A Great Idea For A Blog Is Not Enough

March 20, 2008 by Ruth · Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging 

Because there are so many blogs and web sites about blogs on the internet, it can be tough to distinguish your blog from all of the others.  Whether you are starting up a new site aimed at bloggers or whether you are looking to make your existing blog more distinctive, the key to building and maintaining a site that will capture the interest and attention of the blogging community is finding your niche. 

If you can fill a unique need that no other web site does, you’ll be able to build a lasting readership among web surfers. Once you have discovered a niche, there’s still work to do, but finding your place in the blogosphere is the place to begin.

Every great blog starts with a great idea, and you can’t build a successful site that will last without one. There are many great sites aimed at today’s bloggers, and competition for the attention of this growing demographic is fierce. To make your blog stand out from the pack, you will need to offer something that no other site is currently offering, or you will need to do the same thing that an already popular site does but in a more impressive or valuable way.

One way to discover an ideal model for your blog is to look at the sites that have successfully captured a blogging audience already to determine if you can appropriate some of their strategies to help realize your vision. Of course, you will also need to add a unique flair to your project in order to stand apart from your competition.

Many people agree that the web sites that do the best in today’s market are the sites that have the most personality.  The fiercely individual surfers who are bloggers are a demographic that responds especially strongly to personality, so consider how you can give your site a unique and attractive feeling by lending your own voice and sensibility to your site’s design and content.

Once you have a great idea for your site, have pinpointed a special niche that you are well equipped to fill, and have infused the site with personality, the next step is figuring out how to get the word out to bloggers.  In the long run, a great idea just isn’t enough to propel your blog to success. You will need to draft a smart and realistic marketing plan in order to draw readers to your site.  Once you hook a blogger, good content will keep them coming back, but it is vital to get that first glance or your site won’t have a chance to shine.

If Your Blogs Aren’t Rooted Rock-Solid On The Top 10 Rankings in Google Like You Want It To Be… Then Get Atomic Blogging To Attract Unseen High-Rankings And Floods of NEW Cash With Your Blogs Today!

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Click2Sell: New Alternative to ClickBank

February 28, 2008 by Ruth · Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing 

Click2Sell is a new online marketplace similar to Clickbank, but has a much better Marketplace and Affiliate Network.

Click2Sell permits the sale of physical products as well as digital products and subscriptions. The vendors are never charged a set-up fee.  Managers can track affiliate activities and communicate with their affiliates.

Below are Click2Sell’s features and benefits:

General features:

  • You can sell downloadable, material and subscription products.
  • Merchants have wide variety of payments options (can even accept direct credit card payments from their customers and receive all payments instantly). Supports Paypal, Authorize.net, Worldpay and Google Checkout payment gateways. (Moneybookers is to be integrated soon).
  • Merchants receive funds to their Paypal, Authorize, Worldpay and Google Checkout merchant accounts instantly.
  • Merchants and affiliates are able to communicate with each other.
  • Everything (merchant and affiliate activities) can be done in the same account which is free to create, no upgrade costs.

Affiliate information:

  • Up to 95% sales commissions
  • Accounts are completely free.
  • Multi-currency supported - Receive commissions in the currency of your choice, regardless of currency in which product is sold.
  • 6 month cookies - If a returning visitor (which was first referred by you) buys a product within 6 months - you get a Commission.
  • Merchant rating system: if a merchant fails to pay commissions within given timeframe, his/her rating is lowered.  If there are still unpaid commissions he/she is banned from the system and is put on hall of shame so affiliates know which merchants are reliable. Click2Sell system ensures that all affiliates are paid.
  • Opportunity to earn 30% from referred member’s fees paid to Click2Sell as long as they remain active.
  • Affiliates receive their commissions via Paypal or Moneybookers account.

Merchant information:

  • No set-up fee (Clickbank charges $49.95).
  • There is no product or sales-page approval period.
  • Merchants may set any price for their products.
  • Fees range from $1 to $3 US per sales transaction. Clickbank charges $1 US plus 7.5% of the purchase price.
  • Convenient affiliate payment system - takes only a few clicks.
  • Mass payment to affiliates function is available. Everything is done (with a few clicks) from the same merchant area (no need to login to Paypal and Upload txt files).
  • Merchants have complete affiliate tracking and control.
  • Merchants can set a custom commission rate for a specific affiliate.
  • Merchants may ban unwanted affiliates, approve affiliates automatically or manually, and can offer promotional tools for affiliates.
  • A merchant may choose the countries that he or she wants to sell to.
  • Set automatic product price increase or decrease.
  • Customize pre-made affiliate page, checkout page.
  • Encrypted product Download pages.
  • For added security, download links expire after 72 hours.
  • Merchants have 100% control over refunds of their products.

Statistics:

  • Select either a General or Daily reports of your sales.
  • See how many views, unique visitors and sales your sales-page got (by direct links or affiliate links).
  • You can create different tracking channels to test various advertising options.
    Detailed transaction reports.
  • Track each product’s performance in the Marketplace.
    Track percentage of sales made by affiliates.
  • Statistics of keywords (a user will know exactly what keywords are used in search engines by sales-page visitors).
  • Statistics of referrers (what websites are bringing the most targeted visitors to your sales-page).
  • Statistics about search engines (how many visitors and buyers are brought by each Search Engine for every certain Keyword)

Support features:

  • Help desk
  • User guides
  • Forum
  • FAQ

When you visit Click2Sell intially, don’t be disappointed about the fact that some products have no conversions rates yet.  This is a new system and it will take a little while before they are in full swing.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love Clickbank, but I think they got some competition on their hands.

Two thumbs up for the Click2Sell Marketplace.
 
Sign up for a free Click2Sell account today.

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Benefits Of Having A Sitemap

November 27, 2007 by Ruth · Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing 

Sitemap generators can be downloaded from various sources on the Internet.  Sitemaps have two fundamental purposes.  It help surfers navigate a site effectively.  At the same time, a sitemap encourages search engine spiders.  Google offers one of the most popular sitemap generators online.

The sitemap generator google has makes it possible for a website to get listed and get updated by google’s search engine.  Setting up a sitemap helps speed up the addition of the web pages of a site to the google listing.  It also makes it easier for a site to get noticed by online surfers.  In addition, any changes made to a website that has a sitemap has the potential to be picked up by google immediately.  It also helps keep online information fresh and up-to-date for users.

Visibility is a major concern online.  A website that is completely indexed has better chances of getting top search engine placement in page results.  Many of the popular browsers used by searchers and that support java recognize sitemaps.  These include Firefox and Internet explorer. 

An online consumer that searches for  specific content on the web can immediately be directed to any one of the web pages of a particular site.  It’s easier for a search engine to provide accurate results from web pages they are familiar with.

A sitemap is highly recommended for websites that often do repeated modification of their web pages.  It can be used for websites of any size, regardless of the number of web pages a site may contain.

Although using a sitemap is not a guarantee of increased site rankings, it does however provide the website a better opportunity of getting listed in the search engines.

Most of the sitemap programs available on the web make use of extensible markup language or XML.  Similar to hypertext markup language or HTML, XML is used widely in blogs and syndicated feeds on the Internet.  Each line of a XML code for a sitemap has a specific purpose.

The location or <.loc> identifies the name of the web page of a website.  The line <.lastmod> indicates when the web page was last modified. T he format for <.lastmod> can either be dd.mm.yyyy, dd.mm.yyyy hh:mm, dd/mm/yyyy or dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm.

<.changefreq> advises the search engine of a specific time frame when the web page is regularly updated.  This can either be done on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis.  For web pages that are not updated, the value ‘never’ is used. <.priority> indicates the level of priority that a search engine should give a particular web page of a website. These levels range from 0.0 for least priority to 1.0 for high priority.

Creating a dynamic sitemap is useful for websites containing various web pages.  Google’s search engine makes it easy for users to adapt their google sitemap with the help of a python script.

The python script generates a sitemap using sitemap protocol.  This creates a sitemap from either access logs, URL lists or from web server directories.

As one of more popular search engines offering a sitemap generator for websites on the Internet, google offers a few tips for its users.  Using the google sitemap url encoder/decoder is helpful for submitting sitemaps to google.  For websites that have numerous web pages, creating a sitemap can be a tremendous task.  For this situation it is best to click on the column title in order to make it easier for a URL list to get sorted.

The google sitemap generator allows users to save their settings.  Users can use these saved settings as a guideline for succeeding sitemap updates. The sitemap generator also recognizes the use of robots.txt files.

Using a sitemap is a positive move in getting top ranking on the Internet’s top search engines as well as high visibility among online users. 

Must Have Features For Your Web Site

October 17, 2007 by Ruth · 1 Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing 

Don’t just focus on the home page, keywords and titles

The first step to sales when customers visit your site to see the products they were looking for.  Of course, search engine optimization and better rankings can’t keep your customer on your site or make them buy.  The customer having visited your site, now ensure that he gets interested in your products or services and stays around.

Motivate him to buy the product by providing clear and unambiguous information.  Thus if you happen to sell more than one product or service, provide all necessary information about this, may be by keeping the  information at a different page.  By providing suitable and easily visible links, the customer can navigate to these pages and get the details. 

Understanding Your Target Market

If you design a website you think will attract clients, but you don’t really know who your customers are and what they want to buy, it is unlikely you make much money. Website business is an extension or replacement for a standard storefront. You can send email to your existing clients and ask them to complete a survey or even while they are browsing on your website. Ask them about their choices.

Why do they like your products?  Do you discount prices or offer coupons?  Are your prices consistently lower than others?  Is your shipping price cheaper?  Do you respond faster to client questions?  Are your product descriptions better?  Your return policies and guarantees better than your competitor’s?  To know your customer you can check credit card records or ask your customer to complete a simple contact form with name, address, age, gender, etc. when they purchase a product.

Does your website give enough contact information?

When you sell from a website, your customer can buy your products 24 hrs a day and also your customers may be from other states that are thousands of miles away.  Always provide contact information, preferably on every page of your website, complete with mailing address, telephone number and an email address that reaches you. 

People may need to contact you about sales, general information or technical problems on your site.  Also have your email forwarded to another email address if you do not check your website mailbox often.  When customers want to buy online provide enough options like credit card, PayPal or other online payment services.

Michael Badger’s Profit Sharing Model

October 10, 2007 by Ruth · Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing 

I just came across a new marketing campaign that Michael Badger has put together, and I have to say it is one of the most innovative campaigns I have seen in a very long time.  I have a feeling that this thing is going to take off and turn into a huge viral explosion - one that we will all remember for a long time!

What works about it is that there is a very compelling hook - he is offering to GIVE you a free monthly income with no buying, selling or recruiting.  At first I thought that it was just another hyped up website, but after I read only a few lines of the copy on the main page, I realized that this one might actually be different.

Michael very quickly gets into the nuts and bolts of exactly how he is going to accomplish the task of giving so many people a monthly income.  It is basically a profit sharing model. He is going to be launching a new membership site offering small business owners and marketers a service in a few months.  It is from that service that he will allocate funds to be divided among a pool of people.  All you have to do to be part of the pool is sign up now to receive his newsletter and announcements about the upcoming service.

And that’s it - you just sign up and you will receive part of his profits.

It’s a pretty cool idea really.  In essence what he has done is taken the portion of his budget that would have gone into advertising and put it into getting the word out about his service in a big way.

It’s an interesting campaign that you may as well sign up for - it’s free after all. Or, just take a look at the innovative marketing idea Michael has put together.

Go Sign Up Now because this is going to be huge!

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Want Free Traffic To Your Website?

September 21, 2007 by Ruth · Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing 

If you’re doing business online or planning to , this is a must have.

See why . . .

One of the things my business needs and YOUR business needs is traffic.

But here’s what I think about how much traffic I’m not getting–that I could be getting?

And as you’re reading this, your competition is generating more free traffic than you ever thought possible.  It doesn’t have to be that way.

Some of them know some things you don’t.  They understand some of the best-kept secrets in Internet Marketing.

They’re getting thousands of free visitors each day from the search engines.

And I bet you think the science of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is hard to figure out.

I certainly did.

It all seems to change too quickly; and it looked a little too “Geeky” for me, and it appeared too hard to get really good at it.  Well, I found out that it’s actually fairly easy.

In the first 3 minutes of the video, I discovered two sites provide services I didn’t even know existed.  And they were free!

The hundreds of man-hours it will save me, is worth hundreds of times what this information cost.  He’s also throwing in bonuses that are way more than I would have ever expected.

You can count on us to only recommend things that work–things you can use to increase your effectiveness and your earnings.

If you’re doing business online I’m confident you will be glad you grabbed this information.

I’ve seen hundreds of entrepreneurs completely stagnate because they never learned what you’re about to discover.  And the best part is, most of the resources are free. 

Get Your Copy Today!

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New System And Free Traffic

September 15, 2007 by Ruth · Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing 

Here’s something that you must do today…

John Reese is providing and excellent opportunity to get free traffic called Blog Rush.

All of your blogs traffic will build tremendously over time so the sooner you get started the more traffic you will get and it won’t cost you a cent.

I started adding all my blogs today and you should do the
same…

Get over to Blog Rush now!

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Outsourcing - You Get What You Pay For

July 23, 2007 by Ruth · Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing 

Outsourcing projects can really be a time saver.  But you got to be careful who you outsource your work to. 

Recently I needed something done to one of my websites and had no idea how to do it.  So I headed over to one of popular online freelance companies to post the job.  Once you post a project, you start to get bids almost immediately.

I saw a lot of good bids and most of the freelancers had great reviews.  But I had this one guy that had no reviews and his bid was cheaper than the others.  He kept private messaging me, constantly asking me for the job so he could make a name for himself.

Well being the softy that I am, I gave the guy a chance.  Three days passed and I had not heard from him.  I emailed him and asked how the job was going.  He finally emailed me back and said his power had been out.  I said ok, I can understand that.  So I gave him second chance.

After the fourth day, he sent over the completed work.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  I don’t want to be too hard on him, but his work was so not acceptable.  Kind of made me wonder if his power was ever out.  I was pretty angry to say the least.  I just couldn’t understand what would make someone ask for a job they couldn’t do. 

It was clear that this gentleman had no idea what he was doing and simply wasted my time and his.  I never showed any anger toward him, but did let him know that the work was unacceptable.  I asked him to cancel the escrow payment and he did without hesitation, so I hired the highest bidder and he did a wonderful job.

I learned a big lesson from this entire experience.  When outsourcing a project, read the reviews of all the freelancers that bid on the job before hiring someone.  And never ever pick the lowest bidder.  You truly do get what you pay for.  I would also suggest asking for examples of previous work they’ve done.

It’s always nice to try and help people, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out.

Sometimes in life nasty little things happen.  It’s all about how we deal with them.

In retrospect, I’ve had so many good experiences with this company and will continue to post jobs there.  Outsourcing is a great way to grow your business.  It saves you time so you can focus even more on building a better business.

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Online Marketing Monthly Magazine

July 20, 2007 by Ruth · Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing 

I received the first issue of Online Marketing Monthly Magazine today.  It was quite a surprise.  Rick Butts, the editor and publisher Nathan Anderson really went all out with this one. 

It’s the first and only magazine that I know of created for the Internet Marketing Industry. 

It’s laid out beautifully and full of useful information that you can use right now. 

When I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down until I was just about finished. 

You can get a FREE ISSUE of the current issue right now shipped right to your front door in the US.

If you decide to get a paid subscription, you’ll receive:

> One year of Online Marketing Monthly Magazine delivered to your front door

> Discounts and information that will help save you money

> videos to download

> Access to the private subscribers password protected area where the really juicy stuff is

> News, reviews and just about anything you can think of related to the IM industry

When your receive your free copy, you’ll understand why you should have this in your arsenal of Internet Marketing resources.

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A Surefire Success System

June 7, 2007 by Ruth · Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing 

There is finally something out there that makes you money RIGHT NOW!

The Surefire Success System will help you pay THIS MONTH’S BILLS just by making and selling simple content that any child could do.  We’re not talking about selling well-written articles to a publisher or anything, this is REALLY EASY.  You can submit any kind of original content, like recipes, tips, product reviews, even home movies.

For each and every original thing you submit you’ll get paid Cash UP FRONT for it, and then get paid ongoing residuals for it too.

You get paid real, multiple, US Dollars for it on the front end, and forever afterwards, whenever it is seen by other people anywhere on the net, you get paid again. 

This system is perfect for everyone, because it’s so simple and foolproof, like the name implies. What I can’t get over is how much money you can actually make with it.

On this page:

…Luke tells you how he made $1,500 in three days using the system, and inside the product he teaches us all step-by-step exactly how to do even better than that!

And again, he’s making residuals on all of that content for the rest of his life… That sure beats the heck out of AdSense! 

For anyone struggling to make a decent living online, I suggest you check out The Surefire Success System today.

Grow and Prosper!

Ruth

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