Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing

Do You Really Need All Those Plugins?

If your blog seems slower lately, you may have too many plugins. These days, you can get a plugin for just about anything, and many people do so before even thinking of how it will affect their blog’s performance.

I am as guilty of it as anyone else: I hear about a new pluguin, or an old one I didn’t know did something “cool”, and download it to my blog. And soon enough I have so many plugins I don’t even know what each of them do.

It’s still the beginning of they year and it’s time to go through your blogs and check to make sure you don’t have any unnecessary plugins added.

So, your first step is to go and check how many plugins you have, and how many you really use. If you don’t use it, remove it!

Plugins are notorious for slowing down your blog, and many can be eliminated with just a little bit of a tweak here and there. See if you have any of the following on your own blog, and how you can replace what they do easily.

Google Analytics Plugins – there is no need for a plugin to include your Google Analytics. You simply open your footer.php, and add the code right before the closing body tag. A 1 minute job, actually faster than finding, uploading and activating a plugin.

The only time you need to be careful is if you decide to change your theme: you’ll need to go into your new theme’s footer.php and do it again.

AdSense Plugins – there are lots of options for presenting AdSense on your site, but unless you want o place your units in the middle of an article, or in some other odd place, you can actually code your AdSense into your template quite easily, removing the need for just another plugin.

After removing all those unneeded plugins you’ll be happily surprised with a faster blog.

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Affiliate Marketing, Reviews

Campaign Blasts Review

step-by-step affiliate marketing with AdWords

At the beginning of this year, I decided I need to go back into PPC: I’ve done really well in the past, and got sidetracked a little over a year ago.

And, in order to make the most of my PPC campaigns, I am re-reading Matt Levenhagen’s Campaign Blasts ebook.

The Campaign Blasts Affiliate Marketing System can be your opportunity to start making money on the Internet too, like it was mine.

Matt Levenhagen is an AdWords professional with a proven track record as someone who knows how to profit from Google. The material in this course covers the combination of Google AdWords and affiliate marketing to help you learn to create an income for  yourself with the potential to continue to grow and grow.

The guide that you get with this system is divided into 4 major parts with a total of 21 chapters in all. These parts include:

  • Blasting Orientation – Chapters 1-8
  • Markets, Merchants and Keywords – Chapters 9-11
  • Putting it All Together and Launching – Chapters 12-15
  • Expansion and Some Loose Ends – Chapters 16-18

All of this valuable information is then summarized in a great conclusion that really shows you how to take everything you have learned and make something of it. This is the type of program you can pick up, read through and then begin applying the tactics right from the start. As you can guess, this is very beneficial to anyone looking to start Internet marketing, AdWords or improve their existing campaign and strategies.

When you apply the principles outlined in this course, you can find your own success through blasting landing pages, blogs and websites.

This is more than just a system for making money on the Internet: it’s actually a philosophy. It’s a whole new approach to pay-per-click marketing and when done correctly, it can make you a great deal of money. When you want to be a better marketer and you’re serious about taking the steps needed to succeed, the campaign blast method will walk you through it step by step while also giving you the tools you need to continue to create your own successes in the future.

If you’re not 100% certain if you’re ready for the course, you can start off with only the Blasts guide and a basic membership and then add the full XP All-Inc experience later on.  You will find this is one of the most extensive memberships of its kind and it comes with many additional free material and added goodies. When you want The Best in Adwords Training, this is where it’s at.

Questions? I’d love to help: just ask!

P.S. I made $28,483.94 in commissions in one year with only one program using Matt’s methods. Don’t you think you should see what it’s all about?

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Affiliate Marketing

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

super affiliates handbook

Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing system in which merchants reward affiliates for each visitor or customer that comes to the merchant website as a result of the affiliate’s marketing efforts.

Affiliate marketing is considered one the best ways to make money online (read an amazing success story here), and affiliates can be rewarded in a number of different ways: cash, gifts, coupons and discounted merchandise are just a few of them. Of course, most prefer cash, but other incentives are nice too.

There are many different types of affiliate programs from which to choose. Some of these include:

Pay Per Sale – Every time a sale is made as a result of advertising on the affiliate’s website, a percentage or commission is deposited into the affiliate’s account or paid directly to them through online payment methods such as PayPal®.

Pay Per Click – Every time a potential customer leaves the affiliate website by clicking on a banner or text link that leads to the merchant’s website, a certain amount of money is deposited in the affiliate’s account.

Pay Per Lead – Every time a potential customer registers at the merchant’s website as a result of an advertisement on the affiliate’s account, the merchant deposits a set amount into the affiliate’s account.

For many website owners this is a great way to earn some extra money without actually having their own product.

This type of marketing is also beneficial to the merchant. By placing affiliate marketing advertising on websites all over the Internet, the merchant gets free advertising and does not need to do as much marketing. The more websites with which a merchant is affiliated, the more exposure products get.

All affiliates should do thorough research on the merchant before applying to the program. Not doing so can mean ending up with a merchant who refuses to pay commission fees, merchants with very restrictive terms, and even merchants who couldn’t care less for the affilaite

Of course, most merchants and affiliates have a pleasant and profitable business arrangement, but research is an important first step.

Another important aspect that an affiliate should consider is the placement of the affiliate links, and /or banners. It’s important to choose placement wisely: just slapping a banner on your page will not help you in most cases, but weaving links to affiliate offers in your content usually works well.

One of the best guides I’ve come around that teaches affiliate marketing is the Super Affiliate Handbook by Rosalind Gardner. Have you read it? Implemented it? What kind of success did you have with it? I’d love to hear about your affilaite marketing success.

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Affiliate Marketing, Work at Home

Winning Web Design Tips for Newbie Webmasters

Good web design is an art form.  A web page that is easily accessible, easily navigated and creative will attract more customers than one that is complicated and cumbersome.  Most people assume that to create decent web pages, they must use the most advanced graphics, flash techniques and other sometimes “expensive” tools.

In reality, good web design relies more on simplicity.  Best web design practices actually are simple to master.  First and foremost, a web designer should look at color.  Color is one of the simplest tools that a designer can use to attract surfers to their website.  Good web design uses just two or three complementary colors that are bold enough to send a message, but not so bold as to send the image “cheesy” to customers.

Good web design also requires appropriate utilization of text.  One of the biggest errors failed web sites have in common is inappropriate use of text.  Text for example, should be uniform.  Try using the same font if at all possible throughout a web page.  Additionally, ensure that text is big enough for a surfer to read, but not so big that it detracts from the message of the main web page.

The best web designs also take into consideration the ease of navigability. A web page that is difficult to navigate will cause surfers to flee before they have had enough time to decipher the message you are trying to sell.  Far too often, novice web designers attempt to design complicated and flashy websites.  While visually appealing, these websites can sometimes be difficult to navigate.

Make certain that when designing web pages you select navigation buttons that are easily understood and readily available.  Navigation should also be uniform throughout the website: that way a surfer once they ascertain the navigation method used does not have to guess how to go from one page to the next.

Large web sites should ALWAYS provide surfers with a search engine or site map, so that visitors can easily navigate through the many pages.  Also helpful to surfers would be buttons that would provide customers with information related to where they currently are.

Perhaps the most critical web design practice is ease of download.  Pages that are large and cumbersome or those that download too slowly will cause surfers to turn away before they ever have the opportunity to see what you have to offer. You want to ensure that all surfers have easy access to the information you are providing.

How does your website design stand up to these guidelines? If you have trouble designing your own site, why not outsource it to someone who does this every day?

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Affiliate Marketing

Learn Affiliate Marketing: Top 10 Free Resources for New Marketers

There is a lot of information on the Internet to help newbies learn affiliate marketing. Nearly everyone who’s ever earned a dollar online has something to say about it, but if you’re new to the field, how can you know what’s good advice and what’s not worth the pixels it’s written with? Here’s my pick of the top 10 free resources for new marketers to get you started.

1. WordPress. If you’re going to work online, you’re going to need a website, and WordPress is the easiest to use content management system available. Most web hosts offer one-click installs, which means you can have a professional site up and running in just a few minutes. Since WordPress is open source, there are thousands of developers busy building plugins to extend the functionality and make it even easier to use. No matter what your niche, you’re sure to find a free theme to fit. But if you want something custom designed, there are lots of talented designers out there who can help.

2. Google. Yes, Google. Not just the search portal, though that’s important. Google also provides analytics tools for webmasters and the best free keyword research tool online. They also have extensive help files and tutorials to teach you how to use the tools they provide.

3. Twitter. Twitter is not just for selling. It’s also a great research tool. If you use TweetDeck you can set up searches on your keywords, use the results to find new people to follow, new products to promote, and new topics to write about.

4. Ed Dale’s 30 Day Challenge. If you are starting at the very beginning and need some hand holding, you can’t do better than Ed’s 30 Day Challenge. Much like the Problogger program, Ed gives you daily tasks to complete beginning on day one with choosing a niche. He provides videos, software (free for 30 days), a forum, and lots of encouragement. He says his goal is for you to earn your first buck on line, but a lot of 30 Day Challenge graduates do much better than that.

5. Problogger.net. Darren Rowse blogs for a living, but don’t make the mistake of thinking all he does is sell ad spots on a high traffic blog. He is also an affiliate marketer. He promotes products directly on his blog and via email to his list, all while teaching new bloggers how to build a better blog. His 31 Days to a Better Blog program will give you step by step directions for an entire month of blogging. Finish the program and at the end you’ll have a great start on a sustainable blog, and 30 days of blogging momentum to keep you going.

6. Nicole Dean. As it says on her site, “Nicole Dean jumps out of bed every morning, excited about teaching others how to make money online.” Listen to her podcasts and you’ll know it’s true. Nicole is truly excited about what she does and is thrilled to share. She talks about service businesses, information products, affiliate marketing, blogging and just about every other business model out there.

7. Lynn Terry is one of the most down to earth, girl next door affiliates out there. She spells it out for newbies and veterans alike on her blog, and is always available in her forum, Self Starters Weekly Tips, to provide good solid advice. She also hosts a weekly webinar each Tuesday at noon Eastern.

8. Copyblogger.com. Copyblogger won’t teach you how to blog or how to be an affiliate marketer, but it will teach you how to write compelling copy that sells. Nearly all affiliate marketing models – blogging, email marketing, even selling via Twitter – require some form of copywriting to make it work. Brian Clark of Copyblogger is the master of online copy, and he and his writers freely share their knowledge with the world.

9. Warrior Forum. The Warrior Forum claims to be the oldest community of Internet marketers online today, and one look will tell you why. Most any time of the day or night you will find more than 2000 users online reading and posting and helping each other learn about all aspects of online work. Warrior Forum has a paid membership option as well as free. A warning, though: you could waste a lot of time in there, so be careful to only spend the time you need to learn.

10. SEO Fast Start. If you’re not sure what keywords are or how to use them, SEO Fast Start by Dan Theis will give you all the information you need. Dan has developed a system that will not only help you determine your keywords, but teaches you how to use them to drive targeted traffic to every page of your site.

There are thousands of sites online that promise to help you learn affiliate marketing. It pays to do your homework, and only take advice from those who are affiliate marketers first, and instructors second.

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