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