Path Of Least Resistance

Use Analytic Software To Boost Your Profits

2007-09-30T23:55:00.000-07:00

Track And Analyze Your Visitor To Improve Your Bottomline

Okay here's a newsflash if you're not using analytic software not only are you leaving money on the table you're sabotaging your own marketing strategy! Read on tofind out more.

Internet Marketers who started crafting their trade way back and have since been perfecting it, up until now, had a distinct advantage over the rest of us who were late to the party.
What do I mean by that? I mean that they had access to funds that the rest of us could only dream of or hope to one day duplicate which fact meant that these guys could afford the best! "The Best" as you've probably discovered somewhere along the line, rarely if ever comes cheap!
But that has all changed!

The Best Things In Life Are Free

Many a crooner has...well...crooned that the best things in life are free and most times that is nothing more than wishful thinking! But for once that statement happens to be true!
For the longest time now tracking software and scripts with which to determine the effectiveness of your marketing promotions has been largely confined to deep-pocket internet marketers, because only they could afford the hefty price and benefits characteristic of such software.

But that was then and this is now. Now even a penniless newbie marketer can access such software and...drumroll please...it is free!

How come? Two words is how come...

Google Analytics

In the most modest of explanations (I'm not going to bother going into an indepth description here), Google analytics does what web stats do but a hell-u-va lot more!
Everything is amply and best explained on Google's own web page so I'm just going to give you a brief talk-about here illustrating how Google analytics has helped me thus far, so you can get a better understanding of how it can possibly help you. Google recently unveiled its new version of analytics which it is still classifying as the beta version. That said this is a brilliant invaluable too for any marketer, especially newbies.

How Google Analytics Can Help Your Marketing Promotions:

Traffic Sources

SEARCH ENGINES: Using google analytics (yeah I can't be bothered to capitalize the "G" in google anymore)I can easily tell where my traffic is from. With respect to search engine traffic for example I know that I am getting most of my traffic from Google and a lot less from Yahoo, as well as very-little-to-non-existent from MSN. This tells me a couple of important things which are: I basically shouldn't waste too much time concentrating on getting traffic from any other search engine other than google for the time being.

ARTICLE DIRECTORIES: A quick glance at my google analytic stats shows me that I am getting significantly more traffic from my articles than from MSN and Yahoo combined! I can also tell which article directories are responsible for sending me all that traffic.

OTHER SOURCES: I can also tell which websites are sending me traffic. Recently I started posting to forums and I'm getting a fair bit of traffic from several of them. Every now and then a good bit of traffic comes inexplicably from a very unusual source. What I'll do then is check out the website and find out how come I am getting that amount of traffic from that particular source.

In this manner it is possible to stumble upon a little-known secret new technique for attracting highly qualified traffic; a method which you might have never otherwise thought up!

Country of Origin

This parameter has been surprisingly useful for me; you can find it under the heading of Map Overlay (Geolocation visualization). So how precisely has it been of use to me? Geolocation visualization can tell you right down to the city where your traffic is coming from. I was particularly interested in the country of origin and not so much with the city. In conjuction with another important google analytic parameter(s) which will be discussed a bit further down (the parameters are "average time spent on site" and "bounce rate".

I found those two parameters of particular interest with respect to country of origin because I noticed the folks who spent the most time on my site originated from N. America, most specifically the United States.

The content of my home page practically screams how most newbie marketers are being duped by promises of overnight riches and very long tales of how they'll be making thousands of dollars in next to no time. As mentioned previously I know that the people who spend the most time on my website (average time is 8.67 minutes) come from the U.S. Now the other visitors who hail from all parts of the world such as: Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia etc tend to spend far les time.
Here's how I interpret such data: The folks from North America are more aware of scams and have probably been scammed or burned by useless internet marketing products. In essence they have already experienced the frenzied period of o-mi-gosh-I-gonna-be-rolling-in-cash-soon!

Now the people hailing from other parts of the world who breeze straight-on-thru they are the best candidates to fall prey to internet scams or are the most likely to buy a marketing eBook that promises them that they'll be pulling in $5,000 in a weeks time (these are the suckers who make online marketing very profitable for the few who know how to game the game of internet marketing).

So how can I profit from this knowledge? Well as my website trudges further up the search engines I'm going to change the content of my home page (and nooooo I'm not going to promise prospects landing on my home page that they are going to be overnight millionaires) such that I retain more of those gonna-be-rich-soon misled folks; after all I'd be doing them a favor by saving them from spending their hard earned cash on worthless promises.

Bounce Rate & Average Time Spent On Site

In the paragraphs above I have illustrated the usefulness of these two parameters; but their usefulness extends much deeper. Google analytics tells you the average time spent on each webpage as well as the bounce rate (bounce rate refers to the number of visitors who land on your home page and exit right away). Obviously once you know such information it makes it that much easier to optimize your content to keep your visitors on your site. Google also kindly furnishes increase/decrease percentages for all its parameters so you can easily tell whether the tweaks you have made improve your visitor retention rate or not.

By the way the longer people spend on your site the "stickier" it is said to be. In fact site stickiness is going to be one of the most important seo parameters in determining how far up the search engines a website will get! In other words stickiness is good (which is why I'm going to make the navigation of my site better and more accessible).

READ ABOUT NEW SEO PARAMETERS HERE

Keywords

I've actually waffled on more than I intended but I think it would be downright irresponsible of me not to mention anything at all on how Google analytics can really help you concentrate on the right keywords.

Okay, so there is plenty of free software sprinkled liberally across the internet that helps you to research your market before making a financial investment; the point being that it is far better to determine the viability of an idea by determining whether there's really a large enough interested audience to warrant it as being a profitable market. (I mentioned various sites that supply these free tools in my free ebook Best Kept Marketing Secret).Click the title if you don't have it yet.

Problem with such keyword research software is that it may tell you how many times that keyword is looked up per month but it gives you no idea of the conversion rate of that keyword. When I say conversion rate I mean how many people that get to your site via that particular keyword actually perform your most desired goal or stick around to check out your site.
Okay here's an example that I determined from my Google analytics stats. The number of times that the two keyword terms "internet marketing online" and "internet marketing strategy" are queried each month fluctuates; sometimes the one is more popular than the other.

But as far as my website is concerned what I discovered was that "internet marketing online" is a far more effective term. In what way do I mean more effective? Well people who get to my site through that keyword on average visit 8 pages (compared to 2 for the keyword "internet marketing strategy") and also spend a whopping nine minutes more!

From such data I can tell that the keyword "internet marketing online" is far more profitable to me with respect to the current content of my homepage. Oh! Did I mention that the bounce rate for internet marketing online is 35% less than that of internet marketing strategy for this website?

But perhaps one of the best aspects about Google analytics with respect to keywords is that you get to be aware of longtail keywords that you'd probably never even think up let alone optimize for. For example I never specifically targeted the keyword "free internet eBooks" (the new search engine algorithms are smart enough to pick out keyphrases from text nowadays) but people who come to my site via that word spend a whopping 23.38 minutes on my site and the bounce rate is zero!

Now before you rush off to optimize your website around that longtail keyword you should understand not many people search for it per month and the only reason why I'm even getting traffic from it is because for most of the Google datacenters Internet Business Mart is on page 1!
Okay 'nuff said. If you cannot see how Google analytics can help your marketing strategy well I'll be decorus enough to keep my comments to myself. But if you can...then what are you waiting for? Go to google right now and introduce yourself and get acquainted!

Oh one last thing you need to sign up for a google account which will then incorporate your-everything-google such as Adwords, Adsense, Blogger (if you use it) and Gmail to mention but a few!

Home Base Business Secrets

Sayonara For Google Arbitragers

2007-09-30T00:58:00.000-07:00

Google has finally pulled the plug on the adsense arbitrage party! As of June 1st 2007 they have disabled thousand of Adsense accounts belonging to webmasters who've been actively involved in Adsense arbitrage schemes!

However what I cannot help find intriguing is how every time that Google clamps down on Adsense/Adwords arbitrage a flurry of fantastic, irresistible (for newbie marketers that is) arbitrage offers suddenly flood the internet? But more on that later, for now let me explain what Adsense arbitrage is just in case you don't know.

Google runs the largest and most popular pay-per-click advertising model on the internet, commonly known as Google Adwords. The attraction of Google Adwords and other pay-per-click models is that you can draw almost instantaneous traffic to your website or blog. This is extremely convenient for those webmasters whose sites are new because getting relevant traffic to your internet real estate is perhaps the biggest challenge for most new internet marketers.

Pay-per-click advertising models such as Google Adwords require the advertiser to bid a certain amount on a particular keyword in order to get their ad strategically located on the SERPs (search engine results pages). For a better/higher placement of your ad on the SERPs you need to bid more for whatever keyword you're targeting. Every time someone clicks on an advertiser's ad, they are immediately transferred to the desired destination url that the advertiser designated when setting up that ad.

Also every time someone clicks on an ad, the advertiser is billed the amount they bid or sometimes less; hence the name pay-per-click advertising. The drawback to pay-per-click advertising is that if you are not carefully you can rack up some pretty substantial fees with little profit returns.

The flip side of Google Adwords is Google Adsense. In actual fact Google Adsense ads are really Google Adwords, save for the fact they are located on individual websites and blogs as opposed to the search engine results index page (same thing as SERPs).

Google Adsense is an extra-monetization system for webmasters who display Adsense ads (Adsense ads are what are known as Adwords for content) on their sites. Webmasters (publishers) get paid the amount the advertiser bid to have that ad displayed minus Google's cut of course, which is 50%!

PLAYING THE ARBITRAGE GAME

As you can see there's a strong correlation between Google Adwords and Google Adsense which so happens to be the basis of the whole Adsense arbitrage principle. You see wily internet marketers realized that if they could bid on cheap Adwords and send a lot of traffic from there to MFAs (Made-For-Adsense sites), which traditionally had little else on them except high paying Adsense ads, then those marketers could make a killing! And many of them did!

GOOGLE SAYS ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

But soon enough, because of abuse of the Adwords/Adsense system, many advertisers jumped ship and took their business elsewhere. Of course Google was not happy with this turn of events because this resulted in a substantial loss of revenue for them, thus by incremental degrees they clamped down on those sites that were abusing the system. But it seemed that every check they put in place was countered by the wily Adsense profiteers.

For example a while back Google implemented the Adwords quality-landing-page algorithm, which basically was aimed at Google Adsense templates and MFAs, as well as nullifying the system of buying wholesale cheap (irrelevant) traffic with the sole purpose of getting said traffic to click on the Adsense ads that more or less constituted the destination website in its entirety!

The way in which the Google Adwords quality-landing-page algorithm worked was as follows: if Google determined that a website offered little useful content (in other words was nothing more than an MFA); or if the content on the destination website widely varied from the description of the targeted keyword of the Adword ad from whence the traffic originated, then Google made sure that the webmasters of such offending websites bid a much more for their Adwords keywords than the amount they made as Adsense revenue whenever someone clicked on the Adsense ads on their sites.

The Adsense profiteers countered this move by abandoning Google Adwords altogether in favor of other pay-per-click models such as Yahoo Publisher Network, Kanoodle, Miva (to mention but a few) where they could still bid cheaply for keywords with which to direct traffic to their MFAs and Adsense template sites!

Inevitably Google has finally reached the point of zero tolerance! Where beforehand they'd been treating Adsense profiteers with something akin to kids gloves, now they've adopted the big stick approach. As of June 1, 2007 Google has indefinitely suspended (read forever) all Adsense Publisher accounts that it deemed guilty of the crime of conduct unbecoming; in other words those accounts that largely catered to MFAs and Adsense template sites!

ARBITRAGERS DESPERATE LAST PLAY GAMBLE

The Adsense arbitragers know that the game is up, but that does not mean they are going out meekly and quietly! Remember how I said that isn't it strange how any time Google shuts down a system-under-abuse, those responsible for that abuse suddenly litter the internet with a proliferation of outrageous money-generating offers based on that shut down system. Case in point is the get-google-adwords-free call to arms!
My advice to you if you are tempted to fall for this evident scam is: Think carefully! Do you really think that Google got where they are (Number 1 in the search engine business) by allowing marketers to profiteer from a supposed loophole to the tune of 87 million dollars? Home Based Business Tips

The Hidden Truth About FFA Sites

2007-09-30T00:50:00.000-07:00

The Real Truth Of The Matter Is The Only Person Who Benefits From An FFA (Free For All) Site Is Its Owner...NOT YOU!

There are thousands upon thousands of classified ad and FFA (free for all) sites plastered across the internet, which on the face of it isn't all that surprising; after all FFA sites are an advertising platform and advertising is the backbone of ecommerce. Besides classified ad sites are merely the online derivatives of their real world counterparts commonly found in newspapers and magazines, right? WRONG!

In the real world people have to pay to post their ads in the classified section of a newspaper or magazine but that doesn't hold true for online classified sites which allow anyone who so wishes to post their ad for free. All told this doesn't make sense; why would anyone in the business of making money bother host a website that allows other people to advertise their own business for free? Well that is exactly the biggest yet little-known dark secret of FFA and classified ad sites. Read on to find out this ugly little secret of FFA sites!

FFA stands for "Free For All" and that is precisely what FFA sites are; online advertising platforms for all and sundry who wish to post a free ad. Let me add here that Classified Ad sites are basically the same thing as FFA sites save for the fact that on a classified ad site you can actually incorporate a bit more text in your ad.

But here's the sad truth about posting to an FFA site: NOBODY IS GOING TO SEE THAT AD!

Have you ever seen one of those FFA sites? They are peppered with thousands of ads all struggling to be seen! There are literally all kinds of ads, of all shapes, sizes and colors; ads that wink at you and ads that glitter so bright they'd make a supernova blush with shame!

The bottom line is that posting to an FFA site is an exercise in futility. Out of all those countless ads residing on that site what are the chances that yours is going to be singled out and reviewed? And as if that wasn't bad enough, did you know that when you post an ad to a classified ad site or an FFA site, your ad is only going to be displayed for one hour before it is displaced by the next batch of ads in that particular category!

Let me repeat that in case it didn't properly sink in. Ads posted to an FFA site are generally only on display for an hour or less! Talk about a waste of time and effort!

Which only begs the question, if nobody is going to see those ads where the heck do they all come from and who are all those people so intent on wasting their time by posting such ads?

Evidently the people who post ads to FFA sites have no idea that they are wasting their time. Thus following a path of logical deduction one can only surmise that the folks who fall in this category include newbie internet marketers and other clueless individuals who are desperate for traffic but have no idea how to get it (I should know...BEEN THERE, DONE THAT!)

As I said earlier, added to the fact that any ad posted to an FFA site is going to be one amidst thousands (talk about the proverbial drop in the ocean), compounding this already futile situation, is the fact that a single ad only gets displayed for about an hour before being displaced.

However for a fee it is possible to get premium placement of your ad. In other words your ad will be given the VIP treatment which either means it rotates with a few other premium ads at the top of the list and is constantly displayed unlike most of the other ads that are rotated off display after an hour or so.

Still as one talking from experience let me just say that even with premium placement of your ads (i.e., having paid a fee) the traffic generated from that premium ad is negligible to none!

THE MONEY IS IN HOSTING NOT POSTING

Okay, this entire scheme seems somewhat illogical. I mean NOBODY IS GETTING ANY WORTHWHILE TRAFFIC and on top of that 90% of those ads are posted for free. So what does the owner of the site get out of hosting such a website? I mean HELLO! Most of the people posting aren't paying a dime!

LEAD CAPTURE SYSTEM GALORE

The only reason why anybody creates an FFA site is to capture leads, period! Lead capturing is the sole purpose of Free For All sites which explains why the webmasters are more than willing to let you or anyone else for that matter post their ads for free!

So how exactly does the webmaster go about the business of capturing those leads? The system is quite ingenious really and basically operates according to the following guidelines:

In order for someone to post to an FFA site they have to agree to receive a confirmatory email. The confirmatory email is very important for a couple of reasons: 1) it proves that the email supplied is real and valid and not some bogus made-up one; 2) it acts as a safety net for the owner of the website in the sense that it proves that the email was so requested by the recipient and thus absolves the FFA site webmaster of any future accusations of spam.

More often than not the FFA site owner also incorporates an advert within that confirmatory email. But this isn't where the magic ends because, other than any ad integrated within the initial confirmatory email, another mandatory requirement that people wishing to post to FFA sites must adhere to, is to allow the site owner to send them an advertisement.

Finally, but certainly not least of all is the last requirement; which is that anyone intent on posting a free ad must reconfirm their wish to post by entering a special confirmatory code in a special link encased within the original confirmation email. In essence what has just happened is that the site owner has just collected a Double Opt-In Lead!

In case you don't know what kind of big deal Double Opt-In Leads are, suffice it to say that marketers are willing to pay a medium-sized fortune to get hold of them. However using this bogus traffic-generating system the FFA site owner gets to collect those Double Opt-In Leads for free!

BOTTOM LINE: If you are spending a lot of time posting to these sites in hopes of increasing your internet traffic, it is time to re-evaluate your marketing strategy, because all you are doing is pursuing an exercise in futility!

Knowing The Premise of The Internet Will Improve Your SEO Game!

2007-09-29T23:23:00.000-07:00

Understand The Basic Premise and Fundamental Concept of The Internet To Improve Your SEO Strategy

Once you know how Google measures or evaluates your links then you will be in a better position to conduct a more effective link campaign. Before I explain the current pattern of link evaluation let’s take a stroll down memory lane to see how far things have come.

In The Beginning A link Was The Equivalent Of A Thumbs Up Vote!

The original premise of the internet was to have a bunch of related resources (websites) linking to one another in a natural pattern of progression. Thus someone on a website focusing on gorillas for example would then naturally migrate from that site to one that listed gorilla safaris. Thus quite soon links became (and still are) the standard with which to measure a website’s relevance.

The thinking behind this was that the more popular a website was the greater the likelihood that people would link to it; and since people would only tend to link to sites that offered useful information then it naturally followed a large number of links signified quality...at least that was the idea.

The Birth of Link Spam!

Soon enough wily webmasters realized that they could manipulate the linking concept to their own advantage and make a handsome profit while they were at it. Instead of waiting for people to link to their new sites (a process that could take forever) why not form link directories whereby one, for a certain fee, could amass a large number of links in next to no time at all!

Booming Link market

Getting a new website indexed by Google used to be a task of Herculean proportions. Quite often new websites would languish in obscurity for ages, but those in the know realized that the process could be accelerated. By linking a new website to an established website or webpage with a high page rank (typically page rank (PR) 7 and above) that new website could be indexed by Google within days or a matter of hours depending on the PR value of the webpage on which the link was located. However getting a link from a high PR webpage did not come cheap and it was not uncommon for webmasters to fork over $800 for a one month link on a PR8 webpage!

Debut of The Link Farm

The link market trade flourished for a while, making a mockery of Google’s system of assessing the importance of any given website or webpage. However, a lot of webmasters in a hurry to see their websites scramble up the search engine indexes could not afford the hefty price commanded by a link from a high PR webpage and thus link farms came into being.

Link farms were the poor man’s solution to the hefty priced, high value links typical of high PR webpages. The premise of the link farm was as follows: instead of paying an outrageous sum of money for one link from a high page rank website why not pay a small fee for thousands of low PR links? In essence the link farms abided along the principle of the sum amounting to greater than its individual parts!

The Obsession With The PR Band!

Google thoughtful as ever, made it possible for anyone to determine the relative importance of a website at a glance. This they did by the introduction of the PR band, a small line atop one’s browser fittingly entitled with the word “PageRank.” The pagerank band scaled from a low of zero (PR0) to a high of ten (PR10). The greater the value that Google attributed to a given webpage the higher its designated page rank. In little to no time at that little green slash (PR band) became the highly effective unofficial publicist for the flourishing link market trade.

Webmasters obsessed over the PR band even though in truth the page rank value of a webpage plays little to no part in determining the position any webpage will attain on the SERPs (search engine index results pages). However savvy marketers used the PR obsession of the day to great advantage...using it as a tool to establish credibility and ultimately sell their wares to the less savvy.

However somewhat on par with the abuse of the linking system, the page rank concept soon became equally defunct. In no time at all the Google index was awash with spam sites topping its front page! Something had to give; and it did!

Fast Forward To Today...New Link Evaluation Parameters!

Oh how times have changed!

The search engine algorithms have gotten so much smarter that even blackhat SEO (shady search engine optimization techniques) these days is more trouble than its worth. With the continued abuse and manipulation of the system Google furiously tackled the issue of how to maintain website relevance and quality in its index in an increasingly spammy world.
Since its embracement by the public, the internet has seen its fair share of SEO manipulation from blackhat techniques such as multiple-blog-creation software following the debut of blogs (principle behind this system was that one could create thousands of instant one-way backlinks through the instant generation of thousands of blogs) to whitehat techniques such as the widespread dissemination of articles through article distribution software or services.

Some of these techniques still have value today while others have been effectively nullified such as the mass generation of backlinks through the creation of instant blogs.

How Google Currently Evaluates Links.

It used to be that if the PR band of your website/webpage was gray then this signified that said webpage had been banned. That is no longer the case. All new websites/webpages start off with a grayed out PR band. This band will remain that color depending on a number of factors before it turns white (indicating that the probationary period is over) and eventually transforms to green with establishment of page rank above zero.

Link Aging Filter / Link Probation Period.

To counter the widespread habit of acquiring links for a short-term period, say a month, so as to get a website indexed or attain page rank quickly, Google now subjects every link to a probationary period in which time the link is identified by Google but not accorded any value. Although such a link is recognized by Google, typically it will not be registered as a link associated with the website to which the link points for a subjective period; for that to happen the link needs to mature, and the rate at which a link matures is dependent on a number of factors.

Factors That Hasten Link Maturity Or Reduce Link Probationary Period.

1. Keywords: The keyword incorporated in any given link is going to determine how long that link will be under probation. The more competitive the keyword the longer will be the link's probationary period. In reality this link probationary system has superseded the Google Sandbox, which was/is Google’s technique of ensuring that super-optimized new sites do not zoom uncontrollably up the SERPs, quickly overshadowing long established websites. With respect to the Google Sandbox concept, if a new website was/is targeting a very competitive market already saturated with millions of sites, then that new website would spend a longer period cooling its heels in the Google Sandbox.

2. Volume of Traffic Across A Link: The more trafficked a link is, the quicker it will attain full SEO-value recognition by Google. This is a relatively new system in play and basically what it means is that a heavily trafficked low PR link will bestow far more SEO influence to the webpage it points to than a little trafficked high page rank link. In essence Google has pretty much nullified the system whereby webmasters could purchase links from high PR webpages in hopes of improving the SEO status of their own site. The application of this system explains why some newer webpages attain PR before older more established webpages on the very same website.

3. Links From Topically Related Sites: A links that comes from a website or webpage that has a comprehensively topical relationship to the destination webpage will have greater value than a link that does not. For example, say your website is about internet marketing, getting a link from another website that focuses on online marketing software would definitely fall under the category of topically related sites.

4. Utilizing Different Keywords In Links: Having the same keyword incorporated within all the links pointing to your site will tend to set off red flag alerts, which means that those links are not going to attain full SEO-value recognition by Google for a longer duration. Another link strategy you should employ is to have your links pointing to some of your inner pages as opposed to all your links pointing to your home page. Having links spread across multiple webpages registers as a more natural link strategy to the Google algorithm and the premise of this algorithm tweak was to nullify the system where webmasters would purchase links from link directories.

Remember anything that appears suspicious to the Googlebot is ultimately going to decrease the effectiveness of your SEO campaign. There’re many more factors that play a role in determining how high and how fast your website will make it up the SERPs (Google of course doesn’t spill all the beans) but if you conduct your link campaign with these few tips in mind you won’t go far wrong.

Internet Home Based Business

Bettering Your Affiliate Marketing Methods

2007-09-27T23:24:00.000-07:00

Also consider what currency you're going to get paid in. The big plus here is, if you're located outside of the United States, you're still going to be paid in U.S. Dollars as most internet companies transact in U.S. Dollars. 16. What Kind Of Billing Mechanism Is In Place? To avoid payment issues, it's better to join programs that are part of a bigger affiliate network (such as Commission Junction or ClickBank). Such affiliate networks make sure that each and every merchant who is part of their network has sufficient funds in its account to pay its affiliates on time. When you sign up for a program that handles payment and everything else itself, you lack this kind of security. 17. What's The Minimum Payout Amount? Most programs require you to earn a set minimum amount before they'll issue you a check or deposit earnings directly into your bank account.

What Is An Affiliate Program? Affiliate programs (also known as associate programs), are online arrangements whereby a merchant website pays you (the affiliate) a commission for sending traffic (customers) to them. In essence you are promoting whatever product(s) that merchant is selling. The beauty of this system is that it does not involve: stocking merchandise; shipping and handling; processing credit cards or any kind of customer support. And an added bonus is that you don't even need a website for this type of internet marketing. Points To Consider Before You Join An Affiliate Program 1. Is The Company Trustworthy? Your concern here is whether you'll be paid on time and if at all.

Obviously if the company in question is an eBay or Amazon, you don't have to worry. However if the merchant in question is unknown, that's when you may have some concerns about fly-by-night scenarios or dishonesty. Solution: Join well established affiliate networks such as Commission Junction or ClickBank that host thousands of merchant affiliate programs and oversee the commission payout to affiliates. 2. Any Contact Information? If you can't find any contact information...MOVE ON! 3. How Long Before They Respond To Your Request To Join? If you don't get a response within 72 hours (3 business days) pass on that particular program.

Their tardiness probably extends across board and who's to say they'll be more responsive about your payments or when you have a real problem. 4. Where's The Affiliate Agreement? If the program in question doesn't have an agreement...MOVE ON. No agreement leaves you exposed to being cheated out of your hard earned commissions. 5. What Does The Agreement Say? Okay, nobody likes reading those long-winded go-on-forever agreements; however, in this case make a point of doing so! If you don't, you could be in for a rather nasty surprise later on. Let's say for example you invest several hundred dollars promoting a particular product and your returns from that effort are a couple of thousand dollars. Most likely, you'd want to get paid as soon as possible. But if you didn't read the agreement which stated that the company pays quarterly, your money would be tied up and you'd have nobody but yourself to blame. 6. Agreement Termination Terms.

Most agreements have a termination clause detailing the terms under which you or the company can end the affiliation. It is ill-advised to sign up for a program that binds you to a particular company for a specific period of time. Also be wary of programs that demand exclusivity; such programs generally prohibit you from promoting similar products (from a competitor merchant) on the same site, thereby effectively cutting into your bottom line. 7. Does The Affiliate Program Require A Fee To Join? Affiliate programs are free to join; after all, you're in effect advertising for the merchant. If a program requires you to pay a fee to join, it's not an affiliate program but rather a Multi-Level Marketing scheme ( MLM). 8. What Type Of Affiliate Program Is It? There're basically three types of affiliate programs: pay-per-sale, pay-per-lead and pay-per-click. ·

Pay-Per-Sale: Such programs pay either a fixed cash amount or a fixed percentage for sales generated by your promotional efforts. · Pay-Per-Lead: Here you earn a set amount whenever a customer sent by you fills out a survey, requests a quote or obtains some information. · Pay-Per-Click: These are similar to pay-per-lead programs and you are paid each time one of your visitors clicks on a link through to the merchant's site. Pay-Per-Lead and Pay-Per-Click affiliate programs require large volumes of traffic to generate any substantial revenue so it's probably better for you to opt for the Pay-Per-Sale type of program. This type is performance based and gives you a much better chance of making serious money! 9. What Is The Commission Rate? The commission rate and structure will determine how much money you make. Generally the best paying programs pay you a commission of 50% for every sale. But you have to dig a little deeper to make sure you really understand what you have to do before you get that 50% commission. For example some pay-per-lead programs promise a 50% commission payout per application (let's say credit card applications), but you only get that commission after said applicant has been approved. 10.

Do You Get Recurring Sales? The best kind of affiliate programs entitle you to recurring sales. What this means is that as long as the customer you referred keeps ordering the product (such as a website hosting plan), you keep getting paid every month! This is what is known as residual sales. So be on the lookout for affiliate programs offering residual commissions. It's a great way to make effortless, automated monthly cash! 11. Does The Program Pay Lifetime Commissions? A program that pays lifetime commissions pays you (the affiliate) a commission for each and every product that your referred customer buys from that merchant. This includes any applicable residual commissions. This kind of commission structure is the best there is. 12. Does the Program Use Cookies to Track Sales And How Long Do The Cookies Last? So what are cookies? Simply put, a cookie is a harmless piece of computer code or script that captures harmless information (such as identifying a computer through current and subsequent visits, websites visited and date of visit). This is of importance to you because this is how a merchant can tell that a particular customer was referred by you, thus ensuring you get your commission.

The importance of cookies does not stop there. There're cookies and there are cookies! Cookies are coded to expire after a set period of time. So if a merchant supplies you (the affiliate) with cookies programmed to expire after 120 days, this means that if one of your referrals makes a purchase anytime within those 120 days, you'll get credited for that sale and get paid your commission. Remember, it takes at least 7 exposures to a product before a person is ready to buy! So the longer lasting the cookie, the better...at least from your point of view as an affiliate. 13. Do You Get To See Your Sales Statistics In Real Time? Make sure any affiliate program you sign up for offers real-time sales tracking (within seconds to one hour) or almost real-time sales tracking. This is important because you need to be able to assess the success of a particular promotion campaign. 14. Does The Affiliate Program Offer sales Tools? A well-organized and professional affiliate program offers their affiliates advertising copy, banner ads and/or item-specific links. Sales tools such as these make your job easier. If a program does not offer these it's probably best for you to look at other affiliate programs. 15. When Do I Get Paid? How Do I Get Paid? Make sure you know how often the affiliate program pays: weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or quarterly.

Internet Marketing

Improve Your Advertising Techniques

2007-09-27T23:19:00.000-07:00

Fashion Your Ads For Success 1. Don't leave your ads looking like...well ads! Many Adsense users simply follow Google's default format settings to setup their ads. Big Mistake! If your ad looks like an ad people are generally going to ignore it. As for those banners... please! Nearly everybody online hates banners and avoids them like the plague. So don't make the mistake of thinking that visitors to your website will behave any differently to those Adsense banner ads you may have set up. Simply put...do without the Adsense banners if you want to cash in. 2. Optimal Placement of Your Ads. In the real world it's said that location...location...location is everything. Same thing goes for the web, at least as far as Adsense is concerned.

If your ads are tucked away where no one can see them basically you aren't going to get any clicks. Think about it--when people go to a website the first thing they do is absorb as much information before ever scrolling. That part of the page they see without scrolling is called above the fold. That is where you want to put your ads. Remember easier seen means more clicks...which means more ka-ching! More Is Less. The number of ads you've got above the fold will influence your visitors clicking habits. Google puts the top-paying ads topmost with the lower paying ones at the bottom.

Adsense is an advertising model created by Google which utilizes pay-per-click and pay-per-impression advertising which is beneficial to both advertisers and webmasters alike. For the advertiser Adsense is a very efficient way to get access to high volume targeted traffic by having their ads displayed on topically relevant sites. For the webmaster Adsense can be an extremely lucrative alternative-income source, or as many Adsense gurus have discovered, Google Adsense can well be your primary super-income source. It's free to join Google Adsense and you'd be well advised to read Google's Adsense rules and policies. Google supplies excellent resources on The Dos and The Don'ts of Adsense as well as very comprehensive tutorials on how to set up and use Adsense. So for that reason this article will not go into the basics of Adsense but rather will give you tips on how to become an Adsense Expert and join the growing number of Adsense Gurus who are making mind-boggling amounts from Adsense!

If you have a stack of ads all located above the fold those cheaper ads might steal attention away from the more profitable ones. So keep this in mind...more is not necessarily better as far as your Adsense revenue is concerned. 3. Wave Goodbye To That Border. So you've spent a lot of time putting up intelligent and useful content on a beautifully designed site...shame that you've got to tarnish such wondrous aesthetics with Adsense. But guess what...you don't have to! You can easily blend your ads in to compliment the overall layout of your site. First thing--Get rid of that border delineating your ads. Next, make your Adsense text the same colour as that of the rest of your site. People are more likely to click on it thinking it's part of that useful content on your site. 4. Text Ads versus Image Ads. And the winner by unanimous decision is (drum roll)...Text Ads! With the right formatting your text ads will blend in with your content. Text ads are also more flexible with respect to tweaking and positioning. Another thing about text ads, is that you can squeeze more of them in the space taken up by an image ad (banner).

Text ads don't appear like clutter whereas banners do! 5. Keywords. The content on your web pages determines the Google Adsense ads that appear there. If your site does not have a specific theme then Google will gladly supply you with non-profit general service ads. So as you can see Content is Still King! Even so you can quite easily (and legitimately) influence the Adsense ads supplied to your site by strategically placing keywords in specific locations on your site without diluting your site's copy (text tailored towards a specific goal and written for your visitors).

These are just a few of the simple optimizer tweaks that Adsense Experts utilize to cash in big from Google Adsense. Remember that people generally need to be exposed to something at least seven times before they're comfortable enough to purchase it. So if you're an affiliate marketer or any kind of online seller (or for that matter as long as you have a site) why not put up Adsense on your site and make some easy revenue while your visitors familiarize themselves with what your site has to offer. Finally, if you really want to become an Adsense Guru who rakes in five-figure amounts every month, you need to understand what it takes to correctly design a website from scratch with the sole purpose of cashing in big from Adsense!

Home Business Methods

Tips On Improving Your SEO Game

2007-09-27T23:11:00.000-07:00

Don't worry at the end of this article you'll be supplied with a list of great and free keyword search tools. Nobody gets to see the name of your file other than you the webmaster and the various search engine robots. So it doesn't matter how awkward they look or sound because unlike people a search engine robot is not concerned with the aesthetics of a thing. Keyword Density Versus Content.

While making your webpage as attractive as possible to the search engines bear in mind you're doing this to get traffic...human traffic. So the content (copy) on your pages should read attractively to your human visitors while also appealing to the search engine robots. In this respect keyword optimization is a fine balancing act and if push ever comes to shove you'd be better off weighing this balance in favor of your human visitors. After, all what's the point of having a ton of traffic passing through your site and hardly any of it performing your most desired action (visitors buying something, signing up etc) all because of that lousy copy you wrote with the search engine robots foremost in mind!

By the close of 2005 the big kahuna...the absolute capo di tutti frutti of search was Google which commanded a whopping 46-47 percent of all searches conducted online. The runner up was Yahoo with about 25 % and followed distantly by MSN who conducted about 11.4 % of all searches. AOL boasted a paltry 6.9 % which still came to a not insubstantial 350 million searches. Searches through Google were a mind-sweltering 2.4 billion!

You've laboured, sweated and poured lotsa love into designing and building your website. And phewee...ain't it just the prettiest thing for sore eyes! But just as in real life--so does it go for the online world--beauty will only get you so far. So you've got to put that site to work!
And how do you do that? Get it out there...put it right in the bulls eye of the search engines! That's the way you're going to get traffic to your site. And just in case you don't know, traffic (specifically targeted traffic) is the life blood of any internet business.

Contrastingly MSN is the king of superfast indexing whilst Google is the snail in the site-indexing race. Yahoo once again falls in the middle of the two. So bear in mind, if your site is new and you're optimizing for Google don't forget about the other Big Two search engines (Yahoo and MSN) which can send some rather decent traffic your way in the meanwhile. There are two types of optimization techniques that will determine your website's standing with the search engines. They are: On-Page Search Optimization and Off-Page Search Optimization. This article will give you pointers on On-Page Optimization.

On-Page Optimization of Your Site Keywords

The first thing you must learn to do is to treat each webpage on your site as (if not quite independent) an autonomous entity. In essence this means a different title for each page and targeting different keywords for a particular page. Let's say for example your site is about vitamins and has a number of different pages for the various vitamins. Your home page (index page) would target general keywords such as vitamin, health supplement, dietary supplement, food vitamin etc. But a page with content about vitamin C should not target such generalized terms.

It should target keywords (phrases) specifically related to vitamin c such as: vitamin c, c vitamin, ascorbic acid, benefit of vitamin c and so on. The title of each particular page should begin with your most valued (most searched for) keyword. Once again using vitamin C as an example, your webpage title should begin with Vitamin C and not something like 'All the facts about vitamin c'. If you actually design and construct your website from scratch you can even go a step further. Name your webpage files starting with the targeted keyword. Once again, taking your vitamin site as an example, for pages relevant to vitamin C, name them accordingly. So say one of the pages is about the benefits of vitamin C, name that page with a searched for keyword or phrase pertaining to the benefits of vitamin C; e.g., vitamincbenefits.htm. So how do you know which keywords are regularly searched for?

Over-Optimization

There are also other very important factors to consider when optimizing for keywords. How many keywords (phrases) should you consider for a given page and how many times should that/those words appear on that page. Okay, the first thing that you have to understand is that there is such a thing as a website being Over-Optimized! You may believe that the greater the optimization the better but the reality is more complicated.

You see the search engine algorithms take into account the keyword density of a particular page, and by doing in-depth analyses of the topmost websites for a given keyword (for Google, speculation puts the ideal keyword density at between 1.5 - 1.8 % while MSN runs up to 3.0 %, with consistent ole Yahoo somewhere in the middle) they will know that something just isn't right if your website boasts a keyword density of 10%. This is know as spamming the search engines and sends up an immediate red flag alert. So what's the penalty? Your site won't get the ranking it perhaps deserves if it's new, and if it is an established site it will most likely be taken down a notch or two.

Another factor to consider if your site is new, is that Google routinely sequesters new sites (a process called sandboxing) until the site can establish value and credibility. This is all part of the on-going battle between search engines (trying to deliver valuable and worthwhile information to search queries) and the spam websites that offer no substantial value whatsoever, but are keyword dense one-page websites with the sole goal of making money online in some manner or other.

Home Based Business

Your Free Keyword Tools: 1. www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ 2. www.pixelfast.com/overture/