links. If you do so you run the serious risk of diluting the effectiveness of your links and annoying your readership.

8. Transparency

Do not try to trick your readers into clicking links that could make you money. While it may not always be feasible to label each and every affiliate link I think at least some attempt should be made to let people know what type of link they are clicking on. Consistency is important with this so readers of your blog will always know what to expect. You could, for instance, put a note beside or under affiliate links to let readers know that this is what they are (unless the wording of a link makes it obvious that the reader will be taken to some sort of shop, ie a link my say ‘buy the XXX product’ or ‘get the latest product on XXX’). But the best and easiest way to go about this is to use side-wide diclaimers to inform your readers that you are using affiliate links.

 

Please read Part 2 as well.

 

Technorati-Tags: affiliate program,amazon,links,make money,monetize blog,product links,monetizing blog,endorsement,advertising