The Affiliate Marketers Corner

Hi everybody,
Things have been quite busy for me lately. My internet service is humming along now without a hitch.

There have been so many new services popping up on the web lately that I’ve been spending quite a bit of time researching as many as I can. There are currently so many new tools available out there that shave hours from every project, it makes things much easier.

One problem is that each service is an expense in itself and can add up quickly. I’ll review different services from time to time that I feel is cost effective and provides the best possible avenue for success. I just don’t want to recommend anything and everything.

In my last post I discussed article marketing and how effective it can be in helping drive traffic to your site. In this post I want to review how to set up an effective profile box.

Most article services don’t like articles that are peppered with your ads or links to sales pages, they want content that can be useful to their readers. In other words, don’t just tell people to click your links, give them useful information as I discussed in my previous post.

Set up your profile in a way that gives readers a chance to click on your link and be taken to either another article you’ve written on the subject or to your blog or even to a sales page. This is where you advertise yourself. The article should be gripping and informative enough to move readers to click on your profile links in order to follow more of your advise or to see if you have something to offer.

I’ve found the most effective way to set up your profile is to include three links to three different locations. Write three articles about your subject. This isn’t as hard as it sounds. You simply write a good article and then change it up a bit for the other two. Post two of them on ezinearticles.com or another if you prefer. Then post the third article on another article site like digg.com for example.

In your profile for ezinearticles.com, include a link to your main site or blog, another link to the other article within ezinearticles.com and the third link to the article on digg.com.

Within your profile for digg.com, include a link to each article that was posted on ezinearticles.com and the third link will go to your main site or blog.

By doing it this way, you are creating backlinks between the sites which helps your ranking with Google and pushes your articles up in the search engines.

So an example for someone promoting say…fly traps, would be something like:
For more information on how to build a better fly trap, try reading

Hello everyone,

Wow, what a week. I’ve been battling it out with connection problems with my ISP. I’ve been unable to connect to the internet for about six days up until last night. The ISP swears it is my modem, save the fact that I’ve talked with all of my neighbors who have expressed the same issues with their service. None of us have been able to get online but…it’s MY modem…whatever makes them happy I guess.

So, I hope everyone has had a very profitable week and is ready to energize their efforts for a new month. I always liked October. I’m not a winter person, but I do like Fall.

Ok, let’s get to the topic I wanted to share today…Traffic.

There are several methods of driving traffic to your site. There isn’t enough room or time to go into all of them here today, so I’m going to focus on the free methods that work quite well.

I already discussed keywords and how to use them in my previous post. Now we are going to discuss methods of driving traffic to your sites.

I’ve researched pay-per-click and found it very interesting. If you want to generate quick cash, ppc is the way to go. With that being said however, it is also the easiest way to loose your money. I remember when ppc was new to the web and people were discussing pushing up their amount per click to $1.50. They were sweating bullets over spending that much for a click. Recently, I researched a site that led you through common ppc techniques that were current up to July of 2009. I was shocked to find that there are ppc campaigns that are bidding on $25 to $35 per click. That is entirely way too much in my book…No thank you.

The best free method of driving traffic to your site in my opinion is through articles. I know, everybody likes to quickly jump on the “I’m not a writer” band wagon when the subject of article marketing arises. If you can write as you speak, then you’ve got what it takes to write successful articles.

I used to have a hard time understanding how I would make money by giving away something for free or offering free advice. I wasn’t seeing everything clearly. You must get a grasp on the idea of helping others. No one wants to be sold to, but everyone wants to be helped.

Writing articles that offer help to others to achieve their desired outcome will help you build up trust and recognition for your business. Once you have build up trust in people, they won’t have their guard up and they will know whether or not you are out to get their buck or if you are genuinely wanting to help them.

Your articles should contain important substance and not be for the sole purpose of selling something. Don’t do that! If you write an article on video creation and you post a product and website through every paragraph telling people to, “click here and get this now”, you are doomed to fail and you shouldn’t even waste your time.

Instead, give information about what camera to use, what format the file should be converted to in order to best be played over the internet. Give tips on lighting, what to say, how to dress, camera angles, etc. Maybe write a series of three different articles on the same subject that end in cliff-hangers to keep readers coming back for more. Readers came to get information that will help them with their problem, not to buy something.

Articles are the tools needed to get you set up to obtain future visitors/subscribers to your sites. The profile section is the proper place to promote yourself and your sites. I will go into more detail in my next post concerning how to put together a winning profile. Take care for now and I hope this information helps to get you going.

Take care for now and I’ll see you in the next post.

Rick

Hello all,
Sorry for the gap since the last entry…I’ve been quite busy lately. Things have been moving along with my video sites. I have them all finished but am working on the marketing end of things now. It is time consuming but I think it will be worth it in the end. As promised, I’ll keep you posted concerning how well or not things are going with my whole video sites project.

Once I start generating some traffic and income from them I will take some time to explain what I did and how I did it. I don’t want to write about that yet because if something needs changed along the way, I won’t have to back-track and explain what, how and why things were changed. I just want to give a summary as an overview once I have everything in place. Thanks for staying tuned.

Today I wanted to discuss how to implement keywords into your marketing plan. Keywords are at the tip of the iceberg in the scheme of things. Without them, your site is sure to fail. If you select the right combination, you can expect to generate a nice flow of traffic to your site.

Keyword research can be performed for free by logging into a Google account and visiting: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

There are others, dozens to be truthful, but google is the one that uses the actual keywords that users are typing into the google search engine…plus, it’s free.

Most struggle with selecting the right keywords to use. I want to help clear up something that is a stumbling block for everyone when they are starting out. Newbies always want to start out using the same keyword and simply adding words to them. For example, let’s say you wanted to promote a site that offers information about dog training. Well, You could begin by typing “dog training” into the keyword tool and you would end up with a long list that suggests:

dog training
dog training course
boxer dog training
dog obedience training
dog training schools
etc.

Do you see the pattern? All they do is add a word to your search terms. These types of keywords build your list deep but not wide. Building a list by simply changing or adding a word to your primary subject can cause you to repeat the keyword multiple times and get missed in the searches that don’t include your key term “dog training”.

To build your list wide, use keywords that relate to your subject. Try words like:

dog training
dog behavior
pet obedience school
preventing dog aggression
pet training
animal behavior academy
etc.

By changing it up a bit you are using a wider net to capture traffic that may have been missed by simply using the words “dog training” throughout your site.

Once you have your keywords selected, add them to your site within the meta tag area. You can also add them through the text of your site to give it a boost. Without the proper keywords, your site gets lost in the back alleys of the internet. keywords are necessary elements that pulls you into sight through the search engines. Keep at it and mix it up a bit. If you feel there isn’t enough traffic going to your site and you’ve been promoting the heck out of it, your keywords may need a little tweaking.

Keep promoting and be diligent with it. Good luck and I’ll see everyone in the next post.

Starting your own business takes work, but more importantly…determination. Back in the early 90′s I had opened, operated and owned my own photography studio. I worked for myself for four years before going back to the 9 to 5 scene. I was simply exhausted. I worked day and night to keep up with both the work and the bills. Opening my studio had cost me roughly $20,000, which was a small amount for a professional studio. It literally took up every minute of my day, every day, every week. One day my wife hugged me and told me she missed me. The sad thing is…we lived under the same roof. That was it, I had it and went back to punching a time clock.

Something I learned form the experience of owning my own shop is that it took a focused determination to get there. I didn’t just wake up one day and find myself owning my own business. I had to work up to it. I began taking photographs, on sight. After saving up for about six months, I had enough for a down payment for a small house. My wife and I fixed it up and moved into the second floor, while running the business on the ground floor. My hours were by appointment, so I was open during odd evening hours from time to time. But the point is, I made it happen.

At this point you may be asking, “Ok Rick, what does this have to do with starting an affiliate marketing business”. Well, everything. Keep reading.

I know where each and every one of you are right now. Let me ask you a question, how many “make money online” products have you spent your money on since you began searching for the solution to your financial problems? Honestly, I lost count. I know I have quite a collection. At one point, I began to notice that most of them had similar information in them. All of them offered something unique, but for the most part they all explained the same formula for success. So I began wondering why I wasn’t making any money at this.

I had one problem…ME. I was the reason I wasn’t making any money online. I was so busy collecting “The next big secret”, and never gave myself the opportunity to actually begin working my business.

How does this relate to my portrait studio? The reality was that I went to college, worked as a freelancer for a couple of years on the side to gain experience, bought equipment, came up with a list of services and their prices, went out and “got the word out” about my services, began taking pictures for people. All of this occurred over a three year period after graduating from college.

So what would this look like if I were to relate it to being an information collector of affiliate marketing plans but never taking action? The scenario would probably be…Graduate from college, read and study about being a freelance photographer, research prices for various photography equipment but don’t actually buy anything, list services and prices that I could possibly use, create advertisements and brochures without allowing any of them to be seen by the public, and finally, look through photography magazines and dream about what it would be like to actually execute a photo shoot.

This is a good example of being a professional dreamer. The moral of my story…don’t just be a dreamer, act upon your dream and make it happen. Don’t just buy the next best affiliate marketing product and the next, and the next…etc. Take action and start your business. Once you do, your fears will melt. You may be afraid of success, or failure, or whatever. Ok, that’s fine, but you still need to do something. Push your fears aside and initiate something. You won’t know what the outcome will be until you try it. You may be pleasantly surprised and make enough to make a house payment…or more. One thing I can tell you, it certainly doesn’t take three years to make money through affiliate marketing. If handled correctly and you stick to your guns, you should have sales coming in within less than 90 days. What could be better? It may only be $50, but what would you have if you didn’t do anything?…not even $50.

So right now, I want everyone to just stop procrastinating and JUST DO IT! You won’t be sorry, trust me.

I’ve received a few inquiries about whether or not it is really possible to generate enough income online to be able to quit a full-time job. Let’s take a closer look at this question.

First, you need to consider how much you are making per month/year. Let’s go with a yearly income of $30,000. This would make your monthly income approximately $2,500 …(30,000 divided by 12 months). That means you would need to generate enough sales in order to make up that amount each month.

Based on our mock scenario above, let’s put together a plan that can be implemented to begin generating income to move towards our goal of quitting our day jobs.

We need $2,500 each month to meet our goal, so what do we need next. Well, something to sell and a site to sell it through. So we decide to go through clickbank.com to find products to market.

How many products? Ah, now there’s the magic question. You need to choose a minimum commission that you are willing to work for. Let’s say you want a commission of $50 for every sale you generate.

Ok, now for some math. If you are making $50 commissions for every sale, you will need to make 50 sales each month from your site to meet your goal. Is this doable? Well, yes…but it will take quite some time to build up enough daily traffic to make it happen.

So what would I do? I would build 10 sites. Each site would be marketing a different product with a commission of $50 per sale, per site. That breaks down to 5 sales per month, per site. That’s more realistic with it comes to putting together a plan.

So in answering the question of whether or not a full-time income is possible through affiliate marketing…given the example above, the answer is yes.

I wouldn’t attempt to build a business with only a single site. The more sites you have, the more you will make. Start with 5 or even 10 sites. Find good products that are hot and offer a good commission. After you begin to generate a steady income from them, build more. Continue this process until you have the desired income and keep marketing the sites. As long as you continue to drive traffic to your sites, you will have the opportunity of generating sales.

I hope this answers the question for those who asked and I hope this helps anyone who is trying to form a plan to begin their own online business.

Take care for now,

Rick

Thank you for visiting my site. If you’re wondering who I am and want to know more about me, click the “about” link above and you can read more. As for the purpose of this site…I wanted to provide a place where people could come to find out more about the different methods and tools that are used to generate an income online.

I began working online as an affiliate marketer in February 2007 and have loved every minute of it. I’m not a guru and I’m not making millions…yet. I have a few sites that I’ve been working with for quite some time now with a little success.

Ok, I’ll give you the low down on why I actually started this blog. I’ve been very frustrated with my results from all of my efforts. Recently I have been in contact with an affiliate marketing guru, I’m not going to mention any names here because I don’t want to shine light on someone without their permission. This person instructed me to begin using videos to market my sites and to start a blog to share my experiences with others. I’m not sure how things will turn out but I’m willing to try.

So here it goes…

Back in June of this year I took this “guru’s” advice. By guru I mean that this person is making a full-time income as an affiliate marketer online. I changed a few of my sites by adding videos to them and started to work with certain methods of generating traffic as outlined by my guru friend.

As of today, September 11, 2009, I am giving an update on my status. Although I would like to become an overnight success story, I haven’t quite made enough monthly income to quit my day job yet. I stress “YET”. My experience so far is pretty good. I’ve been able to bring more traffic to my sites that, in turn, is adding more sales to my clickbank account. Nothing major but it has only been about two months. I started seeing an increase in unique visitors about 14 days from the day I started using the new techniques, about the middle of July, and it has been generating more and more each week.

So that’s where I’m at.

I haven’t been very diligent with updating this site but I want to start sharing my experiences with everyone. I’m not here to pull any wool over anyone’s eyes, I haven’t generated any kind of steady income from affiliate marketing up to this point and have been frustrated with my past results. I’m starting to finally see my efforts come to life and want to share with others what I’ve done and what tools I’m using to do it.

I owe it to my wife and three children to generate enough income to allow both of us to quit our jobs and get back to devoting more time to our kids. My house is falling apart and I just can’t keep up with the repair expenses any more. My job just doesn’t pay enough.

Come back and visit often to check for updates. I will be making my best efforts to post a new subject here at least once or twice each week, give or take a few here and there.

If anyone has any input or advice they would like to share, please do so…don’t be shy. I welcome constructive input from anyone’s experiences, that’s how we all learn and grow.

Take care for now,

Rick

One more thing…to catch up on what’s been going on for the past two months, I’ve decided to add several posts over the next few days. Just to catch everyone up on things. Thanks.

As food prices soar and the stock market tumbles it is obvious that our society is changing. The days of big banks and big businesses holding massive amounts of power and influence in the market place are coming to an end. The good news is that small businesses will survive. The small brick and mortar business with strong foundations and principles will continue and do very well, much better than the large corporations obviously. What does this mean to affiliate marketers?

…The business is yours for the taking and the sky is the limit. Due to the downward slide in our economy, internet marketing is actually on the rise. The more people are in fear of their investments and being laid off from their jobs, the more they take action to begin their own business ventures and leave the 9 to 5 RISKS behind.

Below are my recent reviews of current products that are at the top of the affiliate marketers ‘How-To” list. I hope this information helps you in your search for a better life. I work towards selecting the top products for review, these are the products I believe that will be the best to help you start to make a living online.

Keep coming back as I update products from time to time as they become available.

Good luck and remember…“Don’t wait, just DO IT”.