Tons Of Unbeatable Affiliate Marketing Tips And Tricks

 

Looking for some ways to boost your Affiliate sales?  Check out these tips and tricks!

#1 – The Most Important Tip

The most important key to having a successful affiliate marketing program is to choose a high-quality product. Promoting affiliate products on your site means putting your credibility on the line. If you try to sell your visitors on a shoddy or second-rate product, you will lose their trust and their business.

#2 – “Sell” Your Product

When working as an affiliate, you cannot assume that people know what the product is or what it does. And you certainly cannot assume that people know how the product will benefit them. You need to spell this out in a clear and concise manner. Readers only know what you’re telling them about the product.

#3 – Choose Where You’re Sending Them

Where you put affiliate ad graphics and links on the page is as important as what you choose to link to. Tanya’s Note: Make sure you actually visit the page that you’re sending your readers to.  You want the information they find there to be clear and really help them understand what the product is all about.

#4 – Place Your Ads Wisely

If you have a menu at the left, putting a small graphic at the top is good. Links within content are also excellent, as is at the end of an article right above the comments.

#5 – Would YOU Buy?

Check out the website of the affiliate program you’d like to join and consider whether you would buy from it. Does it look professional? Is it eye-catching? Can you easily navigate it? How hard is it to find help? Is there a phone number and address available? If you trust it, your readers will, too.

#6 – Use Article Marketing To Grow Your Reach

Make sure you are submitting quality articles to the major article marketing directories every weekday. Don’t let up – build this into your routine so that it happens without you even thinking about it. Hire a virtual assistant to login to the directories under your name and upload the articles for you each day.

#7 – Be Honest

When using affiliate marketing, be sure to be honest about your intentions. Let the visitors know that you are doing affiliate marketing. When you are honest with your visitors/readers, you will gain their loyalty. When a reader uses your referral link, they will feel good about it if they know that you are using affiliate marketing and that they are able to help you.

#8 – Treat Your Readers Right

It is important that you treat your website visitors right. They know an affiliate advertisement when they see one. If you endorse a product that you do not believe in or if you take advantage of their visit with excessive ads, then they will not visit your website in the future.

#9 – Broaden Your Horizons

Some people avoid promoting high-ticket items through their affiliate marketing business because they feel that those items are too hard to sell. However, your sales skills often play a more important role in your success than the cost of the product. If you can write effectively, you can let potential buyers know how the product looks, feels and sounds. You can give them a sense of what it would feel like to actually own the product. Appeal to their senses in creative and tempting ways. Make them feel as if they can’t live without the product, for another day.

#10 – Affiliate Marketing Is For The Long Term

Affiliate marketing should be approached as a long term project. It all starts with building a web site or blog. The consistent creation of great content and the generation of traffic is next. Only then should affiliate links and banners be added. As one progresses it become easier to determine the right placement for the ads and the type of content that converts. So, be prepared for the long haul to become a successful affiliate marketer.

#11 – Once You’re Comfortable… Promote!

If you plan to hold a contest with an affiliate company, promote the heck out of it! You’ll have to dedicate the bulk of your time to posting the link on forums, social media, contest directories, “Linky” lists, and any website which shares a similar topic to yours. It’s a lot of work but the increase in sales will be worth it!
As previously explained, affiliate marketing can be a wise marketing strategy.
Every business could benefit from having more customers or developing new ones.

http://www.blogelina.com/2013/05/tons-of-unbeatable-affiliate-marketing-tips-and-tricks/

10 Online PR Lessons From the Huge Success of Phonebloks

You start with an idea, create an explainer video, spend a minimum amount of money, and 8 weeks later you've got more than 17 million YouTube views, thousands of quality links, 900,000 registered supporters and coverage in many of the world's leading media. And to cap it all, one of the world's top cell phone companies, Motorola contacts you to explore a partnership.
That's the story of Dave Hakkens and his concept Phonebloks – not yet a finished product. It's a story that has much to teach SEO professionals about online public relations.
The key element to Phoneblok's success was a video that went viral. This is where Phonebloks really scored: their storytelling was superb in this introductory video:

The video talks about people and ideas – it doesn't go into huge technical detail about the product – which perhaps surprisingly doesn't yet exist.
Hakkens didn't sit down and plan everything that happened, but his experience has some great lessons in online PR. Here are 10.

1. You Can Build Links Really Quickly

Phonebloks was only launched on September 2013 yet the site has attracted a large number of quality inbound links. Here's the report from MajesticSEO.com:
IMG 2-phonebloks-majestic seo
That means attracting more than 2,000 referring domains from a standing start – and many of them from high authority sites.
Phonebloks didn't approach these sites individually but created a story that resonated with them – and that meant they wanted to link.
Brief Lesson: Investing your efforts in creating a story can bring fantastic links that couldn't be won in any other way.

2. You Can Get Huge Media Coverage for a Small Enterprise

Phoneblok has attracted media coverage from some of the largest and most popular media outlets in the world - yet it is only a two-person enterprise. Proof that even the smallest of businesses can attract top quality media – so long as your story is newsworthy.
Here's coverage on CNN: "Phonebloks: The smartphone for the rest of your life".

And here are links to a couple of other articles from the BBC, " Phonebloks: The phone you can build like Lego", and from Adweek, "The iPhone Is Nice, but Could This Blocky, Utopian Rival Be the Best Phone in the World?" – there are many more examples.
Brief Lesson: Large media outlets are interested in hearing news, even from the smallest companies.

3. An Idea Isn't Enough, You've Got to Tell the Story Well

So what really created this success?
Yes, it was a great idea but a great idea on its own isn't enough. That idea has to grab people's attention, resonate with them and inspire them to action.
Videos like this can be easily created using inexpensive software provided by Sparkol – fantastic story telling tool and very easy to use.
Brief Lesson: Low-cost video software can produce stunning results – develop your video skills.

4. Creating an Event Gives You Multiple Additional Opportunities

Phoneblok created a social media event – a single day, October 29, when they wanted to make a huge impact using a service called Thunderclap.

Thunderclap provides a way to focus support on a single day. You encourage people to sign up in support: and then if you reach sufficient numbers, Thunderclap will send out a Facebook post or a Tweet from all your supporters, creating a wave of attention.
At the time of writing, Phonebloks had amassed over 900,000 supporters with a collective social reach of 382 million.
And one day after the thunderclap, Google News showed more than 19,000 results for [phonebloks]:

The focus on a single pre-determined event creates multiple waves of online PR and link building opportunities.
The first wave is the launch of the idea and build up to the event: the second wave is during the event and final wave is after the event – telling people what happened and what to do next.
This is a classic public relations technique that can readily be applied to link building.
Brief Lesson: When you create an event, you create waves for link building – before, during, and after the event.

5. The Community You Create is a Tangible Asset

Phonebloks didn't focus on creating links. They focused on recruiting a vast number of supporters for their concept. It was the community that they created in just 8 weeks that helped attract media coverage and thousands of quality links.
Brief Lesson: Don't just focus on links. Focus on building an online community.

6. You Can Get Links From Multiple Market Sectors

Powerful stories attract links from all sorts of sectors – some of which might not be immediately obvious.
By launching a campaign like this, the market sectors that are interested in your product will reveal themselves. Analyzing which market sectors link to you can give you niche ideas you might not have recognized initially.
Here's just a selection of market sectors that linked to Phonebloks:

• Business at Forbes.com
• Design at Campsite-studio.com
• Green living at Treehugger.com
• Viral video at ViralVideos.com
• Education at TheTeacherList.ca
• Moms at MomBloggerBuzz.com
• Academia at Institute for The Future
• Science at PopSci.com
• Gadgets at DudeIWantThat.com
• And people called Kate at Kate-Book.com

Brief Lesson: Don't just look for the obvious opportunities – identify multiple sectors that are relevant to your website.

7. You Will Get Criticism – Don't Worry About it

This is a disruptive technology and so is sure to attract criticism and controversy as in this article at Popular Science that says, "But there's good reason to think the whole idea will fall apart faster than a Lego castle in the path of a toddler."

But such criticism stimulates debate and discussion – and encourages the story to spread even further.
Brief Lesson: Criticism is a positive sign that your idea can generate discussion and sharing.

8. You Can be a Little Shaky on Detail

Being on top of the detail is important in public relations – it doesn't make great copy if you give uncertain answers. But you can get away with it when you've got such an innovative idea, the products not yet made and it's not certain the exact direction things will take.
But that doesn't stop founder Dave Hakkens giving a great interview to Forbes – even if he's not quite sure of his answers on occasions. Perhaps, this is a good example of "agile" public relations.
Brief Lesson: Your story doesn't have to be perfect – the journalist usually wants to make you look good and so can be forgiving.

9. Be Open to Partnerships

Neither links nor rankings are the ultimate goal. They're important, but much more important are the partnership opportunities as reported in this article, "Motorola Unveils DIY Smartphone Project With Phonebloks".

Brief Lesson: Don't just look for links, look for the potential partnerships your campaigns open up.

10. Your Press Kit Doesn't Have to be Fantastic

What Phonebloks triggered with just two people was exceptional but of course it wasn't perfect. The press kit provided to the media was rudimentary at best.
Brief lesson: Press kits are useful if you have the time to create them but a poor one is unlikely to hold back a great story.

Summary

Eight weeks isn't a long time. In just eight weeks, Phonebloks attracted more than 900,000 supporters and it was this online community that made them so attractive to Motorola.
As described in Lesson 4, an event opens up three waves of opportunity – before, during, and after. Phonebloks has now gone through the first two of these stages. It will be interesting to see what further lessons we can gain from the third.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2305170/10-Online-PR-Lessons-From-the-Huge-Success-of-Phonebloks

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Tips and Tricks To Making Money Online

Internet Marketing online can be quite a lot of fun, but there are a few tricks of the trade that you will need to master. You will come to know the term "secrets" during your journey into Internet Marketing, but in reality, there is simply no secret at all. It all comes down to how effective your marketing strategies are in promoting your site.

Gurus love the word "secret" because it creates the sense of curiosity and maybe urgency in the mind of the prospect, who may end up parting with his cash to get the item being promoted. Put bluntly, you have to advertise your site so people will know that you even exist. How you advertise, however, is one of the tricks.

If you are running an internet business you have already determined that your potential customers are also online. Regardless of the quality of your product or service, if people do not know you are there, you will eventually become just another failed business.

One of the best methods of advertising on the internet is through affiliate marketing programs where the cost of your advertising is deferred until a customer buys something from you. Through affiliate marketing you provide links, either graphics or text, for other website owners to post on their site. When one of their visitors sees your ad, clicks on it and buys something from you, that website owner is paid a sales commission.

The more external websites that carry a link to your site, the more essentially free advertising you receive through the affiliate marketing program. You can also carry affiliate advertising on your site for related internet businesses and earn a commission on sales from their sites.

Some affiliate marketing companies give you the option of automatically approving others to post links to your site on theirs while others give you the option of approving a site before your link is posted. Just as you can be particular about which companies you link to, you can also be particular about which sites link to you.

There are also numerous opportunities to network with companies as an affiliate and if you are signed up as a member of their site, your income potential can increase dramatically.

For example an online retail site may pay you a five percent commission on sales if you are a free member, but the first level of paid membership has that commission jump to 10 percent at a premium memberships may see the commission go as high as 30 percent or more.

There are also services offering to pay you for taking surveys online, and while the per survey pay may not be high, they generally take little time and you get to give an honest opinion on a variety of topics. Surveys typically pay between $2 and $10 each and take from five to 20 minutes to complete. Making money online filling out surveys will depend on the amount of time you are willing to put into it.

However, having a decent, updated computer and a fast internet connection will be necessary, regardless of any programs you may join, if you plan on making money on the internet.

http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/20161/how_to_grow_wealth/tips_and_tricks_to_making_money_online.html

10 Tips For Making Money With Social Media

Turning a profit using social media, for some, is as elusive as a white rhino. But, it doesn’t have to be. Think of social networks as a big party and try to fit in — not be the life of the party.

My Infographic, courtesy of my partner, Ideas and Pixels, shows great tools for making money with social media — and other tools for making money online. Many of these tools fit together to create an integrated online marketing strategy to support your online marketing goals.

But, you need to go beyond these tools to know HOW to apply them to making money with social media.

Here are 10 tips for making money with social media (notice none of them involve hogging the microphone):

10. Be authentic

Social media isn’t like traditional advertising and it shouldn’t look and feel the same. Social media is a community designed to share comfort, support, information, expertise, and entertainment. You need to develop a voice in social media — one that talks like a real person, shares like a real person, and that people can relate to as a real person. Share your foibles, mistakes, sense of humor, and what’s going on in your life. Let people backstage.

9. Don’t interrupt

If folks are having fun sharing on social networks, join in. Don’t bring the party down by talking about yourself. Have fun with them or create your own fun.

8. Leave them with something to talk about

Share something interesting — something of value. Social media is definitely a pay-it-forward world and if you don’t get that, then hire someone who does. I give away tons of valuable stuff — like the first chapter of my new social media analytics book. Grab a copy today and let me know what you think. No strings attached. And, if you give me feedback or edit my work, I’ll send you a PDF of the book when it’s finished. What a deal!

7. Follow your target market

Don’t fish where your boat is, fish where the fish are. You’ll be more successful. If the fish aren’t biting, move your boat. For instance, I used to get a lot of traffic to my website from Twitter — now, not so much. I still use Twitter, but I now focus on social networks that bring in traffic, especially the kind that will buy from me — my target market. I find Facebook much more valuable, especially my group, which I call my social media marketing tribe. Feel free to join us and share your great content with the group.

6. Build trust

Trust is a big word… it’s important. And trust in marketing is low because for years we’ve made promises to consumers then failed to meet our obligations. Firms have a lot to do to make up for this.

5. Engage

Get your target audience involved with you. Ask questions on Facebook. End your blog posts by asking for feedback. Participate in Quora conversations. And, make it easy for your target audience to engage. For instance, I use a plugin allowing visitors to comment using their Facebook profile. The plugin also brings comments from Facebook back to my blog. This increases engagement.

4. Build your community

Don’t just pretend to care about your visitors — truly care about them. That means responding quickly when they post a question or concern. Remember, social media is always on, so plan for responses during the evening and on weekends. When visitors share your content or comment on a post, thank them and consider ways you can repay the compliment.
Building community means being a good member of that community and helping everybody out.

3. Give value

Don’t think about yourself — think about your community. Why are they engaged with you? What are their pains? How can you help?
I recently met with a client interested in using social media to connect with younger prospects. Yet, they were uncomfortable when I suggested we find out what types of posts might help these prospects, they only wanted to talk about themselves in their social media marketing. FAIL!

2. Plan, plan, plan

You can never plan too much. And, planning isn’t done — you need to constantly update your plan as things change. I commonly suggest to clients that we meet on a monthly basis to review results and plan for the next month’s campaign. Putting your social media marketing on autopilot isn’t going to optimize your opportunity to make money with social media.
Contingency planning should also be part of your social media marketing plan. Social media marketing is, by its nature, less predictable. You never know when someone is going to say something off the wall or where they’re going to choose to say it. You need a contingency plan so when something bad happens, you’re ready with a response.
Recently, Jesse from Jess3 behaved badly at a conference. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know the details. The important thing is he quickly responded and apologized for his poor behavior before others started complaining about it.

1. Measure, analyze, respond

Social media is great because there’s so much information available, but don’t get sidetracked with vanity metrics like # of Fans or Followers. These don’t translate well to conversion, so keep you eye on the ball. Assess things related to making money with social media — things like reach, SEO, and conversion. Be sure to assesses these metrics in a way that helps you focus your efforts on creating more content that performs well.
Don’t bury your head in the sand. Listen. It’s important, as mentioned above, the listen and respond to both positive and negative comments and answer questions quickly.


http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/10-tips-making-money-social-media-154302821.html

How to make money on YouTube

Looking to earn some extra scratch from your huge collection of adorable cat videos? Think you’ve got a shot to go viral with that heroic three-story bellyflop you did last summer? No matter what kind of footage you’ve got, there’s a way to make money off of it.

That being said, you should know that YouTube isn’t some kind of cash cow just waiting to be milked. Sure, there are a handful of YouTubers that make bookoo bucks, but they are the exception, not the rule. There are hundreds of millions of YouTube channels out there, and the vast majority of them only make a few cents a day. Earning a sizable amount of money on YouTube takes time, dedication, hard work, and oftentimes just plain luck. But hey, if that Fred kid can be make millions of dollars and land a movie deal just from being ridiculously annoying, who’s to say your channel can’t bring in a few bucks? It’s worth a shot.

Thanks to Google’s YouTube Partner program, monetizing your videos is extremely easy. If all’s well with your account, you can have ads up and running on your videos in just a couple hours, ready to start building your retirement fund a few pennies at a time. Below we’ve covered the steps you need to take to get started, along with a few tips for making great videos that people will watch.

How to monetize your YouTube account

Before you can start making money off of your videos, you need to enable monetization on your YouTube account. In doing so, you become a “YouTube Partner,” which basically means you allow Google to place ads on your content in exchange for payment each time one of those ads is clicked.

Step 1: To enable monetization on your account, make sure you’re logged in to YouTube and go to account features. Once you’re there, look to the middle of the page and find the Monetization section listed under Features. Click the Enable button and agree to Google’s terms of service to continue.
 In order to be eligible for account monetization, your account must be in good standing. If you’ve uploaded any copyrighted content or disregarded YouTube community guidelines by posting horrible comments, Google might not allow you to monetize your videos.

Step 2: After you’ve agreed to the terms of service, you’ll be greeted with a dialog that looks something like this:

 

At this point you’ll need to decide what kind of ads you’d like to be displayed on your video. Overlay ads are the small banners that occupy the lower third of the video, whereas TrueView ads are video ads that play before your video. Using both isn’t always the best plan – depending on the content of your video, you might want to opt for one over the other.

Think about the type content you’re working with and be conscious of the audience likely to consume it. If your video is a tutorial on how to rope a goat, tie a bowtie, or some other piece of valuable educational material, then your viewers are more likely to sit through an ad. If your video is just something silly and fun, you might want to opt for just Overlay ads, as TrueView video ads can often turn people away from your video before they even watch it. Don’t stress too much about which ads will be more effective though – you can always change your settings later. Just keep an eye on your Adsense page to track views and clicks so you can get an idea of what works best.

Step 3: Click that big ol’ Monetize button in the lower left and you’re all set. Your videos will be under review for a short period, but after that they should start to display ads whenever they’re played.

Getting paid:
Now that you’ve got your account all set up and monetized, any earnings you get will be funneled into your Adsense account. If you don’t already have an Adsense account, you’ll need to set one up at some point, but Google doesn’t force you to do it until your video starts generating a decent amount of revenue. In order to fully set up your Adsense account and receive your earnings, you need to complete the five steps listed here.

The last of these five steps requires you to meet a payment threshold before Adsense gives you money. Basically what this means is that you’ll need to accrue at least $100 before you get paid. If you don’t meet this threshold by the end of the month, your earnings will be rolled over to the next month (and the next month, and the next month if necessary) until the threshold is met. Depending the popularity of your video(s), this could take anywhere from a few hours to a few months – or even years.

So you want to be YouTube famous…

Don’t we all? Unfortunately, no one here at DT is a YouTube star (yet …), but while we’re definitely not experts on becoming Internet famous, we do know a thing or two about making content that people like. Here’s a few general-purpose tips for making great content that people will want to watch:

1. Do something original. You’re not going to be the next big thing by copying what somebody else did. You might make a bit of money if you’re riding a popular trend wave, but it won’t last. Take all those zillions of Harlem Shake videos for example. Sure, they were hot for a minute, but if you jumped on the bandwagon late you probably only got a few dozen views before you fell out of the spotlight.
2. If you’re hoping to go viral, make sure your video grabs people’s attention in the first 10-15 seconds. The Internet has the attention span of a goldfish with ADD, so you need to make a good hook if people are going to watch your video in its entirety.
3. In order to make YouTube a viable source of income, you need to generate a regular stream of content that will attract subscribers. Just one video isn’t likely to bring in a steady stream of earnings, so it’s best to plan your videos as part of an ongoing series.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/make-money-on-youtube/

10 Creative Ways To Make Money Online

If you’d claimed it was possible for the average guy on the street to make millions of dollars online just a decade ago, the chances are good you’d have heard nothing but laughter in response. Today, though, there are countless Internet millionaires who turned a great idea into obscene profit, used the power of the web to promote their offline business or simply worked their butt off to sell their skills online.

While it’s unlikely that you’ll ever earn enough to buy your own private island, there’s nothing to stop you from using your skills to make a comfortable living online. In fact, while the media would have you believe that online success stories are limited to just a few lucky, hard working people who stumbled on a great idea that went on to make millions, the reality is that there are tens of thousands of people who make a living exclusively online. Here are just ten ways you can join them.

How To Make Money Online

1. Sell Stock Photography

The Internet has caused an explosion in the demand for stock photography. As the number of media and commercial outlets has increased dramatically with the growth of online media there’s an enormous need for high quality stock photos.

Yuri Arcurs is the man everyone turns to for their stock photo needs. As the world’s top selling stock photographer he sells an image every 8 seconds, 24 hours a day (that works out to over 4 million images each year). Arcurs makes millions of dollars each year simply by being the best at what he does. There are lots of great photographers in the world and the barrier to entry is as low as ownership of a camera, but Arcurs has managed to build a reputation online for consistent, high quality and imaginative images.

If you’re a professional photographer (or even just a hobbyist) you should consider the possibilities of selling stock images online.

2. Tweet For Sponsors

SponsoredTweets.com is an online platform that allows you to make money on Twitter by charging sponsors for communicating their advertising messages to your followers. You set the amount you want to get paid for every tweet you make, choose a category and select keywords you want to work with. You then wait for advertisers to contact you and take you up on your offer, paying you the amount you specified for each tweet that you make.

All throughout the process, the tweeter has full control over his or her account, and may choose the wordings of the tweets, or may choose to reject the tweet altogether.

3. Blog for Ad Revenues

If, however, you already have a blog with a devoted following it should be easy for you to leverage your readers into hard cash. Ad networks such as Google AdSense pay big money to place their ads on your site, and you’ll receive a payment every time a reader clicks one. While it’s easy to go overboard and fill every spare pixel, if you place your ads well it’s possible to make a comfortable income from your site.

One of the most successful bloggers around today is John Chow, a Canadian blogger who makes more than $40,000 a month through ad sales and other revenue streams. Ironically, his blog is about ways to make money online.

4. Sell Affiliate Products

If you have a flair for sales copy you could try your hand at selling products for affiliates. While many people take the seedy route of selling diet pills and penis enlargement products, if you want to keep your conscience clear you’ll find that Amazon runs a very successful affiliate program that allows you to make money advertising any of the products for sale on their site. eBay also have a pretty good affiliate setup, with their top affiliates earning $1.3 Million a month, WOW!

5. Write an e Book

In recent years the self-publishing world has exploded online to the point at which you don’t even have to run your own site in order to promote a book. Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo are just a few of the sites on which you could self-publish today, with commission rates of around 70% available on every sale.

The number of eBooks on Amazon reached 8 million last year, and Amazon stated that eBooks are outselling hard backs 2 to 1, 62% of ebook sales fell into the Thriller and Mystery genre, so if you feel that you could pull this style of genre off then you will be in for a good chance of sales.

26 year old self published author, Amanda Hocking from Minnesota makes more than $2 Million a year from her ebook sales. Amanda Hocking’s stories about, trolls, vampires and zombies and  ‘supernatural teen romances’ sell for $2.99 or for as little as $.99.

6. Become a Virtual Assistant

Every small businessman would love to hire a full time assistant to take care of the little things, but many simply can’t afford one. Thanks to the Internet, though, they can now hire part time assistants who work for a whole host of clients, and all at a much lower cost than a full time staff member.
If you work from home this may be a perfect opportunity to make a consistent income. Virtual assistants can earn $20 an hour in return for booking travel tickets, interacting with clients and dealing with the daily needs of small businesses.

7. Lease Your Skills

Most people have at least one skill that carries a market value, though until now that skill may have been impossible to monetize in the traditional job market.
Sites such as 99Designs, Elance, Freelancer and iWriter allow people to hire out their skills as writers, coders, designers, translators and lots more on a contract basis. Freelancing sites are a great way to boost your income in your free time, and with enough motivation and hard work you could find yourself earning a comfortable full time income from them.

8. Selling on eBay

eBay is a great way to turn your unwanted things into a little spending money, but it isn’t just a place to sell your old Star Wars action figures. In fact, eBay’s global marketplace can offer a great way for canny traders to buy and sell their way to profit. By buying wholesale you can sell anything with a mark up. Even better, if you have the skills to make things people want to buy you could start your own home-based craft business, selling to customers around the world.
Matt & Amanda Clarkson are a successful couple who so far have managed to make over $8 Million in eBay sales.

9. Become A Mobile App Tester

People that are rather uncertain of their application development potential can still make some money through the usage of iPhone apps.

People that have the time and desire to test iPhone apps and discover bugs can be rewarded payments for their efforts. uTest is one such application. Individuals that have signed up will also build some reputation on the basis of the testing they have done so far.

Better reputation signifies access to more profitable app testing opportunities.

10. Designing T-Shirts

Finally, if you have something of an artistic streak you could kick off the next viral sensation with your own range of funky, arty t-shirts. Sites such as CafePress allow users to upload their own t-shirt designs and sell them on their personal online store.

You can also contact distributors such as threadless.com or designbyhumans.com to release your t-shirt designs to the masses.

If your designs catch the eye you could be looking at enormous profits when they take off in a big way.

Checkout our article The Top 10 Tips On Starting Your Own Successful Clothing Line, this should give you an idea on how to kick things off.

Conclusion

As you can see, to make money online you don’t have to be particularly skilled with computers. You don’t need to be know how to build your own website from the ground up, and you don’t have to be a mogul with millions of dollars to invest in success. If you have any kind of artistic skills, creativity or business savvy you can turn it into profit.

In short, you should understand that the online world is just like real life. The same opportunities are there for the taking, but instead of drawing your customers from just your home town you can reach out with your great ideas to the far reaches of the earth.

So why not start today?

http://addicted2success.com/success-advice/10-creative-ways-to-make-money-online-right-now/

20 Ideas to Make Money Online

A cash cow for the enterprising, the Internet is littered with opportunities to make a fast buck. While it rarely qualifies as a solitary source of income, the Net can easily help you supplement it. However, the amount you earn depends on the time and effort invested. Go through these 20 options and find out which ones work for you.

Blogging
If you're a passionate closet writer who wants to be published but can't find a way to do so, make each keystroke your way to wealth by penning your own blog. Starting a blog doesn't require extensive technical skills but it's important that you have expertise in the field you are writing on. This will attract visitors to your site. Building a large following will enable you to earn profit by luring advertisers, writing paid reviews or getting commissions for promoting other people's products.

Paid Writing
If maintaining a blog is difficult for you but you still want to indulge your passion for writing, you can jot down articles for other blogs or sites such as Weblogs, Helium or PayPerPost. Writing an e-book can also be a good option. E-books are investment free, with no cost for printing and shipping. If you have a strong command over languages, you can become a copy editor, where Webmasters will pay you to read articles and correct grammatical errors, sentence fragments, etc.

e-tuitions/Webinars
The demand for tutors is high and growing. So, if you like helping others learn, e-teaching could be the earning ticket for you. All you need to become an online tutor is expertise in your subject and a few spare hours per week. TutorVista, e-tutor, SmartThinking and Tutor.com are some of the sites you can enroll with. If you gain a good reputation as a coach, you could even conduct Webinars-lectures or seminars transmitted over the Net. College and university students are willing to pay to gain entry to a well-respected Webinar.

Affilliate/Reseller
For those who have the knack of selling, one of the best ways to make money online is to become an affiliate/reseller. An affiliate is a person who gets a commission for selling every product that he promotes, whether on his Website or through any other avenue such as eBay. You don't have to own the product. You only need to sign up for an affiliate program with a company and start selling its products under your referral link. Firms such as Commission Junction or Click Bank have a large pool of products.

Buying/Selling domains
Buying and selling domain names is another way to make money from home and requires very little investment or time. You can buy domains at their registration prices or even cheaper and trade them at a profit. However, always research on sites such as sedo.co.uk, afternic.com, ebay.com or other domain auction sites to get an estimate of the hottest selling names. The best way to find good ones is to use terminated domain lists, which contain several expired names that are back in the pool.

Freelancing for Professionals
Freelancing is a great option for professionals who are experts in their respective trades and know how to ensure customer satisfaction. Various freelancing and project-oriented sites allow companies that need help to describe their projects. Freelancers and small businesses offer bids, ideas or proposals, from which the buyers can choose what they find most suitable. Websites such as Elance cover everything from programming and writing to data entry and design, while RentACoder focuses on software programming.

Advertising
You can sell space on your Website or blog for advertisements and you earn when these ads are clicked by visitors to your site. The sorting and placing of ads is free. The profitability of pay-per-click advertising depends on the traffic level of the Website and, most importantly, on the clickthrough rate and cost per click. Google AdSense is the most popular option, while others are BidVertiser, Text Link Ads and Blogads. Direct banner and RSS feed are some other forms of online advertising.

GPT Programme
GPT or Get-paid-to sites are becoming increasingly popular among teens. You get paid for signing up for free Websites, newsletters, playing games and filling out online surveys. These are suitable for people who don't have a skill set but want to earn extra money. Taking online surveys is simple- register with a few legitimate, paid survey sites and answer questions. The topics range from shopping to politics. This might not help you make a living, but you can earn good pocket money. Contests2win is one of the trusted GPT Websites.

Online Marketing
Once a Website is created and optimised for search engine (SEO), the SEM or Search Engine Marketing begins. A treasure trove lies hidden here. An SEO/SEM expert, who is responsible for marketing a Website, can promote it in various ways. These include article marketing, writing press releases, forum posting, blog posting, submitting your site to directories and search engines, social bookmarking, etc. Most companies don't do this in-house and pay you to conduct the SEM for them.

Making themes
As more and more people seek an online presence, the demand for Website templates and WordPress (Blog) themes will keep increasing. If you are good at Web designing and coding, you can earn a lot from designing Web themes. In this segment, there are mainstream Websites, such as TemplateMonster and ThemeForest, which act as a marketplace where you can sell your themes. Templates are sold and priced depending on the rights and features that are bundled with them.

Selling photos
If you enjoy photography and are good with a camera, you could be sitting on a huge reserve of revenue. There are people who will be interested in your collection of images. Nowadays, it's easy to take your photos to the public, providing a convenient way to build a secondary income stream. Many stock photo agencies, such as Fotolia, Dreamstime and Shutterstock, offer incentives for people to earn from their photos.

Support & service
Providing coding or fixing other Webmasters' issues is another great way to earn extra bucks. There are simple jobs ranging from adding a script to setting up sites, but knowledge of Web coding is essential. One can offer support for Web CMS (content management systems) like Drupal or Joomla. After you are comfortable with your own installation, you can help other people to set these up and configure them.

Stock/forex trading
Joining the stock/forex market may seem a bit risky. However, you can start small and continue researching till you gain experience in this area. Once you do, it will be easy to earn from exchanging foreign currencies and/or stocks. Their rates fluctuate depending on supply and demand, and economic and political influences in the world. The aim of any trader is to spot which currency/stock is likely to rise or fall in value against another. The more time you put in, the more you will earn.

Selling your own brand
If you have a flair for designing cool images, don't bother about creating your own inventory. As long as your design can be printed on a product, you can pocket some money. You can upload designs on various Websites such as CafePress, and if somebody orders these designs, the company will print them and distribute the products. It could be designs for T-shirts, hats, bags, books, posters, calendars, greeting cards, etc. You will receive a commission for each sale. Other such sites include Lulu and Zazzle.

Virtual Assistant
Small businesses always need help in running their processes, but may not be willing to hire a full-time employee. As a virtual assistant, you are expected to perform practically any administrative task that a traditional secretary or assistant would, such as make travel reservations, handle expense reimbursements or pay bills. You can do it from the comfort of your home, interacting with clients either online or by phone. Your expertise will decide how much moolah you rake in.

Inbound call centre
Many companies, who are facing space constraints, especially those in metro cities, prefer to hire workers outside their offices or outsource certain processes. You can set up an inbound call centre at home to handle such jobs. Research different companies that are outsourcing their work as they may have opportunities for inbound call centre agents. You can work for more than one company. This can be either a part-time or fulltime engagement, depending on your need.

You Tube
If there's a dramatic performer hidden inside you who craves applause and adulation, upload yourself on YouTube. You can be a filmmaker, musician or comedian who wants a wider audience. Your earnings will come from ads displayed on your video page. This process is similar to the pay-per-click advertising program common to other Websites and blogs. Sites such as Flixya and Mediaflix can be helpful in this regard.

Researching for others
Don't be morose if you can't write, design or code. Lack of talent cannot stop you from making money online. If you're willing to work hard for a few hours a week, you can take up simple research jobs for other people who don't have the time to do it themselves. You could search for opportunities in organisations that provide funding for research and offer to assist them through online investigation.

Building Applications
With smartphones gaining popularity, the demand for their applications, or apps as they are popularly known, has also shot up. There are over 3 million apps for the iPhone and over a million apps in Google's Android market. Most of these are selling like hot cakes. Developing and selling your own smartphone app is becoming a lucrative way to make money on the Internet. Apps cost virtually nothing to develop and entail no storage or shipping costs. So they enjoy the best profit margins.

Transcription
Medical transcription involves making written copies of oral material dictated by doctors or other medical experts. These may include history and physical reports, clinical notes, consultation notes, reports, letters, psychiatric evaluation and so on. The dictated material needs to be transcribed swiftly and accurately, which is the most challenging aspect of the job. To become a medical transcriptionist, you need to have a good knowledge of medical terminology and a high typing speed along with accuracy.

http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/20-ideas-to-make-money-online/1/12603.html

How to Setup a Social Media Business Strategy

Does your business have a social media strategy?

According to research conducted by Constant Contact, over 50% of small businesses need help with social media.

While many businesses have a social media presence, many are not engaging on those platforms and thus not meeting their goals.

With planning, your small business can use social media effectively.

Here are seven steps to a social media strategy for your business.

#1: Determine Your Business Objectives for Social Media

How do you want to use social media to help your business? What goals do you want to achieve?
Make your goals as concrete, measurable and achievable as possible. For example, if you currently get five new leads a month, setting a goal to get 100 new leads in the next 12 months is more realistic than setting a goal to get 5,000 new leads.

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Define clear goals for your social media marketing. Image source: iStockPhoto.

Here are some objectives commonly identified by small businesses:

• Build your brand by getting people to recognize your name and associate it with your product.
• Attract new customers by driving traffic to your social media page or company website.
• Support sales by answering prospects’ questions and showing them how to use your products or services.
• Engage with your fans by giving customers a reason to talk about your brand and encourage others to purchase from you.

By setting specific objectives, you establish markers for your business. This helps define your social media metrics and will make effective social media marketing easier for you to do.

#2: Know Your Audience

Determine the prospects and customers with whom you want to engage on social media. This is your target audience.

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Who is your target audience on social media? Image source: iStockPhoto.

To help you understand their characteristics, create a set of marketing personas for the segments you want to reach.

• Understand your target market’s point of view and activities. Think demographics, psychographics and past purchases, as well as interests and priorities.
• Consider influencers, buyers and end users. Most purchase decisions, including consumer purchases, are made with input from more than one person.
• Know where your audience engages on social media. Not everyone is on Facebook.
• Consider your audience’s social media behavior. Does your market lurk, share or create social media content? What incentives will make them act?

The more you know your audience, the easier it will be to engage with them on social media and get the results you’re looking for.

#3: Choose Your “Hot Buttons”

These are your firm’s core topics.

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Select your audience’s hot buttons. Image source: iStockPhoto.

Target your three to five main topics. These should be categories or words you want to place for in search optimization. Create content around these topics for which you want your business to be known.

• Create an editorial calendar integrated with your promotional calendar. Plan relevant content around your main keywords and your planned promotions. Develop a framework to minimize content creation time by not needing to think about what you’re going to write before you craft content.
• Brainstorm ideas for content around these categories. Before developing your content, list topics you want to cover. For most businesses, the easiest way to accomplish this is to answer your customers’ questions before and after purchase. Link to appropriate product pages but don’t be promotional!
• Offer a variety of content formats, not just text. People take in content differently. Attract attention with images, since some social media platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram are image-based.

Actionable marketing tip: Leverage the power of blogging. It provides an owned home base for social media interactions, while supporting building a house file and encouraging social sharing.
By clearly defining the right hot topics for your company and creating content and conversations around these topics, you’ll find it easier to get the results you want from social media.

#4: Stake Your Social Media Turf

Create a presence on all major social media platforms.

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Stake your claim on social media venues. Image source: iStockPhoto.

Take ownership of your firm’s name across social media entities. Understand that this may not be possible, depending on your company name and similarly named organizations. But you’ll want to secure your name for the main social media profiles.

Branding is a shorthand that helps customers to recognize your company without thinking. After you’ve claimed your space, remember to incorporate elements of your brand into your profile.

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Here’s how Social Media Examiner presents its brand on Facebook.

Also think “findability” and post your store location, phone number and local hours. Remember to include a link to your website.

A strong social presence will help you get the most out of your social media marketing.

#5: Set Your Social Media Engagement

Be strategic with your social media time usage. It’s easy to spend more time than you need to on social media. A social media plan—together with a strategic approach—will help you find the right balance.

Use your existing communications such as email and in-store signage to encourage your customers to get onto social media and engage with you.

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A New York City green market vendor encourages social media engagement using a chalkboard.

#6: Plan Your Resource Use

For many small businesses, the concept of planning resource utilization may be new. Even if you’re a solopreneur, you must take a strategic view of your time. If you don’t, you’ll find that you’re running from one online emergency to another.

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Plan your social media engagement. Image source: iStockPhoto.

• Decide who will handle your social media engagement. For most small businesses, this is often the owner.
• Set parameters for social media use. This means defining your social media guidelines for both employees and visitors.
• Create processes where possible. Depending on your business, assess where you have opportunities to develop content that supports your goals. Think customer interactions, purchases and conferences.

Actionable marketing tip: Prepare for creating content. Have a camera, smartphone or iPad ready to capture content while you’re doing business! Don’t forget to get customers’ permission to use their images to ensure you don’t have issues later. Have a plan in place to determine how and where you’ll use the information.

#7: Measure Your Social Media Results

Don’t forget to set up everything you’ll need to measure your results. The metrics you’ll want to track will be based on the business objectives you defined.

Measure your social media progress. Image source: iStockPhoto.

You’ll want to make it easy to measure your results.

• Incorporate a social media call to action. Don’t just assume prospects will take the next action without prompting. Guide them to engage and interact with contextually relevant calls to action.
• Track indicators that help show that you’ve accomplished your objectives. For most businesses, this means more than comments and social media shares.

Actionable marketing tip: Ensure you can track your results by using a unique promotion code or targeted landing page.

Over to You

The bottom line is that your small business can successfully use social media to achieve your business objectives. To this end, plan ahead to ensure that your time spent on social media reinforces your other business messaging and engagement and yields measureable results.
What do you think? What are your special tips for making social media engagement effective at driving your business’s success? Please include your suggestions in the comments section below.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-setup-a-social-media-business-strategy/

Images from iStockPhoto.

 

 

5 Excellent Internet Marketing Strategies (On A Budget)

If you’re running a small business, you have a budget. Heck, if you’re running any kind of business, you have a budget. Available marketing dollars are often less than they should be, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t manage Internet marketing on a tight budget. Here are five unique Internet marketing strategies that you can use right now (on the cheap). 

1. Cheap Website Hosting Options. I know, along with cheap website hosting comes a whole lot of scams and traps you’d rather avoid. If you don’t know about these, I urge you to read through our blog to find out more.

 

But, every once in awhile, a host that’s on the inexpensive side — and also worthwhile – pops up. If you go with a cloud host, even better. Take advantage of cheap cloud hosting sites that offer great deals, your own domain name, and user-friendly control panels.

 

 

2. Use Social Media Sites. It’s really tough to plead the social media case. Even though sites like Facebook can actually help a company build up a marketing plan, some companies are reluctant to spend time or money on social platforms. Try it. At worst, you gain a few followers.

 

At best, you find a whole new market you weren’t even touching before. No time? Hire a social media person to help you out — just make sure that they are reputable.

 

 

3. Content Marketing. I have a love/hate relationship with content marketing. On the one hand, this form of marketing can be useful. On the other, it’s super time consuming. Content marketing consists of posting (informative and well-written!) blog posts, creating guest blog posts on other sites, and adding an article or two to free article sites.

 

I cannot stress enough the importance of great content here. You’ll need to work with someone who can write well, won’t be pulling paragraphs from other sites, and will have your company’s best interests at heart. Content marketing without a professional (and, yes, this might mean paying top-dollar for a writer!) writer is like signing up for a cheap website hosting company without reading the fine print. Don’t do it.

 

 

4. Interact! This is such an easy thing to do! Are a lot of people responding to your blog posts? Write back! Did someone post about the cheap website hosting company you are using? Respond with detail! It’s not hard to communicate online, but very few companies actually pay attention to client responses. Go! Interact! Reach out!

 

 

5. Press Releases. Stop! Before you ask someone to write a PR for you, I want you to pause for a moment and ask yourself: do I have anything news worth to write about? Now, ask yourself: will a newspaper, magazine, or new site want to run this story? If the answer is “no,” a press release is not the cure for your marketing problems.

 

On the flip side, I often see companies that should be sending out releases ignoring the amazing potential of a press release! If you have news, spread it! Did you just open an honest and amazing cheap website hosting company? Don’t be shy! Have you discovered an amazing fact? Let the world know too. Press releases can help – if you actually have news to report! Do you have additional Internet marketing suggestions? Why not post below? Let us know what you think!

http://www.ananova.com/5-excellent-internet-marketing-strategies-on-a-budget/

Email Marketing Tips Checklist: Email Marketing Tips Top 10

If you're considering implementing an email marketing program or are currently emailing but experiencing underperformance, Comm100 provides you in this article with a list of 10 Email Marketing tips that will assure improvement in your email marketing campaigns.

The Top 10 Email Marketing Tips

Despite what you may hear, email marketing is a complicated process with many moving parts. But that doesn't mean that you can't have a successful email marketing program or campaign while keeping things relatively simple. Comm100 has narrowed down the ten email marketing tips that you absolutely must remember. If you follow them, you certainly won't fail!

Email Marketing Tips No.1: Make Sure Your Email Has Obvious Links

The purpose of your email is to drive traffic to your landing page, product page or website. It's really that simple to define the main purpose of an email. Without driving clicks to your page or website, users can't convert to sign-ups or customers. The key to accomplishing this is, quite simple, capitalize on every moment where a user may feel compelled to click. Include lots of links (at least one per paragraph of text) and make sure that your links look like links. Using strong calls to action and even authoritative "click here" messaging will also help you.
Takeaway Message: It's a best practice to have many links and to make sure that those links are obvious to the user.

Email Marketing Tips No.2: Minimize Your Use of Images

We've covered this in great detail in a previous article, but always keep in mind that an email is not a print mail piece. Many (if not most) of your recipients will not see the images included in your email, which means that every image you include can be wasted space. Use well-coded html instead of image heavy design. Never send an email that is simply one big image and certainly don't put any messaging in an image that a user must see to complete the action you want from an email (i.e. "click here" or "order now" messages).

Takeaway Message: Use images sparingly, rely on html to enhance the look of your email and never use an image to convey a critical or important message.

Email Marketing Tips No.3: Make It Easy to Unsubscribe

It may seem counter intuitive to make it easy for a user to leave your mailing list, but the other option is much less appealing. When users get frustrated while trying to figure out how to remove their email from your list, they eventually just start to flag your email as spam. Every user who notes your email as being spam counts against your sender reputation with email providers and makes it harder (and sometimes impossible) to get your email into the inbox instead of the junk folder.

Takeaway Message: Have clear, easy-to-find unsubscribe links that require minimal action from the user to complete the task of unsubscribing.

Email Marketing Tips No.4: Follow Spam Tips EVERY Time You Send Email!

We've also covered in detail the best ways to avoid getting flagged as spam and removed from your users' inboxes, but we can't emphasize enough how important it is to follow those steps. More importantly, it's important to follow them from the beginning of your email marketing effort and to follow them every single time you send. We know that it's tempting to send a harder sales email that trends against some of our advice for staying out of the spam folder, but it only takes one email that looks like its high spam to keep you out of the inbox for weeks, months or years afterwards.

Takeaway Message: Even if it means your email isn't as effective as a sales tool, following all of the steps to avoid being flagged as spam is absolutely, unquestionably critical with every send.

Email Marketing Tips No.5: Maximize Your Email Template Dimensions

You don't have a lot of space in a person's inbox to convey a message, and most of your users will be viewing your email in a preview pane with the images turned off. Make sure that your html email template isn't more than 600 pixels wide and that you clearly get your value proposition and at least one link into the first 100 pixels of height. It won't look as nice as putting a shiny header graphic up there, but it will yield better results. Also, consider a secondary column on the right or left hand side in order to get more information above the fold of an email preview pane!

Takeaway Message: Design for what your email will look like in a 600x200 pixel space without images loaded! How it looks in those dimensions with that restriction is how must users will see the final email.

Email Marketing Tips No.6: Keep Your Text Short and Easy to Scan

Most users aren't going to read the full text of your email. They're going to scan it for key points that they may be interested in. Keep your text short (very small paragraphs or bullets) and use font bolding and additional colors to highlight words or phrases that you know will be important to your users and clients. Too much text will get your email deleted just about as fast as anything, and it creates more risk for triggering spam filters.

Takeaway Message: Less is more! Content may drive the internet, but it doesn't improve email performance. Write concisely, user trigger and keywords and make sure that your most important messages are highlighted or bolded.

Email Marketing Tips No.7: Keep Your Email List Clean

There's no value to not taking the time and making the effort to make sure that you're removing bad email addresses from your house list. Making sure that incorrectly formatted email addresses are caught when somebody signs up and then "pruning" addresses that are returned as undeliverable, non-existent or with full inboxes from your email list before the next send isn't optional if you want to have a successful email marketing program. If your list starts to show a higher percentage of undeliverable email addresses, email providers will flag you as spam.

Takeaway Message: Even if it creates more work for you, make sure that you're pruning your list and removing bad emails from it. The result if you don't will put you in the spam folder!

Email Marketing Tips No.8: Properly Use Alt Text, Title and Linking with Images

Because using images in email can create dead space, maximizing the code behind those images is critical. Make sure that ALL of your images have both alt text and title text as different browsers will read those two types of text differently (Alt text and title text are the text messages that appear when an image doesn't load or when somebody hovers over an image with a mouse). Also, make sure that all of your images are actually links to your landing page or website. This way, at a minimum, your potential image dead space can still drive traffic to your destination.

Takeaway Message: Make sure that all of your images are properly coded. This means not only making sure that the image height and width is properly defined but also that the image has alt text, title text and is linked to a webpage or landing page.

Email Marketing Tips No.9: Send Test Emails BEFORE Sending to Main List

There's nothing worse than sending an email and then finding out that it went right to the spam folder or that something in your email layout broke in Hotmail's email viewer or Outlook's preview pane. Before you send an email to your entire list, send a test version to a test account using each of the big email providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail/Live/MSN and any account using an Outlook client). If there are any significant segments of your list using another email provider, you'll want to include that in your test as well. If you catch any errors, there's still time to start disassembling your email and fixing them, or remove a problematic segment of your email list.

Takeaway Message: Catching an error in an email sent to a seed address is useless if it happens after you've already sent to the main list. Use your seed addresses to test send to and check formatting and deliverability before you send to the main list.

Email Marketing Tips No.10: Make Sure to Piggyback a Text Version

We've previously discussed how to decide if you should use an html email or a text only email, and our recommendation is that you use both. But, at a minimum, if you are using an html email you must piggyback a text only version of the email onto your send. A number of people do opt to view email as text only, and, increasingly, people are reading text-based email only on mobile phones.

Takeaway Message: Make sure, no matter what, that your html email has a piggybacked text email attached to it! It's that simple!

Bonus Tip! Always Ask Users to Add You to Their Contact List!

At every opportunity, remind users that they can be assured that they won't miss out on the valuable information that they love receiving from you if they add your send address to their email contacts list. The more people you get doing that, the better your deliverability will be!

These ten email marketing tips won't make you a perfect email marketer, but they will certainly make you better than most! Just use these tips as a checklist when putting your email campaign together and you'll be fine!

No matter what email marketing strategy you are taking, the first step to ensure a successful email campaign is to choose a reliable bulk email sender.Comm100, who provides this article, offers you powerful email marketing software, which is both a great long-term and short-term solution to improving your email newsletter program to a new level.

http://emailmarketing.comm100.com/email-marketing-tutorial/email-marketing-tips.aspx

Top 10 Commandments of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate programs can be a big source of revenue. The key to maximizing your earnings is engaging your readers. Unlike traditional ads where you are paid for impressions or clicks, affiliates are only paid when/if a specific action is performed. The action might be a purchase or signing up for a newsletter, but regardless, you are not paid until you've compelled your readers to act.
With that in mind, here are the Top 10 Commandments for affiliate marketing success.

1. Know Your Audience

The most successful way to use affiliate programs is to anticipate and meet the needs of your readers. Consider why they are coming to your site. What are you providing that they are looking for? Make sure the affiliate products you are promoting provide a solution to your audience's problems.
If you are writing about sports, don't put up affiliate ads for printer toner just because everyone has a printer and those programs have a high payout. The people who are coming to read commentary or get stats for their favorite teams aren't thinking about those things when they're on your site.
The more relevant the ads are to your readers, the more likely they will use them.

2. Be Trustworthy

Readers are savvy. They know an affiliate link when they see one. If you break their trust by promoting a product you don't believe in or take advantage of their visit with too many ads, they will leave and never come back.
It is your repeat visitors that will drive traffic. They are the ones who will give you linkbacks, spread the word, and recommend your site as the go-to place for valuable content. You need to build a relationship based on genuine content.
If your visitors don't think you're being honest, they won't read anything else you have to say.
 

3. Be Helpful

Think of affiliate ads as additional resources that complement your content. Give value to your content by making it helpful, useful, and informative.
Don't put up a list of your favorite books, hoping people will click on the affiliate link, purchase the books (just because you listed them), so you can cash in on a sale. Take some time to write a detailed review, and use affiliate ads to point them in the right direction if they decide to act on your information. That's what affiliate ads are for. If you write a great review recommending a book and readers buy the book because of it, you should get something for that.
But just throwing out links to products with no rhyme or reason will result in a quick exit by visitors.
 

4. Be Transparent

Always disclose your affiliations. Your readers will appreciate your honesty, and will feel better about contributing to your earnings. If they sense that you are being less than honest about your affiliations, they are savvy enough to bypass your link and go directly to the vendor just to avoid giving you referral credit.Honesty and full disclosure is a necessary part to building a loyal reader base. They know they are supporting you by using your referral links. Make them happy and eager to do so.
 

5. Select Carefully

Take the time to go through all the different options for products or services available through the programs. Put some thought into which products or services your readers may need or like. Also, change the ads around often, try different ones, and use different graphics and text to see which are the most effective.
It may take some time before you figure out the best formula, and you may also find that you need to continually rotate ads to attract more attention.
 

6. Try Different Programs

If one particular program doesn't seem to be working for you, try another one.
Affiliate programs don't look the same. They offer different products, services, and payment structures. Some programs will have a lifetime payout on sales while others will limit it to 30-90 days. Some programs allow much more flexibility in the types of ad units available, as well as colors and design so it fits better on your site's layout.

Also, check your favorite vendors to see if they run their own affiliate program. Sometimes you can go directly to the source. You're not limited to big affiliate networks

Integrate systematic ad testing into your strategy to maximize your profits.
 

7. Write Timeless Content

Your old content can still be valuable even though it's no longer on your front page. Take advantage of the long term opportunities by making sure you provide timeless content.

If visitors come across your older content first, and find that it offers dated information, they will leave right away. Of course, information moves forward, so relevant content changes quickly. You can make your content timeless simply by adding links to your updated articles on your old ones.

Many platforms allow you to show "most recent" or "most popular" or "related articles" on every page, so no matter how old the article is, it will always show access to your new ones. Your old content can make money for you indefinitely.
 

8. Be Patient

Affiliate revenue grows and builds up with time. Remember that some programs offer lifetime payouts. If you refer a visitor, you may continue to make money from that one visitor even if he doesn't come back to your site. Also, as long as you have referral links still active in your old posts, they may still payout for you.

Affiliate programs aren't a get rich quick plan, but it provides opportunity to make passive income in the future.
 

9. Stay Relevant

Keep up to date on the latest offerings of your affiliate programs. New ad units, advertisers, and tools are constantly being added to improve usability and be more visually appealing. Small changes go a long way in motivating action by readers. You may be left out in the dust by being complacent with your strategy.

Don't get lazy about monitoring trends and exploring new opportunities.
 

10. Content Comes First

Above all else, your content must be your highest priority.

Your content is your foundation, the life blood on which the site exists. Without valuable and helpful content, readers won't come. Focus on providing excellent content, and the monetizing strategies will work out.

Once you start compromising your content to cater to the affiliate programs or any other money making venture, you will lose your readers. Once that happens, you will lose the opportunity to receive any earnings from any of your ads, be they CPM, CPC, or referral based.

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