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Top 12 Tips To Writing Effective Google AdWords Ads

2009-07-30T20:26:00.000+10:00

In this article I show you my top twelve tips for creating effective Google AdWords ads.

I've been testing the Google pay per click advertising system for a while, with much success. These tips will help you create ads that generate higher click through rates, and lower cost per click.

1. Target The Right Audience

Target the right audience by selecting the language and countries that you want to target. For example, I exclude all countries where English is not understood by a large percentage of the population.

2. Refine Your Keywords

Use square brackets "[...]" around your keyword/s.

For example:

[google]
[google adwords]

Your ad will only show when the search is for the exact keyword phrase you have included within the brackets.

The ad will not show for searches that include other keywords. In our example, this would be for searches such as "google search," or "google news."

3. Test Multiple Ads Simultaneously

Always test 2 (or more) ads simultaneously. This is what is known in the print industry as an A/B split test.

Find out which one produces the higher click through ratio. Then replace the weaker performing ad with a new one.

Continue this process in your never-ending quest to get the highest click through ratio possible.

4. Track The Return-On-Investment Of Each Ad

Google tracks the click through ratio of each ad. But it doesn't track the conversion ratio.

Use a special tracking link in each ad to track its conversion ratio. For example, you could attach each ad with an affiliate tracking system link. Make sure each ad produces a return-on-investment.

5. Include Targeted Keywords In Your Ad

Include the targeted keywords in the headline and the description of the ad. Google will highlight searched keywords in bold in the ad.

When people scan search results, they look for the keywords they have entered. Searched keywords highlighted in bold certainly help to catch the user's attention. For this reason, ads with searched keywords usually perform better than ones without.

6. Sell The Benefits

Spell out one or more major benefit in your ad. For example, make more money, stay younger looking, lose weight, get healthier, live happier, etc.

7. Include Attention Grabbing Words In Your Ad

Start your headline with an attention grabbing word. For example, "Free:, New:, Sale:, etc." Make sure you stay within Google's editorial guidelines.

8. Use Words That Provoke Emotion & Enthusiasm

Use power words or call-to-action phrases that provoke emotion, enthusiasm and a response.

Here are some examples of power words:

free, cheap, sale, special offer, time limited offer, tricks, you, tips, enhance, discover, fact, learn, at last, free shipping, etc.

Here are some examples of call-to-action phrases:

* Buy Today - Save 50%
* Download Free Trial Now
* Sale Ends Tomorrow

Make sure the phrase specific to your business, otherwise Google may reject the phrase.

9. Sell Your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)

What makes your product or service better, or different, from the competition? Spell them out in your ad.

For example, one of Amazon.com's first taglines was "Earth's Biggest Bookstore." That's a powerful USP!

10. Link To Relevant Landing Pages

If an ad is for a specific product or service, create a landing page for the ad. Include relevant and useful information to convert the customer. Generally, a well designed landing page will almost always convert more visitors than if you simply sent the visitor to the home page.

11. Remove Common Words

Remove common words, such as "a, an, in, on, it, of, etc." Remove every word that does not absolutely need to be in the ad. Make every word count.

12. Deter Freebie Hunters

Deter freebie hunters by including the price of the product or service at the end of the ad. This will improve your overall conversion ratio and lower your average customer acquisition cost.

This may reduce your click through ratio, but that's OK. After all, you're not trying to target every body, only potential customers. In most cases, freebie hunters will never become paying customers.

Conclusion

Remember that advertising is a never-ending series of tests. Always track your ads. Never stop testing different keywords and ads to improve your conversion ratio and lower your customer acquisition cost.

Advertising in the Google AdWords advertising system works. It may not necessarily produce as many visitors as Overture, but the click through cost is usually lower.

mikes-marketing-tools.com

Affiliate Managers: Your Top Five Biggest Affiliate Program Mistakes

2009-07-30T20:24:00.000+10:00

In this article I will show affiliate managers the mistakes they should avoid if they want to build a successful affiliate program.

I felt compelled to write this article after seeing the same mistakes made by most of the hundreds of affiliate programs I have joined since I started promoting them in 1997. I have made a nice living from affiliate programs over the years, so I know a thing or two about them. I would dearly love to make more money with affiliate programs, but affiliate managers don't make it easy for us affiliates. So hopefully this article will do a bit for the cause.

Here are my top five biggest affiliate program mistakes that I find today:

1. Competing With Your Affiliates.

This is by far the worst mistake made by companies that offer affiliate programs. I often see companies for products I am trying to promote compete with me in the search engine rankings and pay per click advertising programs.

Why companies invest money and resources in competing with their affiliates is beyond me. By competing with me, you're trying to put me out of business. Have marketing directors ever thought of it in that way? Because if you succeed, you will no longer have an affiliate network to speak of.

The money would be better spent on supporting your affiliate network by creating a better product, providing more referral statistics, higher commission payouts, faster support, and more, fresh promotional creatives.

So if you're an affiliate manager reading this article, tell your affiliate director at your next meeting to STOP competing with your affiliates, and support them instead!

2. Not Providing Your Affiliates With Useful, Real-Time Statistics.

All marketers rely on statistics to measure the effectiveness of any marketing campaign. Yet most affiliate programs only provide their affiliates with basic statistics such as number of visitors sent, number of sales, and commission earned. These statistics aren't much help to affiliates who want to measure the effectiveness of a particular pay per click campaign.

Affiliate managers - please consider providing these useful statistics so that I can market your products effectively:

Archive of daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly statistics and by date range.
Commission earned, broken down by product or service, and how the customer was referred to the site.
Daily email update of all affiliate statistics.
Instant email notification of a new affiliate.
Instant email notification of a new free trial sign up.
Instant email notification of a new sale and all relevant statistics. I love getting new sales notification emails!
Number of free trial downloads or subscriptions.
Number of returns and all relevant statistics.
Affiliate links with trackable IDs, so that affiliates can tell exactly which site, or ad campaign is sending the referrals and sales.
Unique clicks - which refers to the unique number of visitors referred - in addition to raw clicks - which refers to the total number of click throughs.
A list of top performing affiliate statistics, so that affiliates can compare how they're doing and which areas they can improve on.
Include the most important statistics at the top of the email and subject line. There's nothing worse than having to scroll down to see what the referral purchased or how much commission I have made.

The following only apply if the affiliate program offers more than one level of commissions.

Commission earned as a result of referrals sent by 2nd-tier affiliates.
Commission earned, broken down by commission level.
Number of 2nd-tier affiliates referred.

I've been promoting products and services via affiliate programs since 1997 and I have yet to come across an affiliate program that provides anything close to these statistics.

3. Not Compensating Your Affiliates Fairly For Their Hard Work.

The #1 incentive for any affiliate is cold hard cash. Money sells! So tell your marketing director to fire the search engine optimization firm and advertising department, and redirect the resources to paying your affiliates a higher commission rate.

Another thing I hate is seeing my commissions go down the drain because someone I had referred signs up to the affiliate program and purchases the product via their affiliate link. It almost feels like I'm being robbed blind! I highly recommend affiliate managers deter this practice by making it harder for affiliates to pocket the commission from their own purchases, at least the initial one.

4. Not Providing Enough Fresh Promotional Creatives.

Most affiliate managers seem to give their promotional creatives little thought. All they offer is a handful of 468x60 banners, buttons and text links. What happens is that affiliates end up using the same ads on hundreds, even thousands of web sites.

Affiliate managers - what about these promotional creatives?

Articles and tips with embedded affiliate links
Classified ads
Customer testimonials
Direct email ads
Email signatures
Newsletter ads
pay per click ads
Pop-up/under ads
Product photographs
Product reviews
Product screenshots
Rich-media ads
Skyscrapers
Staff interviews

Listen up! Different ads perform better on different sites. And ads generally have a life span of a carton of milk. So offer your affiliates a greater variety of ads, more often.

5. Not Providing Fast, Quality Support For Your Affiliates.

This is the 21st century. Don't make your affiliates wait longer for an email reply than it takes to send a letter by snail-mail post.

Don't outsource your affiliate support work. If you have to, then at least train your support staff so that they understand the ins and outs of your products and affiliate program. I'm often dumbfounded by affiliate support staff who can't give me answers to simple questions.

Well there you have it - my five biggest complaints about affiliate programs today. I hope affiliate managers take note and take strides to better support their affiliates, because if you don't, affiliates will find other ways to make money on their site.

Affiliate marketers - if you agree with what I've said, send this article to your affiliate program managers!

mikes-marketing-tools.com

Top 5 Professional SEO Tips to Ensure Web Browser Compatibility

2009-04-10T22:01:00.000+10:00

Contrary to popular belief, not everyone uses the same Internet browser. Sure, there are a large number of Internet Explorer users, but there are also a lot of people who use Firefox, Chrome, Opera and others. That is why it is vitally important, to make sure that your website displays correctly, regardless of the browser it is shown on. If you don't, all of your website promotion efforts will be a waste of time.

The major web browsers and their market share as of December 2008, is as follows:

Internet Explorer - 68.15%*
Firefox - 21.34%*
Safari - 7.93%*
Chrome - 1.04%*
Opera - 0.71%*

* Source - NetApplications.com

As you can see, if your website only displays correctly with Internet Explorer, you are missing out on a whopping 30% of visitors, that are unable to view your site correctly.

So, how do you ensure that your site is universally compatible with all of the web browsers out there? The answers can be summed up in five basic steps. They are explained in greater detail below.

1. Test Your Website

If you want to ensure that your website promotion efforts remain worthwhile, you need to test your site among the different web browsers. In the past this had to be done manually. But now, there are free services that can do this for you such as BrowserShots.

To use these free services, all you have to do is enter the URL of your website. You can also enter in other specs, such as screen size and color depth, but these fields are optional. The software will then return a set of screen shots, showing what your site looks like in each web browser.

2. Use Basic HTML

Basic HTML is essential to good website promotion as all web browsers can read HTML. Plus, it is a well developed and established programming language, that will enable even ten year old computers, to load HTML pages pretty quickly. Although websites that are designed using basic HTML may not be as elaborate as those created using more advanced languages, but at least they load and display properly.

3. Do Not Use Frames Foregoing on frames is one of the best kept secrets of website promotion. True, such a suggestion doesn't help with designing, but if you use frames too much, you risk having display problems if the site is shown on an older browser.

So, if your site needs different sections within the same page, use HTML tables instead. They are universal to most browsers plus, if you know what you are doing, they can actually be more attractive.

4. Do Not Include Fancy Fonts in Your Design

Your site should look good even if standard fonts are used. Therefore try and avoid using some of the more fancier font styles, as some web browsers may have difficulty recognising these. Again, this may not help with your site's design, but it will do wonders for your website promotion.

5. Limit Your Use of Images

When it comes to website promotion, content matters more than images. This is because when people are really hunting for information, they are not going to care whether or not a site looks pretty. Granted, there are exceptions to this rule, but as long as your site looks neat, uncluttered and professional, don't worry. Overloading a web page with images may slow down the loading time and can cause problems with the page displaying correctly in certain browsers.

Robert Smith has over 5 years experience in online marketing and search engine optimisation. He is the owner of Get On Fast, a specialist online marketing agency, based in Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom.

Visit our website for further information on our Website Promotion or, to discover how search engines rate your website, request our FREE WebSite Analysis report.

When is the Best Time to Start Your Own eBook Publishing Business?

2009-04-06T21:57:00.000+10:00

There are twelve months, 52 weeks, and approximately 365 days in any given year. When is the best time to start an eBook publishing venture? Some people are convinced that the best time to start a business is in January. The reason why feel this way is because they have typically created a set of new year resolutions that include getting more money and freedom into their lives. Let's face it, one of the easiest ways to get more money and freedom is to start a business. You're in control of your own future, and can create a schedule that best suits your own needs. So a lot of people assume it's January.

Others think that the best time to start and launch an eBook publishing venture is in September. The rationale behind this is because children typically are going back to school. That often results in a stay at home parent having a lot more free time in which to focus on starting and growing a business. It makes sense at some level because with the kids back at school, there are less distractions.

Now here's the truth. The best time to start and launch an eBook publishing venture is today. Why? Because the opportunity for you to make a lot of money in this business is constant. We're not talking about a cyclical business such as tax preparation, or selling ice cream in a climate that has all four seasons. The information publishing business is constant. Sure, some individual topics will be more relevant during certain times of the year, but as an eBook publisher you can have an entire library of titles to market to people all the time.

So the next time you hear that little voice in the back of your head telling you to wait and not launch an eBook publishing business, ignore it. The time to get started is right now. There is opportunity everywhere.

For more FREE information about how to make money on the Internet with your own home based eBook publishing venture, visit the eBook Secrets website by clicking on this link.

You'll discover a fantastic resource that I've put together for you that will help you launch and grow a profitable home based eBook business WITHOUT having to spend a lot of money on startup expenses. You can literally get started today. So go ahead and visit my eBook Secrets website today.

SEO - Why You Want First Page Rankings

2009-04-02T21:59:00.000+11:00

Anyone who knows anything about internet marketing will tell you that without a first page search engine ranking you have got little chance of getting mega traffic to your site. I mean, when you are searching online for something, how often do you look at the results on page 2, 3, 4 or 5? Not very often, I would bet.

People searching the internet tend to concentrate on the results they are given on the first page. They just haven't got the time or the patience to sift through pages and pages of results to find what they are looking for. So if you can get your website seen on the first page of results it is going to get you a lot more visitors to your website and, in theory, a lot more business.

It is highly possible for you to get those sort after first page listings if you think about it logically. If you target a very general keyword such as 'pens' it is going to be much harder for you to get to page one as it is going to have greater competition than a more specific set of keywords such as 'black ball point pens'.

Obviously there will be less people searching for 'black ball point pens' than there will be searching for just 'pens' but when those people reach your website they will be highly qualified as they have been searching for something very specific that you are offering. If you can get first page rankings for these specific keywords you will have a greater chance of converting these visitors into paying customers.

Want to know more about how you can get your website listed on the 1st page of Google check out my Free Report: SEO Secrets

Writing an Ebook Doesn't Have to Be Hard

2009-03-10T21:56:00.002+11:00

One of the hottest trends of the day for making money is writing eBooks. An eBook, in case you didn't already know, is a book that is electronically created and published. Readers enjoy the convenience of eBooks, because they can be instantly purchased and downloaded directly from the internet, providing authors a way to make quick, easy profits. There are many individuals who have achieved financial independence and gained a multitude of fans by writing eBooks.

Have you ever dreamed about writing your own original eBooks? Perhaps you think you have to be an "experienced" writer to be able to accomplish this, but the amazing fact is that you don't necessarily need to be. If you possess passion and knowledge about a topic, you can write about it. Everybody knows about something that is valuable to others and writing eBooks gives you the opportunity to share it with the rest of the world, with the added perk of being able to make money doing so.

To become a successful part of this growing craze, you first need to determine what topics you feel most comfortable writing about. Usually, they are things that you, yourself, find interesting. For instance, if you're a mom who works outside of the home, you may know some great recipes for "quickie" family meals or, if you work from home, you may know about how to find legitimate home based jobs. There is literally a market for every kind of special interest that people want to learn more about.

Writing an eBook may seem a bit intimidating at first, but, once you discover how to properly format it, find out how to relay your information in an engaging, easy-to-understand way and learn how to market your finished work, you'll see that it can be a simple, enjoyable means of generating a continual source of income.

There are other advantages of becoming an eBook writer, too. You don't have to wait for a publishing house to "approve" your work, since you can be your own publisher. You don't have to be at the mercy of some overly critical editor since you are in sole control over what you write. You can set your own prices for your eBooks and keep the earnings yourself. You are in charge of your own destiny, so to speak.

Anybody can be an eBook author, no matter what your level of experience and background may be, from professional people to homemakers to students and more. There are millions of potential internet readers out there, waiting anxiously to learn about something you already know and willing to pay for the privilege. Why not provide them with your expertise?

You can help other people by offering them insightful information they can get access to immediately and satisfy your desire to make an endless stream of income. Imagine having a global readership who values what you have to say and receiving payments on a regular basis, to boot!

You can achieve it all by writing eBooks and using the proper marketing techniques to make sales.

30 Days to profits. Follow the simple action plan using the complete guide for writing and selling eBooks. Start today for cash tomorrow now at Writing, Selling Ebooks.

Turning Ebooks Into Your Home Business

2009-03-10T21:56:00.001+11:00

More people than ever are running their own home business. Some individuals operate them on a full-time basis, while others work at them part-time to supplement their income. Even when the rest of the economy suffers, many home based businesses are still able to succeed.

Why not become a part of this prosperous trend?

If you have been thinking about getting involved in a home business yourself, but are totally clueless on where to start, there are many avenues open to you. One you may want to consider is creating and selling your own eBooks.

An eBook is an electronically-created book that can be easily downloaded. For those who don't have the time or patience to wait for books to arrive through the regular mail, eBooks provide them the information they seek swiftly and conveniently. For that reason, they are more than willing to pay for it.

"But I don't really know anything," you might be saying, "and, besides that, I don't have any writing experience."

The truth is that everybody knows something and has some degree of experience in a topic others are interested in. You might not be able to explain the theory of relativity, but you might be very knowledgeable about how to make crafts, how to come up with tasty recipes for finicky tots, how to lose weight, how to budget, how to design websites and much more. There is no end to the diversity and number of topics you can write about and there are always people on the internet who want what you have to offer.

Of course, you need to decide on the subjects you want to write about. You should have a definite passion for them and be able to present your information and ideas in a way that will stimulate the interest of readers. When people like what you write, they are more likely to come back and purchase eBooks you create.

If you're a bit doubtful about your writing abilities, there are a number of resources you can find online or at your local library that will teach you the basics of writing, so that you can word your eBooks in a well-structured, easy-to-understand manner. Learn to write in a way that is informative and, at the same time, fun to read.

Your home business should consist of eBooks you have written and published yourself. As a publisher of your own unique eBooks, you are the captain of your ship, so to speak. You control the content, design and pricing of your products and you get all the juicy profits.

You could even set up an entire online store for your target group of readers to come to. For instance, if you're a working mom, your store could feature eBooks that are relevant to the needs of other working mothers. Unlike conventional bookstores, you don't have to rent a building or go bonkers trying to manage everything. It's just a matter of finding out how to market your eBook business, so that people will come to where your products are, choose the topics they want to know about and pay for the downloads via credit card or PayPal.

The most enjoyable part of your home business will be watching the profits roll in. The sooner you get started, the sooner you can enjoy this.

30 Days to profits. Follow the simple action plan using the complete guide for writing and selling eBooks. Start today for cash tomorrow now at Writing, Selling Ebooks.

Ebooks and Ebook Reader Devices - Top Clues They Are Taking Off in Popularity

2009-03-10T21:54:00.001+11:00

Ebooks and ebook reader devices are widely used today, but they are not quite standard yet. Still, the clues are there that they are taking off in a big way! There are many different reasons why this is true, and it's only a matter of time before it becomes the standard way to read books. The features of convenience, price, and user-friendliness are just the tip of the iceberg!

Many people love to read. The problem with this passion is that books take up a lot of space. It seems that more people are interested in clearing the clutter and being able to have their books with them whenever they want. That's the beauty of ebooks! In the same space where you could only have one book, you can now have hundreds of books on one little device.

We can't forget that nearly everything is becoming electronic these days. People are attached to their Blackberries, iPhones, laptops, TV's, and other devices. It only makes sense that old hardbacks and paperbacks are going by the wayside to be replaced with something electronic. It's far more convenient and makes sense for modern lifestyles.

Speaking of modern lifestyles, there are many people who are just too busy to sit down and read these days. If they do find the time, it gets difficult keeping track of which page they were on or finding an exact portion of a book. Ebook readers will surge in popularity as more people realize that the devices save your page for you, allow you to easily mark in them, and help you find exactly what you're looking for with a simple search.

In addition to those convenience features, there is also a matter of price. If you go to the local bookstore and open the front cover of a hardback you'll likely go into sticker shock! It's amazing how much they are charging for books these days. Those high prices will cause more and more people to buy ebooks instead. Since companies have less overhead for these electronic titles, that cost savings gets passed along to the reader.

As more publishers catch wind of how many people all around the world are reading ebooks you can only expect the number of titles to increase. When some of the more popular books are converted to ebook format it will attract more people to them. This will create a snowball effect where people all around the world start realizing how amazing it is to read your books in an electronic format!

There is also the matter of having the ability to distribute books on a wider basis. There are some smaller publishing companies that just cannot afford to get their book in many areas. This limited distribution not only hinders sales, it also hinders creativity! With ebooks, people realize that the costs are so low they can effectively get their books into the hands of anyone who wants them. This will cause the ebook movement to spread like wildfire.

Ebooks and ebook reader devices will continue to increase in popularity all the time. If you haven't gotten started reading ebooks, now is definitely the time as they are widely available and can save you a ton of money on popular books.

Are you ready to get your hands on these popular ebook reader devices? The two most popular readers right now are the Kindle and the Sony Reader.

Stop bouncing: tips for website success

2009-03-09T05:00:00.000+11:00

Would you believe me if I said you don't need a Ph.D. to understand your website data? No? Believe it. Free tools like Google Analytics can help simplify website data so that you can better understand what visitors are doing when they arrive on your site.

One of the coolest innovations in understanding your website has been to provide delightful metrics on your web data so that you can make direct changes to your site. In lesson one of our series on The Power of Measurement, we will learn about bounce rate and how understanding it can improve your website.

You may be used to reading about how many “hits” a site or a page has received. But reporting a "hit" meant something back in 1985 when it was essentially a pageview (the number of times your webpage was viewed). Today, you will find that each web page gets many "hits," rendering the metric meaningless. While the number of "hits" a page received used to be the best measure of success, we now have more in-depth and detailed metrics to analyze the performance of our web pages.

Bounce rate is insightful because from the perspective of a website visitor, it measures this phenomenon: "I came; I puked; I left." (OK, technically it also means the number of sessions with just one pageview.) While metrics like visitors show the number of people who came to your site, bounce rate will tell you how many of those people were unimpressed and left your site without taking any action (not even dignifying the site with a single click!).

Bounce rate has these attributes:
1) It is really hard to misunderstand. It measures the number of people who landed on your site and refused to give you even one single click!
2) It is available in most web analytics tools, including our own Google Analytics.
3) It is quick and easy to use. Bounce rate will help you understand where and how to make changes on your website in under an hour.

Now, let's make this real. If you have a Google Analytics account, you'll see this when you log in:

This means that about 77 percent of website visitors came to the site, "puked," and left. Ouch. Based on that, you may need to light a fire somewhere, as things need fixing. Here are two simple and specific ideas:

Tip #1: Find out where your visitors are coming from and which of these sites sends visitors with the highest bounce rate. To do so, all you have to do is go to "Traffic Sources" (in Google Analytics, or whatever tool you are using), click on "Referring Sites," and boom!

In about fifteen seconds you know which sites are your “best friends forever” (BFFs), and where you need to look a tad deeper. By identifying the sites that are sending you visitors with high bounce rates, you can investigate the reasons why (the campaigns, the context in which your link is placed, the ads) and make changes to ensure that visitors find what they are looking for when they come to your site.

However, it may not just be the campaigns that turned your readers away; it could be the specific page that your visitors landed on. That leads to my Tip #2: Go to “Content” (labeled as such in Google Analytics) and click on "Top Landing Pages" report:

You can see different pages of your website on the left and the corresponding bounce rates on the right. Remember, you don't decide the homepage of your website. When people search, the engine finds the most relevant page on your site and that's the homepage. If you have 50,000 pages on your website, you have 50,000 homepages. The report above is showing the top ten pages of your website and which ones might be letting you down by not engaging your visitors enough to get even one click!

In under an hour you can discover which sources are your BFFs and which pages on your site need some sprucing up. This will ensure lower bounce rates, higher engagement with your site, and perhaps even higher revenue. To learn about other ways in which you can use bounce rate effectively, check out this article on my web analytics blog, Occam's Razor.

Good luck!

5 Ways to Make Money Blogging (Once You Have Traffic)

2009-03-09T04:54:00.000+11:00

Making Money From a Blog - Moving Past AdSense

While it is possible to make some money with a blog of any size - your chances of earning income from a blog do generally increase as you increase your readership numbers.

Many bloggers start out monetizing their blogs using ad networks like AdSense. While ad networks like AdSense can still earn you a nice income as your blog grows (many large blogs use them) - an increased audience will also open new opportunities to you as a blogger.

1. Direct Ad Sales

One thing that becomes possible as your readership grows is that you can begin to attract your own direct advertisers. I’ve written on this topic numerous times before so rather than writing a long tutorial on the topic let me point you to some previous posts:

2. Ad Representation

Many bloggers struggle to sell advertising on their own blogs. Most bloggers are not experienced in the area of ad sales, don’t have contacts in the advertising industry, are unaware of how much to charge or even what technology to use to serve ads. Most of us also are passionate about writing content and building community - the admin of finding and interacting with advertisers can often be a distraction.

One alternative once you have a reasonable amount of traffic is to outsource your ad sales. Some blog networks and ad networks will handle this kind of thing for you once you have enough traffic. Generally you need a fair bit of traffic for them to look at you but in these tough economic times I suspect we’ll see more and more services to do this.

3. Start Your Own Ad Sales Network

One thing that I’ve been hearing more and more bloggers doing is joining together to sell advertising as a collective or network within a niche. You might not have enough traffic to attract a top tier advertiser alone - but what if you joined with 4-5 other medium sized blogs in your niche and approached advertisers together?

4. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing can work on blogs of all sizes but once a blog has an engaged and loyal readership it can really pay off. Readers that have tracked with you for a while are more likely to buy something that you recommend than a one off visitor - so this is a particularly useful strategy if you have built a ‘community’ rather than just a blog that has a lot of search traffic. The key is to find products to promote that are of a high quality that you can genuinely recommend and that have high relevance to your readership.

Further Reading: 5 Tips for Making Money with Affiliate Programs

5. Sell Your Own Product

Another monetization strategy to start thinking about once you start seeing growth in your readership is your own product to sell.

Whether that product be an e-book, a membership area, a real hard cover book, training (online or real life), consulting, merchandise…. once you’ve got a loyal readership who trusts you and sees you as an expert in your field you’ll find that they are increasingly likely to buy something that you sell.

You’ll also find it easier to get other blogs in your niche to promote your product once you’ve build a blog with profile. I’m seeing more and more bloggers doing this and suspect that as advertising budgets get smaller in the current economic climate that we’ll see more and more of this type of approach (I’ve previously called it ‘indirect income’) by smart bloggers.

problogger.com

What is Facebook’s Slogan Saying

2009-03-09T04:04:00.001+11:00

I just finished reading an interesting post over at Howtosplitanatom.com about brand slogans. The article talks about the classics like: “Always Coca-Cola” , “Just Do It” and “Think Different”. After reading the post I started thinking about the slogans of some of the social networks out there and what they really said.

The article makes a point to mention that some slogans appear to be after thoughts created with no real perspective. Having worked in marketing I find this hard to believe. Marketing people spend hours looking over the finest details.

With my new mission I decided to look at the slogans of some of the popular social networks and see what they said about their product. Certainly this is all up to interpretation, but it never hurts to look back at a product to figure.

MySpace: “a place for friends”

MySpace is the giant of social networking. In retrospect it is ironic that the MySpace logo is “a place for friends” since one of the major complaints is that a large portion of the profiles are fake. The slogan however embodies what MySpace was trying to accomplish, a place for friends to meet and stay in touch.

hi5: “Who’s in?”

Hi5 has the most inviting slogan of all the social networks. I think this makes sense since hi5 has created itself a truly international community feel. Their network slogan gives a sense of, “come see if you don’t like it we won’t be offended.”

bebo: “EXPLORE”

Bebo’s slogan makes the most sense out of all of the social networks. Bebo focuses on providing content rich experience that allows users to explore and discover new media. By connecting with people on bebo you can find explore their world of entertainment.

Facebook: “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you”

While Facebook’s slogan isn’t very catchy it says quite a bit about the social platform. Facebook has taken a very utilitarian stance on providing a social network. They have created a framework and are expecting you to do most of the work. I do not use Facebook to meet new people, but instead use it to maintain connections.

I was wondering what your thoughts were on these slogans. I find it interesting how a slogan can me something different to different people. Let me know what your thoughts are on these slogans and maybe you could suggest some better ones.

Facebook Tutorial: How to Create a Facebook Profile

2009-03-09T04:00:00.001+11:00

Do you want to know how to register for Facebook and create a profile? This tutorial will walk you through the process of registering and getting set up. This first video is approximately 6 minutes in length and by the end of the tutorial you should have learned how to complete your profile will all the relevant personal information. For more tutorials check out our Facebook tutorials page.

Facebook Profile Tutorial Overview

You probably know a lot of people on Facebook already, and they are probably wondering why your not on it yet. Facebook is one largest social networking sites on the web and itâ€™s a great way to keep in touch with your friends. As more and more people join Facebook is becoming an important tool in helping people stay connected. Itâ€™s also free so there no real reason not to join!

The first step in joining Facebook is creating your account. On the Facebook homepage youâ€™ll see a large blue box in the lower right hand corner of the page. Here is where you sign up for Facebook.Youâ€™ll need to type in you name. This is the name youâ€™ll want to appear on your profile and the name by which people can search for you within Facebook. Youâ€™ll also have to add your email address and a password. This is how you will login to Facebook. Facebook will also ask you to add your gender and your birth date at this time.

Once you click the green â€˜Sign Upâ€™ button youâ€™ll be taken to email confirmation page. Facebook will have sent you an email to confirm that you are creating an account. Just click on the link in the email and youâ€™ll have a Facebook account.

First, Facebook will prompt you to several ways you can find your friends on Facebook such as through searching your e-mail and your school/company networks. Skip these pages for now; weâ€™ll come back to them another time.

Facebook will then ask you to join a regional network. If you choose you can join a network that represents where you live. Just start typing in the city or region in which you live and Facebook will present you several options. Just choose the closest fit.

Now youâ€™re ready to create your profile page. Youâ€™ll first be taken to the Facebook homepage. To get to your profile page click on your name on the banner on the top of the page. You can also reach your page by clicking on â€˜Profileâ€™ on the banner.

This is your Facebook profile page. Here you can add information about yourself to share with friends. To add information click on the info tab underneath your name and Facebook will guide you through a few different pages. You can pick and choose what information you want to share on your profile. There are also several privacy options you can choose from if you want to restrict who can see certain parts of your profile.

The first section Facebook will guide you to the page for your ‘Basic Information.’ Here you will see the information you added when you signed up, including your birth date information. You can choose how people see your birthday in your profile by clicking on the dropdown list. You can also add your hometown, relationship status and your political and religious views on this page. Any field you choose to leave blank will simply not appear on your profile. Once your finished click on â€˜Save Changesâ€™ at the bottom of the page and youâ€™ll be taken to the next section.

This section is for your â€˜Personal Information.â€™ In this section you can pretty much put any information about yourself that you want to. There is a section for activities, interests, music, movies, books, your favorite quotes, and an â€˜About Meâ€™ section where you can write about yourself. Youâ€™ll notice when you start typing in a field Facebook will prompt you with several popular choices but you can add whatever information you choose. Once your done save your changes and move on to the next page.

This section is for your ‘Contact Information.’ Here you can add your various ways people can get in touch with you. Again, if thereâ€™s any information you do not wish to share leave the field blank and it wonâ€™t appear. Here you can add your IM screen names (up to five), any phone numbers, your address, and a website if you have one.

If you want to add this information but want to restrict who can see it you can click on the lock to the right of the information you want to restrict. A window will appear with a pull down list. The list will give you several options to control who can see the information including your networks (the region) you joined, friends of friends, only friends, or you can customize to make your privacy options even more specific. Once you choose the privacy settings you want you can save the changes and move on to the next page.

This page is for your â€˜Education and Workâ€™ information. Here you can add information about the colleges youâ€™ve attended, including the year you graduated, your majors/minors, and whether you attended for college or graduate school. You can add up to five colleges. You can also add up to two high schools you attended. There is also a section for job information. If you want to share where you work you can add this information in this section including a description of your job, how long you worked there, or if you currently work there. You can add up to 15 jobs. Once you your done adding information, save your changes and you are now done editing your profile.

Once you finish editing youâ€™ll see how all the information you just added looks on your info tab. Now you can add your profile picture.

Click â€˜uploadâ€™ link under the silhouette. If you have a picture in mind (it must be a jpg. gif., or a png.) just click on â€˜browseâ€™ in the window it will open your files. Find the picture you want and open it. Facebook will upload it onto your page.

If you have a webcam you can add a picture that way. Click on the â€˜Take a webcam pictureâ€™ under the silhouette and it will open your webcam.

Once you have added a picture you can update your Facebook status. Fill in the bar that asks you â€˜what are you doing right now?â€™ you can answer the question, add how youâ€™re feeling or any update about yourself that you want your friends to know. You can update this as frequently as you want. Once you filled in the bar click post.

Once you refresh the page youâ€™ll see how your completed Facebook profile page appears. You can change any aspect of your profile page, including the privacy settings, at anytime.

On your profile page youâ€™ll see that everything you have just done appears on your mini-feed. Every time you do something on Facebook it will appear in your mini-feed. People can also comment on the stories that appear in your mini- feed.

You can change the comment settings by clicking on â€˜settingsâ€™ above the mini-feed. If you uncheck the box comments on your mini-feed stories will not appear on your profile.

You can also remove stories from your mini-feed by scrolling your mouse over the information you want to remove and to the right an â€˜editâ€™ button will appear. When you click on it, the option to delete the particular mini-feed story will appear.

Now you have completed setting up your Facebook profile page. In the next tutorial we will look at how to find your friends on Facebook...

What is Quality Content for Search Engines

2009-03-03T03:36:00.001+11:00

We often hear the SEO advice that ‘Content is the King’, and search engines like Google favor good quality content. Many people confuse it with creating more pages, and they often end up in buying software like spam site generators, automated content generators and scrapping tools. Many others buy cheap articles and stuff their websites with copies of the articles. However, search engines are not lookinig for such useless garbage which hardly offers any value to the site visitors.

Quality content in short is link-worthy content which is original, conceptually unique and serves as a useful resource for information. And, it refers to the text part of your website. Though keywords matter in your page copy, your page should not look like a keyword stuffed page for search engine robots; you should write for your site visitors focusing on readability and usefulness.

Good quality content has other rewards, too. If people find your content useful and spreading information, they will naturally want to link to your site, and give referrals. Thus, useful pages meant for people can attract links which are very valuable for your ranking in the search engines.

If your pages are copies of pages on other sites, search engines like Google will perceive your site to be of poor quality offering no value. You should therefore create content which people will find useful in your niche. It is better to have few pages with quality content than having thousands of pages filled with garbage. Good content will attract referrals and citations to your site and boost your ranking naturally.

SEO Guide for Beginners from Google

2009-03-03T03:31:00.001+11:00

Is Google getting into SEO business? Well, such a move from Google would lead to a potential conflict of interest. But even Google is telling us that there’s nothing wrong with SEO, and Google’s official Webmaster Central Blog is now formally offering a free “SEO Starter Guide” with practical search engine optimization tips for new webmasters about how to improve their website’s performance in Google.

This search engine optimization guide comes in a 22-page, pdf format. Google uses the same principles inside Google for optimizing its own sites such as YouTube. This starter SEO guide from Google covers dozens of topics such as

• Title tag
• Description Meta Tag
• URL Structure
• Site Navigation
• Content Creation
• Anchor Text
• Heading Tags (H1, H2, etc.)
• Optimizing Images
• Effective of Robots.txt
• Rel=”nofollow”
• Website Promotion
• Webmaster Tools
• Web Analytics
• More Helpful Resources

The guide is well written and is aimed at new webmasters and website owners who are looking for basic training in SEO techniques. I feel it is a good guide for newbies, to cover the basics of SEO before they go for more advanced stuff.

Blogger Seo Tips - Part 2

2009-03-03T03:30:00.000+11:00

On the first blogger seo tips post, I went through the basic settings that you should modify on the blogger.com setting area. On second part, I will show you how to optimize your blogspot/blogger templates. Default templates offer none SEO whatsoever causing most blogger users to rank low on SERPs.
There is one thing I love about Wordpress: the tag! Blogger does not have this. This can result in duplicate content entries, showing the same content on post pages and archive pages. You do not want to have the same content on different pages of your website.

Blogger does not have this built in, so we are going to do a small tweak to accomplish that. Make sure you have selected a widget-ready template. There are couple of steps, so read the whole post carefully. Place the below code before the html tag in your template. Its a small javascript.

Download the first code

Second step involves changing the post includables. If you do not have a widget-ready template, you will not be able to apply this step, since non-widget-ready templates do not have includables. To get to the post parte, where you will change the code, search for id=’post’. If you are unable to find it, you may not have expanded the template. Select the checkbox named “Expand Widget Templates“, which is right above the template code, to expand it into more code.

Download the second code

Now, go to Settings –> Formatting and paste the below code inside the text box labeled “Post template”:

Type your summary here

Type rest of the post here

When you create a new post on your blogger blog, this will clearly show where to write your summary or excerpt, and rest of your post text. It is important to make sure that the /span tag above is at the end of the post. So before publishing your post, check the html source code and make sure that is at the end of your post. The “Read more” link will appear only for the posts that have been divided like this.

SEO tips for blogs hosted on Blogger

2009-03-03T03:29:00.001+11:00

Blogs are the fastest growing class of websites on the internet. No longer the sole domain of teenagers and the love lorn, blogs are now an established form of internet communication.

The online business community has recently discovered the power of blogging, and as such are faced with raising the blog site's ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs). As a direct result of some of the blog characteristics, high search rankings are readily available for the careful blog writer.

Like any other website, blogs have techniques for search engine optimization (SEO), many of them the same as for traditional static websites, and many of them unique to blogs. Among the issues faced by some bloggers is the abundance of free blog hosting sites.

Not requiring any initial cash outlay, the free blog hosts have literally millions of blogs on their books. One of the most popular is the Google owned blog host Blogger.

Note that in this article, the capitalized word Blogger refers to the blog hosting company, while the lower case generic term blogger indicates the blog writer. Confusion between the two words will be avoided as much as possible.

Like all free web hosts, Blogger hosted blogs face unique optimization challenges. Unlike sites where the domain name is owned by the webmaster, free blog hosts maintain ownership of the blog. In fact, the blog name is a sub-domain of the blog host, making value from the blog URL a less powerful optimization tool.

Despite the limitations faced by a blog hosted by Google owned Blogger, there are many very powerful optimization techniques available to the blogger. As we will see, blogs have some optimization methods, that are only available to blogs in general, regardless of host.

When considering the optimization techniques to apply to blogs, the basics of fresh keyword rich content, theme relevance, incoming links, and link anchor text all apply to blogs. In that sense optimization for blogs is no different from other websites.

On the other hand, some additional methods and some restrictions in the choice of techniques are involved as well. The various restrictions are often a direct result of the placement of the blog on the free host.

In this case study, the free host is Blogger. These shortcomings must always be kept in mind, when considering the best course, to fully optimize your blog.

Free Blogger hosting for your blog

Blogger enables you to host your blog on their server for free. As a very simple use interface system, even a novice with absolutely no programming or blogging experience of any kind, can be fully operational in a matter of minutes. The procedure for starting a blog is very simple, and takes only minutes to complete.

The Blogger server offers the choice of having a free standing blog as a separate website, or the option of writing your daily posts on the Blogger interface, and file transfer them to your existing website via the built in FTP feature.

Blogger provides a choice of pre-written templates for the blog layout, but all of them are changeable to include different color combinations and page formats.

Blogger freely permits the use of third party add on features, including commenting systems, track back, visitor counters, RSS site feeds, and most scripts often seen incorporated into traditional websites.

Note that Blogger offers all of those necessary blogging functions, including a site feed through Atom, with the exception of track back, in its blogging service package. Other third party feeds can be freely added to the Blogger template. I use several on my blogs.

The user is under no obligation to use the Blogger supplied versions, however. The company agreement does require that the Blogger logo icon remain on all of the pages, however.

When choosing a URL for the blog, it will appear as http://yourblogname.blogspot.com or if you prefer, as http://www.yourblogname.blogspot.com making the blog URL a sub-domain of the Blogger system.

The main domain is indicated by the "blogspot.com portion of the URL. With being a sub-domain, there are some unique, but not insurmountable challenges to optimization, as we shall see.

A Blogger user is not restricted in the choice of blog titles, and careful title and URL selection can help greatly in the optimization process. Many blogs suffer from having very poorly selected titles, that contain no relevance to the overall blog theme. Keep that in mind when selecting a title.

Keywords within the blog title and URL are very powerful in ranking well, with a blog component, especially as a sub-domain from the Blogger host.

After creating a blog title, and selecting a blog template to be customized later, the Blogger registration process is completed. A new blog writer is ready to begin writing blog columns, which are referred to as posts.

Optimization and SEO power of blogs

Contrary to what many people believe, Google does not give preference to blogs hosted on Blogger, despite Google's ownership of the popular blog service.

As a result, bloggers using the Blogger hosting system are on even footing with bloggers using other free or paid blog hosting services, and with blogs hosted under an owned domain name, or as part of an owned domain website. The playing field for optimization is as level as possible for bloggers using a sub-domain of Blogger, and for other bloggers as well.

Blogs rank well in the search engines by their very nature. They are regularly updated with keyword rich content. Most blog writers stick to a main theme for their blogs making relevance easy. Because of the blog's versatility, the blogger can add more themes to the blog and tie them together, enabling a blog to maintain several strong themes.

Blogs are also link magnets, mainly from other similarly themed blogs. It is not unusual for a blog to receive a Google PageRank 4 or 5 after being live on the internet for only one month. The theme relevant links are often placed right in blog posts, and contain powerful link anchor text.

One way inbound links to blogs are freely given by other bloggers as many blog writers are not concerned about search engine rankings. As a result, the competitive level of the sought after keywords is not as strong as its overall potential, based on sheer numbers of blogs.

Bloggers maintain large link lists, called blogrolls, that usually sit on the blog's home page. The weakness of the blog link lists is their volume, providing less than optimal PageRank and link popularity passage, as it's divided among large numbers of receiving blogs and websites.

What the blog link popularity lacks in amount of what is passed along, is made up for in theme relevance and quantity. Blog links are literally a volume business. Note that reciprocal blog links don't appear to suffer any downgrading, as is often the case for static sites. Incoming links, including reciprocal links, are effective for blogs.

On page blog optimization techniques

Blogs are optimized using the same techniques as static websites. Keep in mind that a blog is simply another website. What works in the search engines for other sites will also work for optimizing a blog.

Blogger assists the blog writer by building in many optimization features, that enable a blog to compete in less competitive searches, even if no other optimization techniques are applied.

The blog title is important, and should be chosen carefully to reflect the topics and themes of the blog. Many blog titles are frivolous, and provide little search engine value. Including at least one important keyword in the title is recommended.

The title is important as it forms part of the URL sub-domain. Combining a keyword enriched title with the blog URL is often enough to compete for non-competitive searches.

As the regular posts are added to the blog, each one generates a unique page with its own URL. Since the blog title forms part of that URL, it's important that it contain some keyword, as the blog title is at the front of the URL.

The individual page URL contains all of a short blog post headline, and most of some longer ones. For that reason, place the targeted keywords early in a blog post headline to ensure their conclusion. Blogger publishes the page URLs, with the headline words separated by dashes, in accordance with the Google preference for dashes over underscores.

The blog title tags are readily and easily changed in Blogger, to reflect any targeted keywords and phrases. Because the blog itself is a website sub-domain, altering the title tag is a very powerful option for any blogger to utilize.

The Blogger supplied templates are pre-written with h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, and h6 tags. The headings are placed in the heading tags automatically, providing an instant search engine advantage for the blog. The templates are fully CSS compatible and welcome both additional CSS and html coding.

Blogs are well crawled by the major and lesser known search engine spiders. Because the posts are so frequent, the spiders return to reindex the blog, on at least a daily basis.

By pinging the blog, which is notifying the specialized blog search engines and RSS aggregators of an update, the blog reaches a huge audience including media outlets. A good one stop multiple site pinger is Ping-O-Matic.

Three very powerful optimization tools are missing from Blogger templates, and would be very helpful in improving searches for Blogger hosted blogs.

One missing item is categories. Blogger users can't place their posts into theme related categories. The ability of other blog hosts to provide categories gives those blogs a bit of a theme related SEO advantage. That is to say nothing of the benefit to the blog readers of neatly organized categories for related links.

Blogger doesn't provide a related links feature that lets readers find additional posts on the same blog topic. Another benefit to readers, and to the search engines due to the loss of an internal link, is missed by Blogger.

A third issue is the lack of internal "tag" coding. Blogger users are required to write their own tag code for Technorati and other users of post tags for search. As embedded linked keywords, tags are also very powerful for creating themes in search engines.

There appears to be little, if any discrimination against Blogger and other free hosted blogs among the members of the media, and other blog RSS feed subscribers.

Link power of blogs

Much of the search engine optimization power of blogs is through their extensive linking networks. Blog owners are free and generous linkers. They link to other blogs permanently, usually from the high PageRank home page, and freely link to what they consider interesting blog posts.

Not only are posts linked frequently by other bloggers, but the on page link is often from a post to a post. As a bonus, the link is usually dripping with important keywords and phrases.

Links from other blogs tend to be very theme relevant in content, as bloggers link to articles, blog posts, and other blogs that are of interest to themselves and to their readership. One way incoming links are a very frequent event for bloggers.

Reciprocal blog links don't appear to be discounted by Google or the other major search engines, as the exchanges are usually between theme related blogs. Blog owners should, however, exert some level of caution, regarding link exchanges with non-theme relevant blogs, as those incoming links might not receive full value.

Linking to and from Blogger is easy, and the template provides an unlimited sidebar area for the inclusion of html links, to other blogs and traditional websites. Links can also be coded within the posts themselves, right at the time of post composition, using simple embedded html conversions.

The Blogger posts are archived after a chosen time period of usually one week, into one month long archive sections. Those time frames are changeable in the Blogger settings, for longer or shorter durations.

The internal linking of the pages is precoded by Blogger, enabling PageRank link popularity, and link anchor text to pass freely from one page to another. The pre-written code can also be altered should the blogger prefer a different internal linking structure.

Conclusion

Hosting a blog on a free host like Google owned Blogger need not be a disadvantage to achieving high search engine rankings. Simply apply recommended standard SEO optimization techniques and the blog will do very well in the SERPs.

The Blogger supplied, and readily alterable templates contain many powerful optimization features by default, including h1 tags, CSS, and strong internal page linkage, to name just a few.

Be sure to keep in mind that the blog URL shows a sub-domain. Because of that limitation, care should be taken with the blog title, title tags, and the headlines given to the regular blog posts.

The power of the many keyword rich anchor text incoming links, from theme related blogs and websites, will go far towards reaching the top of the rankings.

The links are to be expected because of the regular posting of theme relevant content. Other bloggers will link naturally to the blog, with the highly potent one way link.

Be sure to add your own tag code for using those powerful search tools.

The blog combination of fresh keyword rich content and relevant incoming links will propel the blog, and a related website, to the top of the SERPs.

While it's always a better policy to own your own blog domain, don't be afraid of a free blog host, if you are short of cash.

Even a free hosted blog is highly powered in the search engines.

Wayne Hurlbert provides insigtful information about marketing, promotions, search engine optimization and public relations for websites and business blogs on the popular Blog Business World.

Blogger Seo Tips - Part 1

2009-03-03T03:28:00.001+11:00

More people start to host their own blogs to make money online. It is more customizable, and lets you have more control, but it is more stress dealing with hosting payments, downtime and even stress every now and then. Blogger.com is the one who started it all, hosting more blogs than any service or personal blogs combined. Everyone has analyzed and optimized Wordpress to boost their rankings in every aspect, but left blogger/blogspot users looking for tips.

Welcome to Blogger Seo Tips Part 1. I will be covering what blogger settings you should choose before we start to optimize your blog.

Blogger Settings:

Title: Title of your blog, make it short and simple
Description: The description should include your keywords that you are aiming and should be a complete sentence.
Add your Blog to our listings?: YES
Show Email Post links?: NO; nobody uses them, they just lower your keyword density.
Send Pings: YES
Date Header Format: Choose the one with the less text, ex: “8.9.07″
Comments: Show, but delete the unrelated/short comments
Backlinks: Hide, no need to share your PageRank value, is there?
Enable Post Pages?: YES, so that each of your posts can attract different visitors
Archive Frequency: Weekly. Its better to have the least number of posts on a single page.

Google Adsense Ads Custom Font

2009-03-01T18:25:00.002+11:00

Now Google Adsense has many new features such as Adsense for feed, Adsense for domain, and font customization for Adsense as text.

Adsense for Feed allows us to get more earnings from our feed readers such as Google Reader and more. Adsense for domain is for those who have an unused domain. You can place Adsense on the domain, and for those who used to play in Domain parking, will know more about Adsense for domain.

When you create Adsense for content in the form of text or image, usually you can only customize the Adsense format, Adsense color, and corner style (rounded or square). There is a newest feature that you can customize in Adsense for content. You can customize the font of your Adsense text. With this font customization, you can fit your Adsense font with the text font of your blog, it will make your Adsense in harmony with your blog so that the readers will be much interested in clicking your Adsense, and dollars will be closer to your pocket.

Happy optimizing your Adsense!

What First Impression Does Your Blog Give Off?

2009-03-01T18:17:00.001+11:00

First impressions last, or so they say. To be fair, first impressions do not always stand the test of time. There are times when first impressions are false and perceptions change through time. But then again, when talking about your blog and new readers, would you take the risk of not converting a first time visitor to a returning one merely because of a so so first impression? I thought not.

So, have you taken a look at your blog lately? I mean really LOOK – from an outsider’s point of view. What impression does it give off? If you cannot answer that objectively, you might want to take on the help of other people who would be able to give you constructive criticism.

When doing so, try to look at a few important points.

Does your blog layout look messy?
Does it seem like the elements were put together hastily? Try to determine whether this is what other people see and if so, do something about. Trim your blog, clean it up – do whatever you need to get a tight look.

Does your blog look spammy?
Messy I can still take. But at the first signs of spamminess, I pack my bags and hit the high road – and I bet a lot of other people do so as well. Choose your ads tastefully and place them in strategic locations without sacrificing the essence of your blog.

Does your blog look too plain?
This might be a matter of preference but I think that there are a lot of readers out there who would like to have some visual aids complementing the text. If you find your blog looking like a 1000-page novel, it might be prudent to consider adding splashes of color and photos here and there.

These may seem trivial to some but they can make a difference as to whether or not someone decides to return and pay you another visit.

Tweet Your Way To More Traffic

2009-03-01T18:15:00.002+11:00

Twitter has been around for quite some time and it has garnered a humongous amount of followers. Indeed, it has become so widespread that the core concept has already been “copied.” You now have Plurk and other similar social platforms operating around the same idea. If Twitter has been able to achieve such heights of success, then it must be doing something right, right?

I have to say this right now – I have been using Twitter for a year or so but I have not really optimized it in such a way as to benefit my personal blogs. The fact is that, perhaps like many other people, I started using Twitter because everybody else I knew was using it. Recently, however, I have begun to realize that there is something more to Twitter than micro-blogging.

I have been seeing and following a lot of other people on Twitter who seem to know how to use Twitter for more constructive purposes other than telling the world what they ate for breakfast or what they are doing over the weekend. One example is how some people put their blog URL or the URL of a specific post on their Tweet. The logical result is that people who see their Tweet would click on the link, hence bringing traffic to their site.

Another thing that I can think of is that there are more people in Twitter than people you actually know who you can encourage to visit your blog. While not everyone who stumbles upon your blog through Twitter will keep coming back for more, it is a good way to expand your readership.

What other ways can Twitter help your blog? Care to share your own experiences?

Video Blog The 4 SEO Factors

2009-03-01T07:50:00.003+11:00

Monday’s video post is up. On this one I did a quick SEO review of the factors that you need to have in place on single post pages.

Here is a quick summary of what I covered:

On most blogs, the single post pages are the most important ones as far as search engine traffic is concerned
That is because the bulk of the organic traffic will go there, since you can target very specific keywords and optimize the page elements more efficiently there
The first thing to keep in mind is that the full content should appear only on the single post page itself
The second factor is the title tag, which should be dynamic and concise.
The third factor is the permalink structure, which should be based on words, and should not use weird characters or unnecessary information
Finally, you should also make sure that the title of your posts are using an H1 tag

dailyblogtips.com

Blog Promotion: SEO Tools

2009-03-01T07:14:00.002+11:00

The process of Search engine optimization tools is one that takes place when a certain type of material is put through a process and the resulting is another totally different substance. The same is the case with computer SEO tools this form of SEO tools requires that a certain type of binary code data is implemented into human written contents and similarly that human language is used and reused in the form of keywords so that the machine can read and execute any and all commands that are put by the user. SEO tools used by a computer expert take place by the use of special software that is made up and integrated into the computer main frame or mother board.
These days the world of all types of industry runs through the basic function of having web sites and proper advertisement and marketing strategies. This is a very good way of getting the web site to gain popularity and also making a good profit. The way companies use the internet to market their products and services is by sending emails and offers regarding their products to all people. These days having an email id is the trend and every one who is any one has one. The web sites will take a list of annual email addresses and send automated offer and other information emails to people’s inboxes this type of emailing is called Spamming or junk mailing. The term SEO tools are used to refer to types and patterns which are used to include valuable information regarding your web site. The only biggest difference that lies between other techniques of SEO tags and other types of SEO tools is just that techniques are known to be placed between the already existing works that are of the search or results page. A wide array of differences and other Search Engine Optimization and tools would now be available so that a person can include page-related types of information, however they are only two of them, the first is the keyword type density and the second is the description type content, these are the most important from SEO tools perspective.

Submit Blog

2009-03-01T07:06:00.012+11:00

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toprankblog.com

Considering The Off-Page SEO Factors

2009-03-01T06:49:00.002+11:00

The rankings of the search engines can be perked up in a number of ways. These various factors are mentioned on the main page of the blog. Some of them are even not mentioned on the main page of the blog. One of the most firearms of the search engines is none other than the google. The google accounts for more than sixty percent of the share in the market. One who wants to become a search engine optimizer will always want to optimize its website for google. By optimizing our website by yahoo we will get a chance to be recognized as one of the best search engines such as yahoo, msn and many others.

Google pays more attention to the factors which are not mentioned on the main page of the website. They decide the quality of the website on various factors. This also does not indicate that it completely ignores the components mentioned on the front page. It does not give them much importance as to other sites. Many of the search engine optimizers do not even know that what major important characteristics which will be looked over are. One of the most important components is links.

The website is recognized as a very good website if the search engine optimizer makes the links of his website and he accumulates those links from his various sources such as marketing of articles, commenting of blog, submission of directories, Signature of the forums, also sites two point zero. All these factors lead to the good ranking of a website. This is an important thing to keep in mind in order to link the first part of the website while the other part remains the keyword anchor of the content. Since the website is ranked high due to its key words, it becomes very important for the search engine optimizer. Another intelligent idea is to choose various types of versions of keyword in order to achieve high ranking of the website. This is a tip which is believed to be very natural in nature and is therefore preferred by google.

Traffic Brought By The Banners To The Websites

2009-03-01T06:38:00.000+11:00

If the banners are put in the right way and if they are very well intended than they can also help a great deal in attracting more and more people to their website. Thus, the banners can also help a great deal if they are used systematically. Banners also attract and infatuate people because of its minimalism and unfussy designs. The main features of a good banner are that it should be having good and meaningful pictures which will later transform into significant data. This data will be later perceived by the person who is going through it. In order to make the banner more attractive and eye-catching one can add a bit of moving pictures into it. This will make the banner look more appealing and eye-catching.

It is always advised that the banner must be appropriate, short and snappy. One should not add more and unnecessary content to the blog. Sometimes the images are also exaggerated which also makes the blog look overacted. In order to make the blog more attractive and appealing, one must have well ability and talent for making good banners to attract more and more people. Also a good title can also attract the onlookers. If the title is good than the visitor will also be able to have a brief idea about the blog. If the caption is good than the people will also visit the site very rapidly.

The commercial of the blog is also considered to be one of the most important things to gather traffic over traffic over the site. A banner should be very well planned and executed as the blog represents the whole website. There are various predetermined sizes of the blogs which need to keep in the mind while designing them. These sizes are four hundred and sixty eight into sixty, seven hundred and twenty eight into ninety and three hundred into two hundred and fifty. Only these sizes of the blogs are up to the set standard. The most popular size of the banner is three hundred into two hundred and fifty.

5 Prerequisites For Blogging Success

2009-02-08T08:59:00.003+11:00

In the time that I have been blogging, I have noticed that there are a few things that “successful” blogs have in common. And I am defining “success” in every way — monetary terms, absolute traffic, but more importantly, in robust and continued growth. With 2007 here and many New Years Resolutions on the cusp, I thought we would start things off with what I believe are 5 things that are necessary to grow one’s blog.

1. Putting in the Time and Commitment.
One of the things that I didn’t fully appreciate is what a time commitment blogging is. I’m not including all the time it takes to literally set up a Wordpress installation, or taking the time to tweak your theme just right, or even answering the buckets of email you may (or may not) have. What I am talking about is the time it takes to actually write.

If you’re a gifted writer, all the best to you. Skip the rest of this tip. For the rest of us who were not born with a pencil in their mouths, it literally takes time to write something really meaty, interesting, and worthy of your blog. The stuff that makes people fascinated and can’t wait to want more. It takes time to research stuff you don’t know about, to find a block of uninterrupted time to actually sit down and write the blasted piece, and then actually get it out in a form that you feel comfortable with.

And for people who have a semblance of a life — husband/wife, kids, a job, other Responsibilities — it can actually come as a bit of a shock, because in the blogging world no one really talks about how long it takes to actually create something you’re proud of.

For the literal minded (who have not yet started to blog), what this means is that at a post a day, it might require one extra hour of your life to produce that single post alone. Are you going to take that hour away from television time? Time with your family? Time to sleep? For most folks, their days are packed to the gills doing Stuff; taking the time to commit to blogging will often mean taking time away form something else.

What can make it doubly hard is in ADDITION to writing regularly (which is what we all should be aiming for), is that when one starts out, one must make the commitment to blog consistently for a stretch of time. Its insufficient to blog regularly for a few days, then stop for a few weeks. Put yourself in your readers shoes; how fast would you drop a blog if they stopped writing for weeks at a time? Needless to say, if you’ve been convinced blogging is Work, then one of the first hurdles one needs to overcome is the notion that blogging is for the short term. In fact, to grow your blog, you need to write for the intermediate-to-long term to see some kind of return on your time.

Beginning bloggers ought to plan to blog for at least a few months consistently before throwing the towel in. And there are some fairly concrete reasons for doing so as well. Having a body of work allows Google and other Search Engines time to find you (and get out of the Sandbox); it allows you to build a body of work that “proves” to your readers your in it for the long term; a body of work will also “prove” to your readers you know what you’re talking about; the time will also allow you to market your blog (see below) to create other streams of traffic back to your site.

At the end of the day, the reality of blogging, is that to be successful, you’ve got to write regularly and consistently, and you’ve got to find the time to do it.

For some it might mean being more efficient with their time, both with blogging, and the time around blogging; and for others it might mean reprioritizing their evening’s actvities. But no matter what you do, if you can’t do what it takes to give yourself the time to produce something on a regular basis, your blog will start to flag — and it certainly won’t grow.
The blogosphere is growing at a prodigious rate; every blog has a great deal of competition for your reader’s feed reader, and ultimately their attention. They deserve your best — and it takes time to create your best. Finding the time to do it, and do it consistently, is one of the greatest challenges most bloggers will face.

2. Willing to Market The Blog
Even if you’re willing to put in the time and energy to blog, and blog consistently, it will do you no good if you’re not willing to market your blog. There’s no question that blogging in the oblivion of anonymity can be hard; but you are deluding yourself if you’re stuck in the “if I build it, they will come” mentality. There’s no question that Google or other Search Engines might find you, but to grow your blog at any kind of velocity will require you to not only write for your blog, but spend some (more) time promoting it. There is no shortage of articles on this (and I will be contributing to Darren’s own body of work in the next few days), but to create a successful blog, you’ve got to willing to put the effort into making sure people know about your blog.

And I find the most basic strategies are actually the best. Sure, there’s all kinds of other methods, such as blog carnivals, getting your blog Dugg and so on, but if blogging is about conversations, you’ve got to be willing to participate in those conversations yourself. Get involved in the comments section of other bloggers. Respond on your own blog. Link like mad to other bloggers and their posts. Putting in the time to do these basic kinds of “marketing” methods for your blog can pay huge dividends, as all blogging communities are in a state of flux, with older bloggers leaving, and newer bloggers joining in the conversation. And that next one just might be you!

3. Be Interesting
“Interesting” doesn’t mean being something your not. Nor does it mean trying to be “funny” or “clever”. Interesting, is relative, and is relative in particular, to your readers. If you’re writing about a given topic, hopefully you’ll know something about the people who are similarly interested; these are the people who you should be writing for. The content you write should be fresh, unique, passionate and relevant. And it can take many forms (variety, as they say is the spice of blogs). Interviews, lists, news, it goes on. If you’re writing about the same old stuff every day, in the same way every day, or, echoing what everyone else is saying, then stop. Because you need to give people a reason to read your blog once they’ve actually heard about your blog.

4. Realize Its Not About You (its About Them)
Blogging has a reputation amongst the mainstream media and many of the uneducated masses that it is STILL the providence of self indulgent teenagers who are create vanity puff pieces for themselves and their three friends. They’re confusing it with MySpace. Although blogging may have its roots in that kind of mentality, its come a long way. And certainly the kind of blogging you want to do is not about you at all. Its about Them. I’ve alluded to it plenty of times in this very article, but blogs that are successful, popular, and growing are not ones centered around their authors. They are centered around news and information that is interesting to their readership.

But what does this also mean? It means ask yourself and Them, how you can make yourself better to serve their interests. It means, changing your content to make it wildly interesting to Them. It means ask yourself if the next Big Change your going to do on your blog will cheese them off or encourage more feed signups.

It also definitely means being accessible, and getting into the conversations that you generate. Once your blog is up and going, turn your comments on, and try and reply to as many as you possibly can. Sometimes the ensuing discussion is even more important than the actual post that spawned it. And if you’re growing your blog, you may leave an indelible mark on other bloggers who are commenting on your site, creating more fans for yourself.

5. Focus
Blogs that are fascinating, regular reads, that are also are reader-centered do best when they are also focused like a laser. And I mean “focused” and consistent in every single way. Focused in their identity and writing style, focused in their content, and focused in their intent to serve their reader. Blogs that are wishy-washy, who don’t know who they are, who change their kind of writing “voice” repeatedly, who vascillate on their opinions, who introduce nonsensical and unrelated topics are blogs that will find it difficult to succeed.

It is possible to be so fascinating about everything that it requires no focus. But blogs like those that have succeeded tend to be blogs that have been around for a long time. The blogging environment that baby blogs are born into today is a chokingly competitive one. Whether its celebrity, business, law, or crocheting, to earn continual growth requires that every day, in every way, people know what to expect from your blog.

The other benefit of focus, is that irrespective of your actual authority, people will inherently trust, and believe you to be a thought leader in a given area, if you consistently blog on a particular area of interest for a long enough period of time in an intelligent enough way. Thought leadership is important, because when people will look for opinion makers, they’ll turn to you. When they’ll want partners they’ll turn to you. When the mainstream media is interested in a quote, they’ll turn to you. And when other bloggers need guest bloggers, they might turn to you too.

Heck, look at me. A doctor blogging about blogging on one of the biggest blogs in the blogosphere. Who would have thunk it? :)

problogger.com

Blogging Tips for Beginners

2009-01-29T05:54:00.001+11:00

Welcome to my Blogging Tips for Beginners Guide.

On the page below you’ll find links to a series of blog tips that I’ve written with blogging for beginners (and ‘Pre’ Bloggers) in mind. It unpacks the basics of blogging and a lot of the decisions and strategies that you’ll want to consider when setting up and starting a blog.

My Ultimate Guide to Blogging for Beginners

Since developing this series I’ve produced a book specifically for beginner bloggers. You can learn more about it on our ProBlogger the Book page. The book is filled with up to date blogging tips for beginners - you can get it on Amazon here.

3 More Excellent Resources on Blogging for Beginners

Also - if you are looking for some more personalized help in starting and running a blog I highly recommend that you check out these resources by a blogger that I respect - Yaro Starak:

from problogger

MacRumors.com Publisher Success Story

2009-01-25T08:35:00.000+11:00

I love publisher success stories. I think it’s part of the core of what I love about the business aspects of the web, and why I ended up building advertising tools that help them earn more money doing what they love.

The New York Times recently published an article about Arnold Kim who runs MacRumors.com, one of the most successful blogs on the web.

It’s not really a touching rags to riches story as Kim was already earning a six-figure income as a doctor, but it is a great example how identifying a need, then building a relatively simple site, and working really hard to create great content over the years can put you in a great place.

The site placed MacRumors No. 2 on a list of the “25 most valuable blogs,” right behind Gawker Media and ahead of The Huffington Post, PerezHilton.com, and TechCrunch. Two of the other tech-oriented blogs on its list, Ars Technica and PaidContent, were sold earlier this year, reportedly for sums in excess of $25 million.

The cynics out there will say “Sure, but all the good topics already have established sites today so it’s too hard to compete.” While it’s true it’d be hard to crack the rumor market for Apple right now, it’s far from true in general. There are new areas of interest all the time that lend themselves to opportunities. Techcrunch is one of the most successful sites out there, and it was started a couple of years ago when Web 2.0 caught fire.

Just now the market is somewhat open for someone to do a great job covering the iPhone App world in great detail and becoming THE resource. An established site like MacRumors.com has an advantage of already having a foothold in this area, but they also suffer from not being able to focus on the topic exclusively.

It’s not that hard to think up topics if you open your mind, the harder part is putting in the effort for years creating content and marketing your site to achieve the success. It’s exciting to know though that the door is still wide open, and I think we’ll be reading stories like this for years to come.

AdSense + Chitika | Premium Contest: Win a Google Android G1 phone, Blackberry Storm, or iPhone

2009-01-25T08:32:00.001+11:00

We’re giving away 1 of this year’s hottest phones, along with $400 cash in this Adsense+Chitika | Premium placement contest!

Since one of the best ways to earn the most revenue is by using AdSense and Chitika | Premium together on the same page, we thought we would hold a contest to see who has the best AdSense + Chitika | Premium setup.

What do you mean by AdSense + Chitika | Premium setup?
We mean anywhere on your site where you are running AdSense and Chitika | Premium on the same page. For example - look at this screenshot:

What are the Prizes?
There are 3 prizes:
GRAND PRIZE - Winner will receive their choice of:

Google/T-Mobile G1 Android phone
Blackberry Storm
Apple iPhone 3G 8Gb

RUNNERS UP - 2 runners up will receive $200 each

How do I enter?
You can submit your entries by posting a link to your site in the comments below, or send an email to “specialprojects [at] chitika [dot] com” with the subject “AdSense + Chitika contest”.

All entries must be received by 11:59 pm US EDT on Sunday, Dec. 21. We look forward to seeing what you all come up with!!!

If you don’t have Chitika | Premium code yet, you can grab it here. Also - if you are unfamiliar with Chitika | Premium, you can learn how it works here.

Spread the word about this contest and earn revenue!
You can link to this page with your Chitika referral ID and earn referral revenue from people who sign up. Just use the link below, and substitute “username” with your Chitika username:
http://chitika.com/blog/2008/12/12/adsense-chitika-contest?refid=username

Submit Your Blog to these Sites

2008-09-24T04:13:00.000+10:00

RSS Network - submit RSS feeds & select cataegory

Blog Digger - submit your rss feed for your blog

Blogarama - submit your blog

BlogStreet - blog submissions

Globe of Blogs - submit your rss feed for you blog

Kmax Blog Links - blog submission

BlogSearchEngine - submit rss feeds for web logs

BlogHop - submit feeds for blogs

EatonWeb - submit feed for online blogs

PopDex - feed sumbission for web blogs

Blo.gs - blog submissions

BlogCensus - submit your rss feed for your blog

BlogStreet - rss feed submission for blog

BritBlog - blog submission

BlogLines - submit your blog to the directory

BoingBoing - submit blogs for review

RootBlog - enter the URL of a RSS feed you want to added to the database.

Weblog Directory - submit blog to directory

BlogoSphere EcoSystems - add your weblog

Blogz - add your blog

Blog Indonesia - submit your blog url

BlogPulse - automated trend discovery system for blogs

BlogCatalog - The Ultimate Blog Directory - Search For Blogs

Blogdir - spanish blog community

Australian Weblogs - Australian Weblogs seeks to highlight Australian owned or based weblog, everything-nothing and journal style web sites.

AllAfrica Blogs - open listing of Africa-related weblogs

Canadian Blog Directory - BlogsCanada is maintained by a couple of Elves who evaluate blogs for

Weblog Madness - blog sumission sites

mypagerank - submit web blog

technorati - submit your RSS

Ares Galaxy Acceleration Tool

2008-08-30T04:15:00.000+10:00

Ares Galaxy Acceleration Tool is an innovative traffic accelerator for Ares P2P.
Through an innovative traffic optimization algorithm, Ares Galaxy Acceleration Tool can speed up the Ares downloads up to 300%. The tool is designed to support the Ares multi-source downloads and addresses especially the situations with slow sources.
The sophisticated acceleration algorithm stays behind a simple and friendly interface which doesn’t require much user action.
Features:
- increase the download speed from slow sources
- stable and low resource consumer
- straight forward user interface
- free of unwanted software like spyware, ads or trojans
- it’s free

Requirements:
- Internet connection
- Windows 95/98/98SE/ME/NT/2000/XP
- Ares Galaxy P2P program installed (aresgalaxy.sourceforge.net)

AVS Video Tools 1

2008-08-30T04:06:00.002+10:00

AVS Video Tools packs 4 tools that are designed to meet your most various video tasks!

AVS Video Converter converts between all key formats such as: DVD, AVI (DivX, XviD, etc.), DV AVI, MP4 (compatible with iPod, Sony PSP, mobiles and other portables), WMV, 3GP, 3G2, QuickTime (MOV, QT), SWF, VOB, VRO, MPEG 1,2, MPG, DAT, VCD, SVCD, ASF, MJPEG, H.263, H.264, Real Video (RM, RMVB), DVR-MS, MKV, OGM, FLV and like no other converter uploads movies, home videos, TVs, directly to your portable device at one go. AVS Video Converter allows you to create exciting movie DVDs to watch on your home DVD Player.

With AVS Video Converter you can apply more than 50 video and audio effects, extract audio tracks, make still pictures of your favorite or hot movie moments.

AVS DVDtoGo, a smart wizard-styled tool, copies movies and converts just any video to iPod, Sony PSP, Archos, Zen Creative, mobile or a portable media player with one-click. You don’t need to puzzle over best output parameters – AVS DVDtoGo automatically sets them to be 100% fitting your device!

AVS Capture Wizard helps you create home video masterpieces from the first run. The tool transfers videos directly to DVD from VHS tapes, DV or web cameras, TV tuners and even DVB-S, DVB-T or paid satellite channels! You can then enjoy your favorite shows on most DVD Players in use today.

AVS Video ReMaker, a fast MPEG files editor, removes TV ads or just unwanted parts on the fly from DVDs or video files recorded with various DVD , PVR& DVR camcorders. Edited without reconverting DVDs or video files retain their original superb quality. The scene detection algorithm scans video and splits it into episodes making the editing routine most accurate and handy.

AVS Audio Tools

2008-08-30T03:58:00.000+10:00

Your complete audio studio! Record, rip, convert, mix, burn, copy to mobiles.

This audio software suite includes full-featured digital Audio Mixer and 10 wizard-styled tools - Ringtone Maker, Mobile Uploader, Audio CD Grabber, Audio Converter, Audio Recorder, Audio CD Creator, Music Disc Creator, Clone CD/DVD, iRadio Recorder.

- Boost your MP3 audio collection with surround sound!
- Set a soundtrack as a ringtone before the movie is released!
- With AVS Music Mix being creative and original is outstandingly easy!

It supports all major audio file formats: WAV, PCM, MP3, WMA, OGG, AAC, M4A, AMR and others.

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2008-08-24T06:14:00.004+10:00

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About our Affiliate Program

2008-08-16T09:05:00.000+10:00

HOW TO JOIN THE AFFILIATE PROGRAM?

Create an account

. We need to know who you are so we can see your Web site and know where to send your commission checks.

HOW DOES THE AFFILIATE PROGRAM WORK?

When visitors arrive at your site, a cookie is placed on their computers identifying them as "belonging" to you. (All affiliate systems use cookie-based identification.)

If the visitor comes to our site and buys from us, that information is recorded along with your affiliate ID -- thus we know when one of "your" visitors buys from us, and we can calculate your commission.

If a visitor doesn't buy from us the same day he was on your site, you may still earn a commission if the visitor comes back to us later. The cookie lasts forever, so you could still make money days or even months later. (As long as the cookie is present, we can identify the visitor; however, if the visitor goes to another of our affiliates during that time, your cookie will be replaced by that other affiliate's cookie. Thus the visitor "belongs" to the last affiliate site visited.)

OUR AFFILIATE EARNING PER SALE

SERVICE	COMMISSION	PRICE	YOU EARN
Virtual Email Address Sales	30%	$9.00 to 95.00	$2.70 to $28.50
Express Mail Service	20%	$50 to $500	$10 to $100.00
Flower Delivery	20%	$80 to $500.00	$16.00 to $100.00
Phone Translation Service	20%	$50.00 to $400.00	$10.00 to $80.00
Fiancee Visa Kit	20%	$89.50	$17.95
Language Courses	20%	$49.95 to 299.95	$9.99 to 59.99
Romance Tours			$500.00

WHEN DO I GET PAID?

Every month we calculate how much money we owe you. If it's $50 or above, we'll send you a payment; if less, the commission stays in your account, rolling over to the next month. On the first month that the total reaches $50 or above, we'll pay you.

It's a simple process, and pays a generous commission: 30% on all address sales, 20% on all other sales, and a $500.00 commission on all full Romance tour sales.

It doesn't stop there, you will also receive ongoing commissions each time your client comes back and orders again, no matter which of the many services he chooses, and no matter how many times he orders, you will receive a commission each and every time.

Start earning right away

Add Amazon Content to your Web Page

2008-08-15T19:56:00.000+10:00

Make money!

Amazon.co.uk Associates enjoy the many benefits of one of the world’s largest and most successful affiliate programmes:

Up to 10% referral fee for your Associate links to Amazon.co.uk
Attractive content for your website, blogs, newsletters, forums, community: More than one million Amazon.co.uk products to choose from
Free to join and you can cancel at any time
Monthly payment of referral fees
Free access to Associates Central: Comprehensive online reporting, link generator, help function, account information, performance tips
Contact with your Associate Community in our online discussion boards
Access to the latest information on our Associate Blog
Quick and simple online registration without obligation

Affiliate marketing

2008-08-14T07:08:00.000+10:00

Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts.

Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of Internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies, and in-house affiliate managers, specialized third party vendors, and various types of affiliates/publishers who promote the products and services of their partners.

Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.

Affiliate marketing—using one website to drive traffic to another—is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.^[1]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

sign up bluehost

2008-08-04T07:39:00.000+10:00

BlueHost.Com offers one of the most rewarding Affiliate Programs available on the web today.

What do I get?
By driving customers to sign-up at BlueHost.Com, you will receive $65.00 per referral. What could be better than offering a great service to those that visit your web site, and making a healthy sum on the side for doing so? You send them our way, we'll do the rest.

Through your personal Affiliate login and our online administration you can:
View click-through ratios of your links or banner
promotions to our site
View payments by sign-up
Download your personalized tracking code
And track your comission payouts

How do I sign up?
Sign-up is FREE and only takes a minute:
Give us a few details about you and your site, and we'll give you the personalized tracking code to identify you and the visitors you send us. Click below to begin the process.

Chitika eMiniMalls Review

2008-07-31T19:32:00.000+10:00

If you read this review of Chitika eMiniMalls and sign up - you might also be interested in my Chitika eMiniMall Tips Page and my post revealing how much Chitika eMiniMalls earn me .

Over the past few weeks I've been a part of a beta testing program of a new ad format for Chitika's eMiniMalls.

They are a new type of ad that many of you will find quite beneficial for your blogs - I know I have. You've probably seen them around. They come in a range of sizes but usually have a picture of a product and then some tabs running across the top that say 'Description', 'Best Deals', 'Reviews' and 'Search'. As you put the cursor over the top of these tabs they change what the ad shows.

I've added one to the sidebar here at ProBlogger so you can see what I'm talking about in the flesh and have added a screen capture of another sized one below.

- ads pay on a per click basis. The value of the clicks depends upon the product being featured.
- left in default mode - mini-malls are contextual ads (ie they look at your content and try to find ads that are relevant with it)
- ads can be set to be non contextual and to target specific keywords (this is helpful when it comes to running them in conjunction with Adsense - more information on this below).

How Profitable are they?

The terms of using eMiniMalls don't allow me to share specific figures but I can share the following:

Overall - I've been beta testing mini-malls for 5 weeks now and am very happy with them. They don't out perform Adsense for me yet - but my overall earnings with them for the month of September is more than a quarter and less than a half of my Adsense earnings for the month (regularly readers will be able to do some sums and come up with some approximate earnings there). Take into consideration that I don't have them running on every blog I own and have not spent much time optimizing them yet and you'll see that they have some real potential.

Cost per Click - Very good. The first day I added mini malls to and saw the amount that each click was paying I was quite surprised. They are considerably higher than my average click value on Adsense - some days they are 5 or 6 times higher. I've talked to a couple of other bloggers using them and they report similar click values. This is the definate strength of mini-malls.

Click Through Rate - The percentage of people clicking on eMiniMalls ads is considerably lower than what I get on Adsense. This is a bit disappointing and is probably for a number of reasons.

Poor Optimization - This is partly my fault. I've just not had time to really optimize the ads properly. It is also partly because they are not currently offering channels to track ad performance on different blogs/categories/positions. As a result if I were to try to optimize the ads now I have no way of tracking the results. Channels are a feature that will be added shortly however so I'm expecting to be able to increase my CTR somewhat.
Poor Ad matching - Chitika are still working on how they match ads with content. Ad relevancy seems to be a bit of a problem on some posts. I know this because I know they have ads for some products that just don't show up on pages where i'd expect them to. Hopefully they'll continue to develop their algorithm and find ways of making ads even more relevant.
Lower Numbers of Ads - I'm suspecting that Chitika has a lower number of ads than Adsense to select from to run on sites using mini-malls. This means that sometimes ads can be a little irrelevant to your content which would decrease CTR also.

Let's hope they can increase CTR in future.

Reports - I'll emphasize that mini-malls are in beta at present so don't expect too much in the reporting realm yet. At this stage they just update at the end of each day and give you some basic stats under the four headings of - Date, Impressions, Clicks and Revenue. These stats are what they call 'unaudited' - which means they haven't taken anything off the total that they suspect to be click fraud or 'dodgy' clicks. They 'audit' you at this stage once per month (they have indicated that this will happen daily at some point in the future). I was only in the system for three days of last month but the auditing brought my 'unaudited' figures back by about 10% of what they were. Clicks are audited by some secret process that includes multiple or repeated clicks, traffic from bots and spiders as well as traffic coming from certain countries like China or Korea.

I'm not too impressed by the auditing feature. While I understand why its there I can see that this will be the cause of some tension between Chitika and Publishers. I'm sure Adsense has some sort of system in place that does something similar - but they are big enough to build it in as a real time feature so that publishers just don't know what they lose. I'd rather not know the amount they take off for this than have it dangled before me to be taken away later.

I know from my conversations with Chitika staff that the reporting system will be undergoing significant improvements in the coming weeks and months.

Ad Formats - The currently offer 10 different size formats in some pretty standard sizes. I've recommended to them that they add a couple of new formats that I believe would be beneficial to bloggers but overall the options are pretty good. They also allow you to make some changes to the design of your ads by changing colors of borders, title and text to match your blog.

Payment - Payment is via Paypal in US Dollars at the start of every month - around 30 days after the end of the month you're being paid for. You need to reach a minimum of $10 to get a payment.

Can Mini-Malls be used in conjunction with Adsense? - Most people I talk to about mini-malls asks this - it's important as most bloggers want to use them in conjunction with one another.

I've talked to Google about this via email. The first email I got back from them said 'no' you can't use them for two reasons:

They look too similar to Adsense Ads
They are contextual ads

I decided to follow the email up pointing out two things.

They actually don't look like Adsense ads - they have a picture in them, tabs etc. I think the mistake Adsense made at first was in confusing mini-malls with Chitika's other ads which do look very similar to Adsense ads.
You can actually disable the contextual element of the ads and plug in code that targets a specific product.

The email I received back said that they were sorry for making a mistake and that Chitika mini-mall ads can be used in conjunction with Adsense IF they are set to be non contextual.

I know of two others who have had this same conversation with Google with the same results.

English Sites only - at this point they are in beta test and only accepting Engine sites into the program. While this is sad for non English sites I guess they have to start somewhere. Hopefully they'll widen it later at some point.

All in all - I'm pleased with Chitika's mini-malls. They have loads of potential. I suspect (and until I get channels I won't know for sure) that they will do best on product related blogs. They seem to serve very relevant ads to my gadget type blogs and struggle on some of my more 'news' related blogs.

I've also seen them producing very relevant ads over at ShoeBlogs (remember in the interview I did with Manolo that he said that chitika ads were in some of his better performing ads). I've also seen a couple of bloggers so impressed with mini-malls that they've ditched Adsense all together as they were able to earn significantly more from Chitika (one of these is Jeremy Wright from ensight .

As with all new ad programs I would suggest that putting all your eggs in one basket is not the way to go - give Chitika a go by all means but keep in mind that eMiniMalls are in a beta test and as with all beta tests things are being tested and tweaked along the way. There is promising signs but take your time with it.

You can apply to be a part of the eMiniMalls beta test at Chitika Mini Malls Sign Up.

Disclaimer: the links to Chitika in this post are affiliate links - if you sign up using these links I earn a small amount as a commission. It does not impact what you earn from Chitika but rather is paid by Chitika. While these links are affiliate links I genuinely believe in the product and have pointed out both its benefits and weaknesses.

Update: A couple of people have asked for more information on the Adsense/Mini-mall running on the same page thing. Here is an excerpt from an email that Google sent associates and I when we asked them for clarification about running the mini-malls in a non contextual mode.

lunar pages busines

2008-07-31T19:31:00.001+10:00

Top-notch web hosting affiliate program

If you join the Lunarpages Affiliate Program you have some great chances to make the big bucks with your website. They offer their client's top-notch web hosting solutions and since it's a quality company you won't have to be afraid of promoting something that will scare away your visitors. Quite the opposite – they already have over 150 000 satisfied clients. Join this well-established web hosting company and start making money today!

Lunarpages Affiliate Program

and get up to $52 or 0%

Quick facts

Lunarpages Affiliate Program
Payment frequency:
Global Acceptance: Yes Realtime statistics: Yes
Online since: 2000 Conversion Rates
Tracking software: Lifetime payments: Yes
Base commission: $52 Co-Branded: Yes
Cookie tracking: Yes Payment threshold: $0
Commission type: CPO Telephone:
IP tracking: Yes Affiliate Manager:
2 tier Earnings: Yes Support: telephone, email
2 tier commission: $5

Traffic allowed

Organic:		Lead Batch Uploades (Real-time delivery):
Search Engine Optimization:		Hosted Co-Registration (link Outs):
Pay-Per-Click:		Non Hosted Co-Registration (link Outs):
E-Mail:		Exit Popups:
Incentives:		Blogging:
Contextual:		Ad Networks:

Full review of lunarpages

Easy commissions

There are no strange rules or loopholes with this affiliate program when it comes to the commission. As an affiliate you'll earn $65 in commission per referral. Lunarpages.com also offers a $5 2nd tier commission. As you probably understand by now you have every possibility in the world to increase your monthly income. As the costs of living increases each year this affiliate program will help you even it out. Pros

Well-established company
Great security
2nd Tier commissions

Cons

Competitive segment

Award winning affiliate program

As already mentioned this is a very popular web hosting and they have awards to prove their top quality. They have won awards as everything from the best dedicated host to best secure hosting and the editors' choice (WebHost Magazine & Buyers Guide). Trustworthy as ever this is an affiliate program we can highly recommend.

Improve your business

As your referrals count improves the more Lunarpages will help you with your affiliate business. If you can produce 100 referrals a month the incentives and commission will improve. When generating 150 referrals a month they'll help you create tailored landing pages. The more referrals you get the easier it will be generate even more. Partner up with the Lunarpages Affiliate program today!

Join lunarpages program

and get up to $52 or 0%

busines paydotcom

2008-07-31T19:28:00.000+10:00

When i first joined - i did a 3 hour assessment...........
I'm a ClickBanker for my own product line (and now a PDC'er as of tonight), and have clients in MANY different networks, i'm not a network but work with them all, and they love to hate me They hate me because I stand between them and merchants as a standalone guide before a network can get them exclusively and potentially ruin them (this is for bigger and more commercial networks that take big monthly management fee's etc.). However they love me because I DO have to pick one or two for each client to go through with their product/service, so in essence I am recruiting and adding value to the ones I/we choose, and so they love me because I bring them both merchants, affiliates, and money.

Onto the Juice: I've been playing with wrapping one of the networks around a membership site I've been running since 2002, after some inspection and just wanting to test the waters I decided to log into my PDC account tonight for the first time since I made my account a while back and really take a deep tour through the system. Along the way I found myself upgrade, and list my membership site and start learning about the PDC structure/rules/etc. Though it's my first night I've absorbed a lot and here is my feedback and questions: I'm going to compare this grid to ClickBank as that is the closest one to PDC in my opinion re the overall picture of the
networks... The pid works pretty much the same too
Questions: What if I don't put an account number and just leave PDC paydotcom

Does This Happen Here>>oes someone own an account name 'your_pdc_username' and maybe an account names 'pdcusername' or 'yournamehere'? MANY hops/links and affiliates forget to change them and or don't understand yet, and I KNOW they make sales on them. It happens with every network. As a vendor this upsets me to know that most networks keep that money or allow internal teams/leaks get those usernames...

With CB and others you simply make up whatever nick you want, I like this method because you can have a numeric value like 23531 which doesn't look like an ugly affiliate link, or you can be sneaky and make your nickname 'secure_page' or 'front_page' so the link looks more legit.

Also side note: Can I hide the aff link as a merchant? I know I can redirect my home page so it won't show the ?=.... however is there other methods for affiliates? I don't mean cloaking your aff link, I mean so I can promote xx.com and only see xx.com not xx.com?=affid? I don't want to cookie stuff the surfer either, nor would i employ my aff's to do that so is there a legal and easy PDC way to hide it?

Purchase links:Also pretty simple, plugging the PDC paypal buttons
CB: A little different, the whole checkout process happens via ClickBank branded pages.
Questions: So if I'm with PDC, I obviously cannot connect another aff program to this as it require the PDC payment gateway. I dislike this for both PDC and CB. Why? Because now if I want to offer my site via another network to reach other affiliate pools, I have to duplicate the site. Some networks do this to make your site exclusive to them, others simply give you code to plug in on thank you page and you can use your own payment gateway(s), thus enabling using the same site with multiple networks. A few of my clients are multi-networked, and now that I'm here (luckily I build all my own sites) I will be duplicating and offering both aff pools the same products to two seperate versions of the site just to enable the separate payment and tracking gateways... ugh.

Management & Tools: I gotta say, even though its free, the management tools here are quite vast (re adding your promo tools and marketing assets for aff's to use, love the {command} shortcuts.

Affiliates: Haven't done much research yet to know what the affiliate base is like here, can anyone (merchants) enlighten me? CB Has TONS of affiliates and TONS coming on board daily, however don't let this fool you. I'd rather have 10 super affiliates than 100 CB newbies to my products and my clients products.

Now, for recruitment, I don't mind utilizing the page that PDC puts in the marketplace, but I'd much rather the option to point them to my own affiliate recruitment site - i.e. I set this up for my program with PDC paydot - Now all is fine however I cannot seem to get a 'PDC affiliates login here' button working, I can only send them to my PDC made page and instruct them to scroll to the bottom (very looong scroll too) and login there. That should be optimized, put that button above the fold as well as where it sits, the more merchants add assets, the longer that scroll is. So: How can I let my affiliates login to PDC directly from my own page in the above link?

Buying with your own link: PDC Seems to frown on it
CB: Allows you to do it a few times, the TOS is grey, they say you cannot continually abuse it, but a few times is ok. In fact this is a tactic many merchants use to both 'up' their listings quality score, get their affiliates to do the same and reimburse them on the side, and it is somewhat of a win/win for both vendors and aff's. Personally, I wouldn't mind one bit if 1000 affiliates wanted to buy my product with their own links, i'm still making money, affiliates are happy customers, and PDC is making more money. Simply regulate it and throw a script together that checks for transaction intervals, or perhaps allow 'up to 5' purchases with your own ID - smart marketing and business if you ask me. Seems the programmer here knows what h/she is doing so this should be easy technically speaking...

Landing Pages: Since I'm not how the rules are set for landing pages, Scenarios are: 1. I build 5 landing pages, I .zip them and offer my affiliates to download and unzip, change aff id and SEO tactics, h/she uploads to their server and sends the traffic from the lander to my main site with aff id link. This is the standard however there is also this method: I upload the landers to MY server with my affiliates links embedded, the landers have BUY NOW buttons, the affiliate sends traffic to the lander, and customer can buy without having to go to the main site, purchase right from the lander. Is the latter method possible here? And if so can I also give my affiliates that standalone lander for them to use on their own?

Conversion tracking: Since I have no data here yet, and nothing to quantify: Can anyone tell me the perks and weaknesses of the PDC tracking vs. others? No tracking is perfect but I'm sure some of you experienced folks can enlighten me on what some of the odd scenarios are or fake conversions or or or...

Affiliate Pools: I'm on 20 or so forums and see PDC here and there, however can you all please tell me where the popular hangouts are for you guys? Where the big players make their announcements? In fact if there are any big players that see value in my slate so far, please reach out I'm always up to learn more and connect with others when entering a new network. Thank you in advance for this one.

***Conversions ON PDC payment pages: I'm sorry if this hurts, but your payment pages MUST MUST MUST be upgraded. Merchants spend so much time and effort on mastering their pages and websites to be beautiful through and through, to then take the customer to a very outdated and poorly made payment page - i almost got suspicious myself looking at it for the first time. If the developer or designer is here - PLEASE GET IN TOUCH AND LET ME HELP! I thinks THIS is the most important part of the customer journey and your whole operation could drastically improve conversion ratios if you make your payment pages look more professional and secure/safe/easy/branded to the end user. Please let me know if you would consider my help with this. Compared to the other networks not just CB, I think this one is the poorest quality so far (hey I'm still here and wil use the system, however please consider this request I'm sure other experienced merchants will agree). In fact, do you have an advisory board with some of your top earners/members yet? Would love to discuss...

To Add to the above: Customizing your checkout page is of no use - you're on an SSL (https) and if you plug and HTML i.e. Pictures on anything other than text, you get a nasty error/popup message "This page has both secure and non secure items..." User must pick yes or no, I can guarantee that at least half of our shoppers don't have a clue what that means, they just know something is unsafe - and they are on a payment page so this is bad, so they click 'no', when they click no all the images on the page do not show up, instead missing image icons show up... so let's review, customer comes from your beautiful site, to an ugly unsecure looking checkpoint, it's customized/branded to some degree but errors popup and images are missing - the average user is GONE and won't return... Can you not have that as an i-frame or include file that won't affect your SSL? Or perhaps just build in a little tool with a few wysiwyg features for users to upload their own pics/text and you host it? I think allowing your merchants to customize the checkout process is a huge mistake - keeping continuity in your design/branding and eliminating your customers fear for their credit card safety should be priority #1. I would eliminate the HTML branding options, and really let me () or another experienced guru help you create a beautiful Conversion Mastered checkpoint that is strict with style guide and no customization past text... This is essentially a large part of your marketing going to waste as well by not having that page PROUDLY branded (unless there are political or other unknown reasons why something so obvious is not optimized/done professionaly like the rest of the site)...

Paying Affiliates: Can someone with over 250 orders to their product or service please contact me or post here if you feel ok with disclosing this: Due to PDC being on a paypal structure, their refund policy is 56 days and or 8 weeks. Since you pay affiliates on your own here, and you need to pay them in a much shorter time period as I read 30 days or middle of the following month? If that is correct, that leaves a lot of room for mass fraud and refunds once you've paid your affiliates, what do you do in this case? is there an allowance set somewhere to buffer you? I think that even though there is mass payment, it wasn't thought out well, feel a little uneasy for volume sales with this intel. Your thoughts/stories would be greatly appreciated with this one.

On CB and others, they take a 7%-30% commission from either you the aff or from the merchant or sometimes both - I truly think it is A WONDERFUL sacrifice to make - i.e. CB is 7% from either party+$1 per transaction. They look after everything from refunds to allowance to sending you and your affiliates checks every 2 weeks, and they've thought of every crack and protected every weakness re timing/credit cards to sales (you need 5 orders on 5 different cards, at least 3 different cards i.e. one Visa one Mastercard one Amex, paypal/echeck don't count... Anyway, when you make 100+ sales a day and have to payout 100's of affiliates a month - THIS becomes a real hassle (however good problem to have to begin with ).

Multiple Products: This one seems to be in PDC's favor - I can have as many products and sites and payment emails as I want as a VIP/paid member? Really? Up to how many products/sites? CB is 500 under one account - BUT to have different marketplace listings it's $50 per listing/product.

Ok I think that will be all for me for now. If you can decipher the questions in my book above and get back to me it would be greatly appreciated.

join here..!!

backlinks

2008-07-31T19:27:00.001+10:00

busines backlinks

- BINS at the side of the domains. However, offers accepted in the thread
- Do not PM me
- Payment by PayPal balance or Moneybrookers (depending on your profile)
- Multiforum post : Timestamp determines winner
- Payment within 24 hours of posting SOLD
- I reserve the right not to sell to members with less than 1 month old and less than 10 iTraders.
- All domains listed here are free push to the same registrar
- All domains expire after June this year except stated
- Domains registered in Godaddy, Namecheap, ESTDomains, Domainsite and DynaDot
- For registry and expiry, please check this whois

Propecia-Drugs.org - $3 - (Domain history 92 results)
KNOD.net - $5 - 2/29/2008
TechAutoNews.com - $5 - 4/21/2008
FileRadr.net - $5
UnitedMed.org - $6
Security-Softs.com - $7- (251 backlinks)
PatrickFabre.net - $7 - (158 backlinks)
RMCareFoundation.org - $7- (238 backlinks)
f0c.org - $8 - (similar to Free Of Charge)
bm9.org - $8 - (BM 9 Series?)
8lv.org - $8 - (8 Levels?)
n84.org - $8 - (Another Nokia model?)
0hm.org - $8 - (similar to "Ohm")
v1n.org - $8 - (A person's name vin?)
Jaophoto.com - $9- (176 backlinks)
TVBoard.org - $9 - 5/15/2008
SGStudio.org - $9 - (195 backlinks)
HMDL.net - $13 - (All Premium Letters!!)
MLGS.net - $13 - (All Premium Letters!!)
HDBL.net - $13 - (All Premium Letters!!)
GDBL.net - $13 - (All Premium Letters!!)
GMDL.net - $13 - (All Premium Letters!!)

join here

QuebecAnimFX.com - SOLD!
Bingo-Mania.org - SOLD!
GZCM.net - SOLD!
JTSZX.com - SOLD!
J--9.com - SOLD!
EliNomad.com - SOLD!
Buck2K.com - SOLD!
PerfectGrenade.com - SOLD!
KSURCT.org - SOLD!
HCHTW.com - SOLD!
Law163.net - SOLD!
SoftwareLibResv.org - SOLD

backlinks

join widgetbucks

2008-07-31T19:26:00.001+10:00

You're in the publishing business, not the advertising business, so let us help you. Widgetbucks do the heavy lifting by creating contextual ad widgets that your visitors will actually click on and find engaging. You reap the rewards of PPC ad widgets that earn better than $2 CPM. We're seeing $3-$6 CPM on our widgets, about three times that of traditional ad networks.

When you sign-up with WidgetBucks, you'll automatically receive a $25 bonus into your account to get the ball rolling. This means you are half way to your first payout with WidgetBucks.
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adbrite

2008-07-31T19:25:00.001+10:00

If you have a good website with respected amount of traffic , These are in some way similar to ads shown by google adsense . They have more variety in their ads though.You can choose from a variety of ad formats that suits you. As long as you have traffic coming to your site , you can benefit from these adbrite ads.Not to mention again that you need to have a website or a blog to place these ads.

Aernings will depend on your traffic , Quality and quantity is requiered to get better revenues .Here are some of the ad formats that adbrite provides its publishers :

* Text ads
* Banner ads
* Full page ads
* Inline ads
* Invideo ads
* BritePic ads
* Ads for facebook application

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join amazon

2008-07-31T19:20:00.000+10:00

1. Buy what you need from Amazon whenever possible.
astore
Avoid driving to the store, wandering through the maze of isles to find an item that is out of stock, waiting to herd through checkout lines, and wondering whether you paid too much. Buy from Amazon and you will save money, time, and your sanity. In addition, consolidating your purchases with Amazon will give you more weight as a customer in their eyes. If a problem arises, they are more likely to see your loyalty and give you the benefit of the doubt "because you are a valued customer."

2. Join Amazon Prime.

For a $79 annual membership fee, Amazon Prime gives you free 2-day shipping with no order minimum. Upgrade to 1-day shipping for only $3.99. You can place as many orders as you want with these benefits. I no longer wait until I have $25 worth of items to order from Amazon or waste time looking for filler items to bring the total up to $25. As soon as I know I need something, I place the order. Buying gifts for friends and family is a breeze now.

3. Use Subscribe & Save.

When you find an item you want to buy, look for Subscribe & Save in the top section of the product detail page (to the right of the product images). If available, Subscribe & Save will save you around 15% or more. Standard shipping is free for all Subscribe & Save orders. You do not need to order more than $25 or be a member of Amazon Prime. Cancel a subscription at any time with no penalty. Right now, I subscribe and save on Huggies diapers, L'il Critters Gummy Bears vitamins, Kashi cereals and bars, John McCann's steel cut oatmeal, and Clif Bar and Clif Shot products. New items are frequently added to the Subscribe & Save program, so always look for it.

4. Check FatWallet or your favorite shopping deal site for hot deals and discount or coupon codes.

Visit FatWallet.com or a similar site. Search the forums for hot deals at Amazon (type in "Amazon" and scan the recent posts). You can also search for the name of a certain item you want to buy. You may find a great deal at Amazon or another site. Then, enter the cash back and coupon section to see if any coupon codes are available and applicable to your purchase.

5. Compare prices with PriceGrabber, Froogle, or your favorite price comparison site.

Often, Amazon offers the lowest price. But, in some cases, you may save money by not buying from Amazon. It only takes a few seconds to check. While you are at FatWallet, click on the Compare Prices button to access PriceGrabber.com. Type in the model number or the name of the item and search. Click on the Compare Prices button next to the correct item and a list of Sellers and prices will appear. Enter your zip code, if you haven't already, to get the total prices including shipping and tax.

6. Add items that you wish to buy to your cart and monitor.

If you are not in a rush to buy, add the item to your cart and click on the Save for later button. Visit Amazon periodically and click on Cart. When you do, an Important Message may come up at the top of the screen highlighting any changes in the prices of items in your cart. These changes will be from the last time you viewed your cart until present time. You will not find out about other changes that may have occurred along the way, and Amazon tends to tinker with the prices a lot, sometimes more than once a day. However, you will get a feel for when you are getting the best deal in recent weeks versus the best deal at that moment.

7. Add items that you just bought to your cart again and monitor.

As in Tip 6, you will get an important message alert for any price changes. If Amazon lowers the price of an item within 30 days from the day you received the item, send them an e-mail or give them a call and ask for a credit for the difference. Make sure you are looking at the price from Amazon. Amazon will not match a lower price from other Sellers (see policy details).

8. Get an Amazon.com Visa card.

Sign up online through Amazon and you will receive a $30 credit after your first purchase. Earn additional $25 reward certificates by collecting points for purchases. These points equate to a 3% savings at Amazon and a 1% savings everywhere else.

9. Consider buying from Amazon Sellers.

Sellers (big names like Target and small names like me) are great when you are looking for the absolute lowest price (not always Amazon), a used item (to save money), or an item that Amazon does not carry or have in stock. You still get all the advantages of your relationship with Amazon (order convenience, purchase protection, Visa card rewards, excellent customer service, etc.). Look for More Buying Choices information on the far right of the product detail page.

10. Collect items you no longer use to sell on Amazon.

Selling on Amazon is much easier than selling on eBay. Amazon takes a cut only if the item sells. Otherwise, it costs nothing. The item must be in Amazon's vast catalog of products before you can sell it.
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