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.

http://onlinebusiness.about.com/od/affiliatemarketing/tp/affiliate-programs-top-10-tips.htm
 

The Easiest Way to Make Money From Social Media

Do you find it super challenging to make money from social media? Yeah, everyone does.

There are actually many ways to make money from social media. However, most of them require an established business before they can work. If you have a product or service you’re selling, then you can make use of social media to market it and get it in front of potential people who might be interested in it.

I don’t have any existing business, how can social media make me money?

With the exploding demand for social media service providers, it’s becoming a no-brainer for many people, especially who want to establish themselves in this market to start offering their services to potential clients. According to a study published on WantedAnalytics.com, there have been about 13.000 social media related jobs posted on the web in January 2012 alone. This is an 87% increase in demand comparing to January 2011.

The easiest way to make money as a social media service provider
There are actually many social media services that thousands of thirsty clients are searching for. However, many of them require some experience as well as education.

Although services like social media consulting could land you as much as $500 an hour (if you’re just a decent social media consultant), they mostly require a person who have been in the field for some time.

On the other side, social media management doesn’t require a lot of education or experience as you may already have the skills to start doing it right now.

They say that if you know how to posts status updates on Facebook and tweets on Twitter, then you can consider yourself a social media manager. While a part of this statement is true, there is a little more to social media management that most people miss.

A social media manager is the person responsible for managing a company’s social media presence. This is in the case of a fixed job. In case you’re doing it in a freelancing basis (which is even better), you’ll be managing your clients social presence across all the social platforms that they intend to use like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest…etc.

According to Mashable.com, a social media manager’s salary could go beyond the $100k mark depending on their location and expertise. If you’re doing it as a freelancer, then the sky is really the limit. 3 clients paying you $1000 each could easily replace your full time job and you’ll be able to enjoy part-time flexible work hours. If you intend to go beyond the 5 figures/month mark, then you might want to outsource the work to other freelancers and sit there and manage everything!

So what social media managers do?
Social media managers could have many duties that go from simple management to strategic social media marketing planning. However, what most of them do is:
1- Posting engaging status updates on Facebook.
2- Tweeting interesting stuff.
3- Managing Twitter inbox.
4- Replying.
5- Interacting and building audience.
6- Deleting spam.
7- Reply to comments.
8- Follow/Unfollow, Accept/Decline requests…etc

Some of the other duties that you’ll be able to offer when you have some more experience and which they will offer you a free pass to luxury are:
1- Quality/Viral content creation and distribution.
2- Creating an effective social media marketing plan.
3- Doing consulting for clients.
4- Conducting contests and PPC campaigns…etc

As you’ve seen, I bet that you already know how to do most of the tasks listed above, and that’s what makes you a potential social media manager. The question is: would you join the bandwagon and establish yourself in this lucrative market, or get left behind struggling with the competition that will arise?

Image Credit: birgerking

http://weblogbetter.com/2012/06/18/the-easiest-way-to-make-money-from-social-media/

Can You Make Money from Affiliate Marketing? If so How?

Before I start, I would like to make one thing clear:

I do not believe in easy money and there is no magical tips in this article that will help you get rich overnight. So if you are after easy money then this article is not for you.

This article mainly covers the following topics:

• What affiliate marketing is and the different types of affiliate marketing
• The advantages of being an affiliate marketer
• Some tips and good practices to become a successful affiliate marketer

So, can you really make money from affiliate programs? Well yes and no; there is money in affiliate marketing but if YOU can make money from it or not depends on a lot of other factors such as your commitment, experience, site traffic etc.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

According to Wikipedia

“Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts”

 

Basically, you as a publisher will be rewarded when you help a business by promoting their products or services. So for example, if you sign up for Tips and Ticks HQ’s affiliate program and promote it’s products then you will get a commission when the visitor you send from your site makes a purchase.
Affiliate marketing is probably one of the quickest and cheapest (not the easiest) ways to start making money online as you don’t have to create any products yourself. You simply link up a buyer and a seller, and you take a commission on the sale that has been referred by you.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

When you join an Affiliate program and choose the products that you want to sell, sellers provide you with a unique affiliate code that you can use to refer traffic to the target site. Most affiliate programs will offer ready made text links, banners and other forms of creative copies whereby you only have to copy the code and place it on your website to start referring traffic. When interested visitors click on these links from your site they get redirected to the product site and if they purchase a product or subscribe to a service you as the referrer make a commission.

The sellers can track your performance through your affiliate ID and the affiliate softwares (eg. WP Affiliate Platform) that they use. You also have complete, real time access to all sales and commissions stats.

You don’t need to sell products all the time to make a commission. Different affiliate programs can use different payment terms such as:

• Pay per Sale: In this program a merchant pays you a percentage of the sale price when the purchase is completed.
• Pay per Click: In this program you get paid based on the number of visitors you redirect to the Merchant’s website from your affiliate site, whether or not a sale is made.
• Pay per Lead: You get paid once the referred visitors provide their contact information on the target site by filling out a simple contact form.

Why be an Affiliate Marketer?

Affiliate marketing is considered to be one of the world’s fastest growing and best internet marketing techniques to earn money online and I will explain why:

• Cost effective: Marketing on the internet is cheap and you don’t have to worry about the production cost as the product is already developed by the seller. You don’t need a physical business location or hire employees either.
• Global Market: Online marketing gives you the opportunity to reach people all over the world easily.
• No Fees: You don’t need to pay anything to join affiliate programs.
• No Storage No Shipping: You don’t need to worry about storage, packing or shipment of the product. They are all taken care of by the seller.
• No customer support: You don’t need to provide any customer support or deal with consumer complaints as the Seller does that for you.
• Passive income: A regular job can give you a fixed income as long as you continue to work. Depending on your marketing skill Affiliate marketing can create a steady flow of income even when you are not in front of your computer.
• Work from home: If you make enough money then you don’t have to worry about going to work at the same time every day or getting stuck in traffic. You can work in the comfort of your own home.

Tips on Becoming a Successful Affiliate Marketer

After reading all the benefits of affiliate marketing if you think you will be rich over night by selling affiliate products online then you are wrong. Affiliate marketing is definitely an excellent way to make money online but it’s highly competitive too. In order to be successful in Affiliate marketing you need to know the market needs, learn how to promote products, what works and what doesn’t. The following are a few tricks on becoming successful in affiliate marketing that I have learnt over time.

1. Only Choose a Handful of Good Products

The first mistake a lot of affiliate marketers make is that they register with too many different affiliate programs and try to promote everything. Pursuing affiliate marketing down this path can become very overwhelming and you won’t be able to promote any product properly. All you need in order to be successful is a handful of good products to promote. Try to understand the market needs and look for products that align correctly with the topic of your site.

2. Use Several Traffic Sources to Promote Products

Most affiliate marketers put up the ads only on their sites. There is nothing wrong with this approach but know that there are many other traffic sources that you can tap into and promote the products simultaneously. The more targeted traffic you can send to the sales page the more your chances are of making money.
Google Adwords can be used to drive targeted traffic to a sales page. You simply make an ad in your adwords account then use your affiliate link in the target page URL of the ad. Obviously, you will have to continuously measure the conversions and see if the campaign cost is less than the campaign profit in order to keep the campaign running but I am sure you get the idea.

3. Test, Measure and Track Your Affiliate Campaign

It is a very good idea to use different product promotion strategies so you can figure out what is working and what is not. Try to do split testing and measure the performance of each campaign then take actions accordingly. Changing a few things here and there can increase your profit dramatically. Make sure to place the banner ads on different areas of your site’s pages. Some positions will make the ads more noticeable than others.
Most affiliate programs will give you basic stats that you may need but there is nothing stopping you from using your own conversion tracking software too. There are many conversions tracking sofware out there that you can use to track your affiliate campaign.

4. Research the Demand of the Product

If you try to sell a product that is in low demand then chances are that you are not going to get many sales no matter how hard you try. So it is a good idea to spend a bit of time researching and finding out if a product that you are thinking of promoting is a product that your audience needs. If your site gets decent traffic then you can conduct an online survey and easily get input from your visitors.

5. Stay Current with New Methods and Techniques

Affiliate marketing is a very competitive field and people are always coming up with new techniques. Try to stay current with these new techniques and market trends otherwise you will fall behind.

6. Choose the Right Merchant

When you promote a product you also promote the person or the company who is behind the product so try to choose wisely. You don’t want your visitors to go and buy a product following your advice then come back unhappy. Do you think that this visitor will come back to your site and take your advice again? Most likely no; this can hurt your credibility in the long run. Usually, websites/company that offer good customer service will have better customer satisfaction so try to stick with promoting their products.

7. Use Helpful Tools

If you are serious about affiliate marketing then try to find tools that will help you be more efficient. There are many helpful tools out there. If you are using a WordPress powered site then consider getting a plugin similar to the Affiliate Link Manager.

Don’t just hope and pray that visitors will buy; setup everything correctly and make it happen! If you think that visitors will click on your affiliate links and buy just because you placed dozens of affiliate links on your website then you are wrong! You need to have a structured plan in place. Affiliate marketing is a business so you will have a much better chance of succeeding if you treat it like one.
I am sure I haven’t covered everything so please feel free to share your tips in the comment area below.

http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/can-you-make-money-from-affiliate-marketing-if-so-how-2473

Best Online Business Ideas 2013

The top 4 Online Business Ideas To Make Money Online in 2013

If you have read through our home page, you’d know that hundreds of thousands of individuals in Australia make extra passive income from home based business or working on a part-time business around their full time employment.

The internet explosion has made your ability to create and ongoing passive income well within reach and quite literally, the only thing between those that are cashing in on the most lucrative online business ideas and those that are not is action (or a lack thereof). Speaking of action…

The absolute truth is that most people start a side business or second income stream only regret one thing – and that’s not starting earlier.

So if you’re still in the “been thinking about it” boat and are ready to set sail on your own online business, read on for our top online business ideas for 2013!

Just before the list though, if you have looked around at some other websites you will probably see some sites with massive lists of online business ideas ranging from a dozen to over 50 different ideas.
The absolute reality is that the bulk of those ideas are padding to make the article on those websites appear more worthwhile.

At the heart of any well-written internet business idea article should be the following 4 ideas, because they are by far and away the best internet business ideas that you can take advantage of in 2013.

So, here is the list:

Idea 1: Sell other people’s products or services for a commission

This is generally known as Affiliate Marketing. The simplest definition of affiliate marketing is that you promote products that other companies or individuals have created and you make a commission for making the referral. Generally this is done via a personal website or blog.

Keys To Success:

1. Know how to build a website
2. Average or better writing skills
3. 5-15 hours per week time availability

Idea 2: Selling Online/E-Commerce Store

There are plenty of ways to sell a product or service online, be those physical products or digital products (like an e-book or information guide). For example, we could put a small price on any of the “How To” Guides that we cover on this page and we’d make 100% of the sales revenue – we don’t, but we could .

If you are crafty, you can make items and sell them on a website such as Etsy.com, eBay or even just through Facebook.

You could start an e-commerce website and import goods to then sell at a profit online, or use a platform such as eBay to achieve the same.

Keys To Success:

1. Craft skills
2. Sales skills (as you will inevitably need to speak with people and perform some form of “sales process”). If you are new to sales that’s fine – Check out our free “How To” guide on how to improve your sales skills for free in less than 30 minutes!
3. Around 5-15 hours per week (sufficient time to both make your items, promote it and deliver it to your buyer).
4. Knowing how to build a basic website helps as it allows you to promote your product, however you can also do this very simply through a Facebook for business page which we cover in this free Facebook “How To” guide.

Idea 3: Creating mini websites

Mini websites, or Niche websites, have been a hot way to make money for a number of years and we cover this in more detail on this page.

You can actually make fantastic passive income through creating small websites around niche topics. The sites I build are generally around 10-20 pages of content so not much at all. I personally have a goal to build 35 small websites by the end of 2013 that make an average of $50 each per month.

To give you an idea of the time this takes, I allocate 10-20 hours per website depending on their size, so this year my goal of 1 site per two weeks is quite easy to achieve in 5-10 hours per week. I plan to pay some people to do some of the work down the track too.

However, for those of you that enjoy the numbers, even a site that takes 20 hours of personal time to build, and hits the $50 per month in earnings mark makes $1800 over 30 years giving a return of $90 per hour for you to sit at home on your computer and create a small website…

I currently have 12 mini websites now in various stages (not enough hours in the week to complete them all in the time I’d like haha), but I predict that my best performing site will top $100 on its own this month (January 2013) and the site is probably only 30% developed to where I want it to get. It could easily become a 4 figure monthly earner.

This is not life changing income form one site, but even 35 sites earning $50 per month is nice passive income that can be used to invest elsewhere.

How do you make money by creating small websites?

There are many ways, one of them being Affiliate marketing which was covered above. The site I mentioned above that is on track for $100 in monthly earnings is one that I will eventually sell products from and make affiliate commissions from.

The primary way to make money through mini websites as an online business idea is though Google Adsense. Adsense is an advertising program where Google completely manage the advertising process on your behalf.

You place a snippet of code on your own website that triggers adverts for other business to display on your site and when people click on those adverts, Goggle pays you a percentage of that revenue (estimated at around 60%). It’s a great way to make money because it is completely “hands-off” for you.

Idea 4: Blogging and building a larger websites

This Home Business Hub website is essentially an expanded blog and a blog, or weblog, is essentially just a form of website where you write regular updates (known as posts) surrounding the topic of your blog.

For example, the topic of this website is about home business and how to make money from home. We break the diverse topic of home based business into three categories:

1. Home businesses where you can create or sell products or services
2. Making money online through online businesses
3. Network marketing/mlm and party plan businesses.

An example of a more targeted topic would be just focusing on “making money online” for example and there are plenty of blogs that cover this topic (that’s not to say there’s not much room for you to start also).

Starting a blog or website of your own is one o four top recommended online business idea for 2013.
You can start a blog for less than $80 (your only initial costs are around $9 to buy a domain name (the website address of your blog) and pay for it to be “hosted” (which, if you’re new to this, is simply somewhere that hosts your website so that it is live on the internet).

The hosting can actually be paid monthly with no lock-in contract so you can get started for less than $20.

Your blog or website will become your internet business platform. For example, at the time of writing this article we have over 6000 individuals visit this website each month wanting to know more information about making money from home. Soon enough, we will be able to convey our messages and knowledge to over 100,000 people every year in Australia and that is quite remarkable concept from a website that is only 6 months old.

Being able to communicate with 100,000 or more people is like us being able to broadcast our message to people interested in the topic of earning money from home to a packed-out MCG stadium whenever and however we like. Very powerful when you think about it.

How To Research Your Competition

As many of you already know, SEO comes in three stages: picking the right keywords, optimizing your content for those keywords, and promoting the content so it gains visibility. Instead of blindly blogging and picking any keyword that sounds good, you need to learn how to research your competition.

Step #1 – What is Google currently ranking?
Open up Google Chrome and browse via incognito browsing. (That way you don’t get skewed results while signed into your gmail and dealing with cached results.) Decide to only analyze the first page of Google.

Step #2 – What am I to be looking for?
There are dozens of things you could be looking for, but let’s focus on the most important ranking factors. They are:

• Google PR (pagerank – a numerical value between 0 and 10)
• Keyword in the Title, Description, H1 tag, and keywords tag
• Keyword in the first paragraph of the blog post

Usually I find that Google is currently favoring sites that aren’t as optimized as they could be. That leaves us room for us to knock them off the first page.. providing we do the proper work and let time work its magic.

Step #3 – Tools to check PR and meta information
Both Firefox and Chrome have add-on’s that can do some this for you. SEO Quake is a really good one. If you want to check PR manually, then you can use this site: www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php
If you want to manually check a page’s meta information, then you can right click on your mouse and hit ‘View page source’. You don’t need to be an expert in html; just hit CTRL F and search for:

• title
• keywords
• description
• h1

Step #4 – Authority Snapshot
Domain authority is an incredibly important ranking factor. Generally, a site with more incoming links has more authority than a site with hardly any incoming links. Please keep in mind link quality. Not every link is created equal; especially, if you get a link from a PR 3 site versus a link from a PR 0 site.
To perform this test, take your search term and take a hard look at what Google’s currently favoring on the 1st page. What kinds of listings are you seeing? If you’re seeing listings like videos, images, press releases, blogs, or even rating sites, then you’re looking at a page with literally no authoritative sites. Wikipedia is an example of an authoritative site. These sites are also described as a site that’s the go-to resource on any given topic.

Step #5 – Inbound links
No competitive analysis would be complete without mentioning the links the competition has to a specific URL. As I’ve done competitive analysis and achieved many first page rankings, I’ve seen sites with an enormous amount of links and I’ve also seen sites with hardly any. It’s really fun finding competitors like that. Sadly, they easily get bumped off the first page.. providing you can do proper on and off site SEO.

http://www.johnchow.com/how-to-research-your-competition/

How to Kick Failure Out of Your Blogging Career

Do you feel like you’re not getting ahead as a blogger?

I mean, you’re not getting huge amounts of traffic, active readers, email subscribers and most importantly, you earn meager or no income.

I know that feeling because every pro blogger who’s achieved tremendous success today started from a zero level.

They were once broke, hesitant to begin and had those little voices speaking on their inside. Telling them “what if….”

But they pressed forward. They continued. They studied hard, read blogs and so many books just to escape the trap of failure.

And you know what, they finally cracked the code. The cleared the stumps off their paths and today, they’ve huge social media fans, speaking engagements from every corner and thousands of dollars on their bank accounts.

It’s a personal journey

Yep, you need other business-oriented persons to climb the ladder of success, but blogging itself is a personal journey.
No one is ever going to motivate you as much you’d do to yourself. It doesn’t matter how many books you’ve read or exclusive mastermind groups you belong to, if you’re not determined, blogging will not work for you.

If things aren’t turning out the way you want with your blog, it’s time to ask questions and see if you’re the cause. From my personal experience, I learned that pain can be a stepping stone to greater heights in life.

But I’d not advice you to dwell on that, instead I need you to look forward and see how much $10,000 per month could change your life. At least, to an extent.

In other words, don’t be motivated by pain or the fact that you’ve no money in your pocket; be awakened by the joy of tomorrow. Let VISION lead you.

That’s how you can transform the lives of people and make the world a better place to live in. That’s the biggest motivation that would bring a lifelong prosperity.

Use other people’s time

Successful entrepreneurs use OPM (other people’s money) to expand their frontiers. Bloggers on the other hand should use OPT (other people’s time) to reach a wider audience.

Did you know that thousands of people are waiting to send you huge amounts of traffic and money? In fact, I just discovered this not too long ago.

And that’s why blogging is the most lucrative business tool that any serious online entrepreneur can use to reach out and become the go-to expert in his or her niche.

To get these sets of people to evangelize and win a lot of souls for you, you MUST exchange value with them. The first thing you can do to put the machine to work is to produce exclusive content continually.

Let me give you a scenario: In 2011, I struggled to attract loyal readers to my blog. Every day, I felt like giving up and getting a day job. But something kept me going – perhaps my zeal to change the world one step at a time.

And I don’t mean the whole world here, but my OWN special world. Fortunately, I attended a live conference in my city and the keynote speaker made a terrific statement that changed my business & life.

He said, “Create a definite path for people to follow and they’d fly in like Bees.”

Fast forward to 2012, my blog is already getting a lot of loyal readers and quality backlinks from authority blogs.

Because my readers are tweeting, sharing, citing and telling everyone they meet about my rich content. 95% of the time, I didn’t ask them to share it… it’s a reflex action…

The truth of the matter is that if you spend eons of time to write what your readers will not find anywhere else on the entire web, you’ll generate fresh traffic and you might be lucky, a media agency could pick up your best content and republish it – of course with your permission.

If that should happen to your content, you’re guaranteed 5k – 10k free traffic in 48 hours. Do you’ve enough bandwidth space for that?

It’s time to act…

How many e-books are stored on your hard disk, which you’re yet to read? What about all the bookmarks you’ve on your browser, when do you plan to use those information toolkit?

Here’s my honest advice to you, stop downloading every new e-book and start acting. You already know so much, even as a beginner.

Start writing & marketing and learn along the way. As a rule of thumb, study every product you purchased, before buying another one. It’s high time you begin to act. Don’t you think so?

A wise step you can take this year is to fill your blog with epic content; the type that would remain evergreen, helpful and fresh as the months go by.

You’ve got to change people’s perception about you. The quality of articles, blog posts, videos and other digital materials you put out would determine your worth in the blogosphere. See my content marketing study on how to get your online business to life.

And if you’re looking for a freelance writer who understands how to write good content that can grow your website and income, I’m open for hire.

Kick failure out of your blogging career by getting other people actively involved in promoting your content, ideas and products. Do this and you’ll fly like the Eagle. Leave a comment if you like this post. You’re awesome!

http://www.johnchow.com/how-to-kick-failure-out-of-your-blogging-career/

22 online marketing tips that won't cost you a cent

It's a classic Catch 22 situation - you're desperate to improve your online marketing efforts, but there is precious little money left in this year's marketing budget.

Don't despair. Here are 22 things you can do to improve your online marketing right now - and all they will cost you is time.

1. Practice a purchase

Get one of your friends and go on to your website and show them how a customer can go through the process of buying an item or getting in contact with you.

Write down all of the things you both notice during the process; the results might surprise you. Usually there will be one change you can make that will increase your conversion, by at least 10%.

2. Ask for feedback

Add a button that says: "Can't find what you are looking for? Email us your question." You are not your customer, and there is no way you can know what they are experiencing. Let them tell you what they want.

3. Add more keywords to a web page                  

   

Some of your pages may be lacking in keyword density. Log in to your content management system, or ask you web developer to, and just add a paragraph of text to the pages that are looking a little empty on keywords. Remember; Google can't see images but it can see text, so tell Google what your page is about. Even Google changes its logo on its homepage.

4. Change your home page main image

Make the image that users see when they first hit your site something a little fresher. If they are coming back for a second time, nothing is more persuasive than seeing a website that is changing and evolving. It's a signal that the website is alive, and that the company is reputable.

5. Offer an incentive to your affiliates

Offering an incentive to your affiliate businesses might just give them that extra 10% motivation to spend more time promoting your program. And more promotion means more sales.

6. Add a page of content

Write an article and add it as another page to your site. The more pages Google can see on your website, the more chances you have of ranking for any particular keyword. I call this "Buying more tickets to the Google Lottery"!

7. Change the colour of your "buy now" button to green

This might also be your main call to action button, like "Apply now". But remember, red equals "stop", and green equals "go". Are your buttons telling users to stop or go?

8. Invite your staff for a website feedback day

Sure it's going to be a little political, but you are going to get at least two ideas that will be brilliant and easily actionable to increase sales.

9. Update your "about us" page with your latest info

Most people ignore this page, although users want to know who they are dealing with. If your "about us" page still has the 2005 press release you added, remove it and update it with something new. Sell yourself.

10. Call every phone number listed on your website

If one doesn't work. Update it.

11. Convert PDFs into HTML pages

This is an easy win to get new content on your site, and give you a few more tickets to in the Google Lottery. This will work especially well if your PDFs are behind a secure area that Google cannot index.

12. Update your news section

Add your latest news. If you have no news, make some up!

13. Add a second picture to your product pages

Two images are more persuasive than one. Potential customers want to see what they are buying, and if you were to show the back of the product as well as the front, it may overcome some of the objections that have held some of your potential buyers back from taking immediate action.

Tip: If you can only do one image, make pne image half the front and half the back. The images will be slightly smaller, but you will communicate more information this way. NewEgg does an amazing job with its product imagery.

14. "Oh by the way..."

Add a little upsell to your "thank you" page. Think of this like the confectionary at your supermarket. Right next to the cash register before you are about to pay, you can just throw in a pack of gum. It's not sold in a big way, it's just "Oh by the way, if you want a pack of gum I'm $1."

Add gift wrapping, upgrade, upsell or promote an affiliated offer. Their credit card is out for the checkout page, it's time to get them to throw in that "pack of gum". You can be really creative here! One of the best in the business at this is VistaPrint, which up-sell you with free business cards to a DVD subscription.

15. Update your 404 page

This page always gets traffic. Does your page look horrible and nasty, or is it helpful and informative?

16. Add misspellings to your paid search campaign

There is a huge amount of misspelt keyword traffic out there. The extra hits from common misspelt words may be worth the extra work to search out the best misspellings, creating and submitting a page to the search engine, and watching a little bit more traffic come through your site. It's time you cashed in on it. 

17. Protect your brand name

Type in your brand name into Google. See who comes up - if competitors are camping on your brand, politely email them and ask them to take it down.

18. Review your sitemap

Your sitemap is used by both Google to help index your website and by some users to browse your site. Check to see what Google can see on your site and navigate to your sitemap to see if it's usable or not.

19. Fix the top 404 pages

Ask your web master or web hosting company to send you your top 20 visited 404 pages on your website. Fix them. You might get more traffic.

20. Ask a friend in another industry to shadow shop on your site

Give them five things to do on your site and get them to just send you their feedback on their experience. Ask them if they would go back to the site without you asking them to. If they would, you are in the money. If not, you have some work to do. The ultimate test of your website is: "If you didn't own it, would you go to it?"

21. Read the last 100 "contact us" forms

Read what users are sending you. You will find one core insight to your customer, that just might help you improve the site dramatically.

22. Ask a taxi driver their top five websites

Taxi drivers meet a lot of people everyday and learn about a lot of websites. They are generally quite basic in their use of the internet. (Ouch, that is a big generalisation!) Whatever sites they are visiting right now are ones that you need to review and strategise about.

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/advertising-and-marketing/032391-20090423-22-online-marketing-tips-3.html
   

5 Online Marketing Strategies for a Tight Budget

In a world where attention is currency, it's becoming increasingly more difficult to attract the eyes and ears of your target market. Not only are you up against larger companies with nicely funded marketing departments, you're also competing with social media and a multitude of other distractions for the attention of your prospects.

But that doesn't mean your marketing efforts have to cost a ton of money or be overly dramatic in order to stand out from the crowd. Here are five creative and inexpensive ways to market your business in a digital world:
1. Get endorsed by a local celebrity.
 Many business owners dream of having their product or service endorsed by a global celebrity. But instead of trying to get a superstar to support your business, try seeking out a local celebrity instead.
Who exactly are local celebrities? These are people your local paper is writing about -- perhaps an "unsung hero" such as a teacher or a resident who's doing something positive and newsworthy. Since they're in your neighborhood, these people should be relatively easy to locate and contact by phone or e-mail. Let them know you'd like to send them a gift, namely your product or service.

        

The only catch: you'd like to follow up with them in a few days to get their honest feedback. Their responses can make for useful blog or marketing content.

2. Create a LinkedIn group.
Not only is a LinkedIn group free to create, it can enable you to offer your professional network a vibrant, useful information resource all while driving traffic to your site and increasing sales. Just don't use the platform to hard sell anyone.

It can take time and effort to get one going, but the goal should be to help provide resources and start discussions on topics that can benefit your community. Groups should also be a place for your members to network with other professionals online.

3. Get published on niche blogs.
While it may be difficult to get on the front cover of a major magazine, you can create marketing opportunities by being featured in a popular niche blog. Identify three to five blogs that target your market then contact the creator and offer a few ideas of how you'd like to bring value to his or her readers. You can:

• Demonstrate good will by offering the niche blog owner a small amount of your product or service for free, which they can give away to their audience as a gift. This is different than a product review, which only offers information. 
• Send ideas for blog posts you'd like to write and explain why they would be helpful for their readers.
• Ask if you can interview them for your site. This might entice the blog manager to promote your content since it highlights his or her business.

 4. Create videos for YouTube.With more than 800 million unique visitors a month, YouTube can be a powerful platform for marketing a business online. To do so, go beyond simply posting random videos of your product or sharing your thoughts.

The marketing videos you create should include the following elements:

• A keyword-researched headline
• A clear editorial message (don't try to accomplish too much in one video)
• A call to action (tell the viewer to do something, such as subscribing to your channel)

While you can spend a small fortune on cameras, lighting equipment and editing software, the camera built into your smartphone should be able to capture suitable online video. As for editing, if you're on a Mac, for instance, you should already have iMovie in your applications. Even if you don't have a Mac you can find free software online or hire a professional editor on sites such as Fiverr.com, possibly for as little as $5 depending on the scope of the work.

5. Write an e-book about the biggest issues in your industry.
No longer do you need a publishing company or thousands of dollars to get distribution for a book. Amazon, for instance, will let you upload a digital book for free, with a 33 percent take on every sale. The goal is not to make a profit from direct book sales but to use it as a lead generation tool, encouraging readers to opt into your website for further information.

Even time-strapped entrepreneurs who aren't great writers should consider this. You can search sites like E-lance or Odesk to hire an affordable ghostwriter who can help you convert your blog posts or audio recordings into book format.

When it comes to marketing your book, set the price between $1 and $5 -- which makes it affordable -- then use social media, video marketing and e-mail list marketing to promote it. To generate more leads, keep in mind that Amazon allows prospective buyers of your book to take a sneak peek of the first few pages. Be sure to embed links into these early pages so you can capture leads from people who were interested but didn't wind up buying your book.

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226146

The 4 Essential Parts of an Email

Nearly 250 billion emails are sent every day, according to the 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report. That’s one email every 0.00000035 seconds.

Of course, you needn’t read statistics to understand email’s importance—you use it constantly to pitch reporters, apply for jobs, search for new business, and send mom a link to a new recipe.

If you can’t get people to respond to your messages, you’re probably doing something wrong -- especially if your mother won’t read your emails.

Here are some tips on how to write the perfect email that gets the results you want.

        

The subject line.

Arguably the most important component of the email, the subject line is the deciding factor in whether your message is read or deleted. Additionally, using a spam tagline or lots of characters such as $$$ (or in the U.K., £££) can send it straight to the junk box.

The subject line needs to be truthful and informative and tempt the reader into wanting to know more about the content. In that case, strive to retain an air of mystery, but remain truthful. If your email has nothing to do with the subject line, the receipt will have a bad impression of you.

The salutation.

The start of the email sets the tone for the main body. In the opening words the reader is making a judgement about you and what you want, and whether they will continue to read. Seeming too formal or impersonal, or, conversely, unprofessional, can cast a negative impression. If you know the person’s name, address him or her personally; if not, use “Hi” rather than “To whom it may concern.” The latter is stuffy and formal. In business -- and especially in PR -- you need to build relationships, so sounding friendly but professional is always a good approach.

The bit in the middle.

Long, waffling emails are a massive turn off to anyone -- especially to journalists who receive dozens or even hundreds of unsolicited emails a day. Even if the recipient opens your email, a page-long essay will probably inspire him or her to close out of it. No one has the time, or the interest, to read your life story. Keep your messages as short and concise as possible, and deliver information in a digestible way. Your purpose for writing needs to be clear and presented in a way that will appeal and relate to the recipient.

The ending.

Assuming the recipient sticks with your email to the end, the way you sign off is as important as the way you start. End your email by making clear what you would like the reader to do, but don’t do it in a commanding way. Phrases such as “I look forward to hearing from you” or “Please let me know your thoughts” invite a response and make it clear you would like to hear from them. But they are also casual enough to not sound threatening. Sign off with “many thanks” or “kind regards” or something similar and your name, including your first name. Rapport building isn’t achieved with Mr. and Ms.

Additionally, when relevant, include your professional Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and/or Google+ accounts with your signature, especially when approaching someone who doesn’t know you. This way the person can have a better look at what you do, reinforcing your professionalism in his or her eyes.

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

 http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/225719