Internet Marketing | SEO | Traffic and Tips

by: Juan Mendez

An Affiliate is an individual who markets other people’s products on the internet for a commission on the individual sale. Thousands of people do this because they can start making money almost immediately without the expense and time needed to produce a product themselves.

Having a website is not necessary and there is no interaction with your potential customers beyond getting them to the sales page.

Getting involved in affiliate marketing is a great opportunity to make a lot of money on the Internet, but one should not go into it blindly. As an affiliate you must invest some time in research, this is absolutely necessary.

Know what products you want to promote, how much you will make on each sale and the return rate of the product. If possible it’s a good idea to buy or request a sample so you know the product inside and out.

As a first time affiliate it’s a good idea to start with reasonably priced products making at least 50% commission. The most critical part of affiliate marketing is of course marketing.

The issue of traffic is one of the most central and fundamental issues in making any money online. You can separate your marketing campaign into two distinct groups, paid and non-paid.

Free marketing can be quite effective if you know how it’s done. Here is a list of the most popular methods for getting traffic for free.

Article marketing – A great way to increase your ranking with search engines and direct targeted traffic to your sites. You should write about what you know. If you do not have more information on your topic than does the average reader you should probably choose another topic.

Write your article in a conversational tone so that it’s easy to read. Don’t make your article too long, remember it’s an article you’re writing not a book. A length of 450-750 words should be ideal.

Your article should be informative and about your website topic. If its just useless information your readers will expect the same from your website.

Blogging – Writing a blog is also a good way to drive traffic to your site and increase your search engine rankings. Blogs were originally used as online diaries but have recently taken on a business dimension. Your blog should be focused on your particular niche.

You should have several blogs with different providers and include your links in your blogs and profile. This is a good technique for increasing traffic and search engine rankings.

Forums – Participating in forum discussions is another great way to meet people and get your URL out there on every post you make. You should join forums related to the niche you are targeting or the product you are selling.

When you sign up for a forum you have the option of adding a “signature”. This signature will show up at the bottom of every post you make in the forum and should be used to promote your website links and products.

Whenever you make posts you will then be creating links back to your site, while attracting the attention of the forum readers.

Social Bookmarking – This is a valuable and reliable way to get traffic and backlinks to your site. There are many social bookmarking sites such as Furl and del.icio.us. These sites allow you to share your bookmarks along with a description with the public hence the term social bookmarking.

The main purpose is to put your links in front of people who would hopefully also bookmark your site giving you more backlinks.

MySpace – MySpace is one of the largest online communities with over 100 million members. It is a great place for networking with other people who hold the same interests and marketing. Another great benefit of MySpace is that it has dozens of different forums and groups related to specific niches.

Be sparing with your use of music bites, videos and other media clips, you should create an attractive profile that is easy to load. Forget the animation and other bells and whistles, make it easy to navigate your profile and organize your information logically.

Color schemes are important, use colors that enhance the look of your text and images not draw attention away from them. You should also use a recent photo as you are now. For help on designing a MySpace profile consult the tutorials on the site.

by: Theo Swan

When working with internet marketing, making websites designed to generate affiliate commission, it is sometimes difficult to find new niches to make websites about.

Trying to find a niche with competitive commissions, but without the following fierce competition is of course hard, but it is not at all impossible.

One popular way of making money online is by using small websites designed only with adsense – or any other contextual advertisement – in mind. These sites – often referred to as mini- or micro-sites - are made to target unusual search phrases, often in highly competitive niches.

This way, they can reach fairly high search engine rankings without to much work. The terms targeted will not bring many visitors, but the traffic it does bring will be highly targeted, thus converting well.

When using contextual ads – as with any form of paid-per-click programs – the main objective is to make visitors click the ads, they do not necessarily have to end up buying anything. That’s for the webmaster buying the clicks to worry about.

When working with pay per sale affiliate programs, one needs to take a different approach. Most affiliate programs operate by a pay per sale model, making it essential to send good traffic their way, i.e. visitors who will actually buy the products promoted.

Compared to a PPC model, this sure is far more work, but the upside is huge. Working in a similar way as with contextual ad websites, you can easily target odd search terms in highly profitable niches, thus receiving search engine visitors of good quality. You might not get that many visitors, but if you are working with the right keywords, many of them will be searching for exactly what you are offering.

There are a lot of online tools to aid you when looking for a niche with good potential revenue, but a fast and easy way to get a grasp of a niche is to do a few searches on google.

Looking at the number of results for any given search term will give you an idea of the competition.

Mostly this is closely related to the potential profit, as more money naturally attracts more competitors. Click a few of the sponsored ads, to see what landing pages people are using when buying traffic on that keyword.

Remember people are paying to have a visitor see these landing pages, so in most cases they are very well converting, making them excellent to study before you make a website in the same niche.

To fully take advantage of the visitors you send to an affiliate program, you should find a program offering residual commission.

This way, you will not only get a commission on the first sale, but get a commission of all future sales to this customer. In a way, it’s your customer.

Considering the limited amount of visitors expected, another important factor to consider before joining an affiliate program is their promotional material.

Are you looking for text links only, or are you looking for graphics for banner advertising on your page?

If you can find an affiliate program in your niche, offering affiliate links to specific products rather than the main page, it will make it much easier to target your visitors better.

If you are getting visitors using the same search term, it’s not hard to find a specific product to present them with.

Many websites offer free stuff and/or an initial discount when a new customer joins them. Make sure you are using all the promotions available to you when you join and promote your affiliate program - preferably found at http://www.affiliateranker.com/directory

by: Nick Kaplan

Why write articles?

Writing articles can make your affiliate pages unique and drive more traffic from the major search engines, resulting in more sales.

In some instances the merchant's affiliate program may not provide you with more than a banner and a few text links.

If your traffic levels are low than this will not do much to drive traffic to your affiliate links. If the merchant does provide you with content then this can be viewed by search engines as duplicate material depending on how many affiliates are promoting the same product with that content.

Beginning Your Article

First begin by reading all the information on the merchant's site about the affiliate program, if you are not already familiar with the product.

It is very important that you learn what it is that you are offering to your customers such as,product features,capabilities,limitations and specifications.

Many merchants will include these details with the description.

Researching your article

Use one of the many free or paid keyword suggestion tools to build your list of niche keywords. Google Adwords, Digitalpoint and CBtrends all have really useful keyword tools which are free. Experimenting will help you discover search trends.

Testing these keywords in major search engine will give you a sense market saturation and competition.

Include Keywords In your Article

When writing for search engines your article should be keyword rich. Include long tail keyword phrases in your article title and subcategories. Product specific keyword phrases will help drive targeted traffic from search engines to your specific niche.

What to include in your article

Creating an outline will help you organize your article and supporting subcategories sequence. Including descriptive keywords such as, size, color and dimensions in your article will further help drive targeted visitors to your site.

Helping your visitors solve a problem

When promoting affiliate programs through article writing, bring attention to product features that will help your visitors resolve a problem.

Use examples and illustrations of how these features can be applied in real life situations. If your product is easy to use, then bring attention to why you believe it is better than similar products.

Ways to emphasize product features

Use bullet points, numbering or italics when writing articles to emphasize and bring attention to helpful product features.

Free content

Articles provide free instant content for ezines,newsletters and website publishers. This free content is used to optimize and attract free search engine traffic.

Submitting to article directories

There are countless popular free article directories, where your can submit your article for publication. Arcanaweb publishes a list of many popular directories. These directories allow anyone to reprint the article as long as the resource box is included at the end of the article.

Read and follow the guidelines before submitting your articles

Do not include affiliate links in your article or resource box.

This may cause your article to be rejected by the directory.

Do not plagiarize another writers material.

Resource box and backlinks

Writing articles can increase the number of one way links or backlinks to your site. Included at the end of every article is a resource box,where you can include a brief bio and link back to your site.

Free article directories

Free article directories will allow you submit content but you are not paid for your article. Goarticles,Isnare and Articledashboard are among some of the large high traffic free article repositories.

Article distribution and submission services

Article distribution services will submit your article for a fee to article directories,ezines,newsletters,article email groups, social bookmarking and article announcement sites.

Article submission software

Article submission software such as Artemis Lite and Article Submitter 2.2 are free and may expedite the process once your are registered. You will need to do a manual submission for sites using an access code.

Paid article directories

These directories will pay you for writing articles or reviews.

Compensation may be in the form of revenue share or per word.

Paid to write reviews

In addition to getting paid for writing articles, reviews can be another avenue to earn extra income. Review rates can range anywhere from $2.00 to $200.00.

Reviewme, Reviewstream, Softwarejudge and Epinions are just a few of the popular paid to review sites that can put extra cash in your pocket.

You can also earn money with your clickbank id at Reviewsarena for up to 60 days.

Paid to blog

Writing blogs are yet another alternative for earning extra income.

Payperpost and Smorty are blog sites that pay weekly and compensation may range anywhere from $5 to $100. In some cases, you may be able to negotiate a price with the advertiser.

In conclusion

Do your research before writing an article,use targeted keywords on affiliate product landing pages. Submit to high ranking article directories to increase the number of quality backlinks. Check site stats for increase traffic levels.

Test and improve your writing skills by reading writing tutorials and ebooks. Learn from mistakes and continue writing articles.